Interesting Mr Brumby have you a link please ?
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter News, Videos and pics Thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
Brumby
Major
Thank you 
In first F-35A the more numerous 1763 planned for all USAF with Guard and Reserve, replace sure F-16, normaly A-10, F-15C/D possible also F-15E coz i have see with 1763 USAF have the number possible also others options and less F-35 replaced by 6th Gen fighters ?
Actualy USAF with Guard and Reserve have for fighter bombers inventory :
960 F-16A/B/C/B Block
290 A-10C have 35 + years but virtually redone, new wings
240 F-15C/D
220 F-15E
1710
Replacement of A-10 is special, different coz A-10 is a customized attack aircraft for CAS and no doubt is the best the King for that better as Su-25 her more big opponent ( gun ) in fact the A-10 was build around her big gun with a very big magazine many rounds, for destroyed Soviet tanks 50000 ! he is not versatile, it is not a jet but very resistant can fly with one reactor only, deployed on rustic forwarded bases, very easy to maintain and cheaper to flight hour ~ 10000 $, F-16 18000, F-35 24000.
Normaly he need as successor not a jet but one Scorpion can be very ggod Super Tucano also is well but Scorpion get a more long range, more big.
In more stupid use jet vs ISIS or others so expensive true fighters are built for high intensity conflict, true wars.
So imposible or almost and wrond do a comparison btw A-10 and F-35 completely different.
Netx time i evoke F-16/35 in a comparison.
With this chart possible have a better look.
In first F-35A the more numerous 1763 planned for all USAF with Guard and Reserve, replace sure F-16, normaly A-10, F-15C/D possible also F-15E coz i have see with 1763 USAF have the number possible also others options and less F-35 replaced by 6th Gen fighters ?
Actualy USAF with Guard and Reserve have for fighter bombers inventory :
960 F-16A/B/C/B Block
290 A-10C have 35 + years but virtually redone, new wings
240 F-15C/D
220 F-15E
1710
Replacement of A-10 is special, different coz A-10 is a customized attack aircraft for CAS and no doubt is the best the King for that better as Su-25 her more big opponent ( gun ) in fact the A-10 was build around her big gun with a very big magazine many rounds, for destroyed Soviet tanks 50000 ! he is not versatile, it is not a jet but very resistant can fly with one reactor only, deployed on rustic forwarded bases, very easy to maintain and cheaper to flight hour ~ 10000 $, F-16 18000, F-35 24000.
Normaly he need as successor not a jet but one Scorpion can be very ggod Super Tucano also is well but Scorpion get a more long range, more big.
In more stupid use jet vs ISIS or others so expensive true fighters are built for high intensity conflict, true wars.
So imposible or almost and wrond do a comparison btw A-10 and F-35 completely different.
Netx time i evoke F-16/35 in a comparison.
Thank you
With this chart possible have a better look.
In first F-35A the more numerous 1763 planned for all USAF with Guard and Reserve, replace sure F-16, normaly A-10, F-15C/D possible also F-15E coz i have see with 1763 USAF have the number possible also others options and less F-35 replaced by 6th Gen fighters ?
Actualy USAF with Guard and Reserve have for fighter bombers inventory :
960 F-16A/B/C/B Block
290 A-10C have 35 + years but virtually redone, new wings
240 F-15C/D
220 F-15E
1710
Replacement of A-10 is special, different coz A-10 is a customized attack aircraft for CAS and no doubt is the best the King for that better as Su-25 her more big opponent ( gun ) in fact the A-10 was build around her big gun with a very big magazine many rounds, for destroyed Soviet tanks 50000 ! he is not versatile, it is not a jet but very resistant can fly with one reactor only, deployed on rustic forwarded bases, very easy to maintain and cheaper to flight hour ~ 10000 $, F-16 18000, F-35 24000.
Normaly he need as successor not a jet but one Scorpion can be very ggod Super Tucano also is well but Scorpion get a more long range, more big.
In more stupid use jet vs ISIS or others so expensive true fighters are built for high intensity conflict, true wars.
So imposible or almost and wrond do a comparison btw A-10 and F-35 completely different.
Netx time i evoke F-16/35 in a comparison.
the reality is that the F-35 has been designed to replace, not augment the A-10, and that due to the highly toxic environment that all aircraft will operate in on the first day. While you are no doubt right, nothing on the planet holds a candle to the GAU-8 gatling gun, the truth is that wonderful cannon, is on an airframe that is extremely vulnerable in the very caustic SAM and AAM environment. While the A-10 can sustain an incredible amount of ground fire, it only takes one lucky shot to kill or disable the Pilot, it is a dangerous environment, and we lost A-10s during desert storm.
