F-35 Lightning II: News thread

I would like to know how they even managed this.

Many gunpods are angled upwards to loft the rounds high into the air so they drop back down into the line of sight when they reach the target which might be 1-2km away for ground targets.

Cannon shells can leave the barrel at very high velocities but most cannon rounds are filled with HE which is not very dense like lead or steel, so they tend to be large high drag projectiles that are not particularly heavy so they slow down fast.

A 5.56mm HATO round leaves a rifles muzzle at about 920m/s or about mach 3 but within about 500m of travel the bullet will be travelling at 510m/s and it is a slim aerodynamic shape with a heavy lead core.

A 30mm cannon round or a 20mm cannon round is going to slow down fast too... and being in a gun pod it wont be a subcalibre high velocity round...

So high trajectory for shooting at distant targets on the ground in a steady dive means sometimes an aircraft can easily catch up with the rounds it is firing.

Can be made rather worse with low velocity rounds like the 30mm calibre round of the Apache or a 40mm grenade launcher round which is launched at a low velocity anyway.

kvs wrote:

magnumcromagnon wrote:Are vassals given the option to use Vaseline?

New SG MOD paper:"Most importantly,any foreign operator of the F-35 JSF will undoubtedly be at the mercy of the US Government should they decide to switch off local access to the ALIS whenever they ever disagree with how the made-in-USA jets are deployed."

https://www.mindef.gov.sg/oms/safti/pointer/documents/pdf/monthlyissue/jan2021.pdf

https://twitter.com/TheDEWLine/status/1370920756440395778

Where is all the pride of America's "allies" who submit to having a leash put around their necks?

Maybe instead of foaming at the mouth with hate for Russia, they should grow a spine.

those made in America jets come with a kill switch installed curtesy of Uncle Sam

and they told/warned the Pakistanis they couldn't use their F-16s against India in their recent dust off

what's the point of buying something when you have no control over which you bought it's a bit like UK and it's nukes as the soon to be rUK cannot use their nukes without the say so of Uncle Sam because the delivery package is made in the USA and the UK only leases them from America ... NATO is a America's con job on Europe

The jokes write themselves. The UK can't even vaporize Moscow without prior authorization from the US
I expect bowel movements have to have a license in that country soon enough.

But yeah, trying for US jets is just asking for trouble. Not only are you effectively leasing your aircraft, you also have to pay to send your best pilots to the US for training. Months even years spent in a foreign country where you can't monitor or police the people around your pilots. If that isn't a recipe for subversion I don't know what is. Turkey might be on to something obtaining a Russian SAM as a sort of praetorian guard against unreliable US trained pilot cadre.

Explosive rounds that explode near the muzzle is also a problem, but more a problem with ammo rather than the aircraft.

I remember seeing damage on a Kamov Ka-50 or 52 where a fired HE round had exploded as it was fired...

Possibly an EM situation with radar or radio interference with the fuse in the projectile, but most such rounds have a safety delay so the round does not go live till it has travelled a few tens of metres from the muzzle.

Another European country has received an American fifth-generation fighter, the F-35A. The first fighter was handed over to the Danish Air Force.

Denmark received its first F-35 from 27 fighters ordered. The rollout and handover of the aircraft took place on April 7 at the Lockheed Martin facility in Fort Worth, Texas. Despite the official handover, the aircraft will remain in the United States and will operate at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, where Danish pilots will be trained. Five more F-35As of the Danish Air Force will also go there.

https://en.topwar.ru/181779-pervyj-iz-dvadcati-semi-danija-poluchila-na-vooruzhenie-amerikanskij-istrebitel-f-35a.html

All those years draining the ballsack of Lockedroom Farting Lockheed Martin, The Drivel is feeling remorseful!

Today's F-35As Not Worth Including In High-End War Games According To Air Force General

You would be wrong. Joseph Trevithick is a long standing F-35 hater.

lancelot wrote:You would be wrong. Joseph Trevithick is a long standing F-35 hater.

Whether it's true or not, I wouldn't know because I don't really follow Western urinalists, and most of the time The Drivel's editorial board has been routinely caught deepthroating Lockheed Martin sausage. Suffice to say I don't care either way. Whether they're 'for' or 'against' the F-35 quagmire, I just love to take shots at Lockheed fanboy's every chance I get!

Hahaha, that interview is gold:

“The real costs of all the F-35 variants can be found in the service’s budget documents, all of which are available online. The F-35A cost $110.3 million per aircraft in 2020, the F-35B $135.8 million, and the F-35C $117.3 million. These costs differ significantly from the advertised prices. The difference is that all the costs necessary to build each aircraft are spread across multiple budget years. The services budget for advance procurement to purchase components in earlier years, but then claim that the money spent in the actual production year is the total cost which is definitely not the case. This is a deliberate public relations ploy to make the F-35 look better on paper and make it appear as though the program is meeting its cost goals.”

