F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

[BON PLAN]

More laughable garbage from fake French.. I wish I could understand your incoherent thoughts.

I just read your juvenile understanding of RCS and other stuff, hence you don’t deserve my answers on defense topics. Adios.

Take your average american answers and put it deep in your a**.
At least one RCS is now well known : your intelligence is totally stealthy. It's a proved fact.

 

[BON PLAN]

Eurofighters recently went up against USAF F-35s in a visual dogfight. "They flew loads of funky manoeuvres, but I gunned them anyway." - chief JG74 at Neuberg AB

 

[vampyrbladez]

On the F-35-Typhoon dogfight at Neuberg, was a four-on-four engagement in 90 second neutral & offensive manoeuvres, says Lt Col Jacob, callsign X-Ray. “Involved a lot of painful G, and we didn’t gun them every time, but we were on top. They wanted to validate stuff.”

 

[vampyrbladez]

The F 35 seems to perform exactly as I predicted, slow speed AoA maneuvering like a Su 30 without TVC and an F 16 in terms of acceleration or better.

If Eurofighters had to pull high G then they simply used their super maneuverability to counter the F 35. The situation would be very different once high offboresight AIM 9X and F 35 Gen III HMDS would be used in combination with the high AoA and super high yaw rate.

 

[BON PLAN]

the high AoA and super high yaw rate

higher than 20° AoA is dangerous for the plane because not fully matered by FbW as said by POGO.

 

[asianobserve]

The famous helmet that broke the neck of some pilots. Yes, very unsurpassed !

The same helmet that was responsible to some visual effects preventing the Marines to land the Flying brick at night on carrier ? Another exemple of the mastery of all the project !

Congrats LM !

You must be reading ISIS magazines... no F-35 pilot broke his/her neck from using F-35 helmet or piloting F-35. Even in the USMC F-35B that crashed and where the pilot safely ejected, the pilot there did not break his neck.

The green glow has been resolved using OLED technology.

 

[Wisemarko]

Some basics of stealth as it sounds like here Rafale and Eurofighters are somehow made ”almost” stealth by making fanciful (and foolish) claims. In BVR combat against 5th gen true stealth aircraft, these legacy fighters will never know what hit them.

Here’s some declassified info:
The RCS of 1 or 0.1 m2 doesn’t really matter to modern airborne radars. Because even at that level of stealth, targets can be identified at max launch range of BVR A2A. Only exponential level of stealth can change the BVR combat. Also, the detection range is for a maximum-power, narrow-angle search. In conventional search mode, the detection range is down by 50%.

The F-35 RCS is compared to a “golf ball” and the F-22’s to “a marble”; these objects have RCS of 0.0013 m2 and 0.0002 m2, respectively. That is exponential growth in stealth and for each decimal increase, detection range goes down by ~40%. (0.1 M2 RCS will get detected at over 100km by Irbis-E and much earlier with AESA). So in order to launch A2A first without risking passive engagement, stealth must be in 0.001 M2 range.

The SAM response is even more important. Lower frequency UHF/VHF scanning radars can detect stealth at longer range than X, C or S band radars but can not provide targeting solutions due to extremely long wavelength. Even L-band has poor targeting ability against extreme stealth (although better detection ability than C/S band).

Meanwhile, all the limitations of terrain and horizon limit SAM radars. Radar sites can get detected at 40-50% longer range than their own detection range by passive sensors providing enough time to circumvent SAM batteries. The AGM-88 class ARM can engage these batteries from standoff distance (over 50nM).

 

[vampyrbladez]

higher than 20° AoA is dangerous for the plane because not fully matered by FbW as said by POGO.

Kindly refer to the manoeuvres performed at airshows by the F 35. AoA in the F 35 is as high as 110* , possibly more.

 

[BON PLAN]

F-35B that crashed and where the pilot safely ejected, the pilot there did not break his neck.

A Japan F35 pilot widow may not agree.

