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F-35 Cancelled, then what ?

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F-35 Cancelled, then what ?

Old 13th May 2013, 13:43
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F-35B performs first vertical take-off 10 May 2013

F-35B performs first vertical take-off 12 May 2013 Dave Majumdar

F-35B performs first vertical take-off

"Sources say that test pilots at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, performed the first Lockheed Martin F-35B Joint Strike Fighter vertical take-off on 10 May.

The US Marine Corps' short take-off and vertical landing variant had a requirement to perform vertical take-offs right from the outset of the JSF programme. However, the capability is not emphasised because the F-35B would not be able to carry a tactically significant payload in that configuration....

...The original X-35B prototype demonstrated the ability to take off vertically in 2001."
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Old 13th May 2013, 17:32
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LO,

I remember well "exactly the same song and dance number about the F-22, fifteen years ago", although they probably had more to shout about then. But they didn't talk much about ballistic and medium structural and surface damage then either. One question that springs to mind is the difference between the complexity of repairs to significant damage to composite with mostly applied stealth and LM's new, rather better solution (even though to total RCS isn't as good).

There is a briefing on a similar subject next month, hopefully, so we may learn more.
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Old 13th May 2013, 19:44
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A couple of points. Comparisons to the B-2 are not very appropriate as that aircraft has coatings which have to cover a much broader frequency range than either the F-22 or F-35. The comparison to the F-22 is more appropriate and surly LM has had some time to get it much better this time.

Although penetration damage to the composite skin may be a major issue, I don’t see that occurring often enough to be an issue. I also like to see the repair processes to the seals on movable doors, such as the landing gear doors.

Does anyone know how the RN is planning to confirm on the ship that any repairs have been successful from a signature standpoint? It is very difficult to get static signature numbers with the aircraft on the deck and the gear down.

Finally, one of the issues of signature driven aircraft designs is how to dump the system heat overboard. With all access areas sealed little air flows through the structure. Early on the F-35 had heat rejection problems that required more fuel (one of the cooling mediums) be kept on the aircraft than would be required by the operational requirements. That obviously has some operational range implications.
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Old 13th May 2013, 21:08
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All very good points, Bevo. To hit the stealth issue, first.

Comparisons to the B-2 are not very appropriate as that aircraft has coatings which have to cover a much broader frequency range than either the F-22 or F-35. The comparison to the F-22 is more appropriate and surly LM has had some time to get it much better this time.
You are spot on in the sense that the F-35 stealth is targeted in a narrower waveband, specific to pre-defined threats - although there have been questions about the currency of the assumptions at the time. The threats have moved on (L band sensors in the PAK FA leading edges for example), but it would not do the programme any good to try to change the specs now or to keep changing them. It is one of the difficulties with a programme that runs so long and suffers so many delays - before the acolytes get all upset, this is nothing new to the JSF programme, it's happened many times before.

I disagree, though that we can discount penetration or ballistic damage on a warplane. It HAS to be a consideration and cannot be swept away by statements to the effect that we've tested it to 600 hours of flight time (non-combat) and put a few scratches on the surface - against 8,000 hours without being retunrned to depot or manufacturer.

Even LM's engineers cannot design into the airframe the fact that it won't be hit by anything.

You statement about measuring total RCS post-repair in the field is exactly right.

Last edited by Courtney Mil; 13th May 2013 at 21:17.
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Old 13th May 2013, 21:45
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F-35 Flight Test Intentional Departure VIDEO Utube

AFAIK (looking for online info) there is a portable field device to measure F-35 stealth. But anyhoo....

F-35 Flight Test Intentional Departure

"Published on May 13, 2013
F-35 Test Pilot Dave Nelson talks about intentional departure and recovering from stalls during F-35A high angle of attack testing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. Flight Test Engineer Lea Haubelt explains how the tests help define the F-35 flight control software."


Last edited by SpazSinbad; 13th May 2013 at 21:46. Reason: formoverfunction
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Old 13th May 2013, 21:58
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Originally Posted by Courtney
Even LM's engineers cannot design into the airframe the fact that it won't be hit by anything.
They (LM and friends) surely seem to be betting on the idea that the F35 simply won't suffer from damage sustained during battle.
Not that the Pentagon is following the same logic;
Lockheed F-35 Should Get Safety Valve, Pentagon Official Says - Businessweek
The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer is backing calls to restore a valve on Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT)’s F-35 jet that improves the fighter’s chances to survive a hit from a high-explosive round.
Which sounds more than logical knowing that besides the normal CAS missions which where mainly performed with the F16 and F18's, the F35 also has to take over some, if not almost all, of the A10 missions.

