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

[siegecrossbow]

Perceived need, and stated desire to move up into the que, I would imagine that Turkey may be feeling the need, and they may ask to move up as well?

Israel, South Korea, and Japan are all close defensive partners with the US, they have a long history of co-operation, as does Turkey, and have inter-operability agreements with the US.

Turkey is feeling the heat right now, and the BHO team is not a very faithful partner, if you will notice Russia is sending the US warm fuzzies of promise of cooperation in the war on terror, Turkey did what they felt they needed to do, and the Russians/Putin is going to attempt to muscle them, BHO lacks the spine to stand with our allies, unless forced by Congress/Senate.

I wonder if the late comers have to pay more for the same plane as well.

 

[Air Force Brat]

I wonder if the late comers have to pay more for the same plane as well.

Not necessarily, and I think LockMart is having their January White Sale! prices are coming down, so I'd be happy to put in a good word for you??

Some of our partners have invested sweat and cash into this bird, and we have a couple of overseas assembly, and maintenance facilities, so I would imagine that they will get "considerations"?

 

[Scyth]

In The Netherlands, there was (still is?) a debate whether buying the 'finished' F-35 of the shelf would be cheaper than investing in its development and get a discount on the purchase. The fact is that, without access to the complete spending and an army of auditors / investment specialists, it cannot be determined with absolute certainty which option is economically cheaper. From a sales perspective you would have to offer some kind of discount for earlier buyers / investors, because otherwise you would not get people on board early on. Whether that discount offsets the investment costs is difficult to determine.

 

[Brumby]

Not necessarily, and I think LockMart is having their January White Sale! prices are coming down, so I'd be happy to put in a good word for you??

Some of our partners have invested sweat and cash into this bird, and we have a couple of overseas assembly, and maintenance facilities, so I would imagine that they will get "considerations"?

Successive LRIP lot procurement cost of the F-35's had been slowly coming down. It does appear that if they delay the purchase they actually pay less based on declining production cost and potentially less upgrade retrofit because of software delays. Conversely there are some countries that are happy to pay more to move up the chain to secure earlier deliveries.

 

[Air Force Brat]

In The Netherlands, there was (still is?) a debate whether buying the 'finished' F-35 of the shelf would be cheaper than investing in its development and get a discount on the purchase. The fact is that, without access to the complete spending and an army of auditors / investment specialists, it cannot be determined with absolute certainty which option is economically cheaper. From a sales perspective you would have to offer some kind of discount for earlier buyers / investors, because otherwise you would not get people on board early on. Whether that discount offsets the investment costs is difficult to determine.

Those who have more investment will certainly initially pay more as in the case of the US, we have years and years of development, engineering, tooling, etc, etc, so we will always have a higher price per aircraft.

Those who just buy the clean aircraft will get into it for a lower cost, but they are not getting the offset of jobs, and selling parts back to Lockmart for the aircraft, so the jobs/ industry advancement come back to those who have made an investment.

There is honestly some real brilliance here, as the US and LockMart have partners who early on shared in the very real high dollar expenses of JSF, and those partners who jumped in and said sure, have the advantage of being in the inner circle, they will get aircraft and or parts/support if any of those were to be "logjammed".

What is not always apparent to politicians?? is just what a high zoot aircraft this is, and spreading the expenses, will allow everyone to have an outstanding aircraft that they other-wise would have been unable to buy/build themselves?? The Canadian situation is a fine example, where liberal politicians, like the glut we have here, have cancelled a purchase committed to by one of our closest allies. They will likely not only lose out on having a much better airplane, but all the manufacturing and jobs that would have naturally fallen to them were they purchasing the aircraft. Those jobs will likely go to one of the inner circle who are keeping the promise to all the partners??

 

[Air Force Brat]

I wonder if the late comers have to pay more for the same plane as well.

I watched an excellent video in a Facebook Forum, and I should have PMed Jeff to see if we could post it here. It is an excellent rebuttal of Pierre Spreys many false claims about the F-35, interestingly delves in to the lifting body concept and how much that adds to total lift on the F-35/F-22 and and similar fighters, J-20 and PAK-FA. As much as 30 to 35% of the lift is from the shaping/Chining of the fuselage, and the fuselage wing juncture.

 

[Jeff Head]

I watched an excellent video in a Facebook Forum, and I should have PMed Jeff to see if we could post it here. It is an excellent rebuttal of Pierre Spreys many false claims about the F-35, interestingly delves in to the lifting body concept and how much that adds to total lift on the F-35/F-22 and and similar fighters, J-20 and PAK-FA. As much as 30 to 35% of the lift is from the shaping/Chining of the fuselage, and the fuselage wing juncture.

You can link to it here...you might also do a search on YouTube because if it is also on YouTube, then it will actually also play right here in the forum.

