New US fighter jet on course to becoming ‘one of history’s biggest white elephants’ - The UK considered buying 150 F-35s from the US, but not one plane is combat ready as costs soar.

The stealth capability is debatable. Some say it's lacking, others say it's the same as the F-22.

Speed isn't that important, no modern plane can outrun a missile. Also the F-22 isn't supposed to bombard precisely, something that's hard to do if you fly that hard.

It indeed has less internal hardpoints, but it's also a smaller aircraft. The reason why the F-22 wasn't at all considered for the dutch air force, is that they had to make the hanger bunkers bigger and that would be very costly. However the F-22 can only transport a small variant of bombs and rockets. Basically the only air to ground capacity of the F-22 is or 2x 1000lbs GBU-32 or 8x 250lbs GBU-39. The F-32 is able to have a really wide range of ordinance in it's internal bays. 26 of different bombs and missiles, and those are only confirmed working.

The dutch air force also expects to not need the clean stealth capabilities that much to see it as a downside that the external hardpoints reduces the stealth capabilities. Keep in mind, even when using all external hardpoints the F-35 has a smaller radar signature than the F-16.

The range that's listed on websites and such are only when using only the internal fuel tanks while having the internal bays fully armed. Meanwhile the listed range of the F-16 is the one when completly unarmed and most of the time include one external drop fuel tank.

I don't know where you got your prices. According to the dutch wikipedia the development costs are only $44.8 billion. Keep in mind, this is for 3 pretty different types of aircraft. The estimated total costs of operating 85 (dutch) f-35 for 30 years is $15 billion, this includes price to buy those planes.

Also it's really debatable that the F-22 is more capable than the F-35. The F-22 lacks in quite a lot of area's when compared with the F-35, with the biggest downside having a really small role. It can shoot down other air targets, and replace most air to air missiles for a limited range of air to ground ordinance.

/r/worldnews Thread Parent Link - independent.co.uk