F-35 Multirole Joint Strike Fighter

[Belesari]

I'm just glad they will have something that is harder to kill. The Harrier while amazing for its abilities had problems because of those Thrust vectoring nozzles, supposedly they made them rather deadly for those flying them and their heat signature was rather blatant.

I may think that the F-35 was a mistake but the B model is really a must for marine air. Just wish it wasnt quite so expensive.

Thats interesting as well, your just a wealth of information, I think its interesting that the major flew the F-22 for nearly four years, and he is well versed in the Air Force mission, he is basically the Marines point man on teaching stealth ops to the Marine F-35B pilots. I believe in the past many were somewhat reluctant to employ BVR tactics, as we all really want to have a look at the bad guy before dispatching him, but that would tend to negate our LO advantage. The B is supposedly much easier to fly than the Harrier, one of the test pilots noting that you needed to be an octopus to fly the AV8B, stated that in contrast the F-35B was much less demanding.

 

[Belesari]

No but to be honest how many aircraft have we built in the last decade that were planned to carry all of those. If there has been no alternative how can there be contest.

Well they DO carry AMRAAM you know? Even on strike missions. Apparently that weapon is reasonably successful in air combat...

They can't carry AIM-9X Block 1 because lock on after launch isn't a capability that weapon features, unlike ASRAAM and AIM-9X Block II.

I'll suggest both ASRAAM and AIM-9X Block II will be close to the top of the list of additional weapons needing integration if they aren't done under Block III, which let us not forget is the designated INITIAL operating capability level for the F-35.

Not the FULL operating capability...

Can anyone else name another fighter that has a comparable weapons capability of: 25mm gun, AIM-120 AMRAAM, AIM-9X Sidewinder, AIM-132 ASRAAM, Mk 82, 83, 84, BLU-109, 110, 111, Paveway II GBU-12, Paveway IV, GBU-31,32,38 JDAM, AGM-154A/C JSOW and Small Diameter Bomb I on it's very FIRST day of operational service?

Not to mention the targetting and fire control capability to actually self-guide all that stuff?

I'm struggling to think of one...

 

[fretburner]

Those are the weapons that will be available at IOC. Newer weapons will also come online every two years thereafter as new Software Blocks come online. Also, as UIA (Universal Armaments Interface) matures and applies to more and more weapon types, additional weapons can be used on the F-35 without the need to upgrade the F-35 prior to its usage.

I haven't heard about the UIA until now. That's awesome!

btw, Internal AMRAAMs can be used just fine in WVR. Besides, you cannot "sneek up" on a F-35 as EODAS/ESM would pick u=you up longe before you got into WVR.

Isn't that a rather too confident of a statement that you cannot sneak up on an F-35? I've read and seen videos on EODAS and they're as impressive as they can get... But it's hard to say that it's a fool-proof system if there's such a thing at all.

Well they DO carry AMRAAM you know? Even on strike missions. Apparently that weapon is reasonably successful in air combat...

I know. I was just thinking of a scenario where an AMRAAM might not be as effective as a sidewinder...or if for example the F-35 has fired both its AMRAAMs and both missed before it can drop its JDAMs and head home.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

It looks like crazy fantasies about reviving old aircraft to replace acquisition of the F-35 are not unique to Australia:

Global News | Feds reject bid to revive Avro Arrow

OTTAWA -- The Harper Conservatives quietly dismissed a Canadian company's plan for an alternative to the plagued F-35 program -- a revival of a national legend that one of the country's most celebrated infantry commanders says is far superior to the planned American purchase.

http://www.globalnews.ca/f-35+alternative/6442711404/story.html

 

[Abraham Gubler]

I'm just glad they will have something that is harder to kill. The Harrier while amazing for its abilities had problems because of those Thrust vectoring nozzles, supposedly they made them rather deadly for those flying them and their heat signature was rather blatant.

Actually the Harrier was well known as one of the hardest aircraft to get an IR lock on in air to air combat. Because the exhausts were below the wing the Harrier pilot could just roll the aircraft to keep the dorsal facing the threat and they couldn’t get a lock on.

The only problem caused by the exhausts is if they were hit by a ground launched IR missile. Such missiles home in on the aircraft’s general IR image from the ground but as they get closer to the target fly in towards the hottest part of the aircraft. Which tends to be the exhaust pipes. On a conventional aircraft the exhaust pipe is at the rear and a hit on it will only damage the tail and not necessarily knock out anything crucial for the aircraft.

