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US Air Force Declares F-35A Ready For Combat (defensenews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Defense News: The U.S. Air Force on Tuesday declared its first squadron of F-35As ready for battle, 15 years after Lockheed Martin won the contract to make the plane. The milestone means that the service can now send its first operational F-35 formation -- the 34th Fighter Squadron located at Hill Air Force Base, Utah -- into combat operations anywhere in the world. The service, which plans to buy 1,763 F-35As, is the single-largest customer of the joint strike fighter program, which also includes the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy and a host of governments worldwide. "Given the national security strategy, we need it," [Air Combat Command (ACC) head Gen. Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle] said. "You look at the potential adversaries out there, or the potential environments where we have to operate this airplane, the attributes that the F-35 brings -- the ability to penetrate defensive airspace, the ability to deliver precision munitions with a sensor suite that fuses data from multiple information sources -- is something our nation needs." Carlisle said in July that even though he would feel comfortable sending the F-35 to a fight as soon as the jet becomes operational, ACC has formed a "deliberate path" where the aircraft would deploy in stages: first to Red Flag exercises, then as a "theater security package" to Europe and the Asia-Pacific. The fighter probably won't deploy to the Middle East to fight the Islamic State group any earlier than 2017, he said, but if a combatant commander asked for the capability, "I'd send them down in a heartbeat because they're very, very good." The declaration is another achievement for the $379 billion program -- the Pentagon's largest weapons project -- following the declaration of a first squadron of F-35s ready for combat made by the U.S. Marine Corps in July 2015.
"first to Red Flag exercises, then as a "theater security package" to Europe and the Asia-Pacific. "
They transposed "security theater."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Its unlikely it will ever engage another jet in a combat role, countries we fight are too poor for jets, countries with jets have too much power to attack and know we are too powerful to attack too or our allies.
Its ready to be a glorified bomber, bombing mostly suspected terrorists.
that it could well be obsolete in less time than it took to develop it if computer controlled drones keep advancing at their current rate. There was a story not long ago about a computer flying a simulated fighter outperforming a top gun in a dogfight. Move technology on 15 years and putting a pilot in a fighter could seem rather quaint.
I thought we were running articles about how the F35-A carries shit for weapons, turns like an aircraft carrier, can't dogfight, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars every year for decades only to turn out a worthless piece of shit after the trillions settled. Did Slashdot get bought recently?
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http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/feature/5/170838/a-closer-look-at-dot%26e-report-on-f_35-%3Ci%3E(updated)%3C%C2%A7i%3E.html
The Block 2B version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which the Marine Corps declared operational in July last year, is not capable of unsupported combat against any serious threat, according to Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation (DOT&E).
http://aviationweek.com/defense/test-report-points-f-35-s-combat-limits-0?NL=AW-05&Issue=AW-05_20160201_AW-05_373&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1
http://aviationweek.com/site-files/aviationweek.com/files/uploads/2016/01/DOT%26E%202015%20F-35%20Annual%20Report.pdf
The pentagon must be geting pretty desperate.
Upon first reading, I though it was April the first!
By stating how "bad" the F-16 works with one engine you have eliminated your credibility on the subject with a single sentence. Have a nice day.
What plane needs a pilot anymore?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
The F-104 wasn't designed poorly, but it was designed as a very high speed fighter. At low speed the plane was hard to handle. Pilots weren't getting enough experience on it before having an accident. This was before fly by wire and computer control. The F-16 is designed to be highly unstable, but is controlled by its computer. A pilot could not control one without computer assistance. Technology makes a huge difference.
Jesus fucking Jeremiah Christ on a Poop Stick. The F-16 is, after the Supermarine Spitfire, the single most successful fighter *ever*. It has been deployed in more roles than the initial designers and customers could have ever dreamed of, and is gloriously resisting wear, tear and fatigue way better than projected. Did you write that sentence from a Starbucks on your Apple laptop, i.e. from your virtual armchair, dear fanboi strategist ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
"...You look at the potential adversaries out there, or the potential environments..."
Uhhh, potential? That's the best you can do here? Exactly how many metric fucktons of FUD does one need in order to justify over 1,700 aircraft and a $380 billion dollar price tag?
This kind of shit scares me because of what the US might be inclined to get involved in, for no other reason other than to justify this little shopping spree.
Law Number XVI: In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one tactical aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3½ days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.
:)
And by "mission" I mean to siphon as much money from the taxpayer into into Lockheed Martin's bank accounts...
" I just don't understand why in hell they had to have a single engine fighter."
Then you're not qualified to even be fucking speaking on this subject. Quit being an armchair strategist and get your lazy ass into the actual military.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Umm... no.
1. The original ejector seat was shooting the pilot out of the plane by ejecting him DOWNWARDS. As you might imagine this could (and did) lead to a few (un)foreseeable problems at lower altitudes. Even after they realized that this might not be a good idea and replaced it with normal ejectors, they were FAR from zero/zero. And no, zero/zero was absolutely within capabilities of the times, we're not talking WW2 here. And the separation of seat and pilot after eject was even more of a gamble.
2. The plane had a take-off speed of 400 km/h. At 420 km/h, the gear structure could be damaged due to drag. That means you had about 2 second between take off and gear up. Provided you were not heavy, that is. With halfway decent load, you COULD NOT even retract the gear successfully. What would you do? You would slowly (because fast is impossible unless you want to ruin your gear totally) climb to a halfway decent height, switch to landing configuration so you could slow down (and sink while you're at it), and then get the gear in. While you're descending. Now hope that the engine doesn't stall or you're fucked. Because you can't get the gear out in time and your ejector seat... see above.
3. BLC required a running engine at landing. No engine, no landing because you'd stall. Invariably.
4. If your flaps were damaged asymmetrically, extending them for a landing led to uncontrollable rolling. Impossible to compensate. I think I needn't go into detail why uncontrollable rolling while you're already slow, close to stall and not too far above ground is a BAD thing. And now take a wild guess whether the damage control system would inform you about something as insignificant as this.
5. The hydraulic afterburner nozzle failed open in case of a hydraulic breach (e.g. due to faulty material or combat damage) resulting in a flameout. You could sometimes restart the engine, provided you had time and altitude. If you could not ... see point 2.
And so on. That were just the "big 5" Starfighter killers. There were many more "wtf, how does THIS happen" moments.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's not my opinion only. Look at the safety record. A warbird with one engine is a bad thing. Redundancy is everything in the air. When you lose an engine in an F-15 you return to base. In an F-16 you reach for the ejection handle. Even you should be able to see that.
Ok. If you want to look at one dimension of multi-dimensional operations, fine. It isn't really useful, but let's look at the facts anyway, apples to apples.
For example, both the F-15 and F-16 use the same engine. The most current with statistically significant data being the F100-PW-229. In engine related class A mishaps (loss of an airframe or life) the F-15 has had 6 in 565 thousand aircraft flight hours. The F-16 has had 0, that's right, 0 engine related class A mishaps in 367 thousand flight hours. Compared to the F-15 aircraft loss rate the F-16 should have had 3 or 4 by now. So, maybe there is more to it than just the number of engines.