So, the latest selling point for the F-35 JSF is the fact that you might, at some ill defined point in the distant future, be able to put a laser on it:
The Lightning II may eventually be fitted with lasers able to shoot down attacking missiles. The head of Lockheed Martin’s Lightning program and former test pilot, Tom Burbage, said in Canberra the company was looking at special applications including an anti-missile laser system.
”They are lethal countermeasures in that with a laser you could actually destroy something that’s coming at the aircraft,” Mr Burbage said.
The classic rejoinder is the Yiddish, “Az der bubbe vot gehat baytzim vot zie geven mein zayde.” (If my grandmother had balls she’d be my grandfather.)
Certainly, with the transmission for the STOVL lift fan being able to handle something on the order of 25,000 KW, but it’s clear than any aircraft purchased today will never have that capability.
The JSF remains obscenely over priced as it has been sold, over budget compared to that price, and well behind schedule, and no amount of Ronco™ style, “But wait there’s more,” revelations will change this.
I am not one of the people who thinks that building a gazillion F-22s at a cost per Troy ounce approaching that of gold before its recent run-up† is a good idea, but the F-35 JSF is an exorbitantly expensive pig, even before you have “Frikken laser beams attached to their heads.”
*Actually Mike Meyers missed a joke here. Dr. Evil, having been frozen in the 1960s, would never have heard of the “Sea Bass”, it’s a marketing term. If he had known about them at all, he would have know them as a “Patagonian toothfish”, which lends itself to confusion, and all sorts of puns, and a number of humorous asides….I’m just saying.
†Empty weight, 43,430 lb, 12 Troy ounces to a pound, and $200 million price tag, gives a cost per Troy ounce of $383.76, which is very close to where gold was 5 years ago. (click graph for full size)‡
‡Yeah, I know the whine, “But if we buy more, the unit cost would go down!” Listen, 187 were bought, for a cost of $62 billion, which gives a cost of $331½ million each, and even the USAF’s (bogus numbers put the marginal costs well over a hundred million, and that’s not including the modifications that any new production would need because the parts are not made any more….And let’s not go into thee fact that it’s as expensive expensive as hell to just plain fly too.