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

I'm putting my money on them naming it the 'Lightning' - Because it'll please the US - named after the P38 Lightning and also the UK - English Electric Lightning

Spacemunkey

[edit on 6-7-2006 by spacemunkey]

Here's some pics of the bird their gonna roll out tommorrow...and I have scuttlebutt it's gonna be named "Lightning II"...course just like the 'Hog and the Viper I'm sure it'll get an operational name of its own...

www.flightglobal.com

Apparently the date for the announcement has been changed to Friday, July 14th

Don't know why~

Edit: My source told me that the announcemnt date had been postponed - 30 minutes later it's announced that the F-35 will be dubbed "Lightning II".

Last time I trust that source...





[edit on 7-7-2006 by intelgurl]

[edit on 7-7-2006 by intelgurl]

Hey Intelgurl, just wondering, what kind of position are you in the Defense Industry? I mean like are you an aerospace engineer, an engineering technologist, etc.....you seem to know a lot about jet engines, stealth technology, aircraft types, weapons, etc....but I am guessing that is good general knowledge and you are specialized in a particular area in the aerospace industry...?

Great posts though, keep up the good work. Your posts always make me have to go research things just to understand some of the terms you use

BUMP (just figured I'd bump this thread back up as I found it very informative and don't want it lost yet).

Interesting capability for a fighter class aircraft...

Fighters Tipped to be Top Spy Planes

OK,OK OK
We'd better know the first key is you should have mastery of sky then you could talk about how to attack target on ground.
Every one here looks the F-35 as an attacker. Yes, the Joint Strike Fighter also means including attacking ground mission, but Iam so wooried that air combat capability of F-35. The F-35 has less wing area than F-15, less thrust then F-15 whereas weight is equal to F-15.
compare:
F-15 F-35
w.a. 56.5 42
thrust >20ton

Originally posted by Colt40Five
Interesting capability for a fighter class aircraft...

(Best Ace Ventura Voice)

"Ooooohhhhoooooo, /Spooky/"

It's all on oh-please hypocrisy as the fighter pilots try desperately to save their job descriptions from a long deserved obsolescence by sounding all 'CIA like' in their Killroy Was Here attempted snooping.

In reality this-

>>
Air Force fighters in the skies over Afghanistan and Iraq are providing powerful backing to US ground forces, responding as they always have done with on-call air support when troops come into contact with the enemy. Increasingly, however, that support features not precision attack but delivery of video on demand.

...

The capability—known as “nontraditional ISR,” or NTISR—also has vastly sped up the process of battle damage assessment, giving air commanders a faster read on whether targets have been hit and destroyed or need to be struck again. The power to do this is critical early in an air campaign against high-value objectives.

In both Southwest Asia theaters of operation, armed fighters fly high above the ground, ready to respond immediately to a call for air support from ground troops. When that call comes, they can use their targeting pods—Litening, Sniper, or LANTIRN—to zoom in on a target and put ordnance precisely where it’s needed.

Fitted with targeting pods, fighters such as this A-10 can offer full-motion video intelligence to troops on the ground. (USAF photo by TSgt. David W. Richards)

...

“Initially, there was tremendous pushback from fighter pilots who resisted the notion of becoming ‘manned Predators,’ ” noted Lt. Gen. Walter E. Buchanan III, commander of USAF’s 9th Air Force and of US Central Command Air Forces.
>>

www.afa.org...

Is closer to what is going on and most likely /will always be/ what is happening. As even traditional militaries shift to guerilla like tactics to offset the enormous disparity in conventional warfighter numerics and specifically airpower.

The sad part being that you _don't need_ HALF THE CRAP on a 'fighter jet' to do this mission. And if you /pull it/, along with the switch flipper on his rocket recliner, you get a _better_ traditional ISR system.

