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So the theory goes....
Great info pbehn! Certain things to look at - How many were due to training? It was mentioned that there were a lot of accidents in Arizona. If you look into operations at Luke AFB, it's a training base, you're naturally going to have a high rate by nature of the operations.
Preperation for war - again agressive training will induce accidents.
There were a few component failures (Turbine blades coming apart, generator and fuel control failures) but scanning thorough a few pages I found nothing to show that any of these failures were due to "maintenance," but that's not to say there hasn't been a maintenance related class A incident during the F-16's operational history. I have a meeting with my boss, I'm going to hit him up abut engine failures and maintainer induced incidents.
With regards to the F 35 I am sure the Royal Navy's aircraft will not strike a wild boar on take of so that is one worry off my mind.
A common "brain fart" to even the most seasoned pilots!FB ..I was looking at the accidents by year which covers all forces. As you can see it doesnt go into great detail and there are a lot of them since many were accidents that didnt result in total loss. Some losses were due to training like a pilot who ran his internal fuel dry while external tanks were full, this being not unterstanding procedures after inflight re fueling. Is landing with gear still raised lack of training or a "brain fart".
Sometimes corrosion issues may happen to brand new components due to the operational area.I was struck by the number of accidents caused by UC failure mainly corrosion and worn seals but these were not so much in US operation. Budgets and environments are different.
I think you'll find that may be true to many of the participants in Desert Storm.Just from memory I think the RAF lost more pilots in training for Desert Storm than on ops themselves. I drove from London to North England in Summer 1990 and the sky was full of RAF and US jets on exercise circling before landing in East anglia /Lincolnshire.
With regards to the F 35 I am sure the Royal Navy's aircraft will not strike a wild boar on take of so that is one worry off my mind.
The F-16s problems were wiring, says so in this movie...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterburn_(film)..:-)
I actually saw that movie a long time ago, wasn't bad. Basically the wife was trying to clear her test pilot husbands name after a fatal crash, shows her struggle with General Dynamics in trying to get the truth out.
The Chinese apparently have developed a ground based radar system that can detect stealth aircraft. So they supposedly could see an F-35 problem is, they haven't figured out how to coordinate a SAM attack against them. Probably only a question of time though. Nothing as far as I know of any air to air capability.
And that's the main flaw with HF/VHF/UHF radars (at least to my limited knowledge) is that it requires a heavily networked system, and if one part of that system fails, then the whole thing collapses. E.G. If you destroy the huge HF/VHF/UHF radar, the shooter radar will have a very hard time seeing the target.
If you destroy the shooter radar, then the HF/VHF/UHF complex will see the bandit, but will not be able to provide the resolution to guide a missile to the target. If you jam communications, then all of the units lose coherency as a fighting unit. Wouldn't exactly call it the most effective system while taking fire from anti-radiation missiles and generally in most combat scenarios.
HF and VHF radars are pretty immune from ARMs, typically a missile airframe does not have a large enough frontal section to support the necessary antennas for those bands. For example the current generation AGM-88 is advertised to have a lower frequency limit of about 500 MHz, well up into UHF. But that is OK, those VHF and particularly HF radars are typically not very mobile, or take a while to set up / take down, so other munitions will do them just fine.
Which means they might be able to watch the F-35 coming in to drop an LGB on their radar site.
Great accurate info guys! Everyone thinks (especially armchair generals) that stealth aircraft will operate solely on their own merits and detractors have tried to discredit the concept based on "stealth" being built into the aircraft alone. I was on the F-117 program early in the program and remember someone saying "the article is invisible to radar" and immediately an engineer correcting him saying, "It's not invisible, just hard to see on radar." Combine that with ECM and you complete the circle.
Do you think the retirement of the F-117 was more due to budget cuts than anything else?