F-35 Lightning II

F-35A

F-35B

F-35C

Cockpit

I want to be USAF combat pilot. Then ride this plane. But I need to go Luke AFB, Arizona. Then I will using my callsign, Persona. Just look at my signature.

I never knew you could choose what plane you wanted to fly. Always thought that once basic flight training is completed, they stream you according to the type of machine you've shown aptitude for flying.

Yes, I did. But I'm going to choose F-22A Raptor instead. But F-35 is still production until open the service in 2016. First flight was complete in December 15, 2006 for F-35.

Your aptitude scores, your class standings and such determine what bus you end up driving. Fighter pilots, understandably, must score extremely high in order to be selected, and this is most emphatically the most competitive part of the training.

I have a buddy who's a Hog driver - from the stories he told about the Air Force Academy, I was glad for the first time about my eyesight preventing me from being a combat pilot. The stories he's relayed to me about how stressful the whole process is... *shudders*

Impressive set of photos...that cockpit looks about a hundred years beyond my squadron's F-16 C/D's.

Nachtsider wrote:I never knew you could choose what plane you wanted to fly. Always thought that once basic flight training is completed, they stream you according to the type of machine you've shown aptitude for flying.

Not meaning to offend, but I think Nacht is right. If everyone chose what plane they wanted to fly, there'd be a whole lot of transports and tankers without pilots.

The F-35 program is so fucked-up right now it's lucky it hasn't been cancelled. It will be interesting to see if the UK and Australia stick with it, considering the cost per airframe is now many multiples of what was originally contracted and delivery dates are now at least two years farther away than planned.

I know our IDS division down in St. Louis has been pushing the F-15 Silent Eagle concept pretty hard.

Kiskaloo wrote:The F-35 program is so fucked-up right now it's lucky it hasn't been cancelled. It will be interesting to see if the UK and Australia stick with it, considering the cost per airframe is now many multiples of what was originally contracted and delivery dates are now at least two years farther away than planned.

I know our IDS division down in St. Louis has been pushing the F-15 Silent Eagle concept pretty hard.

case of having to,the carriers are being built for them,and unless someone cranks out some more sea Harriers not much else will fly from them other than helicopters

MasterChiefSnake wrote:



F-35A

F-35B

F-35C

Cockpit

I want to be USAF combat pilot. Then ride this plane. But I need to go Luke AFB, Arizona. Then I will using my callsign, Persona. Just look at my signature.

You know what it takes to be a Pilot?
Straight A average, with 4 year college degree and/or 4 years in Airforce Academy to be an officer. Plus you have to pay for your own fight training before they set you up for training in one of their planes. To fly the newer stuff, you'll need a master's degree. Lucky though, there is a college in the military for those wanting to take that option. those of us in this forum could give you leads on this info. ROTC in College would be a big help if I remember correctly.

As for call signs, they are assigned to you by the persona you display to them. This is the military. You do not get what you want, but they do get everything and more from you.

At least in the Army, you can get away with shit.
Sargent: BOY! You Know How To Drive A Truck?!!
Private: No Sir!
Sargent: BOY! GIT IN THAT TRUCK AND DRIVE IT!
Private: Sir, Yes Sir!
*Followed by 30 minutes of gear grinding... and a panick private in a run-away truck.*

The army's budget on truck clutches and transmissions is quite high. Now you know why.

My memory maybe fuzzy on this, but I believe this to be the "ELF" series that the Pentagon has been trying to get for years. Though I love the F22, I have to shake my head on this series. In my view, its too much hype and not enough plane. And that fly-by-wire system has my hair standing up. One EMP in your battle zone and you can kiss your squadron goodbye!

Yeah, I've never been a big fan of fly-by-wire... I wonder if it's because I grew up being a fanboy for everything WWI and WWII aviation.

ElfenMagix wrote:This is the military. You do not get what you want, but they do get everything and more from you.

My experience was as an enlisted man, not an officer, but the USAF does try to provide a degree of choice...or at least the illusion of it.

Jobs: During Basic Training we were offered the chance to pick from jobs we were qualified for (as per our ASVAB scores) and I think I got my first choice.
Stations: Throughout your career every enlisted airman maintains a "dream sheet" of bases you'd like to be stationed at. When it's your turn to move they try to get you a spot at one of those bases...no guarantees. Again, I was lucky to have gotten my #1 choice (Spangdahlem, Germany).

