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Is The F-35 Strike Fighter The Military Chevy Volt?
Investor's Business Daily ^ | February 27, 2012 | IBD staff

Posted on 02/27/2012 4:54:12 PM PST by raptor22

Defense: Pilots who arrived a year ago to train on the fighter of the future are still waiting as safety concerns, cost overruns and questions about the whole program's feasibility mount.

The F-35 is meant to be America's next-generation fighter, the heir to the Air Force's F-15 Eagle and the Navy's and Marines' F/A-18 Hornet. Those two aircraft have fulfilled their air superiority and ground-attack roles well, yet many are well beyond their expected life expectancy.

The F-35 would fill America's defense needs in an age of budget constraints, we were told. So far it has not been a smooth takeoff.

About 35 of the best fighter pilots from the Air Force, Marines and Navy who arrived in the Florida Panhandle last year to learn to fly the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are still waiting. They've been limited to occasionally taxying them and firing up the engines.

Otherwise, their training is limited to three F-35 flight simulators, classroom work and flights in older-model jets. Only a handful of pilots get to fly the F-35s.

Concerns have arisen, ranging from improperly installed parachutes under the pilots' ejector seats to whether the aircraft have been adequately tested.

Production has been slow and delayed, and the cost has risen from $233 billion to $385 billion. Only 43 F-35s have been built, and an additional 2,443 have been ordered by the Pentagon.

Part of the problem is that the F-35 is a one-size-fits-all aircraft designed to fit roles from taking off a carrier's deck to hovering and landing in a confined space on a foreign battlefield. It's meant to be a ground-attack and air-superiority fighter. The question is whether it can adequately be both.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: aerospace; airforce; f22; f22raptor; f35; ibd; military; navair; savetheraptor; usaf
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To: DesertRhino

You stick to SMEAC and leave tactical aviation to those in the know.


21 posted on 02/27/2012 7:31:29 PM PST by A.A. Cunningham (Barry Soetoro is a Kenyan communist)
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To: fire and forget; DoughtyOne
Agreed, even if you could somehow null out inertia the future of military aviation is unmanned.

More on that. Imagine a dozen C-5's, each carrying a load of drones that turn so fast they'd kill a pilot, compared to one F-35.

22 posted on 02/27/2012 7:42:22 PM PST by Carry_Okie (The RNC would prefer Obama to a conservative nominee.)
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To: DoughtyOne
We should never have listened on the F22. It should still be in production today.

I hear you.

The next GOP president (although Romney's double win yesterday makes that look like a very distant, if-ever, event) needs to reopen the F-22 assembly lines and start cranking out a new generation of fleet air arm mounts as well, to replace the missing F-14.

23 posted on 02/28/2012 10:20:47 PM PST by lentulusgracchus
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To: A.A. Cunningham; Donald Rumsfeld Fan; Vroomfondel; raptor22; magslinger; Yo-Yo; rlmorel; ...
[A A Cunningham]
You stick to SMEAC and leave tactical aviation to those in the know.

Okay, everybody -- there it is. Word has come down.

Everybody OFF THE THREAD ..... certified TACAIR experts only!

Everyone exit by the yellow door, please.

</s>

24 posted on 02/28/2012 10:36:56 PM PST by lentulusgracchus
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To: Donald Rumsfeld Fan

Well, the F35 has been asked to do quite a bit. I don’t know a lot about it, but in time it may be a great aircraft for what it was designed to do.

That still doesn’t mean the F22 wasn’t needed.

I know you weren’t trying to make that point, and I appreciate you mentioning McInerney was not a big F35 fan. I’d like to think he’s wrong, but he may be dead on target.


25 posted on 02/28/2012 11:47:03 PM PST by DoughtyOne (Abortion? No. Gov't heath care? No. Gore on warming? No. McCain on immigration? No.)
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To: Carry_Okie

Carry_Okie, I like your thoughts on this. I’m not immune to the argument for unmanned aircraft. I am still not convinced you ever do away with all fighter aircraft.

I may be proven wrong on that point over time. And if I am, the F22 and F35 would be obsolete in short order.

