Posted on 06/19/2005 2:46:42 PM PDT by Wiz
SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany — It will be more than six years until the military has its first operational squadron of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.
But Trey Evans, 14, got to fly the supersonic and stealthy jet last week and raved about it.
“This is great,” he said, smiling afterward. “I could do it all day.”
He flew a computer simulator, of course. Plane builder Lockheed Martin brought its traveling F-35 cockpit sim to Spangdahlem and Ramstein Air Base to show off the future fighter. A team from Lockheed Martin, based in Texas, is touring Europe, bringing the cockpit to U.S. and European bases.
About 500 people at Ramstein and Spangdahlem got a test run. Anyone could try the sim, from pilots to spouses, and most left impressed.
First Lt. Rob Hansel, an F-16 pilot with the Spangdahlem-based 22nd Fighter Squadron, said the plane is much more advanced and offers a tremendous amount of information to help pilots get a good picture of the situation around them.
(Excerpt) Read more at stripes.com ...
ping
Better get used to it, because the next generation will likely have no pilot aboard but fly them virtually instead.
Let's have virtual movie actors and actresses too! We'd miss the pilots but not hollywood.
Actually UAV's are unsuitable for air combat due to latency.
Any control facility close enough to the front is a target (a nice big central one), anything far enough to be safe is far enough so that the signal is going to be delayed by fractions of a second. A second round trip for the information means that the controller would see the world on a one second delay, and the UAV would simply not be able to react.
The best compromise is to maintain manned fighters to keep a man in the loop, but use UAV's as cheap platforms to ferry additional rounds and Bombs in as his "squires". The squires would also be able to leverage countermeasures against enemy defenses and could be programmed to self-intercept any fatal enemy shots.
I want one!!!
The A-10 simulator (obviously, primitive compared to this "traveing show") is the only game I have on my personal computers -- and I love it....
In no way did it prepare me for seeing an actual A-10 ground strike. That is when the motion of the attitude gauges in the simulator made sense.
I like the of 'squire' uav's that are cheap and expendable. But which pack a big punch and give more air prescence.
Your comment points out just how far behind today's capabilities the military is -- mostly due to their antediluvian, slower-than-cold-molasses procurement practices.
My simulator software is so old that it is no longer in production (and the company may be defunct). I run it with three monitors (one for forward/HUD view, and two for side views (of amazingly detailed terrain and target/combat scenarios). You can select a widely varied armament loadout (and experience the matching weight/performance effects). Of course, you can select for time of day, weather, etc.
It even includes the effect of reduced air density near the hot desert surface. The only real effect it lacks is the reverse thrust, smoke, and vibration when the GAU-8 fires.
And it's only a game -- playable on a laptop...
You got the pedals and trim wheels and everything?
No, although it will accept input from all of the above, I never got them, because, as I said, it is only a game to me. (IOW, I know I'll never get a chance to fly an actual A-10.)
With the SAS (Stability Augmentation System) engaged, I can fly it quite well with a good joystick and occasional keyboard input -- once I get it trim-neutral. I have even flown a few successful missions using only my laptop's trackpad, but, to be truthful, most of those wind up "violating the air-ground interface" in the heat of combat maneuvering... '-}
However, I have found that mounting the (properly trimmed and calibrated) joystick on a solid, immovable base is a big help.
I nearly invested in a set of pedals, but realized at the last minute that there would be no room for the dog. :)
Good to see you have your priorities straight! :-)
If that was easy for a 14-yr-old, then the JSF designers really did their homework!
Some of them anyway, at this late date.
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