Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

FighterJock said:

Trump is claiming credit for Lockheed Martin cutting 600 Million from the F-35 program. ??? :-\

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/31/trumps-claim-taking-credit-for-cutting-600-million-from-the-f-35-program/

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NeilChapman said:

FighterJock said:

Trump is claiming credit for Lockheed Martin cutting 600 Million from the F-35 program. ??? :-\

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/31/trumps-claim-taking-credit-for-cutting-600-million-from-the-f-35-program/

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He's going to get blamed for anything that happens on his watch....

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FighterJock said:

NeilChapman said:

FighterJock said:

Trump is claiming credit for Lockheed Martin cutting 600 Million from the F-35 program. ??? :-\

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/31/trumps-claim-taking-credit-for-cutting-600-million-from-the-f-35-program/

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He's going to get blamed for anything that happens on his watch....

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Will that not make them cheaper to buy in the long term?

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By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
While controversy trails the F-35A Lightning II fighter whenever it flies these days, only contrails were visible Thursday as the cutting-edge stealth jet made one of its first appearances in the ongoing Red Flag air combat exercise at Nellis Air Force Base.

Since the year’s first Red Flag began Jan. 23, the F-35A — the Air Force version of the $100 million joint strike fighter — has been flying for the first time in tandem with the nation’s other stealth air-superiority jet, the F-22 Raptor, and more than 80 other warplanes and support aircraft from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

So far, the Lightning II has racked up 110 missions in the exercise that ends Feb. 10 over the sprawling Nevada Test and Training Range, north of the Las Vegas Valley.

The F-35 has been in the limelight since December, when then-President-elect Donald Trump criticized the cost of the Lockheed Martin aircraft as “out of control” in a series of tweets and said he had asked rival Boeing to “price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet” that could perform the same mission. Eight F-18 Hornets also were participating in Red Flag.


Before his squadron departed for Thursday’s war exercise, Lt. Col. George “Banzai” Watkins, commander of the F-35As from the 34th Fighter Squadron, declined to compare “apples and oranges” of the radar-evading joint strike fighters with the Navy’s non-stealthy F-18 Super Hornet.

But Watkins said the F-35 “has been living up to what it’s expected to do,” in the exercise.

Red Flag planners made sure that the 13 F-35s from Hill Air Force Base in Utah have had more aggressor jets than ever to counter and avoid simulated advanced missile strikes.

Meanwhile the F-35s on the friendly “blue team” have been successful in finding ground-based air defense sites with their high-tech sensors and taking them out with training bombs.

As of Thursday the F-35’s kill ratio with aggressor jets stood at 15-1, even though the F-35’s primary mission isn’t air-to-air combat, which typically is left up to the Raptor.

Watkins said he’s “never seen a Red Flag like this where they’ve put up as many advanced threats against us. If we didn’t suffer a few losses, it wouldn’t be challenging enough.”

Members of Congress who hold the Pentagon’s purse strings have been paying close attention to the debate over the cost of the F-35. The unit price of roughly $100 million apiece is expected to decrease to the $90 million range as more of the estimated 150 joint strike fighters are produced for the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Navy and allies.

Rep. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada, a new member of the House Armed Services Committee, said she has an open mind on the president’s approach to reviewing the nation’s most expensive weapons system.

“The president and secretary of defense’s focus on tackling the cost of the F-35 is absolutely right,” she said in an email via her spokesman. “Costs are coming down, but I believe there are additional avenues available to continue to reduce what we’re paying for these aircraft.”


Watkins said the F-35A’s debut has demonstrated that the nation’s newest stealth jet provides an essential complement to the F-22s.

“They’re designed for air-to-air. We’re designed for the suppression of enemy air defense positions,” he said. “We can see the ground through the weather with our SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) mapping radar to detect a threat and take it out before it’s a factor to the other aircraft out there.”

The Marine version — the F-35B — was the first joint strike fighter to fly in a Red Flag at Nellis, in July last year.

Contact Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Follow @KeithRogers2 on Twitter.

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Red Flag gives F-35A its toughest test yet

NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. — What happens when the F-35A goes to its very first Red Flag, the Air Force’s premier air-to-air training exercise?

The answer, according to U.S. military and international participants, is that the event itself becomes more challenging than ever, with a greater number of more capable aggressors outfitted with advanced weaponry.

Although the Marine Corps operated its short takeoff, vertical landing variant in the event last year, Red Flag 17-1 marks the debut of the conventional F-35A operated by the Air Force. After almost two weeks, 13 joint strike fighters from Hill Air Force Base in Utah have flown 110 sorties, said Lt. Col. George Watkins, 34th Fighter Squadron commander.

“It’s a much more difficult adversary that we are fighting against here as a team than we would have fought against a year and a half ago, when I was here last,” Watkins said, referencing his previous Red Flag event, which he flew in as an F-16 pilot.

“They have stepped up the number of red air that we’re fighting — the number of aggressor aircraft that are fighting against us — the amount of jamming and stuff that they’re providing against us, the skill level of the adversary that they are trying to replicate, as well as the surface-to-air missile threat.”

Fifth-generation aggressors will not be introduced during this Red Flag, but the sheer number of fourth-generation adversaries have posed a problem for participants. Up to about 24 adversaries can be in flight at the same time and can regenerate three or four times after being shot down, Watkins said.