I can only imagine that there are similar systems at work for the officer corps.

fly-by-wire

Some people find the reliability of fly-by-wire systems suspect, but in my 7 years active duty my Fighter Wing only had one pilot fatality. It was controls related but it was not a FBW aircraft (an F-15C with conventional controls). Ugly story...I won't bother you with it here but if anyone is genuinely interested I'll write it down...it was a somewhat historic case.

Awinnell wrote:

Kiskaloo wrote:The F-35 program is so fucked-up right now it's lucky it hasn't been cancelled. It will be interesting to see if the UK and Australia stick with it, considering the cost per airframe is now many multiples of what was originally contracted and delivery dates are now at least two years farther away than planned.

I know our IDS division down in St. Louis has been pushing the F-15 Silent Eagle concept pretty hard.

case of having to,the carriers are being built for them,and unless someone cranks out some more sea Harriers not much else will fly from them other than helicopters

I thought the new carriers were now being built to at least have provision for catapults. Am I wrong on that? With that they've got the option of picking up something like the Super Hornet.

My country's current government is ridiculously committed to JSF for whatever reason. Could end up being a big issue in the next election. Hopefully not too many people will buy all the bull about it being the only viable option we have.

JSF seems like it's being marketed as having F-22 like capabilities for a fraction of the cost but is really more of a fraction of the F-22s capabilities for a similar cost. Granted no one but the US was allowed to buy F-22s anyway, but still...

I thought I read somewhere that JSF would end up being built just because there was already so much invested into the project.

I'm a big fan of FBW, myself.

One of the new Queen Elizabeth carriers will be CATOBAR configuration the other (if it gets built!) will be STOVL

Kiskaloo wrote:I'm a big fan of FBW, myself.

A friend of mine owns 2 Lear Jets, an old 45 and a new (or updated) 65. The 65 has FWB, the 45 does not.

One one while flying to a case (he's a Medical Malpractice Lawyer and a damn good one) with a few associates in the midwest in the LJ65, a fuse blew and his nice fancy FWB Dash Board went blank. He made an emergency landing in an airport in Madison WI, cursing the plane for everything it was worth. The plane was fixed, but he borrowed another LJ and returned it for the case. They dont know why the fuse blew other than it did. He returned home in his LJ65. Since then, he had Bombardier refit a secondary dash with actual gauges in case the FBW blows another fuse.

Not that he has money to burn, but for him it is cheaper to own a jet and fly it than it is to fly with the public. He flies that much.

FBW and digital displays are two different things. Many aircraft without FBW controls have digital cockpit displays. And even the most modern digital cockpits still have some analog instruments to fall back on. There is also battery power to keep one set of digital instruments going.

When one of our test 787s lost electrical power on approach a couple weeks back, the batteries and the RAT (Ram Air Turbine) kept the Captain's cockpit displays going and provided power to the FBW control systems to allow the aircraft to land safely.

Kiskaloo wrote:The F-35 program is so fucked-up right now it's lucky it hasn't been cancelled. It will be interesting to see if the UK and Australia stick with it, considering the cost per airframe is now many multiples of what was originally contracted and delivery dates are now at least two years farther away than planned.

To be honest, I'd love to see the F-35 program fail. I have, umm... issues with that aircraft.

Well, not so much with the plane itself, but by what they're trying to use it to replace.

Alfisti wrote:To be honest, I'd love to see the F-35 program fail. I have, umm... issues with that aircraft.

Well, not so much with the plane itself, but by what they're trying to use it to replace.

I admit to having a soft spot for the Aardvark, myself.

Not sure the USAF did the "turn and burn" maneuver with them, but I have a few wallpapers of the RAAF birds doing it.

Alas, all of ours are now gone, with the EF-11A Spark Vark, er Raven, leaving the force in the late 1990s.



Unless you're talking about the F/A-18 Super Hornet.

Kiskaloo wrote:

Alfisti wrote:To be honest, I'd love to see the F-35 program fail. I have, umm... issues with that aircraft.

Well, not so much with the plane itself, but by what they're trying to use it to replace.

I admit to having a soft spot for the Aardvark, myself.

Not sure the USAF did the "turn and burn" maneuver with them, but I have a few wallpapers of the RAAF birds doing it.

Alas, all of ours are now gone, with the EF-11A Spark Vark, er Raven, leaving the force in the late 1990s.



