F-35 Lightning info

[HU&W]

Not resurrecting the two seat discussion but F-35 and drones are in the news...

Air Force’s New Unmanned Strategy Has F-35 Pilots Flying Drones

[di1630]

Can't stand the robotic narrative but some guy made these "myth busting" videos that have some good points:

Some guy = Lockheed.

I enjoyed the video but it's the extreme "pro" f-35 narrative. I chuckled at the "no it really can do CAS, carry more than an A-10 and fly home with one wing"

BL is the -35 is a terrific F-18/F-16 follow on once they get it working and costs under control.

Call it what it is. It's not a Cold War dog fighter, it's not a Cold War tank killer. It's an expensive Low-observable, PGM delivery aircraft with many good features but a ton of drawbacks.

[billy pilgrim]

F-35 Koolaid

I'm sure the 422 and weapons school at Nellis will make it a lethal and tactically relevant platform. But I don't understand how the military made the same F-4 mistake of making an airplane try to do everything well. Flexibility may be the key to airpower, but specialization is the key to performance.

I will miss my old fourth gen jet though when big blue retires it. It's like the old 67 Mustang getting replaced with an automatic BMW 3 series.

[dvlax40]

But I don't understand how the military made the same F-4 mistake of making an airplane try to do everything well.

'

lol maybe because they did it with the F-111 too? ;)

[Clark Griswold]

F-35A fire from last year - $50 million in damages but pilot got out ok.

https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/we-finally-get-our-first-look-at-the-barbecued-f-35-nea-1709394767#

[StoleIt]

Can we send a bill to Lockheed and/or Pratt for that?

[Clark Griswold]

Can we send a bill to Lockheed and/or Pratt for that?

We'll get that check when this happens

Another article from Medium on the fire, sounds like the guy has an ax to grind but it has more info on the cause and basically implicates the F135 engine is flawed. Take with 2 milligrams of salt.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-f-35-can-just-catch-on-fire-sometimes-eecce430792b

[HU&W]

F-35A fire from last year - $50 million in damages but pilot got out ok.

https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/we-finally-get-our-first-look-at-the-barbecued-f-35-nea-1709394767#

So, first F-35 static display?

[Lawman]

Put it at Wright Patt next to the F-22 that twerked it's self out of service doing the low pass.

[Clark Griswold]

https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/f-35b-makes-its-first-leap-off-the-ski-jump-1713406488

[precontact]

More good news: https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-f-35-cant-beat-the-plane-its-replacing-in-a-dogfigh-1714712248

The F-35 Can't Beat The Plane It's Replacing In A Dogfight: Report

106,859

47

Tyler Rogoway

Filed to: F-35 SAGA 6/29/15 5:29pm

We’ve heard of significant shortcomings before with the fighter jet that’s supposed to be America’s future, but this is just as bad as it gets. The F-35 performed so dismally in a dogfight, that the test pilot remarked that the it had pretty much no place fighting other aircraft within visual range.

And it’s even worse than a mere maneuverability issue. At one point, the pilot’s helmet was so big he couldn’t even turn his head inside the cockpit.

That’s according to a scathing report obtained by our friends over at War Is Boring that details the results of visual range air-to-air engagement tests between an F-35A and an F-16C. The F-35, which the US Air Force, Navy, and Marines are expected to rely upon, in addition to the air arms of militaries across the world for at least the next few decades, was supposed to be better than its F-16 predecessor in all respects.

The F-35’s ability to compete against other fighter aircraft in a close-in dogfight, even against the decades old designs it looks to replace, has always been a contentious issue. Long ago, the F-35’s maneuverability was planned to far exceed that of fourth generation fighters. Over time, those claims eroded to the point where the troubled stealth jet is described as being “about as maneuverable as an F-16.”

The fact that the F-35 can carry its weapons and fuel internally was of course the major deciding factor in being able to make such a claim.

Keep in mind, all of this is anecdotal, but testing reports over almost the last decade have supported the fact that the F-35 was not nearly as nimble as many would like it to be. Still, all claims regarding its performance against other fighters in a dogfight remained largely academic, with only bits of data to compare in a vacuum.

Which is why the candid report described in the War Is Boring article finally gives us a good first hand account as to how capable – or incapable as it may be – the F-35 is in the within-visual-range fight.

