I’m surprised they did not make the SATCOM dome a little more aerodynamic.

Now here is a meaty question. What has happened to this F35 a pictured herein?

Suddenly I’m seeing lots of scruffy F35 images! What is the world coming to?

The Chinese seem to have got the hang of how to paint their new fighters black to make them properly stealthy, so why the masking tape look from LM?

It’s about the RAM or the lack thereof.

Take a look at this lineup of SDD F-35As. You will notice that the first two (AF-1 & 2) are all smooth and grey. That is due to not having any final RAM coatings (or not caring about it). All the follow on F-35s have special RAM treatments around the edges of the access panels and doors. Most of these can be opened & closed without any changes or fixes to the RAM.

In other words, if it’s all smooth and pretty it likely has no RAM applied.

F-35 starts High AoA testing

http://f-35.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/F-35-Fast-Facts-November-11-2012.pdf

AF-4 completed the first F-35 Spin Recovery Chute taxi deployment on October 20, the first F-35 flight with the SRC on October 24, and the first High AoA mission at 26 and 30 degrees AoA on October 29.

Is the F-35 super manouverable?

The problem with that question is that the term “super maneuverable” is undefined and vauge.

The F-35A has the following requirements:
1. 9g capable with full internal weapons load
2. 50 degrees AOA
3. Maneuverability on par with clean F-16/18s

Pilots love the F-35’s performance.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20110516/DEFSECT01/105160302/F-35-Tests-Proceed-Revealing-F-A-18-Like-Performance

Operational pilots should be thrilled with the F-35’s performance, Kelly said. The F-35 Energy-Management diagrams, which display an aircraft’s energy and maneuvering performance within its airspeed range and for different load factors, are similar to the F/A-18 but the F-35 offers better acceleration at certain points of the flight envelope.

“The E-M diagrams are very similar between the F-35B, F-35C and the F/A-18. There are some subtle differences in maximum turn rates and some slight differences in where corner airspeeds are exactly,” Kelly said.

Thomas, who is also an F/A-18 pilot and a graduate of the Navy’s Top Gun program and the Marines’ Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course, agreed that all three variants should be lethal in the within-visual-range fight.

Here’s a presser that LM put out.

http://web.archive.org/web/20081207065548/http://www.lockheedmartin.com/news/press_releases/2008/0919ae_f-35settingrecordstraight.html

Watch these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Kx6b7oKA8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ5gmZ74YBY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZWsaJDc8PI

I have a sure-fire way to find out where this happens, the next time it happens.

Predator + 9X = locatable debris field

Keep rowing 😉

@Jō Asakura:

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.

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. The programs has stated that they will do a little testing above M1.6, but operationally the F-35 is limited to m1.6.

This in no way says the F135 cannot push the F-35 faster than m1.6, rather just the opposite.

@OB:
Dash as in part of an existing flight profile, just like dash is used as part of the F-22’s flight profile.

http://www.f22-raptor.com/technology/data.html

Combat Radius (NM) Mission 1 (Sub+Super) 310+100nm {dash}

Here is a graphic showing the F-22’s range with and without a SC “dash”