It would be fine once the ACK ACK is knocked out, but very dangerous until it is?
Ofc with SAM different and as S-300 have a warhead of about 100 kg !
Yes but now USAF look for a A-10 replacement possible not about 300 say 200 and budget and B-21 and KC-46 ... can save several billions this number replaced by an airccraft whicn can have a price of eventualy 20 mill $ several B-21 in more each year by ex.
For A-10 replacement if USAF order one other aircraft fro CAS/COIN missions Scorpion is very good 20 mill and flight hout 3000 $ !
Only things don' t have an internal gun damage maybe remains possible, in pods ofc but get an interesting weapons bay for sensors also for 1.3 t + ext 2.7 t/6 HP : 4 t total it is a good boy soon the new definitive variant, more long range, 2 engines less vulnerable and faster as Super Tucano also interesting.
For F-35 number in the chart it is the maximum yet actually for FY 2017 USAF wanted 5 in less 43 initialy 48 Congress funds the 5 and now possible 60 for FY 2021 ( CAM 04/2016 ).
For FY 2016 LRIP 10 with new F-35 funded by Congress : 47A, 15B and 6C : 68 last year 34
A new unit annouced but surprising seems very early a 2nd OCU/FRS for F-35C VFA-125 to Lemoore ( stand down 2010 on F-18C ) yet a 2nd curious ( in this case almost sure go later for Oceana 2 FRS planned on on each coast logic ) with few F-35C delivered and first Front line Sqn stand up for 2018 VFA-?
Yes but now USAF look for a A-10 replacement possible not about 300 say 200 and budget and B-21 and KC-46 ... can save several billions this number replaced by an airccraft whicn can have a price of eventualy 20 mill $ several B-21 in more each year by ex.
For A-10 replacement if USAF order one other aircraft fro CAS/COIN missions Scorpion is very good 20 mill and flight hout 3000 $ !
Only things don' t have an internal gun damage maybe remains possible, in pods ofc but get an interesting weapons bay for sensors also for 1.3 t + ext 2.7 t/6 HP : 4 t total it is a good boy soon the new definitive variant, more long range, 2 engines less vulnerable and faster as Super Tucano also interesting.
For F-35 number in the chart it is the maximum yet actually for FY 2017 USAF wanted 5 in less 43 initialy 48 Congress funds the 5 and now possible 60 for FY 2021 ( CAM 04/2016 ).
For FY 2016 LRIP 10 with new F-35 funded by Congress : 47A, 15B and 6C : 68 last year 34
A new unit annouced but surprising seems very early a 2nd OCU/FRS for F-35C VFA-125 to Lemoore ( stand down 2010 on F-18C ) yet a 2nd curious ( in this case almost sure go later for Oceana 2 FRS planned on on each coast logic ) with few F-35C delivered and first Front line Sqn stand up for 2018 VFA-?
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While the A-10 has to get "down and dirty" the F-35 will be a 'stand-off" platform with its multi-mission sensors, and highly advanced EOTAS, the days of taking your CAS aircraft down low are coming to an end. The F-35 will be able to accomplish most of the missions that the A-10 is capable of, from a lofty perch, in stealthy solitude. The one thing it will not do, is come screaming by over the top of our troops blazing away with that big honking gun, slicing "---------" tanks in half with those heavy nuke shells.
THAT! is a tremendous psychological advantage to ground troops! but the F-35 will be able to do that same mission if the AA threat is twice or three times the limit the A-10 would be allowed to counter. So yes, the F-35 will carry the ball, and resort to a ground game low and dirty if required. The 25MM gatling gun on the F-35A will be very good air to ground weapon, and it will do well for all involved to be aware, the F-35 has the additional advantage of being able to "know" who is who, and will in fact be more effective, as the danger of ground troops coming under friendly fire is MUCH LESS with the F-35.
Nice to see the "Reapers" back to work!
Bernard
Junior Member
Here's What the US and Its Allies Can Do With Their New F-35s
By
May 17, 2016 | 4:30 am
This story is part two of a three-part series on the innovations, and the problems, of the F-35, the newest warplane entering service in the United States and with several allied nations. Part one is published .
