Forum: F-35 Lightning II

Thus far the F-35 is a toothless pussy cat whih isn't cleared for ANY weapon at all. Great capability! EVERY combat aircraft before had at least a basic set of weapons cleared at the time it entered service even your much hated Typhoon did. So spare us your lame efforts to distract from reality by derailing the thread with off topic discussions! The Typhoon has nothing to do with it and the state of the Eurofighter programme doesn't change anything wrt the F-35 programme. Let alone that you are completely ignoring timelines and requirements, if you know them at all... The only one ignoring facts here is you and that's why you try to change subject and lure the discussion away from the hard reality about the F-35 whether you like it or not.

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sferrin wrote:

Sounds like the first F-16s

At the end of the day the F-35 is running trough the same procedure like any other combat aircraft, just the overlapping of different phases is different and that's it. In the end no special case for the F-35 at all neither positive nor negative.

Scorpion82 wrote:

Thus far the F-35 is a toothless pussy cat whih isn't cleared for ANY weapon at all.

*sigh* The F-35 may well technically be in service but its still being tested. When it actually enters into service with non test squadrons it will have weapons capability including A-G modes, an AESA radar and a defensive system that actually works.
I don't hate the Typhoon either, i'm merely pointing out that when it first entered non test squadron service it didn't have anywhere like the capability the F-35 will have when does.

It is really facinating to witness how a military program such as the F-35 can be brought into danger much due to inaccurate and biased reporting. The bad vibe that this reporting creates is being picked up and spun around the world on internet forums. For example, the latest bad news was that the F-35 won't be able to communicate on the radio in artic condisions. Fact: At present time it will communicate just as well as the current MLU F-16's in Norway, and the satcom is on it's way. I can tell you all, that the carification by the Norwegian MOD did not recieve the same big headlines like the first story was given.

Like it has been documented time and again, the development problems experienced here are quite typical for an aircraft program such as this. Furthermore, if one takes into account the level of technology being developed here, the critisism is even more malplaced.

LM are really beeing punished for the transparency they offer like no one else before. Even stealth is beeing dismissed. Why then, are the Russians and the Chinese building their own stealth aircraft? In this dangerous economic climate, i think that somone should really take their white gloves off, and maybye fight more offensive in the media war that this has become.

Scorpion82 wrote:

Apples and oranges comparison. The F-35 doesn't enter service with the full range of capabilities at all, the first aircraft are already delivered and severly restricted, in many cases even more than any other type before!

How many F-35s are IOC? the Block III is the "entering service" standard variant.

Scorpion82 wrote:

Apples and oranges comparison. The F-35 doesn't enter service with the full range of capabilities at all, the first aircraft are already delivered and severly restricted, in many cases even more than any other type before!

It is an A-to-A comparison because I was referring to IOC, no LRIP1 jets. The EF & Raf were billed as multirole fighters but when they went IOC they were unable to do large parts of that role. The F-35 does not suffer from that as it can complete any of it's multirole functions (A2A, A2G, LGB, ASW, etc) at IOC with Blk3.

Scorpion82 wrote:

Thus far the F-35 is a toothless pussy cat whih isn't cleared for ANY weapon at all. Great capability! EVERY combat aircraft before had at least a basic set of weapons cleared at the time it entered service

The F-35 HAS NOT entered service yet.

btw, Even those Blk1 F-35s delivered to Eglin AFB for training are fully capable of both A2A and A2G missions. What has not been done is the verification, through separation tests, of that capability. As soon as that is complete next year the Eglin F-35s (or any other) can start to demonstrate its already included capability.

For Reference, here is what is included in Blk1

SpudmanWP wrote:

It is an A-to-A comparison because I was referring to IOC, no LRIP1 jets. The EF & Raf were billed as multirole fighters but when they went IOC they were unable to do large parts of that role. The F-35 does not suffer from that as it can complete any of it's multirole functions (A2A, A2G, LGB, ASW, etc) at IOC with Blk3.

