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

[FORBIN]

F-35 dragchute tests start at Edwards

At Edwards Air Force Base in California, tests of the F-35A dragchute system have started, according to the Norwegian Ministry of Defense. Both Norway and the Netherlands have ordered the system, which helps slowing down on runways in bad weather, icy conditions or emergencies, to be installed on their F-35s.

The tests are performed with F-35 test aircraft AF-02, which is specially instrumented for this purpose. The tests at Edwards are designed to see how the jet behaves in the air with a fitted parachute fairing. The fairing is made of composite and metal materials and is mounted on the F-35’s aft fuselage. It houses the dragchute, which is deployed after landing if needed.

At Edwards, the actual chute will be tested on a dry and wet runway. A second test phase is planned in 2018 at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, where tests will be conducted in winter conditions similar to Norway. Tests have already been performed in simulators.

Brake monitor
Norwegian jets will also feature a brake monitor in the cockpit, which will provide pilots with information on braking action on the runway. In November 2017, the first Norwegian F-35s will arrive in-country, and they are to be fitted with this integrated brake monitor. The testing of the brake monitor will however continue until spring 2018.

Norway eyes 52 F-35s, while the Netherlands is looking for 37 jets. According to Norwegian MoD, the dragchute system and brake monitor are also avaliable to other countries.

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[Jura The idiot]

I now watched

Published on Apr 17, 2017
Since the first F-35 Lightning II rolled out of the Lockheed Martin factory in Fort Worth, Texas in 2006, the program's reach has exponentially expanded around the globe

 

[Jura The idiot]

now I read Here's why the F-35 once lost to F-16s, and how it made a stunning comeback

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The F-35 Joint Strike Figher represents the US Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps' vision for the future of combat aviation, but a

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detailed how the F-35 had lost in dogfights with F-16s and F-15s — the very planes it was intended to replace.

Essentially it came down to energy management in the early days of the F-35's testing, according to the report.

During a dogfight, jets have to manage extreme amounts of kinetic energy while making pinpoint turns and maneuvers.

With smaller wings than some legacy fighters and an inferior thrust-to-weight ratio, the early F-35 pilots found it nearly impossible to engage with F-16s.

The report has since

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of the F-35 program who say it's too expensive and not capable.

But according to retired US Marine Corps Maj. Dan Flatley, who helped design the training syllabus for F-35 dogfights, the F-35's lackluster performance against legacy jets had more to do with old habits of the pilots and a weapons system in its infancy rather than anything wrong with the F-35 concept itself.

"When you first get in the F-35 and try to fight it visually, you immediately go back to everything you knew in your legacy fighter," Flatley told Business Insider in a phone interview.

Indeed, the same report that details the F-35's losses to older jets states that the pilot himself had 2,000 flight hours in an F-15 Strike Eagle, which is a very different beast.

“If you try to fight it like a fighter it isn’t, you’re going to have terrible results,” Flatley said of the F-35. Like any new weapons system, the F-35 takes some getting used to. In 2015, F-35 pilots were pulled from other fighters and introduced to a plane that fundamentally reimagined aerial warfare. A learning curve had to be covered.

Unlike dogfighters from World War II, the F-35 mainly focuses on flying undetected while using its array of fused sensors to paint a clear picture of the threat environment for miles out and to engage with targets before they're ever seen.

As exciting as dogfights are, it's been decades since a US jet engaged an enemy in a turning dogfight, and the F-35's design reflects that new reality.

"If I went out and fought an F/A-18 on day one I’d get destroyed," said Flatley. "But if you do what the jet is really good at, you can do things those other jets wouldn’t dream of."

Flatley stressed that dogfighting, where the close range diminishes the F-35's stealth and sensor fusion advantages, is certainly not the purpose of the Joint Strike Fighter, but rather it can excel in those situations in the right hands.

That's not to say the F-35 was a perfect aircraft that was simply misunderstood in 2015. Flatley said he did approach Lockheed Martin to suggest changes to the jet after its poor run against legacy aircraft.

One attribute the F-35 has that, counterintuitively, helps it in dogfights is its ability to slow down during a turn, but it was during these slow turns that pilots weren't able to control the plane how they were used to.

Basically, the engineers at Lockheed Martin built the F-35's flight controls with an incredible amount of automation, which Flatley said could make the jet "feel like it was fighting you," or "feel like the hand of god pushing you in certain directions."

Flatley and other F-35 pilots needed the ability to push their airplane right to the edge of its abilities — almost to the point where it would fall out of the sky because it hit slow speeds at insane angles — should they need to in a do-or-die dogfight.

