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.

Comments

As PE said

[Lawrence_Bird]

don't..don't believe the hype!

A very troubled, costly program trying to generate some positive spin.

Re: As PE said

[ShanghaiBill]

It is only "stealthy" if the radar transmitter and receiver are co-located. The Russians and the Chinese are well aware of this limitation, and are already building offset radar. So it is only stealthy if we assume that our adversaries are idiots. This is a good assumption if we want the funding to continue, but a bad assumption if we actually expect it to be effective. The F35 has way too much inertia and sunk costs to be cancelled at this point ... and please don't say that "sunk costs don't matter". That may be true in business, but is not true in politics.

In the Sprawlmart parking lot . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

So the F-35 pilot exits Sprawlmart, and looks around for his plane.

I know I parked it here . . . but I just can't see it anywhere!

Pointless hype

[HuskyDog]

Yes, well maybe the aircraft's signature was too low for the threat system to engage them, but if you want to increase the signature of the stealthy aircraft there are lots of easy ways, such as:

1) Lower the undercarriage.

2) Many low signature aircraft have corner reflectors which either bolt on or are hidden behind doors and which greatly increase the radar returns. They are used to hide the true signature when flying somewhere where someone may try to measure your radar cross section. I have no idea if the F35 has such a feature, but I would be surprised if it doesn't.

3) Fit external stores. I don't know if the F35 supports this option.

So, a story about something that isn't a real problem and instead suggests a badly planned training exercise re-cast as an opportunity to say how great their aircraft are.

Can't turn, can't climb, can't run

[Deep Esophagus]

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?

Always a clever tactic to demand an explanation and then triumphantly declare that the other person has none before any time has passed for replies to be made. Here, let me help you with that "missing" evidence. Have you missed the news for the past eight years? The F-35 program has been dogged at every step by cost overruns, test failures, design-by-committee creeping features, etc.

• * F-35 Fighter can't turn, can't climb, can't run
• * Trillion-dollar F-35 joint strike fighter can't even do dogfights
• * F-35 Program: a danger to US Defense
• * My favorite:How the F-35 could provide 23 years of free college for everyone

I could go on all day, but you get the idea. Just google "F-35" + "waste" + "failure".

Re:Can't turn, can't climb, can't run

[Rei]

Yes, the F-35 absolutely can dogfight - for whatever that's worth these days.

Also, all of these financial comparisons completely miss the point, as if the US wasn't going with the F-35 program, they'd be going with a different program instead. It's not like the US is just going to say, "Meh, I think our fighters are good enough, even though all of our potential adversaries keep advancing theirs..." And they would have again sought to go big, since there's a lot of aircraft to replace, and the more they produce the smaller the unit cost.

Yes, the F-35 is estimated at $1,5 trillion. Total through 2070. Aka, $28B per year, versus the Pentagon's $580B budget. And not all go to the US, there are many international orders as well. Procurement is only a fifth of that $1,5 trillion, or under $6B per year.

Again, yes, you could spend that money on, say, college education for people instead. If you're willing not only to let your adversaries out-tech your airforce, but also to scrap the current airplanes you're with that the F-35 is designed to replace, since that money also pays for ongoing operations costs that you'd have to pay for either way. You might be willing to scrap a large chunk of your airforce. Most Americans would not be, I'm sure.

Is it worth mentioning that many of the design decisions of the F-35 are designed to reduce operating costs, such as large production runs, a single engine design, etc - even though the unit cost is high? Again: production is only a fifth of total costs....

Re: Can't turn, can't climb, can't run

[Hylandr]

Huge amount of group think going on here.

The F-35 May have been made invisible to the EMF spectrum used by radar, but there's far more frequencies that it will show up on.

https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
http://aviationweek.com/techno...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I like this one. Clutter can be solved with good software.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And this one is gold:

a series of in-field modifications carried out by the Yugoslavs further reduced the frequency of the 1960s vintage P-18 VHF acquisition radar under Dani’s command, which enabled his men to detect Zelko’s F-117 at a distance of 30 to 37 miles (50-60 km).

*In-field modifications* That's bad-ass.

http://thediplomat.com/2014/08...

Re:Can't turn, can't climb, can't run

[Rei]

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.

Re: Can't turn, can't climb, can't run

[Luckyo]

I recall reading a more detailed account, and the last one is wrong. He later admitted that he was using stock hardware. His secret was in the fact that he had very well trained AA battery teams, who followed strict discipline when it came to things like time for which fire control radar would illuminate the target and had very high morale as they were the most successful AA team in the entire nation.

The biggest problem for Serbs was the sheer volume of strike craft and the fact that you couldn't paint anything without being quickly targeted and destroyed by the plane itself or its allies because of it. Dani's people were trained to illuminate the target only for 20 seconds at a time and then shut the radar down and rapidly relocate no matter what. That meant that HARM based counter-strikes that killed so much AA hardware were ineffective against his batteries. It also meant that his people quickly understood that they weren't being under severe threat of getting randomly killed by air fired missile, which created significant amount of morale and bravery needed to put your neck out to spot, identify, target, paint and shoot at numerous aircraft that all really hate you, want to kill you and have weapons that are specifically designed to kill you.

That got US pilots in the area used to the fact that they were only in danger for ~17 seconds. His shoot down of F-16 later on involved him breaking his own rule and telling the fire control people to keep the radar illuminating the aircraft, pilot of which expected to just jam off the missile once more powerful radar on the ground would turn off and decided to take a HARM shot to see if he could score a kill. He didn't and plane got shot down

I recall similar thing was done to F-117, in that it was killed in a very specific window during which it could be tracked accurately enough for missile to stand a good chance of actually hitting the aircraft. I recall that he said he used a moment when F-117 opened it's bomb bay to get a tentative radar return that this is indeed his target, and then he just directed his powerful fire control radar to illuminate the spot with as much energy as it could pump. You can be stealthy enough to prevent a weapons grade lock on from fire control radar, but when you get bombarded by a fire control radar that already knows where you are because you flashed yourself for it to low quality lock on because spotters took their time to analyze the tactics used and know where to look, missile's logic has a good chance of estimating the range correctly and detonating close enough to kill the aircraft when aircraft is as slow and unmaneveurable as F-117.

According to the leaks, for F-35 the moment when it's "low observable" rather than "stealth" is pretty much any time it's above and ahead of ground radar. It's stealthiness is mainly in the front hemisphere of the aircraft, and rear is far less stealthy. Which means that if it runs into a well trained team like one that Dani led, it's going to have a decent chance to get killed in a similar fashion. And that's when it's in the stealth configuration, which can carry almost no payload. When carrying a proper strike package, it's about as stealthy as most aircraft around, simply because of signal returns from the payload itself.

Re: Can't turn, can't climb, can't run

[Aighearach]

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.

Re: Can't turn, can't climb, can't run

[tpgp]

he had very well trained AA battery teams,

Imagine what he could've done with C, or even D cells.

Re:Wait, so the F-35 is good for something?

[Rei]

Because you've been reading sources focused on bashing the F-35? Which might explain the seemingly "inexplicable" interest by other parties who don't read exclusively efforts to bash it?

Salesmanship

[sshir]

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.

Really good stealth vs US radar.

[Ecuador]

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.

Re:The next great military technology?

[arglebargle_xiv]

You're thinking of the F-9 3/4, which is so stealthy that even its own pilots can't find it. Costs 200 billion apiece. The money is going to the Pentagon somewhere, but no-one can figure out where the resulting aircraft are.

Re:The next great military technology?

[AC-x]

Stop posting FUD, the F9¾ stealth project was a stunning success! Here's a whole squadron of them being proudly displayed.