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F-35 Cancelled, then what ?

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F-35 Cancelled, then what ?

Old 28th Aug 2015, 20:20
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"Not least because they will be rare as rocking horse s***. Russia have cut their order to 16. How effective will it be when out numbered 10:1 against the F22?"

I'm afraid the F-22 fleet is too small as well, considering the costly research and development. And to think politicians and certain manufacturers argued for the "less expensive option" - the F-35. I guess we do this "one-size-fits-all" nonsense once every 40 years or so.
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Old 28th Aug 2015, 21:02
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No worries, Ken. And thanks for the "Rare bit of good news" post. The link issue has always been one of my concerns about the programme.

A1Bill, is that the kind of thing you were after?

Last edited by Courtney Mil; 28th Aug 2015 at 21:16.
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Old 29th Aug 2015, 08:37
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F-35 vs A-10 in CAS evaluation...

Could prove to be interesting...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-support-test/

-RP
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Old 29th Aug 2015, 09:41
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Oops!

Earlier this week, Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, the Air Force’s Chief of Staff, said it would be a “silly exercise” to compare the A-10 and F-35’s ability to provide CAS. In a statement Thursday, he backed away from that comment, saying he did not understand that the testing would be part of a formal Pentagon test and evaluation program.
Career dissipation light blinking?
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Old 29th Aug 2015, 10:49
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Originally Posted by KenV
The F-35 is an electron vacuum cleaner much like the F-22. The problem is sharing all that data with 4th gen aircraft because the F-35's MADL is not compatible with 4th gen aircraft. But it looks like they're developing some effective work arounds by using aerial refuelers as data repeaters. (and by they way, one reason why the KC-46 has 25+ miles of extra wiring.)

Tests show F-35s can share data with older aircraft - Reuters News 08/28/2015
Two weeks of joint testing of the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jet at a California air base by the Royal Netherlands Air Force showed that the new stealthy jets are able to share a significant amount of data with older warplanes, the pilot in charge of Dutch F-35 testing told Reuters.
Colonel Albert De Smit, commander of the Netherlands operational test detachment, said the testing sought to validate that the new fifth-generation F-35s could share useable data with older F-16s and aerial refueling aircraft via the Link 16 system.

He said the results showed that during combat, the F-35 could help relay key targeting, surveillance and other data to less capable F-16s and other planes, in much the same way that the U.S. Air Force's F-22 fighter jets work with older aircraft.

"The amount of information that we can share is very promising," De Smit said in a telephone interview this week. "It provides fourth generation aircraft with information that they normally would not have ... It looks like they're going to be able to execute a better mission" if used together with F-35 jets.

He added that it could take months to fully evaluate the results of the tests, which involved two to three Dutch and British F-35s, as well as Dutch F-16s, refueling planes and a small fleet of A-4 Skyhawks posing as enemy aircraft.

The Netherlands is one of the eight countries that joined the United States in funding development of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and its military is a formal part of the F-35 operational test community, along with the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, as well as Britain and Australia.

The Netherlands already had two F-35 A-model jets, which are being used for the testing, and it plans to order 37 more in coming years. The planes due to go into service in 2019.
You left Rafale of your list of "electron" suckers there Ken...
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Old 29th Aug 2015, 12:41
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Having had the opportunity this week to see the T-50 display live, I can only suggest that it has been taking gymnastic lessons from the Su-35S. Building on CM's comments, not only do the Russian operators and engineers clearly believe that maneuvering is far from irrelevant, but there seems to be a view that (at least in some circumstances) forward speed is not everything.

"Bells" and helicopter turns provide very rapid changes in direction. Sure, you lose energy - but both the T-50 and Su-35S appear to be able to regain it very quickly.

I'd also be very careful about thinking of the T-50 as an F-22 analog, let alone automatically thinking that different is worse (why should a curved duct + blocker be less efficient than a full-LOS-blocked duct?). It apparently has a full active EW system and (the evidence gets clearer every day) is emphatically not a pure air-to-air fighter.

Generally speaking, the Russians appear to be tooling up merrily to fight a different kind of war from the one that the F-35-centric Western forces expect. Our best hope may be that the wheels fall off their economy again before it comes to that.
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Old 29th Aug 2015, 14:20
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Well hopefully the F-35 is better than the T-50 at something. The T-50 is a twin, has almost twice the wing area, packs about 30,000lbs more thrust, has over twice the range and travels Mach .7 faster..
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Old 29th Aug 2015, 16:30
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and probably costs about half the F-35 as well...............
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Old 30th Aug 2015, 02:08
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CM, It just shows what I don't know. I'm not seeing the intricacies of the craft that you see. I look at the SU-30 video I put up and then look at the PAK-FA video. It looks to my uneducated eye, that it has a ways to go.
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Old 30th Aug 2015, 08:43
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A1bill, I have to say that I haven't tried doing a side-by-side comparison between the various types, but if you're noticing differences in performance, three things occur to me.

