SpudmanWPAfter Yugo, keeping the F-117 out of Russia’s hands was a moot point.
SpudmanWPOr.. It could be for F-35Bs which the FACO is not setup to produce.
SpudmanWPThe F-117, especially it’s avionics, were a hodge-podge of existing systems. Nothing terribly new.
SpudmanWPExclusive: Japan to buy at least 20 more F-35A stealth fighters – sources
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan plans to buy at least 20 additional F-35A stealth fighters over the next six years, some or all of which it may purchase directly from Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) in the United States rather than assemble locally, three sources said.
“In view of budgets and production schedules a new acquisition of around 25 planes is appropriate,” said one of the sources with knowledge of the plan. The sources asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media.
The sources said buying complete aircraft from the United States, at about $100 million each, will save Japan about $30 million per airframe.
The purchase will add to an earlier order for 42 of the fighters, most of which are being constructed at a “final assembly and check out” plant in Japan operated by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (7011.T), the country’s leading defense contractor.
That plant is one of only two such factories outside the United States. The other, in Italy, is operated by Leonardo Spa (LDOF.MI).
As China fields ever more advanced aircraft, including stealth planes, and as North Korea pushes ahead with its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs, adding F-35s will further increase Japan’s reliance on U.S. military technology to give it an edge over potential foes in East Asia.
Japanese military planners are also considering buying F-35Bs, the vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) version of the aircraft. Those models can operate from small islands skirting the East China Sea or from ships such as the Izumo-class helicopter carriers.
“We have not yet made any plan and we are evaluating what fighter aircraft we need,” Itsunori Onodera said at a news briefing on Tuesday when asked whether Japan planned to buy more F-35s.
Onodera’s ministry will release two defense reviews by the end of the year that will outline Japan’s security goals and military procurement plans for the five years beginning in April 2019.
The first of the 42 F-35As ordered by Japan’s Air Self Defence Force (ASDF) are being deployed to Misawa Air Base in northern Japan. Japanese government officials and Lockheed Martin executives are set to attend a ceremony there on Saturday to mark the entry of the first Japanese F-35 into service.
The F-35 accounts for about a quarter of Lockheed Martin’s total revenue. The company is hiring 1,800 workers for its Fort Worth, Texas, factory to build a fleet that is expected to grow to more than 3,000 jets worldwide. Lockheed Martin is scheduled to nearly triple annual production to more than 160 jets by 2023.
The first Japanese F-35s will replace aging F-4 Phantom fighters that date back to 1960s. The next batch will allow Japan to retire some of the aging 200 F-15s flown by the ASDF that are the main interceptor workhorse of the nation’s air defenses.
Japan also wants to build its own stealth fighter, dubbed the F-3, although the high cost of military aircraft development means it will probably need to find foreign partners to share the expense.
Reporting by Tim KellyEditing by Gerry Doyle
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
SpudmanWPNo. The words “naval”, “navy”, “carrier”, “France”, and “Rafale” never appear in the RFP. The word “French” only appears once to describe a URL.
The word “compatibility” appears 6 times, primarily in relation to NVG & pilot gear
The word “compatible” appears twice, once for cargo containers and the other for runway arresting gear.
Here is the RFP
http://www.vandeput.fgov.be/sites/default/files/articles/Request%20for%20Government%20Proposal_0.pdf
SpudmanWPBelgium wants to buy Rafale fighters for naval capability, says French lawmaker
PARIS — Belgium has shown interest in the Rafale fighter jet for maritime use, said Jean-Jacques Bridey, chairman of the French Defence Committee of the lower house National Assembly.
“The Belgians are interested in the Rafale,” he told The Defense Journalists Association. “Why? If they buy the Rafale, it will be the naval Rafale.”
Belgium is interested in the aircraft’s ability to land on the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, which would boost Belgium’s deployment capacity, Bridey said. “This is a seaborne airbase, after all,” he added.
France has pitched the Rafale in an offer of broad bilateral military cooperation with Belgium, opting out of a competition that has attracted British and American offers of the Eurofighter Typhoon and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, respectively.
Laurence Mortier, the spokeswoman for Belgium’s defense minister, said she could not confirm the interest in a carrier-based aircraft.
