F-35 is ‘ACE’ - Test Pilots
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Joint Strike Fighter acing tests, pilots report By Dave Majumdar - Staff writer Feb 26, 2011
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2011/ ... t-022611w/
"The F-35 is getting a thumbs-up from the test pilots flying it.
Both military and civilian aviators give the Joint Strike Fighter high marks on speed, altitude and vertical takeoffs and landings, as well as for its avionics.
The single-engine jet has performed reliably up to Mach 1.2, slightly faster than the speed of sound, and in maneuvers up to 1 G, a unit of force equal to the force exerted by gravity. Now, the test pilots are assessing how the stealth warplane handles even higher speeds and greater Gs.
Once those flights are complete, the Air Force and Navy can train their instructor pilots and the Marine Corps can train its fleet pilots, said Squadron Leader Steve Long, a British Royal Air Force test pilot assigned to the JSF program. Long holds the record for the F-35’s fastest flight: Mach 1.3.
Ultimately, the test program will push the three variants of the aircraft to 50,000 feet, Mach 1.6 and 700 knots. The B model, the one to be flown by the Marine Corps, will reach a top speed of 630 knots. The Air Force variant, known as the A model, will be cleared to 9 Gs, the B model to 7 Gs and the Navy’s C model to 7.5 Gs.
Bound for Eglin Air Force Base
The F-35 test pilots have been focusing on common speeds and maneuvers so they can release the F-35 to instructor pilots at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.
“They don’t need to go at Mach 1.6 right now just to become familiar with the airplane and learn how to be instructors and all that sort of thing,” Long said. “There’s no real time pressure on us right now to get the speed headlines cleared out for us.”
The aviators have completed 23 vertical landings with the B-model aircraft, more than half of the 42 needed for the Marine Corps to begin trials at sea aboard an amphibious assault ship.
“We’ve done more vertical landings in the month of January” — 13 — “than we did last year. So this is coming fast now,” one of the test pilots, Marine Lt. Col. Matt Taylor, said in a telephone interview from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md.
Landing vertically in the F-35B is easy, Taylor said.
“I’ve flown a lot of airplanes. This is the easiest one there is to land,” said David “Doc” Nelson, who flies for Lockheed Martin, the F-35’s prime contractor.
Nelson said that even pilots who have never flown a vertical-landing aircraft, such as colleague Jon Beesley, have no trouble handling the F-35B.
The test pilots also raved about the JSF’s maneuverability, calling it a nimble machine. For example, the F-35 can handle better than a 40-degree angle of attack, which is related to the amount of lift.
“It flew great on its first flight and it’s flying great now, and we’re tweaking it to make it even better,” Taylor said.
Nelson said: “It’s not quite what an F-22 is, but it’s better than any legacy I’ve seen.”
At subsonic speeds, the F-35 can accelerate right alongside the more powerful twin-engine Raptor. Although the F-35 flies faster than sound, the F-22 is in a league of its own — a maximum speed of Mach 2.
The F-35 variants fly in remarkably similar fashion, the test pilots said.
“They did some trick with the flight controls to make all three variants feel the same,” Nelson said. “When you sit in the cockpit, all the hardware switches are the same. So if you blindfolded a guy, there is a possibility he wouldn’t know which jet he was in.”
Taylor, though, thinks the Navy’s C model, with its larger wings and stabilators, has a “slightly different” feel in parts of the flight envelope, a term that refers to design capabilities usually in terms of airspeed and altitude, and is “slightly draggier” than its sister versions.
‘A’ for avionics
The F-35’s mission systems are even more advanced than its flight characteristics, according to the test pilots.
“To me, the headlines aren’t how fast it goes and how many G’s it pulls, it’s how great that radar is and how great the [Electro-Optical Targeting System] and the [Distributed Aperture System] and the situational awareness that you get over [the Multifunction Advanced Data Link] and all those sort of features in the airplane,” Long said.
The radar, according to the aviators, is almost ready for combat, even with the basic software currently in place.
“I would just comment that the performance of the sensors at this early phase in a program is unlike any I’ve ever been part of,” Taylor said. “The fact that they work as well as they do and are as close to being ready to go to combat today is really impressive. I expect it to hold a lot of promise for how the airplane is going to be when it’s fielded.”
