New Heritage Foundation Report

[blain]

AF pilots say they want the F-35As. Former Boeing executive wants the AF to buy a fighter from Boeing. John Venable is out with a new report. He suggests ramping up production to 72 aircraft per year.

https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/ ... BG3406.pdf

[Corsair1963]

Honestly, they should do a report with all of the former F-15 Pilots that now fly the F-35. Asking them if the USAF should acquire the F-15EX.....

[marsavian]

Recommendations

The U.S. Congress should fund and authorize the Air Force to purchase 72 F-35As in the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020, and 360 over the Five-Year Defense Plan (FYDP).

The Department of Defense should approve full-rate production of the F-35A, and move to field the F-35A as rapidly as possible. The DOD should forego the acquisition of fourth-generation F-15EX fighters, and acquire 72 F-35As in 2020, while also funding the associated spare parts accounts.


The F-35 Joint Program Office should:

Repair the visual challenges and conflicts within the HMDS as an urgent operational requirement.

Elevate the requirement for and adequately fund a robust embedded training suite of capabilities within the F-35. That suite should include user-friendly software that has a selection of both canned (pre-programmed) and tailorable mission scenarios, and a level of fidelity that allows multi-ship F-35A packages to find, fix, sort, and target layered SAM systems that are pulled from the jet’s threat library.

Install concurrent software updates for the F-35A simulator in line with those made to the aircraft.

More rapidly improve F-35A Distributed Mission Training to increase the number of simulators connected through the Distributed Mission Training System to the standard number of aircraft in an LFE package.

Improve user transparency of its global parts supply system for the F-35A, accelerate the delivery of those parts, provide users with visibility of those parts as they are in transit, and bring delivery schedules for those parts up to modern-day global-supply-chain-management standards.

Increase the number of personnel dedicated to resolving maintenance action requests (ARs) and the number of teams it makes available for on-site troubleshooting.

Increase parts availability and maintenance visibility into parts sourcing, improve scheduling, and rapidly increase the joint technical data available to maintenance personnel.


The Air Force should:

Increase the average number of sorties for line fighter pilot wingmen, flight leads, and instructors to a minimum of three flights in the aircraft a week to grow or sustain their skill sets, as well as grow the F-35A experience
level with the CAF. In order to accomplish that, it should institute aggressive flying-hour contracts in all wings operating at or above IOC to grow the breadth of fighter and maintenance experience as rapidly as possible.

Segregate the costs associated with overloading unit maintenance manning for the sake of expediting the spin-up of future F-35A bed-down locations, and exclude those costs from F-35A O&M cost calculations.


Conclusion

The Joint Strike Fighter program has endured its share of growing pains, but the F-35A is now fully operational, and those flying the jet have complete confidence in its ability to operate in and around the most intense threat environments in the world. While it will take several more years before the jet, its simulators, maintenance, and logistical support fully realize their potential, the technical issues that limited the early operational employment of the JSF have been overcome, and there is no doubt in the minds of those flying the F-35A at Hill AFB that, even now, this is the most dominant and lethal multi-role weapons system in the world. It is time to field this game-changing weapons system as rapidly as possible.

—John Venable, a graduate of the USAF Fighter
Weapons Instructor Course with more than 3,300 hours
in the F-16C, is Senior Research Fellow in the Center for
National Defense, of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom
Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy,
at The Heritage Foundation.

[doge]

https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/BG3406.pdf

It seems that one F-22 pilot has newly joined the Rating interview. F-22 seems to have exceeded all in Maneuverability Rating. (F-22 All"5" vs. F-35 All"4". (According to one F-22 pilot.))

The former F-22 pilot rated the F-35A fours in all areas and the F-22A all fives. F-22A assessment numbers are included in the “all pilots surveyed” depiction.

This time Pilots rate chart for Maneuverability was a bit different from the previous chart. (Excluding F-15C. (This time F-15C pilot is absent.))
In CHART 1, everything seems to be slightly lower than before, or almost no change.
Chart 2 also appears to be slightly lower overall than the previous chart.
(Maybe the difference in the number of people is involved? (Previously 31 people(2016). This time 21 people(2018).))

Maneuverability 2016-2018.gif (118.58 KiB) Viewed 29055 times

New charts for Avionics and Sensors have appeared.

F-35's RWR and ECM seem to be very high.
On the other hand, I wondered about radar.
I was surprised that the F-15E's radar was above the F-35's radar , and I read the F-22's annotation, and question or confusion arose.
this...

The F-22A pilot rated the F-35A as a five in every area except visibility (3), and rated the F-22A all fives except integration of offboard sensors (4).

F-15E > F-35=F-22
In the case of simply arranging based on these, The order of the radar becomes like this. (I get confused while writing. )
Is the F-15E's radar so much powerful??

and...

