F-35 Lightning II (Stealth Joint Strike Fighter)
This post is related to this dramatic headline:
Military: Don't Worry if the F-35 “The Most-Expensive
Fighter Jet Ever” Can't Dogfight
First this background on the plane:
·
In 1997, Lockheed Martin was selected as one of
two companies to participate in the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) concept
demonstration phase.
·
In October 2001, the Lockheed Martin X-35 was
chosen as the winner of the competition and teamed with Northrop Grumman and
BAE Systems to begin production.
·
In February 2006, the first produced F-35A
rolled out of the assembly in Fort Worth, Texas. Later that year, it, in
development by the United States and eight other countries, was named the “Lightning
II” in homage to two earlier fighters.
·
In December of 2006, the F-35 completed its
first flight. Over the next few years, flight and ground test articles of all
three variants rolled off the production line and began collecting test points.
·
In February 2011, the first produced F-35
conducted its first flight with deliveries beginning that very same year.
·
In 2012, the F-35 ramped up with 30 aircraft
deliveries and increased testing operations across the United States. The
program reached several milestones in weapons separation testing, angle of
attack testing, aerial refueling training, and surpassed more than 5,000 flight
hours with more than 2,100 recorded flights in that year.
Now, the source article of this post is from this story (ABC News – July 1,
2015), in part: The makers of one of the most expensive weapons programs in
history went on the defensive today, saying a recent report on the F-35 fighter
jet’s failures in old-school dogfighting against a decades-old, much cheaper
legacy fighter “does not tell the whole story.”
The report in question, posted
on the national security news website War Is Boring,
was based on an internal five-page brief in which an F-35 test pilot wrote a
scathing criticism of the next-generation jet’s abilities in a January dogfight
with an F-16, one of the planes the F-35 is designed to replace.
Essentially, the pilot
reportedly wrote, the F-35 was no match for the F-16 in close-up, high
maneuvering fighting – whether the F-35 was trying to get the F-16 in its
sights or trying to evade the F-16’s mock weapons.
“The F-35 was at a distinct
energy disadvantage,” the test pilot reportedly wrote. “There were not
compelling reasons to fight in this region.” Now the Pentagon’s F-35 Program
Office did what the actual $138 million jet (GAO report) apparently couldn't,
well, they are fighting back.
I conclude that it would be great to get the whole story,
and ideally the whole truth and nothing but the truth … and not from members of
congress protecting their aircraft production turf, either.
Related media coverage on this subject:
From PBS April 2010 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military-jan-june10-defense_04-21/
From Business Insider February 2014 http://www.businessinsider.com/f-35-cost-2014-2
From Think Progress July 2014 http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/07/09/3458101/f35-boondoggle-fail/
From the Fiscal Times February 2015 http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/02/02/Pentagon-s-Too-Big-Fail-F-35-Gets-Another-106-Billion
From the CT Mirror June 2015 http://ctmirror.org/2015/06/02/congress-money-for-f-35-program-may-come-with-strings-attached/
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