Not least because:

1. You can design the optical aperture as a thimble which provides true 360` all 'round coverage.
2. You can honestly expect 10-14hr loiters (not quite a predator but vastly more than an F-16 or 35).
3. You can design for much greater signature reduction (no tails, no gaping supersonic inlets, no condi nozzles 'glowing in the wind')
4. Flight Hour costs go DOWN from the roughly 5,000 dollars per flight hour towards $1,200 dollars per flight hour. Not including pilot salary and his endless training regimen and family care issues.
5. With optimized systems like MTS and XTRA or Lynx, you get _superior_ small target tracking.

CONCLUSION:
These idiots have a Star Wars complex in an OK Corral world. They further have ZERO idea of what D1/R1 is going to look like in a DEWS driven **S2A** threat picture. And so they sop to the pilot corps that effectively has 'signing authority' for OUR money.

Something that _The Freakin' Constitution Of The United States_ and various Anti Deficiency Act 'supplimentary legislation' should have long since put a stop to.

The ultimate irony being that these brave aerial assassins are in fact bored to tears flying these merry go 'round missions. And they cost so much to support that the very nature of airpower 'as originally conceived' (to put eyes over and beyond the immediate horizonline of battle) is being jeopardized because we cannot sustainably generate more than about half the sorties we need to keep the Iraqis from butchering each other for sport.

Danger Will Robinson, the aluminum siding tin-men are out in force!!


KPl.

Originally posted by Kriskaos
The arnament on this thing is like an f-14 bombs and air- to air missiles. wow.

The armament on it may be similar, but it lacks the "sexy something" that the Tomcat had.

Speaking of sexy, the Boeing X-32 was NOT. The oversized intake scoop just under the nose just doesn't... Ugh. Uncool.

That being said, with all my F-35-bashing I think it will turn out to be a good plane. However the bashing will not stop, nor will the Raptor-bashing. Just because then I'll have nothing else to bash!

Originally posted by Spectre
Like cmdrkeenkid said, the 100kw laser weapon is really interesting. That is the kind of technology that could radically change things. If Raytheon, or a competitor ,can shrink a solid state laser down to the size of a drop tank and still have enough power to destroy incoming air-to-air missiles, that would beat the crap out of chaff and flares!

I believe you/anyone (Edit: just realised the age of this thread and that he is no longer active) will find a number of answers, and as many revelations, here

Stellar

[edit on 13-8-2006 by StellarX]

Check this video
Link

Intelgurl, you have some extremely good facts and information on the F/X-35. I was wondering if you could clear some things up or possibly give me more information on a few subjects.
I had seen from a previous source when the F/X-35 was first showcased that it had engine noise stealth capabilities and possible visual stealth capabilities that were still top-secret and being tested, but were mentioned none the less.
The reason I am asking is because of this litte episode:
I had gone out one night to gaze up at the stars and to watch sattelites pass by. To my surprise and the two others with me, we noticed two odd lights that were significantly closer to the ground. We had binoculars and used them to look up at the two lights. As they got farther away, we noticed that the lights began to get longer. They were the afterburners of two jets in formation. This isn't uncommon in my area since we have an old radar base on the mountain that is still used for training simulations. What surprised all of us is that there was totally NO SOUND before or after the planes passed. We waited several minutes after the planes passed and still heard nothing. Each plane only had one engine, or at least one exhaust. This is a characteristic of the F/X-35. This occured approximately 3 years ago around 11pm.

What do you think?

why do u think that the f 35 lightning is better than the f 22 raptor, yes the f 35 lightning is as stealthy as the f 117 nighthawk but the f 22 raptor is the most used aircraft and it doing a good job as it is.

intelgurl,
Your description of the basic facts pertaining to the F-35 are very informative. You did mention, at the beginning of the thread, the F-22 was considered expensive (agreed), but do you know much about the F-22 in greater detail than what's available on the Internet?
In general terms, or course. I also realize the F-35 and F-22 are different programs.

[edit on 16-2-2009 by big_m]

[edit on 16-2-2009 by big_m]