"You guys are hand-holding us," Flatley told the engineers, who hadn't imagined the fighter pilot's need to push the limits of their aircraft.

"We want more authority. I want to be able to throw my nose around if I need to," said Flatley, referring to the plane's ability to point its front end at threats in order to better assess and target them.

So Lockheed Martin worked with the pilots and fixed the issues keeping them from acing dogfights, as they do now.

Since that test, the F-35's record speaks for itself. During Red Flag, the US Air Force's most realistic and challenging jet-fighter training event, the F-35 came out with a

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on the legacy aircraft that had once beaten it.

Flatly, who came from an F/A-18 background, said he had to shake the old habits he formed in an aircraft that was originally conceptualized in the 1970s, but young pilots training today won't have those problems and could revolutionize the way the F-35 fights.

"The next generation, the first lieutenants that have never flown an F-18 before, those are the pilots that are going to define what the F-35 is going to do," said Flatley.

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

Translation, It was Early in development and the Flyby wire as well as Pilots were not up to speed yet on how to use the system.

 

[Jura The idiot]

here's the most recent article The F-35A is in England. What’s next?

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:

Within a couple hours, eight U.S. Air Force F-35As will have arrived at RAF Lakenheath, England, for a month of practicing dogfighting and combat maneuvers with the United Kingdom and potentially other NATO allies.

Six F-35As from the active-duty 34th Fighter Squadron and reserve 466th Fighter Squadron, both located at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, landed at RAF Lakenheath on Saturday — marking the first time the Air Force version of the jet has been sent abroad for training.

Once the last two jets arrive on Wednesday, pilots will get ready to start training with U.S. F-15Cs and Es located at RAF Lakenheath, Eurofighter Typhoons owned by the U.K. Royal Air Force and perhaps Dutch F-16s, with further exercises still in the works, said Lt. Col. George Watkins, commander of the 34th Fighter Squadron. Lessons learned will help inform the bed down of U.S. Air Force F-35 squadrons that will be permanently based at Lakenheath in the early 2020s.

The deployment comes at a delicate time for the U.S.-Russian relationship, which was rocked by the U.S. military’s recent Tomahawk strike on Syria that was prompted by a deadly chemical weapons attack on civilians. As a result, the Air Force has walked a thin line on messaging, with statements noting that although it was partially bankrolled by the European Reassurance Initiative funds meant to boost NATO capability against a resurgent Russia, the deployment was long-planned and should not be understood as a response to heightened tensions in the region.

Watkins characterized the deployment to Europe as a “natural progression” that started with a proof-of-concept deployment last year to Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, followed by the squadron’s recent trip to Nellis AFB, Nevada, for Red Flag.

“All that was done locally [in the United States], and then this is our first overseas deployment with the F-35, so we’re just taking it step by step,” he said. “We came to a base where they are looking forward to hosting F-35s in the future as an organic squadron here, so we’re kind of taking ideas and learning from these guys, and doing some local training, and then we’ll return back to Hill.”

Over the first week, F-35 pilots will start off doing air-to-air exercises with U.S. Air Force F-15Cs and F-15Es permanently located at Lakenheath, as well as engagements against other F-35As acting as adversary air, Watkins said. Pilots will practice dogfighting one-on-one and doing combat maneuvers in two-on-two formations with simulated weapons, including the laser-guided GBU-12, 2,000-pound joint direct attack munition and A-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile.

From there, activities will ramp up to small and large force exercises with U.K. Eurofighter Typhoons and potentially Dutch F-16s, he said. Other NATO aircraft could also join in for that training, but have not been confirmed yet.

“We’re not super firm if the Dutch are playing with us or not, and it’s not out of the question to have other NATO fourth-gen players participate in our exercise as well,” he said.

All training exercises will take place over U.K. airspace — further minimizing the risk of miscalculation by Russia or other nations. However, F-35s will conduct “out and back” flights to other NATO countries to familiarize themselves with the region, although the locations of those sorties will not be announced will not be announced until after the planes have safely landed back at Lakenheath.

The Air Force has sent 215 pilots, maintainers, support personnel and security officers to England. That’s more manpower than what’s needed for an event of this size, but the service wanted as many airmen as possible to benefit from the deployment, Watkins explained.

For day-to-day maintenance, management and mission planning, operators will rely on the F-35’s logistics hub, the Autonomic Logistics Information System.

“We’ve had pretty good luck with ALIS so far,” he said. “We sent a team to make sure that everything was set up and ALIS was running, and they got it set up in record time. It went really smooth to get everything set up, hooked up and talking across the IP addresses.”

