6 F-35s land on Wasp for testing

[spazsinbad]

Hey 'optimist' Welcome (that is what BillyBoy said to 'mauswhatever' over on pPRUNe). One wonders about BS indeed - but only for a microsecond or so.

Good deck crew check everything all the time - no matter how closely - otherwise what else do they do? Check Check and Check again we hope. And besides this is how things go on a flat deck at sea. Check CVN checkers of arrestor gear for example. BTW the LHA scorch checker is in the first video on that page.

I'm wondering if the SCORCH is partly composed of some carbon from UNBURNT JET FUEL. However I do acknowledge the cleanliness of exhausts compared to the olden tymes ones (see vid - guess which one has the engine mod to decrease smoke - or engine failure).

[spazsinbad]

Gast your FLAB (Flabbergasted) on this one:

[neptune]

:.. One wonders about BS indeed - but only for a microsecond or so...

..the BS sidekick has some good? interim videos from her visit out to the Wasp...

[sferrin]

PS - Note the bloke making a very careful walk-around visual check of the landing spot at 4:15-4:45.

What video is he talking about that is 4+ minutes long?

[optimist]

The first video on the page by Amy
http://aviationweek.com/blog/videos-f-3 ... dium=email

[lookieloo]

It must be going well, if the dribble of a bitter old man can only come up with this on pprune

The STOVL flight control is impressive. And after a lot of time and money - STOVL has added double-digit gigabucks to R&D, starting with the two engines - the system has become reliable enough to perform repeated operations with journos watching. Also, congrats are due if they actually did practice an afloat engine and lift-fan change.

However...

+ $50 million per airplane
+ >4,000 lb deadweight
- 5,000 lb internal gas

Not to mention that the CTOL airplane has its wingspan dictated by parking on the Wasps, and its overall length constrained by the elevators on the Invincibles.

Now all we need from the Marines is a CONOPS that makes an iota of sense and we're off to the races.

PS - Note the bloke making a very careful walk-around visual check of the landing spot at 4:15-4:45.

I also noticed "the bloke making a very careful walk-around visual check of the landing spot." It struck me as just a common-sense thing to do with a new plane and deck-coating. Billy should also note that it's just a joe making a visual assessment, not some Lockheed boffin with suitcase full of equipment.

The other day he was gushing over the nonchalant testing of a new Swedish radar system and said something along the lines of "sometimes, it's not what you do but how you do it." Regular Marines doing regular stuff is boring, and that's a good thing. I guess we'll all have to wait until the USS America receives its modifications for things to get interesting again. See ya then Bill.

[hurricaneditka]

'sferrin' DVIDS is a problematic website to find images - go there often enough and it probably gets easier but they can have a zillion photos of one event meaning sorting/going backwards by date can be tiresome. I guess there are many ways to skin the cat there but meanwhile having the URL for the photos really helps those willing to register to get the best resolution pics / videos available and of course YMMV & site can be SLOW. So here is the URL for the engine photos:

https://www.dvidshub.net/image/1949783/ ... V9uTukw8kI
HI REZ: https://www.dvidshub.net/download/image/1949783 (JPG 2.7Mb) 2100x1500 puxels

https://www.dvidshub.net/image/1949777/ ... V9v-ukw8kI
HI REZ: https://www.dvidshub.net/download/image/1949777 (JPG 2.5Mb) 2100x1500 puxybits

Zipped Gallery JPG examples may be downloaded also: https://www.dvidshub.net/download/gallery/setid/533606
ZIP file 8.8 Mbs All the four available images in HIREZ (sometimes they are NOT hirez). It is an odd website indeedy.

Five Parted Engine F135 modules from: http://www.dodig.mil/pubs/documents/DODIG-2015-111.pdf (2.2Mb)

http://www.navyrecognition.com/images/s ... very_3.jpg
&
http://www.amdo.org/JSF_Program_and_33_FW_Updates.pdf (3.5Mb)

Sorry if this is too far off-topic, but this is one of the most detailed posts I've seen on the F-35's engine components. Are any / most of these components interchangeable between the A, B, and C variants? In other words, could the power module be pulled out of an F-35A's engine and be put into an F-35B's engine, or are there differences there?