The world's most expensive defense contract, the F-35 program, is up for full-speed production. As you might expect, a defense program that runs to over its expected lifetime of 50-plus years attracts a pretty sizable amount of criticism from a lot of corners. But for all the back and forth about the pros and cons of the program — it's either the best combat aircraft since the invention of powered flight or the biggest chunk of defense pork in history — there doesn't seem to be nearly as much talk about the thing itself.
To get a handle on what the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II really does, VICE News went down to Naval Air Station Patuxent River to talk with some of the test pilots and get their take on this whole thing. They're flying some of the early F-35s, harbingers of a wave of airplanes that will run to almost 3,000 units for the US Air Force, Navy, and Marines — plus a handful of close American allies including Israel, the UK, Japan, and Italy, the latter two the only other countries where it will be assembled.
There are different ways of thinking about whether the immense amount of money for the F-35 is worth it. The first is to ask what makes the F-35 different from other aircraft. Is it faster? Does it fly higher? Farther? Well, we already got to that earlier, so let's ask a different question: What happens when you put the F-35 with others of its kind? Does it do anything particularly interesting? Or, what happens when you start using it with other kinds of gear? Can it do anything especially neat or noteworthy?
First, a very quick recap of what the F-35 does that's different. Sure, it's stealthy and all, but the big thing is that the F-35 packs a lot of the specialized reconnaissance, electronic warfare, and jamming gear that normally live on specialized aircraft, which are part of a class of planes called "enablers." Often, that means enablers are big planes, like converted commercial airliners.
"Fundamentally, the way that you're going to fight [with] this aircraft is different than the UK Tornado [an older type of strike aircraft], which was very kinetic," explained Royal Navy Commander Greg Smith, top UK F-35 program guy at Pax River. "This is stealth technology; you operate in a different manner — you avoid the problems."
On top of that, the F-35 does by all accounts a very, very good job of taking all that information from all those sensors, combining it, and presenting in a form useful to the pilot. This frees up the pilot to do a lot of important pilot things, like not getting shot down and shooting the other guy down instead. Fighter-bombers from earlier generations, like the F-15 and F-16, may be advanced in their own right, but don't do that so-called sensor fusion as well. Their pilots have to do a lot more, which is kind of texting while driving, which is not a good move unless you enjoy getting blown out of the sky.
The F-35 is pretty much the embodiment of a way of fighting first thought up by the Soviets in the 1980s. The gist of the idea is that advances in sensors, computers, and precision weapons change the way warfare is carried out. Not that long ago, the idea of sending a drone or stealth aircraft halfway around the world to hang out, wait for a high-ranking Islamic State leader to appear, and then whack him with an anti-tank missile was preposterously high-tech. But the ability to do that has changed a good chunk of pretty much everything about using airpower in conflicts.
In essence, it's fair to think of the F-35 not so much as a fighter with fancy electronics, but the other way round: as a super-sophisticated surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft that just so happens to be armed to the teeth — unlike the typical ISTAR (Information, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance) planes, which tend to be lumbering things based on the passenger jet that just flew you from Newark to Albuquerque.
Nonetheless, for all its wonderful ISTAR and electronic warfare capabilities, the F-35 still isn't going to have as much capability and power as dedicated enabler aircraft. The first way to get around this fact is by sharing information between different F-35 aircraft.
An F-35 flying independently takes the sensor information and puts it all on a map for the pilot to look at. The effect of stitching together the input from the sensors of a whole bunch of F-35s is that, in effect, it gives each one the ability to see almost as far as they could if they were packing one of those great big antennas. It's still not what a dedicated aircraft can do, but it's a lot better than what current-generation planes like the F-15 can.
An F-35 from the Pax River test squadron prepares to launch from the deck of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69). (Photo by Andrew McMurtrie Lockheed Martin/U.S. Navy)
Now, the counterpart to all this is something called "cooperative targeting." For example, a ship might get a request to fire one of its missiles off in some particular direction. The twist here is that the ship may not have any of the targeting information and or even the slightest idea what that missile is intended to go do. So the missile is fired toward the plane that requested it, and, once the missile gets close enough, the aircraft takes control of it, feeds it target information, and tells it where to go. Or it can point the missile further downrange and hand it off to yet another aircraft.
If you take these two things together — sharing a sensor picture and cooperative targeting — it means that if you have a lot of F-35 aircraft up in the sky, each of those pilots has an enormous sphere of influence. They can see stuff hundreds of miles away, way beyond visual range, and shoot at it with missiles also from hundreds of miles away. Each pilot stops acting like a guy in a plane shooting at stuff and becomes a sort of air traffic controller of death, picking up targets way the hell off in the distance, directing missiles to and fro, and steering them into targets.