Unless you're talking about the F/A-18 Super Hornet.

No, I was talking about the Pigs (Aardvark officially, but "Pig" to everyone here). I think they're a brilliant aircraft and are definately one of my all-time favorites.

My own emotional response aside however, the F-35 just isn't capable of filling the F-111's role. It simply doesn't have the range, weapons payload or general capabilities that the Pig offers... I'm fairly certain the F-35 can't designate it's own Laser Guided Bomb targets (just one example). I understand why we're retiring the F-111, because the RAAF has been essentially running classics and, no matter how much you love them or how good they are: that's expensive and difficult. However the F-35 is not the aircraft to replace them.

For the record, I was to a far lesser extent talking about the F/A-18s as well.

The F-111 certainly delivered one of the coolest afterburner takeoffs I've ever seen...rivaled only by the B-1 perhaps.

Alas, aircraft get old, and speaking as an (ex-)aircraft mechanic; keeping a 30 year old plane flying equals a lot of really late nights. A pain in the ass during peacetime...a massive liability during wartime.

My heart went out to the German squadrons that inherited MiG-29's when the country reunified. Those things were spectacular when they were running right, but that wasn't often. The factory back in Russia was not reliable either, and plenty of times the German mechanics & pilots were stranded at deployed locations with no hope of getting the replacement parts they needed anytime soon.

Here is comparison between F-35 and F-22. However, US government refuse to export F-22 to international such as Japan, Australia, and Israel. It only for F-35 as export.

Well, looks like this jet has indeed become a major issue in my country's election campaign (hell, a dispute over whether accurate cost figures were being provided was a key reason we're having an election right now). A lot of people here are pretty strongly opposed to the purchase of this aircraft because of cost issues and the fact that there hasn't been a competitive bidding process.

Personally, I'm thinking this might not be the right jet for Canada at this point in time for a couple different reasons. For one thing I take the somewhat old fashioned view that the primary purpose of a Canadian fighter aircraft should be the defense of Canadian Airspace. Aside from the fact that protecting Canada should be the main reason we have a military, I just don't think that getting involved in too many foreign adventures is a good idea. With that in mind, I'm wondering if the 5th generation advantages the JSF has are really worth it over the advantages offered by some of it's 4.5 Generation competitors. A mega expensive stealth plane optomised for ground attack is not my vision of the ideal air defense aircraft.

The other question I have is whether JSF is really capable of dealing with future threats. Granted this may be more of a problem for the foreign adventures scenarios I'm not keen on in the first place then for the more important role of defending Canadian airspace, but I think it's still a legit question. There's been questions raised about JSF's ability to deal with a truly modern air defense network for instance. Then there's also the fact that other countries are developing Fifth Generation fighter aircraft. Sukhoi's PAK FA looks a hell of a lot more capable than JSF in many respects. Granted I do not expect to see PAK FA become widely proliferated any time soon, but when people are talking about a fighter like JSF being the backbone of air forces for decades to come I think the question of whether it can adequately deal with something like PAK FA is a legitimate question. Personally I have doubts about whether it's performance is up to the task.

Which overall makes me think that maybe Canada ought to get a relatively inexpensive "good enough" fighter aircraft for the time being and maybe wait a couple decades before we jump on the Generation 5 bandwagon rather than saddling ourselves with an aircraft that costs so much it will be difficult to replace if it proves to be the wrong choice.

Can you guys tell I'm not keen on my country forking over $110 million plus per plane for this aircraft?

Professor Voodoo wrote:During Basic Training we were offered the chance to pick from jobs we were qualified for (as per our ASVAB scores) and I think I got my first choice.

I remember taking the ASVABs as a requirement for my school's graduation. I did pretty well at 93 and for MONTHS my parents kept bitching to me how the Air Force/Navy/Army wouldn't stop calling the house, even after I had moved into my dorm. The dude who presented the tests wasn't kidding. I remember him (I thought jokingly at the time) saying that if anyone does well they'll be hearing from him soon afterward, and very often.

I told him how I had already gotten my acceptance letter to my University of choice and he said "Sure, there won't be as many good looking women DURING training, but afterward you'll be a macho military dude that 'chicks just dig.'" I almost said "Why the hell not?" just cause the guy was trying so hard. Recruiters always try to give that "Big Bro/Big Sis" vibe, probably to land recruits.

