i'm sure the Navy and Marine pilots will take great comfort in that...
Posted on 08/05/2016 7:20:20 PM PDT by Mariner
The celebration of the Air Force variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter reaching initial operational capability continued Friday with a ceremony replete with dignitaries at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, where 15 F-35s were declared combat-ready this week.
The crowd in attendance included Utah Gov. Gary Herbert; Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James; Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein; the head of Air Combat Command, Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle; and other top Air Force brass.
The commander of Hill’s 388th Fighter Wing, Brad Lyons, touted the accomplishments of the F-35A variant, saying the aircraft had performed even better than hoped in recent testing.
The now-operational F-35As will be assigned to Hill’s 34th Fighter Squadron, out of the 388th Fighter Wing, and maintained with support from the 419th Fighter Wing.
Lyons noted that the F-35A had completed 88 out of 88 successful sorties at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, in June and dropped 15 out of 16 bombs on target. In the F-35 spinup program, he said, the aircraft had achieved 39 direct hits out of 40 munitions deployed.
(Excerpt) Read more at dodbuzz.com ...
” and with NO internal gun,,, “
The A model, being discussed here, has an internal 25mm Gatling gun. That’s up from 20mm in the F-16.
What's the final cost of "The Great Society" adjusted for inflation. We have to be able to defend all the rewards reaped by that program.
The Silent Eagle may be worth buying, but not for Naval Aviation.
It’s not a carrier capable aircraft
Problem is that the F-22 is about the same cost at the end of the day so F-15 is a hard sell.
Our only current options for Carrier aircraft is more FA-!8, bring back the F-14 and/or the F-35C
i'm sure the Navy and Marine pilots will take great comfort in that...
If the evolutionists are right, big brains and advanced processing, resulting in better, faster solutions, beats speed, agility, brawn, size and strength all the way to the top of the food chain!
As such, I can see how the planners came up with the F-35 way back when they were trying to predict the future it would fight in, because the F-35 is, at its core, half geek and half motor head, but with a little bit of fashion sense.
From what I've read, the F-35 is designed to be the biggest, baddest brain in the ring, with the biggest, baddest, most radically powerful engine they could possibly think up, tucked tightly wrapped inside a somewhat sexy, though not svelte body that has a "beauty in the eye of the beholder" quality I think will be quite infectious once the F-35 is out and about strutting its stuff.
Oh yeah, it's obvious. Debutante or not, I can see she's a very bad girl and I'd like to meet her!
I think I'm a bit too old for her, though... *sigh*
And for only $1 Trillion in development!
Or a half-dozen jihadis with a $5,000 SAM and one with binoculars. Spot jet contrails, point everyone that way and let ‘em rip, pilot now has a biiig problem.
Well, the North Vietnamese moved their “static” SAM launchers - you know, the old ones with the Soviet-laid fixed position star pattern and hundreds of feet of mechanical and electrical control cables between every rocket launcher and radar and control station - every night, and twice during cease fire.
They were shooting 15-10 surface to air missiles for every US jet hit, and shooting 20 for every kill - not bad ratio.
Then, as now, the democrat administration was telling the North Viet’s when and where we would bomb up north - so the NV “civilians” would no be hit. Har, har.
No. The F-22 was shut down. The F23 production never started.
barkie administration, GLOBALIST-crony elites: “Hey Brad, how’d you like to live the good life? No worries on your military career. Ticket to ride. Just say this about the f35...”
Brad: “No problem. Best plane EVER.”
Blue Max..
OK. So the enemy fighters are in the above an airfield mix with our tankers, cargo planes and AEW in the air and trying to evade the attack - Shooting them with cannon, machine gun and short range AAM.
Enemy fighters and gun-armed attack planes are using civilian planes to get near our space and inside our flight paths.
How are you going to get in close to shoot in either case with killing our own planes or the nearby country’s civilain airliners?
Long range shoot-in-an-empty sky might happen. But hasn’t yet.
Nah. F-35 is intended to be the lower end, multipurpose, McNamara designed does everything at a lower price cousin to the high-end and expensive F-22. F-22 was intended to be the control ship for the lower end fighters - acting a local AEW when needed.
Ugh, that’s not a bad kill ratio at all. And consider that happening with the hideously overpriced F-35’s. We are making it increasingly EASIER for our enemy to run us broke in a war, which coupled with a bad economy is a real nasty brew.
Don’t get me started on a Nork “Civilian”...that’s what the Democrats called them when they hid their rifles and ran home to hide in their huts behind mama-san and their brats who spent all day hiding digging pit traps and spying on troop movements.
I was hoping as a black project.
But that's the fault of the politicians and their ever-evolving shopping lists, rather than the planners or the engineers' talents and designs.
Once the people who have to live with it sit down at the table without the politicians there, most of those designs were made right and were effective.
True, the "purpose-built first and multi-purpose later" approach has almost always been the better way, but... politicians.
What more is there to say? Open any history book and the examples just pour out! It's crazy...
Anyhoo, I think we're at another crossroads, this time between piloted-aircraft or only UAVs flying in the first day+ modern battlefield airspace.
In that arena, the F-35 will need to be multi-purposed, multi-tasked and multi-talented to actually be "purpose-built" as the F-16 initially was or the A-10 still is.
Every design is a compromise and it's likely true that the F-35's not as nimble as and obviously not as svelte as the F-16 and F-22.
Instead she's a bit more ah... 'full-figured', but in a sexy, stealthy-Rubenesque kinda way you often see with some MMA fighters, rather than with runway models and beauty queens.
Personally, I think she's hot, but yeah, maybe I think she's just a little, teensy bit too heavy to make weight, and don't you dare tell her I said that!
Anyway...I think she has a lot of potential and we're all just barely getting to know each other.
Have some faith. I think it's going to be a very good and very satisfying, long-term relationship.
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