Although the deployment so far has proceeded without any major problems, Watkins acknowledged that a small snag has led to the delay of two jets arriving in England.

During the initial flight to Lakenheath, a pilot noticed he had a fuel tank float valve that didn’t seem to be reading correctly, and opted to have maintenance check it out as a “routine safety precaution,” he said. That aircraft and an additional F-35 acting as its wingman stayed behind at Bangor, Maine, before flying to the United Kingdom today.

“It ended up not being an issue, but we wanted to make extra sure of that before crossing the Atlantic,” Watkins said.

 

[Jura The idiot]

now FlightGlobal

• 2 hours ago

USAF leaves behind two F-35As during Lakenheath deployment

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Two of the six Lockheed Martin F-35As deployed by the US Force Lakenheath AB last week were left behind in the UK as their squadron mates made the return trip.

An USAF pilot noticed a possible refueling issue on one F-35A and decided to hold back deploying both that aircraft and its wingman, says Lt Col George Watkins, commander of the 34th fighter squadron. Watkins called the check a routine safety precaution.

“The pilot noticed he had a fuel tank float valve that was not 100%, his fuel tank may have not been reading correctly and he wasn’t sure so the pilot made the choice not to take that jet,” Watkins says. “[He was] just making sure we could air to air refuel without any problems.”

Each of the two F-35A formations that deployed to the UK last week took three different tankers, though the tankers did not accompany the jets for the entirety of the trip, Watkins says. The F-35s refueled nine times over the deployment and the last tanker refueled the jets from RAF Mildenhall.

Earlier this year, the US Marine Corps deputy commandant for aviation criticiced the refueling model for the USMC’S F-35B.

“You look at that model how many times we had to send out tankers, way too many times,” Lt Gen Jon Davis said. “We’re redoing that model so we need a lot less refuelings than we’re doing right now.”

Watkins characterised the recent refueling en route to Lakenheath as routine and noted the F-35A carries more fuel than the USMC’s short takeoff vertical landing F-35B model.

During its Lakenheath deployment, the USAF will restrict its training operations to the UK airspace. The aircraft will also fly out and back to other NATO locations outside the UK, but a USAF spokeswoman could not reveal those locations.

 

[Jura The idiot]

ooh la la
F-35 Needs More Potent Adversary Services

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The F-35 Lightning II strike fighter is easily able to counter the adversary services aircraft thrown at it in numbers, said an official of an adversary services contractor, who added that the industry is facing challenges in coming up with a realistic threat aircraft for training for high-end combat.

“Nothing gets close to these things [the F-35s]” said Jeffrey Parker, a former Air Force fighter pilot and chief executive of ATAC LLC, a Textron company that provides opposing aircraft for U.S. fighter squadrons and electronic threat simulation against Navy strike groups. “I’ve flown against the [Marine] F-35Bs down at [Marine Corps Air Station] Beaufort [S.C.] It’s an impressive airplane. Even in the hands of students, it’s a very capable fighter.”

Parker also said that increased adversary services are needed by the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to reduce the fatigue-life toll on use of the services’ own front-line fighters and their limited flight hours in the adversary role.

The Navy “has a shortage of readiness training, so they’re reaching out to industry to try to solve that problem,” Parker said. “They’re using too much ‘gray air’ [warfighting aircraft].”

He said each adversary aircraft that flies 250 hours a year is the equivalent of freeing an F/A-18 Super Hornet for fleet use for a year. Ten ATAC aircraft in use for 250 hours each can extend the lives of 10 Super Hornets per year.

The Navy has three squadrons of dedicated adversary aircraft with third-generation F-5 or fourth-generation F/A-18 fighters and the Marine Corps fields one squadron of F-5s. The Navy’s Topgun school also uses F/A-18 and F-16 adversary aircraft. The Air Force operates two adversary F-16 squadrons. Companies like ATAC use foreign-built aircraft such as the supersonic F-21 Kfir and slower Hawker Hunter to supplement with adversary services.

“The Navy squadrons are hurting on aircraft,” Parker said. “They don’t have enough. They’re also trying to upgrade their training from third-generation aircraft like F-5s to fourth-generation aircraft like F/A-18s and F-16s.

“The aircraft shortages in training are made worse by the F-35 fifth-generation aircraft, which you need a lot of ‘bad guys’ for,” he said.

Parker told Seapower that more fourth-generation fighters are needed to meet the increasing demand for adversary services, but that “not enough fourth-gen aircraft in the world are available to industry. Nobody can provide it all, nor can all of us [the adversary companies] provide it together, at least in the next five years or so.”

