F-35 Development and News Thread:

GarryB wrote:I strongly suspect the light 5th gen fighter will be stealthy but also cheaper and as such be very appealing on the international market.

However I strongly suspect that current F-35 operators will not make such a political statement as to change from a US fighter to a Russian one... no matter how much it costs them.
 

collegeboy16 wrote:
Simples really, just take a page from the west book of marketing- make a consortium. The Italians have no problems marketing the m346 trainer aircraft and the euros have their own avionics and weapons plus possibly engines.

The US’s newly developed radar-evading F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will not be able to escape Russian radars.

“The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter... is not, in fact, stealthy in the eyes of a growing number of Russian and Chinese radars,” the Aviation Week said.

It said the jet, which the Pentagon hopes would be stealthy, is “having all sorts of shortcomings.”

The report said the jet is not even effective in “jamming enemy radar”, adding the US Defense Department is spending “hundreds of billions of dollars” for a “fighter that will need the help of specialized jamming aircraft.”

It said the F-35 is even “susceptible to detection by radars operating in the VHF bands of the spectrum.”

The report said Russian armed forces have been armed with a “highly counterstealth radar system” – unveiled at an air show near Moscow last August – that is able to “track small targets once the VHF radar has detected them.”

The F-35 has not been equipped with “onboard jamming,” the report said.

“Had the JSF requirements been tightened by one iota since the program started, its advocates would be blaming that for the delays and overruns,” it said.

The new US fighter’s “jamming is mostly confined to the X-band,” the report said.

Speculation about the US fighter comes at a time US President Barack Obama is apparently set to turn the ongoing crisis in Ukraine into a war with Russia.

Tensions between Moscow and the West mounted after Crimea separated from Ukraine and requested to join Russia after a referendum on March 16, in which nearly 97 percent of the participants voted for rejoining Russia. Moscow subsequently accepted Crimea’s request.

India, Burma are two examples. Apparently Egypt is interested and I think Bangledesh ordered some. wrote:

Now you are trolling. India bought the MiG-29K because they bought the Kuznetsov carrier - all part of the same deal. The Indian air force refused to buy the MiG-35, Algeria returned their SMTs.

Werewolf wrote:

BlackArrow wrote:God, you guys are fast...

F-104 - safety record no worse than its contemporaries from the 1950s, probably better than the MiG-21's, who knows? I see the IAF lost another MiG-21 this week. Killed its pilot too.  

Definetley not, the MiG-21 and their operators have not lost almost 50% of their MiG-21 fleet in only 23 years without enemy engagement, German pilots and maintenance are rather good considering some Arabic countries under embargos who operated MiG-21s and still Starfighter fall from the sky like no other plane ever before.

The Starfighter has its reputation very well deserved as the Meteor, engine problems like no other plane.

He belongs in top 3 of the biggest failure in military aviation fighter jets, while MiG-21 is among the most succesful fighters and with various upgrades still very useful for smaller budget countries, and most certainly still lethal against F-35 in a dogfight.

BlackArrow wrote: I think the F-35 will be great success just like most if not all American tactical aicraft built since the 1940s. Who has bought any MiG-29s lately?

TR1 wrote:Many MiG-21 operators had nothing like the crash rate the Germans had with the Starfighter.

But in general yes, fighter operations were dangerous then.
Though it is funny to see people desperately try to deny that any US fighter could possible have a worse crash record than a Soviet counterpart.

Dat superiority complex

As Sa'iqa wrote:http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/04/us-grounds-entire-f-35-fighter-jet-fleet?CMP=twt_fd

The Pentagon has stuck with the F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter program despite dozens of technical problems and delays, strategic concerns, and massive cost overruns that have nearly doubled the initial cost estimate, raising the cost of building the planes to around $400 billion with a lifetime cost of up to $1.5 trillion.

One reason why the project has become such a boondoggle is that many states and countries are significantly invested in the plane, relying on its production for income and jobs.

Every U.S. state but Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska, and Wyoming has economic ties to the F-35, with 18 states counting on the project for $100 million or more in economic activity, according to primary contractor Lockheed Martin. All told, the project is supposedly responsible for 32,500 jobs in the U.S. Globally, another nine countries have major ties to the F-35.

One way or another, America's multirole fifth-generation fighter is coming — though it was most recently delayed to September 2017.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-map-explains-the-f-35-fiasco-2014-8#ixzz3BUick6xr