Hardly, the night-traffic on the highway in mind.

The presence, or lack thereof, of light has no effect on either SAR or EOTS functionality.

Next.

The empty launcher was hardly to distinguish from a commercial truck. Several truck-drivers transporting goods from and to Aqaba in Jordan Awere killed by F-15E-crews during such nights. A F-35 will change nothing about that really, without real intel infos about hide-outs in advance. 😉

The Scud launcher looks nothing like a commercial truck.

It explicitly works WITHOUT a cue.

Unlike other sensors, DAS picks up targets without assistance from an external cue.

New F-35 Vid

Props to SNAFU for the find

My fav part is at 1:08 showing SIX internal AMRAAMs!

http://www.youtube.com/v/y44lftPGWvM?fs=1&hl=en_U

Mod Edit: No hot-linking, please!

The NGJ does not need to use use the APG-81 as it will also be fitted to the F/A-18G.

As far as the APG-81’s jamming ability and duty cycle, the F-35’s VLO stealth decreases the need to jam at long ranges so the loss of range is not a problem.

The true advantage that the F-35 has is that because of the better radar and VLO capabilities, it decides when and how it will engage.

If it detects a flight of SU-35s, it can decide to alter it’s course and engage from the side or above.

Also, RWRs will not detect the AIM-120 till it goes active in the last stage of the flight. If the F-35 launched from >100km, the MAWS of the SU-35 would not detect it and would not pick up the passive heat signature of the missile till it was only 5-10km away (due to motor not being active in the last part of the flight).

Not always mate- look at South America, the US wanted to sell the F-16’s but refused to sell advanced weapons like AMRAAM and ASRAAM, something about not introducing advanced weapons in lesser developed countries- so those countries went to the Russians and bought up big.

That is not how they handled the C7.

The AIM-120C7 went IOC in 2006 and started to be cleared for sale to allies within 1 year of IOC.

Israel in 2007
Taiwan in 2007
UAE in 2008
Turkey in 2008
Finland in 2008
Morocco in 2008
Singapore in 2008
Kuwait in 2008
Brazil in 2009
Jordan in 2009
Bahrain in 2009
Chile in 2009

Obviously the US is no longer playing the AMRAAM Diplomacy game.

Peter, as to the first RAAF F-35s, they (the US-based trainers) might likely have the C7. I was speaking of the first RAAF IOC unit likely having the 120D.

Why would the Blk3 F-35s be AIM-120C7 since AIM-120D’s are already in production?

btw, The only C7’s currently being produced are for current FMS customer orders. Also, Blk4 deliveries are due to start delivery in 2015/2016 time-frame.