China is Fucked - Japan eyes F-35 deployment in south for Senkaku defense

[Froggy]

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Ja...4&pub_date=20210407090000&seq_num=10&si=44594

Japan eyes F-35 deployment in south for Senkaku defense
Kyushu air base cited as 'leading candidate' for new jets, with focus on China

The F-35B's short-takeoff and vertical-landing capabilities make the jet well suited to defending remote Japanese islands. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Marines)
JUNNOSUKE KOBARA, Nikkei staff writerApril 7, 2021 00:09 JST
TOKYO -- Japan is giving strong consideration to positioning new F-35B stealth fighter jets on the southern island of Kyushu, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi indicated Tuesday, a move that would beef up deterrence against China's increasingly frequent maritime forays in the East China Sea.
The Air Self-Defense Force's Nyutabaru Air Base in Miyazaki Prefecture in southern Kyushu "is certainly a leading candidate," Kishi told reporters. Tokyo aims to bring the planes into service in 2024.
Deploying the advanced fighters on Kyushu would put them near the Senkaku Islands to Japan's southwest, which are administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing. Recent months have seen a sharp rise in official Chinese vessels sailing near the islands, and recent legislation positioning China's coast guard as a quasi-military force has set off alarm bells in Tokyo.

The ministry sees the F-35B as a key element of its defense strategy for remote islands due to its short-takeoff and vertical-landing capabilities. Japan's medium-term defense program calls for adding 18 of the planes to its forces by fiscal 2023.
"We're focusing on existing air bases that already have fighter jet squadrons deployed," Kishi said. He did not provide a specific time frame for the positioning.
Tokyo aims to settle on a deployment location as early as this fiscal year following discussion with local communities. It will then start building the necessary facilities and creating a unit for the fighters.
The defense ministry plans to conduct exercises involving the new jets and the Kaga helicopter carrier, which is being converted into an aircraft carrier.

 

[Leckmichamarsch]

..............a fucked up plane!!!!!!!!1

 

[Leckmichamarsch]

slowly slowly skin the monkeys

 

[blackmondy]

Don't fuck with China. Their deadly secret weapon will be unleashed for all the world to see....

 

[Froggy]

Don't fuck with China. Their deadly secret weapon will be unleashed for all the world to see....

A game changer indeed and I could see a swarm of 10,000 of these carrying a division flying across the Taiwan straits and Taiwan will be finished within an hour.

 

[tanwahtiu]

Keep yr friend close, the enemy closer.

US is Japan enemy for the Plaza Accord bullied by US.

Buy US planes is to copy them.... money can buy enemy arms and know their weaknesses...

Japan can never attack China, the neighbour.

Maybe China can lease out Taiwan to the Jap for 150 years to amuse the Chinese...

Let the hokkien kia kowtow to the Jap and call them Master...

 

[blackmondy]

A game changer indeed and I could see a swarm of 10,000 of these carrying a division flying across the Taiwan straits and Taiwan will be finished within an hour.

I'm sure the Taiwanese army will be very happy to use this on those deadly copters.

 

[laksaboy]

A game changer indeed and I could see a swarm of 10,000 of these carrying a division flying across the Taiwan straits and Taiwan will be finished within an hour.

Don't worry, USA and NATO will not let that happen.

In fact, the day China launches a strike on Taiwan is the day the CCP regime becomes a footnote in history. Helps speed things up a lot.

 

[pvtpublic]

Don't fuck with China. Their deadly secret weapon will be unleashed for all the world to see....

Richard Hammond and Tory Belleci built one out of scrap from a ship wreck while on a deserted island and fueled it by fermenting fruit.

China needed an army to build one

 

[Hypocrite-The]

The F35...wat is that? Can't outfly, cant outrun , can't out gun, can't out range even an f16. The Chicons have nothing to fear

 

[Hypocrite-The]

The Chicons have nothing to fear.

