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

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, heck, you can bust up APCs and scout cars with any decent 20mm, or even a .50 with Raufoss rounds. But there's a hell of a lot of everything from T-62s to T-80s out there in unstable parts of the world, and burning a missile or a PGM on each one gets expensive fast. A single A-10 carries enough 30mm to scrap about 20 main battle tanks without using a single piece of external stores. The gun is a very versatile weapon, but about every 20 years or so since the birth of the guided missile it seems like someone comes along and tries to convince everyone else that the gun is obsolete.