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

Brumby

Major
congratulations huh
The Navy's "Operational" F-35C Is Fully Mission Capable Less Than Five Percent Of The Time

March 20, 2019
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image
In discussing the issue of availability rates there are three distinct underlying components that affect the statistics that we should understand. If not, it is no more than an attempt at drive by shooting rather than an analytical objective determination of the situation. Upfront I have to admit that the statistics are terrible and in my view will remain so for quite a long time. Some of the issues we had discussed before and they remain a problem even today.

First of all we have the rather infamous ALIS system. It was identified years ago as a problem and has now become almost impossible to operate because of scale. IMO, someone should be fired for this because clearly they dropped the ball on this one. To-date other than adopting a "mad hatter" program to fix it, we do not know how they have progressed on this one. I would classify it as show me the results. Until then I don't trust that the program is getting their hands around this problem. In short don't expect improvement in mission capable rates until we see ALIS fixed.
Secondly, due to concurrency a lot of the F-35s will never be mission capable until they are retrofitted. In perspective, all F-35A produced up to Lot 8 i.e. 2016 are not mission capable. We are talking about 108 F-35As. In other words, as at end of 2018 at least 2/3 of the F-35A produced are not mission capable because they are not retrofitted to 3F standard. There are currently no plans to retrofit or that they ever will be. If this is not addressed, then the mission capable rates will continue to suffer.
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Finally, I had expressed before and I will say it again. The F-35 program will never get to the 80 % rate. History with the F-22 and B-2 tell me realistically on a sustainable basis it is around the 50 % threshold. Setting unrealistic expectation is always a recipe for failure
 

Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
In discussing the issue of availability rates there are three distinct underlying components that affect the statistics that we should understand. If not, it is no more than an attempt at drive by shooting rather than an analytical objective determination of the situation. Upfront I have to admit that the statistics are terrible and in my view will remain so for quite a long time. Some of the issues we had discussed before and they remain a problem even today.

First of all we have the rather infamous ALIS system. It was identified years ago as a problem and has now become almost impossible to operate because of scale. IMO, someone should be fired for this because clearly they dropped the ball on this one. To-date other than adopting a "mad hatter" program to fix it, we do not know how they have progressed on this one. I would classify it as show me the results. Until then I don't trust that the program is getting their hands around this problem. In short don't expect improvement in mission capable rates until we see ALIS fixed.
Secondly, due to concurrency a lot of the F-35s will never be mission capable until they are retrofitted. In perspective, all F-35A produced up to Lot 8 i.e. 2016 are not mission capable. We are talking about 108 F-35As. In other words, as at end of 2018 at least 2/3 of the F-35A produced are not mission capable because they are not retrofitted to 3F standard. There are currently no plans to retrofit or that they ever will be. If this is not addressed, then the mission capable rates will continue to suffer.
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Finally, I had expressed before and I will say it again. The F-35 program will never get to the 80 % rate. History with the F-22 and B-2 tell me realistically on a sustainable basis it is around the 50 % threshold. Setting unrealistic expectation is always a recipe for failure


Y-A-W-N-! somebody say something???
 

Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
Too many night runs in the Cardinal? Lol.

boy that's the truth, that krap takes the fun right out of it, didn't ding the Cardinal is a +++, I made two beautiful landings after that, but that one "nasty one" will live on in infamy...

I just love reading all these negative posts about the F-35, same old rehashed krap, yes the damn things expensive, no ALIS isn't worth a damn, the F-35C is not a fully functional death star....

So no, I don't expect it to be fully operational, yes the early airplanes may be scrapped/relegated to some "intermediate status"? training?? yes there are three different versions, oh, and did I say they are "damnably expensive", and that everyone in their right mind whose been around the block more than once, understands that aircraft take a hell of a lot of maintenance, the Cardinal is torn down right now and sitting in the hangar, for who knows how long, yes! we've worked on the damn thing more than we've flown it!

same formula applies to aircraft carriers, submarines, tanks, damn near anything that more complicated than a "bayonette", no doubt Brother Jura's favorite weapon, I don't want to be anywhere near one of those damn things, no matter how reliable it is!
 
quote of the day comes from
Sale of F-35s to Turkey in Trouble, Dunford Confirms
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:

"The S-400 is a computer. The F-35 is a computer. You don't hook your computer to your adversary's computer and that's basically what we would be doing," Katie Wheelbarger, acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, told the news outlet in an interview.
 

