I am beginning to wonder, is English your primary language because you seem to have a problem understanding it, especially “tense”.

Try starting here (note the title):
http://www.sldinfo.com/the-moment-pilots-first-realized-the-f-35-was-something-extraordinary/

To understand the significance and value of the F-35, and whether “it works” or not, cut through the complexity and noise. Simplify. Put aside the politicians, the ideologues, the self-proclaimed experts and listen to the voice of the pilots.

The pilots will take the aircraft into combat, their own lives in the balance as they penetrate contested space and are likely to be outnumbered by adversary aircraft.

Second Line of Defense and a handful of journalists recently had the opportunity to visit with four such pilots during a “Proof of Concept” demonstration on the USS America, November 19, 2016.

The four pilots are some of the most experienced F-35B pilots in the United States Marine Corps (USMC);

George “Sack” Rowell, Commanding Officer (CO) of VMX-1 (Marine Operational Test & Evaluation Squadron). Prior to the F-35, Rowell spent appx. 3000 hours over 18 years of flying the F/A-18 Hornet. Previously the CO of VMFA(AW)-533

Col. Chad “Mo” Vaughn, CO of VMFA-211. Prior to the F-35, Vaughn spent a couple 1000 hrs over 13 years in the F/A-18A-D Hornet, as well as time in the F-16A-B Fighting Falcon/Viper and F/A-18 Super Hornet at NAS Fallon.

Col. Rich “BC” Rusnok, slated to become the CO of VMFA-121 in March 2017. Prior to the F-35, Price spent appx. 7 years flying the AV-8B Harrier II with additional time in the F/A-18 Hornet.

Col. John “Guts” Price, slated CO for VFMA-122 (2018). Prior to the F-35, Price spent appx. 1200 hrs and 10 years flying the AV-8B Harrier II, and has about 400 hrs in the F-35 over the past 3 years.

MO: The airplane provides awareness of what is going on around you. All around you. It is second to none.

MO: I cannot tell you how awesome the sensor suite is, combined with the survivability of the airplane.

Guts: Situational awareness and the freedom of maneuver that stealth brings. The workload required to have that unprecedented SA is greatly reduced over previous platforms.

Guts: I’m getting all this information, I have freedom to maneuver, and I work significantly less than I did in a previous platform to have that level of information.

BC: We came in with Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), Industry, Big Navy to perform a demonstration in September out of White Sands, NM. The F-35 performed an engagement with that combat system through a gateway that allowed us to talk via Multifunction Advanced Data Link (MADL) to the AEGIS combat system and engage the target.

Mo: Physically flying the airplane is extremely easy, that’s the beauty of it, so you just focus on the tactical employment.

Price: The unique capability it brings is executing CAS in the presence of a wide range of threats (something I could not do with previous platform).

Guts: When I talk to approach for the first time they are telling me about the traffic that is out there that I already know about and I see it.

Mo: I was leading a four ship of F-35s on a strike against 4th Gen adversaries, F-16s and F/A-18s.
We fought our way in, we mapped the target, found the target, dropped JDAMs on the target and turned around and fought our way out.
All the targets got hit, nobody got detected, and all the adversaries died. I thought, yes, this works, very, very, very well.
Never detected, nobody had any idea we were out there.

Sack: As the displays came alive there were track files and the SA as to what everyone else was doing in the airspace, and I was still on the ground. I mean, I hadn’t even gotten my take-off clearance yet.

Every single quote was from personal experience of what the F-35 is doing for them today, now, at Block 2B/3i in operational sqdns.

By all means, show some quotes of pilots talking about “future” features while at the same time not talking about present ones.

Lol.. You think DOT&E is the “customer”?

He is the Mother-in-Law that keeps calling your wife to tell her what she heard that someone else saw you do at the supermarket.

As I said before, the DOT&E rarely ever tells you when something is fixed, only what it perceives is a problem based on final SDD FOC features.

To sum it up:
If Gilmore says there is a problem, then there is a problem, regardless of what Bogdan says..

–Not in cases where he reports the issue months after it was ID’d & fixed but before he has a chance to verify. Just look at the examples above, he was months behind the curve.

If Bogdan says the issue has been resolved, then it means nothing until Gilmore has confirmed it.

–BS, see above. Also, Gilmore rarely reports when things are fixed, he spends most of the time talking risks. Case in point, the “must open the bay doors periodically” issue reported a while back.. No mention in the current report.

me too… I wonder how…
But perhaps it is because eit is not true:

“…Many pilots assess and report that the Electro-Optical
Targeting System (EOTS) on the F-35 is inferior to those
currently on legacy systems, in terms of providing the
pilot with an ability to discern target features and identify
targets at tactically useful ranges, along with maintaining
target identification and laser designation throughout the
attack…”

This perfectly exemplifies your problem and the problem with ABJs in general: They nitpick items that are either already fixed (as the DOT&E report is generally 6 months behind the curve), will be fixed by 3F, or are compensated by other systems in the F-35. They then take that one issue and try to judge the entire performance envelope of the F-35 based on that one issue.

The FACT is that the F-35A/B has participated in multiple exercises over the past few years and has dominated anything that it has come up against. These are pilots flying unescorted Block 2B/3i jets.

That’s a lot of assuming to think that the ATF would have grown in cost but the Falcon-21++ would have shrunk in costs given that the same company was building them both.

Remember that Falcon-21++ was virtually and entirely new plane (new engine, fuselage, wing, radar, avionics, internal weapons bay, AESA, new avionics, etc). It’s development comparison to F-35 is also an apples-to-oranges comparison since the F-35 has to do the job of 3 planes and the Falcon-21++ just one.

um.. zero

If the replacement does nothing more than play in his own sandbox then he will be better than Gilmore whose constant “leaks” and opposition to the Block Buy does nothing but spread FUD and cost the program $Billions.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-10/f-35-needs-rigorous-review-by-trump-team-pentagon-s-tester-says

Michael Gilmore, who will leave the post as testing director when Donald Trump takes office as president next week…

Best news the Program has had all year :very_drunk: