Exercise Northern Lightning Overview [F-35As + others]

[XanderCrews]

More whining from the usual suspects:

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Because of its habit of selectively releasing details and figures, the US Air Force makes it impossible to understand whether the F-35A’s performance during the deployment was as impressive as it sounds.
For example:
-- a “surge” of 138 missions by 14 aircraft over two weeks may sound impressive, but it averages out to less than one (precisely, 0.7) mission per aircraft per day, which is rather pedestrian.
-- The story does not say how many of those 138 missions were aborted.
-- The story says the squadron scored 110 kills against “enemy” aircraft, but again that averages out to 0.56 kills per aircraft per day, which is not really impressive.
-- how many of the “suppression of enemy air defenses, destruction of enemy air defenses” missions were assisted by EG-18F electronic attack aircraft?
-- how many “offensive counter-air” missions were assisted by E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft, and/or F-16 and F/A-18 Super Hornets fighters?
More details are needed to determine the F-35A’s real performance during this simulated deployment.)

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articl ... -date.html

Wehhhhhhhhhh

The longer the "editors note" the better with this hack LOL

[botsing]

Members of the 58th Fighter Squadron and F-35A's from Eglin AFB, Florida traveled to Volk Field, Air National Guard Base in Wisconsin to participate in exercise Northern Lightning, the DoD's largest F-35 deployment.

Published on Sep 5, 2016

Just take off and landings, at around 6:04 you can see 13 (could be 14?) F-35 lined up.

[hornetfinn]

More whining from the usual suspects:

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Because of its habit of selectively releasing details and figures, the US Air Force makes it impossible to understand whether the F-35A’s performance during the deployment was as impressive as it sounds.
For example:
-- a “surge” of 138 missions by 14 aircraft over two weeks may sound impressive, but it averages out to less than one (precisely, 0.7) mission per aircraft per day, which is rather pedestrian.
-- The story does not say how many of those 138 missions were aborted.
-- The story says the squadron scored 110 kills against “enemy” aircraft, but again that averages out to 0.56 kills per aircraft per day, which is not really impressive.
-- how many of the “suppression of enemy air defenses, destruction of enemy air defenses” missions were assisted by EG-18F electronic attack aircraft?
-- how many “offensive counter-air” missions were assisted by E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft, and/or F-16 and F/A-18 Super Hornets fighters?
More details are needed to determine the F-35A’s real performance during this simulated deployment.)

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articl ... -date.html

LOL, just LOL...

1. Yes, because exercises always go full steam from the 1st day to last day with maximum amount of sorties flown every day... Also that amount of sorties is fairly normal for mature in-service aircraft during similar time frame. Besides, each F-35 sortie is likely a quite a bit longer as it has much better endurance than most fighters. It might be hard for this editor to understand, but even F-35s need maintenance and their crews need to eat and sleep... Not to mention mission planning and debriefing...

2. Killin over 110 enemy aircraft without any losses is fairly impressive to me... Especially since most missions weren't even air-to-air missions at all. Only F-22 has ever done anything remotely similar in exercises.

3. What does it matter if F-35s got support or not? This exercise wasn't about showing how super-awesome F-35 is. It was about everybody getting important training, including F-16, F/A-18, Growler and E-3 crews.

This is getting really stupid. If F-35 doesn't kill everybody within secods and if there are some other aircraft in the air at the same time, it sucks...

[Dragon029]

More from SLD:

http://www.sldinfo.com/northern-lightni ... -20169116/

Northern Lightning Exercise 2016:

09/06/2016: 4th and 5th generation aircraft soared through the skies at Volk Field on Thursday morning as pilots had combat rehearsal training.

Volk Field Combat Readiness Training Center hosted their annual Northern Lightning combat exercise which provides real-world conflict scenarios for active service personnel from the National Guard, Air Force, and the Navy.

The week long exercise is meant to prepare 700 airmen for combat. Missions practiced at Volk Field are high-end training drills for units from all over the country.