However on a Harrier the exhaust pipes are amidships so a SAM hit will go straight into the engine and knock the plane down. Interestingly because of this problem the later versions of Soviet VSHORADs added an automatic dogleg pattern to the missile. That is just before it would hit the target it would fly to the side and then into the target so as to avoid the tail pipe and hit amidships. On a Harrier it is possible that such a missile would miss the nose…

 

[ADMk2]

No but to be honest how many aircraft have we built in the last decade that were planned to carry all of those. If there has been no alternative how can there be contest.

Besides the Super Hornet?

There was an alternative, it was called the X-32 and was put forward by Boeing. The X-35 won an was developed into the F-35 we see today.

The F-32 would have had the same weapons and a similar targetting capability at IOC had it been selected.

 

[jack412]

It looks like crazy fantasies about reviving old aircraft to replace acquisition of the F-35 are not unique to Australia:



Global News | Feds reject bid to revive Avro Arrow

and for the same illogical reason
Speed: The Arrow would fly twice as fast as the F-35 -- 3,887 km/h, or Mach 3.5, compared to the F-35's 1,854 km/h, or Mach 1.67.

 

[Marc 1]

It looks like crazy fantasies about reviving old aircraft to replace acquisition of the F-35 are not unique to Australia:



Global News | Feds reject bid to revive Avro Arrow

LOL,

Hey, anyone else on here believe that todays tanks have gotten far to heavy and expensive? The M3 Stuart was none of those things. On that topic we should form a company and also offer upgraded Bliz wagons and willys jeeps instead of these new fangled airconditioned G wagens etc....

Sometimes he best thing that can happen with retired officers (A grunt advising on Air Farce matters WTF???) is to keep their mouths retired too.

 

[Bonza]

It looks like crazy fantasies about reviving old aircraft to replace acquisition of the F-35 are not unique to Australia:



Global News | Feds reject bid to revive Avro Arrow

Oh good grief... are they serious?? An interceptor from the 1950s is going to meet a multi-role requirement from the 21st century? And where did they pull those life cycle cost estimates from? Apparently you don't need to factor in any upgrades the 60-year old design might need, the existing estimates will do just fine... this is dumber than the bloody F-111S...

EDIT: And they even managed to quote Winslow Wheeler in there, it really is the total package.

 

[swerve]

Avro Arrow? Where to start?

After one's changed the engines, avionics, every piece of circuitry & wiring, & sourced replacements for all the OTS parts that are no longer made, one might as well have started from scratch. And you'd still have 1950s aerodynamics.

Luckily for Canada, the government understands this -

Still, the minister wrote in June, the funds and time needed to develop the updated Arrow's airframe, avionics, sensors and mission systems are too much for Canada.

"The risks associated with undertaking this developmental effort would be too high to consider," Fantino wrote.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

Why be fast when you can be invisible? It’s much better to survive, see and kill because no one knows you are there than because you can quickly run in and out. These old timers and their F-111/Arrow fantasies are just really showing how little they understand what fighting is all about. These aircraft are not for ‘touching the face of god’ and all that Right Stuff but for going out and spreading death, destruction and mayhem.

 

[south]

The real reason as to why fighter aircraft get shot down is SA, or more accurately lack thereof. The fighter who slips in without getting targetted by the other side is the one that does the damage. Its also the reason as to why more experienced guys survive, they have the ability to keep higher levels of SA or regain it quicker once they recognise it has been lost. The F-35 is going to provide its pilots with a superb amount of SA, whilst having the ability to degrade the bad guys SA.

Ive attached a link to a paper which in part examines how SA contributes in air to air (page 15 onwards) along with a whole heap of other air power consids and how technology and doctrine have interacted....
doctrine, technology and war

 

[StobieWan]

Oh good grief... are they serious?? An interceptor from the 1950s is going to meet a multi-role requirement from the 21st century? And where did they pull those life cycle cost estimates from? Apparently you don't need to factor in any upgrades the 60-year old design might need, the existing estimates will do just fine... this is dumber than the bloody F-111S...

EDIT: And they even managed to quote Winslow Wheeler in there, it really is the total package.

You're missing a key and vital point here. It'd look *awesome*

Unbelievable they're suggesting it mind -I wonder if anyone just pointed and laughed out loud when they heard the suggestion ?

No idea where they get the program costs estimate from, Arrow was too expensive way back when they had a possible export customer or two.

 

[ADMk2]

The only thing more awesome in that fool's submission than the typical APA drivel, is that Mr Bourdeau seriously suggested that the Arrow can be reverse-engineered by Canadian engineers and industry from bloody Youtube videos!

Maybe APA can one-up him and suggest the DSTO can reverse engineer the F-22 from Google images???

