Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Is Ready For Combat

Megalith

Megalith

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It's been a long journey, but the advanced stealth multirole has achieved operational capability. The original prototype took off nearly a decade ago in 2006, and more than half a trillion dollars later, the marines officially have something new and deadly to play with. Now someone just needs to call up Kenny Loggins and give it a rocking tune.

The Marines plan on buying 420 total jets, a mix of 340 B and 80 C models. The first F-35B deployment is scheduled to take place in 2017, with the unit known as VMFA-121 moving to Iwakuni, Japan.
 
Wow. Never thought we'd see the day this shitshow of a program would come to fruition.
 
It'll lose to 40 year old tech in a dogfight, but "that's not what it was meant for". Nothing like bringing a balloon to an air battle.
 
Spidey329 said:
Wow. Never thought we'd see the day this shitshow of a program would come to fruition.
Click to expand...

Only took 25 years. The F-35 can legally drink, vote, can't quite run for President yet.

Wait a minute...does the gun in it yet have software that would allow it to fire? Last I knew it didn't.
 
I forget :)

What'll be funny is if pilots pick other aircraft when given choices...
 
GORANKAR said:
What was it meant for again?
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The same thing the F-4 Phantom was designed and built for....and then regretted greatly for how it was designed.

That presumes the plane will even be able to fly IRL when it is raining out.
 
Let's do this:
evilsofa said:
Can it shoot down an F-16 yet?
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That was a control law test at high angles of attacks for the F-35. The F-16 was used as a reference point or control. In addition, the test F-35 in question didn't have any of the weapons or software that later F-35s have or even stealth coating. Finally, there were limits on the control abilities of the F-35 that won't be present on the final versions or even currently available versions. The point of that test was to find out where the control softwear was lacking in the high AoA area and make improvements if need be. The fact that the F-35 can improve its maneuverability via software updates is a pro, not a con in this case.

A bit more:
http://i.imgur.com/40OijeR.png
Skripka said:
Only took 25 years. The F-35 can legally drink, vote, can't quite run for President yet.
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The F-35 didn't fly until 2006. Unless you're talking about the X-35 which didn't fly until 2000. That's still well under 25 years.
Wait a minute...does the gun in it yet have software that would allow it to fire? Last I knew it didn't.[/QUOTE]
Not until the Block 3F software update in 2017. Which is mentioned right in the article.
GORANKAR said:
What was it meant for again?
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Multi-role fighter to replace the F-16, F/A-18, A-10, and AV-8B. Its greater emphasis on the ground attack role means that it steers into sub-category of strike fighter roles hence the program name of "Joint Strike Fighter". Meaning that while its main job is to attack ground targets, it also has the means to defend itself from enemy aircraft in the same mission. In other words, F-35 strike packages don't quite need as much of an escorting air to air element as older planes do.
Skripka said:
The same thing the F-4 Phantom was designed and built for....and then regretted greatly for how it was designed.
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NOt quite. The F-4 was designed as a fleet interceptor as well as a fighter-bomber. That's a tad different from the F-35 as a bomb-laden F-4 Phantom is more or less defenceless against enemy aircraft whereas a bomb-laden F-35, F-16, or F/A-18 can still defend themselves.

In addition, the F-35 developers did learn from the F-4 and have included a cannon. It's just delaying use of that cannon for other priorities.
Skripka said:
That presumes the plane will even be able to fly IRL when it is raining out.
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Wrong stealth aircraft. The F-35 or the F-22 for that matter don't use the same radar absorbent paint like with the B-2.
 
Dangman said:
The F-35 didn't fly until 2006. Unless you're talking about the X-35 which didn't fly until 2000. That's still well under 25 years.
Wait a minute...does the gun in it yet have software that would allow it to fire? Last I knew it didn't.
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I count development of the aircraft from the day after the initial proposal was sent out from the Pentagon and the day contractors started spending manpower fulfilling it.

For example the Lightweight Fighter Program which birthed the F-16. Request for proposals was sent out in 1972..to operational status of the F-16 was a measly 6 years later in 1978.