What Happens If the F-35 Has to Dogfight Another Plane?
The aerial dogfight was not supposed to happen. On May 20, 1967, eight U.S. Air Force F-4C fighters were patrolling over North Vietnam when they spotted as many as 15 enemy MiG-17 fighters a short distance away.
Fog and the MiGs’ low altitude had prevented the F-4s from detecting the North Vietnamese jets from farther away.
Diving to attack, the twin-engine F-4s fired a staggering 24 Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles, shooting down just four of the single-engine MiGs. The North Vietnamese jets reacted quickly, forming into a tight-turning “wagon wheel,” with each pilot watching the tail of the man in front of him.
As the heavy, twin-engine F-4s tried to out-turn the nimble, single-engine MiGs, a North Vietnamese pilot peppered one of the American planes with cannon fire, igniting it and forcing the two crewmen to eject.
“The turning ability of the MiG-17 is fantastic,” one F-4 flier recalled later. “It must be seen to be believed.”
But the Air Force had assumed that wouldn’t be a problem—that its then-brand-new twin-seat F-4s would never even get into a close-range dogfight. They had thought that instead the F-4s—and other Air Force and Navy fighters—would always destroy their enemies from long range, using the Sparrow and other air-to-air missiles.
It was a flawed and dangerous assumption that got scores of American aviators shot down over Vietnam. But 53 years later, the Air Force is assuming the same thing … with regards to its new F-35 stealth fighter.
In January 2015, the flying branch pitted a radar-evading F-35A against a 25-year-old F-16D in mock air combat. The F-35 proved too slow and sluggish to defeat the F-16 in a turning fight, according to the official test report.
But the Air Force said not to worry. “The F-35’s technology is designed to engage, shoot and kill its enemy from long distances, not necessarily in visual ‘dogfighting’ situations.”
Sounds familiar.
The Air Force’s faith in long-range aerial warfare proved disastrous in Vietnam. There are good reasons to believe it will prove equally disastrous the first time squadrons of new F-35s fly into battle against a determined foe.
For the first four decades of air-to-air fighting, opposing planes mostly shot at each other with guns. Then in 1946, Navy engineer William Burdette McLean began work on a heat-seeking rocket—the Sidewinder, the first effective air-to-air missile.
Twelve years later, Washington outfitted Taiwanese F-86 fighters with the first combat-ready Sidewinders. In aerial battles over the Taiwan Strait, the F-86s shot down Communist Chinese MiG-17s—and seemingly changed air warfare forever. Soon, new and better missiles—some with radar guidance—were rolling out of laboratories all over the world.
The Air Force and its sister branches enthusiastically embraced the missile age, even dropping guns from many of its new warplane designs, including the early F-4Cs.
The new missile technology coincided with a shift in doctrine. The Pentagon decided that in future wars, jet fighters would climb high and fly fast to target Soviet long-range bombers, striving to hit them from far away before they could drop their atomic bombs.
American jets of the era were powerful but lacked agility. “Our tactical fighters were designed primarily for nuclear war where penetration was more important than maneuverability,” Air Force Gen. Bruce Holloway wrote in a 1968 issue of Air University Review.
But the next war America fought wasn’t global Armageddon with the Soviets. Instead, U.S. troops joined the South Vietnamese military battling a communist insurgency backed by North Vietnam’s own army and air force.
American military planners had bet on a high-tech war of atoms, electrons, rockets and high Mach numbers during straight-line flights. What they got were slow, twisting dogfights low over the forest canopy. It didn’t take long for the Air Force and Navy to realize their technology and tactics just didn’t work very well against Hanoi’s MiGs.
Between 1965 and 1968, American fighters launched 321 radar-guided missiles over Vietnam. Slightly more than eight percent hit their targets, according to a 2005 analysis by Air Force Lt. Col. Patrick Higby.
The Navy scrambled to analyze the terrible hit rate. “A primary reason for less-than-desired combat performance of air-to-air missile systems in Southeast Asia is their design optimization for a high-altitude engagement against a non-maneuvering, large (bomber) target,” the sailing branch concluded in a 1968 report.
With a little bit of warning, a MiG-17 could out-turn a missile—and then use that same maneuverability to get on the American jet’s tail.
The Pentagon upgraded the Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles and added a gun to the new “E” version of the F-4. Pilots got training for turning fights. Soon, kill-loss ratios improved for U.S. aircrews. But what America really needed was a brand-new fighter—one that didn’t just excel at a narrow sort of high and fast, long-range fighting.
America needed a dogfighter.
“A tremendously improved thrust-to-weight ratio, which, coupled with a low wing loading, will produce high Mach and ceiling along with superior climb, acceleration and turn ability throughout the flight envelope,” is how Holloway described the new jet’s characteristics in 1968.
“Advanced avionics and armament, which will provide the necessary ability to defeat any foreseen adversary with a wide variety of weapons, including missiles and guns,” Holloway added.
The result was the twin-engine F-15, which debuted in 1972 and 48 years later is still the Air Force’s most numerous air-superiority fighter. The smaller, single-engine F-16 followed a few years later. It, too, could fight high or low, fly fast and turn tight, launch missiles and fire guns.
The F-15 and F-16’s designers didn’t optimize them for fanciful, idealized war scenarios. They optimized them for our own imperfect planning, for uncertain circumstances and for an enemy that gets his own vote—in other words, for the real world.
Which has only become more important as Russian fighter design has progressed. MiG-17s gave way to speedy MiG-21s and, later, highly maneuverable MiG-29s and Su-27s. Today’s Su-35—a heavily redesigned Su-27—can fly faster and turn better than an F-15 and carries more and arguably better weapons.
Less and less, America gets to dictate the terms in aerial warfare. More and more, the Pentagon needs fighters that can fight.
But America’s new F-35, which is set to become the Air Force’s main warplane, is “substantially inferior” in a turning battle even to an F-15, according to the pilot in the January 2015 mock dogfight. The Air Force insists that’s no problem because the stealthy F-35 will avoid detection and hit enemy planes from long range.
In other words, the Air Force insists it can dictate the terms of the F-35’s engagements.
Maybe that’s partially true. Maybe the F-35’s stealth properties will actually work somewhat. Maybe its missiles won’t miss all the time. Maybe Russia won’t export the Su-35 to every interested buyer. Maybe the United States won’t ever wage a full-scale war against a high-tech foe that can negate the few advantages the F-35 possesses.
But what if the government’s rosy projections turn out to be even slightly off-target? What if something doesn’t work perfectly and F-35 pilots find themselves in dogfights with aerodynamically superior Sukhois or MiGs or Chinese-made planes? What if we send a fighter that can’t turn into battle with fighters that can?
It’s happened before to Air Force fighter jets that weren’t ever supposed to fight close. And a bunch of F-4 crews paid for the government’s blind faith in long-range, straight-line aerial warfare with their freedom … or their lives.
David Axe is defense editor of The National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad.
Image: DoD.