The test pilot flying the F-35 makes it very clear that the new jet, even in its ideal configuration without any external stores, was no match against a Block-40 F-16C in a less-than-ideal configuration with a pair of under-wing fuel tanks:

Even with the limited F-16 target configuration, the F-35A remained at a distinct energy disadvantage for every engagement.

In dogfighting, energy is everything, and if your enemy has more kinetic and potential energy for maneuvers than you do, then you’re toast.

The report even goes into what is akin to a fairly desperate move usually only used in one-on-one air combat maneuvers, known as a rudder reversal, that the F-35 is apparently decent at performing at slow speeds. The fact that this was even detailed in the report as a useful tactic is telling. In reality, using such maneuvers means you are probably going to die if any other bad guys are in the area as it rapidly depletes the aircraft’s energy state, leaving it vulnerable to attack.

Another area that the test pilot highlights on is the F-35’s abysmal rearward visibility. David Axe from War Is Boring writes:

And to add insult to injury, the JSF flier discovered he couldn’t even comfortably move his head inside the radar-evading jet’s cramped cockpit. “The helmet was too large for the space inside the canopy to adequately see behind the aircraft.” That allowed the F-16 to sneak up on him.

The report goes on to make other telling remarks about the F-35’s air combat maneuvering performance. It should be noted that the aircraft’s flight software can probably still be tweaked to offer a little wider envelope for pilots to traverse during a hard turning dogfight, but seeing as this test occurred this year (almost a decade after the first F-35 flew), the amount of extra agility that can be squeezed out of the F-35 is most likely marginal at this point.

All of this also reminds us of the fact that we cannot believe the information coming from the program itself, which is troubling. Only as the aircraft continues to enter the fleet (which is a whole other ridiculous story) will we begin to hear more honest reviews of its performance, as in the past we have had to rely on unclassified congressional watch dog reports and other unbiased sources to identify trends and key data points.

Major Obvious: F-35 Pilot Says A-10 Will Always Be Better At Air Support

F-35 pilot Major John Wilson said the obvious in an interview with Danish aviation reporters; the…Read more

Eisenhower, and others to some degree, did warn us gravely to beware of the military-industrial complex, I supposed of which the F-35 is the poster child.

Arthur C Clarke Warned Us About The F-35 And Its Damning Costs

The fantastic and haunting short story "Superiority," written by the science fiction…Read more

The fact that the F-35 is maybe not really a good fighter at all is reminiscent of the question that we’ve been asking for years — if you don’t really need competitive maneuverability, than why do we need a fighter at all?

[brabus]

Ballwash article from a dude who has zero SA. Put on your thick skin: Strikes get beat by a 2 bag Viper every time (assuming no gross BFM execution errors), yet the Strike is a very capable fighter that kills the shit out of the enemy. Is the Strike a "useless fighter" because it can't kick the shit out of a Viper in BFM? Absolutely not, that'd be an absurd assertion. Should the Viper go away because we suck at slow speed fights and get our ass beat by name-your-high(er) alpha capable fighter in a slow speed fight? Again, dumb. Look at some EM diagrams - it's not bravado or bar talk, it's simple physics. To say a jet is worthless because it can't perform 1v1 BFM to the level of another aircraft is retarded. We all have strengths and weaknesses; this article is attempting to make a minor problem into a massive one. FWIW, I think BFM is important and awesome (and I'm disappointed the F-35 is shitty in the realm), but it's a weakness that has to be dealt with and is not even close to being a "show stopper."

By the way, the F-4 was shitty too, and took its whips in Vietnam, but it also took its turn killing MiGs far more maneuverable than itself in the WVR region. Fighter pilots will overcome and be creative - all is not lost.

Edited June 30, 2015 by brabus

[Clark Griswold]

Keep everything in perspective, from Breaking Defense on Stillion's Trends in Air to Air Combat:

https://breakingdefense.com/2015/04/should-future-fighter-be-like-a-bomber-groundbreaking-csba-study/

Put another way, missiles can now often outperform most fighter aircraft, although stealth and electronic warfare help even the score.

Trends from the database of air combat since 1965 show the rise of long range missiles and a steep decline in dog-fighting. Of the 33 U.S. kills in the 1991 Persian Gulf war, only four involved any maneuvering at all. 25 years on, the power of long range sensors and missiles is only greater, meaning that traditional fighter attributes such as speed, thrust-to-weight ratios, and turn radius are even less important to success today and in the future.

