Forum: General F-35 Forum

alloycowboy wrote:

What does a large frontal area have to do with any thing??? If you know anything at all about aerodynamics it is what you do to the back end of the object that has more effect that then the front end.

The back and front are equally important, because unless the front is shaped right, the back doesn't do anything.

Also remember that nothing is going to have the flow around it remain fully attached like that first ice cream cone shape in the picture you posted, planes included. There is going to be some wake generated behind the plane, and the size of the plane will influence the wake. The same goes for shock wave.

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Why will it's stealth advantage shrink?

Because sensor technology will advance. Yes, the F-35's coatings will get better as time moves on, but it remains a distinct possibility, I would say a certainty, that the F-35 will become relatively, as compared to deployed sensors, less stealthy over its lifetime. As that happens, the F-35 will see its tactics change and evolve, and I am interested to see what they will be.

Right now, we're in a tough spot because no one has had a chance to investigate new tactics against a similarly equipped opponent for 10+ years. F-35 development over the past decade has been based off of simulations, past experience, and suppositions about the current state of the art air defenses. (This is inevitable and really not a problem with the program. Any fighter program today will have the same issues) It'll also be interesting to see if the AF's predictions hold true.

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The -16s rolling off the line today sure ain't nothing like what was coming off the line in 1984.

So close, I almost got you there. The F-35 program exists because upgrading an airframe is insufficient to keep it relevant in the modern era. This happened to the F-4, A-7, F-15, F-16, etc., and it will happen to the F-35. F-35 proponents should embrace this logical argument, and state that it supports the F-35 program, which it does. There will come a point when the F-35 is outclassed by its threat environment, just as we have reached a point where the F-16 is outclassed by its threat environment. Hopefully before the F-35 is outclassed there will be a fighter program to replace the F-35.

Bonus hypothetical question: the F-35 is stealth with speed, what will be its replacement? Speed with stealth? Stealth / speed ueber alles?

It's possible that, by the time the F-35 is outclassed, it will be because autonomous UAVs have largely replaced pilots, with humans acting more as flight leaders or wing commanders.

@arkadyrenko..... before you keep knocking the F-35's stealth technology I suggest you learn and understand the Stealth Equations and there implications.

Some times what looks good on paper isn't practical do to enviromental factors.

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@arkadyrenko..... before you keep knocking the F-35's stealth technology I suggest you learn and understand the Stealth Equations and there implications.

I'm not saying the F-35 is going to be non-stealthy, far from it. What I am saying is that its stealth advantage will decline as opponents invent countermeasures to the present level and arrangement of stealth. To argue otherwise is almost certainly ridiculous. Coatings will improve and so will the easy of manufacturing high powered AESA radars; or the signals processing capabilities for bistatic radars; or the integration of high-altitude UAVs with powerful IRST equipment. (btw, think of this: if the F-35's stealth advantage is going to decline, what does that say about teen series fighters? They're doomed, that's what.) This isn't an argument against stealth so much as a recognition of technological advancement in the endless game of sensor and counter sensor. Note, in the future that I'm envisioning, stealth won't become obsolete, it'll become the minimum to survival.

count_to_10 - Perhaps. I think that autonomous UCAVs will only take over when high-powered lasers show up. At that point, flying anything would be a death sentence. In the meanwhile, the massive rise in cyber warfare and its disturbing implications for communications networks should put a priority on human manning and autonomous, in the sense of not requiring outside support, flight. Oddly enough, the F-35, with its plethora of sensors, fits the second requirement quite well.

I suspect that isn't odd at all.

spazsinbad wrote:

'QS'

You forgot the OzTrailians amongst some others missed (Spanith, Eyetalians, CanUKians). Big No No

Was trying to capture the list of partners who have actually bought a jet or two, plus the FMS players. As you suggest, I should have included IT; Spain not playing (yet).

@arkadyrenko..... I think it was Neptune that posted this a while back, it's a really good article.

http://www.northropgrumman.com/analysis-center/paper/assets/analogues_stealth.pdf

I read the article, I think it supports my conclusion. I do wonder if there's been any new assessment of bi-static radars, given the large jump in processing capabilities the world over.

Finally, I may note that we haven't seen a stealth vs. post Cold War air defenses. The advantages of stealth are predicated on the experiences of Serbia and Iraq, both using legacy systems. And, there must have been work in the past two decades on counter stealth technologies. The report implicitly accepts that stealth needs continual work, and there is no reason to think the F-35 will be any different.

sufaviper wrote:

SpudmanWP wrote:

If supercruise is a byproduct of having a clean airframe and a high thrust engine (both are design requirements) then nothing was "added" to make it supercruise and therefore no money was wasted.

