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About three weeks ago we had a discussion here about an F-35B stealth fighter that had a mishap on landing at Fort Worth Naval Air Station. It was being flown by a USMC pilot but he was performing pre-delivery evaluation flights for Lockheed Martin. Now the military has halted deliveries on F-35B engines pending further investigation (which is a pretty good indication the pilot was exonerated). The source article is at Defense News -dot- Com (under heading "Air Warfare"), which I apparently am forbidden to post from. So look it up if you're a mind to. It was at the...

The UAE has evaluated a number of fighter aircraft including the Dassault Rafale, Boeing’s Advanced Super Hornet and Advanced F-15 and the Eurofighter Typhoon. Emirati attention now seems to have switched back to the Advanced F-15, already entering service with the Royal Saudi Air Force as the F-15SA and now ordered by Qatar as the F-15QA. These orders promise to keep the F-15 production line out to 2022. Following a meeting between US Defence Secretary, James Mattis, and Sheikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, deputy supreme commander of the UAE Armed Forces and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, reports emerged...

One of the world top independent defence experts has conduced an incredibly exhaustive examination of the real cost of the Joint Strike Fighter (F-35) to those countries that are buying it. The expert, Paris-based Giovanni de Briganti, of Defence-Aerospace, estimates that the average unit cost of Lockheed Martin JSF in the ninth low-rate initial production run is $US206.3 million. The Australian parliament has been told by Defence Minister Marise Payne and Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne that the cost of our Joint Strike Fighters will be in the vicinity of $US90 million. Such a huge variation means that either Giovanni...

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...

“0 losses in 8 dogfights against F-15E Red Air” The U.S. Air Force F-35A fleet continues to work to declare the Lightning II IOC (initial operational capability) scheduled in the August – December timeframe. Among the activities carried out in the past weeks, a simulated deployment provided important feedbacks about the goal of demonstrating the F-35’s ability to “penetrate areas with developed air defenses, provide close air support to ground troops and be readily deployable to conflict theaters.” Seven F-35s deployed from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, to Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, to carry out a series of operational tests...

The whole idea behind the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was for it to be, you know, joint. That is to say, the same basic plane would work for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps and foreign countries. Lockheed Martin is designing the F-35 to meet all the requirements of all three U.S. military branches from the outset, with — in theory — only minor differences between the Air Force’s F-35A, the Marines’ F-35B and the Navy’s F-35C. The variants were supposed to be 70-percent common. But Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, head of the JSF program office, told a...

A Norwegian fighter pilot has published a soft rebuttal to a damaging critique leaked last summer about the Lockheed Martin F-35A’s dogfighting prowess, contradicting many of the critical points made in the scathing review written by a Lockheed test pilot. Royal Norwegian Air Force Maj Morten “Dolby” Hanche, a US Navy test pilot school graduate with 2,200 flight hours in Lockheed F-16s, has flown several mock dogfights from Luke AFB in Arizona since becoming the nation’s first F-35 pilot last November. These have yet to advance to performing "dissimilar" training against other aircraft types. In a blog post on Norway’s...

Israel Reconsidering 2008 Purchase of U.S. Jets; Cabinet Mulls Cancelling Acquisition of Flawed Fighter-Jet Rejected By Most NATO Air Forces A welcome decision made back in 2008 to purchase U.S.-made Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) jets no longer appears very attractive in 2016 – and Israel is considering backtracking on it. So say Israeli government sources quoted by Middle East Newsline (MENL). For one thing, the much-touted JSF has some inherent flaws, such as inadequate range, weapons payload and stealth capability. In addition, the Americans refuse to share the JSF source code with Israel. Israel would not be able to modify...

The F-35 is an absolute disaster, and it needs to go. The scandals around it are legion. The supersonic stealth plane called F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was supposed to be the greatest and best military plane the world has ever seen. While the United States' stealthy F-22 is an "air superiority" plane, ensuring the country's dominance over the skies, which is why exporting it is illegal, the F-35 was supposed to be able to do everything, and be the standard fighter-bomber of the U.S. and most countries with which the U.S. has friendly relations. It was supposed to be stealthy,...

PARIS --- The unilateral decision by the United States to locate all F-35 software laboratories on its territory, and to manage the operation and sustainment of the global F-35 fleet from its territory, has introduced vulnerabilities that are only beginning to emerge. The biggest risk is that, since the F-35 cannot operate effectively without permanent data exchanges with its software labs and logistic support computers in the United States, any disruption in the two-way flow of information would compromise its effectiveness. All F-35 aircraft operating across the world will have to update their mission data files and their Autonomic Logistic...

