F-35 Multirole Joint Strike Fighter

[SpudmanWP]

Like I said, not enough publicly available information to know for sure.

 

[jack412]

yes, it's all very mysterious, if there are no decent interviews, we may have to wait for reported info slips to start flowing

 

[colay]

It's the F-35 main computer complex that would accept input from all the onboard sensors and offboard data links to perform the actual sensor fusion, right?

 

[jack412]

True, but as this is the first plane to fuse RF IR, I was thinking to drag it out for a couple of pages

 

[colay]

Here's an informative article dealing with sensor fusion on the F-35.

Shaping the F-35 Combat System Enterprise | SLDInfo


Whether it’s detected passively via the EW system, DAS or EOTS, or whether the target is in the field of view of the multi-function radar, the F-35 can find it.

 

[Air Force Brat]

Here's an informative article dealing with sensor fusion on the F-35.

Shaping the F-35 Combat System Enterprise | SLDInfo


Whether it’s detected passively via the EW system, DAS or EOTS, or whether the target is in the field of view of the multi-function radar, the F-35 can find it.

Very good post colay and thanks for sharing that link, explains clearly the advantages of LO technology and having all these systems linked through aircraft systems, especially the ID friend and foe, he makes an outstanding point of needing to see paint to know the difference between a mig 29 and an F-15, thats one of the main reasons that these aircraft are so much more capable then even 4.5 gen aircraft.

 

[colay]

The recent Parliamentary hearings down under was helpful inhighlighting some capabilities of the F-35. In terms of BVR combat, the F-35 pilot should have an unsurpassed advantage in terms of being able to positively identify hostiles at long range and benefit from the " first look, first shot, first kill" advantage.

Air Vice Marshal Osley:"And so the strength of the joint strike fighter—and I use this as an example—is that it has the ability to have up to 650 parameters by which it will identify a potential threat out there. Other aircraft, such as the F22 have about a third of that and fourth-generation aircraft have perhaps half a dozen. So if you are in an F18 or in some of the other Soviet aircraft you only have a very limited understanding of what the threat is and being able to identify it at a distance. If we are able to do as we plan with the F35, and that is to have good access to the software and to be able to program it appropriately with mission data, it will have the ability to identify hostile aircraft at quite a considerable distance. Then decisions will be made within the formation, it will play to its strengths and it will defeat it, but not by going within visual range"

 

[ADMk2]

hope JSF doesn't turn into another LCA

Why would it Phil? Please expand on this point. That is the nature of a discussion forum, discussing...

What are the attributes of the LCA you find unappealing and why do you suspect the F-35 may develop or imitate these attributes?

 

[PhilTheBeloved]

Why would it Phil? Please expand on this point. That is the nature of a discussion forum, discussing...

What are the attributes of the LCA you find unappealing and why do you suspect the F-35 may develop or imitate these attributes?

F-35 program was started in the late 1990s to make a jet for the 21st century. Given that production is now delayed to nearly 2020, which means only 80 years left in the 21st century, anymore delays would not be financially wise and UCAV would take its place.

 

[SpudmanWP]

Production started in 2007. If by Multi-Year Buy - Full Rate Production, then yes, that aspect of it was pushed back to 2020. However, by that time, there will be hundreds of F-35's flying.

btw, The F-35 is already being built in higher annual numbers than either the EF or Rafale. One man's Full Production is another man's LRIP.

Cheers

btw, Here is the video of the F-35's first external stores flight.

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz6uF7Jkodk&feature=uploademail"]F-35A Flight with External Stores - YouTube[/nomedia]

 

[gf0012-aust]

F-35 program was started in the late 1990s to make a jet for the 21st century. Given that production is now delayed to nearly 2020, which means only 80 years left in the 21st century, anymore delays would not be financially wise and UCAV would take its place.

the problem with this concept is that its taken from old mantra of looking at the platform from a flight engineering perspective only - the capability of the airframe in LO aircraft is not as focussed on wing placement, shape in isolation because they are just but single parts in the overall platform systems construct - as well as the platform being part of the broader warfighting systems construct.

ie inherent platform design as a critical decay no longer exists.

the inherent enablers and opportunities are the systems that compliment the design, and they are not designed to decay or become obselete in the traditional lifer cycle sense

the plane is not designed to fight through one particular edefence system, or fight within a particular wave form construct.

you can't look at design date, development date or delivery dates through the same capability "redundancy" as in the past.

modern weapons systems in modern militaries are no longer capability constrained by their physical design as the effectiveness of that platform is enhanced by evolving systems on board as well as offboard

 

[Air Force Brat]

Production started in 2007. If by Multi-Year Buy - Full Rate Production, then yes, that aspect of it was pushed back to 2020. However, by that time, there will be hundreds of F-35's flying.

btw, The F-35 is already being built in higher annual numbers than either the EF or Rafale. One man's Full Production is another man's LRIP.

