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

[Air Force Brat]

re: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Thread

Well...yes, it is. Right here, on this thread:

F-35B successfully demonstrates 1st dual AIM-120 (AMRAAM) air to air combat capability
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But that's okay...doesn't hurt to punctuate news like this if it has already scrolled on to a prior page. Just doing it within a few posts is not a good thing. A search of the title of the article will generally find it.

Many people have interpreted the "discussion" of the F-35, and its many "teething" problems to mean this aircraft will be in-effective, and nothing could be further from the truth. My own concern was that the F-35 would cost the same as the F-22 and was/is, as an airframe/platform, much less airplane as an A2A platform as it relates to kinematic performance, my own real concern. I have pointed out that the F-35 was "moved ahead", in spite of the Air-Forces many objections and concerns, and the F-22, which is also controversial, was axed. The Air Force does not/did not have the political clout on the Joint Chiefs save the F-22, and at least one Air Force General was fired for defending it to the hilt..... So we are left with little pork-chop to perform the grunt work of A2A, I still think her nickname should be ThunderHoggeII, but, but compared to all other "fifth gen" aircraft, she will be a winner, with the most important aspect of "situational awareness" well ahead of the competition. You can't shoot what you can't "see", and the ThunderHoggeII will find you and kill you, long before you know where "she" is, bringing/making unprecedented battlefield awareness to any theatre, and there will be a quantum shift to BVR engagement, due to the threat of encountering "opposing fifth gen aircraft" and the high G2A threat of the future battlefield. I'm not saying it won't excel in the WVR, it likely will beat most opponents on the strength of its Helmet Mounted sight, and superior weapons, but those kind of furballs are being discouraged by those who write fighter doctrine.

 

[Air Force Brat]

re: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Thread

Many people have interpreted the "discussion" of the F-35, and its many "teething" problems to mean this aircraft will be in-effective, and nothing could be further from the truth. My own concern was that the F-35 would cost the same as the F-22 and was/is, as an airframe/platform, much less airplane as an A2A platform as it relates to kinematic performance, my own real concern. I have pointed out that the F-35 was "moved ahead", in spite of the Air-Forces many objections and concerns, and the F-22, which is also controversial, was axed. The Air Force does not/did not have the political clout on the Joint Chiefs save the F-22, and at least one Air Force General was fired for defending it to the hilt..... So we are left with little pork-chop to perform the grunt work of A2A, I still think her nickname should be ThunderHoggeII, but, but compared to all other "fifth gen" aircraft, she will be a winner, with the most important aspect of "situational awareness" well ahead of the competition. You can't shoot what you can't "see", and the ThunderHoggeII will find you and kill you, long before you know where "she" is, bringing/making unprecedented battlefield awareness to any theatre, and there will be a quantum shift to BVR engagement, due to the threat of encountering "opposing fifth gen aircraft" and the high G2A threat of the future battlefield. I'm not saying it won't excel in the WVR, it likely will beat most opponents on the strength of its Helmet Mounted sight, and superior weapons, but those kind of furballs are being discouraged by those who write fighter doctrine.

Northrop Grumman just delivered the 150th center fuselage section just 15 months after the 100th center fuse section, to LockMart on June 2, 2014, as per the Air Force Magazine Daily Report, AF68 to be precise! From its IAL, which uses advanced technologies to "get it right"... Go Northrop Grumman! Go!

 

[Jura The idiot]

re: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Thread

Northrop Grumman just delivered the 150th center fuselage section just 15 months after the 100th center fuse section, to LockMart on June 2, 2014, as per the Air Force Magazine Daily Report, AF68 to be precise! From its IAL, which uses advanced technologies to "get it right"... Go Northrop Grumman! Go!

AFB, seeing Lockheed mentioned ...:

Posted on InsideDefense.com: June 9, 2014

Despite having in the past forcefully railed against the looming automatic government budget cuts set to be triggered by sequestration, Lockheed Martin President and CEO Marillyn Hewson excluded the subject from her opening remarks at a June 9 press conference, focusing instead on the company's core U.S. military contracts, non-defense innovations and international business opportunities.