For a program so far down the road (10+ years now) , with so many pre production, development and LRIP examples flying it certainly seems to be having issues with many very basic items.
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Old 13th May 2013, 22:08
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Ken, I will suggest that perhaps the A-10 mission, if it is to be taken over, will be assumed by rotary wing. There is a certain amount of doctrinal nonsense that somehow helicopter, airborne fires, don't provide close air support on the battlefield. Also, with the new guidance sysetms on weapons, that A-10 mission may not be delivered from comparatively low altitude, with a gun, should fixed wing be called on for close in fire support.

See also unmanned and armed aircraft. Reaper can bring you a 500 lb laser guided munition, among other things.

Think combined arms, in any case, and not just air superiority or purely air minded when establishing operational assumptions.
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Old 13th May 2013, 22:57
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Some F-35C Hook Clarity

2-Star: Air Wing Has To Evolve 13 May 2013

2-Star: Air Wing Has To Evolve - Association of Naval Aviation in Virginia Beach, Virginia - Hampton Roads Squadron

"Defense News, Navy Times’ sister publication, discussed the future of naval aviation with Rear Adm. Bill Moran, the director of air warfare, and his deputy, Rear Adm. Rich Butler. Excerpts, edited for space and clarity:...
...Q. Adm. Jon Greenert, chief of naval operations, was recently asked in the Senate what his biggest concerns are with the F-35. He said, “I need a tailhook, a helmet and a program that will deliver weapons equivalent to a Super Hornet.” Can you address those issues?

Moran. Absolutely. The tailhook had issues with snagging the arresting cable. The bottom line is that the design was flawed, so a complete redesign has been completed. A preliminary critical design is done. The engineers for the Navy have confidence in that design. We’re going to begin testing that.

Q. Is the hook being repositioned on the aircraft?

Moran. No. We changed the hold-down damper, and we changed the hook design, which previously was more of a blunt-nosed hook. It was kind of a bulbous nose and it wasn’t scooping. I know— it’s hard to defend this one.

Butler. When the [aircraft’s] wheels go over the wire, it bounces, and that bounce happened to hit right as the hook was coming over where the wire was on the deck. So it was a combination of the distance between the main mounts and the hook point, and the fact that the hook point wasn’t shaped quite right.

It wasn’t hugging the flight deck close enough...."
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Old 14th May 2013, 08:10
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JSFfan, you calling Courtney Mil or anyone else a troll in this forum is a bit rich. I didn't see any "goal posts". If you view someone's points of view as such, it simply shows how defensive you are about a project that has a load of major faults and that you have adopted in public with no willingness or ability to post informed views of your own. But I do enjoy seeing your numerous selective quotes that we're all capable of reading elsewhere for ourselves.

Courtney Mil, I don't think you'll get many answers here about structure repair. We don't really understand what the composite or its qualities are. Flogging a dead horse. I love the idea of the portable stealth measuring device. I wonder if it unfolds to fit the whole aircraft in or if its like a radar flashlight that you shine on the repair. Or maybe a Star Trek Tricorder.

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Old 14th May 2013, 08:36
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Field equipment will be able to assess flight line RCS

The F-35’s Race Against Time Nov 2012 By John A. Tirpak Executive Editor

The F-35?s Race Against Time

"...When it comes to maintainable stealth design, the F-35 represents the state of the art, O’Bryan said, superior even to the F-22 Raptor, USAF’s top-of-the-line air superiority aircraft.

The F-22 requires heavy doses of regular and expensive low observable materials maintenance. F-35 stealth surfaces, by contrast, are extremely resilient in all conditions, according to the Lockheed team.

"We’ve taken it to a different level," O’Bryan said. The stealth of the production F-35—verified in radar cross section tests performed on classified western test ranges—is better than that of any aircraft other than the F-22.

This, he went on, is true in part because the conductive materials needed to absorb and disperse incoming radar energy are baked directly into the aircraft’s multilayer composite skin and structure.

Moreover, the surface material smoothes out over time, slightly reducing the F-35’s original radar signature, according to the Lockheed Martin official. Only serious structural damage will disturb the F-35’s low observability, O’Bryan said, and Lockheed Martin has devised an array of field repairs that can restore full stealthiness in just a few hours.

Dramatic Stealthiness
The F-35’s radar cross section, or RCS, has a "maintenance margin," O’Bryan explained, meaning it’s "always better than the spec." Minor scratches and even dents won’t affect the F-35’s stealth qualities enough to degrade its combat performance, in the estimation of the company. Field equipment will be able to assess RCS right on the flight line, using far less cumbersome gear than has previously been needed to make such calculations...."
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Old 14th May 2013, 08:55
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M2,

I so wish I'd thought of that.