 

[BON PLAN]

Kindly refer to the manoeuvres performed at airshows by the F 35. AoA in the F 35 is as high as 110* , possibly more.

"The test reports Defense News obtained also reveal a second, previously little-known category 1 deficiency in the F-35B and F-35C aircraft. If during a steep climb the fighters exceed a 20-degree “angle of attack”—the angle created by the wing and the oncoming air—they could become unstable and potentially uncontrollable.

To prevent a possible crash, pilots must avoid steeply climbing and other hard maneuvers. “Fleet pilots agreed it is very difficult to max perform the aircraft” in those circumstances, Defense News quoted the documents as saying.

The implications are chilling. In a dogfight with a Russian or Chinese jet that can exceed a 20-degree angle of attack, an American flying and F-35 could be at a serious disadvantage."

https://defenceforumindia.com/forum/threads/f-35-joint-strike-fighter.9172/page-148#post-1596128

 

[Wisemarko]

Kindly refer to the manoeuvres performed at airshows by the F 35. AoA in the F 35 is as high as 110* , possibly more.

https://www.reuters.com/article/france-rafale-idUSPAB00791820090924

At some point juveniles (and who fake their identities) need to be left to their quandaries.

Watch the insane maneuvers of F-35
https://taskandpurpose.com/f-35-demonstration-team-video

 

[Bhurki]

A Japan F35 pilot widow may not agree.

Thats is just disturbing.
How shameless of you to taunt the wife of a martyred pilot.
Its explicitly established that the plane crashed due to disorientation. It can happen to anyone, anytime regardless of their experience/expertise.

 

[vampyrbladez]

"The test reports Defense News obtained also reveal a second, previously little-known category 1 deficiency in the F-35B and F-35C aircraft. If during a steep climb the fighters exceed a 20-degree “angle of attack”—the angle created by the wing and the oncoming air—they could become unstable and potentially uncontrollable.

To prevent a possible crash, pilots must avoid steeply climbing and other hard maneuvers. “Fleet pilots agreed it is very difficult to max perform the aircraft” in those circumstances, Defense News quoted the documents as saying.

The implications are chilling. In a dogfight with a Russian or Chinese jet that can exceed a 20-degree angle of attack, an American flying and F-35 could be at a serious disadvantage."

https://defenceforumindia.com/forum/threads/f-35-joint-strike-fighter.9172/page-148#post-1596128

“We’ve implemented an update to the flight control system that is planned for integration in the third quarter of this year — and we expect this item to be resolved or downgraded,” said Greg Ulmer, Lockheed Martin vice president and general manager of the company’s F-35 program.

The issue seems to be with the FCS software of the aircraft. As time will go on, the issue will get resolved. The problem with supersonic speeds was resolved by using special coating to protect against thermal shock waves. Since then, the issue has not emerged again.

BTW the variant used in the exercises with the Eurofighters was probably the F 35B because of the 60 knots speed (akin to hovering) and basing at Swindon.

 

[vampyrbladez]

https://www.reuters.com/article/france-rafale-idUSPAB00791820090924

At some point juveniles (and who fake their identities) need to be left to their quandaries.

Watch the insane maneuvers of F-35
https://taskandpurpose.com/f-35-demonstration-team-video

Unnecessary parlance and equivalence. Both are great fighters in their respective fields.

 

[asianobserve]

A Japan F35 pilot widow may not agree.

Auto GCAS is already being installed on F-35s.

 

[Wisemarko]

Unnecessary parlance and equivalence. Both are great fighters in their respective fields.

As unnecessary as picking the right warfighter for defense needs.

 

[vampyrbladez]

As unnecessary as picking the right warfighter for defense needs.

Rafale is the best 4.5 generation fighter in the market. F 35 is the best 5th generation fighter in the market.

Hardly a way to seek parity here.