I was not aware of that one... good trick, as you would expect it from the expert scammers at the US MIC

LMFS wrote:Hahaha, that interview is gold:

“The real costs of all the F-35 variants can be found in the service’s budget documents, all of which are available online. The F-35A cost $110.3 million per aircraft in 2020, the F-35B $135.8 million, and the F-35C $117.3 million. These costs differ significantly from the advertised prices. The difference is that all the costs necessary to build each aircraft are spread across multiple budget years. The services budget for advance procurement to purchase components in earlier years, but then claim that the money spent in the actual production year is the total cost which is definitely not the case. This is a deliberate public relations ploy to make the F-35 look better on paper and make it appear as though the program is meeting its cost goals.”

We know this but when you go on other non Russia specific forum, there will be Yanqui fanboys saying that the F-35 is cheaper than the su 57. They say it with a straight face. A poster by the name of SpudmanWP on Key Pub always posted these fictitious F-35 prices. He was never that bad of a poster. But even he drank the Kool Aid. They could at least keep the lier price above a 100 million so we could pretend to believe it but nope. They really believe that the high rate of production gets the cost down that much.

"Hey man Turkey should get F-35 because its cheaper than su 57"

Backman wrote:We know this but when you go on other non Russia specific forum, there will be Yanqui fanboys saying that the F-35 is cheaper than the su 57. They say it with a straight face. A poster by the name of SpudmanWP on Key Pub always posted these fictitious F-35 prices. He was never that bad of a poster. But even he drank the Kool Aid. They could at least keep the lier price above a 100 million so we could pretend to believe it but nope. They really believe that the high rate of production gets the cost down that much.

"Hey man Turkey should get F-35 because its cheaper than su 57"

The moment they started in compulsively hyping the price reduction of the plane per successive lot it was clear that the program was under big pressure... hardly surprising that those prices were not true either, accordingly with a program which is a true manual of worst practises and malfeasance.

As for those arrogant idiots that still have not understood that Russia buy their planes in Rubles and hysterically deny a Su-35 can cost roughly the same than the engine on the F-35B, they should first get beyond their functional illiteracy to even be worth listening, they don't have a clue what they talk about. There was one of them that until now is 200% sure the VKS will buy the J-31 in despair because of the abject failure of the Su-57, I kid you not...

I have become an instant fan of this Dan Grazier, he simply demolishes the F-35 in the interview above and runs this organization POGO with great information on the program:

https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2021/04/f-35-changes-needed-while-still-in-infancy/

Well done Sir

They really believe that the high rate of production gets the cost down that much.

Yeah, mass production only makes things cheaper when you have finalised and essentially fixed the design... when you have made 500 and they still don't work properly then production actually makes things worse because every one you make might need to go back to the factory to get something fixed which is never cheap.

Would add that they even stopped including the engine in the price of the F-35 to make it sound more affordable... so only 80 million for the plane... plus another 30 million for the engine or it wont fly.

Classy.

GarryB wrote:

They really believe that the high rate of production gets the cost down that much.

Yeah, mass production only makes things cheaper when you have finalised and essentially fixed the design... when you have made 500 and they still don't work properly then production actually makes things work because every one you make might need to go back to the factory to get something fixed which is never cheap.

And the foreign customers are probably stuck with the mod level they got delivered. Which could give interoperability issues. Wonder how different the Danish ones are from the Norwegians next door?

JohninMK wrote:

GarryB wrote:

They really believe that the high rate of production gets the cost down that much.

Yeah, mass production only makes things cheaper when you have finalised and essentially fixed the design... when you have made 500 and they still don't work properly then production actually makes things work because every one you make might need to go back to the factory to get something fixed which is never cheap.

And the foreign customers are probably stuck with the mod level they got delivered. Which could give interoperability issues. Wonder how different the Danish ones are from the Norwegians next door?

It doesn't matter, they have full-blown Quisling regimes....their leaders don't care, and Uncle Sham will tell them to jump and they'll say "How high?" These Scandinavians are going to get bent, and get pumped full of Uncle Sham's 'lutefisk!'

magnumcromagnon wrote: These Scandinavians are going to get bent, and get pumped full of Uncle Sham's 'lutefisk!'

That was cruel reminding me. Have you ever tasted lutefisk?

Think of the US MIC as bad as you can, the reality is probably worse:

"The #F35 fails to deliver on promised capabilities, and its mission capability rates do not even begin to meet the service thresholds. It seems that the case to the industry’s solution to these problems is to ask the taxpayers to throw money at the problem." @RepGaramendi

The supply chain Pratt & Whitney is describing sounds quite fragile. It's a good thing the F-35 isn't designed to operate in a highly competitive environment where the adversary will stop at nothing to disrupt such systems.