[neptune]

...

Sorry if this is too far off-topic, but this is one of the most detailed posts I've seen on the F-35's engine components. Are any / most of these components interchangeable between the A, B, and C variants? In other words, could the power module be pulled out of an F-35A's engine and be put into an F-35B's engine, or are there differences there?

Variants[edit]
F135-PW-100 : Used in the F-35A Conventional Take-Off and Landing variant
F135-PW-400 : Used in the F-35C carrier variant
F135-PW-600 : Used in the F-35B Short Take-Off Vertical Landing variant

...usually the B & C are "marinized" (for suckin' seawater) vs. the A (non-suckin')....to you and me they would probably look the same....Oh!, the B also has that fan "thingee" attached up front...

[newmanfrigan]

"Now all we need from the Marines is a CONOPS that makes an iota of sense and we're off to the races."

---Bill Sweetman
Saab Public Relations
Linkoping, Sweden



This part is the one that is most outrageous and offensive to me. Why on earth does Bill Sweetman think he knows what a good conop or a bad conop is?

Networked, Distributed STOVL ops in the Pacific seem absolutely ideal for a 21st Century Marine Corps CONOPs, but that might be up for some debate. ...some debate between people who actually know what they're talking about, not folks who write children's books on fighter planes. I want to know where Bill gets off, because I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who doesn't give two tosses what a blowhard who has never served and/or is not academically qualified, has to say.

He's good at writing about historical aviation. Retrospectively, he's fine. All the tech details are public domain, history has been recorded, and he assembles those already-known quantities and qualities for his readers. That's lovely, but when it comes to the future, the present and even the last few decades, there is a glaring absence of comprehension in Bill's public writings. The best example I can immediately think of is the article he wrote on the SU-35, saying that the Russians were banking on surviving barrages of AMRAAMs with their supermaneuverability, while simultaneously maintaining their energy state during these wild maneuvers. This would then allow them to somehow merge and kill F-35s that they would have no idea how to find in the first place. That piece was so out-of-touch with modern technology and CONOPs, that it should have been enough to flush anyone's credibility down the toilet permanently. It's fan-fiction, foxtrot-alpha level BS.

When he wrote about new Russian and Chinese radars rendering "stealth" ineffective he demonstrated publically that he doesn't really understand how sensors work in the EM spectrum, what those sensors can see and can't,what processing power and Moore's Law mean vis-à-vis processing sensor data, etc. Come on man! ....like Skunkworks, N.G., L-3, Raytheon, etc don't understand or didn't think about passive, or bistatic sensors? I mean, come on! Fighting within and managing the EM spectrum is EXACTLY what the F-35 is designed to do and there isn't another platform on earth that will be able to exploit it as well.

....it just frustrates me. It seems like he should know better, but is just playing dumb to spread FUD.

[bring_it_on]

:bang: ....it just frustrates me. It seems like he should know better, but is just playing dumb to spread FUD.

It sells..Plus he is an international editor. Throughout his career he has taken pot shots at the US services and even US made systems. He just kicks it up a notch when it comes to his forum posts. Also, have you heard any AvWeek podcast where he doesn't bring up SAAB? He could have been talking about ice-cream and he'll manage to bring up the Gripen.

Years back he had an article basically taking an opposition to the USMC's existence (he used something like - "The US Navy's, army has its own air-force")..I have it saved somewhere, i'll try to dig it up.

[cantaz]

He could have been talking about ice-cream and he'll manage to bring up the Gripen.

Did you know that the Gripen is the only 6th gen fighter to include its own icecream dispensing capability?

[newmanfrigan]

:bang: ....it just frustrates me. It seems like he should know better, but is just playing dumb to spread FUD.

