As the most expensive procurement program in history, the F-35 program exemplifies both the promise and pitfalls of developing and deploying an advanced weapons platform. After years of delays and cost overruns, in 2016 the program reached an important milestone: the USAF, the largest buyer of the airplane, declared it combat ready. In reviewing defense procurement in 2016, The Cipher Brief revisits a Q&A with Marine Corps pilot Lt. Col. David Berke, who makes the case for the F-35's qualitative advantage over other jets.
The Cipher Brief: Can you explain why a 5th generation aircraft like the F-35 is qualitatively different than a 4th generation one such as the F-16 or F-18?
David Berke: If you google the difference, you get a list like stealth, supercruise, sensor fusion, super maneuverability – there’s going to be a laundry list of things that make it different. But what truly makes them different is the concept of the plasticity of the aircraft, and the ability for a 5th generation aircraft to operate across a much broader spectrum of information, whether it’s electro-optical, infrared, or laser, and to process information and transfer it in a manner that could never have existed before in a 4th generation airplane. So the user profile could range from being a tactical flight, where maybe just two airplanes want to drop a bomb on a target or take pictures of it, to a strategic asset, where it can perform and behave in a manner that no tactical airplane has been asked to do or been designed to do.
There are things inherent in the design of the F-35 that enable it to perform functions and make adjustments over time to accommodate expectations that may not even be understood now. Those things just simply cannot be done in a 4th generation airplane. You can’t retrofit a 4th generation airplane to do those things. You can’t make it stealthy. You can’t build it from the inside out any differently than it’s already been built. If you want a 5th generation airplane to perform like a 4th generation airplane, that’s very easy to do. If you want a 4th generation airplane to behave like a 5th generation airplane, it’s impossible.
If you’re trying to measure the capability of a 4th generation aircraft to the F-35, it’s like measuring the capability of a wall phone versus a smartphone. If I held up an iPhone and started asking questions about the phone, you’d want me to ask about how good is the screen, and how fast is the processor? I wouldn’t ask you how easy is it to dial numbers or how clear is the sound quality. It’s not to say you don’t care about it, but if somebody is holding an iPhone, he’s going to be really shocked if you ask a bunch of questions about the phone quality, especially because if all you want to know is how quickly you can dial, or how crisp the sound quality is, then the iPhone is going to lose out to your wall phone by every measure of how to historically measure a phone.
The problem with the F-35 is how you used to measure an airplane is no longer relevant to how you measure this platform, because this platform is doing missions well beyond the missions that a fourth generation airplane was asked to do.
I’d much rather understand what other things the F-35 can do and ask questions such as, “what’s the throughput of the datalink? How wide of a spectrum does it operate in? What’s the accuracy of the sensors? How well does it collaborate with other airplanes? How well does it function in this type of battle space? How usable and how real-time is the data that I’m porting to a ground based user? How does it interact with these other platforms? The list of questions to ask is a mile long. And 100 percent of them don’t apply to the F-16.
If you hear someone say, “Well, I heard the F-16 accelerates from 200 knots to 400 knots faster than the F-35,” you need to immediately acknowledge that you’re dealing with a dinosaur who’s asking the wrong questions, who misunderstands the capabilities of the platform. That’s someone who is trying to sell you a wall phone, and the Marine Corps and the Joint Service should not be in the business of buying wall phones any more. We need to be buying smart phones.
Not only is the list of things the F-35 can do infinitely longer, but the most important thing is a lot of those are undiscovered. It’s frustrating to defend it against a platform that it really shouldn’t be compared to, but we’re compelled to do so because the F-35 replaces the F-16.
TCB: How would you respond to criticisms about cost overruns and development delays on the F-35? Is it worth it?
DB: The question of “Is it worth it?” has to be put into context. You can only determine the worth of this airplane if the capability is understood. If you want to define the capability along 4th generation standards and say it’s not worth the price of the program, that’s a pretty flawed argument to me.
For someone who is pretty familiar with the role and the impact of tactical aviation in a joint warfight – and I’ve been in combat in the F-18 numerous times – I’m very comfortable saying that the F-35 is a much more capable aircraft in terms of missions. It gives us a qualitative advantage, but more importantly, it has, inherent in its existence, an ability to adapt to missions we’re not even familiar with right now. It’s going to create an ecosystem, and it’s going to facilitate a whole host of other contributors to a network of warfighting information without which we would be at a huge disadvantage.
A lot of people either underestimate or misunderstand the actual capabilities of the F-35. It’s almost impossible to overstate how significant the emergence of this airplane is for the Marine Corps and the joint war force in general. Then you start to incorporate concepts like the F-35B and how expeditionary it is, and where it can operate. It can contribute to joint force missions and provide combatant commanders with a specialized aircraft that offers a persistent capability that may not represent 100 percent of what they need, but it’s available to them all the time.
It’s really difficult for me to say how good the airplane is because it’s so much better than anything we even thought of building, let alone have actually built. And part of the reason why it’s delayed is because the technology is so complex and what we’re asking it to do is so significant that it’s going to take some time and a little bit of patience, but ultimately, it’s in the hands of the war fighter now. And that’s the best place for it to be because people that are using this to support Marines and to support the joint forces are going to figure out what they need out of it and what it can do. And that’s part of the reason why the program is doing so well lately and why the news is getting better – we’ve got it in the hands of the people that are going to use it.
I’ve always said this: the greatest advocates of the F-35 are the people closest to the program. The biggest skeptics and critics are the people farthest away from the program. The less you know about it, the less you understand it, and the more critical you are of it. If you ever hear someone pining away for the F-16 of 1979 or the F-18 of 1983 or the F-15 of the mid 70’s, you’re talking to a someone who’s so far behind the technology and what the airplane can do that to me, his criticisms are just totally unwarranted.
The people that know the most about the jet are the people who are the biggest advocates for it. And keep in mind these are people with experience in other airplanes and other warfighting assets. I didn’t grow up on the F-35. I had three previous operational experiences with amazing airplanes prior to the Joint Strike Fighter. My opinion of the F-35 is vastly higher than that of anything else, and that’s just because I understand it.
