India could get US invite for F-35 first flight

A spokesperson for the JSF project told The Indian Express in an e-mail from Fort Worth, ‘‘I can tell you that F-35 JSF partnership in the strict sense of the term is closed, but we anticipate selling many F-35s to non-partner nations.’’ He added, ‘‘As you may know, the decision to allow the sale of F-35s to any country is made by the US government, not by Lockheed-Martin.’’

World

India may get US invite for F-35 flight

Wednesday, September 28, 2005 at 1255 hours IST

New Delhi, September 28: As Washington’s most ambitious and classified fighter aircraft—the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)—readies for a first flight next year, the Pentagon is preparing to extend a special invitation to New Delhi to witness the event at Fort Worth, Texas. This is significant given that India is not a partner country in the multi-billion dollar project.

A senior source at the US Embassy here told The Indian Express, ‘‘In a sense, the programme is closed to non-partner countries. But with the new Indo-US strategic partnership, the US government feels it is appropriate to keep India abreast of the latest technology. It augurs well for future cooperation.’’

Expected to be a high-profile event, the invitees are likely to include the IAF chief, the Defence Secretary and senior South Block officials.

The JSF project—primarily an Anglo-US project—has developed the F-35, an advanced fifth generation fighter for all three forces, which is cheap to procure and maintain, and also capable of performing all possible roles. The partner countries in the project are Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway, who will induct the fighter over the next 15 years.

A spokesperson for the JSF project told The Indian Express in an e-mail from Fort Worth, ‘‘I can tell you that F-35 JSF partnership in the strict sense of the term is closed, but we anticipate selling many F-35s to non-partner nations.’’ He added, ‘‘As you may know, the decision to allow the sale of F-35s to any country is made by the US government, not by Lockheed-Martin.’’

The invitation to Fort Worth, while significant in itself, comes as part of a long line of specific gestures by Washington: Air Chief Marshal S P Tyagi took flight in a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet at the Paris Air Show earlier this year; former chief S Krishnaswamy took off in an Israeli F-16 Falcon in October last year; Indian teams have witnessed the Patriot-3 in action at White Sands, New Mexico; and India’s interest in the cutting-edge Boeing P-8A maritime multi-mission jet has been received favourably by the Office of Defence Cooperation.

‘‘The Super Hornet and Falcon are formal contenders for commercial purchases by New Delhi, but witnessing an event of this magnitude is symbolic. It shows that the Bush administration is willing to involve India, even at a non-critical level, in its most exclusive projects,’’ the US Embassy official pointed out.

The new alliance Bush is building is geared toward creating multiple strong military powers in Asia with a strong interest in opposing Chinese aggression.

It is not fundamentally geared toward the war on terrorism.

The War on Terror is at a point where a complete and swift victory is dependent upon us, the non-combattants to stand up for the mission and for the troops. The battle against terror is a two front war with our troops and those of our allies on one front, and the rest of us fighting for victory in the court of public opinion.

There is only one reason the fight in Iraq has been as hard and as long as it has been, and that has been the perception disseminated by the mainstream media that support for the war will fall if the death toll grows. The message embedded in the media's reporting is that such thinking not only holds merit but is 100% valid. But a victory in Iraq does not require us to win in the court of public opinion. In the end, victory in Iraq will be achieved when the Iraqis are capable of assuming responsibility for their own security.

In other words, for a victory in Iraq - we need to persevere.

Here is an article I cut and pasted about the USAF train against the F22.

Laura M. Colarusso
Times staff writer

NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. — Among the F/A-22’s opponents, there’s none more determined than Maj. Robert Garland, whose job is to beat the Raptor, the Air Force’s most advanced fighter jet.

It’s a tough job. He flies an F-15C.

He’s never won.

Garland and his F-15 buddies, assigned to the 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron, fly against the Raptor to find its weaknesses and help develop the tactics to employ the Air Force’s newest fighter jet.

“The Raptor is going to win, but that’s what it’s designed for,” said Garland, who is also an F/A-22 pilot. “It doesn’t matter, really, how experienced we are or if we have a good day or a bad day. The Raptor is going to succeed.”

Even though they rarely win, the pilots of the 422nd radiate confidence. They say they use each sortie to improve their skills in the F-15. They’re on a mission to prove themselves against the aircraft the Air Force has billed as the best in the world because of its speed, stealth and integrated avionics.

“When I go out in an F-15 and I fight a guy in a Raptor, if a guy does a good job in that airplane, there’s no chance that I have to defeat him,” Garland said.

It sounds discouraging, and these pilots talk at length about being throttled, kicked in the face and frustrated by the Raptor. But Garland and the others who train against it say the fight’s not supposed to be fair.

The training missions almost always start out with the Raptor in a defensive position, because otherwise it would be a “waste of gas,” said Maj. Robert Novotny, another F-15 pilot with the 422nd.

When the F/A-22 is on the defensive and the fight is taking place in a visual maneuvering environment — meaning the aircraft are in close, so everybody can see each other — the F-15s have more of a chance.

These fights are violent, said Lt. Col. Art McGettrick, a former F-15 pilot who now solely flies the F/A-22 with the 422nd. The pilots pull 9 Gs, perform jarring maneuvers and generally try to beat each other up when the F-15s and the F/A-22 fight, because they are trying to wring out the Raptor to find any deficiencies.

The pilots prepare for the mental and physical demands of dogfighting, Garland said. They study tactics constantly and try to learn from the mistakes highlighted in the mission debriefings. The pilots also train like professional athletes, lifting weights and running several miles a week, he said.

Once in a while, if the scenario is set up right, Novotny has been able to shoot the Raptor. Two new technologies, the AIM-9X missile and the Helmet Mounted Cueing System, have leveled the playing field by giving the F-15s the ability to shoot off-bore sight shots.

Pilots once had to maneuver so the noses of their jets were pointing at the enemy. Now they can simply look at the target and shoot, shaving seconds off the targeting process.

But if the mock battle starts from a distance, the F/A-22 is in its element, and there is little an F-15 can do against it, according to Garland. The Raptor’s radar and standoff weapons allow it to shoot enemy aircraft before they even know the Raptor is there, McGettrick said.

Yet they keep trying. Novotny has never gunned down a Raptor, the ultimate in air-to-air combat. But when asked whether he’s given up fighting the Raptor, Novotny’s enthusiasm for the mission is clear.

“Hell no,” he says, pounding the table. “I love it.”

Novotny says sometimes his goal is to just survive for 60 to 120 seconds.

“Nobody wants to get beat,” said Novotny, who has flown about 1,700 hours in the F-15. “It’s a very frustrating fight for me, because I almost never, ever, ever see, hear [or] smell the Raptor, and I’m dead. So, it’s a really boring ride for me, because I get killed all the time.”

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