 

[BON PLAN]

Thats is just disturbing.
How shameless of you to taunt the wife of a martyred pilot.
Its explicitly established that the plane crashed due to disorientation. It can happen to anyone, anytime regardless of their experience/expertise.

Was the wreck recovered? NO Was the pilot body found? NO
The spatial disorientation is the preliminary report cause. No definitive answer so far.
Disorientation for a single pilot of a swing of four planes, on a basic flight without any aggresiv manoeuvers is a .... politically correct answer.

another way of explaining "too big to fail".

 

[BON PLAN]

https://www.reuters.com/article/france-rafale-idUSPAB00791820090924

At some point juveniles (and who fake their identities) need to be left to their quandaries.

Watch the insane maneuvers of F-35
https://taskandpurpose.com/f-35-demonstration-team-video

America Is Stuck With a $400 Billion Stealth Fighter That Can’t Figh

The planes have had several previously unreported ‘category 1’ flaws—military parlance for issues that can prevent a pilot from accomplishing their mission.

by David Axe

Here’s something the public didn’t know until today: If one of the U.S. military’s new F-35 stealth fighters has to climb at a steep angle in order to dodge an enemy attack, design flaws mean the plane might suddenly tumble out of control and crash.

Also, some versions of the F-35 can’t accelerate to supersonic speed without melting their own tails or shedding the expensive coating that helps to give the planes their radar-evading qualities.

The Pentagon’s $400-billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, one of the biggest and most expensive weapons programs in history, has come under fire, so to speak, over more than a decade for delays, rising costs, design problems and technical glitches.

But startling reports by trade publication Defense News on Wednesday revealed flaws that previously only builder Lockheed Martin, the military, and the plane’s foreign buyers knew about.

The newly-exposed problems underscore the potential fragility of American air power as the armed services work to replace more and more old fighters with as many as 2,300 F-35s while also reconfiguring to confront the increasingly deadly Chinese and Russian air forces.

The problems might also help to explain why acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan reportedly described the F-35 program as “*censored*ed up.”

Defense News obtained military documents detailing a wide range of serious problems with two of the three versions of the F-35. The Air Force’s F-35A appears to be exempt from the latest flaws, but the Marine Corps’ vertical-landing F-35B and the Navy’s carrier-compatible F-35C both suffer what the services call “category 1” deficiencies. (In military parlance, a category 1 flaw in a plane can prevent a pilot from accomplishing their mission.)

The F-35 program and the office of the secretary of defense did not respond to requests for comment.

One problem cropped up during test flights in 2011, Defense News reported, citing the trove of military documents. In the 2011 tests, at least one F-35B and F-35C both flew at speeds of Mach 1.3 and Mach 1.4. A post-flight inspection in November 2011 revealed the F-35B sustained “bubbling [and] blistering” of its stealth coating.

Further supersonic tests in December 2011 revealed structural damage on an F-35C resulting from the extreme heat coming from the plane’s single Pratt & Whitney engine, one of the most powerful fighter engines ever made.

To avoid similar damage, the military has limited F-35B and F-35C pilots to flying at supersonic speed for less than a minute at a time.

But that could make it impossible for aviators to keep up with, or avoid, Russian and Chinese fighters flying faster than the speed of sound without any restrictions. “It is infeasible for the Navy or Marine Corps to operate the F-35 against a near-peer threat under such restrictions,” Defense News paraphrased the documents as saying.

The test reports Defense News obtained also reveal a second, previously little-known category 1 deficiency in the F-35B and F-35C aircraft. If during a steep climb the fighters exceed a 20-degree “angle of attack”—the angle created by the wing and the oncoming air—they could become unstable and potentially uncontrollable.

To prevent a possible crash, pilots must avoid steeply climbing and other hard maneuvers. “Fleet pilots agreed it is very difficult to max perform the aircraft” in those circumstances, Defense News quoted the documents as saying.

The implications are chilling. In a dogfight with a Russian or Chinese jet that can exceed a 20-degree angle of attack, an American flying and F-35 could be at a serious disadvantage.