There are a number of critical aspects of fighter aircraft and the roles they are asked to fulfill, their antagonists, and countermeasures to both that will have to be studied at length before a determination can be made.

Filling the air with hundreds of our manned aircraft while thousands of unmanned aircraft are launched against them sounds like a real buzz-kill for the manned aircraft. Trouble is, is it practical to launch 1000 unmanned aircraft if you can’t recover them, bring them back to base?

Yes G forces are not as big a threat to unmanned craft. Does that mean that weaknesses won’t be exploited to make unmanned aircraft a pipe dream that is defeated just as it’s promise is about to be realized?

Will our sleuths devise a way to take command of unmanned aircraft away from their owners, or will they find ways to commandeer ours?

In the short term, I don’t think we commit either direction. We keep adequate forces of conventional aircraft, and seek to develop the umanned aircraft to their full potential.

I will say, that if we put our eggs in the unmanned basked, and the command and control is compromised, we’re essentially defenseless in a matter of hours.

Talk about your doomsday scenario...


26 posted on 02/29/2012 12:00:32 AM PST by DoughtyOne (Abortion? No. Gov't heath care? No. Gore on warming? No. McCain on immigration? No.)
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To: lentulusgracchus

I agree. I might not roll out as many as we originally ordered, but I would sure roll out a lot more than we currently have.


27 posted on 02/29/2012 12:54:41 AM PST by DoughtyOne (Abortion? No. Gov't heath care? No. Gore on warming? No. McCain on immigration? No.)
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To: Vroomfondel; SC Swamp Fox; Fred Hayek; NY Attitude; P3_Acoustic; investigateworld; lowbuck; ...
SONOBUOY PING!

Photobucket

Click on pic for past Navair pings. Post or FReepmail me if you wish to be enlisted in or discharged from the Navair Pinglist. The only requirement for inclusion in the Navair Pinglist is an interest in Naval Aviation. This is a medium to low volume pinglist.

28 posted on 02/29/2012 4:47:26 AM PST by magslinger (If I wanted to vote for a Commie I would vote for Obammie. He has a chance of winning.)
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To: lentulusgracchus
"...Everybody OFF THE THREAD ..... certified TACAIR experts only! Everyone exit by the yellow door, please..."


29 posted on 02/29/2012 4:53:59 AM PST by rlmorel ("A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." Winston Churchill)
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To: raptor22
Comparing an F-35 to a Volt is probably unfair to the Volt. The little electric is probably OK at what it is designed for: back and forth to work, quick trip to the liquor store, that kind of thing. Grocery shopping? Can you fit a weeks groceries for a family of four in one? With the driver?

Any engineering involves trade offs. If you want a maneuverable bird, there goes the stability. You want armor? There goes the speed, rate of climb and ceiling. Kick it the butt harder. You just lost range. More fuel? Back to the loss of speed. I think they are trying to make the F-35 do too much. A fairer automotive comparison would be to call it a family sports pickup. Think of how poor it would be at all three tasks not to mention the dismal fuel economy.

30 posted on 02/29/2012 5:22:05 AM PST by magslinger (If I wanted to vote for a Commie I would vote for Obammie. He has a chance of winning.)
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To: DoughtyOne
Well, the F35 has been asked to do quite a bit.

Too many tradeoffs, too many compromises.....it was painful....ugh. There is a dvd on the painful project's development.

A competition between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Fun to watch if you're an aerospace engineer


31 posted on 02/29/2012 5:24:25 AM PST by Donald Rumsfeld Fan
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To: magslinger

A 450 lb battery used to store the equivalent of a gallon of gas worth of energy. It doesn’t pass the laugh test.


32 posted on 02/29/2012 5:33:05 AM PST by Donald Rumsfeld Fan
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To: Donald Rumsfeld Fan

I just meant that it would fulfill it’s basic mission, something I highly doubt of the F-35. I did not mean the Volt is a good vehicle or that it’s flimsy butt has any business on a highway where even a minor altercation with an original VW Bug would put it badly in second place.


33 posted on 02/29/2012 6:21:22 AM PST by magslinger (If I wanted to vote for a Commie I would vote for Obammie. He has a chance of winning.)
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To: DoughtyOne
Trouble is, is it practical to launch 1000 unmanned aircraft if you can’t recover them, bring them back to base?

