So what do we think of the F-35?

[TheDude]

And what do you think are the secret capabilities Lockeed Martin can't talk about?  Or is it all BS?

[kkokkolis]

I hope they are awful warplanes.

[TheDude]

  I guess for the money you could put a  in the hands of every man, woman and child on this earth. 

[Fortytwo]

I guess for the money you could put a  in the hands of every man, woman and child on this earth. 

Indeed, the figures I'm seeing are in the trillions and would allow every man, woman and child on this planet to have a Surge with sheath, bit kit and clip while still have 20+$ in every hand.

All I'm reading about the F-35 (biased by the local preference for the Saab JAS 39 Gripen) say that while the price has increased rapidly they have had to get rid of planned features and lower the specifications to be able to deliver. No doubt the F-35 will outperform everything else in the air but will it do it well enough for its price? You could have two JAS 39 for the same price basically and they are notoriously famous for their price/flight hour as well as offering short service times and as such allowing fewer aircraft to fill up the needed airtime. Still, the F-35 will sell well since it's a good way of keeping up the relations with the US.

Swedish media was a bit surprised when the Norwegian airforce decided on the F-16 instead of the JAS 39 and there's been quite a few reports of them having trouuble keeping the planes in the air both because of the cost as well as long service times. There was also talk about the Norwegian MoD missing the fine print and making their price comparisons between a ready to fly JAS 39 and a F-16 without engine!

[Whoey]

From what I read Canada has opted to buy some more F18s as a stop gap.

I haven't paid much attention to military aircraft since I stopped being a base brat, and back then we had CF-18s

I was keen on the F22 style planes in simulators etc, and from what I'm seeing the F35 is not that far from that.

[ironraven]

A politically born botch.

A CTOL aircraft with a naval option, ok. Catapult and arrestor aircraft with the option of removing the hooks and adding fuel, excellent idea.

Making a VTOL capable aircraft... ok. Well, people do it.

Trying to use the same basic airframe for all three... WTF!?

[Grant Lamontagne]

Good basic design overall, but too expensive and fiddly with super high maintenance costs, so they tried to compensate for it by trying to say it will do everything.  It won't.

Looks pretty at airshow though. ....

Def

[Steinar]

I like to make strong statements on highly complex projects which are not yet finished. Especially when they are classified and haven't been field tested.

It's a huge project with feeping creaturism from day 1. Perhaps it will be great given enough time and $$$, perhaps it won't. The only thing we know for certain is that it's expensive.  Very expensive.

[Steinar]

Swedish media was a bit surprised when the Norwegian airforce decided on the F-16 instead of the JAS 39 and there's been quite a few reports of them having trouuble keeping the planes in the air both because of the cost as well as long service times. There was also talk about the Norwegian MoD missing the fine print and making their price comparisons between a ready to fly JAS 39 and a F-16 without engine!

I presume you mean F-35 above, since JAS 39 was introduced in 1997 according to Wikipedia and the Norwegian air force has been using the F-16 since 1980.

Now, the Swedish press being surprised by the acquisition IMNSHO tells no more than the Swedish press being ill informed, or playing up to reader expectations. Norway buying F-35 has very little to do with the planes themselves, to the degree BAe (Eurofighter) pulled out of the bidding process since they saw the while thing was a sham and the decision was basically already made to buy F-35. Every single Norwegian fighter pilot is trained in the US, and all support programs really stem from the alliance with the US. The Americans were very clear about the consequences of not buying American for the successor of the F-16. (For instance, new C-130 planes (or parts for them, don't remember) were needed as well, they were delivered very quickly after the F-35 contract was signed.) Buying the F-35 was a decision made to keep the Americans happy. Everything else was really secondary, but very few had the guts to admit that publicly.

tl;dr: Norway buying F-35 was Realpolithik and was not a technological choice.

[sLaughterMed]

I don't really have an opinion anymore, as I haven't been following the F-35 trainwreck for a few years now (which says something pretty dramatic about the project, as it's been a mess almost since the beginning). But to my understanding, the F-35 was intended to replace the F-22 as the Air Force's main air superiority platform, because the F-22 was too expensive, and was overkill for any task assigned to it. The F-35 was always intended to be cheaper (I'm not so sure it is anymore), while still being the "best" fighter in the sky (not counting the F-22).

[kkokkolis]

Steinar, we live the same situation here, for ages. It was the Bavarians at the beginning, then Germans and Austrians, then British, then American and through a brief flirt with the French after our withdrawal from NATO, now it's Germans again, with a percentage of American deals. That's how it is when you live in a small state. And any war will hardly ever benefit any protectorate state of our size.
Myself, I prefer to buy Swiss!   

[Steinar]

Well, we're threading the line on no politics here, but I'd just like to add “Pax Americana” has been very good for Norway. There's a reason Norwegians in general love American stuff. There's two sides to every coin.

[Smashie]

Until it see's combat it's unproven, people dismissed the Harrier until it was found to be rather good when people were shooting at you.

Expensive, yes, waste of time? NO ONE KNOWS

[Fortytwo]

Swedish media was a bit surprised when the Norwegian airforce decided on the F-16 instead of the JAS 39 and there's been quite a few reports of them having trouuble keeping the planes in the air both because of the cost as well as long service times. There was also talk about the Norwegian MoD missing the fine print and making their price comparisons between a ready to fly JAS 39 and a F-16 without engine!

I presume you mean F-35 above, since JAS 39 was introduced in 1997 according to Wikipedia and the Norwegian air force has been using the F-16 since 1980.

Now, the Swedish press being surprised by the acquisition IMNSHO tells no more than the Swedish press being ill informed, or playing up to reader expectations. Norway buying F-35 has very little to do with the planes themselves, to the degree BAe (Eurofighter) pulled out of the bidding process since they saw the while thing was a sham and the decision was basically already made to buy F-35. Every single Norwegian fighter pilot is trained in the US, and all support programs really stem from the alliance with the US. The Americans were very clear about the consequences of not buying American for the successor of the F-16. (For instance, new C-130 planes (or parts for them, don't remember) were needed as well, they were delivered very quickly after the F-35 contract was signed.) Buying the F-35 was a decision made to keep the Americans happy. Everything else was really secondary, but very few had the guts to admit that publicly.

tl;dr: Norway buying F-35 was Realpolithik and was not a technological choice.

Indeed, I tried to address this issue with my statement in the first part, that local opinions are highly biased towards the local alternative.
The JAS 39 is now getting close to the fourth iteration (model E) so it's hardly an outdated alternative. I believe that Swedish sentiments were coming from a dual perspective; firstly there's the fact that the JAS 39 is fairly well adapted to Swedish conditions (and Norwegian use should be similar) and secondly there's the recent increase in cooperation (that among other things gave the Archer project.