The F-35A’s kill ratio stands at 15 aggressors to 1 F-35 killed in action, but because Red Flag is a training exercise, the fighter shouldn’t have a perfect record, he contended.

“If we didn’t suffer a few loses, it wouldn’t be challenging enough, so we’d have to go back and redo it. So there are some threats out there that make it through because of their sheer numbers and the advanced threats that they’re shooting at us. So we have had one or two losses so far in our training,” he said. “That’s good for the pilots.”

The F-35 is so stealthy, it produced training challenges, pilot says Once the F-35 reaches full combat capability, it will be more lethal, Watkins pointed out. The fighter is currently limited to an internal missile loadout, but will be able to carry a full complement of weapons — including external stores — as early as 2018 in Block 3F.

For many pilots of other aircraft, the exercise was their first opportunity to fight alongside the joint strike fighter. Lt. Col. Charles Schuck, an F-22 pilot and commander of the 27th fighter squadron, agreed that this year’s Red Flag featured a larger number of skilled adversaries with advanced capabilities. But his squadron’s experience partnering with the Marine Corps’ F-35Bs last year helped them understand how the F-22 and F-35 could augment each other, he said.

“Getting to work with them gave us a little bit of an advance leg up this time to know what kind of questions to ask our Air Force F-35s so that our knowledge was there,” he said. “And it put us a little out in front in getting ready for the Red Flag, so we didn’t have to start from square one on the very first day.”

Lt. Col. Dave DeAngeles, an F-35A pilot who commands the reserve detachment at Hill AFB, said the mission-planning sessions were critical for understanding how to best utilize the unique capabilities of each asset to cooperatively defeat a threat.

“I'm able to sit with my [E/A-18 Growler] partners and just say: ‘How are you able to go and fight different threats, and how are you able to jam them?’ And I'm able to share: ‘This is how I would fight with my F-35,’ ” he said.

“Then, using the Link 16 network, we're able to kind of pass each other targets as well, so in certain scenarios where they say we need to take out a high-threat [surface-to-air missile] we'll work closely with the Growlers,” he said. While the E/A-18s suppress the threat by jamming and other electronic attacks, “we're able to go ahead and take it out."

The F-35 has particularly excelled in missions where the enemy can launch advanced surface-to-air missiles. Previously, in scenarios with those weapons, blue forces, or friendlies, would put all their energy into taking them out with standoff weapons such as Tomahawk cruise missiles.

"We'd have to start from that, and then we'd peel back from there,” Watkins said.

This year, Red Flag participants have encountered three or four different advanced surface-to-air-missiles in one scenario. In those situations, cyber, space and signals intelligence assets like the Rivet Joint partner with the F-35 to fuse together targeting information. Then, the F-22 uses its standoff weapons to bring down aggressors while the F-35’s stealth capabilities allow it to slip undetected within range of the missile system, where it drops munitions.

It would be too dangerous for a fourth-generation aircraft like an F-16 to get that close, Watkins said.

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The approximate per variant unit prices, including jet, engine and fee are as follows:

F-35A: $94.6 million (7.3% reduction from Lot 9)

F-35B: $122.8 million (6.7% reduction from Lot 9)

F-35C $121.8 million (7.9% reduction from Lot 9)

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The plane’s EW suite helps it find the threat, then they can use their stealth and jamming to “get in a lot closer to these threats than anyone else can,” Watkins told reporters earlier this week. Then they can use their cyberwarfare capabilities, about which no one will talk on the record, and EW to neutralize the IADS. Or they can use a missile or bomb or a combination of all four.

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Air Force Air Combat Command is looking for a quick-turnaround, 500-pound precision-guided bomb that could be fielded on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as soon as this year.

The service is conducting market research to identify companies that may be able to produce up to 1,200 precision-guided munitions and meet the requirements of the F-35 Block 3F Operational Flight Plan, according to a Feb. 10 sources-sought notice. The notice indicates the bombs will be fielded on the Air Force's F-35A variant.

"In response to an Air Combat Command Quick Reaction Capability requirement, the USAF is seeking a time-sensitive, interim solution to add a 500-pound class precision-guided munition with moving and maneuvering target capability that is mechanically, electrically and logically compatible with F-35 Block 3F aircraft," the notice states, making clear that the service is looking for "a mature, existing design already in production."

The service could issue a contract as soon as the third quarter of fiscal year 2017 for an initial 400 PGMs with deliveries beginning six months later.

"The capability cannot impact the current fielding schedule for F-35 Block 3F, namely 15 May 2018," the notice states.

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VTOLicious said:

Not necessarily in reference to the above posted link, but after reading the article I posted below I doubt Next Big Future to be a reliable news source :

Marine megadrone will have all the weapons, sensors of an F-35 and do everything a manned F-35 can do except displace the F-35 budget

http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/10/marine-megadrone-will-have-all-weapons.html

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VTOLicious said:

Not necessarily in reference to the above posted link, but after reading the article I posted below I doubt Next Big Future to be a reliable news source :

Marine megadrone will have all the weapons, sensors of an F-35 and do everything a manned F-35 can do except displace the F-35 budget

http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/10/marine-megadrone-will-have-all-weapons.html

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