Dated March 2014:
http://aviationweek.com/awin/lockheed-s-secret-project-missouri-links-f-22-f-35

So they recognize there were a problem, generated by a wrong mindset (and not a minor one as it is the one leading all the F-22 project) and they are taking the necessary countermeasures.

Now, three years after F-22 production was stopped.

It was even worse than I thought, they are neither able to use its own system to communicate with F-35, not just with us technologically challenged allies…

On different forums alone, there are a dozen engineers, and two hundred+ enthusiasts that aren’t even agreed upon one single maneuverability parameter of F-35, And someone come to conclutions about its entire combat capabilities from a freeware computer game? Why not use LOMAC instead? At least it looks better than text, IRSTs there won’t classify targets from 45,3 nm away and no funny things like “R-37M (tech late 1990s) ECM = always success” crap.

And if it is difficult about the f-35, let’s just imagine about a T- marked aircraft i.e. a prototype (although in the State Trial Phase).

Also the affirmations about Russian (and European) having not advanced datalinks and sensor fusion on their own aircrafts seems me a far cry, doing just a quick tour in the forums about the models actually in production would convince one of the right contrary…

Lemme see . . . .
Finmeccanica – 30.3% state-owned. 49.8% institutional investors, of which only 3.9% is owned in Italy. Even if all of that is owned by state pension funds (very unlikely), the state still has a minority stake, about the same as North American institutions.

Thales . . . 26.1% state-owned, directly & indirectly. Note that the French state pension reserve fund invests mainly abroad (2/3rds outside Europe!), & is rather small, as almost all French state pensions are paid from current tax revenue. It doesn’t just over 14 million Euros worth of Thales shares, which is peanuts. Same for other defence firms.

Airbus . . . 26.0% owned by the French, German & Spanish states. That’s the total, via all the different bodies. No extra state pension fund shareholdings 26%.

I don’t know where you get the idea of massive share ownership by state pension funds from. It doesn’t work like that. In W. Europe, state pensions are almost entirely paid straight from tax revenues. Contributions to state pensions don’t go into investment funds, but straight out again to pay existing pensioners.

There are some state-owned or controlled firms, but they’re a minority: Nexter, RuAG, Kongsberg, Nammo, Navantia, DCNS, Fincantieri, Bumar (Poland) & Patria. Notice something? Three big shipbuilders, & the rest mainly in AFVs & other land systems. The biggest firms are missing – they’re NOT state-owned, either directly or indirectly.

I did know about the others one but can assure that our Finmeccanica work under golden share rule, no other shareholders than italian state can had more than a 3% share and administrators and general managers are chosen by the finance minister.
They are all strategical assets, so no way the control would follow normal rules.

There’s no more and no less state involvement than in Europe. Americans cant understand it but Thales, Airbus, Finmeccanica etc… are not all that different in structure than Rostec, UAC, etc…except that where as most of the Euro defense firrms are directly state owned on the order of 25-33% with another 20-30% in the hand of state pension fund (making them defacto majority state owned) in Russia you dont have the illusion of pension funds masking the true scale of state ownership. Instead in Russia you have different fiefs belonging to different bosses so you have Rostec and Rosnano both having stakes in the same company even though both are themselves state entities. Russian firms are inefficient owed to political decision to employ large #’s of managers and do-nothings to keep the social pressures under control. You see that in Europe too, but to less of a degree. So the nature of the beast is the same but the political realities the beast operates in are a little different though less so every year. Rostec for its part is actively cutting the size of the manager cadre to “European levels” right now, but by US standards the Euro players and the Russian players are both massively bloated at the top especially and thus poorly run though there’s plenty of make work position creation going on in the US too.

Best run defense firms are probably Israeli owed to high salaries relative to crappy budgets keeping the make work to a minimum out of necessity as an Israeli engineer is probably the most in demand engineer there is today while in the US the REAL level of unemployment among engineers is actually pretty bad.

Just to add that although the part about company ownership is absolutely correct, there is still a fundamental legacy in the military development and acquisition process from U.S.S.R. times up to now, in the the form of the design bureau /state trial procedure.
It would probably surprise Mad Rat and other fanatical capitalists around there but this peculiar “socialistic” way to go actually worked well then and still work also now in a radically different social and economical environment.
Fact is, that such a acquisition process was then specifically introduced to allow a strong competitive environment where it was still needed,i.e. in military and high tech without having to abdicate to the whole communist/statist doctrine.
So the design bureau could compete one with the other in the design selection phase but as soon as acceptance trial would be passes the armed force would gain not just the ownership of the prototypes but will also keep on by themselves trough all the rest of the testings phase.
Mutatis mutandis (design bureaus are now directly rewarded according to a contract instead of receiving more state funds) system is still in full gear and guess what, it seems to work very well also in the opposite way, keeping the effective control of the whole process in the hand of the customer instead than to the producer’s own corporate greed.

Just like it happened with LockMart:rolleyes:.

Yeah, it is indicative but still no actual test results which would be good to have.

