With the U.S. F-35 Grounded, Putin’s New Jet Beats Us Hands-Down
By Rob Garver, The Fiscal Times
March 24, 2015
With the U.S. F-35 Joint Strike Fighter still in limbo over reliability problems, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration on Monday said it would begin regular production of its newest fighter jet, the T-50, next year.
According to state-run media, the Russian military will begin mass-producing the advanced fighter jet in several versions, and will also begin making models that will be available for export.
“We have plans to deliver the first series of fifth-generation fighter jets next year,” said Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov, after visiting a plant owned by Sukhoi, the Russian defense contractor responsible for the new plane, which is also known as the PAK-FA.
The “fifth generation” of fighter jets to which Borisov refers is a category of the very newest military aircraft in the world. To date, the only true fifth generation fighter in operation is the U.S. F-22, a wildly expensive and not terribly reliable plane that Congress agreed to stop funding in 2009. The last F-22 was built in 2011, giving the U.S. Air Force an inventory of 187.
One of the reasons Congress and the Pentagon agreed to eliminate the F-22 was that the F-35 was in the pipeline. The joint strike fighter was supposed to be cheaper to produce and operationally superior to the F-22. To date, it has been neither.
The F-35 has consumed some $400 billion in resources, about $170 billion more than was originally projected, and the prototypes that have been produced have failed to meet the necessary performance standards. A scathing report from the Department of Defense’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation cited a laundry list of flaws and shortcomings, from vulnerability to engine fires to computer malfunctions.
Experts estimate that the F-35 remains years away from deployment in a combat situation, despite assurances to the contrary from the Pentagon.
At the moment, that isn’t a major security issue. The F-22, for all its problems, is currently without real competition in the battle for the skies. However, if the Russian T-50 is true to its specification, that could change in the not-too-distant future.
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