Whereas the F-35 came out of the Joint Strikefighter Program. Which was started in the early 90s. Now the F-35 is declared "operational" even though its gun doesn't even have the software to fire.


F-35 would be such a huge laughing stock were it not for our tax dollars being blown on it left and right. Remember the original program called for $1 trillion USD over the 50 year program, and they blew through that before the plane was ever operational...for a plane that our kids may fight and die in because it doesn't work. Which well, it doesn't work if the gun doesn't have the fucking software to fire.
 
The F35 is a failure designed for engagements which will no longer happen. If is a boondoggle and the only good thing to come out of it is the helmet tech.
 
Skripka said:
I count development of the aircraft from the day after the initial proposal was sent out from the Pentagon and the day contractors started spending manpower fulfilling it.
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To artificially inflate criticism I see.
Skripka said:
For example the Lightweight Fighter Program which birthed the F-16. Request for proposals was sent out in 1972..to operational status of the F-16 was a measly 6 years later in 1978.

Whereas the F-35 came out of the Joint Strikefighter Program. Which was started in the early 90s. .
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Yes but what you fail to understand is that the F-16 that was declared operational in 1978 is a far far different bird compared to the latest F-16 variant in the 2000s. At its core, the early F-16 was a daytime air-to-air fighter with a light ground attack capability. It took multiple upgrades and new releases spread thoughout a decade+ for the F-16 day fighter to become the F-16 multi-role all-weather all-day figther that it is today. In fact, there's multiple Blocks of the F-16 that has increased capability as the number increases. In other words, a Block 60 F-16C is a far more deadlier fighter than a block 25 F-16C. Not to mention that even in its Block 2B configuration, the F-35 is still far more useful than an early F-16C/D in combat in terms of weapons payload and capability.

Then there's the issue of the Cold War which added a bit of a push for developers and branches to move fast. Not to mention the increased complexity in terms of both hardware and software that the F-35 has over even the latest F-16 variant let alone a cheap dumb F-16A. Finally, if you actually compare the F-35's actual production/development time to other fighters like the Eurofighter, Rafale, Gripen, and even the F-22A Raptor, it's not that much longer. In other words, long production and development times is the unfortunate norm, not the outlier, when it comes to developing fighters.
Skripka said:
Now the F-35 is declared "operational" even though its gun doesn't even have the software to fire.
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It's declared IOC or Initial Operational Capability. It doesn't mean that it's 100% fully operational. Just enough of it is operational for it to be useful.
Skripka said:
for a plane that our kids may fight and die in because it doesn't work.
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Note that I actually do have family that will end up flying the F-35 within the next five years. So your attempt at fear mongering doesn't hold sway.
Skripka said:
Which well, it doesn't work if the gun doesn't have the fucking software to fire.
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You act like the cannon is the end-all be all ultimate kill weapon. It isn't. I don't think the cannon is such a high priority that it should be available for use before the plane is considered operational. No one is going to be sending this plane into combat with just its guns available. Nor is the gun that particular extra useful that additional resources have to be committed to get it to fire earlier. The Block 2B variant of the F-35 with AIM-120 capability and the ability to launch smart bombs is far more deadly than a F-35 with a cannon only.

I think you're overestimating the value of the cannon. These days, troops don't exactly care what's used to provide CAS as long as it can hit and kill the enemy. With the rapid proliferation of MANPADs, CAS involving gun runs are going to become rarer and rarer unless in the most dire of situations. There were plenty of targets in Afghanistan alone where guns/cannons were insufficient and bombs had to be used. Since bombs are safer for the fighter while being more destructive and more helpful to the troops on the ground, cannons aren't exactly widely needed. In addition, the small cannon load means that its useful time in combat is just as short if not shorter than just carrying a bunch of laser guided bombs and lobbing them at targets far away.

Not to mention that we won't be in a situation in the next two years where the U.S must deploy F-35s overseas in a combat situation. As you've noted, the U.S still has plenty of other fighters that can still do the job until the F-35 comes online. It's only another two years before the gun becomes operational.