Because of restrictions in U.S. law, the adversary contractors cannot purchase or lease fourth-generation fighters from the U.S. aircraft in desert storage. As such, they go to foreign nations like Israel for retired jets to bring to the United States.

The Navy has issued a draft Request for Proposals for fourth-generation adversary services for the Naval Aviation Warfighting Center at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nev., looking for F-16- or SU-27-like capability with an upgraded radar.

“There’s only one category of radar [that can meet specifications] — an AESA [electronically scanned array radar],” he said.

For cost reasons, Parker said, single-engine jets are needed, rather than two-engine aircraft.
The ability of the F-22 Raptor and F-35 to track and engage large numbers of aircraft means that large numbers of adversary aircraft are needed to provide a realistic scenario for training the pilots. For example, the Air Force stations a number of T-38 supersonic trainers at Langley Air Force Base, Va., to provide enough bogeys to challenge the F-22s based there.

“The Raptor is such an uneven fight, that if you send out two Raptors against anything else, there’s no challenge, no work for the pilots to do. For a ‘two-ship’ they want 12 bandits.

“What we see going on is a maturation of the industry” he said. “By going to the fourth-generation level, the Navy is acknowledging that these programs are going to be around and integrated at the highest levels, because now they have radar; pulling 9 gs [nine times the force of gravity] at the merge; [and] helmet off-boresight capability.”

 

[Jura The idiot]

Yesterday at 9:23 PM

now FlightGlobal

• 2 hours ago

USAF leaves behind two F-35As during Lakenheath deployment

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... and DoDBuzz
2 More F-35s to Join Fleet in Europe After Fuel Valve Glitch

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Eight

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Lightning IIs will be flying with NATO partners for the next few weeks in part of their training

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to RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom, officials told reporters on Wednesday.

Six fifth-generation aircraft from

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, Utah, originally flew out on Saturday; two additional aircraft will join the rotation this week after one stayed stateside for a small maintenance fix, said Lt. Col. George Watkins, commander of the 34th Fighter Squadron at Hill.

Before crossing the Atlantic, the pilot of the aircraft noticed a fuel tank float valve mishap, Watkins said. As a routine safety precaution, the aircraft stayed back until the issue was resolved.

“They diverted two of the airplanes, one with the problem, one as the wingman to Bangor, Maine,” said Brig. Gen. Scott Pleus, a former

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pilot who directs the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program’s integration office for the service.

“There are no F-35 maintenance people at Bangor, so you now have to fly people from Hill Air Force Base … out, to do the troubleshooting on the airplane and then fix the airplane,” Pleus told Military.com at the Pentagon Wednesday.

The Air Force would have had to wait for available tankers to then fly alongside the fighters to Lakenheath, said the general, who is moving on to a new post at Air Combat Command.

“You can’t just say that the airplane took five days to fix — the airplane could have taken two hours to fix, but to get tankers and logistics folks out there” it takes longer, he said.

“Realize, it’s a very difficult, logistical challenge to move fighter planes across the ocean,” Pleus said. “The Air Force makes it look very easy when we do it, because we do it all the time.”

Pleus said hiccups are standard no matter whether the service is dealing with an older, fourth-generation F-16 or a brand new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The Air Force has contingency plans in place in case of any kind of snafu, he said.

“Fighter airplanes are extremely technologically complicated machines, [like] high performance sports cars that require lots of maintenance and lots of work; in this case, it was out of caution the pilot decided [he] had an anomaly, and said it was best” to check it out.

First Time Training in Europe

For the first week of training, the F-35s will be doing primarily air-to-air training with local F-15C and F-15E squadrons, Watkins said.

“We’ll then do a small force exercise, [then] large force exercise with [U.K. Eurofighter] Typhoons, and potentially some Dutch F-16s as well,” Watkins said. He said the training will be conducted primarily over U.K. airspace; but there will be some “out and back” one-off flights over NATO airspace, added Capt. Sybil Taunton, U.S. Air Forces Europe-Air Forces Africa Public Affairs.

The exercises will include one-on-one dogfighting, and simulated training with inert weapons such as the the

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Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile,or

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; the GBU-31 2,000 pound, GPS-guided joint direct attack munition; and the 500 pound GBU-12 laser seeker bomb.

“We will do air-to-air and air-to-ground training while we’re here,” Watkins said.

The deployment is partially funded through the European Reassurance Initiative — established under President Barack Obama in 2014 to fund programs for the U.S. military conducting exercises in Europe in wake of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea — and partially by the Air Force, Taunton said. She could not provide specifics on what this initial deployment costs.

