Rii – Very true. I mean, the Chinese are so dumb that they aren’t even emulating the Vera time-difference-of-arrival ESM system. Wait, what?

Wow, lots of new people here, repeating tired and invalid arguments.

Not much time to respond to it all, but let’s try to hit some key points.

F3 – The “node in a network” idea suffers from the flaw that stealth aircraft are designed to transmit as little as possible. IFDL on the F-22 was primarily designed for that purpose, to share targets across the flight, minimize radar use and cut down on voice comms.

In a full-up NCW concept, the idea is very different: the idea is that one user can call on everything that any user knows about any target. For that to work requires largely unrestricted transmission.

Yes, possibly you can put some kind of network together with MADL, but it still requires an outside interpreter to talk to other aircraft, CAOC or ground users.

And spare us the pro-JSF myth about “the government ordered a change to the schedule”. This has only happened after the inability of the JPO/contractor team to meet schedule has been obvious for months to outsiders.

Also: Kinematics matter. You may be able to get first-look until the cows come home, but if you can’t shoot with high Pk until detection is mutual (and think IRST) then you have not accomplished much. Ultimately, the line that “perfect SA tells you when you’re going to die” can be quite accurate.

“Besides didn’t the Mustang start as a ground attack aircraft?” No. The P-51A got used that way because its engine could not cut it at high altitude, but that wasn’t the intent.

Symons – Did you read the QLR report? About how it started because problems that emerged in the past year (since testing accelerated beyond a snail’s pace) have threatened the start of IOT&E and blown the assumptions about “testing is validation, not discovery” out of the water? About how the people who kicked QLR off were the “Internet hysterics” who run operational testing for the USAF, USN and RAF?

The identified QLR issues can probably be rectified, at a price. The report made it very clear that more issues are (barring a huge statistical fluke) certain to appear. Those may be fixable – at a price. Is the result worth it except to the Church of the 5th GenerationTM?

Loke – You’re correct to a point about the F-35 and F-22 being similar in being aimed at wide-aspect, wider-band LO. How close they are to one another, we don’t know. We do know that LO is half the survivability solution (particularly versus SAMs) for the F-22, along with high Mach/altitude to “blow by” the threat.

John S – Your logic is flawed. I don’t need either the driver’s manuals or a degree in mechanical engineering to tell you that a Ferrari isn’t a Porsche Cayenne – and nobody here questioning the F-35’s performance is saying they have the final answers.

And the QLR did not state that there were no fundamental design risks with the aircraft. The team said that (in 30 days) they had not found issues that could not be fixed (“with realized consequences”) and that warranted halting production now.

By the way, do you expect that the APG-81/JSF will be the next fighter AESA to reach IOC?

I haven’t seen such a display of ineffective Snark since Presque Isle AFB in 1961.

On Mercurius’ topic: Assessing who knows what on any online forum is a personal, qualitative judgment, based on multiple posts. That said, anyone commenting on highly sensitive matters and claiming inside knowledge is almost certainly a fake.

aussieinscale: The way aircraft look is determined by concerns such as the need to accommodate systems, fuel, and weapons, aerodynamic principles (including the broad guidelines sometimes known as the “area rule”) and signature. You’d never need flight manuals to tell you that an A-7 is slower than an F-8, would you?

Brad Piff – Interesting definitions. I submit that “true multirole” excludes the F-22, which can’t do CAS, imaging ISR, precision strike versus mobile targets, maritime armed surveillance &c. “Low” frontal RCS admits the Rhino and EuroCanards.

Levsha – So far we haven’t seen the F-35 performing aerobatics (or pretty much any maneuver other than a lazy-looking roll).

Two big questions:

How much lift off the body, and under what conditions? This matters because the A/B wings are pretty small (because the body is wide to accommodate lift-fan, fuel and weapons, and the span is constrained by ship compatibility). Look how much more wing the C has to get down to a CV-acceptable approach speed (I believe the area outside of the body is almost 2x the A/B).

Wave drag and area ruling: The jet is equivalent to the Super Hornet in weight and thrust but nine feet shorter, and the cross-section area peaks very quickly from the nose to the inlet/lift-fan area. Maybe they’ve been very clever somehow and it’s all OK, but that’s not how most slippery airplanes look.

Loke – “If you want a 5-gen fighter in the west there is no alternative” translates into “If you want an F-35…” “Fifth-generation” is a marketing term. Indeed, if you stack the KPPs of a Typhoon, F-22 and JSF side-by-side you may well find that the Typhoon has as much in common with the F-22 as with the JSF. The two LockMart aircraft have a similar LO philosophy and that’s about it.

Tribes: “Flocking to” is not the same as “Have not dumped”.

Also, those nations signed on at delivery dates, and acquisition and operating costs, that were attractive but not real, and at a point where alternatives appeared equally immature.

I thought that all partner work is on a “best value” basis. Spudman, can you show contract language that allocates work to partner-nation contractors for the life of the program?