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

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supersnoop

Major
Registered Member
MarKoz81 said:
USN is not responsible for anything wrong with F-35 because USN was forced to participate in the program.

The most important thing that everyone needs to understand whenever commenting on F-35 is that JSF was never about delivering what any of the services wanted. JSF was Lockheed's strategy to corner the fighter market. Every problem in the program stems directly from there.

That strategy became a priority for Lockheed when reviews in the 1990s first ended B-2, A-12 and NATF and then reduced number of F-22 planned from 750 to 648 in 1990 to 442 in 1993 to 381 in 1994 to 339 in 1997 etc. Lockheed went deep into debt to acquire necessary capabilities for F-22 including GD's F-16 production line and F-35 was its de facto lifeline. Any cuts to F-35 like it happened to F-22 would kill Lockheed due to incurred financial liabilities. What most people tend to forget is that in the 1990s it was in no way obvious that 2000s would involve return to increased defense spending, because both Democrats and Republicans broadly approved of "peace dividend". Even after 2001 majority of additional funding went to finance military operations and procurement very quickly was forced to focus on those needs and those were very different from what was planned in the 80s.

I don't have the article at hand but it described how all the defense companies managed their post-1990 strategies and Lockheed was the only one which relied on exceedingly aggressive debt-financed acquisitions to generate profits in the long term through market control. All the other companies had more conservative strategies.
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Nah, they all relied on aggressive debt-financed acquisitions in the 90's...
Boeing - Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas
Northrop - Grumman, Vought, Westinghouse electronics
... and still are
Raytheon - United Technologies
L3Harris, etc. etc.

Lockheed is/was not unique at all. All the defense sector saw the writing on the wall with the collapse of the USSR.
 
G

gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
I guess he never heard of The Last Supper.
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The mergers were actively encouraged by the US government itself as it sought to cut back defense spending after the fall of the USSR.

"... Secretary Perry made a presentation using a graph that was projected on the screen. And it was a stunning graph, so much so that the following day I went over to the Pentagon and asked for a copy of it, which I still have. And what was startling about it was that the Defense Department was saying there are way too many companies in the defense industrial base. That we can't afford them. And that we couldn't have a bunch of companies with half full factories and not enough money to invest in research and development, huge overhead, high costs. And we need to consolidate the industry.

And just to give you an example, the chart had a column on it that showed how many companies in various categories of military equipment, like fighter airplanes, tanks or what have you, how many companies the Defense Department was going to be able to afford to keep in business. And as an example, there were 16 categories of equipment and there were three. The government said it could keep three companies in business in one of the categories. In another of the categories it could afford to keep, let's see, it was six categories, it could afford to keep two companies in business. And there were seven categories where it considered it could only keep one company in business."
 
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M

Michael_Scott

New Member
Registered Member
MarKoz81 said:
It was largely an obstruction with an intention to get kicked out from the program.
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feel free to show as much proof as possible of the Navy actively trying to get itself kicked out of the JSF program as they demanded the US Marines also buy F-35C and the entire program was litered with Admirals throughtout including Admiral Stiedle in the mid 1990s and then Venlet after the 2010 breech.
 
A

Aswin_hht

New Member
Registered Member
Stealthflanker said:
This actually good as it contains hard numbers.

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Block 3F cooling capacity, 32 KW and they can go as high as 47 KW for apparently the latest block. The importance is that one can actually start figuring the power specification for the TRM's and therefore Radar range.
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Very interesting. I think with this data we might be able to at least estimate a reasonably accurate range of the F-35 radar.
 
T

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
sheogorath said:
Is this the "base" coat of the radar absorbing paint burnt off by the heat?. I don't think it is rust

View attachment 121402
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I don't think "rust or not" really matters, it is all compromising surface damge after some time of usage. Rust is oxidization of iron, oxidization of other metal is still damage in the same maner. If it is coating of lower layer after top layer being burnt, it is still damage to the surface that compromise the stealthness.

What maters is make sure of constant and afordable maintanance to not to have these damages happening.
 
S

Stealthflanker

Senior Member
Registered Member
Aswin_hht said:
Very interesting. I think with this data we might be able to at least estimate a reasonably accurate range of the F-35 radar.
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I did, with following result. some parts still need to be assumed tho. Mainly how much of that cooling went into Radar. From my previous estimate on F-15FX presentation tho but that is in another forum. Radar cooling account for about 39% from the total cooling capacity of the aircraft. Thus from that 32 KW, 12.5 KW would be available. based on that Estimates on TRM rating can made. This requires frequency, which could also be estimated from people counting the elements and available information on physical area of the antenna.

Which gave me 9857 MHz. The next assumed value would be PAE (Power Added Efficiency) This is by far the measure people use to gauge TRM efficiency, although it applies to power amplifier. That part however is the biggest consumer of electricity and producer of heat in TRM. The more power TRM have, the hotter its power amplifier runs. 33-35% is typical value for Class-A biased power amplifier. There are other classes like AB, B and C but Class A is favored due to Linearity at least for X-band and Radar purpose. Communication may happily operates in other classes.

JSFModule.png

The cooling capacity information from the news, showed that the TRM rating for the APG-81 to be about 9-10 Watts which typical for the Gallium Arsenide design.

Below is the result sheet from my "AESA Radar Calculator" Some parts here are still WIP But for range are fully operational. From the estimates. The range of the AN/APG-81 is 301 km for PD-50% and 207 Km for PD-90% against SW-1 target. PD is "Probability of Detection"

It's very respectable especially for stealth, also with the PD-90 Range, it allows accommodation of long range A2A missile.

APG81.png
 
A

Aswin_hht

New Member
Registered Member
Stealthflanker said:
I did, with following result. some parts still need to be assumed tho. Mainly how much of that cooling went into Radar. From my previous estimate on F-15FX presentation tho but that is in another forum. Radar cooling account for about 39% from the total cooling capacity of the aircraft. Thus from that 32 KW, 12.5 KW would be available. based on that Estimates on TRM rating can made. This requires frequency, which could also be estimated from people counting the elements and available information on physical area of the antenna.

Which gave me 9857 MHz. The next assumed value would be PAE (Power Added Efficiency) This is by far the measure people use to gauge TRM efficiency, although it applies to power amplifier. That part however is the biggest consumer of electricity and producer of heat in TRM. The more power TRM have, the hotter its power amplifier runs. 33-35% is typical value for Class-A biased power amplifier. There are other classes like AB, B and C but Class A is favored due to Linearity at least for X-band and Radar purpose. Communication may happily operates in other classes.

View attachment 121407

The cooling capacity information from the news, showed that the TRM rating for the APG-81 to be about 9-10 Watts which typical for the Gallium Arsenide design.

Below is the result sheet from my "AESA Radar Calculator" Some parts here are still WIP But for range are fully operational. From the estimates. The range of the AN/APG-81 is 301 km for PD-50% and 207 Km for PD-90% against SW-1 target. PD is "Probability of Detection"

It's very respectable especially for stealth, also with the PD-90 Range, it allows accommodation of long range A2A missile.

View attachment 121406
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This is amazing data. As expected, an excellent radar. It is claimed that Byelka radar has a similar range to Irbis but APG-81. I wonder if they are compensating it with more power available in Su 57.
 
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