The pilots especially praised the plane’s synthetic aperture radar, which takes photo-quality images of the Earth’s surface, as well as the electronic warfare suite and the communications systems.
“I’ve seen a lot of mission systems programs start,” Nelson said, “and I’ve never seen one start like this.”
A few hiccups
Not all has been perfect, though.
The JSF has an engine “screech,” a disturbance in airflow; a phenomenon called “transonic wing roll-off,” in which it can roll unexpectedly; and a helmet-mounted display prone to latency and smearing. The problems have either been corrected or are being addressed, according to the test pilots.
“We have screech kits that we’re going to attach to the airplane that will trivialize its impact on the envelope,” Nelson said.
“Transonic roll-off, we’re investigating that and we have recently updated the software to minimize its effect on the handling characteristics of the airplane,” he said. “The transonic roll-off is something that has been overcome in many ways by the software update that we just got.”
As for the helmet-mounted display, Taylor said he and his colleagues are “on a path to get that stuff sorted out.”
“Obviously, the problems aren’t too bad, because we’re still flying the airplane and we’re using the helmet on every single flight,” Taylor said.
The helmet display gives the pilot a much larger field of view, and it uses infrared cameras to make nighttime flying similar to flying during the day, Nelson said.
“When the fleet has flown this airplane for several years and the guys are raving about their airplane, the F-35, the reason they’re going to love it is because nobody sees them and they see everything,” Taylor said.
Asked whether the F-35 is their warplane of choice to take into combat, the test pilots had the same answer: an unequivocal “yes.”
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2011/ ... t-022611w/
"The F-35 is getting a thumbs-up from the test pilots flying it.
Both military and civilian aviators give the Joint Strike Fighter high marks on speed, altitude and vertical takeoffs and landings, as well as for its avionics.
The single-engine jet has performed reliably up to Mach 1.2, slightly faster than the speed of sound, and in maneuvers up to 1 G, a unit of force equal to the force exerted by gravity. Now, the test pilots are assessing how the stealth warplane handles even higher speeds and greater Gs.
Once those flights are complete, the Air Force and Navy can train their instructor pilots and the Marine Corps can train its fleet pilots, said Squadron Leader Steve Long, a British Royal Air Force test pilot assigned to the JSF program. Long holds the record for the F-35’s fastest flight: Mach 1.3.
Ultimately, the test program will push the three variants of the aircraft to 50,000 feet, Mach 1.6 and 700 knots. The B model, the one to be flown by the Marine Corps, will reach a top speed of 630 knots. The Air Force variant, known as the A model, will be cleared to 9 Gs, the B model to 7 Gs and the Navy’s C model to 7.5 Gs.
Bound for Eglin Air Force Base
The F-35 test pilots have been focusing on common speeds and maneuvers so they can release the F-35 to instructor pilots at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.
“They don’t need to go at Mach 1.6 right now just to become familiar with the airplane and learn how to be instructors and all that sort of thing,” Long said. “There’s no real time pressure on us right now to get the speed headlines cleared out for us.”
The aviators have completed 23 vertical landings with the B-model aircraft, more than half of the 42 needed for the Marine Corps to begin trials at sea aboard an amphibious assault ship.
“We’ve done more vertical landings in the month of January” — 13 — “than we did last year. So this is coming fast now,” one of the test pilots, Marine Lt. Col. Matt Taylor, said in a telephone interview from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md.
Landing vertically in the F-35B is easy, Taylor said.
“I’ve flown a lot of airplanes. This is the easiest one there is to land,” said David “Doc” Nelson, who flies for Lockheed Martin, the F-35’s prime contractor.
Nelson said that even pilots who have never flown a vertical-landing aircraft, such as colleague Jon Beesley, have no trouble handling the F-35B.
The test pilots also raved about the JSF’s maneuverability, calling it a nimble machine. For example, the F-35 can handle better than a 40-degree angle of attack, which is related to the amount of lift.
“It flew great on its first flight and it’s flying great now, and we’re tweaking it to make it even better,” Taylor said.
Nelson said: “It’s not quite what an F-22 is, but it’s better than any legacy I’ve seen.”