Hewson disagreed when asked if the decision not to broach the topic signaled that the sense of urgency regarding sequestration has eroded at the world's No. 1 defense company.

"We continue to make our voice heard. We don't think that it has subsided at all," she said. "It still is a very real concern for our customers and for our national security."

Hewson noted that the defense industry was shielded from many of the across-the-board cuts planned under sequestration in fiscal year 2014 and 2015 under the Ryan-Murray budget deal, though FY-16 remains a concern.

"We've had a bit of a reprieve in the sense of having some stability," she said. "But we still haven't dealt with FY-16 and beyond. Sequestration does not line up with a national security strategy. Anyone I speak to on Capitol Hill agrees with that."

Congressional sources said many defense contractors have stepped back from the forefront of anti-sequestration rhetoric on Capitol Hill, opting instead to attempt to target select programs for survival. "Full sequestration is inevitable," one Hill staffer said, noting that the shift in tactics indicate a certain acceptance on behalf of contractors.

As U.S. defense growth opportunities are poised to slow in parallel with the military drawdown in Afghanistan, Hewson said Lockheed would continue to expand its foreign business, adding that the company expects 20 percent of its revenue next year will come from international sales.

"We expect to continue to increase the element of our revenue that is international," she said. "F-35 is an important element of that certainly."

Hewson said the F-35C carrier model is expected to have its first test aboard an aircraft carrier this October. "The program continues to progress through development," she said.

Meanwhile, Lockheed has also responded to the Pentagon's call for defense companies to increase their internally funded research and development spending.

"We continue to invest in our portfolio," Hewson said. "Last year we raised our independent research and development dollars by 13 percent. We spent close to $700 million. We're planning to again increase it by another 5 percent this year."

 

[advill]

re: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Thread

My hunch with orders coming from Australia, possibly Japan and others, the pricing of the aircraft will be gradually reduced - "Economies of Scale".

 

[Jura The idiot]

re: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Thread

On Shortfalls:

Posted on InsideDefense.com: June 13, 2014

Senior Pentagon officials expect the Joint Strike Fighter to meet all of the aircraft's originally intended capabilities despite a 2013 audit that predicted wide-ranging operational shortfalls would not be corrected before 2018, when the program is due to complete systems development.

Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's acquisition executive, this week expressed confidence that the F-35 would eventually demonstrate all key performance parameters (KPPs) -- each of which is deemed "critical or essential" to the new fighter -- despite a March report prepared by his office that revealed the JSF program development was on track to meet only seven of eight.

"We don't see anything in the program that suggests we're not going to make our KPPs ultimately," Kendall said in a June 12 telephone press conference from Florida, where he concluded a two-day annual meeting with major F-35 stakeholders from around the world.

In March, one of Kendall's lieutenants -- Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Engineering Stephen Welby -- revealed findings of an internal F-35 program office review in a report to Congress. That report made public, along with the potential KPP shortfall, that the program was at risk of not being able to demonstrate nearly 40 percent of originally envisioned non-KPP operational capabilities (DefenseAlert, April 1).

Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the F-35 program executive officer, said during the June 12 press conference with Kendall that he called for the 2013 audit to assess the alignment between the original 2000 operational requirements document, which articulated the expectations of the customers, and F-35 contract specifications, which translated the requirements into tasks for the aircraft makers.

"Sometimes when you translate the warfighter's needs into contractual language, there is always significant room for interpretation," Bogdan said. "So what we worked on last year -- and it was JPO initiative to do this -- was to ensure that contract system specification was in line with what the warfighter truly needed based on the ORD."

"What we found was there was some different interpretation between what the warfighter thought he was going to get and what the prime contractors were actually going to deliver," Bogdan added.

According to Welby's report to Congress, last year's internal review of the projected performance of the F-35 concluded the aircraft is not on pace to achieve 24 of 62 capability goals originally set for the program. Specifically, the report found 16 non-KPP targets set in the 2000 operational requirements document would not be achieved by the end of system development based on the current plan; another eight were at risk of not meeting threshold capabilities, according to the report.

"We have done a scrub of that and we have addressed every single one of those disconnects such that we understand today what the warfighter needs and we have made the appropriate adjustments in the program to ensure that those system specs on contract are parallel and comparable to the needs in the ORD," Bogdan said this week.