Long story short, the only thing I would have ever wanted to do in the military was become a fighter pilot and I had that dream for years when I was a kid. Unfortunately my eyesight made that an impossibility so I decided to make the literal "Old College Try."

Well the JSF is designed to operate in an environment where they have Air Superiority thanks to the F-22 Raptors having cleared the skies of the enemy air forces and Tomahawk cruise missiles having destroyed all those on the ground.

That being said, the F-35B VTOL variant is looking effectively dead now that the British scrapped it in favor of the F-35C carrier version and are modifying the Queen Elizabeth class to CATOBAR to handle it. The US DoD has placed a two year "program pause" on the model to see if it works, but if it doesn't, I don't see the America class being made CATOBAR...

Which airframe will be taking over the anti-surface to air missile role...using the AGM-88 HARM missile? The F-16C/D Block 50's currently flying those missions are 20 years old now.

One thing I found ridiculous is that some F35 variants are supposed to replace A-10s in close air support.

John_234 wrote:One thing I found ridiculous is that some F35 variants are supposed to replace A-10s in close air support.

Yeah, never did quite figure out how the beaureacrats came up with that one...

It's kinda like everything else (ghetto armor, 60mm mortars, rifle modifications) - if ever actually replaced with it, it would probably be reactivated during wartime.

Our military has been in love with 'the latest thing' since WWII. Every branch has its favorite toys, and favorite contractors. If memory serves, the F-111 was supposed to be a sort of JSF, adaptable with minor modifications for any branch of the Armed Forces. The Navy sabotaged the idea because they wanted their own plane, and got the Hornet. As for some of the other instances of hanging on to a bad idea, the Sergeant York and the Osprey come to mind...

Alfisti wrote:

John_234 wrote:One thing I found ridiculous is that some F35 variants are supposed to replace A-10s in close air support.

Yeah, never did quite figure out how the beaureacrats came up with that one...

Perhaps if they were to crash on the enemy forces with a full tank of fuel, they'd be as effective as a Warthog. Kind of expensive though.

The Osprey is such a death trap.

@Thescarredman: Part of the A-10s effectiveness, though is how tough it is. It's immensely survivable.

Guess I should have said that the ONLY way an F35 could do as much damage as a Wart would be to crash with a full tank of fuel.

Thescarredman wrote:Our military has been in love with 'the latest thing' since WWII. Every branch has its favorite toys, and favorite contractors. If memory serves, the F-111 was supposed to be a sort of JSF, adaptable with minor modifications for any branch of the Armed Forces. The Navy sabotaged the idea because they wanted their own plane, and got the Hornet. As for some of the other instances of hanging on to a bad idea, the Sergeant York and the Osprey come to mind...

The F-111 program started as the TFX - Tactical Fighter eXperimental - and was ordered by SecDef Robert McNamara to try and get the USAF and USN to pool their resources on a single airplane as both services had similar missions requirements for the new airframes they were seeking. General Dynamics was chosen as the winning bidder and due to their inexperience with naval aviation, they paired with Grumman. The Navy eventually cancelled their model due to weight and performance issues and Grumman was then chosen to give them their own airframe - the F-14 Tomcat.

Kiskaloo wrote:The F-111 program started as the TFX - Tactical Fighter eXperimental - and was ordered by SecDef Robert McNamara to try and get the USAF and USN to pool their resources on a single airplane as both services had similar missions requirements for the new airframes they were seeking. General Dynamics was chosen as the winning bidder and due to their inexperience with naval aviation, they paired with Grumman. The Navy eventually cancelled their model due to weight and performance issues and Grumman was then chosen to give them their own airframe - the F-14 Tomcat.

One of the upsides that came out of the F-111 originally needing to be able to handle naval operations was that it had a very strong undercarrige which, in Australian service, meant it could be operated from unpaved temporary airfields. Combined with its ability to set up a virtual ILS approach using its ground attack radar, it was a VERY useful bit of kit in a country where, lets be honest here: civilisation can be a little difficult to come by.

Plus, you know; the ability to fly 3000nM, drop half a B52 worth of high explosive on someone's head, then turn around and fly back again (admittedly more a case of either/or... but let me have my fun).

I liked the 111.

Kisk, Alfisti, thanx for the clarification - and the elaboration. Nice history lesson.

the vertical take off versions been dumped,the UK is getting the standard catapult launched version,this has meant a redesign of one of the proposed carriers,the other will remain a stol version and be kept in reserve !