 

[glockman]

A game changer indeed and I could see a swarm of 10,000 of these carrying a division flying across the Taiwan straits and Taiwan will be finished within an hour.

A swarm of 10,000? With their inferior tech and pilots, they'll be malfunctioning and dropping into the Taiwan Straits, as well as crashing into one another. By the time they reach the coast of Taiwan, there'll be maybe a dozen left at most.

 

[Hypocrite-The]

I would not worry too much about the F35

 

[Hypocrite-The]

Why America Desperately Needs the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

NOW
PLAYING

The reality is that the nation needs the F-35 and backing off the program now would present an exceedingly dangerous risk.
The United States Air Force faces a crucial juncture regarding the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Anyone watching the news over recent months could not miss the high-velocity onslaught against the program. Whether it was House Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith referring to the 5th generation fighter as a “rathole” or news headlines saying the aircraft “has failed,” the message was incredibly aggressive and caustic. The program is still experiencing its fair share of challenges, especially when it comes to software updates, the engine, and sustainment costs. However, such challenges pale in comparison to the accomplishments the aircraft are demonstrating each and every day they fly. Defense acquisition programs—particularly those adopting advanced technologies in new ways—are always riddled with challenges. To cast the F-35 as a failure is a massive inaccuracy. However, optics matter—especially when Congress is involved—and it is crucial that the Air Force regain control of the debate by interjecting real data, not alarmist conjecture. The reality is that the nation needs the F-35 and backing off the program now would present exceedingly dangerous risk.
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Derision of the latest combat aircraft on the part of a vocal minority is a long-practiced tradition. One can look back at the early days of now-legendary types like the B-52, F-15, F-16, B-1, and C-17 and find sensationalist stories filled with doom and gloom. Aircraft innovation demands pushing the limits of technology to address tomorrow’s challenges. This invariably drives trial-by-error discovery, cost growth, and schedule delays—the fodder for attack by competing entities. The pattern is clear: deride the program as unnecessary, unfixable, and too expensive. Then recommend canceling the program in question, extending the life of existing aircraft, or buying more low-cost, less capable aircraft.
Here is the problem with that kind of thinking: it flies in the face of security requirements, economic common sense, and historic lessons learned. First and foremost, it is important to recognize that the global security environment is not controlled by the United States. Adversaries have a vote. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rapid rise of ISIS in 2014, along with China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the Pacific stand as proof. The United States must defend its interests, or risk severe consequences. The growth in the capability and capacity of modern threats requires the capabilities resident in the F-35, and that it be purchased in sufficient quantities.
If naysayers get their way and programs are cancelled or dramatically curtailed, then billions in development, testing, and early production will be wasted. Costs will compile extending the lives of older, less capable aircraft. With security requirements growing, the Air Force will invariably have to double back to launch a new program to fill the void. This is exactly what happened to the B-2. The nation only bought 21, not the 132 planned. Same for the F-22, with just 187 procured, not the 386 as stipulated by the validated military requirement. In both cases, the shortfall persisted, and the service had to launch new programs to fill the void, in this case, the B-21 and Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter. This pattern must stop. Investing billions in the front end of a program but failing to realize planned capacity is both strategically shortsighted and economically unsound. How many people build a house, but abandon it because they do not want to deal with last-minute cost growth and schedule delays? The answer is obvious, no one. If the requirement remains valid, taking advantage of sunk cost, pushing through the inevitable development challenges, and buying in volume is the commonsense approach. This is what made the Reagan-era build-up so effective. The services gained forward-leaning capability and significant capacity—investments we still depend upon 40 years later.
Over the past 30 years, the Air Force was forced to cut planned modernization of its aircraft due to shortsighted calls for a peace dividend post- Cold War, the ground-centric focus precipitated by Afghanistan and Iraq, and fiscal shortfalls yielded by the Budget Control Act. As a result the service now finds itself with the smallest, oldest aircraft fleet in its history at a time when demand for those forces is surging. The only way to address this challenge is by doubling down on the programs that are in production today—the F-35, B-21, KC-46, T-7, MH-139, MQ-9, GBSD, and more.
The Air Force has to get healthy and that is best done with today’s solutions. An undue focus on “program next,” will result in billions spent and operational capacity never realized. That means combat commanders robbed of necessary capability and airmen stretched to the breaking point flying increasingly geriatric aircraft.