You have to take into account requirements and schedules of all these aircraft, not just those of the F-35. When Rafales and Typhoon were "entering" service they were largely fielded with OCUs and OEUs only. The French Navy accelerated introduction as it required a fighter to replace the F-8, AG had no priority at that time. Rafale F2s were multirole capable though it took time to integrate a number of weapons. Typhoon was always scheduled to enter service in a pure air defence configuration and evolve into a more flexible multirole platform latter. The F-35s primary mission is AG so it naturally enters service in that role first, while boasting a basic AA capability. Sure the F-35 might be more capable at the time it finally achieves IOC (when was it now 2017?2018?), but that's some 6-7 years after the first aircraft arrived for training! Maybe the blk III will be ready earlier for operational purposes as such, but its not such a fast track development as people like you try to imply. And considering the endless billions which are pured into this programme+what has been spent on the F-22 already which certainly helped quite a bit to save funds in the F-35 you better hope they do it somehow better than the much more cash constrained Europeans were politics were always throwing sumbling blocks in the way of the programmes. Thus far the F-35 has not seen any politically motivated delays when it comes to development funding etc. The sole delays were owed to technical difficulties caused by LM and partners.

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btw, Even those Blk1 F-35s delivered to Eglin AFB for training are fully capable of both A2A and A2G missions. What has not been done is the verification, through separation tests, of that capability. As soon as that is complete next year the Eglin F-35s (or any other) can start to demonstrate its already included capability.

And as long as weapons aren't cleared those block 1s will be toothless training jets only. Rafale F2s could do a lot of stuff sensor/avionics wise when they entered service but their multirole capabilities were severly restricted as a lot of weapons/stores weren't cleared at that time. Very much a not to dissimilar situation, except that neither a Rafale, Typhoon, nor F-22 or any other combat aircraft I'm aware off were fielded (and if just for operational evaluation and/or basic training) without having ever fired a weapon. I'm at least delighted to see that you don't repeat the nonsense argument of "F-35 can do everything and more the Rafale & Typhoon can do now".

One of the big time-savers that the F-35 program is using is concurrency (a bad word to some). This was planned to allow LRIP jets to be delivered while SDD was still commencing. They did plan on separation tests to be complete before the LRIP jets were delivered, but testing has suffered delays that prevented that from happening.

The disadvantage of that "time saver" is that you put a largely untested aircraft in production. The results of this can be seen, 64 aircraft must be fixed afterwards already and we can just hope that there won't be more, possibly even more serious flaws which must be fixed afterwards and I'm not talking about software issues, but structural design flaws etc. Btw as someone posted the number of days for various programmes...

Just F-35/Rafale/Typhoon as I know them on top of my head:

Programme start: March 1996/14th November 1982/16th December 1983
Development phase start: 26th October 2001/13th February 1987/23th November 1988
First flight of prototype: 15th December 2006/19th May 1991/27th March 1994
First production order: 21st April 2007/26th March 1993/18th September 1998
First flight of production aircraft: 25th February 2011/24th November 1998/5th April 2002
First delivery to customer: 14th July 2011/4th December 2000/30th June 2003

The early LRIP jets have been tested for the functions that they will initially serve, ie training. That fix to the wing is going to be accomplished at the same time that already planned upgrades (eg Blk1 --> Blk2, Blk2 --> Blk3, etc) will take place. The plane will not be offline for any significantly longer time than was already planned.

I think in a pinch the F-35 could be cleared for some weapons delivery pretty quickly.

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Multiple exposures of a GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) separating from the F-35 Lightning II aircraft during a test in Arnold Engineering Development Center's (AEDC) four-foot transonic wind tunnel. (Photo by Rick Goodfriend)

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I think in a pinch the F-35 could be cleared for some weapons delivery pretty quickly.

Like I said, the Blk1 jets currently at Eglin have nothing mechanical or in software that will keep them from using the features already in Blk1.

Forum: F-35 Lightning II

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