Cheers

btw, Here is the video of the F-35's first external stores flight.

F-35A Flight with External Stores - YouTube

Thanks for posting that spudman, I hadn't seen that one before, there seem to be several more available lately, most seem to be coming from Edwards, I believe they said high aoa testing is scheduled later this year, hopefully we'll see some video of that soon.

 

[OPSSG]

Production started in 2007. If by Multi-Year Buy - Full Rate Production, then yes, that aspect of it was pushed back to 2020. However, by that time, there will be hundreds of F-35's flying.

btw, The F-35 is already being built in higher annual numbers than either the EF or Rafale. One man's Full Production is another man's LRIP.

Could I impose on you to post what you posted elsewhere with your comments to the transcripts of the proceedings in the Australian Joint Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade (both the 16th March 2012 and 20th March 2012 Transcripts)?

It would be a useful resource for this thread. Many thanks.

 

[jack412]

GAO report is out
http://www.gao.gov/assets/590/589695.pdf

The JSF program began system development with none of its eight critical technologies mature; and, according to program officials, four of these technologies—mission systems integration, which includes the helmet-mounted display; the prognostics and health management system; integrated core processor; and integrated support systems—are still not fully mature. Deficiencies in the helmet-mounted display prompted the program to develop a second helmet. The program is also trying to fix the first helmet, which does not currently meet system requirements. Significant development risks remain as the program integrates and tests these technologies.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...-lockheed-f-35-for-continued-development.html

Acting Undersecretary for Acquisition Frank Kendall today signed an “acquisition decision memo” that approves the current development phase and continuation of low-rate initial production contracts."

"The memo discloses that full-rate production, the program’s most profitable phase for Lockheed Martin, has been moved to 2019, a delay of seven years from the original goal that was set in October 2001 and two years later than the current schedule."

"The targets are expressed in a standard measure of aircraft costs -- “unit recurring flyaway,” which represents basic airframe production, in inflation-adjusted “then-year” dollars.

The Navy model’s target is $93.3 million. The latest comparable number is $210.6 million as negotiated in Lockheed Martin’s fourth production contract.

The Air Force’s version has a 2019 target cost goal of $83.4 million, down from $152.2 million.

The Marine Corps short-takeoff and vertical landing version’s 2019 target cost is $108.1 million, down from $172.4 million."

 

[SpudmanWP]

I did not do any quotes from the March 16th Testimony, but here is what I picked out of LM's March 20th Testimony:

PARLIAMENTARY JOINT COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, DEFENCE AND TRADE
Department of Defence annual report 2010-11 (Public) Tuesday 20 March 2012, 5.50pm - 6.30pm

ACTING CHAIR = Dr Jensen
BENTLEY, Air Cdre (Rtd) Graham Mitchell, Director, International Business Development Australia, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company
BURBAGE, Mr Charles Thomas (Tom), Executive Vice President and General Manager, F-35 JSF Program Integration, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company
LIBERSON, Mr Gary Maxim, Technical Lead Operations Analysis, Strategic Studies Group, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company
McCOY, Mr Bradley Kent, F-22 and F-35 Strategic Analysis, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company

http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo...nt/3cb4e326-70e4-4abd-acb7-609a16072b70/0000"

Quotable Quotes
(Page numbers given are in reference to the PDF page, not the printed page number of the document)

The F35 configuration that Australia will take delivery of in 2014 is identical to the configuration of the US Air Force.

Can we finally put this "export model" BS to bed?

More than 80 per cent of all of our airborne software is flying today and all of our sensors are demonstrating the required performance. The implementation of the multilevel security design did in fact require approximately three more months than originally planned; however, recovery plans have been developed and implemented. We expect to recover two of those three months by mid-year and all three by the end of the year.

By September of this year, we expect to have block 2B, as we refer to its software, which is the software that marines will take as their initial operational capability to be flying in our test aircraft.

Our current assessment that we speak of is: greater than six to one relative loss exchange ratio against in four versus eight engagement scenarios—four blue at 35s versus eight advanced red threats in the 2015 to 2020 time frame.

And it is very important to note that our constructed simulations that Mr Burbage talks about without the pilot in the loop are the lowest number that we talk about—the greater than six to one. When we include the pilot in the loop activities, they even do better when we include all of that in our partner—

ACTING CHAIR: Post 2015 and 2020 you have stealth on stealth. How are you going to kill either PAC FA or J20?

Air Cdre Bentley: We cannot answer that question, just as we cannot answer the threat question, because we get into classified areas very, very quickly.
ACTING CHAIR: It seems to be a very convenient excuse.

