Here's an overview with some scraps I found scattered around online. Keep in mind the long lead time of any aircraft coming online - much less an advanced platform. I find it hard to believe software and old-gen CPU's at the core of the Raptors systems could hold it back -upgrade capability would be the first thing I would make possible if it were up to me, and my guts tell me I would use the '35 as a "Research Dog" towards that end. I note in closing that exports of F-22 are not allowed, though the F-35 might be sold overseas. That tells me something right there.

The following is speculative!










No commentary so far about a potential F-35 or other variant that could vector in AUV's, that is my own observation... But such aircraft could be as fast as a missile and have extreme range and maneuverability over a manned aircraft. All they need is a forward controller

 

Exports are moving fast Dutch, we've sold F-35 Lightning II's to allies like Australia, UK, Israel, Japan because they wanted 5th gen to go against the Chinese and Russian stealth fighter/bombers. We sold a license to Japan to manufacture their own. You're right, every bleeding-edge weapons system has it's problems and the F-35 is among the biggest. It's at about the same place the AV-8A Harrier (our Marine version is the improved AV-8B, and the Brits liked it so much they switched to it) and V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor were in this stage -- cost/time overruns, malfunctions, crashes. And they became tried and true successes for 3rd and 4th gen aircraft.The Pentagon is increasing production numbers.

We'll learn from the F-35 like we did from the others. There are enough orders now that the per-plane price of the 'A' model dropped to $95M, sheesh, it's a shame they're so friggin' expensive for many reasons.

F-35A Drops Below $100M; Pentagon Trumpets Jobs Feb 3, 2017
http://breakingdefense.com/2017/02/f-35a-drops-below-100m-trump-pentagon-trumpets-jobs/
LRIP 10 – F-35 Costs Feb 3, 2017:
F-35A: $94.6 million
F-35B: $122.8 million
F-35C $121.8 million
Pentagon: "Current production supports more than 1,300 suppliers in 45 states, directly and indirectly employing more than 146,000 people. In addition it employees thousands of military and civil service positions at U.S bases both home and abroad."

44 F-35A for U.S. Air Force
9 F-35B for U.S. Marine Corps
2 F-35C for U.S. Navy
3 F-35B for UK
6 F-35A for Norway
8 F-35A for Australia (presumably the sale occurs only if they don’t send us those refugees…)
2 F-35A for Turkey
4 F-35A for Japan
6 F-35A for Israel
6 F-35A for South Korea

Resurgent Japan military 'can stand toe to toe with anybody' {with U.S. support} Dec 8, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/06/asia/japan-military-pearl-harbor-anniversary/index.html

#ad

F-35As

 

And the F-X is still "black" so we can't even speculate much on it.

 

Wow. Who did the Navy piss off?

 

That has me laughing in my chair. Do it again and i'll be rolling on the floor.

The low F-35C numbers are because of the difficulty and production holdups to strengthen it for carrier ops, putting it about two years behind production. Lockheed Martin is ramping up production from 4-7 C models per year and say they will meet the Navy's goal of 340 by 2021. The C model delays caused buying more F-18s to fill the gap, and the F-18 attrition rate. {all subject to change of course :}

The F-35A and F-22 for the Air Force are doing pretty well at Red Flag (sigh of relief).

F-35’s kill ratio against F-16 Aggressors at 15:1 during Red Flag 17-1, many thanks to supporting F-22s Feb 5, 2017
https://theaviationist.com/2017/02/...-most-probably-thanks-to-the-supporting-f-22/

 

So thanks to the (discontinued) F-22 escorts taking out the (40 year old) aggressors, the new F-35 was able to slip in undetected and bomb the target?

Doesn't that mean it should have a B in front if the 35 instead of an F? And the -C variety is going to be even heavier?

Color me pessimistic, but I still don't believe one size fits all. The Air Force, Navy and Marines have very different needs during different missions. I don't see one plane doing all of them well. And with the price tag, it's not like we're exactly saving a ton of money.

