F-35 Flight Simulator with Lockheed Martin [FLY EXPLAINED]

AB in mid-low altitudes guzzles gas too

At 9:03 Instructor said 'that was a 9g turn' so it is F-35A.

All while carrying 2x 2000 lbs GBU-31s.

True, but by that point w only ~7K of JP left. Fuel indication is on far left of the 1.5" strip of admin info at the top of the PCD. Just to the left of the fuel indication is 'fuel flow' in ppm; if there is a bright square box (which you can see the RH edge of from time to time starting at about 3:45) around the FF indication, that means the jet is in AB. I'll bet he was at or near full AB for the duration of the sim.

Season Five, Episode 12: F-35 Flight Simulator with Lockheed Martin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGU3noa1PEU





HOW TO SELECT A TARGET ON THE TSD TACTICAL SITUATION DISPLAY - SHOWN below:

Thanks spaz. Very interesting video.

In a real world scenario, would be more information about the target on the display? Like what kind of fighter it is?

Target ID, type, vector, speed, etc.

“In a real world scenario, would be more information about the target on the display? Like what kind of fighter it is?”

While not apparent in the video, there are different unique symbols displayed on the TSD for different categories of ‘things’ in the battlespace around the jet; air, surface, emitting, not emitting etc. Additionally, there are color differentiations for friendly, enemy or unknown, and additional differentiation in symbols once a ‘thing’ is added to the shoot list. You see this play out once the sim guy tells the guy flying to move the cursors over one of the aircraft at the 5 o’clock position relative to the formation. Once he latches one of the targets for the shoot list, a box of info pops up that tells the pilot additional details about the target they’ve latched. Given the number of interest items that can be displayed on the TSD, it is impractical to provide that info continuously; it is resident in the system, it simply remains in the background until the pilot summons it via the cursors.

Select Target F-35 Travel Flight Simulator + LM Guide Shows https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ujPgxQiAQ

Select Target F-35 Travel Flight Simulator + LM Guide Shows https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ujPgxQiAQ

Thanks. That was the sequence I meant.

vector, speed, etc.

That would be the lowest line in the Info box, from the video above

“In a real world scenario, would be more information about the target on the display? Like what kind of fighter it is?”

While not apparent in the video, there are different unique symbols displayed on the TSD for different categories of ‘things’ in the battlespace around the jet; air, surface, emitting, not emitting etc. Additionally, there are color differentiations for friendly, enemy or unknown, and additional differentiation in symbols once a ‘thing’ is added to the shoot list. You see this play out once the sim guy tells the guy flying to move the cursors over one of the aircraft at the 5 o’clock position relative to the formation. Once he latches one of the targets for the shoot list, a box of info pops up that tells the pilot additional details about the target they’ve latched. Given the number of interest items that can be displayed on the TSD, it is impractical to provide that info continuously; it is resident in the system, it simply remains in the background until the pilot summons it via the cursors.

Ok thanks. In the box you have fusion ID 129. I assume this would be the code, in that case, for a Mig-29?

Confidence 0.92 means the system thinks it is 92% sure it's a Mig-29?

Ok thanks. In the box you have fusion ID 129. I assume this would be the code, in that case, for a Mig-29?

Actually you noticed something that I previously failed to notice but yes, I strongly believe that your assessment should be correct.

By the way I have a question to complement yours: What does the '1' from ID 129 means? One (1) Mig-29 Selected? A flight composed by a single (1) Mig-29? Another meaning?

Confidence 0.92 means the system thinks it is 92% sure it's a Mig-29?

Yes, I strongly believe that's to be the case.
If I'm not mistaken the NCTR (Non-Cooperative Target Recognition) on legacy aircraft like the F-15, F-16 or F/A-18 also displays data in a similar way - it displays the type/model of the selected/locked target after a certain % of confidence is reached and even after showing the type/model of the target it continues to show the level of confidence of the target, this again as a percentage (%) value.
The diference here is that in the case of the legacy aircraft the confidence level/percentage comes from the Radar alone (more precisely from its NCTR mode) while in the case of the F-35 the confidence level/percentage comes from the sensor fusion with all the advantages that it brings.

My Guess: there are two bogies & only ONE selected as a target?: download/file.php?id=30040

By the way I have a question to complement yours: What does the '1' from ID 129 means? One (1) Mig-29 Selected? A flight composed by a single (1) Mig-29? Another meaning?