Brumby

Major
A bunch of F-35 pilots were interviewed for the Air and Space Journal April/May edition. Three of those are reproduced for your reading pleasure.
BILLIE FLYNN EXPERIMENTAL TEST PILOT, LOCKHEED MARTIN
A test pilot with the company for more than 15 years, Flynn flew the first F-35 airshow demonstration, at the Paris Air Show in 2017.

For four years, all people could talk about was how we’d lost a dogfight against a 40-year-old F-16. Paris was the first time we showed what the airplane could do. The F-35 engine is the most powerful fighter engine in the world, so on takeoff, I pulled straight up. The F-22 Raptor is an airshow favorite because it is super maneuverable. It has thrust vectoring; it controls the engine exhaust with paddles that move. The F-22 can do a downward spiral, and I did the same thing in the F-35—without thrust vectoring. I pull up to vertical, skid the airplane over the top, and spiral down like a helicopter hovers. That pedal turn [executed with rudder inputs] ended the discussion of how an F-35 would perform in a dogfight.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL DAVID “CHIP” BERKE | USMC (RET.)
The first non-test pilot to fly the F-35, Berke commanded Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 502 at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina. He is the only Marine ever to have qualified to fly the F-22 Raptor and served as the F-22 division commander at the Air Force’s 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron.

Fighter aircraft all have to have a level of performance and maneuverability: speed, Gs, turn rate, turn radius, acceleration, climb—all of those things. In the F-35, there’s not a massive change in those performance metrics. The F-35 is better [than legacy aircraft], but not a lot better. But those ways to measure an airplane are not nearly as relevant now as they used to be. They’re not irrelevant, but they are not as important as all the other qualities that you should be measuring an airplane by. If you were to write down all the ways in which you could measure an airplane—payload, fuel, ordnance, handling—and ask 100 pilots to rank which is the most important, I guarantee you that 100 out of 100 pilots would say “situational awareness.” By far. Not a single pilot in the world would say “turn radius.” Not one. Because the more you know, the more accurately you know it, the better able you are to make a decision. In situational awareness, the F-35 is superior to all platforms, including the Raptor. I’d never been in an airplane that so effectively and seamlessly integrates information to tell me what’s going on
around me—and not just from the radio frequency spectrum, but laser, infrared, electro-optical. That’s usually the first thing people notice when they get in the airplane. They know so much more than they ever knew before. After situational awareness, you want to be able to dictate access regardless of the capability of the threat. A highly robust air-defense network can deny
access. The biggest problem that legacy aircraft have right now is that the threat gets to dictate when and where we fly. Air-defense networks can also be limiting for stealth aircraft. The first thing you have to think about in the F-35 is managing your signature. In an F-18, you don’t even think about it because everybody sees you the minute you take off, so you don’t spend a lot of time trying to hide. Managing all the components of low observability is very challenging, and pilots have to think about it all the time. And they don’t do it well the first time. We all struggle with that initially. But you de-brief and analyze and start to build a database of the methods being used to detect you You start to build a strategy that will keep others from finding you. Where
do you want to put other people in the formation so you can maximize information sharing and sensor coverage and sensor footprints? It’s really no different, from a philosophical viewpoint, from what we’ve always done. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out what our weaknesses are: What do I need to fix as a pilot?
In an F-22 and F-35, one of the most enjoyable things is being virtually undetectable until it’s way, way, way too late for the threat. If you manage the signature really well, and you do it in a way that is integrated with the other platforms, most of the time the threat doesn’t know you’re there. And that’s why I have extreme faith that the machine is going to be the most dominant aircraft ever built.