There is so many buzzwords going around the F35, but once details emerge it allways turns out that original claims where exaggerated. Just take the Beesleys maneuverability claims, the supercruise or the other bs.

Heat exchangers where the coolant is fuel that goes into the engine is the exact same thing as the F35 has. Maybe it is just a part of the rebranding hysteria going on at LM. If I where to rebrand ‘wings’ into ‘signature reducing lift surfaces’, would that change their function? If I where to rebrand “fuel as coolant fluid” with “fuel as heat dump”, would that change the function? No, it is exactly the same.

And sure, I have no doubt that the engine is colder than comparable engines since there are no other fighter jet engines in the same class! Are they comparing with AL41, F136 or the J58 on the SR-71? Let me just guess here, they didnt give any model to compare with, it was just like the BS claims about its capabilities vs “4th gen fighter”. Or do you call the comparison below serious?

In this case they didnt provide any example of the fighter they compared with even though the picture on the right (only more advanced) has been standard for a long time outside of USAF.

In this case it seems me they keep on using their usual trick of comparing the F-35 to their own legacy aircraft i.e. items introduced in service in the late eighties and that, almost in USAF case were last acquired during Bush senior presidency.
So they can sell as out-of this world innovation some things that others (i.e. We and Russian) has used for some decades now, like IRST or off-boresight missiles.
Let’s add also the habit to take for granted some features that has still a long way to be developed or hasn’t still proved their practical utility, see x-ray vision and generally DAS.
Inthis case F-35 is really innovative for USAF but only because it finally features (at the greatest technological level possible, I eagerly concede) some capabilities that have not been implemented at all in the meanwhile they were all focused/fixated on getting just the maximum stealth level possible.

No. I don’t mean a concept drawn on paper and pushed through a PR campaign for fund raising. I meant that the F35 was first designed around a core of technologies structured toward ensuring a full mission capability. It’s not an upgrade. Its the result of a long and strategic acquisition process hardened by professionals with the most experiences in the world.

The tri-services have enjoyed the benefits of a constant aircraft dev tempo during the last 30 years. This is pure gold and I put this as the main reason for the surge of tech we are enjoying today (that will ultimately have to benefit the civil society in the long term).

This not a single man plane. This is the result of massive million man hours done by thousands of selected individuals (over several countries). This is a complex system that would require an humble approach to partially understand it. But that simple fact seems to overstretch the cognitive potential of some…

By the way, I didn’t meant to insult you in anyway when I referred to barking dogs.

~S!

Barking dogs? Never even noticed that!
I also sometimes regret about some overzealous F-35 haters that with their excess make a critical view about it much more harder to get through.
I can be something harsh, something also a little biased but I know when the critics stop and propaganda begin.

For an example I will never call F-35 a lemon (also because I love eating lemons) just a flying brick, meaning that it, despite its excellent engine and trust to weight ratio is the slowest one of the lot (and probably also the one with the lowest climbing rate as they have still not published it) due to its own high drag.
About the scores of tri service professionals enjoying a thirty years dev tempo on a single aircraft type I just have the impression that they have spent most of this time in correcting inherent defects of the project instead of making some real progress in its flying performance…

Yes. Drag is the most important thing in a turn. Andraxxus repeatedly monstrates it with his calculation without recognizing it. It’s not about Wing area (it has never been) or a vaguely mentioned Coefficient of lift (which one? Airfoils section or total lift coefficient of the airplane?).

Those still remains valid to compare the perfs of something like a redbull racer with another one. But not for a Fighter jet with advanced aerodynamics.

Wilbur and Orville now stand in the Pantheon (with their brother Kutta). Modern aerodynamics are no more WYSIWYG.

Active aerodynamics ctrl is the new Bling. I have been preaching that for so long that I am still amazed to read pages of slide rules demonstration dealing with Wing loading, wing area, Cl (of what ? Who know the wing section of the F35 and that of its Fuselage ?!!) and all the like that still seems so popular here.

Please stop it. You’re killing me.

Everybody in the industry has his feet deep wet into the art nowadays: The Russians, The US (LM, Boeing, Northrop) and now the UK.

So I will understand and remains patient if that thread was written in french that some of you still have that kind of archaism in mind and pursue such discussions from another age. But we are here on an English forum… So, PLEASE, refrains and lets move on.

If you don’t get the F35 as a concept, it does not mean that the Thousands of people that have worked on it are no more capable than you. If you think so you shld consult asap.

This idea of F-35 being a concept instead of a plane is quite interesting , would you please explain it better?
Are you meaning that f-35 would depend more on their own avionics, sensor fusion and networking capabilities than in its own being? or something other?

Because you see, conceptual development are interesting things but it can happen that they end up proving themselves wrong or better to say unable to cope with an everchanging environment.
My general impression is that many of the supposed advanced features of the F-35 are just the US way to apply new technological advancements to their own planes.
Certainly comparing them to their own legacy airplanes would made seem them a quantum leap in this field but many of those new things are instead not so shining new if compared with similar ones implemented in production aircrafts in both Europe and Russia and in some cases (DSI intakes and AESA radar) even by China.