Forum: F-35 Lightning II

Bill Sweetman has done some very excellent articles on this very topic going back almost 10 years. Good reading on a recent piece he did...

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/de ... 3b42a17b93

F-16.net Sponsor

Every time I read about the whole "export JSFs will not be as stealthy as the US ones" I have to wonder if the partners included in their respective contracts exactly what the guaranteed RCS values are. If they made sure they were spelled out and LM delivers those values to them then they have no room to complain if the US said "we want better than that" and gets it. If they did NOT specify what RCS values they requiered then they also have no room to complain. The only case in which they have any ground whatsoever to stand on is if they spelled out the specific values and they aren't getting them. What the US gets is completely irrelevant.

Have there been any recent announcements re LO/CLO Excom's decision re the F-35? World Airpower wrote about this too a few years back. They said that there'd be considerable problems with having different levels of stealth. There would have to be different software modeling for threat transmitters, different materials testing, and upgrade compatability testing throughout the life of the program. Obviously, there would be considerable problems with exporting the highest level of stealth as well. It would mean access to the threat modeling software that could tell an adversary exactly where the F-35 is vulnerable as well as access to hardware and materials.

My understanding is that the various CINCs weighed in too and opined that there should be one level of stealth in order to facilitate inter-operability and mission planning and in order to avoid the political hot potato of an allie's F-35 aircraft being downgraded and more vulnerable than a US one.

Mike

psychmike wrote:

My understanding is that the various CINCs weighed in too and opined that there should be one level of stealth in order to facilitate inter-operability and mission planning and in order to avoid the political hot potato of an allie's F-35 aircraft being downgraded and more vulnerable than a US one.

Mike

Kinda strikes me as complaining your Enzo is "less fast" than a Veyron when everybody else is selling Model T's. Wink

Quote:

competitors will continue to point out that if your JSF is not as stealthy as the US JSFs in the theatre, your primary mission will be that of an armed decoy.

now, this is quite too much... "less stealthy" doesnt mean "honking like a truck and pulling a 15 meter Hey Shoot Me If You Can banner"

Lets not forget that not every potencial F-35 buyer is in the development consortium, neither will they have factory specs to come about arguing their RCS are not as promised.

Maffa wrote:

Quote:

competitors will continue to point out that if your JSF is not as stealthy as the US JSFs in the theatre, your primary mission will be that of an armed decoy.

now, this is quite too much... "less stealthy" doesnt mean "honking like a truck and pulling a 15 meter Hey Shoot Me If You Can banner"

Show me the RCS and thd dB. Laughing

Back in 2006 or so it was announced that LM is spending about 1 bln $ to develop an export version of the F-35 with inferior stealth capabilities, but it is said that this does not affect the participating nations.

Quote:

Back in 2006 or so it was announced that LM is spending about 1 bln $ to develop an export version of the F-35 with inferior stealth capabilities, but it is said that this does not affect the participating nations.

Id say it looks clear that someone forgot something important in those MoU. Confusion rules.

One thing to consider: the shape of the aircraft is not changing for the partner countries. In that aspect of LO, they won't be a difference (unless an export version is designed with a different OML shape but I doubt even that...takes too much design work to develop a whole different ship-set with different structural sizing, run new CFD analysis, etc.). But shape is only one part of LO, another crucial part is the coatings. These coatings, and all information regarding these coatings, are export controlled and are not releasable to foreign countries. I have no clue what the path forward for the partner countries is; maybe we will allow them certain kinds of information/coatings, or maybe the partner countries have to develop their own. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

Keep in mind, guys, that for years we've been exporting F-16s with different and less-capable software in them. The US would be foolish to export its best technology to ANYONE. I wouldn't be surprised if the Saudi, Japanese and Korean F-15s are less-capable software-wise than USAF jets, either.

Ever looked at a classified T.O. and seen the words "Secret--NOFORN" on its pages? "NOFORN" means do not disclose to any foreigners--even Brits, Aussies, and Canadians. I submit that the -22 and -35 fall well within those parameters.

The various agreements between the USAF and the other countries regarding the technical specification of the JSF is be classified. I won't even begin to describe how complex those discussion were when I was in SAF/IA, but suffice it to say the various issues brought up in this thread are but the tip of an iceberg.

LO'CLO Excom decisions in this area are always classified as well, so don't expect much in the way of a "public announcement"

Note WRT to the "armed decoy" comment: It's tactically advantageous to the US if a potential adversary is uncertain as to whether US and coalition F-35s differ in their RCS and if so by how much. Also, those differences would be known to a coalition commander - the less stealthy airplanes may not be sent downtown on Day 1. And as sferrin points out, the customers know what their RCS KPPs are. On the other hand, this underlies the point that LM's "fifth-generation" shtick is a gross over-simplification; and raises the issue of whether the US aircraft will be more robust versus developing detection technologies.

It has been suggested here that the devil is in the details...i think this is a fair assessment.
Although we will never know the details, I think all we can do is weigh the possibilities.

1. I don`t think there will be be too many differences in airframe shape, increased production costs could be unacceptable, without even going into political wrangling about selling a Buick for export versus a Camero.

2. I don`t think the US is going to let Elvis out of the building with 30 years of stealth development blueprints in his back pocket, a few pages may be missing even if that does happen.
"US F-35`s buy the farm because the opposition knew exactly how to defeat it", this headline isn`t going to appear on an editor`s desk. Not because the opposition had a good hard look at an export version anyway...

3. The basic aircraft may end up being the same but I would bet good money that, on the inside these will be very different birds. It is perfectly understandable for the USAF to want to hold the Aces, anything else would be foolhardy.

The negotiations are complicated, as stated by Roscoe. You have to believe that the US is doing the best job she can to safeguard it`s stealth lead.
It would be easy to believe that the F-35 will not even approach the same levels of stealthiness vis s vis the F-22, this would make export much more palatable for congress and the air force.

LowObservable wrote:

Note WRT to the "armed decoy" comment: It's tactically advantageous to the US if a potential adversary is uncertain as to whether US and coalition F-35s differ in their RCS and if so by how much. Also, those differences would be known to a coalition commander - the less stealthy airplanes may not be sent downtown on Day 1. And as sferrin points out, the customers know what their RCS KPPs are. On the other hand, this underlies the point that LM's "fifth-generation" shtick is a gross over-simplification; and raises the issue of whether the US aircraft will be more robust versus developing detection technologies.

Would it really be a night and day difference between the two though? I'm sure there are maintainability sections in the contract (one would HOPE there is anyway- along with RCS values) so it's not as though they can just use F-117-type RAM/RAS and get the same numbers as the newer stuff. And we have no idea how different (or even IF it's different) the RCS might between the "US version" and everybody else. If it's only 10% that's still better than everyone else in town. Basically it's what I said though; what RCS did they state they wanted in the contracts and are they getting it. I wonder if it's a case of the contracts being written with values attainable at the time of writing and there having been some advancements made since then and the US is dumping those into their F-35s and giving everybody else the agreed upon, older numbers. Regardless if it's a case of "the US said they were going to give us an RCS of X and now they're not but they get to have it" then all they'd have to do is whip out the contract and take the case to court. Makes you wonder why they haven't.

Forum: F-35 Lightning II

My JSF is stealthier than yours, or is it?