The F-35 deployment is using more than 200 pilots, maintainers, security, and other various personnel, Watkins said, which is slightly more than needed, but the Air Force saw it as an opportunity to train additional airmen during the event.

Taunton added, “We are continuing to send that reassurance message supporting our NATO partners, reinforcing our commitment to NATO.”

 

[Air Force Brat]

Yesterday at 9:23 PM

... and DoDBuzz
2 More F-35s to Join Fleet in Europe After Fuel Valve Glitch

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Flying ANY aircraft overwater is a serious issue, while every flight in a fighter aircraft is dangerous and potentially life threatening, a long overwater ferry flight is particularly dangerous..... likely NO ONE has ever ditched a fighter jet on purpose in nearly 60 years due to the almost certainty that you will drown before you could possibly get out....

I would imagine that the last fighter jet you could "blow the canopy" off on approach was prolly the F9F Panther.

So that would require a "bail-out", a bail-out over the North Atlantic this time of year in particular would likely be deadly as well, who's gonna come pluck you out of the water??

So a fuel issue is a no go, now if that had been a combat mission?? the results would have likely been the same, you've got to have "motion lotion", without it, your time aloft is going to be extremely short... look at the Miracle on the Hudson,,,, Sully was an USAF F-4 pilot in SEA!

 

[Jura The idiot]

Today at 7:39 AM

Yesterday at 9:23 PM

... and DoDBuzz
2 More F-35s to Join Fleet in Europe After Fuel Valve Glitch

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... and AirForceMag
England F-35A Deployment Just Practice, Not a Message

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The movement of eight F-35As to Lakenheath, England—the first overseas deployment of the Air Force’s newest fighter—isn’t meant to send any kind of political message, and the aircraft won’t be available for operational missions during their weeks-long stay in the UK, USAF officers reported during a telephone press conference on April 19.

The deployment, which was made over the weekend with little notice, had nevertheless been in the planning for months, US Air Forces Europe and Air Force Africa spokeswoman Capt. Sybil Taunton said. Former head of Air Combat Command Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle said in February that a European F-35 deployment was coming “soon.” Taunton acknowledged that “some” of the funding for the deployment is coming from European Reassurance Initiative accounts, the rest is coming from USAF operations and maintenance monies. The timing of the deployment “is not tied to any world events,” she said.

Lt. Col. George Watkins, commander of the 34th Fighter Squadron aircraft from Hill AFB, Utah which made the trip, said the jets are not there to perform Baltic Air Policing or any other operational missions—even in a contingency—but are taking “the next step … in the natural progression” of F-35 deployments. Watkins said the jets have previously deployed to Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, to a Red Flag exercise at Nellis AFB, Nev. and to “the other side of the base” at Hill on a simulated deployment to practice moving equipment and setting up at a new location. This UK deployment now adds the experience of transiting the ocean and setting up with “a different power system” in a host country, he said.

During the deployment, the F-35s will first spend a week or so tangling with F-15Cs and Es from Lakenheath, which will be the first overseas F-35A base in a few years. They will practice both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions, 1v1 and 2v2 scenarios and “fighting our way in…and out” of simulated target areas, but will use no actual ordnance, live or inert. Further on, the F-35s will practice against British Typhoons, and possibly Dutch F-16s, though the latter engagement isn’t certain yet. Later still, the jets will make “out and back” visits to other, unnamed NATO countries, but will not participate in exercises or do training during these flights. Watkins said broadly the other-nation visits are for “familiarization” purposes, and no austere fields will be part of the program.

Six F-35As initially made the trip; one additional F-35A aborted at Hill as a precautionary measure for a suspect fuel tank reading, but it and another jet followed the rest of the group Wednesday. Watkins said the unit brought 245 people on C-17 and C-5 cargo aircraft; a larger-than-usual number of the airmen were “security forces,” he said.

The size of the deployment was “very comparable” to what is done with F-16 movements, Watkins noted, but it was not modeled on the “Rapid Raptor” concept which quickly deploys a small number of aircraft with a single C-17 or KC-10 carrying support gear and people.

Each group of three F-35s was accompanied by three tankers along the way, and nine air refuelings were made on each aircraft. KC-135 tankers from RAF Mildenhall escorted the first group of jets from over Canada the rest of the way to Lakenheath. He said the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) came ahead of the group, was set up “in record time” and is functioning well in the new location. “We’re happy with how it’s working,” Watkins asserted.

He also said the F-35’s low observable surfaces will be maintained at combat levels during the deployment.

The exact duration of the planned deployment was not disclosed.