This nifty trick becomes critical when you take into account the F-35's stealth features. Stealth design comes at a cost. The biggest cost is that a truly stealthy aircraft has to carry all of its weapons, payload, fuel, and whatnot internally. Older planes just put all that non-stealthy stuff on pylons attached to the wings, but that sticks out on radar like a sore thumb and would ruin the plane's stealth mojo. The problem is that carrying stuff internally means carrying much less.
However, doing all this cooperative targeting jazz neatly avoids the problem by letting the stealthy aircraft remain stealthy, and getting all its missiles "shipped in" from aircraft that were never stealthy to begin with, and stayed well behind.
When combined, all the various information sharing and cooperative targeting tricks come together to create a very fundamental change in how one uses air power, particularly against air defense systems, especially in the opening days of a conflict.
Taking the idea a bit further, there's a huge advantage in being able to hide your reconnaissance and intelligence platforms generally. As Commander Greg Smith pointed out, when an aircraft carrier flies its radar aircraft, the E-2 Hawkeye, that sends out a pretty clear signal about where that very valuable ship is, because that E-2 plane is going to be more or less above the center of that carrier battle group. From there, all you have to do is look for the only thing that registers as longer than 1,000 feet, and, voilà, you've found the carrier. That would be gold for, say, Chinese or Russian fleets trying to locate the big juicy American target.
Thus, being able to carry out enabling tasks without the gigantic footprint of a traditional array of enablers is a really nice thing; it's like the difference between a frontal assault by a heavy armored brigade and a handful of Special Forces guys slinking in under cover of night.
Where all this blossoms from the unexpected into the truly shocking is at a larger scale. It's easy to forget that, although the US has had stealth technology for decades, more properly it's only the US Air Force that's had stealth all this time. But the Navy's and the Marines' F-35s will be flying from aircraft carriers, and that means stealth jets whose base can be moved to anywhere in the world pretty fast.
[Part 1]
By
May 17, 2016 | 4:30 am
This story is part two of a three-part series on the innovations, and the problems, of the F-35, the newest warplane entering service in the United States and with several allied nations. Part one is published .
The world's most expensive defense contract, the F-35 program, is up for full-speed production. As you might expect, a defense program that runs to over its expected lifetime of 50-plus years attracts a pretty sizable amount of criticism from a lot of corners. But for all the back and forth about the pros and cons of the program — it's either the best combat aircraft since the invention of powered flight or the biggest chunk of defense pork in history — there doesn't seem to be nearly as much talk about the thing itself.
To get a handle on what the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II really does, VICE News went down to Naval Air Station Patuxent River to talk with some of the test pilots and get their take on this whole thing. They're flying some of the early F-35s, harbingers of a wave of airplanes that will run to almost 3,000 units for the US Air Force, Navy, and Marines — plus a handful of close American allies including Israel, the UK, Japan, and Italy, the latter two the only other countries where it will be assembled.
There are different ways of thinking about whether the immense amount of money for the F-35 is worth it. The first is to ask what makes the F-35 different from other aircraft. Is it faster? Does it fly higher? Farther? Well, we already got to that earlier, so let's ask a different question: What happens when you put the F-35 with others of its kind? Does it do anything particularly interesting? Or, what happens when you start using it with other kinds of gear? Can it do anything especially neat or noteworthy?
First, a very quick recap of what the F-35 does that's different. Sure, it's stealthy and all, but the big thing is that the F-35 packs a lot of the specialized reconnaissance, electronic warfare, and jamming gear that normally live on specialized aircraft, which are part of a class of planes called "enablers." Often, that means enablers are big planes, like converted commercial airliners.
"Fundamentally, the way that you're going to fight [with] this aircraft is different than the UK Tornado [an older type of strike aircraft], which was very kinetic," explained Royal Navy Commander Greg Smith, top UK F-35 program guy at Pax River. "This is stealth technology; you operate in a different manner — you avoid the problems."
On top of that, the F-35 does by all accounts a very, very good job of taking all that information from all those sensors, combining it, and presenting in a form useful to the pilot. This frees up the pilot to do a lot of important pilot things, like not getting shot down and shooting the other guy down instead. Fighter-bombers from earlier generations, like the F-15 and F-16, may be advanced in their own right, but don't do that so-called sensor fusion as well. Their pilots have to do a lot more, which is kind of texting while driving, which is not a good move unless you enjoy getting blown out of the sky.
