some F35 info

razor1uk said:

Its taking long enough already - has the conventioanl version been worked on or is all effort only being used on the VTOL/STOL versions?

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If you don't know that you're about two years behind...

F-35 Lightning II Program

BTW, this isn't a Lockheed site, it's whats called "dotmil," US govt site...

Since the end of the coldwar, many militaries have downsized, have mothballed or scrapped systems, and also after the bankers crisis, and many countries own future opinions, forces are weaker than they were. When the remaining edge is only tech and skill after numbers have been cut, then the difference between the players is minimised, and the chances of a outcome less onesided are greater, and it is this that is making me jumpy for the near future, I'd like these birds active and supplied asap,if not, to use those monies to reactive, re arm and bolster current forces, to give Pooptin strong 2nd thoughts that are lower than going into a 1962 senario that's all.

I am miffed at the ongoing slowness, yess it has a 55 lifespan desing ed instead of the previous 10 -20 years of old A/C's, but the longer it is not ready and the hotter things get elswhere, the bigger the gap for things to go the wrong, within that gap, I'm getting jittery living in the UK's 2nd city and 2nd biggest target hould things go all the way in the next few years, 2020+ for 'roll out' is long off yet.

Some useful info there still FBJ, thanks, still doesn't quell my future situation blues, but slightly more info altogether than just reading Combat Aircraft and companies sites, Military Aviation and others, etc.

For the RAAF, the original service delivery dates were 2012, then put back to 2015-16 and now 2019-23. The constant delays are an undeniable PR debacle, but in this country the US aerospace industry has a rock solid reputation for delivering superior products....eventually. im old enough to remember the scathing attacks made on another US a/c, the F-111 which took 11 years longer than the RAAF had wanted before delivery was achieved. The wait was worth every second. those 28 F-111s gave our forces total dominance over the oceans as a regional power until well into the 2000s. The only nation with the force projection able to challenge those aircraft was US carrier fleet and thankfully they were on our side.

The F-35 has big shoes to fill, because they are part replacements for the f-111s. I worry about the range issue, but my RAAF buddies say its covered.

The ever diminishing force structure is a function of costs, and to an extent the cost of the f-35 contributes to that, but more importantly are the parsimony each of our national govts are prepared to apply. as each year goes by, and no hot war emerges, they snip a little bit more off the budgets. they don't realise that defence budgets are there to keep the peace, not to make war, and each time the knife is applied, a little more risk is added to security.

My criticisms are more toward the Euro-aerospace industry. During the war the Brits really scr*wed us over, and not for defence related reasons, more for commercial purposes. After the war we had several instances of relying on European techs, notably the Mirage and the Leopard I tanks. In both cases, for different reasons and with variable impacts, we were comprehensively done over by the Europeans. Our military will never trust anything with "made in Europe" again for anything relating to our national security (at least vital interests).

I like your honest antipodean assessment of EU suppliers Parsifal, you can add the some of the educated UK's civilians squaddies opinions to some of what you hint at bad kit too, they say one thing, and it does at least 2 things less than envisaged it should/could/sold as ..why else do we drink tea.
As to if (some of) those issues are solved verses others yet to be solved for our own gear, it is likely only a few know persons enough over here, let alone those under gags or behind closed doors.
..Didn't we have problems with localised area coms systems not functioning, munitions supply faliures and before we purchased HK, our rifles wouldn't regularly work correctly on anything more than single shot - perhaps a nod to the paperwork involved in UK forces for bullet accountency, before we sold them (HK) on.

But I feel you feel strongly aggrieved with EU/UK, and despite being from their eyes 'English' you hoped for a better deal from the French and a lesser form, the Germans too...
In which War did we screw you, Mirages and Leaopards production usages range from the 50's/60's until now?
(Do you mean Vietnam, we objected to that one - partially due to the Suez fiasco, but your own government wanted to become effectively a US protectionate from possible from PRC/Malaysian/Indonesian possibilities, so please hold it against us for your national decisions when where possible, for it the common binding of the Commonwealth, GB/UK is the prigenitor of all its glories, faliures and the spread of its peoples, good, bad, ugly dispicable.)