Lonewolf,

It's not so much what might be better at taking on the A-10 role (and I agree with your point about attack helos), it's more to do with the idea years ago that "the F-35 will replace the US Air Force A-10s and F-16s, US Navy F/A-18s, US Marine Corps AV-8B Harriers and F/A-18s, and UK Harrier GR7s and Sea Harriers."




Spaz,

As one of the issues with the old hook design was trail angle, I think Moran and Butler may have missed a trick by not mentioning it in that interview (although possibly mentioned elsewhere in it). To be fair, given that the old hook wasn't missing every time, I hope it's reasonable to hope that the damper and shoe changes will do the trick.

Courtney
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Old 14th May 2013, 09:35
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The F-35 is supposed to replace the A-10, AV-8B and Marine F/A-18, along with all the aircraft that partners use for CAS.

Whether this will happen depends to some degree on how CAS requirements change. I suspect there will be a move towards a lower-cost, more persistent platform staying out of "golden BB" range, using DIRCM and reduced IR signature to defeat MANPADS, and radar/IR/Brimstone-equivalent against heavier air defenses.
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Old 14th May 2013, 10:03
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Repair Verification Radar (RVR) for F-35 Field Use

For 'Mach Two' some RVR: http://www.pprune.org/military-aircr...ml#post7841682

Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"...Ground crews require Repair Verification Radar (RVR) test sets to verify the RCS after performing repairs...."[footnotes: 263, dead link]"

[footnote: 264] Brewer, Jeffrey and Shawn Meadows. "Survivability of the Next Strike Fighter", p. 23. Aircraft Survivability: Susceptibility Reduction via Joint Aircraft Survivability Program Office (JASPO), Summer 2006.

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc...f&AD=ADA529057 (PDF 2Mb)
OR
http://www.bahdayton.com/SURVIAC/asn...mer%202006.pdf (2Mb)

"...The aircraft signature design is derived using lessons learned from legacy stealth aircraft. However, the F-35 will employ updated materials and design techniques to ensure that low signature is maintained while keeping the aircraft affordable and supportable. The F-35 team has designed in an unprecedented number of access panels not requiring special Low Observable (LO) restoration compared to legacy LO aircraft. LO maintainers in the past have struggled, replacing tape and seal systems after maintenance events. The JSF team has fought to keep these time-intensive repairs to a minimum. In fact, most routinely accessed panels do not require any LO restoration. Additionally, when performing a non-standard repair to the aircraft, the maintainer will have the option to use a Repair Verification Radar (RVR) to provide confidence in the RF performance of the repair. The maintainer will use the RVR to ensure that a proper repair was made and also to perform periodic inspections for potential non-visual defects. An advanced LO Health Assessment System (LOHAS) will prioritize LO restoration tasks based on maintenance tasks performed and defects recorded into the system to help the maintainer know what needs to be repaired for the next mission or what can be deferred to a later date. The JSF Team is working hard to eliminate unnecessary, or so called “recreational,” maintenance actions...."

Last edited by SpazSinbad; 14th May 2013 at 10:04. Reason: Add Previous Post Link
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Old 14th May 2013, 10:40
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Originally Posted by Lonewolf_50
Ken, I will suggest that perhaps the A-10 mission, if it is to be taken over, will be assumed by rotary wing. There is a certain amount of doctrinal nonsense that somehow helicopter, airborne fires, don't provide close air support on the battlefield. Also, with the new guidance sysetms on weapons, that A-10 mission may not be delivered from comparatively low altitude, with a gun, should fixed wing be called on for close in fire support
I fully realize that, I was commenting on how the F35 was initially conceived and sold which means, a CAS platform, something it most certainly is not.
At best it is a bomber, striker with limited A2A capabilities.

The best solution for countries like mine is not the F35 but a combination of UCAV (predator, X47 and TARANIS) and more importantly an ever growing list of potent stand off weapons, pretty much negating the need for the F35.
This point was already clearly made by Admirals and Generals in the US not too long ago.



Also I don't doubt that in time they will get all the bells and whistles working like they where supposed to be, the F35 will probably be no more different than any of the other complex weapon system in that regard.
That still leaves us with a fighter which is not a replacement for our F16 or F18, it is already completely compromised due to its complexity, price, operating costs and most important contractual limitations put on it by LM, Northrop and the US government.
BTW, this is what some high placed ex LM Skunkwork employees had to say about the JSF;
The Aviationist » Two former Skunk Works members seem to know why the F-35 program is a mess
Bob Murphy, who joined the Skunk Works in 1954, managed flight-test on the U-2 and became deputy director of operations, illustrated the troubles faced by the Joint Strike Fighter to Batey.

