More Good News on the F-35...

[Gargamel]

Gen. Bogdan seems to have corralled the out of control money train (finally) and we're starting to see a real 5th gen aircraft over the past 18 months or so.

Doesn't excuse the circus that it was (heads should roll), but its nice to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Lt. Col. George Watkins, an F-35 pilot and 34th Fighter Squadron commander, said flying the F-35A in combat “feels like air dominance.”

“I’ve had four of my (F-35A) pilots come back from missions, guys who have flown the F-15 and F-16 at Red Flag for years, and tell me ‘This is amazing. I’ve never had this much situational awareness while I’m in the air. I know who’s who, I know who’s being threatened, and I know where I need to go next.’ You just don’t have all of that information at once in fourth-generation platform,” Watkins said.

[Chas_svo]

The F-35 is not designed for air dominance. It can provide the F-22 the information it needs and the support role to guarantee it can for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, the "joint" part brings too many neutering points, all in the name of design and maintenance cost savings that the arguably "unnecessary" STOVL model causes. I still believe they should, or should have, thrown that model out. If the costs for its engineering changes were factored out, I believe all would agree. I have never heard an intelligent argument for putting $180MM or the pilot in harm's way that justify the Marines needs. And 100% of my older children are in the Corps.

My 2 cents.

[Gasser64]

Paint 'em somethin' cooler lookin'.

[BP]

Paint 'em somethin' cooler lookin'.

The early test models had a neon green outline, looked pretty good but not good for stealth.

[svauto-erotic855]

The early test models had a neon green outline, looked pretty good but not good for stealth.

Believe it or not the best way to hide a plane during daylight is to shine bright lights onto every observable surface.

[Chas_svo]

The early test models had a neon green outline, looked pretty good but not good for stealth.

That is a corrosion-preventing primer. It's on every one of them.

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...act=mrc&uact=8

[BP]

That is a corrosion-preventing primer. It's on every one of them.

Cool! I've only seen it one time and it was probably one of the first ones they test flew. Looked like neon green masking tape on the edges. One flew over the house this morning with the normal grey paint scheme.

[Chas_svo]

They flew quite a few while working on certain parts before paint. The green comes in a variety of shades, but all are ugly.

[Gargamel]

Numbers from the recently completed Red Flag 17-1 Exercise for the F-35:

Air to Air: 145 kills - 7 losses
dropped 51 simulated weapons against SAMs, killed 49 of them

We obviously don't have details of the type of Red Air threat or how much of the action was within visual range, but the pure numbers are damn good.

-------------------

Past Red Flag Air to Air numbers for the F-22
(for very general comparison)

221-0
108-0
144-1

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Obviously, the devil is in the details.

I'd like to see data on 4th gen aircraft performance via the F-35 in a mini-AWACS role.