ACM in the WVR arena is still important but winning in the BVR fight is where 5th gen US aircraft heavily outnumbered against 4th+ gen fighters will need to engage and survive. We won't have enough 5th gen to risk in WVR fights when there are 3 or 4 MiG-35s or J-10s for every 22 or 35. Engage, let the AMRAAM go up close and personal, RTB and get ready for the next sortie.

Edited June 30, 2015 by Clark Griswold

[StoleIt]

Devil's advocate: That's all good in theory until someone back in Washington says we need to visually ID the target before engaging.

[HuggyU2]

Yes, the F-35 is over-promised, over-priced, and behind schedule. Got it.

However, it was never designed to go into a one-circle fight with a Viper. That's why we have the F-22. The F-35 has other strengths. And if the author is going to make lists of capabilities, he needs to include all the capes found in only the F-35. Never mind the capes that will be found in the later Blocks. I'm certainly no F-35 fan... but the discussion needs to be valid.

As for the author, Tyler is certainly a great guy. But he is an aviation photographer, not a test pilot; not a fighter pilot; not a military pilot. It seems as valid as me writing an opinion piece in PHOTOGRAPHY magazine, based on what my photographer friends have told me.

https://www.hangar71.com/index.php#mi=1&pt=0&pi=3&p=-1&a=0&at=0

Edited June 30, 2015 by Huggyu2

[TreeA10]

It's not like we are going to relying on this jet for decades plus future adversaries will never develope their own stealth technologies. 10 or 15 years from now, our pilots will never be forced to enter a visual fight. I see no problem with it.

[xcraftllc]

Man this debate is gonna rage and rage. It sucks to have to speculate on so much of the topic. Seems like a lot of the articles pick someone or something to argue against, and it goes back and forth. WRT maneuverability, I've seen the debate rage back and forth so much it's hard to keep track of all the arguments.

I remember when Pierre Sprey (granted he's off base on a lot of things) said it was gonna be a turkey, people came out of the wood-works with how the internal bays, 11:1 T/W engine, lifting body attributes, and the clean exterior surface of the 35 more than made up for weight and width. Now we see tests like this, with a station wagon flying with two tanks as an adversary, and it everyone flies back the other way. Who really knows though, most of these articles are just as much opinion as this post!

(So here comes more opinion)

Put a good enough radar on something, give it good enough missiles, and you'll end up with something that will win every time and never need to maneuver at all as long as the enemy you're facing can't come up with an effective counter-measure. That's what we've seen with the Eagle's awesome AESA and modern AMRAAMS. But that's not a permanent solution, and generally only works as long as you're the biggest economy with the biggest budget, fighting against some semi-third world countries with hand-me-down air forces.

The JSF has some great ideas and attributes though, no one can deny that. I don't think it'll get us through WWIII but we do need it, and I think we'll learn more from the research that went into it than in any other fighter project.

Until then I just hope the AIM-9X, distributed aperture radar, and other similar technologies can bridge the gap. You gotta give it to Lockheed; although the program has taken way more time and money than it was supposed to, no one has died, and the only total loss was P&W's fault, not Lockheed's.

EDIT: To clarify; by "station wagon" I meant two-seat D model Viper. If you look at the original War Is Boring article on the brief, it mentions that the Viper was a D model.

Edited June 30, 2015 by xcraftllc

[Sprkt69]

That was a terribly written paper by someone who does not understand what maneuver and speed mean in the BVR fight. Missiles can only do so much when you are low and slow. Its all about the physics.

[tac airlifter]

Devil's advocate: That's all good in theory until someone back in Washington says we need to visually ID the target before engaging.

Great point. So often AF discusses capabilities void of the circumstances they're used in. Combat isn't a sterile academic environment.

[di1630]

It's not the fact it can't outmaneuver an F-16...it's the sum of the problems: not as maneuverable as a legacy, small payload when stealth, lack of a/g gun capes, costs more than an F-22, single engine, uses now 15 yr old technology, did I mention costs a shit ton.

It's all fine until it's sensors are jammed to the merge...or it needs to do close in CAS. But I have it on good advice from the USAF that from 1959 on we didn't need a gun on an aircraft and a supersonic jet would be a good FAC-A so I'm not worried.

I asked someone in test who has flown everything in the inventory and he said the F-35 is a big disappointment for many reasons.

Edited June 30, 2015 by di1630

[Clark Griswold]

Devil's advocate: That's all good in theory until someone back in Washington says we need to visually ID the target before engaging.