Yes would be also interesting to know.

Yes, I strongly believe that's to be the case.
If I'm not mistaken the NCTR (Non-Cooperative Target Recognition) on legacy aircraft like the F-15, F-16 or F/A-18 also displays data in a similar way - it displays the type/model of the selected/locked target after a certain % of confidence is reached and even after showing the type/model of the target it continues to show the level of confidence of the target, this again as a percentage (%) value.
The diference here is that in the case of the legacy aircraft the confidence level/percentage comes from the Radar alone (more precisely from its NCTR mode) while in the case of the F-35 the confidence level/percentage comes from the sensor fusion with all the advantages that it brings.

Yep. The confidence should be clearly higher, thanks to better sensor and fusion than in a 4 gen.

Besides what Spaz said, the "129" may potentially be a public demonstration simulator term; rather than putting potentially classified data in public view (how far away an F-35 sees a specific MiG-29 variant) they might just have a generic MiG-29 aircraft with (eg) an RCS of exactly 10m^2 or whatever, with the Lockheed programmers just taking a bit of a shortcut and naming the database entry "129". Alternatively, "129" may be the brevity form of that specific MiG-29 variant, a bit like how in the RWR display of F-16s or F/A-18s, etc something like an SA-10 will just show "10". Here there might be something like "129" for the MiG-29A, "229" for the MiG-29S, "329" for the MiG-29SMT, etc.

Yep. The confidence should be clearly higher, thanks to better sensor and fusion than in a 4 gen.

Something of interest to note too is that (according to the 2018 AIAA paper "F-35 Information Fusion") the F-35's combat ID sensor fusion system works pretty much entirely in probabilities, whereas legacy systems will have some level of probability involved when they're filtering signals or imagery, but then just make an outright declaration to the pilot via some heuristic method.

This means that an F-35 can give tentative / partial answers to the pilot, whereas a legacy jet would continue to show an unknown contact, and it means that an F-35 pilot will be able to identify that an ID is only somewhat certain, whereas a legacy jet's pilot may be mislead if the combat ID is tentative and possibly incorrect (due to advanced enemy EW or whatever). The F-35 combat ID system also utilises a taxonomy system, so it can identify a target to varying levels of detail, whether it's a vague "air" target, or an "enemy air" target, or an "enemy fighter", or an "enemy Su-27", or an "enemy Su-27UBK".

They even go as advanced (in the background; invisible to the pilot) as to have each individual sensor report the uncertainties / error margins for the different dimensions of target track, etc; so the system can do things like identify that it specifically has high uncertainty of (eg) target distance, and then in-turn utilise a better ranging sensor (the radar vs the EOTS for example), or tell a wingman's sensor fusion computer that it lacks that data (and would appreciate the wingman obtaining that data if it has sensor duty-cycle to share).

From the paper cited by 'Dragon029' the attached graphic springs + text

F-35 Information Fusion
25-29 June 2018 Thomas L. Frey Jr., J. Chris Aguilar, Kent R. Engebretson, David K. Faulk, and Layne G. Lenning,
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, Fort Worth, Texas, 76132, USA

"...Although the soft decisions developed by fusion provide a more accurate representation of what is known and not known about a given target’s ID state, the pilot requires actionable information, which requires that the soft decision be converted into a hard declaration. The Dempster-Shafer algorithm produces support-plausibility intervals that bound the estimate of probability but do not directly provide platform declarations. The F-35 design converts the probability masses into pignistic probabilities that effectively distribute the platform disjunction confidence across all elements of the disjunction. The system makes a hard ID declaration when the translated confidence exceeds a user-defined threshold. The taxonomy is traversed from lower nodes to higher nodes until the confidence threshold is exceeded. The F-35 combat ID output, shown in the second row of Fig. 7 [BIGGEST PICTURE BELOW], is flexible enough to allow a display of information from any level in the taxonomy. The output also contains ID declarations from other sensors and off-board sources, which helped to develop trust in the fused outputs and transition from legacy platforms. In this example, a Link 16 declaration of fighter was combined with the MADL declaration of F-35 to produce a high-confidence type declaration of F-35 and a friendly confidence of 1….