Considering that the A-10's superior cannon alone isn't a good enough reason to keep the A-10 flying, that should tell you just how less effective (or more deadly to the aircraft) airborne cannons are becoming in CAS nowadays. Another example is the AC-130: Compare how many cannons the early AC-130s had to what the latest AC-130W Stinger II/AC-130J Ghostrider has. There's a shift towards bombs and missiles with the latest AC-130.
 
Skripka said:
Only took 25 years. The F-35 can legally drink, vote, can't quite run for President yet.

Wait a minute...does the gun in it yet have software that would allow it to fire? Last I knew it didn't.
Click to expand...

Which plane are you talking about? This is the B, which carries an external gun pod much like the Harrier it is designed to replace. It is a very different aircraft from the A (which has an internal gun) and C.

While you can claim the USMC and its F-35B did compromise the USAF's A and USN's C, it certainly is a massive jump over the Harrier which it is replacing.

Anemone said:
It'll lose to 40 year old tech in a dogfight, but "that's not what it was meant for". Nothing like bringing a balloon to an air battle.
Click to expand...

From what I recall it was much like the Eurofighters which beat the F-22s in mock dog fights. They intentionally put the Eurofighter at unrealistic advantages so it could score some kills. In the real world, Eurofighters don't spawn within visual range right behind you. ;)
 
Dangman said:
Let's do this:

That was a control law test at high angles of attacks for the F-35. The F-16 was used as a reference point or control. In addition, the test F-35 in question didn't have any of the weapons or software that later F-35s have or even stealth coating. Finally, there were limits on the control abilities of the F-35 that won't be present on the final versions or even currently available versions. The point of that test was to find out where the control softwear was lacking in the high AoA area and make improvements if need be. The fact that the F-35 can improve its maneuverability via software updates is a pro, not a con in this case.

A bit more:
http://i.imgur.com/40OijeR.png

The F-35 didn't fly until 2006. Unless you're talking about the X-35 which didn't fly until 2000. That's still well under 25 years.
Wait a minute...does the gun in it yet have software that would allow it to fire? Last I knew it didn't.
Click to expand...
Not until the Block 3F software update in 2017. Which is mentioned right in the article.

Multi-role fighter to replace the F-16, F/A-18, A-10, and AV-8B. Its greater emphasis on the ground attack role means that it steers into sub-category of strike fighter roles hence the program name of "Joint Strike Fighter". Meaning that while its main job is to attack ground targets, it also has the means to defend itself from enemy aircraft in the same mission. In other words, F-35 strike packages don't quite need as much of an escorting air to air element as older planes do.

NOt quite. The F-4 was designed as a fleet interceptor as well as a fighter-bomber. That's a tad different from the F-35 as a bomb-laden F-4 Phantom is more or less defenceless against enemy aircraft whereas a bomb-laden F-35, F-16, or F/A-18 can still defend themselves.

In addition, the F-35 developers did learn from the F-4 and have included a cannon. It's just delaying use of that cannon for other priorities.

Wrong stealth aircraft. The F-35 or the F-22 for that matter don't use the same radar absorbent paint like with the B-2.[/QUOTE]

All very necessary to drop bombs on goat herders shooting at you with pistols.
 
canna said:
All very necessary to drop bombs on goat herders shooting at you with pistols.
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As Admiral Michael Mullen, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, USMC General James Mattis, and US Army Major General H.R McMaster have all stated, it's virtually impossible to predict where the next war will be. Our own history supports that. Did anyone predict that in 15 years, 10 years, 5 years or even 2 years that we would be fighting in Korea, Vietnam, Honduras, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, or Iraq twice?

So while we're bombing goat herders now, that may not be the case in the next 5, 10, maybe 20 years.
 