Per the GAO: People in the field aren’t able to work on #F35 components because they don’t have the technical data and tools to be able to maintain the F-35 in the field. This is why the government needs to get the intellectual property rights for all weapons it buys.

The #F35 is supposed to be the everyday fighter. That's the idea that was sold in 2001. Now it is apparently little more than a data gatherer for the real fighter aircraft according to #LockheedMartin.

General Fick said that contractor maintenance personnel is the biggest driver of #F35 sustainment costs. All the more reason to buy weapons that are designed to be maintained by uniform maintainers.

https://twitter.com/dan_grazier

Are these people expecting contractors to send commercial offers in the middle of a big war, so the USAF gets their fighters repaired??

LMFS wrote:Think of the US MIC as bad as you can, the reality is probably worse:

"The #F35 fails to deliver on promised capabilities, and its mission capability rates do not even begin to meet the service thresholds. It seems that the case to the industry’s solution to these problems is to ask the taxpayers to throw money at the problem." @RepGaramendi

The supply chain Pratt & Whitney is describing sounds quite fragile. It's a good thing the F-35 isn't designed to operate in a highly competitive environment where the adversary will stop at nothing to disrupt such systems.

Per the GAO: People in the field aren’t able to work on #F35 components because they don’t have the technical data and tools to be able to maintain the F-35 in the field. This is why the government needs to get the intellectual property rights for all weapons it buys.

The #F35 is supposed to be the everyday fighter. That's the idea that was sold in 2001. Now it is apparently little more than a data gatherer for the real fighter aircraft according to #LockheedMartin.

General Fick said that contractor maintenance personnel is the biggest driver of #F35 sustainment costs. All the more reason to buy weapons that are designed to be maintained by uniform maintainers.

https://twitter.com/dan_grazier

Are these people expecting contractors to send commercial offers in the middle of a big war, so the USAF gets their fighters repaired??

LFMS I have a question for you, with all the lies said, half-truths twisted to meet a narrative, are your still completely sold on the capability of the F-135 engine? They've already stated that the diagnostic software for the F-135 was so buggy that it was preventing it from performing at it's full capacity. With their extensive history of lies, how can we know for sure it's simply a software issue, and not a case of over-promising and under-delivering?

magnumcromagnon wrote:LFMS I have a question for you, with all the lies said, half-truths twisted to meet a narrative, are your still completely sold on the capability of the F-135 engine? They've already stated that the diagnostic software for the F-135 was so buggy that it was preventing it from performing at it's full capacity. With their extensive history of lies, how can we know for sure it's simply a software issue, and not a case of over-promising and under-delivering?

My personal opinion, after seeing how they BS compulsively, is that there must be things we don't know and are not so rosy as they say, and I would not be surprised if they are selling the dummy as usually, but I don't have hard evidence of that. The cost of the engine is extremely high and the reliability has seen some issues lately, with high temperature coatings degrading faster than expected, but if I were to judge where US still has some gap based on the information that we have, it would be the engines and radar TRMs. I cannot know if the engine's operational temperature is lower than stated, but the plane is very bulky an still the engine accelerates it quite fast, if airshows are to be taken as evidence. Also reliability or maintainability can be worse than said, but the planes are not falling from the sky every day. So I think it is still the reference in terms of fighter engines yes, with remarkable technical parameters and claims about more to come in successive iterations and improvements, so the technological roadmap seems to be healthy. Technical issues know no ideologies and I try to stick to objectivity based on critical analysis of open sources, but we can be fooled very easily. I think the high turbine temperature may make them pay a price in operational life, we already saw the F119 being spent much faster than expected and the 3600F claimed for the F135 are head, shoulders and waist above anything else around, so I will keep an eye on that.

BTW, what you say about the diagnose system may be related to ALIS? It was a disaster and they cancelled it, creating a simpler more down to Earth version. It will be still a scam, but it will probably work at least.

There's always this whining about the US tax payer. The US tax payer pays for nothing. It's US Treasury bond holders who pay for it all. That's China , Japan, the EU and anyone else with the poor judgement to buy and hold US dollars. Which is every major economy and a bunch of smaller ones. Everyone except for Russia.

Owning US debt was a good deal... you make money on that, unlike money in a bank.

And all those countries that owned US debt were basically saying we trust in the US's ability to pay their bills... in other words a true enemy of the US would never buy their debt in case they used it against them like a weapon.

Russia did have a lot of US debt, but when the US started using their dollar as a weapon against Russia then Russia got rid of it... in many ways america might have done them a favour there.

They are certainly doing themselves no favours.

True, the "taxpayer money" is a retarded euphemism, all of us pay for it by the inflation export that the US generates, apart from the more crude looting and exploitation they perform in other places.

About the production program of the F-35 fighter as of May 4, 2021.