If you feel so strongly that few can supply your national needs, then however your government really works, petion, create community rallies etc for 'real Assie industries' or whatever nationalistic titles work in your neck of the woods to produce your own kit and then you can complain about that too, just like we do over 'ere.

parsifal said:

My criticisms are more toward the Euro-aerospace industry. During the war the Brits really scr*wed us over, and not for defence related reasons, more for commercial purposes. After the war we had several instances of relying on European techs, notably the Mirage and the Leopard I tanks. In both cases, for different reasons and with variable impacts, we were comprehensively done over by the Europeans. Our military will never trust anything with "made in Europe" again for anything relating to our national security (at least vital interests).

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I always thought that the Australians did well with the Centurions, Artillery and even SLR's and GPMG's. As for the Mirage you were I think offered the Mirage with the Avon which really had a performance (even the French admitted it was far superior) but still let the French talk you into accepting the Atar version with all the problems that followed.
For those interested the Avon version was faster, climbed faster, had a gun firing ceiling raised by 10,000ft, shorter field length and 20% greater range. Remembering that the RAAF already had experience with the Avon in the CA27 the decision to go with the Atar can only be blamed on one nation, Australia.
I should also add that the Avon Mirage was also to be equipped with a new Airpass 2 multi mode radar far superior to the Cyrano but the choice was Australia's.

A final point, although the UK didn't approve of your involvement in Vietnam we did supply you with spares and ammo something the French and Sweden wouldn't do.

Reference post #839. The Bf 109 was a winner 10 years later.

The F-35 began in 1992 with the Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter that morphed into the Joint Strike Fighter that morphed into the F-35. If my math isn't wrong, that's a 23-year gestation period and it still is not in full service.

23 years atfer the Bf 109 was conceived it was history except in Spain, who built a few in the form of Hispanos to tide them over until their jets became available and kept a few a while more for historic purposes. Nobody seriously condsidered them as front-line fighters at the time, even the Spanish, but they kept their cadre of fighter pilots flying. It certainly wasn't cutting-edge 23 years after 1936.

To me as a taxpayer, the F-35 is too little for the money and over a decade too late. It may well turn out OK, but was a bad decision in my opinion. I wish it well but will probably never be a fan. If it lives up to hype in the real world, I may change my mind. But for that to happen, I'd need to see some combat results against a decent opponent ... and there is no way I want a war to start just to make me like the F-35. So I firmly hope I never come to like it since that would mean lasting peace.

I'll be watching it with interest and some skepticism, coupled with hope that the F-35-likers turn out to be right in the end. If it turns out to be a good one, I won't complain about the price. If it turns out to be turkey, I would wish for some basic congressional controls to be put in place to prevent them from doing it ever again without both bipartisan support and public support.

The cost of the entire weapon system is staggering if it turns out bad, and bad but perhaps acceptable if it turns out good.

All I can say in support at this time is it looks to be doing OK so far, but it is not in full service yet. That is better than the record of some other planes that turned out OK in the end, so at least it appears to be headed the right way.

Maybe the worst IS behind us.

we were happy enough with Mirage performance, but the refusal to provide spares was holding the entire nation to ransom for political reasons and goes beyond the pale.

The French did the same thing to the Israelis a short time later, a little more controversially admittedly.

The leopard I had a serious problem...... the metallurgical treatment of the armour plate was faulty and crystallized making them fragile and unsuitable for any operations. Germans refused to fix the problem, so we were stuck with an expensive training vehicle for more than 30 years.

Nothing wrong with Centurion, but the brits were happy for us to showcase the technology in Vietnam, nothing like a centurion in the scrub as a photo op. Would have sold a lot of tanks. Im not even sure who actually built those aussie Centurions, but they were well within our skillset to fix ourselves. Even if the brits had told us to nick off we could have managed to keep them going ourselves.

SLRs were a European design, for sure, but made (and even exported) from Australia. Not going to be a problem if the Europeans tried to get jiggy with us over the SLRs.

Brits did other things just to nark us. Like dropping lots of a-bombs on our soil, and then bugging out without cleaning up the mess. Okay, but a bit rude.