A single multi-role plane will never fill every niche. You get one plane that's supposed to do everything but can't do any one thing especially well. It will never be as effective as the A-10 for tank busting, never be as effective as the F-22 for air superiority... you get these eggheads in the Pentagon that want everything to be ultra-precise, yet when it proves to not work you go back to the old strategies. That's how it went in Afghanistan. Expensive precision munitions didn't cut it, so they took to high-altitude carpet bombing with B-52's. Ground tactics had the same problem. In Fallujah in Iraq, the Marines were using 2 M-249 gunners per squad instead of the typical one, and were using M-16A4's on full auto for close-in fighting. There's documented cases of Army soldiers toting captured AK-47's around in both sandboxes because the sand was causing havoc with the M-4 and they were overheating. Snipers? They took care of those by blowing up the building the sniper was on with an Abrams. Scorched earth worked yet again. Precision munitions have their place, and technology can give the upper hand, don't get me wrong, but when it comes down to it the older, cheaper, simpler stuff is sometimes better for certain jobs. Personally I'd rather not spend half a million to drop a laser-guided munition on a squad of jihadis in a pickup truck armed with nothing but AK-47's and RPG's when a 20mm cannon burst could do the job.

Honestly I hope all the critics and my own criticisms are wrong about this plane since it's going to be responsible for defending the country, but I'll not be convinced until its battle-tested.
 
Doesn't the cannon have a total firing time of like 5 seconds?

No one thought of ratcheting it down to say 300 rounds per second?
 
Spidey329 said:
Wow. Never thought we'd see the day this shitshow of a program would come to fruition.
Click to expand...
IOC was declared too early, even after reducing requirements, so the plane still can't do a whole lot other than get into the air and maaybe drop a bomb in airspace where any opposing forces have already been eliminated.

On top of the DOTE's report shows the actual number operational aircraft is crap, around 50% or so, mostly due to logistics and maintenance issues.

In other words its so hard to service a F35 right now you can only keep half of them 'combat ready' even in peace time conditions when its relatively easy to get parts. That will improve over time of course but it showcases just how stupid it is to declare IOC right now on the F35.
 
daglesj said:
Doesn't the cannon have a total firing time of like 5 seconds?

No one thought of ratcheting it down to say 300 rounds per second?
Click to expand...
You're not supposed to do long sustained bursts. You'd need thousands of rounds to do that for any decent length of time and that amount of ammo (remember, it uses a 25mm auto cannon) is so heavy it'd really limit what any aircraft could do or armaments it could carry.

The main gun is supposed to be 'blipped' in use. That is you only tap it for a half second or less. Just long enough to get a short burst of rounds out. The high RoF allows the gun to function like a long range shotgun.

Bear in mind other modern fighters have similar amounts of ammo on hand for their guns. Some have less. The SU-35 for instance only has 150 rounds. If it sounds silly just remember that aircraft gun fights haven't really been much of a thing post Vietnam and that missiles improved quite a bit since then too. Its meant to be a back up weapon and it'll probably be seldom used throughout the F35's entire lifespan.

The gun is actually one of the few things that they did a decent job on for the F35. If you want to read up on some forhead-smacking levels of stupidity with the F35 look up concurrency. Or VTOL.
 
And you thought AMD had driver problems, they can't even get a joystick driver that can fire the gun....
 
How the heck is the lift fan version of the F-35 the first one to go operational?
 
Kueller said:
How the heck is the lift fan version of the F-35 the first one to go operational?
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Marines pushed for early IOC on it because their current planes are falling apart + internal military politics.

The hilarious (read: awful) part is that the current revision of hardware and software for the F35 is using Block 2B which was never meant to be used for a IOC aircraft, it was for test purposes only.

What does that mean exactly? Well here is the DOTE report from April on Block 2B capability. The tl&dr version: Block 2B F35's have 1970's-esque fighter capability. When they actually work that is. Block 2B is a buggy mess so terrible that most of the really fancy hardware and sensor package (aka fusion) is unusable and has to be turned off or ignored by the pilot.


Draax said:
the only good thing to come out of it is the helmet tech.
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The helmet doesn't work with Block 2B. No really. Read the DOTE report. It can only function as a HUD for some of the displays with Block 2B. The night time camera is also non functional with Block 2B which means the F35 is currently limited to daytime only use.