Those critical of the F-35 need to spend some time weighing the Air Force’s options. First and foremost, the spectrum of air combat missions performed by the aircraft provide non-negotiable conditions required for any successful military operation. Ships at sea, forces on the ground, space control centers, logistics lines, and operating bases are simply non-survivable if subject to concerted attacks from the sky. Questioning whether the Air Force needs modern fighter aircraft to fulfill these missions miss this key reality. While the Navy and Marine Corps possess fighters, their inventories lack the Air Force’s scale, theater-wide and global perspective, and are insufficient to meet the nation’s combatant commander’s demand.
While some may be concerned that the Air Force’s future fighter force will be increasingly dependent upon the F-35, they need to recognize this was a decision made in 2009 by leaders in the Department of Defense and Congress, not the service, when they truncated the F-22 production line at 187 aircraft—half the stated requirement.
Even though older designs, like the F-15 and F-16, are still in production, they lack the performance attributes necessary to survive in the modern combat environment: stealth, electronic warfare prowess, and information dominance. This set of attributes is solely possessed by 5th generation technology aircraft. Today only 20 percent of the Air Force fighter force is 5th generation. Stealth and electronic warfare capabilities combine to radically degrade an enemy’s ability to target the aircraft. Sensors, processing power, and connectivity to the broader force provide crucial situational awareness that allows the aircraft to understand the battlespace in real-time. Miss any of these capabilities and the aircraft in question are at extreme risk of getting shot down. That is why the F-117 first-generation stealth fighter was retired—it lacked the information and electronic warfare capabilities required in the modern battle space. It is also why even improved versions of the F-15 and F-16 are not smart choices. Even through they have been modified with modern information and electronic warfare attributes, they will never be stealthy. As such, they represent an expensive way of getting shot down—especially given that an F-35A’s acquisition price now falls below that of a new-build F-15. That is why former Chief of Staff of the Air Force General David Goldfein explained in 2019 congressional testimony, “…if we ever get to a point where we are trading F-15s for F-35s, that is a bad choice. The F-15 is not an F-35, it will never be an F-35.” Leaders need to keep this in mind as topline defense budget pressures will drive difficult decisions.
While the Air Force is pursuing new fighter solutions via the next-generation air dominance (NGAD) program, this option will not be available in operationally relevant quantities for at least a decade—if then. The B-21 program provides a useful yardstick in this regard. The Air Force selected the winning design in 2016, but it has yet to fly, and will not be fielded in volume till the 2030s. The B-21 and the NGAD will be fantastic aircraft. However, designing, developing, testing, producing, and fielding new combat planes takes time. Those arguing that the F-35 should be cancelled and NGAD be accelerated as the solution simply do not appreciate this reality. The Air Force’s current fighter force is primarily comprised of aircraft designed over fifty years ago and purchased in the Reagan Administration. They are worn out and do not possess the necessary capabilities to fight, survive, and win in modern threat environments.
Consider what happened during Operation Inherent Resolve in Syria, which is far short of a high-end campaign. The Russians moved advanced surface-to-air missiles into the region. All of a sudden, any aircraft lacking the combined attributes of stealth, electronic warfare, and information dominance was at extreme risk. The older designs could only continue flying combat missions because the Russians chose not to shoot. That is an unacceptable risk and F-35 skeptics need to recognize that when they call for the program’s cancellation. They are effectively seeking to cede a crucial advantage by failing to equip airmen with the tools they require to successfully accomplish their missions.
Taking all of these points into consideration, the Air Force has no choice but to double down on the F-35. The mission is essential. The current fighter inventory demands a reset. Lower tech options available are simply not viable given the threat environment and new solutions that may prove incredibly valuable in the future simply will not be available soon enough. Add this to it as well: while the F-35 may be experiencing specific technical problems, these are all solvable. Every combat aircraft that came before the F-35 experienced similar issues. There was a point in the 1970s when half the F-15 fleet was grounded due to engine issues and F-16s were crashing with alarming regularity. The problems were identified, solutions implemented, and the programs succeeded. Working this sort of common-sense path forward is the most cost-effective, fastest option available to the Air Force. Is it frustrating? Of course. Is it manageable? Yes. That is precisely why the Air Force needs to regain control of the narrative surrounding the F-35. Left unabated, highly misinformed conjectures risk shooting it down in the political realm—an outcome America’s security interests cannot afford.
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[winners]

Don't fuck with China. Their deadly secret weapon will be unleashed for all the world to see....

I don't see what good in this? With its lightweight structure, I doubt it can be equipped with any meaningful ammunition. It still need a runaway to land and take off, so where's the versatility? The only usefulness is probably as an air-taxi at most.

 

[Hypocrite-The]

F35 works together with F15ex. Than the nips will have a chance against the CHICONs.

 

[Hypocrite-The]

The F-35 Is Such a Badass Plane — and Has a Giant Price Tag
Is it America’s most capable fighter, or America’s most expensive headache? Why not both?