...IX.Summary
The F-35 Information Fusion software combines information from both onboard and off-board data sources, providing the pilot with advanced capabilities not available on legacy aircraft. Further, this extensible approach to information fusion leverages the spatial and spectral diversity among multiple F-35 wingmen, creating an innovative tactical network where data is shared instantaneously with other F-35s and legacy aircraft. The F-35 Information Fusion implementation of data association, state estimation, and combat ID ensures that the pilot has accurate situational awareness, allowing for advanced target detection, tracking, and tactical employment. The autonomous sensor manager provides timely reaction to a changing environment and ensures that all tracks are refined to a prespecified quality based on priority, allowing the pilot to return to the role of tactician. The F-35 MADL provides sufficient bandwidth for complete sharing of detailed fusion solutions and accuracies for all air and surface targets, resulting in improved situational awareness for all pilots in the MADL network. Using data-sharing methods to ensure that the data pedigree is maintained, the MADL information can be processed like a remote sensor, resulting in improved accuracies and new capabilities."

Source: download/file.php?id=27755 (PDF 1.4Mb) [You are not authorised to download this attachment]

@Dragon and Spaz thanks for your informative posts.

They even go as advanced (in the background; invisible to the pilot) as to have each individual sensor report the uncertainties / error margins for the different dimensions of target track, etc; so the system can do things like identify that it specifically has high uncertainty of (eg) target distance, and then in-turn utilise a better ranging sensor (the radar vs the EOTS for example), or tell a wingman's sensor fusion computer that it lacks that data (and would appreciate the wingman obtaining that data if it has sensor duty-cycle to share).

This is really amazing. I was aware, that the F-35 can use data from other platforms to get a better situational awareness. But i didn't know, the system "asks" other platforms by itself to get a better picture.

More from the same source cited by 'Dragon029' & quoted above:

...VIII.Cooperative Sensing
The F-35 MADL was designed to support full sharing of information among aircraft. MADL bandwidth supports the exchange of all air and surface tracks between/among participants within the flight group. Given that each F-35 has multiple sensors detecting multiple targets – and sometimes spurious signals – this can lead to the exchange of numerous, potentially duplicative tracks over MADL. Therefore, the F-35 places limits on the kinds of tracks and associated information that can be transmitted over the link.

For MADL distribution, a single F-35 system track is divided into three messages: the basic MADL surveillance track, extended combat ID (XID), and RF parametric extensions. The basic surveillance track provides the independent kinematic state estimate and track covariance at the time of the last measurement update. It is important to note that the kinematic estimate for a sent track can be either ranged or angle-only (no observed range). This distinction becomes important for advanced multi-ship tracking techniques, such as angle/angle ranging or time difference of arrival (TDOA), described later. The MADL surveillance track also includes a list of sensors contributing to this track, as well as ID summary data. The XID message contains a higher-fidelity ID ambiguity list, in addition to ID measurements (e.g., IFF). The RF parametric message contains the electronic signal measurement (ESM) data correlated to this track. The sharing of this detailed information allows each aircraft to leverage the spatial diversity of the flight group.

One of the initial multi-ship capabilities of the F-35 was the ability to cooperatively range airborne emitters by finding the intersection (or point of nearest approach) for angle-only tracks on two or more different aircraft.

On the receipt of a MADL angle-only track, the receiving fusion system determines possible intersection points with its own onboard angle-only tracks. It is possible for a given MADL angle-only track to intersect with multiple ownship tracks. In truth, only one of the intersections is correct. These alternate angle/angle candidates are referred to colloquially as ghosts. Once all ghosts have been eliminated, the range of the track from each participant can be calculated.

Rotating the covariance of each observer into a common reference frame, the range error in the common reference frame is approximately the intersection of the two error covariance matrices, which can be expressed. [many equations omitted]

For surface emitters, fusion incorporates a TDOA capability for precision location. The TDOA capability provides the ability for multiple aircraft to synchronize ESM dwells in time and frequency. Upon initiation, the autonomous sensor manager configures the dwells across the network, and then all aircraft send the time of arrival of any received pulses to the initiating aircraft. Fusion processes these pulse streams from the cooperating participants to detect common pulse pairs. Common pulse pairs form a surface of constant delta-time that, when intersected with the Earth, produce a hyperbola of constant time difference called an isochrone. Multiple pulse pairs represent the intersection of one or more isochrones and produce range estimate...."

So if a flight of F-35s pick you up on DAS/RWR in any direction, they will range you and then dissect you like surgeons, very impressive like a school of intelligent dolphins in a hunting pack.