JON BEESLEY | LOCKHEED F-35 CHIEF TEST PILOT, 2002–2011
With more than 23 years as a Lockheed Martin test pilot, Beesley worked on the development of the F-117 Nighthawk and F-22 Raptor, as well as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. On December 15, 2006, Beesley took the first F-35 prototype, designated AA-1, on its first flight.

On the F-35, they used the Navy approach [to test maneuvers at high angle of attack]. That was to go up, disable all the limitations in the flight control system for an instant, get the airplane wrapped up, and then re-engage the whole flight control system to show that it would recover itself. It’s the part of the airplane that people don’t understand. The F-35 is as maneuverable as any other airplane, except perhaps the F-22. Russian airplanes are also very maneuverable, but if you dig into [the Russian demonstrations of maneuverability], what you’re seeing is the capabilities of airplanes flown by exceptional pilots. What we were building with the F-35 is an airplane that everybody can fly. That’s the critical part of it.
 
Nov 4, 2018
yes, this thread for what I noticed now which is
German Air Force to test covert radar in large-scale demo over Bavaria
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kinda followup:
German Air Force jumping on passive radar
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The German Air Force has created a formal acquisition track for passive sensing technology, joining a global military equipment trend that could reshuffle the cat-and-mouse game of radar versus stealthy aircraft.

A defense acquisition spokesman told Defense News that the service is working on an “FFF” analysis for passive sensor systems, a technical acronym from deep inside the military-acquisition bureaucracy. Short for “Fähigkeitslücke und Funktionale Forderung,” the process serves to describe a capability gap, derive requirements and eventually tee up an actual investment program.

Information about the acquisition status came in a response by the Defence Ministry to Defense News about an event in November that showed the military’s keen interest in passive radar.

The Luftwaffe and the ministry’s defense-acquisition organization had staged a weeklong “measuring campaign” in southern Germany aimed at visualizing the entire region’s air traffic through TwInvis, a passive radar system made by Hensoldt.

Queries about the results of the demonstration were left unanswered.

Passive radar equipment computes an aerial picture by reading how civilian communications signals bounce off airborne objects. The technique works with any type of signal already present in a given airspace, including radio or television broadcasts as well as emissions from mobile phone stations. In contrast, traditional radar works by emitting radar waves and then tracking their path.

Passive radar technology is essentially covert, meaning pilots entering a monitored area may be unaware they are being tracked. That could even be the case for pilots flying stealthy aircraft like the F-35, experts say, though there is no publicly available data pitting passive radar against low-observable aircraft designs and their radiation-absorbing coatings.

With German defense officials so tight-lipped about the technology, it is difficult to discern what role the demonstration last fall played in the Luftwaffe’s thinking, especially if the event triggered the FFF phase or whether that had begun previously.

What is clear, however, is that the service is formally engaged in a technology area that could challenge existing assumptions on stealth as a key organizing principle for air warfare.

There are a number of additional applications for passive radar, including as an undetectable guidance system for missile defense or covert surveillance of borders and whatever lies beyond them, Hensoldt officials have said.
 

Anlsvrthng

Captain
Registered Member
Means that BLU-114/B will be used first.

The USA strategy is to destroy the attacked country (civilian) electrical grid as well, it means that the elimination of the T&D infrastructure will kill the radar network of Germany in one go.

And the T&D infrastructure is quite hard to protect. Compared to that the X band search radars has quite good survival chance .
 

Brumby

Major
Which platform is more stealthy - F-22 or F-35? The answer is it depends. The F-22 is designed with a RCS profile that is more stealthy than the F-35 but the F-35 is better able to dynamically adjust its RSC profile relative to active threats due to its better sensor system

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Multiple Air Force and industry sources confirm that the
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than the F-35 (as the Air Force maintained for nearly decade till 2014), but the newer aircraft is far better at managing its signature thanks to an incredibly advanced electronic warfare suite. That is likely why retired Air Combat Command commander Gen. Mike Hostage told
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: “The F-35 doesn’t have the altitude, doesn’t have the speed [of the F-22], but it can beat the F-22 in stealth.” The operative word there is can. As current ACC commander
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: The F-35 has much better “passive capability to determine who’s out there [and] its ability to manage its own signature.”

