Posted on 07/03/2013 2:05:52 PM PDT by Blood of Tyrants
The Pentagon's pursuit of the Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter jet has been a heartbreaking one. If you're a tax payer, the program's estimated $1 trillion price tag probably breaks your heart a little bit. If you're an aviation enthusiast, the constant whittling away of the do-it-all aircraft's features, which in many cases actually amounts to adding weight and taking away maneuverability, must hurt a little bit, too.
If you're just an everyday American, though, you should be downright shattered that after a decade and a fortune spent, the F-35 will actually be more vulnerable than the aircraft it's replacing. At this point, the Pentagon is literally rewriting its rulebook so that the dumbed-down super jet will pass muster.
The Defense Department's annual weapons testing report reveals that the military actually adjusted the performance specifications for the consistently-underperforming line of F-35 fighter jets. In other words, they couldn't get the jets to do what they were supposed to do, so they just changed what they were supposed to do.
(Excerpt) Read more at motherboard.vice.com ...
Might stress the airframe too much.
The F-111 was the one aircraft the Russians feared.
Charcoal is mostly carbon. I suggest an experiment tomorrow, if you have time, to see if charcoal burns.
Carbon Dioxide is carbon burned.
The problem was the Air Force wanted a subsonic bomber, and the Navy wanted a supersonic interceptor.
The Air Force would use an aircraft with a thin skin, and variable wing sweep and high lift devices to give a combination of low speed takeoff, high payload, and long range.
The Navy would use an aircraft with a thick skin (for supersonic flight) and variable sweep and high lift devices to give low wind over deck speeds and long loiter time.
The Navy never demanded a capsule ejection system for any aircraft but the F-111B. The F-14 never met the F-111B’s required loiter time at 600 nm from the carrier even at zero nm from the carrier.
The Navy killed the F-111B by the tried and true method of over specifying.
Stealth is a family of technologies. Coatings can do some (SR-71 & F117). Shape is a bit better with fly-by-wire coupled controls. If you begin with a no -stealthy airframe there are very real limits to how much stealth you can achieve.
I knew the EF-111 was quite successful in its role and also that the FB-111 took part in the raid on Libya back in the ‘80s but I don’t think the Air Force never really gave the plane the credit it apparently deserved.
I didn’t mean to criticize the Aardvark at all, in fact, in 1968 when I was stationed at Ft. Benning, Ga. an F-111 did a high speed, low-level pass over the airfield, followed by a full power climb-out till all you could see was a ball of fire in the sky. The noise was deafening. Talk about impressive.
The SR-71 was not built on a production line. Neither was the first P-51 which was a flying prototype. The F-35 is in pre-production phase. This is where they iron out the kinks (hopefully) while they arrive at the first production bloc configuration. There is a lot of plant layout work being done simultaneously as production ramps up.
The program is struggling, no doubt.
What a beauty. I love the sound of that baby.
I guess with upgrade packages you never know.
The future is hard to predict.
The A-10 was designed for the rudders to hide the exhaust... but better infra-red guided missiles came out soon after, and the newer ones could lock onto the aircraft inlets.
There are two kinds of wars. One is against a near peer competitor. Think WWI, WWII, and perhaps Korea after the ChiComs got in with Russians flying the Nork planes.
Then there are the colonial wars, against (as Black Adder put it) natives armed with sharp pieces of melon.
A lot of systems are designed for the first, but end up getting quite a following when they perform well against the second.
“When all else fails,
We have got
The Maxim Gun,
And they have not.”
I grew up just south of Plattsburg AFB, and they would roar down Lake Champlain....
Heck of a plane, and tough for anone to stop. It had problems: The inlets kept being moved out, and the supersonic range kept going down and down.
The Air Force didn’t care. The 300 NM supersonic Range requirement (slick) was left over from the F-105 and its job to throw a nuclear bomb, roll over and run away. They really didn’t anticipate the F-111 being used like that, but didn’t want to do the paperwork to end the requirement because of the bad publicity it would have given.
Rather, the things that make a good fighter are more complex now.
As MSgt Mac said, if you learned about Energy Maneuverability from Boyd, you are about 40 years behind the learning curve.
Imagine if you tried to field a WWI army in time for WWII. That is only 20 years difference, and the pace of technology and military change is faster now. Imagine trying to get massive stocks of artillery ammunition forward while your lines were being cut by fighter bombers, your factories were flattened by WWII bombers, and your attacking spearheads were rolled over by medium tanks with half tracks.
Got to keep up with the times, or admit ignorance and go home.
And they had an A-12 Oxcart to start from.
The F22 has supercruise which help protect it from heat seekers, the F35 doesn’t and will light up the sensors in after burner. The F-35 probably should have been a smaller, single-engine version of the F22 IMO, with vectored thrust and all the goodies.
The thing is, every airplane is a compromise. The problem with single mission machines is that mission isn't usually the mission of the day.
Look at the evolution of the F-16, the lightweight champ that took the belt in several more weight classes the older it got. Such is the way of an aging true fighting champ, but also our shrinking budgets.
The F-22 had to become a bomber, just like the F-15 had to, as did the F-4 before. The list is long and distinguished. You make do with what you have. None the less, to me, the F-35 seems more bomber than fighter, more like the F-105 than an F-8. Time will tell.
Of the choices fielded, during the fly off and the beauty contest, the F-35 was the pick of the litter. I can see many advantages to what they've done...IF they can put enough motor in it. Most of the stealth is in front, so one can make some assumptions from that about its intended missions.
And, given how long this machine will be in service and all the possible scenarios it will need to succeed in, you can get a feel for the challenges they were trying to address.
Good, bad or ugly, we're committed. We'll have to wait and see if they have chosen their compromises wisely. Production is rolling along and I was surprised by how many have been built and who all is currently flying them. There are plenty of the guru level geniuses here and abroad working on it. My F-35 glass is up to about two thirds full and filling slowly.
The heat seekers see the F-22 exhaust just fine without after burner. They can see the inlet too.
F-22 is a great plane, but you have to fight it like a F-22, that is to shoot your enemy before he sees you. If you wait, then you lose a big part of your advantage.
The unstable planes like Gripen or Typhoon have some advantages in close. F-22 drivers should know that, and avoid their advantages. Never give a sucker an even break.
I like the ability of the F22 to fire their AMRAAMS using the radar of a distant AWACS without ever turning their own radar on. The enemy won’t see it coming.
If lockheed candidate was what you say, they would have lost the contest. That isn’t what the requirements were.
Look, We wanted to get a big part of the newly free world to not buy Russian (ex soviet) planes. The F-35 gave a lot of people a chance to get a first class plane when all they had previously had was Soviet crap.
Industrial policy drove the strategy. Weapons design makes the F-35 superior for its role, and keeps its buyers involved in the non-russian markets.
Bingo! You win the prize!
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