Nic – So the Swiss AF is going to campaign against the referendum, knowing that if it fails, there will be no replacement for the F-5E/Fs?

Or else who do you have in mind?

Either sore loser. Or possibly both.

Errm, the radar’s previous name “Vixen 1000E” might be a bit of a giveaway, in view of the fact that the smaller radar in the family was known as Vixen 500…

CB – All I’ve heard is that the F-35A has achieved Mach 1.8 in flight testing and can easily sustain Mach 1.2 with minimal to no afterburner usage.

The alleged “supercruise” is an urban legend. It’s derived from a claim that the jet can go a certain distance at M=1.2, which may or may not be true or achievable in normal operations. However, the acceleration issues are pretty clear: the F-35B (less fuel) and the F-35C (slow) will struggle to reach 1.6 with enough fuel remaining to do anything useful. The F-35A may under some circumstances make sense out of Mach 1.6 bomb drop – but why? It gives you a little standoff range, but it might be easier (AASM) to put a squib in the tail of the bomb.

DJC – You are going to have to engage in some form of roll-back, F-35 or not. The IOC spec was written against a 1995 perception of a 2010 threat; even then, you are not going to magically go it alone against an IADS (even the F-117 did not do that in 1991, against a much older threat). As for your point on Aesa, it would be equally accurate to observe that after decades of work the US still has to field an affordable fighter Aesa that delivers major operational advantages over an MSA (see DOT&E report), that neither the first airborne Aesa nor the first fighter ESA were US products, and that if you want operational low-cost Aesa technology you don’t look to the USA.

I don’t smoke. Are you standing next to an F-35 radome, or the integrated powerpack?

DJC – Everything has moved on, and to criticize people for living in the past while talking about Package Q is inconsistent. EW has improved massively because of much more accurate detection, and electronically steerable antennas that generate much tighter beams, putting far more energy on target. DRFM is an advance on the EW side that is hard to match on the radar side. (By the way, all these things raise the bar substantially for a fighter radar trying to track a target while staying LPI/LPD.)

One lesson is that relying totally on any one technology is a crap shoot – and that includes microwave-frequency stealth.

Spud – With Stealth you can have BOTH, a VLO airframe AND active countermeasures if it is needed.

Possibly, some time under Block 19, and “I read an interview with someone from BAE years ago” is not that strong of a source. However, the problem with putting active EW on the penetrating stealth platform itself is knowing when you have been detected – because if you go active prematurely you have just exposed yourself.

Neither does realtime route planning work if the adversary radar can see you to the horizon.

TDP – target designation pod. The EOTS has restricted FOV and doesn’t (and can’t) have the multi-spectral characteristics of modern pods.

TC12F – Clearly Hops is dwelling in the LMT Augmented Reality Zone. By the way, he’s also forgetting that increasing fuel load by 20 per cent never buys you 20 per cent more range, whether you carry it internally, externally or up the pilot’s ****, because more fuel = more weight = more induced drag.

If I had to take a guess, I’d say that the F-35 suffers from high induced drag (drag due to lift) because of its lift distribution, which (because of the wide body, which develops little lift in the cruise) is biased towards the wingtips. (BTW, that also explains the very visible vortices.) An additional issue could be trim drag with full tanks – the A carries 5200 – 5500 lb more fuel than the B, and has an internal gun that displaces mid-body fuel, so there has to be around 6000 lb in the lift-fan bay, right behind the cockpit.

Looking at the “calculations” (rather a strong word) on the SLDInfo page, it is dazzlingly apparent that they assume that 30+ per cent more fuel = 30+ per cent more range; to wit, that the fuel tanks, whether empty or full, have neither mass nor drag.

That’s what one of my designer friends calls “Newton don’t allow”.

On the other hand, it’s a good piece to bear in mind when considering the quality of SLDInfo’s copious pro-JSF propaganda.