Ultimately, it’s the pilot vehicle interface the United States has developed over the decades at great expense that affords it the edge over Russia and China’s upstart programs—as Carlisle himself told me a few years ago at the Pentagon. Nonetheless, the United States will have to keep developing new technology to stay ahead.
 
Jul 3, 2018
Friday at 9:49 PM
while With their F-35 program in limbo, Turkish pilots begin training in US

13 hours ago
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and now
Luke Air Force Base Readies for Additional F-35s to Train Turkish Pilots
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expects to receive two additional
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for its pilot training program with Turkey in coming weeks, even as officials debate complexities surrounding the NATO ally's involvement in the program.

Two jets are expected to arrive at the Arizona base next month, 56th Fighter Wing spokeswoman Maj. Rebecca Heyse said during a phone call Friday.

The first group of Turkish pilots and instructor-pilots have graduated the training program with the 63rd Fighter Squadron as the second and third groups have begun entry-level training at Luke or in San Antonio, Texas, she added.

Heyse could not disclose the number of pilots in the program for operational security and privacy reasons. The first group,
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, will remain at Luke to teach and work with future groups, she said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
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that his country -- which hosts
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,
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-- will continue with its purchase of the Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile system.

The deal troubles Defense Department officials, who have said the purchase could result in Turkey's ouster from the F-35 program.
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that the U.S. is considering halting preparations to deliver the F-35 to Turkey in light of its efforts to acquire the Russian system.

"The S-400 is a computer. The F-35 is a computer. You don't hook your computer to your adversary's computer, and that's basically what we would be doing," Katie Wheelbarger, acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, told the news outlet in an interview.

Responding to the Reuters report, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said Thursday that he "would have a hard time" justifying future F-35 sales to Turkey.

"We're hopeful to find a way through this, but it's a tough issue," he said during a discussion at the Atlantic Council on Thursday.

The program of record for F-35 sales and pilot training for Turkey remains unchanged, a DoD official said on background Friday.

Congress could create legislation to block delivery of the jets to Turkey, a move slated to occur between late summer and the end of the year, the official said.

In the
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, lawmakers temporarily blocked F-35 transfers until then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo submitted a report to Congress describing the current U.S.-Turkey relationship and whether keeping the F-35 from Turkey would hurt production, training or other partnerships.

Turkish defense companies have produced part of the plane since 2002, in conjunction with Lockheed Martin Corp., the F-35's manufacturer.

The lawmakers' temporary block was also related to "a hostage situation" involving
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. (Brunson was
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.)

The classified report was submitted in November, the official said. A few highlights
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, saying "the administration will reassess Turkey's continued participation as one of the eight partner nations should they continue their purchase of the S-400," according to a two-page summary reported by Bloomberg.

The DoD official said the situation remains a diplomatic issue for now, as the Pentagon awaits further guidance from the White House or Congress.

Turkey wants to buy 100 of the
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variant used by the U.S.
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. The country took delivery of its
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in a ceremony at Lockheed's Fort Worth, Texas, facilities, amid the legislative efforts to halt future deliveries. Two F-35s were then transferred to Luke.

In an effort to keep Turkey away from Russian-made weapons, the State Department in December
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of the
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and related equipment to the country for $3.5 billion.

Both Lockheed and Raytheon Co. build parts of the long-range Patriot surface-to-air missile system. Officials have touted the Patriot to Turkey for years, and the country expressed interest in the system after the war in Syria began in 2012.

But according to the
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, a Turkish news site, unidentified officials who spoke to the paper in July said the Patriot isn't a suitable alternative to the S-400.

While U.S. officials are committed to ongoing negotiations, Turkey in February rejected the latest sale proposal,
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.
 
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