Hang on! Page 3 says 728nmi range for a surveillance mission with 2 AIM-120, 2 GBU-12 and at 5,000-25,000ft which is hardly optimal altitude for range.

Indeed, others have commented on this as well. Presumably the altitude is to facilitate the use of various sensors. (flying beneath cloud cover for example and/or getting low enough to positively ID something.

This was also a requirement for the Triton :

“The unique thing about a Triton, compared to a Global Hawk is a Global Hawk takes off and goes. Triton will go up and surveil and when it wants to, it has the ability to dip to come down to wherever you need to so you can get a further identification
with an [electro optical / infrared sensor] and we can stream pictures and video from that,” Mackey said.

Those dips can drop Triton from 50,000 feet down to 10,000 feet which puts stress on the wings that are designed for high altitude flight.

http://news.usni.org/2014/02/21/trition-testing-ahead-schedule

So again, without knowing all the assumptions that go into those range figures it is very difficult to make an apples to apples comparison. How much time is the F-35 spending at sub-optimal altitudes? In the second profile… how much fuel goes into “combat at 20k ft?” For that matter how much farther could the F-35 go if it weren’t flying most of the mission at 30k ft and was instead flying at its optimal cruise altitute? (as specified on the slide, ingress and egress at 30k ft)

In time more detail will emerge. Until then reasonable people will recognize that the F-35 with 18,000lbs of internal fuel, a newer and higher-bypass turbofan will handily out-range an F-16 in almost any real-world scenario. Meanwhile the haters will continue to look for any possible way to read the numbers to make the F-35 look bad.

Where is it documented that it only gains 70nm, that is a ridiculous figure. The link I’ve shown gives 785nm radius neglecting drag but working with 600nm not 613nm as the base figure. Even allowing a 0.5 multiplier for external fuel, the radius comes out at 703nm. The claim of 630nm for an F-16 with 2 370gal tanks is preposterous. How can adding 4,800lb of external fuel (2 370gal tanks) to a small aircraft with 7,600lb of internal fuel more than double range?

It comes from one of the Norway documents where they are talking about a surveillance mission. The problem is that in this scenario the F-35 wouldn’t be dropping its tanks. Essentially what you are seeing is the result of adding a relatively small amount of fuel to the F-35, while adding drag that would be carried out 700+ miles, presumably loiter for some period of time, and then carried back 700+ miles.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the % increase in range isn’t great in that scenario. (naturally the usual bunch will try to attribute this to a laundry list of really scary sounding theories they have zero evidence for)

It is essentially an issue of the ratio of the internal fuel of the tank to the fuel/range of the aircraft carrying it. If you added a ~450gallon tank to a Boeing 777 you would likely reduce its range simply because the tank would contribute a trivial amount of fuel to the 777’s total, while adding drag that would be carried over a distance of thousands of miles. (OMG, maybe it would unbalance the plane and result in excessive trim drag!)

If the F-35 were to jettison the tanks when empty (which nobody is going to do flying a peacetime surveillance mission) then the increase would be greater. (Note that in the F-16 graphic posted earlier the tanks are being dropped when empty)

So in summary, yet another case of the critics wishing for the worst, but mostly just making themselves look foolish.

That’s certainly an argument but you, too would not use a 150km figure for RBE2 radar range just because Thales write >130km (vs 3sqm), would you?

Is there an official source that says 150km? Are you really this dense?

One source says >X, another gives a specific number that happens to be greater than X. Is that confusing to you somehow?

That’s all nice… but if we talk about critical thinking, then you do realize that with the F-35, we are actually talking about an aircraft which is weight-wise in the Phantom II / Super-Hornet class and price-wise even beyond the Su-30 / F-15E designs..

So?

We have numbskulls in this thread asserting that an F-16 can carry more than an F-35. As you have so keenly observed, the F-35 is a substantially larger aircraft with a far greater carrying capacity, particularly at longer ranges.

Neither me, nor you have ever taken claims of Sukhoi or Russian MoD about the T-50 as tangible evidence. Probably rightfully so.
I don’t see any reason why the F-35 should be treated differently.
OK, next page, as I said.

So let me get this straight… if you ignore the opinion of everyone with access to the F-35 program then there are no sources. :stupid:

We should instead just make up what we want to believe. 😎

In other words, you, too, have no evidence.. OK, next page..

I guess you failed to see the quote just above… of course since it didn’t support your preferred worldview I guess that shouldn’t surprise me.

You yourself are “regurgitating” what you have read on forums without having any personal experience of the conflict.

Separatist claims that they had shot down a Ukrainian cargo aircraft did indeed precede any public knowledge that an airliner had been downed.

For proof look here, starting on page 3991:

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?236054-Ukraine-discussion-thread-Or-the-original-Butthurt-thread/page3991

It isn’t until page 3994 for news breaks that an airliner is missing…

The ugliest of the (operational) delta-canards is still a fine looking aircraft.

But no, really: with J-10, China out-foxed everyone* — something we’ll be seeing a lot more of in future I suspect.

…and this is based on what exactly?

See page 3 of that document.

Hint that what I thought about the Gripen being the trojan horse of the US fighter industry to kill the European fighter market is not so far from the truth.

I’d bet an arm that the US industries subsidize the cost of the Gripen anywhere it competes with other Eurocanards, for instance Brazil or Swizerland.

Nic

The US doesn’t need to do a thing to kill the European fighter industry. Europe’s governments have taken care of that all by themselves though simple neglect. The US, China, and Russia have all moved ahead with 5th generation designs and they may be joined in the coming years by Japan, Turkey, Korea and perhaps even India.

You can’t expect to stand still and remain in the game.