I bet my hat that when operational , the F-35s will be hangar queens with an astronomical cost per hour of flight .
Note my words .

Cheers .

I wouldn’t be too sure on that one considering they’ve already surpassed the 5000 flight hours mark some while ago and whilst i’ve heard the F-35 being called a lot of things i’ve never heard it being called a hanger queen. When they’re allowed to fly they seem to do so fairly frequently.

To fly low or not to fly low? Here is what Buster Glosson said on the issue

Q: What was your directive on low flying, what did you want to happen?

Glosson: Of all the things that occurred in the air war probably the most controversial one single factor that I’m most frequently asked about is low flying versus medium altitude versus high flying. The correct answer to `which is correct?’is that they all are. And it depends on the situation and the circumstances.

When you’re trying to get tactical surprise and you have a very significant Sam threat, early on in a conflict you may elect to want to fly at low altitude almost exclusively, which for.. to a large extent we did the first two or three days.

But then anyone that’s mindful of military history knows that eighty five to eighty seven percent of all the aviation losses, since the Wright Brothers started flying, has occurred as a result of Triple A. Triple A shoots you down basically below ten thousand feet so why would you fly in the envelope where eighty five to eighty seven percent of all the losses have taken place unless you had to.

The first three days of the air campaign we planned to primarily fly low. There were some exceptions to that but, by and large, the bulk of the flying was going to be done low. The reason for that is because of the tactical surprise you gain and the benefit you get from the SAMs that are the high altitude SAMs, like SA2s, SA3s and 4s and 5s.

But the risk you take is if you do that too long and then you start flying into the strength of a country’s capabilities, i.e. Iraq. Iraq’s primary capabilities were Triple A and shoulder held SAMs.

Now when we took the command and control system out then all of their Triple A and SAM.. shoulder held SAM units, were operating in an autonomous mode. So why then would we continue to fly into the one area that they had any significant capability of providing a threat to us, that would have been just absolutely criminal.

So we had planned all along after three days, or two or three days, that we were going to fly medium to high altitude so we’d stay out of there. And that’s exactly what we did. And all the things you read and all of the second guessing and all the speculation about we did it for some other reason is totally wrong. We planned it from the start that way and that’s the way we executed it.

He also goes on to talk about the dreaful RAF losses

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/glosson/1.html

There is no such thing as clearing out the AAA & SAM networks on the “1st day” and making it safe for the rest of the war, Package Q taught us that.

Hooray! Someone else who gets it!
The amount of times i’ve heard first day of war talk banded around (often from serving military personel) is truly frightening. If they do not yet understand that this is not how it works then there’s going to be some serious losses when the next major air campaign comes around.

What is the status of this MADL? Does it actually exist in hardware form on the F-35 or is it merely a PowerPoint pipe dream?

nonsens. F-35 mission profile is Medium and hi-altitude CAS. End of story.

Down below, a few stray 7.62mm rounds in the fuselage and its “kiss your @ss goodbye”..

What about night strike as that woul greatly reduce the risk of being hit by small arms fire.

French colonel: France better off alone in Mali

“In Afghanistan, you have some countries who really fight and others who do very little. For example, the German contingent and the Italian contingent don’t have a combat role. There are many countries who do not want to fight, so working in the coalition is very tough,” he noted.

And

The EU doesn’t know how to wage war. It’s not prepared to launch military operations of this type [Mali],” Goya said.

http://euobserver.com/defence/118858

This is very interesting and chimes with what many observing from the sidelines have said in that past.

So, so far we’ve seen Big Blue came in all guns firing in the Rafale but he was swiftly forced to retreat after a couple of heavy weight posters launched their own electronic offensives that seemingly nullified the French ECM superiority.

But what about the F-35 in all this? We never did figure out if it’d be a more effective low level striker than the Rafale, Tornado or F-15. Will it have CCRP/CCIP and toss bomb modes. How would the ride feel like when cruising down on the deck, rough and nasty or smooth as silk? Would it be worth the USAF or other operators dedicating a couple of squadrons purely to perfom the low level strike role or would those in high places stamp all over that idea?

And whilst on the subject of the more specialised missions what about Recce? Could the F-35 make a superb Recce bird thank’s to its multitude of cuttting edge optical and electronic sensors?