French decided to drop a few bombs in our backyard as well, told us to bugger off, acted like general a*holes, and even blew up a few protests boats to boot. Not military issues, but evidence of an arrogance that really does the Europeans no favours. We aren't just "mere colonials" that you can screw over at your leisure and think nothing will happen. If nothing else, if you treat us like that, you can stick your Mirages where the sun don't shine

There is nothing wrong with European technology, its the strings that go with it, that is so irksome, and has really soured Australia as a purchaser of European military technology unless we can build it or fix it ourselves

I've heard that from other forums, from other countries, with a change in who did what and left what there and what the strings were. It's one of the reasons I'm not too fond of outsourcing ... though I wish we had gotten the FN-FAL rather than the M-14.

When we got the Canberra, we made sure we could make it and support it. In fact, they just recently took an RB-57F out of retirement and refurbished it for NASA ... and it's back operational. Now THAT was a shocker, at least to me.

The best situation for you guys might be to partner with someone, not purchase. You build some of and they build some of it ... and you both depend on each other. Sort of like SEPECAT did with many European companies.

If we can help Japan with an F-16 derivative, you guys could do something like, too, with the nation and company(ies) of your choice.

Of course, that assumes there is any money left after the F-35 purchase. Are you guys getting a mix or all 3 types, or maybe just 1 or 2 versions, or what? How many?

GregP said:

Of course, that assumes there is any money left after the F-35 purchase. Are you guys getting a mix or all 3 types, or maybe just 1 or 2 versions, or what? How many?

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As I understand it, we have 72 F-35A's on order with a further 24 planned. Also Australia is going to be the maintenance "hub" of the Southern Pacific area.
Australia chosen as preferred F-35 global support location | Australian Aviation

GregP said:

The F-35 began in 1992 with the Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter that morphed into the Joint Strike Fighter that morphed into the F-35. If my math isn't wrong, that's a 23-year gestation period and it still is not in full service.

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Not true - that's when the specification was drawn up and the government issued the first request for solicitations. There was a competition for initial design proposals and Lockheed and Boeing were allowed to "play" in the final round. The X-32 and X-35 were the entries and in 2001 the X-35 concept was chosen. The X-32 was a miserable failure and Boeing was removing components off of it so it could meet some of the test requirements in hover. The F-35 program officially began after the 2001 Joint Strike Fighter was announced as the X-32 and X-35 were really proof of concept aircraft. The first F-35A rolled out in 2008 after a redesign proposed by Lockheed and ACCEPTED by the government that took over 2500 pounds off the weight of the aircraft. In November 2010, the GAO found that "Managing an extensive, still-maturing global network of suppliers adds another layer of complexity to producing aircraft efficiently and on-time" and that "due to the extensive amount of testing still to be completed, the program could be required to make alterations to its production processes, changes to its supplier base, and costly retrofits to produced and fielded aircraft, if problems are discovered.This global network of suppliers was not by choice as all team members got a piece of the pie and some of the foreign suppliers drug their feet in meeting delivery schedule, so if you're making this assumption based on what you're reading in the internet, you're getting half the story.

GregP said:

23 years atfer the Bf 109 was conceived it was history except in Spain, who built a few in the form of Hispanos to tide them over until their jets became available and kept a few a while more for historic purposes. Nobody seriously condsidered them as front-line fighters at the time, even the Spanish, but they kept their cadre of fighter pilots flying. It certainly wasn't cutting-edge 23 years after 1936.

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Greg, its silly to compare the production of a WW2 aircraft to the F-35. the ejection seat alone is twice as complex as the whole me 109 airframe!

GregP said:

To me as a taxpayer, the F-35 is too little for the money and over a decade too late. It may well turn out OK, but was a bad decision in my opinion. I wish it well but will probably never be a fan. If it lives up to hype in the real world, I may change my mind. But for that to happen, I'd need to see some combat results against a decent opponent ... and there is no way I want a war to start just to make me like the F-35. So I firmly hope I never come to like it since that would mean lasting peace.

