F-35 Joint Strike Fighter News, Videos and pics Thread

stan hyd

New Member
Registered Member
T7 is a flight trainer with no where near the capability to match F16 or F35 in ability. As a China watcher it would be like pitching a never built variant of JF17 to replace J10. Or Russian trying to justify a new YAK 130 to replace Mig29.
Obviously I wasn’t suggesting the T7 as an offering, I was merely saying how quickly they turned this around.

also we aren’t talking about a company that has no experience of producing fighters, between the F-18 and F-15 I think they have a chance of offering something quickly that offers something more than an updated F-16.
Hey, let’s sit back and enjoy the show
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Obviously I wasn’t suggesting the T7 as an offering, I was merely saying how quickly they turned this around.

also we aren’t talking about a company that has no experience of producing fighters, between the F-18 and F-15 I think they have a chance of offering something quickly that offers something more than an updated F-16.
Hey, let’s sit back and enjoy the show
They have the experience yes. Do they have the money, the time, the production capacity?
being blunt the timeline is beyond ambitious to the point of ludicrous, the numbers wanted for turnaround and production on top mean building a brand new 4.5 Gen in less than 2 years with production in rapid. Its a moonshot, all of which assumes that either Boeing doesn’t get bankrupted in the process. I mean the company is having a rocky time.
What would a theoretical clean sheet F-16ish design look like? F-35 - stealth coatings and internal bays?
Probably not much different than existing F16. They arn’t asking for stealth. They want avionics above it all. They could add a DSI Have Glass coatings but I doubt much more. Cost is a huge factor. More off the shelf the better. In time and money. Changing the tail is out. That’s when it becomes a new aircraft. As happened with F15SE you can only do so much to fourth gen fighter. The returns on investment just don’t match. You could cover it with ram coatings, dsi a new nozzle and swept tail but in the cost benefit it’s now just as expensive to maintain as F35A.
 

gelgoog

Brigadier
Registered Member
The T-7 was designed by Saab for Boeing. It is probably based on the Grippen's design. It uses a similar single engine configuration.
Boeing couldn't make anything quickly if they needed it to save their own skin. Just look at the Starliner capsule.
 

Bhurki

Junior Member
Registered Member
Crux of the "F35 not enough" issue...

The biggest headache is that the F-35 was late and that orphaned a number of F-16's that were expected to be replaced by it by now (but now won't).

The FY-21 request from the USAF was for 48 aircraft in the main budget, and 12 aircraft in the UPL. Congress gave them all 60. Add to that 12 F-15EX's. That gets them to 72 aircraft. Perhaps if they play around they can climb that up to 80 / year (combined) with flattish budgets. But that is the peak and likely best-case. Between these two aircraft families (F-35A and F-15EX) they won't get to 110 a year that they need (it is actually more than 110 a year if you factor in growth) to make a sizable and timely dent to the average age of the fleet.

So there is room to find something that is much cheaper and can come at a rate of 20-30 aircraft a year. It could be a new type of UCAV, or it could be a T-7 derivative or a combo of multiple 4+ gen, T-7 and UCAV. The T-7 program is being built for a peak production capacity of 60 aircraft a year. At that rate it would deliver all the current trainers to the USAF in under half a decade so by the end of the decade they could have options to leverage that established, paid for, production line for a derivative that should cost much less than an F-16V.

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"The Air Force remains committed to the F-35, and it is the “cornerstone” of USAF’s force planning".

The F-35 is the cornerstone of our … fighter capability,” and of USAF’s plans for the future, Brown asserted. The TacAir study he unveiled last week will simply look at what systems will be needed to complement it, he said.

“I’m not sure that’s fully appreciated,” Brown said of the long production run. If the service sticks to 1,763, the Air Force may “need to accelerate” the ramp rate, conditional on the funding that Congress will allow.

When the F-35 buy rates were forecast at the outset of production, the Air Force said it expected to be buying upwards of 110 of the fighters a year by 2018.

Brown specifically ruled out raiding the F-35
accounts to buy the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter, now in development.

We’re not going to take money from F-35” to fund NGAD, he said. The NGAD will be financed “from some of the other … parts of the fighter force,” he said, adding that he will continue trying to “bring down … some of the older aircraft”
 

gelgoog

Brigadier
Registered Member
I think it is highly doubtful they'll replace F-16s with F-35s on a 1:1 ratio.
The aircraft aren't that comparable. One has 79/131 kN thrust and the other 120/190 kN thrust for example.
That is almost 50% more engine power which translates into an equivalent increase in payload.
 

Atomicfrog

Captain
Registered Member
The US Air force may order less F35 than originally intended with the ideal that not every aircraft has to be a high end stealth aircraft. High cost on maintenance and engine life is reportedly still issues with the aircraft.

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Engine life ? Presently they have to figure-out how to fly the aircraft without engine... The maintenance of the engine is so troublesome and time consuming that they don't have enough spares engines. They have to choose between putting engine in new jets or making the batch already in units fly.
 

Temstar

Brigadier
Registered Member
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Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) changed its air defense strategy in order to lower the number of interceptions. Fighter jets should now only be scrambled when foreign aircraft threaten the country’s airspace.

The change was made to help free resources for the advanced training of fighter pilots on the newly-deployed Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. Coincidentally, the introduction of the stealth fighter jet lowered the capacity of the JASDF to intercept incoming aircraft. "The F-35 is not suitable for emergency lift-off, and it will become difficult to maintain the same system as before,” the Japanese Ministry of Defense told Kyodo News.

Currently, the main interceptor of the JASDF is the Mitsubishi F-15J, a homegrown version of the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle. However, the Japanese government is reportedly considering the sale of some of its older F-15J fighters to fund the acquisition of more F-35s, which could hinder the capacity of the JASDF even more.
 
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