I wasn't exaggerating when I said current F35's are limited to 1970's-esque fighter capability. It really is that bad. And the military knows about. The USMC chose to straight up ignore the reports and warnings from the people doing the testing.
 
With all the aircraft this is capable of (and likely will be) replacing, it's probably going to be cheaper for the US taxpayers in the long run by means of eliminating the maintenance and upgrade/update program costs of those different aircraft being replaced.
 
Deadly Ramon said:
Anthrax's "Death from Above," from its debut album "Fistful of Metal" released in 1984, would be a far better tune for this upcoming aircraft–and it doesn't suck at all.
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>would be a far better tune for this upcoming aircraft–and it doesn't suck at all.

OK. I'll take the positive approach, in what way does it not suck when compared to other 5th generation fighters?

It's insanely expensive, slow, has poor maneuverability, a seemingly endless string of problems and was recently beaten up by a double-seat version of a jet first fielded in 1978 that was carrying external fuel stores. On the plus side, it's kinda cool looking and has better climb performance than my Super Decathlon. ;)

http://www.ausairpower.net/jsf.html
http://www.wired.com/2012/04/super-hornet-jsf/
http://www.businessinsider.com/here...at-the-pentagon-found-in-a-2014-report-2015-3
 
half a trillion dollars. F/16e about 80 million each. Double that for improvements. Works out to about 3,200 improved F/16e's. 100 percent operational ready. No training required. large volumes of low tech usually will almost always prevail against low volumes of high tech. Russia vs. Afghanistan. U.S.A. vs North Vietnam. Enough army ants vs. anything alive on the ground.
 
No its not.

It was supposed to be originally (it was first pitched as a cheap jack of all trades master of none bomb truck, no I'm not kidding) quite cheap but costs have been ballooning dramatically with every new feature and role that has been jammed into this pig.

Concurrency assures that costs will do nothing but continue to rise on top of that. Why the push for concurrency at all? Lockheed-Martin wanted it. They pitched it as a way to reduce costs in the long run by spreading out development over time but it has totally failed to do that. It has however made Lockheed-Martin rich.
 
Finally. Now we just need to create a phony war to justify the $500,000,000,000.00 we wasted on it.



'MURICA
 
Except in any dogfight evaluation against a modern counterpart (F15 F16 F18) the JSF is considered vastly inferior and would lose in a majority of those fights. (Per leaked internal memos)

The only thing that makes the JSF and it's variants superior is it's stealth. And once that has been compromised, it's squicked.
 
Unexploded said:
>would be a far better tune for this upcoming aircraft–and it doesn't suck at all.

OK. I'll take the positive approach, in what way does it not suck when compared to other 5th generation fighters?
Click to expand...

I was referring to the song used in that Lockheed Martin promotional video for the aircraft, not the aircraft.
 
>I was referring to the song used in that Lockheed Martin promotional video for the aircraft, not the >aircraft.

Ah, apologies. On-call phone plus sleep deprivation apparently makes me a little dense.
Still made it to the gym on 2 hours of sleep though. Granted I couldn't find my car for a while on leaving. :eek:
 
Spidey329 said:
Wow. Never thought we'd see the day this shitshow of a program would come to fruition.
Click to expand...

If you throw enough money at a problem, you can make anything work. I'm sure it's a capable plane, but maybe next time they will have a more realistic, cost effective goal.
 
daglesj said:
Doesn't the cannon have a total firing time of like 5 seconds?

No one thought of ratcheting it down to say 300 rounds per second?
Click to expand...

The F-15 and F-22 carry less than 5 seconds worth of cannon ammo. It doesn't take much, the cannon is fired in very short bursts.

Dangman said:
Let's do this: ...
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Good post. I've pretty much given up on debunking anti-F-35 rants. Nobody in the general public knows what this aircraft's capabilities are. People are going to believe what they want to believe.

I'll just say that the FUD and bullshit we see in the tech industry/press pales in comparison to what goes on in the aerospace industry. People need to be a bit more incredulous about what they read on the internet and not assume that things like supposedly leaked memos are authoritative sources of information.
 
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