 

It isn't the same plane - the F-35B for the marines and UK is VTOL, and that has to be a radically different airframe in a lot of ways







What I find amazing is that the entire exhaust section (A/B?) can be bent at 90 degrees
Howwinnell do you bend a jet engine at a right angle? I mean - vectored thrust, sure. That's fairly easy. THIS isn't....

(last video this post)


With a top speed of 1,200 MPH (Mach 1.6+) it's a whole lot faster than a Harrier (*400 MPH).
Range is 900 nautical miles

The "A" and "C" variants are rated a range of 1200 NM, with a slightly higher payload.
~But that's without refueling

It is considered an STOVL platform, but obviously it can take off vertically and air-refuel

 

The F-22 and F-35 were built to work as a stealth fighter - bomber team (like F-4s flying CAP for A-7 and A-6 bombers). The F-22 program built only 187 of the original 700 planned. The F-22 is a success, the F-35 is about where a couple of other bleeding edge new-gen aircraft were in their development in the past. The bugs get ironed out, usually at great cost, and we end with a great aircraft. (There is no F-22 version for a carrier, though there is at least one fake YouTube video of a flight deck landing.)

USAF Col. Larry Broadwell on Jan 5, 2017: “The F-35 is needed because it is to global precision attack what the F-22 is to air superiority,” he added. “These two aircraft were built to work together in concert. It is unfortunate that we have so few F-22s. We are going to ask the F-35 to contribute to the air superiority mission,” he said.

An arguing point in these F-35 threads was that the F-35 couldn't beat a 40-year old F-16. Now it does at Red Flag, the best simulated battle-sphere we have, and the F-22s as CAP shot down most of them. We'll know better when it dogfights a 4th gen enemy like the MiGs and Sukhois, let alone the J-20 and T-50 5th gen. I've got my fingers crossed.

The Air Force designation for a bomber is "B", the Navy's is "A" for attack. If it is a multi-role fighter/bomber it is F/A, like F/A-18B.

I'm a little pessimistic too, we have such great aircraft currently, but they will soon be outclassed by the 'invisibility' of 5th gen from our opponents.

 

Cut the BS and re-start the F-22 production lines............unless you want all those shiny F-35s to become MiG/Sukhoi bait.

 

Ok. Get the team of F-22 fighter and F-35 fighter/attack bomber back on track. The above link includes "...Rand study finding that it would cost over $500 million (in 2008 dollars) to restart production on the F-22. “If the Air Force ordered 75 additional jets, Rand estimated they would cost $179 million each”. {WTH they couldn't use "2016 dollars" I dunno. Bean counters.}

*checks billfold* I have $600 with me, that'll buy the starboard wing light. Entitlements and Defense are our two biggest money hogs. Congress won't get the 60 super-majority to bust the "Reconciliation Act" budget sequester to move money from domestic to defense spending. $20 trillion debt. Nobody knows what the next budget will look like and both sides are declaring lines in the sand. More years of deadlock. "We're doomed" is becoming my favorite saying too.

 

Depending on how much tech China hacked off our F-22 and F-35 contractors, we'll see how the new competition stacks up

Chinese Stealth J-20 Jet Enters Service With PLA Mar 10, 2017
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/china/2017/china-170310-sputnik01.htm?_m=3n.002a.1961.yf0ao07u16.1sx5

BEIJING (Sputnik News on GS) -- China has put its new Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter jet in service, in efforts to develop a marine corps and a "first class" Navy, while simultaneously narrowing the military gap with US. Beijing's military is undergoing major upgrades, complete with advanced submarines and anti-satellite missiles, all under the supervision of President Xi Jinping.

Chinese planespotters first saw the J-20 in 2010, and the public got its first glimpse of the craft at the Zhuhai airshow in November 2016. The military channel on China's state television confirmed that the plan had entered service on Thursday.

