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The New F-35 Is So Stealthy, It's Harder To Train Pilots (airforcetimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Air Force Times: The F-35 Lightning II is so stealthy, pilots are facing an unusual challenge. They're having difficulty participating in some types of training exercises, a squadron commander told reporters Wednesday. During a recent exercise at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, F-35 squadrons wanted to practice evading surface-to-air threats. There was just one problem: No one on the ground could track the plane. 'If they never saw us, they couldn't target us,' said Lt. Col. George Watkins, the commander of the 34th Fighter Squadron at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. The F-35s resorted to flipping on their transponders, used for FAA identification, so that simulated anti-air weapons could track the planes, Watkins said.
So you're saying that there's no truth to this story? Where's you're evidence? You have none? Then why should I believe your negative spin?
Which greatly limits the performance of the aircraft and thus provides much less than optimum training for the missile operators.
[[Citation Needed]] - not only that such things exist, but that the F-35 has them.
It does (I know this because I'm not too lazy to Google), but as in 1), this is not always desirable.
Actually, no. A bullshit reply that indicates a lack of any real knowledge indicates you have know clue what you're talking about.
Except the f_35 is supposed to be a close air support plane as well. If you can see it you can hit it no matter how small the radar cross section is.
That is the problem with the f-35 it isn't the a,b,c version.. but it is trying to do roles it can't do well
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Those planes were designed for low cross section at frequencies used by American AA systems. Remember, during last Winter Olympics, there were photos of Russians deploying their antiaircraft systems? And there was a weird, seemingly ancient rickety thing? That, my friends, is a modern long wavelength radar. That thing sees "stealth" planes just fine.
Seeing the F4 is still in service, Widely used up until the 90s, still holds several world records and supports a wide variety of mission types. I think we should be lucky if the F35 is anything like it. Neither were dogfigthers, but maybe neither deserves to be compared to an F-15. I am sure we can find many other things to critize that it actually claims to be good at. Denmark (where i am from) are replacing our fleet of F16's with the F35. I think were getting about 27. This is an odd choice since our primary purpose for the jets is to engage Russian fighters when they press our airspace. We need a detterent (radar visible) air supremecy jet, and chose the F35 for that. Great idea right?
All they are saying is that the F35 has very good stealth vs the US AA radar, which is a high frequency radar and that makes sense, since it was a big priority of the design. In fact, it was a priority over other aspects, so the F35 has many disadvantages. But yes, it has that advantage.
Now, the problem is that Russia and China are building low frequency radars to which the F35 has no stealth capability. The difficulty is getting a good enough lock for weapons targeting - something that is thought to be hard with low frequency radars (i.e. you can see the F35 fine, but it exact location & vector are harder to get). If they succeed in making them good at targeting using low frequencies, then the F35 loses its main advantage and several disadvantages will start coming into play.
Personally, I'd have thought the US would have already built radars that can "see" the F35, mainly to anticipate the others doing so, in order to prepare on facing them (perhaps tweaking the plane, or seeing the limits of low frequency radar technology, or developing strategies etc). But of course they wouldn't announce it, so this fluff piece would be published anyway.
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This is simply not correct. The F-35's operating cost is nearly as low per hour as the old, much less advanced F-16, which has had nearly half a century to refine. See the line item above for maintenance, $10k per flight hour? The F-22 by contrast takes $33k maintenance per flight hour. Just the maintenance line item alone for the F-22 costs more than all O&S costs for the F-35 combined.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
It also turns out that when you program the computer to run in extra-safe mode... it turns, climbs, and otherwise runs slower. That's the thing that was based on something real.
Too bad Mr Deep Eyesocket didn't actually read any of his own links, he might have learned something.
The quote about turning, climbing, running slow was from RAND corp, from 2008, and not based on anything real or even from the military; they programmed a war sim themselves. Using non-classified (read: fake) data sources. And indeed, they managed to program it so that in the simulation, the thing with the label "F-35" did indeed suck. Not sure that means what some of these people think it means. Gosh, scary thought, but what if these morons also believed everything else that RAND Corp said?! Yikes!
You may have stepped in some strategic misinformation. Like "carrots improve night vision," which is still being taught in schools even thought the Germans already know about radar.
Low-frequency radar is a great tool. And it can indeed detect stealth craft. The problem is, you need a giant powerful broadcast, and you don't get location data. You just detect, "gosh there is something out there." It isn't what Serbia used to shoot down a plane; they used regular AA radar, the plane wasn't stealth even though it was a stealth model, because it was operating in wet weather where it looks normal on radar. It has to be dry to be stealthy. They took a chance, and got hit.
You thought vintage radar would detect stealth tech? Seriously? That's like... W T F level stuff.
What utter nonsense; of course you can. It's true, you better be damn good at leading your target to have any success with a SINGLE PROJECTILE. But that is a stupid visualization. Close air support is extreme low level. Close air support is brought down by filling the air in the vicinity with fire. Lots of Mustangs were brought down by multiple free-fired ground machine guns. Can you avoid a hailstorm by flying fast but directly toward the target at low level? Of course not.
WWI CAS was under 100 knots. By WWII it had risen to 200-400 knots. Today it is very little faster; 350-500 knots; no matter if the aircraft is capable of supersonic dash or not, that just isn't how you strafe ground targets. It's not that much harder to hit something at 500 knots than it was at 400, especially when it's much bigger now.
The F-35 is an utter piece of garbage at close air support as well as at dogfighting. The only role it could be any good at is flying high, engaging enemy aircraft at long range with missiles. And it's complete overkill for that. Not to mention that no air force on earth outside of the US, Europe, Russia, and Israel has the slightest competency whatsoever at air to air combat.
More like 25 years of avoiding conflict. After the USSR showed they could shoot down a U2 by actually doing it, US has had a policy of avoiding engagement with anyone who has competent defence.