“Because of bureaucracy”, […] “once you get all these organizations involved-all the different Air Force bases across the country, and every contractor that makes a screw for the airplane-when they have meetings, everybody comes to every meeting, and nothing ever gets settled. It’s crazy! If you’ve got 300 people in a meeting, what the hell do you solve? Nothing,” Murphy stated.

But F-35′s cost overruns and slippage were are also due to the philosophy which brought to the three different F-35 versions, as explained again by Brown:

“In the mid-1960s, there was a proposal by the Secretary of Defense to combine the F-14 and F-15 programs, so we did some analysis”, […] “the Air Force wanted 200 F-15s and the Navy wanted 200 F-14s.

If you designed an airplane for each individual service to do what they wanted, each airplane would weight about 40,000lb, but if you combined them so one airplane could do the job that was needed for each service, the weight suddenly went up to about 70,000lb-and back then it was generally accepted that airplanes cost about a thousand dollars per pound of weight.
The cost savings on producing 400 of one airplane rather than 200 of two was about 10 percent, so it was clearly much more cost-effective to have two separate airplanes doing their own job best.

So how we manage, on the F-35, to suddenly reverse that idea is not clear to me.”

It’s a shame that the experience made on some of the most advanced and adveniristic projects ever made in aviation history did not guide LM and the U.S. Air Force and Navy through the development of the Lightning II.

Basically a new 70,000lbs fighter with a 43,000lbs engine is not a replacement for what was originally a true LWF like the F16.
Once the point of MLU is reached , it's anyones guess what is going to happen with the weight and level of complexity in this already compromised fighter.
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Old 14th May 2013, 10:42
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I see a slight misunderstanding here, Spaz. I think your statement

I read they have test equipment to measure the RCS on ship after repair.
is what's caused the problem. The RVR, you're talking about, doesn't measure RCS. RCS is a property of the entire airframe. The RVR is a bit like M2's flashlight option (kind off), which simply looks at the properties of the repaired area and allows the user to compare it with the spec to see if the repair has changed the stealth material's properties beyond defined tollerances.

If you want to measure RCS you need to put the aircraft on a pole and examine it with radar energy appropriate to your chosen threats.

Hope that helps.

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Old 14th May 2013, 11:40
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UpApoleWithoutApaddle

Where's the Paddle?
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Old 14th May 2013, 12:21
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People mistakenly think CAS is solely about getting down and dirty in the weeds and mud...it's not!

With appropriate sensors, comms and weapons, CAS can and is done by strategic platforms from medium altitudes. I've seen B-1Bs and B-52s doing CAS in Afghanistan, and F-111Fs did CAS in GW1 (plinking). Today Predators do CAS from >10000 with Hellfire and GBUs, and AC-130s have been doing it for decades from >8000 feet.

Post A-10, the CAS domain will be divvied up between attack helos, UASs and LASs at the lo end, AC-130s and UASs in the mid, and F-35, UCAVs and other fast movers and bombers at the hi end.

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Old 14th May 2013, 12:38
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Courtney/Ken/LO: thanks. I don't think it's a matter of requirement creep or mismatch, or "one size fits all" (which looks good to a budget weenie but has SRFA to do with combat effectiveness). With the varied requirements laid on the air effort, to include CAS, the "best fit" with F-35 is going to warp in part due to the program taking so long to get fielded. The world and war keep changing, and I suspect that like the B-2, JSF will arrive late for the show. IIRC, Sopwith Snipe arrived right as WW I ended.

Foxtrat Alpha: you said it more eloquently than I.

JSFfan: calling CM a troll ... come one, man!

Last edited by Lonewolf_50; 14th May 2013 at 12:45.
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Old 14th May 2013, 12:59
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Originally Posted by FoxtrotAlpha18
People mistakenly think CAS is solely about getting down and dirty in the weeds and mud...it's not!
Nobody here thinks or believes that CAS is solely about getting down and dirty, the F35 would be terrible at that anyway.
The next generation CAS missions will be mostly dependant on future stand off weapon capabilities, the F35 won't be any better than the existing platforms in this regard.

Also the idea that down and dirty will no longer be needed is a fallacy as well, the technology to strike from a far distance might be very promissing, inevitably in turn it will also be (partly) negated by new technologies developped to protect against this SOW tech on the battlefield.

Fact is, the F35 was sold as the true Harrier/A10/F16 succesor for exactly these missions and while these kind of missions might be mostly fullfilled by helo's and UCAV's in the future, with the F35 we pretty much loose the option of doing this with a manned fixed wing fighter.
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Old 14th May 2013, 13:31
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JSFfan, you are in no position to come here calling anyone a troll.

A forum for the professionals who fly the non-civilian hardware, and the backroom boys and girls without whom nothing would leave the ground.

Remind me where you fit in?
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