…. More at the Jump
https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/02/20/belgium-wants-to-buy-rafale-fighters-for-naval-capability-says-french-lawmaker/
So… An extra fighter line to introduce a capability that Belgium has never expressed interest in? :very_drunk:
SpudmanWPLatest Hot Bay issue. Short version, Flight releases should have already been released. They may include envelope limitations or a shorter weapon life (or needed maint for weapon). No mention of having to open the bay periodically.
• F-35A Flight Sciences Assessment
– The Air Force airworthiness authorities are analyzing strain loads, flutter (from flight envelope expansion), weapons separations, and weapons bay acoustic and environmental data to determine the acceptable and safe envelope for flight operations and weapons carriage and employment, with both internal and external weapons stores.
▪ The program expects to complete analysis and provide Block 3F military flight releases by late CY17, first for fielded Lot 9 aircraft and 2 months later for OT aircraft, which were produced in earlier lots.
– The full planned F-35A Block 3F envelope is up to Mach 1.6, and 700 knots, and 9.0 g. Whether airworthiness authorities will clear the F-35A for the full planned envelope, for all planned configurations, without limitations remains to be determined.
▪ Aerodynamic loads and environmental conditions within the weapons bay have either caused flight certification authorities to impose limitations to the weapons envelope or have caused weapon vendors to impose life limits on the weapons. Excessive temperatures in the weapons bay at low altitudes while at high speeds may result in speed and time restrictions when carrying internal weapons.
Last report (reasons are classified)
You do love taking things out of context, huh.
The assessment revealed several problems with the employment of air-to-air missiles in the Block 2B and Block 3i configurations. The test team discovered several classified missile integration problems as well as pilot‑identified deficiencies with the controls and displays that affected the combat capability of the F-35 to support the kill chain.
…
Most of the AMRAAM events were completed using work-arounds to mitigate limitations induced by outstanding deficiencies that compromised the combat capability of the weapons employment. The JPO, contractor, Services, and JOTT are assessing these weapons integration deficiencies so that problems can be addressed prior to entry into IOT&E and subsequent fielding.
Did you miss the Block 2B/3i part or that no mention of it being there in Block 3F or that it will be fixed before IOT&E?
On wingtips ? Lol
um, who cares? Having a restricted view does not keep the Raptor from smoking everything under the sun, even with Aim-9Ms and a more restrictive FOV.
Canada’s missions will not in any manner require a VLO airframe. Only interesting for “tip of the spear” missions they will not perform.
Tell that to planes that were shot down well after the 1st day in Lybia, Iraq, Syria, etc.
Do try and keep up.
SpudmanWPRE: Hot Bay – No mention in the latest DOT&E report. Remember that they only report problems and not them getting resolved.
RE: AMRAAM ( unable ot use properly AMRAAM) – Where do you get that from?
RE: unable to use IR missile on LBL mode – They are external so why not?
RE: Competely useless for canada. – Canada, just like all other NATO countries, participates in operations around the world where having a VLO airframe will save lives and ensure mission success.
SpudmanWPU.S. Navy To Test F-35 With Aegis At Sea
The USN is preparing another F-35 guided SAM launch.
SINGAPORE—The U.S. Navy hopes to further validate the Lockheed Martin F-35’s performance as an airborne sensor for air and missile defense in an upcoming Aegis sea trial.
Sometime between June and August, the Navy will attempt to use tracking data from an F-35 to shoot down an air-breathing target drone with a Raytheon Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) interceptor fired from an Aegis ship in the Pacific Ocean.
Steve Over, Lockheed’s director of F-35 international business development, says the at-sea demonstration will be a follow-on to a September 2016 test involving a Marine Corps F-35B and the USS Desert Ship at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. In that trial, targeting data from the F-35B was used to successfully intercept an MQM-107 Streaker target drone with an SM-6.
At the time, the government wanted to preserve the MQM-107 for reuse, but the test proved to be so successful that the radar-guided SM-6 destroyed it on impact. The SM-6’s fuse had been replaced with a telemetry kit to measure its final proximity to the target rather than explode, but it struck the MQM-107 target anyway.