It sells..Plus he is an international editor. Throughout his career he has taken pot shots at the US services and even US made systems. He just kicks it up a notch when it comes to his forum posts. Also, have you heard any AvWeek podcast where he doesn't bring up SAAB? He could have been talking about ice-cream and he'll manage to bring up the Gripen.

Years back he had an article basically taking an opposition to the USMC's existence (he used something like - "The US Navy's, army has its own air-force")..I have it saved somewhere, i'll try to dig it up.

Dig it up so others can see it, but I am familiar with that piece as well. He doesn't believe Naval Infantry should exist, because WWII was a long time ago? That was the thrust of his logic I think, in a nutshell ...but the Pacific is still there and soldiers are still required to capture and hold territory. It seems self-evident to me that the USMC should exist. FFS!

He writes about Saabs GaN technology as if it's as groundbreaking as the Apollo Moon landing.

CONSPIRACY THEORY TIME: ....wonder if somebody at LM was feeding him dribs and drabs of disinfo during the Cold War, regarding the Aurora. I'm Aurora agnostic, because I've seen some, shall we say, unusual aerospace vehicles while stargazing in the desert. Nothing hypersonic, but very unusual all the same. If Bill got burned by somebody using him for disinfo, then he might have a motive for his venom. It could also be something more petty, like a personal issue. Who knows? All I can tell is that BS is full of himself, namely, full of BS.

Maybe a Marine stole his girlfriend or ran over his dog?

[Dragon029]

Sorry if this is too far off-topic, but this is one of the most detailed posts I've seen on the F-35's engine components. Are any / most of these components interchangeable between the A, B, and C variants? In other words, could the power module be pulled out of an F-35A's engine and be put into an F-35B's engine, or are there differences there?

I don't know the answer to this, but it's worth noting that F-35Cs have flown with (F-35A) F135-PW-100 engines previously (and not too long ago), which suggests a fair bit of commonality.

[spazsinbad]

It is strange about the F135 engines. LM say that the A & C are the same with same reference number on their 'fast fact sheets' for a very long time now. There have been a few debates on this forum about what ANY differences might be for the A & C variant engines and even though some wisdom says that some parts of the 'same as the A' C engine have been buttressed against sea water corrosion, it makes sense to me to just make the A/C engines the same, after all we see photos of the washdowns at Eglin AFB of the A version after landing. Having the same engines in the A/C variants must save money during manufacture? About whether the five modules are interchangeable I would guess that they are but that is all it is - a guess. And as pointed out the B variant needs the LiftFan components.

F-35 Lightning II Program Status and Fast Facts April 23, 2015
https://www.f35.com/assets/uploads/down ... 2q2015.pdf (75Kb)

(also attached in this forum) download/file.php?id=20547

[spazsinbad]

:bang: ....it just frustrates me. It seems like he should know better, but is just playing dumb to spread FUD.

It sells..Plus he is an international editor. Throughout his career he has taken pot shots at the US services and even US made systems. He just kicks it up a notch when it comes to his forum posts. Also, have you heard any AvWeek podcast where he doesn't bring up SAAB? He could have been talking about ice-cream and he'll manage to bring up the Gripen.

Years back he had an article basically taking an opposition to the USMC's existence (he used something like - "The US Navy's, army has its own air-force")..I have it saved somewhere, i'll try to dig it up.

Yes BS is an odd one indeed - I recall that quote (or similar). BS is a reverse Rumpelstiltskin - spinning straw from gold - about the USMC in particular and the F-35B specifically:

"...In order to make himself appear more superior, a miller lies to the king, telling him that his daughter can spin straw into gold..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpelstiltskin

viewtopic.php?f=58&t=25647&p=277744&hilit=army+land+bill#p277744

AND: viewtopic.php?f=22&t=24483&p=267726&hilit=army+land+bill#p267726
BS says:

"...[A-10s] would give the Navy's army's air force a mission."