Air Cdre Bentley: No, it is not an excuse. All of the defence officials who are appropriately cleared in all of the nations that are participating in this country know exactly what we have briefed, what those briefings entail and what the analysis entails, and they have chosen F35. If you are purporting to be a huge—

ACTING CHAIR: So what you are saying is, 'Believe us; we've got all the classified data in a brown paper bag'—

Air Cdre Bentley: Believe the nine best air forces in the world as far as their operators and their analysts are concerned and I think that you will come to realise that it is not us telling the story; it is them telling the story to their governments and their governments making a decision to go forward with this aeroplane.

If you look at the STOVL jet and you look at our weight charts, which you are more than welcome to see, we have now gone two years without any weight increase on the STOVL jet, and that is while accommodating engineering changes to the doors, which we have replaced with heavier doors, and other changes that were made to the airplane. We manage the weight very tightly on that airplane—for good reasons, because it needs to be. The other two airplanes are not as sensitive to weight. We are actually probably several thousand pounds away from the first compromise of the performance requirements of those two airplanes.

So much for no growth margin

Senator FAWCETT: I have one last question, if I can. Speaking of the key performance indicators, obviously for the overall program they are cost, schedule and performance. In cost and schedule we have seen a number of changes and rebaselining to allow for things that have happened. In terms of the KPIs against your original ops requirement document—you do not have to disclose which ones have not been met—but at this point in time have all of the original essential requirements from the ORD been met?

Mr Burbage: We have 16 key performance parameters on this airplane. Half are logistics and sustainment-related, half are aeroperformance-related and one or two are in classified areas. We have an oversight body called the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, the JROC, that looks at those requirements every year and makes decisions on them—'Are we going to meet them, are we not going to meet them? If we are not going to meet them, what is the impact of that?' We have one this year which was the range of the Air Force airplane which had a specific set of ground rules associated with how that range is calculated which is not similar to either of the other two airplanes. The airplane flies a large part of its mission at a non-optimised altitude in the original calculation. The JROC agreed to change the ground rules to fly that airplane as the other two were flown and, when that happened, the airplane had excess margin to the range requirement. For any performance-related requirements, we artificially penalise the engine by five per cent fuel flow and two per cent thrust. Those margins are given back as we mature the design and get more and more solid on exactly what it is going to do. They are there for conservative estimation up front. We have not taken back any of those margins yet so, when those margins are taken back, the airplane will continue to be well in excess of its basic requirement. The airplane is meeting all of the other requirements today.

Senator FAWCETT: So have those requirements like schedule and cost been rebaselined, or are they are still the original ORD?

Mr Burbage: Schedule and cost are not KPPs. I thought you were talking about performance.

Senator FAWCETT: No, I recognise that. You have rebaselined schedule and cost as you have gone along. What I am asking is have the KPIs been rebaselined and does the statement you just made apply to today's KPIs or does it also apply to the original ones?

Mr Burbage: To the original set. Today, all the KPPs are green because that ground rule was changed to be common across all three airplanes on the range. But we have not taken back the margins that are being withheld to make sure those performance predictions are conservative. We are not going to have degraded engines. We basically measure our performance characteristics with a highly-degraded engine capability. Our actual flight test information coming back from the engine is better than nominal. These calculations are not done using actual airplane test data. They are done using an artificial penalty that gets paid back as the design matures.

What is interesting with this is that the USAF test facility for measuring radar cross-sections and so on is S-band and higher frequencies. So you do not have a test facility for L-band, VHF and so on.

A quick check on the net shows that LM's Helendale RCS test facility has two systems that can test down in the VHF range (Mark Ve and BuleMax).

 

[ADMk2]

Nice. Jensen obviously mis-read his little spoonfed questionaire from Goon there...

Surely the "all-knowing" Peter Goon wouldn't have missed that the USAF does in fact have VHF radar ranges and all of Carlo's pathetic little "counter stealth" rants aren't worth the paper they're written on?

Wankers.

 

[Magoo]

I heard a hilarious Star Wars/APA analogy the other day...

 

[ADMk2]

I heard a hilarious Star Wars/APA analogy the other day...

Equating some of them to Sith Lords? I saw that too...

 

[Magoo]

Equating some of them to Sith Lords? I saw that too...

That's the one...I had the whole thing up for about 15 minutes, then thought better of it and deleted it, lest I be accused of an "ad hominem" attack!

 

[ADMk2]

That's the one...I had the whole thing up for about 15 minutes, then thought better of it and deleted it, lest I be accused of an "ad hominem" attack!

Damn right. You're only allowed to "play the man" if you happen to be a member of an "independant thinktank..."