Commentary
When it comes to shape, the F-35 is pretty stealthy when going up against legacy air defense radars. But when it comes to sound, the F-35 is loud—really, really loud. In fact, tests have the F-35 being perceived as four times as loud as an F-16 and many times louder than an A-10.
Pretty much every community that has F-35s based at nearby airfields has seen noise complaints spike, and in some, if not most cases, property values plunge. The F-35’s loudness isn’t merely a nuisance; it’s a potential health hazard that has significantly contributed to the billions of dollars of unplanned/unbudgeted indirect costs the F-35 program has incurred.
That the F35 is really, really loud is evidenced by the fact that the Navy had to purchase new ear protection equipment to prevent personnel from suffering severe and permanent ear damage. Indeed, the brand-new $5,000 headset provides a whopping 14 decibels more protection than the legacy headset. When development costs are factored in, the new ear protection the Navy purchased to deal with the F-35 noise level will be many millions of dollars.
However, the Navy had no choice, as the F-35 Environmental Impact Study found that the F-35’s maximum measured loudness (Lmax) at takeoff would be perceived as roughly four times louder than that of an F-16 and twice that of an F-15. For reference, Lmax was measured when the planes were 1,000 feet above ground level. On aircraft carriers, aircrews are much closer to F-35s running their engines at full military thrust and/or using afterburner. In such cases, sound levels can easily reach 150 decibels.
That a single-engine F-35 would be louder than the much smaller F-16 isn’t at all surprising, but the F-15A’s twin engines produce similar amounts of power as the F-35’s single engine yet aren’t nearly as loud. And F-35Cs will most probably be a bit louder than the acknowledgedly loud F/A-18e/f Super Hornet. So why is the single-engined F-35 so loud? To make a long story short, the F-35, with its single, very hot-running F135 engine, is pound-for-pound the most powerful production jet engine in the world. To achieve that power, its exhaust volume is very large, very fast, and very hot. This all combines to make it very loud and relatively unreliable.
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So due to the need to have a very powerful engine at a minimum weight to get the heaviest single-engine aircraft in the world to fly, a very loud engine was designed, and that very loud engine has had an impact on communities where F-35s are displacing quieter aircraft. Case in point, as reported in the Wisconsin State Journal, Hawthorne Elementary School teacher Melina Lozano described an F-35 flying above a group of first graders outside the school just south of an F-35 field causing the first-graders to scream and cover their ears. One first-grader observed, “Those planes are twice as loud as the old planes [F-16s].”
A 2019 study from Public Health Madison & Dane County of Wisconsin found that replacing F-16 fighter jets with F-35s increased noise exposure, which can have adverse health effects, especially for children. These effects may include sleep disturbance, decreased school performance, increased stress levels, annoyance, hearing impairment, hypertension, and heart disease.
And, of course, large noise increases affect the property values of communities anywhere near F-35 airfields and flight paths. One such community, Burlington, Vermont, is close enough to an F-35 airfield that the government has been forced to spend tens of millions of dollars to buy more than 100 homes at top-dollar prices because of the negative effect on property values. Many of these previously habitable homes are being demolished, as living in them is unhealthy due to the F-35 noise levels. Other communities also will be greatly affected.
Finally, while acoustic detection of aircraft is no longer widely used, it’s being researched and looked at as a way to augment the detection of aircraft. And the F-35’s extreme loudness is just another reason why I believe that it’s the worst possible plane conceivable to replace the much quieter A-10 Warthog for close air support missions.
These kinds of oversights and unbudgeted/unplanned cost impacts have plagued the F-35 program, which is now estimated to be $183 billion over budget in direct costs and 10 years behind schedule. And indirect costs, such as being forced to do structural modifications to ships so that they can survive F-35 landings and launches, are costing taxpayers additional billions of dollars.
Given the F-35’s continued lack of performance, its unreliability, its increasing vulnerability to modern air defense systems, its skyrocketing support costs, and its inadequate, noisy F135 engines, perhaps it’s time to realize that counting on the F-35 to be the backbone of future U.S. airpower is just plain irresponsible.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