First the T-50 is a a fairly early prototype with the wrong engines - impressive as they appear to be. Second, the display may have been to show that slow-speed, high-aoa awesomeness. Third, you may be seeing some of the costs of the stealthy form - the trade-off between aerodynamics and low RCS. Most likely a bit of all three.
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Old 30th Aug 2015, 11:38
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FlightGlobal: MAKS: Is Russia developing an F-35-hunting UAV?

Russia could be working on a low-observable, F-35-hunting unmanned air vehicle that uses deeply-integrated electronic warfare systems to stay hidden from radars. The tip-off comes from electronic systems producer KRET, which has a curious UAV model on display at the MAKS air show in Moscow.

According to the company’s first deputy chief executive officer Vladimir Mikheev, this aircraft model is more than just a sleek promotional display – it is an advanced military UAV being developed by the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC). Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies (KRET) is a subcontractor on the project, he says, providing the fundamental communications, radar, electronic warfare and self-protection systems, as well as the ground control station.

Speaking via a translator, Mikheev tells Flightglobal that the company is involved with two military UAV projects – one in development and one in the concept phase – but both ventures of UAC. He declines to name the project and does not say which UAC design bureau is in charge, but confirms some of its key capabilities.



Mikheev says the UAV has been designed to detect stealth aircraft in the same vein as China’s ambitious “Divine Eagle” project, which he claims is based on technology “borrowed” from Russia and the USA. Such aircraft aim to detect low-observable US combat aircraft using X-band and UHF radars, specifically the Lockheed Martin F-22 and F-35 and Northrop Grumman B-2. But airborne surveillance is just one of the UAV’s capabilities.

Mikheev says KRET is providing a deeply-integrated electronic warfare system that not only provides a protective electromagnetic sphere around the aircraft to counter air-to-air missiles, but also cloaks it from radars. The unmanned aircraft closely resembles Northrop’s carrier-based X-47B demonstrator, but adds two lift fans on each wing and vertical stabilisers.

Mikheev says the UAV’s avionics, radar and electronic warfare systems are derived from those being produced for the Sukhoi Su-35 multirole fighter and the Kamov Ka-50 attack helicopter. KRET is also deeply involved in the Sukhoi T-50/PAK FA fighter project.

In an article published on KRET’s website on 2 August, Mikheev says Russia has been competing with the USA in the realm of electronic warfare “for our entire lives”, and about five years ago the company decided it needed to bring in the next-era of electronic warfare systems. “Today we are talking about 15% to 20% annual growth in the direction of electronic warfare systems,” he says.

It remains to be seen whether this UAV project is just marketing or a mature development programme with similar goals to China’s Divine Eagle UAV. It would come as the stealthy F-35 enters serve as the West’s primary “first-day-of-war” combat jet.

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Old 30th Aug 2015, 15:53
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The development of that and the divine eagle are, in my mind, an indication of things to come. Like I said, the development of stealth countermeasures was always going to be an inevitability; it makes me even more sceptical that we should be hinging the future of our air combat capability on it.
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Old 30th Aug 2015, 16:59
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And the obvious question is, "What's the West in a similar way to counter their growing stealth capability?"

Maybe stealth against stealth means we will all end up alive at the merge!
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Old 30th Aug 2015, 19:03
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ORAC,

Thanks for the UAV article, perhaps it will awaken some sleeping people up. In any business, shortened time to market for a new advanced product is the real edge, something that has eluded the participants in the everlasting but continuing development of the F-35. The counter play to whatever technology advantage the F-35 possesses can't be a surprise coming 15 years or more after the F-35 conception, can it?
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Old 30th Aug 2015, 19:09
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I see the Russians have stepped up from computer rendering to persex models with flasing LED's.

What is the West to do to against this major advance in Russian model making?
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Old 30th Aug 2015, 19:21
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Perspex model? I thought that was the finished product.
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Old 30th Aug 2015, 20:47
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Once the whole stealth UAV blah blah etc etc ends in aerial stalemate we get back to , infantry, tanks, artillery, and trenches
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Old 30th Aug 2015, 21:39
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Are you being serious, SARF?

Stealth is simply a part of the ECM/ECCM/ECCCM, etc battle that has been going on about as long as we've been using the EM spectrum. This is just another page in that book.
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Old 31st Aug 2015, 09:00
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I do understand the scepticism shown here to the above report. Those super tanks that were reported a few months ago??

However, a wise man [OK RAF Rgt instructor] once "told" me, never underestimate your enemies.

It would not be beyond reason to discover the [-]Soviet[/-] sorry, Russian, Empire to have taken a completely tangental approach to countering western LO aircraft design and COST.
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Old 31st Aug 2015, 09:37
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That approach includes inventing aircraft and their abilities so the West will spend billions in countering them.

The reality is that Russia has a defense spend that a bit less than UK and France combined. The demands of its large territory complely overwhelm it.

Given its military starting point (lets call it a country stuck at 1975) of almost nothing, hugh infrastructure costs and collapsing demographics, I'm more inclined to laugh at the ridiculous claims coming from Russia, than be scared.

They don't have the people or money to do 90% of their projects. Potemkin village comes to mind...
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