I was adding the C-5 scenario to drive out-of-the-box thinking. Obviously drones land now and would have longer range if they didn't have to carry all that weight to support the pilot. Still, if a pilot can land on a carrier deck, I don't think it impossible to land a plane into a C-5 in a manner analogous to parachute jumping or aerial refueling.

It's doable. The combination of speed and maneuverability those birds would have would make the current (and possibly then some) generation of enemy A2A missiles practically useless.

Does that mean that weaknesses won’t be exploited to make unmanned aircraft a pipe dream that is defeated just as it’s promise is about to be realized?

I don't understand the question.

Will our sleuths devise a way to take command of unmanned aircraft away from their owners, or will they find ways to commandeer ours?

With spread spectrum communications, that would be truly difficult. Think of it this way (and I was thinking this in 1985): one could load a random frequency switching sequence from the launcher. NOBODY would know that sequence in advance. The enemy would have to acquire it in-flight or from the actual system that generated the sequence at launch (which could be shared in drabs should the flight extend beyond communications range), which would require them to predict the future of a random number sequence. Any breach would initiate an auto-destruct.

In the short term, I don’t think we commit either direction. We keep adequate forces of conventional aircraft, and seek to develop the umanned aircraft to their full potential.

I like the idea of finishing off the F-22 run while we do it. The X-29 project was enough ground work to make such a drone a slam dunk, that is, unless the contractors decide to make a money pot out of it. (Can't stand those people.)

I will say, that if we put our eggs in the unmanned basked, and the command and control is compromised, we’re essentially defenseless in a matter of hours.

Talk about your doomsday scenario...

With as much fly-by-wire and target management technology we have in those birds now, practically, we're already there.

34 posted on 02/29/2012 6:45:00 AM PST by Carry_Okie (The RNC would prefer Obama to a conservative nominee.)
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To: Carry_Okie
Still, if a pilot can land on a carrier deck, I don't think it impossible to land a plane into a C-5 in a manner analogous to parachute jumping or aerial refueling.

Landing into a C-5 would be a lot easier than a carrier landing. Much lower relative speed.

35 posted on 02/29/2012 7:06:56 AM PST by magslinger (If I wanted to vote for a Commie I would vote for Obammie. He has a chance of winning.)
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To: magslinger; DoughtyOne
Landing into a C-5 would be a lot easier than a carrier landing. Much lower relative speed.

True, but the "shock absorber" means would be a downer in an aircraft, so to speak. Yes, I do think the system is doable and it addresses both our need for more transports and tankers. As to close combat air support, I think fighters are a poor tool. I'm a Warthog guy there.

36 posted on 02/29/2012 8:03:37 AM PST by Carry_Okie (The RNC would prefer Obama to a conservative nominee.)
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To: rlmorel

And the number to call is BR-549.


37 posted on 02/29/2012 10:23:18 AM PST by Ole Okie
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To: Donald Rumsfeld Fan

Thanks for the mention. I should probably go out and see if I can dig up a copy.


38 posted on 02/29/2012 10:33:52 AM PST by DoughtyOne (Abortion? No. Gov't heath care? No. Gore on warming? No. McCain on immigration? No.)
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To: DoughtyOne

You can watch it on netflix. It IS interesting to watch, too.


39 posted on 02/29/2012 10:52:28 AM PST by rlmorel ("A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." Winston Churchill)
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To: Carry_Okie; magslinger

I would have a serious concern for trying to combat the air flow cast off by a C-5 aircraft, penetrating that safely to land on aboard.

Beyond that, the air flow mechanics involved with the transition of exterior to interior air flow would seem to me to make this impossible.

Lift disappears when you transition from 150 to 250 mph exterior wind flow, to 5 to 10 mph interior atmosphere.

Perhaps you folks can explain away my misgivings, but I think that would be quite difficult.


40 posted on 02/29/2012 12:59:42 PM PST by DoughtyOne (Abortion? No. Gov't heath care? No. Gore on warming? No. McCain on immigration? No.)
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