then WHY the F designation??? "If we're still planning for dog fights with the naked eye, everyone else in the whole world will eat our lunch."
and since our ROE are limited to visual confirmation, well...
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 ...
If true, thats just awesome.
then WHY the F designation??? "If we're still planning for dog fights with the naked eye, everyone else in the whole world will eat our lunch."
and since our ROE are limited to visual confirmation, well...
The main payload of the JSF program is taxpayer dollars delivered to defense contractors in congressional districts. It is devastating in this mission, putting more dollars on more districts than any weapons system in the history of warfare.
Airflight, stealth, and combat capability are welcome side effects but largely unnecessary in the combat environment of tomorrow.
We need to make the aircraft succeed. And I think we will. It is going to have teething pains. People seem to be rooting for it to fail, and I think that is unwise.
I understand all the arguments against it and for an aircraft such as the A-10, but like you, I believe the battlefield has changed, and we better change with it.
LOLOLOL!!! now THAT'S funny...
As soon as Trump calls Hillary a monster, the MSM goes all out to make it like being a monster is good.
BS the minute you put external pylons on it you loose all stealth capability and it becomes just another target
To me it has a comical look of a hunchback or Angry Bird beak face. What a weird airplane
For the number of actual strikes any F-35 may ever partake, drones can supply as much precision and far less cost.
Reliance on remote control drones can have it’s downsides, as we learned with the LMCO RQ-170 drone the Iranians hijacked.
Just say its a stealth enhanced light attack plane. but don’t try to pass it off as a modern fighter. The claim that its a fighter all involve it not being seen. None involve it defeating anyone who knows its there.
The F-35 is comparable in maneuvering performance with an F-16 and actually superior in some aspects.
I think what it makes it a monster is that it is 80% heavier than the F-16.
In fact it is heavier than the monster F-105 :p
Its engine is powerful but I fear not enough. 90% more than F-105 and 50% more than F-16
WTF
The F-35 can also mount an external gun pod and run two guns in low observable mode.
Do you have any actual visibility on the JSF program or do you just like to troll.
A lot of your comments are simply incorrect.
One of the funniest shows ever!
Only the big winged Navy version has lower wing loading. What worries me is that it weighs more than the F-15C ! The f-15 E and stealth eagle is a bit heavier but still higher in thrust.
The Stealth Eagle is the better deal, imo.
Thanks, you beat me to it.
I haven’t seen anything good about the F-35 unless your selling them. 16 years and still in test and according to the GAO another $20B - $100B to fix the S/W that has 8 million lines of code.
Does the F-35 supercruise?
The more I read about and see videos of the F-35 the more I like it.
“For the price of one F35 - you could buy 3 F16s and a refueler...”
Nope. The flyaway cost of the F-35A (actual cost to manufacture the aircraft) is right around $100 million at this point and dropping. A current model F-16 is around $60 million.
For the extra dollars you get stealth, much better sensors, and game-changing electronics/computers.
F-35 stealth is pretty good, they are cleaning up F-15s and F-16s in exercises.
“That said we have expendable, precision strike/standoff weapons in the Tomahawk cruise missile fired from ships, subs and ground.”
At the low, low price of over $1.5 million per shot, plus a limited supply.
Bombs are FAR cheaper. The Small Diameter Bomb is touted as being as effective as a 500 lb. bomb, and is highly accurate. It is a winged standoff weapon that can glide up to 60 miles to its target. Three of them pack more than the punch of a Tomahawk, at a total cost of $120,000.
“And a 100 mm (or a 150mm 6inch) mortar mounted in truck outside the fence could get the F35 with a few 100.00 shells.”
Point 1: Mortars aren’t anti-aircraft artillery.
Point 2: The F-35S will likely fly mostly at night if we can force the operational tempo (although IR does mitigate that if available).
Point 3: F-35S will mostly be paired with Small Diameter Bombs that are launched from 30+ miles away, from high altitude. AA guns would never be close enough for a shot.
‘Remember Pearl Harbor. The enemy didn’t attack the way they were “supposed to”.’
F-35s and stealth should be effective for decades. There are radars that can “see” stealth aircraft, but they aren’t useful for targeting, they’re too imprecise. Further, such radars can’t be carried by aircraft, they use long wavelengths and thus require large antennas. Radar guided air-to-air missiles are in even worse shape due to their small size.
It’s all down to IR missiles, and those can’t see through clouds. Also practical plane-mounted high powered lasers are coming soon, and those will blind IR missiles with almost no effort.
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