With concerns voiced this month in an April 14 Government Accountability Office report that the F-35’s Autonomic Logistics Information System, which Department of Defense officials have described as the “brains” of the fifth-generation fighter, that a failure “could take the entire fleet offline,” in part, due to the lack of a backup system, and “if required funding levels are not reached, the program’s procurement plan may not be affordable…” problems continue to mount for the ole F-35 which make off-the-shelf competitors such as Gripen, Typhoon and even the domestic F/A-18E/F look good in comparison.
Which brought the below editorial cartoon from SOFREP.com
Which I think is just mean.
Of course the U.S. Navy and Marines had legit issue with the Brewster F2A Buffalo, dubbing it “the flying coffin” when flying against highly trained Japanese pilots with argueably better aircraft but the Finns, who used 44 Model B-239 (export) F2As nicknamed Pylly-Valtteri (“Butt-Walter”) and Lentävä kaljapullo (“flying beer-bottle”) among others, made mincemeat out of Red Air Force planes for a time.
Buffaloes of Lentolaivue 24 (Fighter Squadron 24) claimed a staggering 477 Soviet Air Force warplanes destroyed, with the combat loss of just 19 Buffaloes, an impressive kill/loss ratio of 26:1, while the top scoring Finnish ace, Ilmari Juutilainen, scored 34 of his 94½ kills in B-239s.
Finnish Brewster-239 BW-354 over Lake Tikshozero 1942
So maybe we just need to export the F-35 to Finland and call it a day?