At subsonic speeds, the F-35 can accelerate right alongside the more powerful twin-engine Raptor. Although the F-35 flies faster than sound, the F-22 is in a league of its own — a maximum speed of Mach 2.
The F-35 variants fly in remarkably similar fashion, the test pilots said.
“They did some trick with the flight controls to make all three variants feel the same,” Nelson said. “When you sit in the cockpit, all the hardware switches are the same. So if you blindfolded a guy, there is a possibility he wouldn’t know which jet he was in.”
Taylor, though, thinks the Navy’s C model, with its larger wings and stabilators, has a “slightly different” feel in parts of the flight envelope, a term that refers to design capabilities usually in terms of airspeed and altitude, and is “slightly draggier” than its sister versions.
‘A’ for avionics
The F-35’s mission systems are even more advanced than its flight characteristics, according to the test pilots.
“To me, the headlines aren’t how fast it goes and how many G’s it pulls, it’s how great that radar is and how great the [Electro-Optical Targeting System] and the [Distributed Aperture System] and the situational awareness that you get over [the Multifunction Advanced Data Link] and all those sort of features in the airplane,” Long said.
The radar, according to the aviators, is almost ready for combat, even with the basic software currently in place.
“I would just comment that the performance of the sensors at this early phase in a program is unlike any I’ve ever been part of,” Taylor said. “The fact that they work as well as they do and are as close to being ready to go to combat today is really impressive. I expect it to hold a lot of promise for how the airplane is going to be when it’s fielded.”
The pilots especially praised the plane’s synthetic aperture radar, which takes photo-quality images of the Earth’s surface, as well as the electronic warfare suite and the communications systems.
“I’ve seen a lot of mission systems programs start,” Nelson said, “and I’ve never seen one start like this.”
A few hiccups
Not all has been perfect, though.
The JSF has an engine “screech,” a disturbance in airflow; a phenomenon called “transonic wing roll-off,” in which it can roll unexpectedly; and a helmet-mounted display prone to latency and smearing. The problems have either been corrected or are being addressed, according to the test pilots.
“We have screech kits that we’re going to attach to the airplane that will trivialize its impact on the envelope,” Nelson said.
“Transonic roll-off, we’re investigating that and we have recently updated the software to minimize its effect on the handling characteristics of the airplane,” he said. “The transonic roll-off is something that has been overcome in many ways by the software update that we just got.”
As for the helmet-mounted display, Taylor said he and his colleagues are “on a path to get that stuff sorted out.”
“Obviously, the problems aren’t too bad, because we’re still flying the airplane and we’re using the helmet on every single flight,” Taylor said.
The helmet display gives the pilot a much larger field of view, and it uses infrared cameras to make nighttime flying similar to flying during the day, Nelson said.
“When the fleet has flown this airplane for several years and the guys are raving about their airplane, the F-35, the reason they’re going to love it is because nobody sees them and they see everything,” Taylor said.
Asked whether the F-35 is their warplane of choice to take into combat, the test pilots had the same answer: an unequivocal “yes.”
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I doubt he has ever flown a Eurocanard though I can't find a list of what types he has flown in.
Rafale has got to higher AOA from what I understand in tests but that was with all the safety limiters turned off beforehand and they they can't do it operationally. You see them max out the AOA at airshows on them and its not impressive like a Superhornet, Flanker or F-22.
Rafale has got to higher AOA from what I understand in tests but that was with all the safety limiters turned off beforehand and they they can't do it operationally. You see them max out the AOA at airshows on them and its not impressive like a Superhornet, Flanker or F-22.
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shep1978 wrote:I doubt he has ever flown a Eurocanard though I can't find a list of what types he has flown in.
If so, why are you claiming that?:
AOA exceeding that of the Eurocanards
Does you have any proofs to confirm it? Just curious about that.
Regards
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Shep, you must be mistaken. These psuedo-internet experts know much more that the pilot that have hundreds, if not thousands of hours in operational fighters, have transitioned to the F35 and say what they say above. How could a pilot know better than a computer/internet jockey???? 
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To be fair to him I don't think Rapec was coming at it from that angle.