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the aircraft was actually 7 years late and has 'caught up' to much of the delays in which many were due to flight test concurrency which was induced by the pentagon. LMCO told the government that this was going to increase the cost but the approval was given anyway.

GregP said:

I'll be watching it with interest and some skepticism, coupled with hope that the F-35-likers turn out to be right in the end. If it turns out to be a good one, I won't complain about the price. If it turns out to be turkey, I would wish for some basic congressional controls to be put in place to prevent them from doing it ever again without both bipartisan support and public support.

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Although LMCO is not blameless, the root of the problem are those approving contract add-ons be it hardware or software related. In the beginning of the program there were tons of customer induced design changes. Remember - LMCO built this aircraft based on a Pentagon solicitation and was not offered as a non-solicited proposal in the same manner you would go out an buy a car off the shelf.

GregP said:

The cost of the entire weapon system is staggering if it turns out bad, and bad but perhaps acceptable if it turns out good. All I can say in support at this time is it looks to be doing OK so far, but it is not in full service yet. That is better than the record of some other planes that turned out OK in the end, so at least it appears to be headed the right way.

Maybe the worst IS behind us.

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Well the latest news says otherwise...

U.S. Navy Rear Admiral John Haley, commander of Naval Air Force Atlantic, said developmental testing of the F-35C, the carrier variant of the new stealthy fighter jet, had been "pretty doggone good" compared with earlier aircraft.

"The F-35 is going to bring ... sensors and an ability to guide the fight, whether it's an air-to-ground fight or an air-to-air fight. They're going to have an ability that's going to change how we think about getting to the target, delivering weapons and getting out of the target," Haley said.

Lockheed F-35s finish at-sea test flights as U.S. Navy warms to new jet - Reuters News 10/9/2015 8:48 PM
Lockheed rolls out first F-35 fighter jet for Norway | The Star-Telegram

Nice!

parsifal said:

we were happy enough with Mirage performance, but the refusal to provide spares was holding the entire nation to ransom for political reasons and goes beyond the pale.

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But had you purchased the Avon version the RAAF wouldn't have had the spares or support issues and a better performance. Also the RAAF were not happy with the performance and had been promised a higher powered version of the engine which was late.

The leopard I had a serious problem...... the metallurgical treatment of the armour plate was faulty and crystallized making them fragile and unsuitable for any operations. Germans refused to fix the problem, so we were stuck with an expensive training vehicle for more than 30 years.

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Totally agree that this was a serious issue, but not the fault of the British.

Nothing wrong with Centurion, but the brits were happy for us to showcase the technology in Vietnam, nothing like a centurion in the scrub as a photo op. Would have sold a lot of tanks. Im not even sure who actually built those aussie Centurions, but they were well within our skillset to fix ourselves. Even if the brits had told us to nick off we could have managed to keep them going ourselves.

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Don't be quite so fast to take the credit for selling Centurion tanks. By 1967 they were in service in a number of countries and had seen combat in Korea and in 1967 was in action in the Six day war on both sides, in 1965 they were in combat in India.

F-35 Eye Candy compilation ...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSVAnEQMn2I

It does have a cool look to it.

I know it's not the first plane to use this configuration but I never liked seeing the refueling nozzle behind the pilot. Always seemed like it would make it harder for the pilot during refueling operations.


Wheels

FLYBOYJ said:

"The F-35A is an agile aircraft, it has speed and can pull a 9G turn like an F-16," said Mr Linstead. "It would be trite to say dogfights are over. But if an F-35 got into a dogfight situation then the pilot would have probably done something wrong."

Have we heard that before?!?!?!?

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Can't help but think Vietnam again and the missiles only fighter....circus, just listen to what Robin Olds say in Dogfights about it....

I don't think that dogfights will disappear in a foreseeable future....and I bet a packet of bacon!

Didn't they think that Vietnam would be a missile only airwar? See what happened there...

I think that, much like everything else in military aviation, stealth is something that has come and will in time also go, as in systems....weapons etc., will be or already are in development that will make it not as useful as when it first showed up, just look at the Meteor missile, all they did to it, was changing the way it operates, can't remember what is was called K- something wavelength and it turned out be much more sensitive to stealth....

