There is no indication that the F-35’s coatings will have any problem with the heat, speed, and altitudes that it will experience on the F-35.

Depends. If it has to use ab to get the speeds then there might be some problems. I havent seen any fix regarding that.

Really… back to the misconception that the 150nm is an absolute limit?

It’s called a “dash”, look it up.

btw, the F-22 has a 100nm dash.

The F22 dash is as part of a specific mission profile, in the F35 case it not certain what they mean. The VP says something that can be interpreted differently, the pilots say a thing that is pretty clear.

Are you insinuating that the pilots dont know what they are talking about because you have the only correct interpretation of the VPs quote?

VP claims it can stay at around mach 1,2(?) for a dash of 150 miles and that its not technically supercruising. The pilots say it can’t stay supersonic without a little use of afterburner.

The 150 miles might not be an absolute limit but its probably not supercruising till the fuel runs out.

@Tu22m: They said it, I just have to find it.

Doesnt matter if you find it or not, the claim is still BS. Only difference will be that we will have a specified source for it

@Hopsalot. The Su35 accelerated while supersonic without using afterburners. That means it probably could maintain the speed in the current configuration.

The current configuration, on the other hand, is still unknown. So I think we need to wait and see and maybe discouss that in a related thread?

At what altitude? SC performance in any fighter is dependent on altitude. The F-35 pilot quote could easily be about lower altitude flight while higher altitude flight is better for SC. This applies to all fighters, not just the F-35.

Who is in De-Nile now and being picky about details? Pilot story, previous estimations AND official statement from the VP are congruent with the statement that the “not technically supercruise for a 150 mile dash” was in a dive, with a marginal drop off in speed or both.

btw, The Vmax of the F-35 is much greater the m1.6 as the program has said in the past that it is only developing and testing to 1.6 for time & cost reasons.

You know that is complete BS? With over 600 flight tests in 2012 this far I have a hard time believing they couldn’t fit another 10 or so to really see what speeds they can reach because of “time and cost reasons”. Most other airplanes have done this and the Su27 set 41 world records in speed, climb etc during development phase. Since the speeds are outside the operational envelope its jsut interesting to see how the control system reacts and how acurate the models are.

LM define SC as M1.5+ whenever they are talking about the F-22, just to put it into a separate class. In this case, the difference of M0.3 is enough to call it ”a league of its own”. OTOH, whenever the F-35 is the topic, they define SC as M1.0+..
Quite confused PR, if you ask me. But miraculously, with some people it still works.

Im guessing that only Spudman truly knows how it really is. After all, whenever something looks unimpressive for the F35 its because the F22 is the benchmark, the only fighter in the world that is faster than the F35 while carrying more than one AMRAAM.

Besides, the F35 doesnt need to be as maneuverable and fast as any other fighter anyways because it has a flir system that is superior to all others in the world and with such a margin that it doesnt even need a radar. Heck, it has 650 different ways to detect enemies, and the methods all work BVR! Only the radar is an active system, but the emissions in the APG81 are so invisible so no modern EWS-systems can detect the emissions anyways. And it can drop JDAMS on enemy SAM systems like S400, Pantsir S1 and so on. I dont know, but I think the marketing material could be a little bit… exaggerated in some aspects.

What he said was 100% clear. The F-35 can sustain M1.2 on dry thrust. That is supercruise as most define it.

Look, he said it could hold it for a dash of 150 miles. There is not enough to be 100% certain, only fanboys are. I just try to fill in the blanks without calling anyone a liar.

I think its healthy to stay skeptic about the undisclosed details.

The LM VP said as it relates to the spec created for the F-22, ie mach 1.5+.

btw, he said “maintain m1.2”, not at m1.2 or higher. In other words, it did not use AB to get to m1.6 then go MIL for 150 miles til it’s below m1.2.

[QUOTE=”Lockheed Martin]supercruise speed (speed in excess of Mach 1 without afterburner)[/QUOTE]Page 5 http://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed/data/corporate/documents/2006-Annual-Report.pdf

And there are more. So you can’t with absolute certainty say that it is a definitive LM standard for supercruise that is mach 1,5 when they themselves occasionally define it as mach 1,5 without ab and other times as mach 1+ without ab while the rest of the world define it as mach 1+ without ab.

Exactly what you accuse me of (only accepting what I want to hear) is what you are doing. At least I want to know the details. If you have any information that proves me wrong please share it so I can read up and we can move on.

Anything will do as long as the sources are solid, like Obligatorys are most of the time.

This is where we are: LMs VP says its not a supercruising aircraft, we know it can maintain around mach 1,2 (under unclear circumstances), we know that the definition of supercruise is dry thrust only (economical) while not losing speed and we know what the pilots say.

During the curcumstances I described nobody can be called a liar. With a marginal drop in speed during cruise that goes from… say mach 1,24 to mach 1,15 over a distance of 150 miles it stil fits in the description of both the pilots and the VP.

And about the dash stuff… please do define how you interpret it. English is my third language so maybe I just relate differently to that word?

I think you’re having a quite selective memory. Most of the talks regarding maneuvrability of the F-22 were not aimed at the capabilities of the aircraft itself rather than at discrepancies between the actual performance and the alleged claims coming from the fan camp. It is the same situation as we got with the F-35 today – the plane as it is is not nearly as bad as it is quite far from the PR myths surrounding it..

P.S. The F-22’s ”Cobra” looks somewhat fishy as the Raptor gains altitude at the same time, which looks just weird.

Probably slow movement of tail fins? Same thing happened to the Draken when the flaperons didnt rise fast enough. It might be so that the thrust vectoring has something to do with it (if it automatically assists in the pitch). Not that the Cobra maneuver matters, if someone tries to shake off an F22 with a cobra it will just respond by doing a fast climb and to a top kill (or using a kulbit and fire an AIM9)

But to get back on topic. A lot of stuff regarding the F22 and F35 is pure marketing BS.

Just to mention a few current claims from the F35 camp (one of which was recent).
F35 can supercruise: No, it turned out that to get above mach 1,2 the F35 needed to use full afterburner thrust to reach a higher mach number to be able to stay above mach 1,2 while using full dry thrust in 5 minutes. After that it can’t stay above mach 1,2 unless it uses afterburners again untill fuel runs out.
F35 will have better manuverability than the F16: That claim is revoked. Yes, it handles better than a F16 with drop tanks and heavy weapons but with light AA load it will be outperformed by the F16 (aka a F16 without JDAMs and without drop tank… sort of what one would expect to have dropped in a dogfight.)
Pro F35 source: http://whythef35.blogspot.se/2012/06/first-non-test-pilot-trained-on-f-35.html

And the list goes on about stealth effectiveness, costs, the EODASS with TV-helmet etc.

Im confident that the F35 is the most sophisticated jet around and that it is hardest to detect on radar. Does this categorically make it the best fighter? Probably no, in some aspects yes, in others its even worse than the current fleet. Thats just how it goes.

Stealth isnt a silver bullet, it is a countermeasure against one threat. In the F35 (and some extent for the F22) stealth has been adopted at the cost of other performance. The Pak FA is a compromise in the other direction where flight performance is the top priority and radar stealth comes in as second priority. If we want to keep the debate civilized we have to acknowledge that every design has pros and cons and are results of compromises. The F35 is NOT an exception!

Are you for real?

(It’s ok though, just backpeddle and say you were joking and we can put that truly ridiculous comment behind us.)

Considering your history of well supported arguments I dont think I have to.

Why dont ypu specify your standpoints and produce some sources to back them up? Thats what the serious participants in the thread are doing.

What is heavy EW support and not might be open to debate. For me it is when high performance jammers like the BOQ-310 or dedicated EW jets are used. From then on its a matter of getting a large enough number of them in the sky.

A domestic order and only a domestic order is nothing short of terrible for a fighter that’s being marketed on the international market. Did you really expect the Sweedes to order anything other than a domestic product? Don’t bother answeing that as we all know the answer.

It won in Switzerland as well.

And the C/D version is in use in 5 air forces.

I cant remember the last time a small country made a jet that got to so many clients. Does the French Mirage count?