Jan 31, 2021

Refueling under cover of darkness, a massive formation of U.S. Air Force, Royal Air Force, and Australian Air Force aircraft prepared for combat.
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Fourth-generation fighters hailing from all three nations—including F-16 Fighting Falcons, F-15 Eagles, and Eurofighter Typhoons—coordinated with E-8 Joint STARS command-and-control aircraft. As their stealthy escorts, both F-22 Raptors and F-35 Joint Strike Fighters surveyed the battlespace.
Soon, cockpit displays in each aircraft began to light up and alarms sounded, indicating that the formation was being painted by multiple radar arrays tied to surface-to-air missiles and inbound fighters. Enemy fighters sporting the color schemes of Russian Su-30s began to close in.
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“On the last week of a Red Flag exercise we really throw everything we have at the Blue Force and replicate the toughest adversary possible,” says Travolis “Jaws” Simmons, commander of the 57th Adversary Tactics Group.
Ultimately, the F-35 won the day, breaking down one of the world's most advanced air defense networks and relaying the data to missile-packed fighters like the F-16.
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The F-35 can fly at speeds as high as Mach 1.6 and can carry an internal payload of four weapons without compromising its stealth. But it’s not the F-35's firepower that really makes the difference, it’s the computing power. It's why F-35s have come to be known as “quarterbacks in the sky" or “a computer that happens to fly.”
“There has never been an aircraft that provides as much situational awareness as the F-35,” Major Justin “Hasard” Lee, an Air Force F-35 pilot instructor, tells Popular Mechanics. ”In combat, situational awareness is worth its weight in gold.”
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But for nearly its entire life, many have debated whether the F-35 is a game-changing platform or a case study in the excesses of the Pentagon’s weapon acquisition process.
It turns out it's both.
A 21st-Century Fighter Jet

The Boeing X-32, left, and the X-35 from Lockheed Martin.
Joe McNallyGetty Images
The aircraft we know today as the F-35 was built to meet the demands of multiple fighting forces with a single, highly capable aircraft.
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In the May 2002 issue, Popular Mechanicsexplored the U.S. Military’s newest fighter: the F-35.
Popular Mechanics
This new “Joint Strike Fighter,” Pentagon officials believed, would allow for streamlined logistical supply lines, maintenance, and training. This new fighter would also leverage the same stealth technologies found in the F-22.
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With a laundry list of requirements from the U.S. Navy, Air Force, DARPA, and soon, the U.K. and Canada, the Joint Strike Fighter program quickly moved from its official proposal in 1995 to two competitive prototypes in 1997: Lockheed Martin’s X-35 and Boeing’s X-32. And the new fighter had its work cut out for it—the Joint Strike Fighter needed to replace at least five different aircraft across all the different services, including the high-speed interceptor F-14 Tomcat and the tank-killing close air support A-10 Thunderbolt II.
While replacing all these aircraft with one plane would (theoretically) save money, the long list of requirements led to a landslide of expensive complications. In fact, while the X-35 was still competing for the contract, many weren’t sure such an aircraft could even be built in significant numbers.
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Lockheed Martin's F-35: The Specs

A cross-section of the F-35 from the May 2002 issue of Popular Mechanics. Necessary design changes over the years likely altered these original design plans.
Popular Mechanics / John Batchelor

Designed from the ground up to prioritize low-observability, the F-35 may be the stealthiest fighter in operation today. It uses a single F135 engine that produces 40,000 lbs. of thrust with the afterburner engaged, capable of pushing the sleek but husky fighter to speeds as high as Mach 1.6. The aircraft can carry four weapons internally while flying in contested airspace, or can be outfitted with six additional weapons mounted on external hardpoints when flying in low-risk environments. The F-35A also comes equipped with an internal 4-barrel 25mm rotary cannon hidden behind a small door to minimize radar returns.

The standard weapons payload of all three F-35 variants includes two AIM-120C/D air-to-air missiles and two 1,000 pound GBU-32 JDAM guided bombs, allowing the F-35 to engage both airborne and ground-based targets. Lockheed Martin has developed a new internal weapons carriage that will eventually allow it to carry an additional two missiles internally.

The cockpit of the F-35 forgoes the litany of gauges and screens found in previous generations of fighter in favor of large touchscreens and a helmet mounted display system that allows the pilot to see real time information. This helmet also allows the pilot to look directly through the aircraft, thanks to the F-35’s Distributed Aperture System (DAS) and suite of six infrared cameras mounted strategically around the aircraft.

“If you were to go back to the year 2000 and somebody said, ‘I can build an airplane that is stealthy and has vertical takeoff and landing capabilities and can go supersonic,’ most people in the industry would have said that’s impossible,” Tom Burbage, Lockheed’s general manager for the program from 2000 to 2013 told The New York Times. “The technology to bring all of that together into a single platform was beyond the reach of industry at that time.”
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While both the X-32 and X-35 prototypes performed well, the deciding factor in the competition may have been the F-35’s complicated Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) flight. Because the U.S. Marine Corps intended to use this new plane as a replacement for the AV-8B Harrier Jump Jets, America’s new stealth fighter had to be able to fill the same vertical landing, short take off role.

