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Enthusiast Joined: Dec 13, 2006 Posts: 52 Status: Offline

I have been watching the F-35 fly and looking at the photos from LM and I was wondering about the almost constant vapor trails coming off of the airplane.

Were they expected to this extent?
Does this vapor detract from the combat visibility of the aircraft?
Does it matter in this day and age?
Will they engineer them out of the airplane?

Just curious.

Z

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Elite 1K Joined: Jan 31, 2004 Posts: 1561 Status: Offline

The wingtip vortices probably won't be seen visually at high altitudes (not the right conditions). You can, obviously, get exhaust contrails up high but the mission planning takes the predicted conning altitude into account and tries to avoid 'em.

The wingtip aerodynamics that generate the vortices are also predicted and refined in the design phase to minimize wingtip drag while still staying in design parameters.

If you're down low in a real daylight attack mode, the enemy has probably already seen ya visually, so your vapes are the least of your worries at that point. Wink

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Forum: F-35 Lightning II

AA-1 vapor trails