What remains to be seen is whether the J20 can evade radar with the same aptitude as Lockheed Martin's F-35 strike jet, or Lockheed's air-to-air combat jet F-22 Raptor. The development of the new Chinese aircraft began in the late 1990s and had its first flight in 2011.

In November 2016, aviation journalist Andreas Rupprecht wrote in the Aviationist, "The J-20 is a giant leap for the PLAAF both capability-wise and technology-wise. Did anyone of us expect...

 

So we will go into a possible future conflict much like we did WWII, with Me-109s/FW-190s and A6M Zeros flying circles around our F-4 Wildcats, P-40s and P-39s?
The Russians and the Chi-Comms aren't worried too much by budgets.

 

No, can't let that happen. More debt i guess.

Their budgets don't have to cover as much globally; it's costing Russia a mint to keep ops in Syria going, like it's costing us to help Iraqis with some Irani commanders get to Mosul-Raqqa. The Kurds are xlnt allies so far. We're well into Africa milops with France and countries individually. N.Korea, UN etc, you know. Budgeting is a tough nut, no doubt about it and the poloticos nor i have a painless answer that doesn't need 60 votes.

The Pentagon ignored this "top heavy" report. A military HQ needs to be top heavy in wartime for subject matter expertise, but it's expensive. And there's shennanigans going on too. Comes and goes, it's big money. More base consolidations not a good idea imo, anyway congress people usually fight to keep us. Oops, 'them' since i are retired.

Pentagon buried study of $125 billion of wasteful spending on bureaucracy Dec 6, 2016
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/06/pent...-125-billion-in-wasteful-spending-report.html

Pentagon and contractors have got to trim the costs. link might be a repeat, sori

 

J-20 is intended as an interceptor, and they specifically plan to take out tankers and AEW (AWACS) platforms with it.
The rumor is that it has halfway adequate frontal stealth, but they haven't completely incorporated all around stealth.

The Russian plan is to go with IR rather than Radar Guidance for their missiles (AA) since improved stealth will make radar guidance even less reliable over time.

It would not be a bit suprising to see a guidance system similar to the Tomohawk missile come out that would use an instant position fix at launch, target position estimate, GPS mid-flight guidance, and a purely optical computer enhanced terminal solution system developed by just about anyone at this time, but I suspect we have a significant lead in those areas.

My thoughts are that milsats will be increasingly advanced and enter into the area of ground and air surveillance and target tracking (hopefully by passive means) with an eye toward real time asset vectoring.

This despite the fact that anti-satellite systems are also out there, and the counter to that would of course be rapid launch and insertion of critical sats during conflicts.


This might seem like a boring and irrelevant video - but it is a MUST SEE video, to understand the capabilities.
That is why I suggest you watch it all the way to the end. The MILITARY does not develop anywhere near as
much technology as the civilian sector. Truly WILD TECH is developed by corporations
*ZERO IN on 27:05 and just after - then skip ahead to 41:56
**This is datelined 2014, so it may well be OLD news



A system such as the above could rapidly deploy or replace theater specific assets for com and intel purposes

*I submit for your inspection that as "Orbit Clutter" in terms of outmoded "Junk in the Sky" increases, newer systems and much more capable satellites that can absorb and continue the functions of earlier sats must replace old tech, and those older systems be de-orbited to make room for newer sats in their positions in orbit. Otherwise, it would be nearly impossible to loft anything new above the earth - so at some point "ORBITAL POSITIONS" may themselves become a huge space borne "REAL ESTATE MARKET"

TWO questions here:
1) Who will arbitrate any disputes? (Especially as regards China)
2) Will there be areas restricted for Government use only, and how will they designate WHO'S Government?

Formerly there have been many summits on "SPACE", and what it should and should not be. What it should have in it, up there. And what should not be allowed


We live in an era wherein "OUTER SPACE" is now a very sensitive geopolitical arena
~I sincerely hope I have raised new questions and ideas in your mind

CIAO!
~Wolfie