The Boeing X-32 prototypes were more unusual looking than its X-35 competition and in many ways, were less advanced. Boeing saw this as a selling point because the legacy systems leveraged in its design were cheaper to maintain. The aircraft used a direct-lift thrust vectoring system for vertical landings that was similar to that of the Harrier. It effectively just re-oriented the aircraft’s engine downward to lift the airframe, making it less stable than the X-35 in testing. But Boeing’s biggest mistake may have been the decision to field two prototypes: One that was capable of supersonic flight, and another that was capable of vertical landings. This decisionleft Pentagon officials worried about Boeing’s ability to field a single aircraft with all of those capabilities crammed inside a single fuselage.
USAFWikimedia Commons
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The lift fan design used in the X-35 connected the engine at the back of the aircraft to a drive shaft that would power a large fan installed in the aircraft’s fuselage behind the pilot. When hovering, the F-35 would orient its engine downward, not unlike the X-32, but it would also pull air from above the aircraft and force it down through the fan and out the bottom, creating two balanced sources of thrust that made the aircraft far more stable.
It also helped the F-35 notch a win in the looks category.
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“You can look at the Lockheed Martin airplane and say, that looks like what I would expect a modern, high performance, high capable jet fighter to look like,” Lockheed Martin engineer Rick Rezebek says. “You look at the Boeing airplane and the general reaction is, ‘I don't get it.’”
Ultimately, Lockheed Martin won out over Boeing’s unusual looking X-32 prototype in October of 2001. The future looked bright for the newly named F-35.
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Complications and Headaches

The F-35 receives a robotic spray of radar-baffling coating along the leading edge of its wing and air intake.
Popular Mechanics / Randy A. Crites
While Lockheed’s lift fan approach to STOVL flight might’ve nabbed the contract, the hard part was just beginning.
Choosing to begin with the least complex iteration of the new fighter, Lockheed’s Skunk Works started designing the F-35A, intended for use in the U.S. Air Force as a traditional runway fighter like the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Once the F-35A was complete, the engineering team would then move on to the more complex STOVL F-35B for use by the U.S. Marine Corps, and then finally, the F-35C, meant for carrier duty.
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There was just one problem—jamming all the necessary hardware for the different variants into a single fuselage proved extremely difficult. By the time Lockheed Martin wrapped up design work on the F-35A and got to work on the B, they realized the weight estimates they had established while designing the Air Force variant would lead to an aircraft that was 3,000 pounds too heavy. This miscalculation created a significant setback—the first of many.
Meet the F-35 Variants
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To the outside observer, the differences between each F-35 variant can be difficult to detect— and for good reason. The only real differences among each iteration of the jet are related to basing requirements. In other words, the most noticeable differences are in how the fighter takes off and lands.

F-35A
Intended for use by the U.S. Air Force and many allied nations, The F-35A is the conventional take off and landing (CTOL) variant. This aircraft is intended to operate out of traditional airstrips and is the only version of the F-35 to come equipped with a 25mm internal cannon, allowing it to step in for both the F-16 multirole fighter and the flying cannon A-10 Thunderbolt II, among many others.
F-35B
The F-35B was purpose built for short take off and vertical landing operations (STOVL) and was designed with the needs of the U.S. Marine Corps in mind. While still able to operate off of traditional runways, the STOVL capability offered by the F-35B allows Marines to operate these jets from austere runways or off the decks of amphibious assault ships, often referred to as “Lightning Carriers.”
F-35C
The F-35C is the first stealth fighter ever designed for carrier operations with the U.S. Navy. It boasts larger wings than its peers, to allow for slower approach speeds when landing on a carrier. More robust landing gear aids in tough carrier landings, and it harbors a larger fuel supply (20,000 pounds worth) internally to support longer range missions. The C is also the only F-35 equipped with folding wings, allowing for easier storage in the hull of ships.
“It turns out when you combine the requirements of the three services, what you end up with is the F-35, which is an aircraft that is in many ways suboptimal for what each of the services really want,” Todd Harrison, an aerospace expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The New York Times in 2019.
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Lockheed Martin’s team would eventually work out the finer points of each different platform, leaving as much of the aircraft consistent across branches as possible. But pulling off this engineering magic trick led to a series of delays and cost overruns.
Lockheed Martin’s bad arithmetic in the weight category stretched early development by 18 months and cost a daunting $6.2 billion to correct, but it was just the first of many issues to plague the new Joint Strike Fighter. It wouldn’t be until February of 2006, five years after Lockheed won the contract, that the first F-35A would roll off the assembly line. But these early F-35s weren't even ready to fight because the Pentagon had chosen to begin production before they had completed testing.
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Lockheed Martin chose Pratt & Whitney to power their new stealth fighter, using an F135 engine derived from the F119 used in the F-22 Raptor. The powerful engine produces 40,000 pounds of thrust, just less than the F-15 pulls out of twoPratt & Whitney F-100-PW-220 engines.
DAVID MCNEWGetty Images
This approach, called “concurrency,” was meant to ship out F-35s sooner with plans to go back and correct identified issues later. Unfortunately, a long list of problems meant each of these early fighters needed massive overhauls that were often too pricey to pursue.
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By 2010, nine years after Lockheed Martin was awarded the JSF contract, the cost per F-35 had ballooned to over 89 percent higher than initial estimates. It would still be another eight years before the first operational F-35s would get into the fight. To this day, the aircraft still hasn't been approved for full-rate production, largely due to ongoing software issues.
Knowing Is Half the Battle