The F-35 is not perfect, it never was and it'll never be, neither is the Gripen or anyone else out there...thinking that and you're shooting yourself in the foot or whatyacallit...

Again, bl**dy good and educational thread lads!

Lucky13 said:

Can't help but think Vietnam again and the missiles only fighter....circus, just listen to what Robin Olds say in Dogfights about it....

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For that era, dogfighting was alive and well as were the stupidity of the politicians who put ROEs on the pilots and actually induced VR dogfights in an environment that favored the enemy.

Lucky13 said:

I don't think that dogfights will disappear in a foreseeable future....and I bet a packet of bacon!

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dogfights won't go away IMO but they wont be the same twisting and turning encounters so many of us are programmed to believe what really happens. In fact I believe most of the encounters wont even see high G aerobatic maneuvers!

Lucky13 said:

Didn't they think that Vietnam would be a missile only airwar? See what happened there...

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2 comments - actually it was when you compare the amount of gun kills to the amount of missile kills on BOTH sides. Even 3/4 of the "Last Gunfigter" F-8 kills were missiles kills.

For the US it would have been more of a missile only airwar if most of them worked and the airmen were allowed to use them!

Lucky13 said:

I think that, much like everything else in military aviation, stealth is something that has come and will in time also go, as in systems....weapons etc., will be or already are in development that will make it not as useful as when it first showed up, just look at the Meteor missile, all they did to it, was changing the way it operates, can't remember what is was called K- something wavelength and it turned out be much more sensitive to stealth....

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Again, stealth isn't the catch-all, it just makes it easier for you to get the first shot off first

Lucky13 said:

The F-35 is not perfect, it never was and it'll never be, neither is the Gripen or anyone else out there...thinking that and you're shooting yourself in the foot or whatyacallit...

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Not perfect, no machine is, but if it works half as well as say the F-16, it will be damned close!

Lucky13 said:

Again, bl**dy good and educational thread lads!

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Lucky13 said:

...I don't think that dogfights will disappear in a foreseeable future....and I bet a packet of bacon!

Didn't they think that Vietnam would be a missile only airwar? See what happened there...

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But this is the 21st century and with a far higher degree of systems that will allow an accurate kill beyond visual range.

Having ballistic weapons on board (MG, Cannon) is certainly an insurance policy, but getting down and dirty in a slug-fest is not, and should not, be a priority for a modern fighter.

It seems to me, that the general public still sees fighter pilots as those daring guys who put on their leather cap, toss their silk scarf around their neck and fly off into the puffy white clouds in search of thier adversary, charge their maxims and yell "Tally Ho!" (or Horrido!) as they dive into the fray and this tends to color the "jets must be dogfighters" argument.

Didn't they once compare the dogfight to a boxing match? Maybe the missile is the dancing around with a few punches here and there, with all the countermeasures there's around against them, using a good gun for the final technical knockout?

With all that it takes to fly a fighter today, aren't the pilots more of a gamer than anything else?

I disagree with some of this. The primary mission of a/c for a nation other than one like the US with the resources to take losses and replace them should not be to configure optimise your forces for air combat. That is now the primary department of ground based air defence systems. it is far more economical to win your air battle from the ground, and only when and where you need to.

For nations like mine, your airborne assets should of course have have air to air capability, for two reasons. If an enemy is penetrating your air space to deliver its packages on your assets, you may need your a/c airborne and able to knock them out of the sky as required. Bomber destroyers gents. Where your forces are set to deliver packages onto enemy assets, you want your assets survivable, which means undetectable, with sufficient defences to maximise your survivability and then get out of Dodge as quickly as you can. Strike aircraft. you don't use an aircraft like the F-35 to sweep into enemy airspace like the US cavalry and ride around the sky making as much noise as you can. You sneak into their airspace, blow the cr*p out of whatever you need to and then retreat to your own air space and try and shoot down their assets if they try to retaliate, on your terms.

Im not saying the F-35 is not an air superiority weapon. it most certainly is, but it does it in the modern way, not to outmoded tactical concepts.