The Pentagon’s embattled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter continues to be plagued with so many problems that it can’t even pass the most basic requirements needed to fly in combat, despite soaring roughly $170 billion over budget. As the most expensive weapons program in the Pentagon’s history, the $400 billion and counting F-35 is supposed to be unlike any other fighter jet—with high-tech computer capabilities that can identify a combatant plane at warp speed. However, major design flaws and test failures have placed the program under serious scrutiny for years—with auditors constantly questioning whether the jet will ever actually get off...

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will not receive the software package required to operate the Pentagon’s top close-air support bomb until 2022, according to military.com. The article also stated that the JSF office already had discovered earlier that the precision-guided air-dropped Small Diameter Bomb II (SDB II) does not fit onto Joint Strike Fighter Marine Corps variant without modifications to the aircraft’s weapons bay. Yet the Department of Defense will wait until the F-35 B (the Marine Corps variant of the F-35) reaches initial operability before modifying the F-35’s armament bay, since the weapon will be useless without the right...

Top image shows an F-35A, at Edwards AFB, California,nexto to its F-35 Systems Development and Demonstration Weapons Suite the aircraft is designed to carry. According to Lockheed Martin, the Joint Strike Fighter can carry more than 35-hundred pounds of ordinance in Low Observable (stealth) mode and over 18-thousand pounds uncontested. The Lightning II is conducting testing required for full weapons certification through a campaign which included validating 2B weapons software and successfully executing several weapons separation and engagement tests. “Comprehensive flight test on the F-35A variant GAU-22 25mm gun system is scheduled to begin mid-year at Edwards AFB, Calif., and...

America’s $400 billion, top-of-the-line aircraft can’t see the battlefield all that well. Which means it’s actually worse than its predecessors at fighting today’s wars. When the Pentagon’s nearly $400 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter finally enters service next year after nearly two decades in development, it won’t be able to support troops on the ground the way older planes can today. Its sensors won’t be able to see the battlefield as well; and what video the F-35 does capture, it won’t be able to transmit to infantrymen in real time. Versions of the new single-engine stealth fighter are set to...

The U.S. Navy conducted the first arrested landing of an F-35C Joint Strike Fighter carrier variant on November 3. Cmdr. Tony Wilson, a Navy test pilot, landed test aircraft CF-03 on the flight deck of the carrier USS Nimitz off the coast of San Diego after flying from Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Ariz. The first arrested landing came at the start of initial at-sea developmental testing of the F-35C, which is expected to last for two weeks. The carrier testing involves test aircraft CF-03 and CF-05, both fitted with a redesigned tail hook after problems with the initial design...

Every two years, a select group of Western fighter manufacturers touch down at Farnborough air show to promote their wares in what is perhaps the toughest of all sales categories. As the home show for Eurofighter partner company BAE Systems, the event offers a prime opportunity to highlight the credentials of the Typhoon, as it works with allies Airbus Defence & Space and Finmeccanica’s Alenia Aermacchi to add to their operators list. Austria, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Spain and the UK have together received more than a combined 400 examples so far, and Oman is under contract to field 12...

America’s gazillion-dollar Joint Strike Fighter is supposed to go virtually unseen when flying over enemy turf. But that’s not how things are working out. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—the jet that the Pentagon is counting on to be the stealthy future of its tactical aircraft—is having all sorts of shortcomings. But the most serious may be that the JSF is not, in fact, stealthy in the eyes of a growing number of Russian and Chinese radars. Nor is it particularly good at jamming enemy radar. Which means the Defense Department is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to a fighter...

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter - the jet that the Pentagon is counting on to be the stealthy future of its tactical aircraft - is having all sorts of shortcomings. But the most serious may be that the JSF is not, in fact, stealthy in the eyes of a growing number of Russian and Chinese radars. Nor it is particularly good at jamming enemy radar. Which means the Defense Department is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to a fighter that will need the help of specialized jamming aircraft that protect non-stealthy - "radar-shiny," as some insiders call them -...

Pratt & Whitney said Monday it is cooperating with authorities after federal agents arrested a former employee for trying to ship documents to Iran related to the U.S. military's Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. The East Hartford defense contractor, the sole manufacturer of the aircraft's engine, declined to comment on how Mozaffar Khazaee, 59, slipped thousands of pages of documents, diagrams, blueprints and technical manuals out the door before he was laid off in August along with hundreds of other employees. Federal authorities arrested Khazaee at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on Thursday before he could board a plane...

Direct Video Linki YouTube:F-35B Accomplishes First Night Vertical Landing Aboard USS WASP On Aug. 14, the first DT-II (Developmental Test Phase Two – the second of three planned tests aimed at expanding the F-35B’s shipboard operating envelope for the U.S. Marine Corps) night vertical landing was executed by F-35 Marine Corps test pilot, Lt. Col. C.R. “Jimi” Clift. Clift, a Harrier pilot. The F-35B is the STOVL (Short Take Off Vertical Landing) of the JSF, destined to replace all the USMC assets, including the Harrier jump jet and the F/A-18 Hornet.