Cockpit instrumentation of the F-35 Lightning II.
Richard BakerGetty Images
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So what really separates the pricey F-35 from the fighter jets that've come before it? Two words: data management.
Today's pilots have to manage a huge amount of information while flying, and doing so means splitting your time between traveling the speed of sound and a collage of screens, gauges, and sensor readouts screaming for your attention. Unlike previous fighter jets, the F-35 uses a combination of a heads-up display and helmet-based augmented reality to keep vital information directly in the pilot’s field of view.
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Inside the F-35 Helmet

Nick Nacca

1. Every Gen III is customized to its owner’s head to prevent slippage during flight and to ensure that the displays appear in the correct locations. To do this, technicians scan each pilot’s head, mapping every feature and translating it into the helmet’s inner lining.
2. Pilots used to have to switch over to a mounted night-vision attachment when flying in the dark. The Gen III projects a night-vision reading of the surrounding environment directly onto the visor when the pilot switches the system on.
3. The shell is made of carbon fiber, which is what gives it a characteristic checkered pattern.
4. A tight coil of bound cables comes out of the back of the helmet to connect it to the plane, Matrix-style. When the wearer turns his head in a specific direction, the wires feed the helmet the proper camera footage.
5. The communications system has active noise cancellation. Speakers produce a sound that opposes wind noise and the low-frequency hum of the jet engines so pilots can hear clearly.

“In the F-16, each sensor was tied to a different screen...often the sensors would show contradictory information” Lee tells Popular Mechanics. “The F-35 fuses everything into a green dot if it’s a good guy and a red dot if it’s a bad guy— it’s very pilot-friendly. All the information is shown on a panoramic cockpit display that is essentially two giant iPads.”
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It’s not just how the information reaches the pilot, but also how it’s collected. The F-35 is capable of gathering information from a wide variety of sensors located on the aircraft and from information sourced from ground vehicles, drones, other aircraft, and nearby ships. It collects all of that information—as well as network-driven data about targets and nearby threats—and spits it all out into a single interface the pilot can easily manage while flying.
With a god’s eye view of the area, F-35 pilots can coordinate efforts with fourth-generation aircraft, making them deadlier in the process.
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“In the F-35, we're the quarterback of the battlefield—our job is to make everyone around us better,” says Lee. “Fourth-gen fighters like the F-16 and F-15 will be with us until at least the late 2040's. Because there are so many more of them than us, our job is to use our unique assets to shape the battlefield and make it more survivable for them.”

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All of that information may sound daunting, but for fighter pilots who've experienced the daunting task of compiling information from a dozen different screens and gauges, the F-35’s user interface is nothing short of miraculous.
Tony "Brick" Wilson, who served in the U.S. Navy for 25 years prior to joining Lockheed Martin as a test pilot, has flown over 20 different aircraft, from helicopters to the U-2 spy plane and even a Russian MiG-15. According to him, the F-35 is—by far—the easiest aircraft to fly that he’s come across.
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“As we moved into fourth-generation fighters like the F-16, we moved from being pilots to being sensor managers,” Wilson says. “Now, with the F-35, sensor fusion allows us to take some of that sensor management responsibility off the pilot’s hands, allowing us to be true tacticians.”
The Fighter of the Future

Matt CardyGetty Images
In May of 2018, the Israeli Defense Force became the first nation to send F-35s into combat, conducting two airstrikes with F-35As in the Middle East. By September of the same year, the U.S. Marine Corps sent their first F-35Bs into the fight, engaging ground targets in Afghanistan, followed by the U.S. Air Force using their F-35A’s for airstrikes in Iraq in April 2019.
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Today, over 500 F-35 Lighting IIs have been delivered to nine nations and are operating out of 23 air bases around the world. That’s more than Russia’s fleet of fifth-generation Su-57s and China’s fleet of J-20s combined. With literally thousands more on order, the F-35 promises to be the backbone of U.S. air power.
And unlike previous fighter generations, the F-35’s capabilities are expected to keep up with the times. Thanks to software architecture designed to allow the F-35 to receive frequent updates, the aircraft’s form has stayed the same, but its function has already changed radically.
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[syed putra]

I think you got it all wrong.
This is china's new weapon.
Terminator becoming reality.
Skynet will come for you.