The revelation of the two performance flaws comes at a critical time for the 18-year-old F-35 program. Pentagon officials plan to declare an end to the testing phase of the F-35’s development sometime in late 2019 and clear the fighter for mass production.

The stealth fighter enjoys strong support from Congress, owing in part to the thousands of jobs the JSF program sustains, albeit at a cost of around $10 billion a year to U.S. taxpayers. In anticipation of a green light for mass production, the Pentagon and Lockheed in early June reached an informal agreement on a $34-billion deal for 470 F-35s.

The Air Force told The Daily Beast it is confident in its own version of the F-35. “Fielding and deployment plans for the F-35 have not changed,” the Air Force’s Air Combat Command said in a statement. “The F-35 plays an essential role in U.S. air combat superiority and we are highly confident in its capabilities and performance.”

The military and Lockheed have identified possible fixes to all the problems Defense News revealed. A new coating could minimize heat damage. Better flight-control software could mitigate the risk of a crash during hard maneuvers. “We expect this item to be resolved or downgraded,” Greg Ulmer, a Lockheed vice president, told Defense News in reference to crash risk.

But if the program doesn’t apply the fixes before F-35 production picks up, it’s possible the deficiencies will become “baked in” on scores or even hundreds of F-35s. Retroactively fixing deficient jets could cost billions of dollars.

To a great extent, the damage is done. Owing to the Pentagon’s controversial decision to manufacture F-35s while still testing them, Lockheed has delivered around 400 early-model F-35s to the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps and to U.S. allies such as the United Kingdom and Israel.

The Air Force, Marines, and Israel have already deployed their F-35s in combat against lightly-armed militant groups.

More than 100 of those early F-35s are B-models that cannot safely fly fast or maneuver hard. They’ll need fixing. It won’t be cheap. The military was already spending billions of dollars modifying older F-35s. That bill could grow to cover the flaws Defense News revealed.

Fixes could take a while. “The services will have to wait five years or more to get a fully functional aircraft, if they ever do,” Dan Grazier, an analyst with the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C., told The Daily Beast.

In the meantime, the armed services possess scores of F-35s they cannot safely send into high-tech combat, according to Grazier. “The program is definitely not ready for active service.”

 

[vampyrbladez]

America Is Stuck With a $400 Billion Stealth Fighter That Can’t Figh

The planes have had several previously unreported ‘category 1’ flaws—military parlance for issues that can prevent a pilot from accomplishing their mission.

by David Axe

Here’s something the public didn’t know until today: If one of the U.S. military’s new F-35 stealth fighters has to climb at a steep angle in order to dodge an enemy attack, design flaws mean the plane might suddenly tumble out of control and crash.

Also, some versions of the F-35 can’t accelerate to supersonic speed without melting their own tails or shedding the expensive coating that helps to give the planes their radar-evading qualities.

The Pentagon’s $400-billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, one of the biggest and most expensive weapons programs in history, has come under fire, so to speak, over more than a decade for delays, rising costs, design problems and technical glitches.

But startling reports by trade publication Defense News on Wednesday revealed flaws that previously only builder Lockheed Martin, the military, and the plane’s foreign buyers knew about.

The newly-exposed problems underscore the potential fragility of American air power as the armed services work to replace more and more old fighters with as many as 2,300 F-35s while also reconfiguring to confront the increasingly deadly Chinese and Russian air forces.

The problems might also help to explain why acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan reportedly described the F-35 program as “*censored*ed up.”

Defense News obtained military documents detailing a wide range of serious problems with two of the three versions of the F-35. The Air Force’s F-35A appears to be exempt from the latest flaws, but the Marine Corps’ vertical-landing F-35B and the Navy’s carrier-compatible F-35C both suffer what the services call “category 1” deficiencies. (In military parlance, a category 1 flaw in a plane can prevent a pilot from accomplishing their mission.)