The figures in the March report amount to a snapshot of the F-35 program at a time when "we didn't have a way for closing that gap," Bogdan said. "We have a way of closing that gap now and we have done that. . . . There is no distance between what the warfighter thought he was going to get and what we intend on delivering," the three-star general added.

Asked to identify the capability shortfalls the program is correcting, Bogdan said he would consider a reporter's request for information -- some of which he said could not be made public. His spokesman did not respond to a request for additional information by press time.

 

[Jeff Head]

Re: Australian military news and discussion

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Images of the RAAF’s first Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II being towed from the production line to the paint facility have been revealed.

The aircraft, dubbed AU-1 and appearing in primer colours, is due to be officially rolled out in July and delivered to the USAF’s Integrated Training Center at Luke AFB in Arizona later this year.

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[Jeff Head]

re: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Thread

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(US Navy test F-35Cs have already performed about 90 short landings with arresting gear and the F-35C hook)

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Navy test pilots are conducting numerous shore-based test landings of the F-35C of the next-generation Joint Strike Fighter in anticipation of its first at-sea landing on an aircraft carrier later this year, service officials said.

The shore landings, taking place at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., are designed to replicate the range of conditions which the F-35C is likely to encounter at sea – to the extent that is possible.

Test pilots are working on what they call a structural survey, an effort to assess the F-35C’s ability to land in a wide range of scenarios such as nose down, tail down or max engaging speed, said F-35 Test Pilot Lt. Cmdr. Tony Wilson, or “Brick.”

Max engaging speed involves landing the aircraft heavy and fast to determine if it is the aircraft or the arresting gear that gets damaged, Wilson explained.

“The whole purpose is to make sure the landing gear and the aircraft structure are all suitable to take the stresses that the pilot could see while trying to land aboard the deck of an aircraft carrier,” Wilson explained.

While recognizing that the mix of conditions at sea on board a carrier cannot be replicated on land, Wilson said the test landings seek to simulate what he called unusual attitudes such as instances where the aircraft is rolling with one side up or descending faster than normal with what’s called a “high sink” rate.

“We’ve done about 90 carrier-style landings,” he said.

High sink rate is reached when an aircraft is descending 21-feet per second, much faster than the typical 10-feet per second descend rate, Wilson explained. The shore landings also seek to replicate an airplane condition known as “yawing” when the body of the aircraft is moving from side to side.

The F-35C is engineered to be larger than the Air Force’s F-35 A or Marine Corps short-take-off-and-landing F-35B because the structure of the aircraft needs to be able to withstand the impact of landing on a carrier. Also, the F-35C has larger, foldable wings to facilitate slower approach speeds compatible with moving ships, Navy officials said.

“In order to withstand the forces experienced during an arrested landing, the keel of an F-35C is strengthened and the landing gear is of a heavier-duty build than the A and B models,” an official with the F-35 Integrated Test Force said.

The wings of the F-35 C are also built with what’s called “aileron control surfaces” designed to provide control power to roll the aircraft at slow approaching speeds, Wilson explained.

At sea, pilots must account for their speed as well as the speed of the wind, the weather or visibility conditions as well as the speed of the boat, Wilson explained.

“The landing area is constantly changing. This is a challenge to structure of the aircraft because there is no way of knowing for certain how hard we are going to hit the deck or at what angle they are going to be at,” he added.

On an aircraft carrier, the ship has arresting wires or metal cables attached to hydraulic engines used to slow the aircraft down to a complete stop within the landing area.

“On an aircraft carrier, the landing area is off about 10-degrees. The boat’s motion itself is moving away from you — so you can’t just aim at the boat,” Wilson said.

The cable is four to six inches above the deck of the carrier and hydraulic fluid controls the pace of deceleration for the aircraft, Wilson said. A hook lowers from the back end of the F-35C aircraft, designed to catch the cable and slow down the plane.

“In order to maintain our stealth configuration, we had to put the hook internal to the airframe. On all the legacy systems, the tail hook sits up underneath the engine externally. We have three doors that open up to allow the tail hook to fall down,” Wilson said.