Valid point - this could be a point or requirement when it is LO v. LO aircraft or would a long range IR image from an IRST be enough for VID in that situation?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[xcraftllc]

One of the Fighter Sweep guys put his 2 cents in on the article: https://fightersweep.com/2548/f-35-v-f-16-article-garbage/

[Red Fox]

I think the argument that it can't "dogfight" the F-16 is moot. It wasn't designed for that. The F-16's aerodynamic design is superb and it's newer engines give it a turn capability difficult to match, especially for a VTOL/STOL, LO designed strike aircraft. But, I think we all know that.
I don't doubt we need next generation strike aircraft like some here have advocated, but I think this plane is poor value for the cost. Why make a VTOL/STOL aircraft LO? If we are going to put aircraft at austere airfields that require that capability then those very aircraft will most likely be vulnerable to attack from the surface or air. The attack on the Marine Air Squadron in Afghanistan is still raw and I'm also reminded of what a determined foe can do in moving artillery into difficult positions like the North Vietnamese did against the French at Dien Bien Phu. One can argue the planes would be in hardened shelters. Well if you can build hardened shelters then you can lengthen a runway. Also, it is poor design to make such a pricey aircraft to be used for carrier ops single engine. How many will be lost due to low power emergencies vs those we could save if there was a #2? Also, how will they conduct buddy refueling ops? As of now, the USN uses F-18's with external bladders to refuel others (so I was told by a Hornet pilot). Will the F-35 be able to do that once the F-18's are retired? And one last question, how effective will it be against a large mobile force that is invading friendly territory? What if there is weather? Will the CFACC risk these high priced assets in order for them to accurately engage the enemy? And now, one last point. It is poor strategy, IMHO, to use high priced weapons/aircraft to destroy $5000 trucks with a machine guns mounted in their backs. When we utilize them in combat vs low tech adversaries, we risk giving away footprints, flight profiles, data link info, etc. to potential higher-tech adversaries. I believe the F-35's LO technology will be obsolete before the entire buy is complete and we will be stuck with an air-frame that we have to hang pods from that doesn't perform as well as it's predecessors. My 2 cents (from an ORF)
Regards, RF

Edited July 4, 2015 by Red Fox

[Azimuth]

One of the Fighter Sweep guys put his 2 cents in on the article: https://fightersweep.com/2548/f-35-v-f-16-article-garbage/

That's Patch here.

[StoleIt]

I think the argument that it can't "dogfight" the F-16 is moot. It wasn't designed for that. The F-16's aerodynamic design is superb and it's newer engines give it a turn capability difficult to match, especially for a VTOL/STOL, LO designed strike aircraft. But, I think we all know that.

I don't doubt we need next generation strike aircraft like some here have advocated, but I think this plane is poor value for the cost. Why make a VTOL/STOL aircraft LO? If we are going to put aircraft at austere airfields that require that capability then those very aircraft will most likely be vulnerable to attack from the surface or air. The attack on the Marine Air Squadron in Afghanistan is still raw and I'm also reminded of what a determined foe can do in moving artillery into difficult positions like the North Vietnamese did against the French at Dien Bien Phu. One can argue the planes would be in hardened shelters. Well if you can build hardened shelters then you can lengthen a runway. Also, it is poor design to make such a pricey aircraft to be used for carrier ops single engine. How many will be lost due to low power emergencies vs those we could save if there was a #2? Also, how will they conduct buddy refueling ops? As of now, the USN uses F-18's with external bladders to refuel others (so I was told by a Hornet pilot). Will the F-35 be able to do that once the F-18's are retired? And one last question, how effective will it be against a large mobile force that is invading friendly territory? What if there is weather? Will the CFACC risk these high priced assets in order for them to accurately engage the enemy? And now, one last point. It is poor strategy, IMHO, to use high priced weapons/aircraft to destroy $5000 trucks with a machine guns mounted in their backs. When we utilize them in combat vs low tech adversaries, we risk giving away footprints, flight profiles, data link info, etc. to potential higher-tech adversaries. I believe the F-35's LO technology will be obsolete before the entire buy is complete and we will be stuck with an air-frame that we have to hang pods from that doesn't perform as well as it's predecessors. My 2 cents (from an ORF)

Regards, RF

Some counter arguments:

The MEU with air support from an amphibious assault ship is still the primary plan rather than AV-8's on the ground in country.

And just because recently the Navy has enjoyed the success of twin engine airplanes doesn't mean it lacks a history with successful single engine fighters (ie: A-7, F-8, A-4).