Visibility
Ergonomics/ease of employment

These seem to be low, is the 5th Gen fighter not so comfortable to ride? (or, Is it will just unaccustomed to yet?)
(For me these are full of mysteries! (Sorry for the strange post... ))

[disconnectedradical]

I’m surprised F-35A is rated lower than F-15C and F-16C on instantaneous turn. I thought from performance chart from a tear ago the F-35 instantaneous should be better.

[hythelday]

deleted

[hornetfinn]

F-15E > F-35=F-22
In the case of simply arranging based on these, The order of the radar becomes like this. (I get confused while writing. )
Is the F-15E's radar so much powerful??

F-15E AESA is very possibly more powerful than AN/APG-81 as it has larger antenna. But effective range difference is likely in the region of 10-20%, likely not more than that. It might also be many other qualities of the radar like ease of use and general feel of the system. For example in F-15 the radar is pretty much directly connected to cockpit displays while in F-35 radar data goes through the data fusion system. This might have some effect on how pilot sees the system especially if they are more used to legacy systems.

[sferrin]

I wonder if somebody pencil-whipped the "new" F-15 numbers as a fig leaf for the new F-15 buy.

[linkomart]

On the other hand, I wondered about radar.
I was surprised that the F-15E's radar was above the F-35's radar , and I read the F-22's annotation, and question or confusion arose.

I guess there are three possible factors:
* The F-15 has a bigger (AESA) radar, with more Power and therefore range and/or
* There is no stealth mode, so it can be active all the time whereas F-35 probably most the time go in power off or LPI mode, and/or
* The maturity of the radar can be shaky...

my 5 cent.

[doge]

Thank you for your reply, everyone!
Although It's a small antenna diameter and nose, but "it's very close to the F-15E's radar, and omparable to the F-22's radar", to that F-35's radar performance, I will (very much)satisfied for now. (Applause)

(It's also satisfying that RWR and ECM were also very higher than others...(Personally) )

[sprstdlyscottsmn]

I find the universally poor visibility and ergonomics interesting. I guess bezzel buttons are easy to use and a 20 in screen can be highly susceptible to glare.

[quicksilver]

There are some recurring behaviors in aircraft transitions (for pilots). After having spent as much time as many of them have spent developing familiarity, competence and then expertise in another aircraft type, ‘new’ things (like hotas functions and other ergonomics) in the new jet are the most common early dissatisfiers. Why? Because things that were almost reflexive in the old jet now require conscious thought; it is akin to ‘teaching old dogs new tricks’. The guys that came from McBoeing jets will not like certain things and the folks that came from F-16 will generally not like others. They get over it as they get good in the new jet. Note what the newbs think of the jet...

Wrt to some of these ‘better than’ numbers in JVs report, remember that you’re quibbling about a very small difference (eg 4.4 vs 4.6 in the E vs F35 radar) in a qualitative (ie highly subjective, unscientific) survey. In some cases there are quantifiable differences in how F35 performs that do Indeed show up in the assessments (eg ITR vs an Eagle where Eagle plays best — at altitude); in other cases it’s about how it ‘feels’ and it doesn’t ‘feel’ like stuff felt in the other jet.

Pilots almost always love most the jet that they loved first...forever. Recognizing that reality, these surveys are a very positive thing.

[fbw]

On the other hand, I wondered about radar.
I was surprised that the F-15E's radar was above the F-35's radar , and I read the F-22's annotation, and question or confusion arose.

I guess there are three possible factors:
* The F-15 has a bigger (AESA) radar, with more Power and therefore range and/or
* There is no stealth mode, so it can be active all the time whereas F-35 probably most the time go in power off or LPI mode, and/or
* The maturity of the radar can be shaky...

my 5 cent.

The AN/APG-70, -63(v)3, -82 (v)1 all have LPI capability. The first part of your post, difference in size and power of the AN/APG-82(v)1 , makes the most sense for the higher rating.

[SpudmanWP]

To be fair, their level of LPI is nowhere near that of the APG-77/81 and Raytheon has never claimed otherwise.

[doge]

About Chart 2 of maneuverability.
I missed this.

The number one reason pilots selected their previous fighter over the F-35A in any one of the four visual fight scenarios was the fact that their previous fighter had an AIM-9X missile for those fights, and the F-35A did not. The scenario that each pilot was given included aircraft configurations for the early stages of a war where stealth was required for the F-35A. There, the jet has no external stores, and since the AIM-9X missile can only be carried externally, that missile was not available.

I think this is a big handicap. F-35 "only" without AIM-9X!

I think this is also a handicap.

14. Combat configuration for the F-35A: 13,000 pounds of fuel to replicate retaining internal munitions and roughly half internal fuel. The F-35A will have no external stores during any anti-access, high-threat environment.

It must be maneuver at 70% of total internal fuel! Heavy!!
Despite having a 2handicaps that is fuel heavy and without AIM-9X, for the F-35's maneuverability still gets many supports, I will applaud. (But, the Mystery deepens why F-35 is supported even though it's heavy and no AIM-9X... )