The F-35 is pretty much the embodiment of a way of fighting first thought up by the Soviets in the 1980s. The gist of the idea is that advances in sensors, computers, and precision weapons change the way warfare is carried out. Not that long ago, the idea of sending a drone or stealth aircraft halfway around the world to hang out, wait for a high-ranking Islamic State leader to appear, and then whack him with an anti-tank missile was preposterously high-tech. But the ability to do that has changed a good chunk of pretty much everything about using airpower in conflicts.
In essence, it's fair to think of the F-35 not so much as a fighter with fancy electronics, but the other way round: as a super-sophisticated surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft that just so happens to be armed to the teeth — unlike the typical ISTAR (Information, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance) planes, which tend to be lumbering things based on the passenger jet that just flew you from Newark to Albuquerque.
Nonetheless, for all its wonderful ISTAR and electronic warfare capabilities, the F-35 still isn't going to have as much capability and power as dedicated enabler aircraft. The first way to get around this fact is by sharing information between different F-35 aircraft.
An F-35 flying independently takes the sensor information and puts it all on a map for the pilot to look at. The effect of stitching together the input from the sensors of a whole bunch of F-35s is that, in effect, it gives each one the ability to see almost as far as they could if they were packing one of those great big antennas. It's still not what a dedicated aircraft can do, but it's a lot better than what current-generation planes like the F-15 can.
An F-35 from the Pax River test squadron prepares to launch from the deck of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69). (Photo by Andrew McMurtrie Lockheed Martin/U.S. Navy)
Now, the counterpart to all this is something called "cooperative targeting." For example, a ship might get a request to fire one of its missiles off in some particular direction. The twist here is that the ship may not have any of the targeting information and or even the slightest idea what that missile is intended to go do. So the missile is fired toward the plane that requested it, and, once the missile gets close enough, the aircraft takes control of it, feeds it target information, and tells it where to go. Or it can point the missile further downrange and hand it off to yet another aircraft.
If you take these two things together — sharing a sensor picture and cooperative targeting — it means that if you have a lot of F-35 aircraft up in the sky, each of those pilots has an enormous sphere of influence. They can see stuff hundreds of miles away, way beyond visual range, and shoot at it with missiles also from hundreds of miles away. Each pilot stops acting like a guy in a plane shooting at stuff and becomes a sort of air traffic controller of death, picking up targets way the hell off in the distance, directing missiles to and fro, and steering them into targets.
This nifty trick becomes critical when you take into account the F-35's stealth features. Stealth design comes at a cost. The biggest cost is that a truly stealthy aircraft has to carry all of its weapons, payload, fuel, and whatnot internally. Older planes just put all that non-stealthy stuff on pylons attached to the wings, but that sticks out on radar like a sore thumb and would ruin the plane's stealth mojo. The problem is that carrying stuff internally means carrying much less.
However, doing all this cooperative targeting jazz neatly avoids the problem by letting the stealthy aircraft remain stealthy, and getting all its missiles "shipped in" from aircraft that were never stealthy to begin with, and stayed well behind.
When combined, all the various information sharing and cooperative targeting tricks come together to create a very fundamental change in how one uses air power, particularly against air defense systems, especially in the opening days of a conflict.
Taking the idea a bit further, there's a huge advantage in being able to hide your reconnaissance and intelligence platforms generally. As Commander Greg Smith pointed out, when an aircraft carrier flies its radar aircraft, the E-2 Hawkeye, that sends out a pretty clear signal about where that very valuable ship is, because that E-2 plane is going to be more or less above the center of that carrier battle group. From there, all you have to do is look for the only thing that registers as longer than 1,000 feet, and, voilà, you've found the carrier. That would be gold for, say, Chinese or Russian fleets trying to locate the big juicy American target.
Thus, being able to carry out enabling tasks without the gigantic footprint of a traditional array of enablers is a really nice thing; it's like the difference between a frontal assault by a heavy armored brigade and a handful of Special Forces guys slinking in under cover of night.
Where all this blossoms from the unexpected into the truly shocking is at a larger scale. It's easy to forget that, although the US has had stealth technology for decades, more properly it's only the US Air Force that's had stealth all this time. But the Navy's and the Marines' F-35s will be flying from aircraft carriers, and that means stealth jets whose base can be moved to anywhere in the world pretty fast.
[Part 1]