Oh my God.
I specifically used the term, “Whitcomb area rule” so people would look it up. Intentionally. Because
it’s so readily apparent that A LOT of people posting on this issue have no idea what area ruling means. (The F-105 vs F-35A thread went on for days, and days, and days. And I was leaving hint, after hint, after hint—and literally shaking my head in disbelief.)
--> And regardless of how or why I used the term, "Whitcomb area rule" how does that in any way negate the FACT that Tom Burbage, Lockheed's former JSF project manager, confessed that the F-35 minimally conforms to said rule?
As to your comment: “Area ruling is not a particularly significant issue to use to criticise F-35 (F-22 shows even less evidence of area ruling than F-35.)” Unfortunately, and most respectfully,
that’s just crazy talk.
The Following Are: “Will Have a Significant Operational Impact” Issues
1. The 2012 DOT&E report notes the following about the F-35 acceleration from .8M to 1.2M:
A) A Model: Specifications retroactively decreased: time for acceleration from 0.8 Mach to 1.2 Mach increased by 8 seconds,
B) B Model: Specifications retroactively decreased: time for acceleration from 0.8 Mach to 1.2 Mach increased by 16 seconds,
C) C Model: Specifications retroactively decreased: time for acceleration from 0.8 Mach to 1.2 Mach increased by “at least” 43 seconds.
Quoting FlightGlobal: Most egregious is the F-35C-model's drastically reduced transonic acceleration capabilities. "That [43 seconds] is a massive amount of time, and assuming you are in afterburner for acceleration, it's going to cost you even more gas," the pilot says. "This will directly impact tactical execution, and not in a good way." Pilots typically make the decision to trade a very high rate of fuel consumption for supersonic airspeeds for one of two reasons. "They are either getting ready to kill something or they are trying to defend against something [that's trying to kill] them," the pilot says. "Every second counts in both of those scenarios. The longer it takes, the more compressed the battle space gets. That is not a good thing."
Why the spec change? Because the F-35A/B/C ain’t ever going to achieve the original spec. Why? Because the F-35A/B/C minimally conforms to Whitcomb’s area rule.
And the above is going to get waaaaaay worse when they start hanging externals on the aircraft.
--> The F-22 does/did not struggle with acceleration performance, and it’s performance specifications were not retroactively decreased.
2) The 2012 DOT&E report also notes:
“
Turn performance for the F-35A was reduced from 5.3 sustained g's to 4.6 sustained g's. The F-35B had its sustained g's cut from 5 to 4.5 g's, while the ‘C’ variant had its turn performance truncated from 5.1 to 5 sustained g's.”
FlightGlobal:
"Having a maximum sustained turn performance of less than 5g is the equivalent of an [McDonnell Douglas] F-4 or an [Northrop] F-5," another highly experienced fighter pilot says. "[It's] certainly not anywhere near the performance of most fourth and fifth-generation aircraft."
At higher altitudes, the reduced performance will directly impact survivability against advanced Russian-designed "double-digit" surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems such as the Almaz-Antey S-300PMU2 (also called the SA-20 Gargoyle by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), the pilot says. At lower altitudes, where fighters might operate in for the close air support or forward air control role, the reduced airframe performance will place pilots at increased risk against shorter-range SAMs and anti-aircraft artillery."
Why? Because the F-35A/B/C ain’t ever going to achieve the original spec. Why? Because the F-35A/B/C minimally conforms to Whitcomb’s area rule.
And the above is going to get waaaaaay worse when they start hanging externals on the aircraft.
--> The F-22 does/did not struggle with turn performance, and it’s performance specifications were not retroactively decreased.
Citation for both above: https://www.flightglobal.com/news/ar...tional-381683/
3. The 2012 DOT&E report also notes:
"Buffet and transonic roll-off—wing drop in high-speed turns, associated with asymmetrical movements of shock waves—still affect all variants of the JSF, despite control law changes. The program will conduct flight tests this year to assess the problem, but has now reached a limit on what can be done with control laws, Gilmore reports. Further changes would degrade maneuverability or overload the structure.
Why? Because the F-35A/B/C minimally conforms to Whitcomb’s area rule.
And the above is going to get waaaaaay worse when they start hanging externals on the aircraft.
--> The F-22 does/did not struggle with buffet and transonic roll-off.
4. Top speed, cruise, range, climb, payload--the whole shooting match—it’s all fundamentally compromised because this aircraft minimally conforms to area ruling. Period. It’s so blatantly obvious. And it always has been.
And Lockheed Martin has freely admited to all of this. Good grief.