Not forgetting the A-10 is bringing a buttload of 30mm rounds to the fight as well.
Back in the early 90s, while visiting a friend who was an IP at Lemoore, he showed me some HUD video of one of his ACM sessions dipping below 70 knts over the top in order to get guns on a student.
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Whilst a vertical climb is impressive, I would be interested to know the degradation of flight time after such a manoeuvre
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I really donât want to restart the great A-10 debate of 2016. The F-35 maneuvers well with an internal load that is comparable to the practical external combat loads of the aircraft it was designed to succeed: The F/A-18 and F-16C.
Agreed, since that is not the point of the Lightning to begin with.
I like the way it looks. Well except for when the cockpit is open. Then it just looks stupid.
Reminds me of another looker that looks stupid with the bonnet openâŠ
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I make ZERO arguments against its combat effectivness. I have none. I just think it looks like an uninspiring turd. The Phantom, the Thud and the Hog are ugly in ways that make them beautiful.
As a kid, had I the power to force my 78 year old 3rd grade teacher to, at gun point, draw a âjet fighterâ, this is pretty much what I imagine sheâd have come up with. If I had then forced her to fly her creation, the Paris demo (minus the landing) would have been about what Iâd expect.
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All aircraft are ugly when compared to the mighty F-111.
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âŠwhat is there something hiding behind the Tomcat?
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Keep in mind that the design of the F-35 is to go in with internal weapons for an alpha strike into enemy controlled airspace and then load up with external stores for a support role.
I think we can all agree though that the F-35 is much better looking than the Boeing alternative.
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Agreed, I actually believe that the F-35 is actually a suitable replacement for the F-16 and legacy Bug. But telling people that a more capable (and more complex) aircraft was going to be cheaper was a load of bovine excrement and Iâm not sure why anyone believed that. Further, can we get the brass to quit yakking about how the F-35 is going to be able to do the A-10âs mission?
@Tyco I sure hope they have some EW support if they do that, otherwise it might not turn out the way they think.
Also, you make X-32 sad.
The great A-10 debateâs been hashed and rehashed on these message boards alone quite a bit, and I donât think weâre going to have any new facts to mull over until the reported USAF A-10 vs. F-35 fly-off coming up sometime in the (hopefully) not-so-distant future.
The X-32 vs. X-35 debate leads into a tale of what the F-35âs vision is now versus what it originally was when it carried the name of the âJSFâ. You could argue that Boeingâs earnest if somewhat derpy looking offering actually carried the original spirit of the design further than Lockheedâs 35, with the attention to manufacturability and production that only a design house with a commercial aviation wing can produce.
Scope change and requirements are fickle beasts though and in the end, the 35âs airframe offered more impressive performance at the expense of cost.
Kinda makes you wonder though. If the original intent of the plane were maintained and the United States decided to keep the Raptor as the high-tier prize-fighter and technology test bed with a low-cost, modest-performing F-32 as the quiet but reliable workhorse, would the acquisition process be in the fiasco that it is now?
Stuff like that keeps me up at night!
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Whew⊠Iâll go there: comparing the F-35 to the A-10 is apples and oranges; whoever first thought the two should be comparable needs a swift kick in the nads.
I think that the largest problem of the JSF, whether it was the X-32 or the X/F-35, was the Marinesâ demand that VTOL be there. Itâs unrealistic and way too complicated to shoehorn into an affordable aircraft; further, an evaluation of how the Harrier has been used over the past 30 years doesnât hold a lot of water in how the Marines want to use aircraft in the future. It would have been far more palatable to tone down the requirement to STOL, which is far more in the realm of reality than VTOL.
I think all the promises Lockheed was making on the part of the F-35 were why the F-22 got axed, not to mention the rising costs that the F-35 was bringing to the table. Itâs a shame because the F-22 was far more mature and would have allowed us to avoid some of the problems weâre currently getting with the F-15. Iâm also of mind that the F-35 should not of had a hurried production schedule that it did; how can you take so many new technologies, piece them together, and say that itâs ready for production before youâve worked the bugs out of it? The complexity of the software alone shouldâve been a clue to everyone involved!
This is why I like to bring up the RAH-66: it was a fancy âneededâ new helicopter, to replace the legacy OH-58, with new technologies, be able to do this, that, etc. in the battlespace and ensure Army Aviation would stay competitive for x years in the future. Then after a few years of money and development, they realized that since the RAH-66 was going to take 40% of their budget, it wasnât worth what it was supposedly going to bring to the table. The result was the technology developed from the RAH-66 was dispersed to other aircraft in inventory, coupled with keeping them flying and most importantly, keeping the crews current and properly trained.
So while I can see the F-35 as bringing what it does to the table as a good thing, even needed thing, but I canât see having IOUs in place of actual jets we need now.
{Edited} Dumb post.
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Thereâs really not much else a jet can do at an airshow but fly maneuvers. They donât hold live fire demos and thereâs certainly no way to demo stealth or sensor fusion. As planes evolve itâs a less and less representative way to evaluate them, but it is what it is.
As for the thrust comments, I wonder if he was referring to combat loads. Sure, a clean airshow-configured Hornet or Falcon or whatever can power out of a low-alpha pass to the vertical with max AB, but what about with a combat fuel load and weapons? The 35 has far more excess power thanks to having the largest single jet engine ever put into production.
Just look at pics of 16âs and 18âs flying over the Middle East and they look my mom did when we went on trips to theme parks as a kidâŠstuff hanging out under both arms so she could barely walk because she needed the drinks, and the snacks, and the stuff we bought in the stores, and handwipes⊠When she put all that down, she could walk faster and didnât get tired nearly as soon, but since we âneededâ that stuff, she was overburdened and slow and required frequent stops. 
In other words, thanks to internal bays with AMRAAMs and bombs a clean F-35 can actually be a useful F-35, while a clean 16 or 18 is nothing more than a dual-9 toting gun platform. As soon as you make those 4th gen fighters combat ready, with stores and at least one if not 2 or 3 tanks, youâve got less ability to climb than airliners! Hence tankers climbing away from refueled loaded fightersâŠ
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thatâs⊠Thatâs really not how beauty works. The uglier you go the more you get into a cronenbergâd/Giger esque visual situation! 