But it should be fun to see the anger and bitterness over on the Key pub forums when people start noticing this, I've already seen one of the usual idiots there claim the F-35 can't do high AOA just this morning, he'll be devestated and in denial when he finda out it does it better than his beloved Typhoon can.
But it should be fun to see the anger and bitterness over on the Key pub forums when people start noticing this, I've already seen one of the usual idiots there claim the F-35 can't do high AOA just this morning, he'll be devestated and in denial when he finda out it does it better than his beloved Typhoon can.
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I know many people wil be very dissapointed and hurt when they find even just what is publicly released. Just as with the F22, it will do far more than the public will ever know, at least for about 20 more years, that is unless some unsuspecting advesary dares to try to fly against it. I offer my condolences to them in advance, they, or their widows and orphans will need them.
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JetTest wrote:How could a pilot know better than a computer/internet jockey????
I think this accusation refers to my person and thank you JetTest for thoughtful opinion. Sadly, you are wrong but this doesn't matter.
JetTest wrote:These psuedo-internet experts know much more that the pilot that have hundreds, if not thousands of hours in operational fighters, have transitioned to the F35 and say what they say above. How could a pilot know better than a computer/internet jockey????
JetTest ----> FYI I'm actually for, not against, F-35.
I was just asking what and where are the basas to the statement:
AOA exceeding that of the Eurocanards
as I didn't find any clues in the article about that.
In fact I'm interested in modern fighters maneuverability and I recall articles like those:
http://www.livescience.com/3032-fighter ... fleet.html
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/news/pres ... aight.html
where test pilots clearly say that in terms of subsonic maneuverability -in combat configuration- F-35 will exceed (to what extent this is another question) other 4 and 4.5 gen fighters. What's more, I would like that my country (Poland) in distant future purchase some F-35A for MiG-29 replacement, but due to financial reasons this is not going to happen before 2030.
shep1978 wrote:To be fair to him I don't think Rapec was coming at it from that angle.
Thanks
- as I wasn't coming from that angle.
Regards
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The F-35 should have a better AOA because it's not carrying weapons on the wings like all the other fighters except the F-22. But this is really a mute point as a fighter jet is not going to out turn a modern missile any way. The name of the game now is first detection and first shot with a hypersonic missile like the upcomming dual role air dominance missile (DRADM) before the enemy plane can detect and fire.
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Well this is good news.
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Just because missiles are getting faster doesn't mean fighters won't be able to outmaneuver them. It's the same as now, fire a missile from max range and a fighter shouldn't have much trouble bleeding the missile out of energy. Fire within the NEZ and it's all down to counter measures. The latter might be the norm in stealth vs stealth though.
I do agree on the need to get first shot though.
I do agree on the need to get first shot though.
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shep1978 wrote:I say it because the article states that the F-35 has gone beyond 40 degress AOA whilst as far as i'm aware the Typhoons, Rafales and Gripens can only reach about 35 degrees.
And folks like Jon Beesley, and others have given figures as high as 55 deg AoA, for that matter.
The Eurocanards are operationally limited to 25-35 deg.
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Hey exorcet, so while the enemy plane is trying to evade the incoming hypersonic missile launched from max range the F-35 will be lining the enemy plane for a secondary kill shot with an Amraam or Sidewinder. By detecting and shooting first with a high speed missile you put the enemy plane in a totally defensive position.
Using the specs of the Meteor Missile as a guide, it has a range of about 100 KM and a speed of Mach 4. Assuming the enemy plane is traveling around mach 1 that gives him approximely 50-55 seconds to detect and evade the missile. The missile having traveled aprox. 83 km and the enemy airplane aprox. 17 km. Considering the equation for Kinetic Energy is (Ke=0.5*mass*velocity*velocity) I would say the chances of the enemy airplane running the missle out of energy are pretty slim to none.
Using the specs of the Meteor Missile as a guide, it has a range of about 100 KM and a speed of Mach 4. Assuming the enemy plane is traveling around mach 1 that gives him approximely 50-55 seconds to detect and evade the missile. The missile having traveled aprox. 83 km and the enemy airplane aprox. 17 km. Considering the equation for Kinetic Energy is (Ke=0.5*mass*velocity*velocity) I would say the chances of the enemy airplane running the missle out of energy are pretty slim to none.
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