“The Navy got very excited when we did this successful test that they’re planning the next test now,” Over said during an interview at the Singapore Airshow here Feb. 4. “They plan to do a live-fire exercise out in the Pacific this summer [Northern Hemisphere].”
The key to these tests is enabling the Aegis Combat System to receive information from the Joint Strike Fighter’s Multifunction Advanced Data Link (MADL). This data link has a low probability of detection by passing information through a narrow, directional beam that is extremely difficult to intercept.
Over says last November the Navy outfitted one of its San Diego-based Aegis destroyers with a MADL receiver in preparation for the upcoming test. With this modification, the ship can receive targeting information directly from the F-35.
The purpose of this at-sea demonstration is to show how the F-35’s advanced Northrop Grumman-built infrared distributed aperture system (DAS); active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar; and fusion algorithms can support air and missile defense as part of a networked “kill web” architecture.
The F-35’s six-camera electro-optical/infrared Northrop AAQ-37 DAS enables the pilot to look through the skin of the aircraft and see incoming air and missile threats at great distances. DAS’s full capability became apparent in 2010 when an F-35 flying near Washington, D.C., detected a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch at Cape Canaveral almost 800 nm (1,482 km) away.
Two networked DAS systems can be linked together to generate a three-dimensional target track, or it can simply cue the F-35’s Northrop APG-81 AESA fire control radar, if within range, to get an even better track.
This targeting information can then be passed via MADL to any “shooter” capable of intercepting the target through kinetic or electromagnetic means. This could include the U.S.’s Aegis, Patriot or Thaad missile systems.
Flying at 30,000 ft., the F-35 can see farther than any land- or sea-based sensors. In the September 2016 test, the MQM-107 was replicating a subsonic cruise missile flying low behind a mountain range and it could not have been seen without the F-35B.
“Aegis didn’t even have its radar turned on,” Over notes. “It couldn’t have even seen the target drone because of the mountain range.”
Over says the F-35B provided an initial target location as well as midcourse guidance updates to the SM-6. He says SM-6 is an “enormous missile” that could not possibly be carried by a typical fighter aircraft, so linking F-35 and Aegis allows the F-35 to kill a wider variety of targets without even firing a single shot.
“This is a logical evolution of the capability of the airplane,” Over says. “It just requires software and the right communications link.”
John Montgomery, Northrop’s fifth-generation improvements and derivatives program manager, says the distributed aperture system ensures that no airborne missile can sneak up on the F-35. Northrop has been exploring ways to employ DAS for air and missile defense for several years. This capability was successfully demonstrated during a test designated FTX-20 on Oct. 16, 2014.
During that trial in Hawaii, a ground-based DAS and one carried aboard a Gulfstream testbed aircraft were able to establish a three-dimensional target track of a medium-range, surface-to-surface ballistic missile.
“This weapon system is going to evolve to do things legacy fighter airplanes could have never even thought about,” Over says.
http://aviationweek.com/awindefense/us-navy-test-f-35-aegis-sea
SpudmanWPExternal Weapons Pods were not in the list of the ASH-Lite items being added to the SH Block3 plan. Of the major items, only CFTs made it.
So, if someone else wants them, they will have to pay for their development.
SpudmanWPthe main point is that 8000 hrs is “built-in” to the F-35’s design but the F-18/16 would require a SLEP to do the same.
This is one of the factors that Denmark considered in their decision where they specifically spoke to the increased lifetime cost to deliver 8000hrs of use.
This is yet another “hidden cost” that most do not consider when comparing fighters to the F-35.
SpudmanWPThe F-15E had Lantirn & LDP during ODS, although they were in short supply.
http://www.f-15e.info/joomla/en/weapons/loadout-configurations/129-desert-storm
SpudmanWPand is also not keen on single-engine aircraft
Given their experience with Russian single-engine fighters, do you blame them 🙂
SpudmanWPThe RFP requires a minimum availability rate and hours per year of flight through ~2030.
SpudmanWPF-15E for the High end (1989) (For both the 1-Fighter Choice and the 2-Fighter choice)
http://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104499/f-15e-strike-eagle/
F-16 Blk40/42 for the Low end (1989) (for the 2-Fighter choice)
http://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104505/f-16-fighting-falcon/
I know.. The dates are all 1989… But it’s still the ’80s
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