“These exercises allow us to practice full scale operations and they allow us to improve our own instructors so that when we go back to our school house to teach the newest students in the F-35, we can make them better and ultimately improve our combat capability as an Air Force,” Lt. Col. Brad Baeshore, Commander, 58th Fighter Squadron said.

The situations practiced provide extensive training and cohesiveness between joint military services.

“The Air Force just declared initial operational capability, we just did that on the second of August is when we declared that and now the important part is that we are taking the F-35 on the road to train other people what our tactics are and how to manage those tactics so that when we do have to employ in combat everyone is familiar with each other and we know how to execute those to the best of our abilities.” Lt. Col. Brad Baeshore added.

Northern Lightning exercise 2016 is the largest F-35 training to date.

https://vimeo.com/181516255

[spazsinbad]

LM F-35 GM Weekly Update
01 Sep 2016 Jeff Babione

"Northern Lightning Exercise
As the F-35Cs returned to Pax River, 14 F-35As from Eglin were executing a two-week deployment as part of the Northern Lightning exercise in Wisconsin. The F-35As from the 58th Fighter Squadrons flew 102 out of 104 scheduled sorties with aircraft availability averaging 80 percent for the duration of the deployment. All 14 F-35As are operating with older 2B software, making these sortie and availability rates even more impressive.”..."

Source: https://a855196877272cb14560-2a4fa819a6 ... 9_1_16.pdf (0.7Mb)

[neptune]

deleted

[spazsinbad]

'neptune' I'm not following. Why would the pilots influence the availability rate? Maintainers get this done - BZ. The pilot accepts the aircraft ready to go - or not - with the maintainers working hard to make it so.

[neptune]

...
“These exercises allow us to practice full scale operations and they allow us to improve our own instructors so that when we go back to our school house to teach the newest students in the F-35, we can make them better and ultimately improve our combat capability as an Air Force,” Lt. Col. Brad Baeshore, Commander, 58th Fighter Squadron said.

The situations practiced provide extensive training and cohesiveness between joint military services.....Northern Lightning exercise 2016 is the largest F-35 training to date...

....most of these 14 (Sr.) F-35A (Instructors (teach the teachers)) were from Eglin EG and maybe one tail form Luke LF....
maybe to be expected, senior talent for this earliest of exercises.....hmmmm.......

[neptune]

'neptune' I'm not following. Why would the pilots influence the availability rate? Maintainers get this done - BZ. The pilot accepts the aircraft ready to go - or not - with the maintainers working hard to make it so.

..sorry, wrong link...

[arian]

-- The story says the squadron scored 110 kills against “enemy” aircraft, but again that averages out to 0.56 kills per aircraft per day, which is not really impressive.

Agree with the writer here. I'm totally not impressed. Losers.

/sarc

[botsing]

-- The story says the squadron scored 110 kills against “enemy” aircraft, but again that averages out to 0.56 kills per aircraft per day, which is not really impressive.

Agree with the writer here. I'm totally not impressed. Losers.

/sarc

Yeah man, just like that looser called F-15 that only got 103 kills in 14,855 days making for an average of only 0.0069 kills per day.

/sarc

[popcorn]

The detractors are being forced to reach further and further into the absurd and ridiculous... truly warms my heart.

[mk82]

-- The story says the squadron scored 110 kills against “enemy” aircraft, but again that averages out to 0.56 kills per aircraft per day, which is not really impressive.

Agree with the writer here. I'm totally not impressed. Losers.

/sarc

I wonder which 4th generation platform achieved similar kill ratios (in a similar exercise).....oh wait.....none of them!

[sersi]

Perhaps by 2020 the internet fanboys will be touting how great the F-35 is and panning the B-21.

[sprstdlyscottsmn]

I wonder which 4th generation platform achieved similar kill ratios (in a similar exercise).....oh wait.....none of them!

The book I read it in is packed, but I recall the F-15A pulled something crazy, along the lines of 200-5. Not too shabby by any measure. If anyone has "The Great Book of Modern Warplanes" they can fact check for me.