The F-35 program and the office of the secretary of defense did not respond to requests for comment.

One problem cropped up during test flights in 2011, Defense News reported, citing the trove of military documents. In the 2011 tests, at least one F-35B and F-35C both flew at speeds of Mach 1.3 and Mach 1.4. A post-flight inspection in November 2011 revealed the F-35B sustained “bubbling [and] blistering” of its stealth coating.

Further supersonic tests in December 2011 revealed structural damage on an F-35C resulting from the extreme heat coming from the plane’s single Pratt & Whitney engine, one of the most powerful fighter engines ever made.

To avoid similar damage, the military has limited F-35B and F-35C pilots to flying at supersonic speed for less than a minute at a time.

But that could make it impossible for aviators to keep up with, or avoid, Russian and Chinese fighters flying faster than the speed of sound without any restrictions. “It is infeasible for the Navy or Marine Corps to operate the F-35 against a near-peer threat under such restrictions,” Defense News paraphrased the documents as saying.

The test reports Defense News obtained also reveal a second, previously little-known category 1 deficiency in the F-35B and F-35C aircraft. If during a steep climb the fighters exceed a 20-degree “angle of attack”—the angle created by the wing and the oncoming air—they could become unstable and potentially uncontrollable.

To prevent a possible crash, pilots must avoid steeply climbing and other hard maneuvers. “Fleet pilots agreed it is very difficult to max perform the aircraft” in those circumstances, Defense News quoted the documents as saying.

The implications are chilling. In a dogfight with a Russian or Chinese jet that can exceed a 20-degree angle of attack, an American flying and F-35 could be at a serious disadvantage.

The revelation of the two performance flaws comes at a critical time for the 18-year-old F-35 program. Pentagon officials plan to declare an end to the testing phase of the F-35’s development sometime in late 2019 and clear the fighter for mass production.

The stealth fighter enjoys strong support from Congress, owing in part to the thousands of jobs the JSF program sustains, albeit at a cost of around $10 billion a year to U.S. taxpayers. In anticipation of a green light for mass production, the Pentagon and Lockheed in early June reached an informal agreement on a $34-billion deal for 470 F-35s.

The Air Force told The Daily Beast it is confident in its own version of the F-35. “Fielding and deployment plans for the F-35 have not changed,” the Air Force’s Air Combat Command said in a statement. “The F-35 plays an essential role in U.S. air combat superiority and we are highly confident in its capabilities and performance.”

The military and Lockheed have identified possible fixes to all the problems Defense News revealed. A new coating could minimize heat damage. Better flight-control software could mitigate the risk of a crash during hard maneuvers. “We expect this item to be resolved or downgraded,” Greg Ulmer, a Lockheed vice president, told Defense News in reference to crash risk.

But if the program doesn’t apply the fixes before F-35 production picks up, it’s possible the deficiencies will become “baked in” on scores or even hundreds of F-35s. Retroactively fixing deficient jets could cost billions of dollars.

To a great extent, the damage is done. Owing to the Pentagon’s controversial decision to manufacture F-35s while still testing them, Lockheed has delivered around 400 early-model F-35s to the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps and to U.S. allies such as the United Kingdom and Israel.

The Air Force, Marines, and Israel have already deployed their F-35s in combat against lightly-armed militant groups.

More than 100 of those early F-35s are B-models that cannot safely fly fast or maneuver hard. They’ll need fixing. It won’t be cheap. The military was already spending billions of dollars modifying older F-35s. That bill could grow to cover the flaws Defense News revealed.

Fixes could take a while. “The services will have to wait five years or more to get a fully functional aircraft, if they ever do,” Dan Grazier, an analyst with the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C., told The Daily Beast.

In the meantime, the armed services possess scores of F-35s they cannot safely send into high-tech combat, according to Grazier. “The program is definitely not ready for active service.”

These are redundant arguments.