This Record-Breaking Shanghai Drone Display Is A Show Of Technological Strength

David Hambling
Contributor
Aerospace & Defense
I'm a South London-based technology journalist, consultant and author

More than 3,000 drones flew in formation to create the logo of Genesis Motors above Shanghai’s iconic skyline last week to mark the company’s launch in China. The record-breaking publicity stunt is a milestone in the deployment of massed drones. Just as building the tallest skyscraper is a point of pride and a sign of technical achievement, assembling the largest drone formation has become a hard-fought technology contest between U.S. and Asian companies.

3,281 drones creating the Genesis emblem over dazzling Shanghai's skyline
GENESIS

The Shanghai display involved 3,281 drones, breaking a record established last year by Shenzhen Damoda Intelligent Control Technology with 3,051 drones. With numbers this large, the individual drones become pixels in a giant airborne display.

 

[blackmondy]

The US must bring this black beauty into service again.

 

[Hypocrite-The]

The Real F-35 Problem We Need to Solve
When Pentagon strategists game out potential near-peer conflicts, they tend to plug in sortie-generation rates for the F-35 Lightning II that reflect the program’s original vision, not the far lower numbers that represent the actual state of things. But if planners intend to count on the F-35 in a battle of any but the shortest duration, the Pentagon and industry must urgently improve their ability to maintain and sustain the most technologically complex (and capable) aircraft in history. A performance-based logistics plan currently being discussed is worth considering.

I confess that as a young Marine Corps aviator, I cared not at all for logistics. My peers and I took for granted that our EA-6B Prowlers would be ready to go every time we were ordered into the skies over Iraq and Bosnia. And they were. In the 1990s and well into the 2000s, the maintenance readiness of our Vietnam-era jets rivaled that of aircraft two and three decades younger. In the early 2000s, the Navy Department decided to extend the EA-6Bs’ service life yet again. Soon our Prowlers were deploying nonstop around the globe, and flying at a rate significantly higher than in previous decades.

What kept our Methuselah jet improving with age? Money, expertise, and need. The costs of PRL (program related logistics) and PRE (program related engineering) rose as the plane flew on well beyond its designed lifespan. The intricacies of maintenance and logistics were well understood and well-tended by Northrop Grumman and other companies, working with Naval Air Systems Command engineers and the fleet’s own experts. And the need for electronic-warfare planes assets only grew as the world entered the Network Age.

The Prowler was a relatively small program – the classic “low density, high demand” asset — while the F-35 Lightning II is the largest acquisition program in the country's history. More than 500 F-35s are flying already; plans call for a total of 2,456. But the F-35 program faces the same central questions we confronted with the Prowler: how to sustain it, how to best maintain readiness, and how to devise a functional supply and maintenance system.

Its infancy has not been auspicious. A July 22 hearing of the House Oversight and Reform Committee highlighted various maintenance and logistics challenges: planned depots that have yet to stand up, an immature supply base, the once-touted, now-troubled Autonomic Logistic Information System, or ALIS, used to track and order parts.

It won’t matter how well the F-35 can penetrate enemy air defenses if the sorties can’t be generated. Moreover, flat budgets in the foreseeable future mean that throwing money at the problem is not an option. Nor can the U.S. afford to trim the planned F-35 fleet; we need those aircraft and their capabilities if we are to prevail. Instead, we need to improve F-35 maintenance, logistics, and sustainment — while reducing their costs.

One enticing option is to move to a performance-based logistics arrangement. Currently, the Pentagon negotiates annual sustainment contracts based on a cost-plus-incentive fee. Because they must be renewed every year, they prevent long-term planning and require enormous investments of time and manpower in oversight.

Last year, F-35 maker Lockheed Martin proposed a different approach, starting with a five-year deal to supply, by 2025, enough parts to keep 80 percent of the world’s F-35s up and ready — a higher readiness level than we currently see. Lockheed has said that part of its strategy for living up to the deal would be investing up to $1.5 billion in subcontractors to shore up the supply chain.

Performance-based logistics has succeeded with much smaller programs, but it has never been tried on a large scale. And it might just work. We are seeing industry bet on their own success and accept risk if they don’t succeed. It is also noteworthy that this arrangement would take cost risk away from the government and place it on industry, in exchange for the predictability of a half-decade-long contract.

Moreover, this is one of the places where the promises of “big data” can actually pay off, particularly in a program the size of the F-35. Data analytics gives opportunities to increase efficiencies, reduce manpower and material costs, and improve inventory control. These are things we conceptually understood – even in an old warhorse like the EA-6B – but we never fully leveraged.

I hope DOD will move forward with this PBL idea. In fact, I’m surprised that it hasn’t become something that DOD is demanding of industry. There must be a recognition of the reality that while technology has certainly been a decisive piece of our military superiority, readiness has been just as important. Our ability to maintain and supply the force is what has made us the best military in the world.

It’s not sexy. The truth is that the unsung heroes during my operational deployments weren’t capable pilots, but rather supply officers and noncommissioned officers who were Merlin the magician making sure we had the one part that would keep the jet in an “up” status. It’s also what will determine whether or not the F-35 can live up to its full potential.

Scott Cooper is a retired Marine Corps officer who flew the EA-6B. He is the co-author of the book "No Fly Zones and International Security: Politics and Strategy in 2019.

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