The aircraft also needs to be able to withstand what’s called a “free flight,” a situation where the pilot receives a late wave off to keep flying after the hook on the airplane has already connected with the wire, he explained.

“We need to be sure that the engine and the aircraft itself can handle the stress of essentially being ripped out of the air by the interaction between the cable and the hook,” Wilson added.

Describing landing as a controlled crash into the aircraft carrier, Wilson explained that pilots look at a light on the ship called the Fresnel Lens in order to orient their approach.

“The whole purpose of the lighting system is to show us where we are in reference to a specific glide slope. What this lens does is it tells us where we are,” he said.

In total, the Navy plans to acquire 340 F-35C aircraft. So far, five F-35Cs have been delivered for pilot training at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.

Both Wilson and fellow test pilot Lt. Cmdr. Michael Burks, or “Sniff,” former F-18 Hornet and Super Hornet pilots, said flying the F-35C represents a large step forward in fighter jet technology.

Burks referred to the JSF’s touchscreen cockpit display which combines information from a range of sensors, cameras and radars….ect.

“Unlike our legacy aircraft where I might have to look at several different displays – the F-35C’s integrated core processor integrates all the information for the pilot. It very neatly and concisely displays all that information in one location, making tactical decisions much easier,” Burks said.

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[SouthernSky]

re: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Thread

Slowly but surely, the aircraft some love to loathe is becoming a reality. Thanks for the update Jeff.

 

[Jura The idiot]

re: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Thread

On F-35B:

Posted on InsideDefense.com: June 13, 2014

The final version of F-35 Block 2B software the Marines will use to declare the aircraft operational was recently delivered to the test community and it will take about a month to determine how the software performs, according to an official.

Air Force Lt. Col. Andrew "Growler" Allen, 461st Flight Test Squadron commander and test pilot, told Inside the Navy during a June 11 interview the goal is to complete Block 2 testing by the end of November so that there is time for the F-35 joint program office and the services to go through the entire certification process.

F-35 weapons testing is scheduled to finish in November and related aircraft envelope testing required for carriage and employment of weapons throughout the Block 2B envelope extends into December, F-35 spokesman Joe DellaVedova wrote in a June 12 email.

DellaVedova wrote the time lines support the weapons certification process in advance of the planned Marine Corps initial operational capability in July 2015, but in conjunction with the services, the joint program office does have some ability to react to unplanned events.

Allen said the testing is on track to meet the November deadline but a lot of things must fall into place. "It's not going to be easy," he added.

Initial indications of the new software drop are promising but Allen said within a month the military will have a better idea.

The updated version of Block 2B software unlocks testing that can be performed. The test community had to delay testing because they were having issues with certain systems, Allen said.

It allows for testing the full capacity of the navigation system, electro-optical targeting system, radar and data link testing, he said.

On May 27, the most complex weapons test to date was performed on an F-35. Allen fired the first dual AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile during a weapon delivery accuracy mission and tracked two maneuvering drone targets.

Firing a dual AMRAAM shot is part of the weapons test plan. "There's actually 15 drops or shots in that plan and . . . that was the next shot in that order," Allen said."It's kind of a buildup approach."

The aircraft used was an F-35B because it was the aircraft that was available for the range date, Kevin Peck, weapons integration engineering lead for the 461st Flight Test Squadron, told ITN during the same June 11 interview.

There are six F-35 aircraft used for weapons testing at Edwards Air Force Base, CA. These include three F-35A conventional-takeoff-and-landing jets, two F-35B jets and one F-35C carrier variant jet.

Prior to the dual AMRAAM shot the testers completed firing the first single AMRAAM from an F-35C. "We set out in the beginning when we started the live fires to spread them across the variants and we're just starting to do that now with this first [short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing] shot and we'll continue to do shots on each of the three variants but so far it's just been available aircraft," Peck said.

 

[Jeff Head]

re: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Thread

Slowly but surely, the aircraft some love to loathe is becoming a reality. Thanks for the update Jeff.

You are welcome.

seeing that trap with the hook...and knowing they have now done it 90 times or more, is heartening.

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Looking very forward to seeing the Charlie onboard the carrier.