 

[gf0012-aust]

Maybe APA can one-up him and suggest the DSTO can reverse engineer the F-22 from Google images???

the canadians can borrow APA's sig definition tools that they used to measure JSF with

 

[colay]

The only thing more awesome in that fool's submission than the typical APA drivel, is that Mr Bourdeau seriously suggested that the Arrow can be reverse-engineered by Canadian engineers and industry from bloody Youtube videos!

Maybe APA can one-up him and suggest the DSTO can reverse engineer the F-22 from Google images???

Who is Marc Bourdeau? The scant info available indicates no connection or background in aviation and defense/security but more in the the automotive and sports management fields.

 

[Bonza]

The real reason as to why fighter aircraft get shot down is SA, or more accurately lack thereof. The fighter who slips in without getting targetted by the other side is the one that does the damage. Its also the reason as to why more experienced guys survive, they have the ability to keep higher levels of SA or regain it quicker once they recognise it has been lost. The F-35 is going to provide its pilots with a superb amount of SA, whilst having the ability to degrade the bad guys SA.

Ive attached a link to a paper which in part examines how SA contributes in air to air (page 15 onwards) along with a whole heap of other air power consids and how technology and doctrine have interacted....
doctrine, technology and war

Thanks for the link, and for the continued injections of sanity into what sometimes becomes quite an off the wall topic. Much appreciated.

 

[ADMk2]

Who is Marc Bourdeau? The scant info available indicates no connection or background in aviation and defense/security but more in the the automotive and sports management fields.

It seems he is an ex- Canadian Army infantry officer of some sort, but he is clearly more heavily involved in the use of unlawful South American sourced, pharmaceuticals these days, if he truly thinks reviving the Avro Arrow is a realistic proposition...

 

[Abraham Gubler]

It seems he is an ex- Canadian Army infantry officer of some sort, but he is clearly more heavily involved in the use of unlawful South American sourced, pharmaceuticals these days, if he truly thinks reviving the Avro Arrow is a realistic proposition...

That’s Maj.Gen. Lewis McKenzie (Ret.). He was the Canadian commander of the UN in Sarajevo during the height of the Bosnian War. Which made him very famous in Canada and Europe. Since then he has kind of been the uber talking head for all things military in Canada.

Marc Ronald Bourdeau (born: 1954) is described as a former Canadian public servant and the company linked to the Arrow proposal is Bourdeau Industries. Which a search on the internet aligns with the automotive industry. Though there doesn’t seem to much inidication of what they do (if anything). They have a shell company in the UK (Bordeau F1) and Vector Motorsports Grou (not to be confused with a similar name American company) located in some guys house in the suburbs of Ottawa. Just the sort of people a Government is likely to give $10 billion to so they deliver 100 5th generation strike fighters.

I'm hanging out to see what happens when the Clown Club get a whiff of this. Whenever two villiage idiots meet they either become best of friends or worst of enemies. This could be popcorn worthy to watch.

EDIT: Update on the Bordeau story is that in 2000 he tried to take over the the Prost F1 team but the deal fell through because they had no money to buy it!

http://www.atlasf1.com/news/2000/sep/report.php/id/2941/.html

Canadian Deal Falls Through for Prost

Friday September 22nd, 2000

The Canadian Vector Motorsports Group Inc. has given up its attempt to take over the Prost Grand Prix team after failing to find the necessary funding, according to the National Post of Canada newspaper.

Marc Bourdeau, head of Vector, confirmed they had reached an agreement earlier this year with team owner Alain Prost, and added that the company had assurances of funding by a group that claimed control of a US$100-million instrument.

"I met with Alain several times over the weekend of the Canadian Grand Prix, and we very quickly came to an agreement on a transaction," said Bourdeau. "But deliberately or accidentally, they did not deliver the financial instrument and we could not get them to do it."

With the deadline past last Monday, Bourdeau hoped that another of their backers, the Quebec government, would save the deal, but Vector said Quebec's offer was too low so the deal fell through.

Bourdeau, however, refused to rule out a future move into Formula One.

"In Formula One, it's never really over. There are still possibilities to do business out there - even with Prost Grand Prix."

The French team has struggled this season, not having scored a single point with three races to go, and rumours about Alain Prost quitting at the end of the year have been constant for a few months.

Now the deal with Vector is over, the Frenchman looks set to stay for another season.


Reported by John Marchesan, TSN

 

[Vivendi]

Reuters) - Senior Pentagon officials voiced frustration about the pace of Lockheed Martin Corp's development of the $396 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program at a high-level review on Friday, according to several sources familiar with the program.

Officials did not approve a comprehensive plan for operational testing of the F-35 program as had been expected.

More problems raised at Pentagon F-35 fighter review | Reuters

Seems like the program still has some issues. I presume this could indicate further delays? No doubt it will get there however the problem is of course that delays means that the price tag will increase.