I agree completely, but congress, politiciants, ext. likely will not see it that way, or will choose not to see it that way to support whatever their current campaign is. I can hear the McC's, or any number of others now, "Lockheed Martin stole taxpayer money to add additional "gold plating" to this already over priced, over weight, late, . . . program. We never asked for this and LM forced it on the taxpayer." (forced on us, like ObamaCare, and Social [in]Security? but that is an entirely different issue, and a different website for that matter). While in reality like you said, it is more likely a byproduct of the design than something they designed into the aircraft, thus my "Dumb as that sounds" statement.

Sufa Viper

Not sure if you are simply being sarcastic, or defending Lockheed. Hopefully, not the latter, because their performance as an honest business partner has be horrible through both the F-22 and F-35 programs. Of course the pentagon and a horribly weak congress are as much to blame. A perfect storm if you will. A little more than two years ago, congress was told the unit cost for he F-35 would be between $64 and $68 million. Shortly thereafter it was in the 70s, then 80s. Now more realistic official figure is out from the program managers - 2,443 birds at $396 billion total development and production costs. That's a......$162 million and change per unit. That's a long ways from $64 to $68 million. Of course we all know the 2,443 is going to get cut significantly, so the true unit cost will be higher still. The plane itself may very well be a world beater technologically (although not until the 2060s - their current line of BS), but one thing is indisputable, the program has been horribly run from a fiscal point of view. Awarding the contract to the firm that botched the F-22 was clearly a mistake. Promising a one-plane fits all for multiple services with technological leaps of this magnitude may have been the biggest over-reach of all time. We'd have been better off with a different contractor for the Department of the Navy's needs and two different aircraft. For $396 billion, we could have had that. If the pentagon's latest figures are to be believed, going with one prime contractor and a common airframe hasn't saved a penny it turns out.

redbird87 wrote:

Now more realistic official figure is out from the program managers - 2,443 birds at $396 billion total development and production costs. That's a......$162 million and change per unit. That's a long ways from $64 to $68 million.

Development is development. Build is build. It's basic math. When you add six apples to four oranges, the number of oranges you have remains at four. What will it cost in materials and wages to turn out an F-35 now that the line is built? Last I heard it was only around $85M.

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We'd have been better off with a different contractor for the Department of the Navy's needs and two different aircraft.

Wow, you're even worse at math than I thought. We needed three different aircraft, not two.

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If the pentagon's latest figures are to be believed, going with one prime contractor and a common airframe hasn't saved a penny it turns out.

The Raptor program cost $66.7B for 187 planes. Subsequent build costs were to be about $145M each. So if we tack on another couple thousand plus planes at that price, to equal the size of the F-35 program, we get about $393.8B. Only about $3B shy of the entire F-35 program; adjusted to same-year dollars, that's more than the cost of all three aircraft in the F-35 program. So, compared to spending another $66.7B on developing another Navy aircraft, and another $66.7B on developing another STOVL aircraft, it saved us about $120B to build the F-35. And of course, the Naval and STOVL versions of the F-35 were more expensive than the CTOL version (and that would be the case for any Naval or STOVL aircraft), so they actually account for even more of the F-35's cost than their build numbers suggest. Were we to have built a different Naval fighter (not even considering the STOVL), its development alone would have exceeded the cost of the Raptor quite handily. So really it saved us probably more in the range of $200B to use a substantially common airframe and engine.

The argument that maybe we would've wound up with slightly more capable specialist aircraft at that price may still have some meat to it, but the idea that it didn't save a fortune to do it the way we did do it, is laughable.

arkadyrenko wrote:

If I had to guess, given the F-35's shape and design characteristics, it will not be as maneuverable as the light load-out configurations of select 4th gen fighters.

LM and the USAF claim that a loaded F-35(i.e. 5000lbs of internal weapons), will outturn a clean F-16.

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But, per the F-35's defenders, that shouldn't matter. In fact, the F-35's design appears to follow the idea that maneuverability isn't as important as before. How that will work in combat, however, remains to be seen. There hasn't been a battle between equivalently equipped air forces since the Falkland's War. (I don't count the Gulf War as that was a walkover) So, we haven't had a chance to reset the maneuverability argument.

The "maneuverability is irrelevant" comment doesn't mean that the aircraft isn't agile. It's highlighting the fact that this won't be the sole determining factor, in outcomes.

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Finally, I hate to say this but the historic discrepancy between what Lockheed said and what the select acquisition report said, regarding the F-35's flight regime, makes me unwilling to completely trust any Lockheed statement about the program. (and the flight test pilot is Lockheed's) E.g. the issue with supersonic flight & airframe peeling or the transonic buffeting. So, I don't completely trust the test pilot when he says the F-35 as maneuverable, if not better, than the F-16. Its probably true in a bunch of flight regimes (loaded with gas + bombs), but still one can't be sure.

All fighters with twin tails buffet at some point(and how does that even pertain to the overall agility?) I'm not sure what the paint issue has to do with agility either.

Forum: General F-35 Forum

F-35 Kinematics in Air to Air configuration