First Marine F-35 flight

[unixronin]

A week old, but I haven’t seen this anywhere else.  Marine Corps News reported last Friday that the first Marine JSF development test pilot, Maj. Joseph “O. D.” Bachmann, flew the F-35A Lightning II for the first time last Friday.

Bachmann said the purpose of the flight was to acquire experience and become comfortable with the aircraft so he can to find any potential flaws or issues that may need correction, especially in the short take-off and vertical landing version of the aircraft.

“Mission: accomplished,” said Bachmann after his first F-35 flight.  “It was amazingly easy to fly.  It was surreal.  It was badass.”

The F-35A is the conventional takeoff and landing version of the F-35, slated to replace the Air Force’s F-16s and A-10s.  The US Marine Corps will be receiving the F-35B STOVL version, which will replace their F/A-18 Hornets, AV-8B Harriers, and EA-6B Prowlers.  The US Navy will be getting the F-35C carrier variant.  In all, it is expected the F-35 will replace 13 aircraft types in the air forces of 11 nations.

An interesting detail:  Word is that only the F-35A will have an internal gun, a General Dynamics GAU-12 25mm rotary cannon with 180 rounds of ammunition.  The Marines and Navy have chosen to delete the internal gun and carry the same gun, with a helical ammunition drum holding 225 rounds, in a stealthy external pod that can be fitted to a dedicated centerline pylon.  In addition to the ability to remove it for missions when it’snot needed, one argument for the pod is that it allows larger ammunition capacity, but either way we’re only talking a couple of seconds of firing time.  I can’t help but suspect the drag of the pod will prove to be a bigger drawback than the extra 45 rounds, and I’ll bet the external pod — when carried — adds nearly as much additional weight over that of the internal gun as is saved by deleting the internal gun.

I thought we learned the lesson of the “no internal gun” idea on the F-4 in Vietnam.  The F-4 went into service without an internal gun, and it quickly became apparent that it was a bad idea, necessitating the hurried development of under-wing 20mm Vulcan gun pods.

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

It may be cool, but do we need it?

(Yeah, Military Minds don't ask that sort of question.)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, some of the aircraft it's replacing, like the EA-6B, are getting kinda long in the tooth. Others have been rendered obsolete by the F-22. There are things I'm sure it'd be awesome at, like, for instance, as a Wild Weasel.

;)

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

They have to ask and answer that question. They have to be able to justify it to congress. We have a fairly good procurement system. History shows why. It may seem a mess but the past is far worse.

We still get tripe like the Stryker. That's congress pulling those strings along with REMF generals who want to be in the political loop. When that happens a LOT of soldiers have to die loudly and publicly plus the people who brought that program in have to be out of positions of power.

I think the JSF is expensive but we have an aging air force, some frames have too many hours on them and are degrading faster than can be re-certified and it's horribly expensive to maintain them. Building a new 'old' plane can cost more since they have to be built with the old proven tech which is expensive. To redesign them to use more modern tech would cost the same as the JSF. The toxic materials in those old craft is insane.

I repaired F/A-18 radar assemblies. Because of the procurement issues and the inability to get a design changed without a lot of blood the assemblies I repaired were late 70's technology which cost up to 100,000 to repair something I could buy off the shelf for 100 and make to spec for maybe 3k.

That sounds insane. To find out why it's not insane you have to look at the constraints. Congressional laws, rules, regulations, design restrictions which are and have to be damn near eternal, etc.

To substitute one transistor in one of our power supplies with a better one that cost less but was not authorized for that power supply but had the same specifications would cost 1/2 million for it to be reviewed, tested, approved, signed stapled and notarized and blessed as an approved replacement part.

So instead they put out a bid for someone to make the old part at 1,000 each. The original was about that cost due to hazardous materials. The replacement that met all the generic military specs was $25.00.

And every step of that process is there for a reason and it's hideous and you can't and really don't want to change it.

If you leave room for fraud, graft, corruption you WILL get it.

Oh Sheesh /rant off already