News F-35 stealth fighter sees first combat, in Israeli operation.

[Notebook]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-44210403

The US-made F-35 stealth fighter has seen its first ever combat action, flying in an operation for the Israeli air force.
The air force chief showed an image of jets over Beirut, Lebanon, and said the planes had "already attacked twice on two different fronts".

Didn't know it had been made available for export?

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[ljetibo]

Wasn't it the result of a Joint Strike Fighter program? That would by definition make it an export, wouldn't it? I'm always at awe at the tech that goes into these things. Very unfortunate it's to shoot people with.

I'm also kind of surprised that it doesn't really seem to boast a lot of aerodynamic "upgrades". I mean at least not on the surface. It's got a lot of tech in it, like the integrated combat environment systems etc., but aero seems to have taken a back-seat to stealth capabilities - which was not how they developed fighters up to now.

 

[Notebook]

I remember the JSF, don't know what happened to it!

Its the fact its being exported at all. It is being bought by the UK(maybe other NATO countries?).
I'm surprised its gone to a none NATO member, but Israel has a unique position re the US, so a political decision maybe.

As far as I know, its not uncommon to make export versions of your first-line aircraft with less capalities.

The BAE Hawk trainer was built with sales in mind, and was succesful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Systems_Hawk

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[jedidia]

The BAE Hawk trainer was built with sales in mind, and was succesful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Systems_Hawk

N.

Yeah, we've got that one too!

 

[Notebook]

It was an attractive aircraft, having the Red Arrows didn't do anything to harm sales. Designed by the same man who did the Folland Gnat I think.
EDIT: No it wasn't, different chap altogether.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._W._Petter

Hawk designer:
Can't see a single name for the Hawk, design office job I think.

Has Switzerland any plans to buy the F-35?


N.

 

[ljetibo]

So, after a it of wikipedia reading, F35 is the product of the JSF program.

Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is a development and acquisition program intended to replace a wide range of existing fighter, strike, and ground attack aircraft for the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Italy, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and their allies. After a competition between the Boeing X-32 and the Lockheed Martin X-35, a final design was chosen based on the X-35. This is the F-35 Lightning II, which will replace various tactical aircraft, including the US F-16, A-10, F/A-18A-D, AV-8B and British Harrier GR7, GR9s and Tornado GR4.

If you read on through the links you'll see that the X35 is just the proof-of-concept aircraft that once it won the JSF grant was developed further to some final form, armed and then registered as F35.

As far as countries that are implied under "allies" and countries that could be considered as "exporting to" seems to be a bit harder to trace out completely. The most exhaustive list comes from this site but considering how barely legible that table is and the fact there's no date-of-writing or actual links to quoted material take it with a grain of salt. But still, if you follow what's written in the text they do seem to follow what's being said on other sites and that's in short:

Level 1 partner: UK.
Level 2 partner: Italy and the Netherlands.
Level 3 partner: essentially the remaining NATO countries + Australia - Germany and France
Security Cooperative Participants (SCP): Israel and Singapore.

Wiki mentions Japan and South Korea as exporting countries but when you read about it a bit Japan ends up as technically not on the receiving end of arms export business because they're not allowed to due to laws and what's South Korea doing there - I've no idea. "It's all political" I guess is the quote to use.

I think you might have just mixed up F22 and F35. F22 is banned for export since the late 90's till today. I don't know how dissimilar F22 is to an F35 and due their likeness, at the surface level at least, it wouldn't be far fetched F22 had been used as a development starting point - but the two airplanes come from different decades so I wouldn't really bet on them being similar at all under the surface.

 

[Notebook]

Thanks for that Ljetibo, nicely researched. I remember the F22, thought it had just gone away, as some aircraft do!

Looks like the F35 is a multi-nation co-op, at some levels. I thought it was sole US, with NATO partners as potential buyers, and not for "hostile" exports.
As its going to equip our latest aircraft-carriers, suppose should keep an eye on it.
I will be paying for it.

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[MaverickSawyer]

Yes, F-35Bs will form about 2/3rds of the fixed wing element of the air wing aboard your new carriers... With the remaining third being USMC F-35Bs.

Also, the UK is pushing hard for an improvement on the extremely low speed flight regime on the B model to enable slow rolling landings, both to reduce stresses on the ship and the aircraft, and to increase the amount of payload the fighter can bring back aboard.

 

[Notebook]

Looked a bit more at the QE class carriers, all very clever. There is a documentary running here about the ship. Last episode, the propeller fell off(not really).

Did prompt me to have a look at the last big ship built for the RN.

Could be this:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db6bgu0gs-g"]HMS Vanguard - Britain's Last Battleship - YouTube[/ame]

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[ljetibo]

Work safety in that video is on point!