 

[Jeff Head]

This is my favorite F-35C photo so far.

 

[Equation]

Successive LRIP lot procurement cost of the F-35's had been slowly coming down. It does appear that if they delay the purchase they actually pay less based on declining production cost and potentially less upgrade retrofit because of software delays. Conversely there are some countries that are happy to pay more to move up the chain to secure earlier deliveries.

Lower oil prices also helps the over all economy of scale.

 

[FORBIN]

Fleet-wide F-35 fix targets fuel tank over-pressurisation

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F-35 fleet
34 F-35A with 2 Australians and 1 Italian, for first years Sqns of 24 with F-35 of foreign countries which leave after for join her countries and replaced by US F-35A.
1 full Sqn now, a second with 10 F-35A and 2 re activate was on F-16 for next year.
And remains 4 Sqns of F-16 whose 2 to Holloman with each 20, all F-16 used are Block 42 last Bl 25 retired.

Now about 90 F-35A delivered except prototypes some used for static tests etc...
All OCU full or almost mainly delivered now to Luke and the 34th FS to Hill he get now about 5/6 F-35A.
Actually Almost 2 F-35A delivered by month ~ 20/year.

In more 46+ F-35B and 23/24 F-35C whose 2 USMC.

F-35 training at Luke AFB gathers pace with 34 jets

The multinational pilot training centre at Luke AFB in Arizona has grown exponentially since receiving its first Lockheed Martin F-35 in March 2014, and that pace won’t let up in 2016 as the 56th Fighter Wing zips past 3,000 Lightning II sorties.

In an interview today, wing commander Brig Gen Scott Pleus says Luke AFB now counts 34 pooled fifth-generation F-35As in American, Australian and Norwegian livery. The wing also continues to produce 95% of the US air force’s F-16 pilots from the base in Phoenix and its two satellite squadrons at Holloman AFB in New Mexico.

As the world’s premier conventional F-35 training base, Luke is currently training pilots and instructors for the USA, Australia, Norway, Italy – and soon F-35 foreign military sales customers Japan and Israel. Other programme partners – the Netherlands, Turkey and possibly Denmark and Canada – will also join the pooling arrangement, where they share aircraft and instructors.

Luke will grow to six F-35 training squadrons, and will soon reactivate its third unit – the 63rd Fighter Squadron, which trained F-16C/D pilots until it disbanded in 2009.

As its former commander, Pleus is looking forward to the 63rd's return, and he expects one squadron to covert to F-35 each year after that. Eventually, Luke will house 144 jets and 12 full-mission simulators. Singapore and Taiwan also have F-16 training squadrons at the base.

Pleus flew the base’s first F-35 sortie on March 18, 2015, and by the end of the month, it had clocked 1,000 sorties. Luke recently surpassed 3,000 sorties.

Luke’s training programme will grow rapidly through 2024 as F-35 nations work towards initial operational capability. Lockheed is scaling up aircraft production at its main site in Fort Worth, Texas as well as in Italy and Japan, with a planned run of 2,322 A-models.

“Throughout this year, I’ll get two more Norwegian F-35s, our very first two Italian F-35s, and six more F-35s with US flags on the tail,” explains Pleus. “We’ll be sitting somewhere around 44 jets by the end of 2016. We’re also going to start training Israel with some ground-based training, and Japan will come in later as our [foreign military sales customer].”

FMS customers including South Korea will fly their own jets, and have instructors assigned to their units. The first Israeli F-35I “Adir” is in final assembly, but flight training is being done in Israel.
“Right now, Israel is just doing academic and simulator training only. Japan will bring their own aircraft here, and will go through the academics, the simulators and we will have instructor pilots assigned to them.”

One of the lingering curses of concurrent development and fielding of the F-35 is that the 34 aircraft based at Luke are in various stages of upgrade, and will be continuously improved as new hardware and software modifications become available. That means maintainers are working overtime to bring the aircraft and simulators up the latest configuration.

That should smooth out as Lockheed enters full-rate production in the standardised Block 3F and Block 4 configurations in 2017 and beyond.

Until recently, Luke has been growing its pilot instructor base, but in April students will adopt a new syllabus focused on full combat training, and eventually weapons employment.

That new focus comes as Hill AFB in Utah stands up its first combat-coded F-35 squadron for IOC in August, and as Luke prepares to receive its first undergraduate pilots in November.

Those basic course, or “B-course,” pilots will have limited exposure to combat jets, having operated the T-6, T-38 and AT-38 prior to taking control of a $100 million F-35. Until then, pilots have come across from older airframes like the A-10, F-16 and F-15.

“We are on the cutting edge in November of getting that first group of students started, so they can go right to Hill AFB upon their graduation and become the new pilots, instructors and leaders for the F-35 as it continues to grow,” says Pleus.

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