 

[Andy44]

The F-35 bears a superficial familial resemblance to the F-22, both being Lockheed Martin designs, but they are totally different programs. Right off the bat the F-22 has 2 engines and the F-35 (all variants) has one.

The F-22 was supposed to be made in great numbers to replace the F-15 as the USAF's primary air superiority fighter, but the program was cut short a few years ago and production stopped. Depending on who you talk to it was done to cover the cost overruns of the F-35 program, but that's debatable.

In the US the F-35 is pretty visible in the news due to its great cost and protracted development.

 

[jedidia]

Has Switzerland any plans to buy the F-35?

:rofl:

Yeah, right! we're debating about what to replace the F18 with for the better part of a decade now. One time it looked like the Saab Gripen or the Eurofighter might be it, but the voters shot them down. Currently it looks like the Swiss population doesn't want to spend any money on fighter jets at all, much less on that overpriced unproven bird coming straight from production hell... :lol:

 

[Linguofreak]

Looked a bit more at the QE class carriers, all very clever. There is a documentary running here about the ship. Last episode, the propeller fell off(not really).

Did prompt me to have a look at the last big ship built for the RN.

Could be this:

HMS Vanguard - Britain's Last Battleship - YouTube

N.

Vanguard confuses me to no end. I can see the case for completing one of the Lions, and I can see the case for cancelling all battleship production entirely for the duration of the war, given that in the event Vanguard was not finished until afterward, and the Lions would have been more delayed . But Vanguard strikes me as obsolescent by battleship standards (not even taking carrier warfare into account) before she was even laid down. Both Vanguard and Bismarck strike me as WWI designs more than WWII designs.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

The F-35 bears a superficial familial resemblance to the F-22, both being Lockheed Martin designs, but they are totally different programs. Right off the bat the F-22 has 2 engines and the F-35 (all variants) has one.

The F-22 was supposed to be made in great numbers to replace the F-15 as the USAF's primary air superiority fighter, but the program was cut short a few years ago and production stopped. Depending on who you talk to it was done to cover the cost overruns of the F-35 program, but that's debatable.

In the US the F-35 is pretty visible in the news due to its great cost and protracted development.

There's been some reports lately that point towards the cancellation of the F-22 production run to free up funding for the LRS-B program.

Regardless, the Raptor, had it remained in production, would have benefited greatly from the F-35 program.

EDIT: Found the report I was thinking of: http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...on-was-killed-so-that-a-new-bomber-could-live

Retired Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz has stated in his new memoir that F-22 production was idiotically axed after building less than half the required number so that the flying force could get then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to approve building a new stealth bomber.

 

[Col_Klonk]

No videos.. it didn't happen :thumbup:

 

[MaverickSawyer]

No videos.. it didn't happen :thumbup:

What, for the mission? Of course not. The Israelis are about as tight-lipped as you can get regarding airstrikes.

 

[Dickie]

Yes, F-35Bs will form about 2/3rds of the fixed wing element of the air wing aboard your new carriers... With the remaining third being USMC F-35Bs.

Also, the UK is pushing hard for an improvement on the extremely low speed flight regime on the B model to enable slow rolling landings, both to reduce stresses on the ship and the aircraft, and to increase the amount of payload the fighter can bring back aboard.

Not quite true; the air group on the new carriers will eventually be made up entirely of UK F-35B (plus various UK rotary wing assets), however until we have received enough airframes to fill the capacity of the ships ourselves there's an agreement for USMC F-35B to embark periodically for exercises and potentially deployments for coalition tasking further down the line. This is more to do with making sure the ships are already up to speed with operating a larger air group including F-35B when the UK's F-35B force is finally delivered, there's also the option of surging the UK carrier air group with USMC jets in future should the need ever arise for whatever reason.


I'm not sure it's a case of improving the low speed flight regime for the ships rolling vertical landing so much as developing and testing the procedure, pretty sure the jet itself is capable of it already?

 

[Andy44]

Since we're on the subject of the F-35, the USAF is making them nuclear-capable:

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2018/05/24/terrifying-new-nuclear-threat-is-here.html

Earlier this year, the F-35 completed a series of weapons separation tests and is currently able to be armed with the AIM-9X, AIM-120, AIM-132, GBU-12, JDAM, JSOW, SDB-1 and the Paveway IV, Lockheed Martin data states.

And soon the B61 variable yield nuclear weapon.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

That's been a long time coming. The nuclear strike role was a key design requirement.

 

[Col_Klonk]

I'm sure everyone must have noticed that this is most likely against limited defense capability targets (Nothing wrong with that - always strike with advantage).

Real shyte will happen when you come up against the Russians or Chinese... don't get to excited yet.