The F-35 thread

Excuse my ignorance on the topic, but what has been the most modern fighter jet to actually engage in air to air combat?
 
crack2483 said:
Excuse my ignorance on the topic, but what has been the most modern fighter jet to actually engage in air to air combat?
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4th Generation fighters only. Last I recall was a skirmish between the Greeks and Turks (Mirage 2000 vs. F-16). I think a US F-15 also shot show an SU-24 in Syria in 2017 or so.
 
Dave said:
Turkish F16 wasn't it?
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Thanks for the correction and you are correct for the shootdown of the SU-24, but my year was wrong as that was in 2015. Seems it was a US F-18 downing a Syrian SU-22 in 2017.
 
Blu82 said:
And another carrier incident.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1485722392148152320
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Think the problem wasn't from the plane, but rather the carrier itself. Sounds like the arresting cable snapped.

That being said, I still don't think the F-35C should be a carrier based plane in its conventional form as it's a single engine aircraft. A slight power loss on landing or take-off and the pilot won't be able to recover before going into the ocean. The B version with its STOVL capabilities should be the only carrier based version.
 
Norrad said:
Think the problem wasn't from the plane, but rather the carrier itself. Sounds like the arresting cable snapped.

That being said, I still don't think the F-35C should be a carrier based plane in its conventional form as it's a single engine aircraft. A slight power loss on landing or take-off and the pilot won't be able to recover before going into the ocean. The B version with its STOVL capabilities should be the only carrier based version.
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Your statement is so tru given this article. Of the last five incidents on the carrier two involved F-18's landing on single engines which can equate to two lost F-35's.
Before that, on Nov. 29, an F/A-18E Super Hornet made an emergency landing after a pilot received cockpit notification of an “Airframe Mounted Accessory Drive (AMAD) pressure caution” for one of the jet’s engines, according to officials. The pilot executed single engine procedures and landed the jet safely on the carrier.
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And on Nov. 22, the starboard engine of another F/A-18E Super Hornet caught fire in flight during training over the Philippine Sea, but the jet was able to return to the carrier, officials said.
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Source
 
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Norrad said:
Think the problem wasn't from the plane, but rather the carrier itself. Sounds like the arresting cable snapped.
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There are 4 cables on a nimitz class carrier, if you hooked one and it snapped you go around (unless you hook another one). Remember they land at full throttle so they have the power to take off again if a cable snaps. If they somehow suffer a power loss on a single engine plane they're fscked.
 
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ponder said:
There are 4 cables on a nimitz class carrier, if you hooked one and it snapped you go around (unless you hook another one). Remember they land at full throttle so they have the power to take off again if a cable snaps. If they somehow suffer a power loss on a single engine plane they're fscked.
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I refer you to the video below that results in an ejecting pilot, a deck hand with the reflexes of a cat and a couple of injuries.

 
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Blu82 said:
I refer you to the video below that results in an ejecting pilot, a deck hand with the reflexes of a cat and a couple of injuries.

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Fair enough, it's not always the norm though. In this instance the plane was slowed to the point of no recovery when the cabled failed.
 
Floats nicely. So with all four corners present arresting fear failure is even more likely unless this was the UK crash since I can really confirm the source.
1643281499185.jpg
 
Looks like the program is a massive money pit. $14 Billion software upgrade is apparently buggy as hell. Wonder if the 737 Max software engineers were involved :whistling:

mybroadband.co.za

F35 fighter jets get “deficient” R216-billion software update

A $14 billion (R216 billion) Pentagon software upgrade for F-35 jets is being installed on planes that are already deployed even though it’s “immature, deficient and insufficiently tested,” according to a new assessment by the military’s testing office.
mybroadband.co.za mybroadband.co.za
 
The U.S. Navy has confirmed the authenticity of a video showing the final moments leading up to one of its F-35C stealth fighters being involved in a mishap while landing aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, while operating in the South China Sea, earlier this week. While it’s not clear who filmed the clip and how it was leaked, Navy spokesperson Lt. Mark Langford told Newsweek that it was “taken on board” USS Carl Vinson and does indeed show the mishap jet. You can read our original reporting on the event here.
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Source
 
Norrad said:
Looks like the program is a massive money pit. $14 Billion software upgrade is apparently buggy as hell. Wonder if the 737 Max software engineers were involved :whistling:

mybroadband.co.za

F35 fighter jets get “deficient” R216-billion software update

A $14 billion (R216 billion) Pentagon software upgrade for F-35 jets is being installed on planes that are already deployed even though it’s “immature, deficient and insufficiently tested,” according to a new assessment by the military’s testing office.
mybroadband.co.za mybroadband.co.za
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My own view is that the people behind these sorts of nonsense clickbaity sensationalist reports don't understand software development, large integrated systems, nor the F-35 continuous-development program.

There are at least three- or four-dozen sophisticated "apps" that make up the F-35 system. Each of these, like with any mission-critical systems design, is implemented with a clearly-defined hierarchy of functionality that ranges from absolutely-no-fail-on-mission to important-but-not-critical, all the way to nice-to-have.

Also, so many of these systems are architected to be used on future yet-to-be-developed platforms. So there's a current F-35 implementation, and planned future developments. Basically, versioning.

With such a sophisticated system and ecosystem, not everything can possibly be implemented and debugged in a few steps. So, very deliberately and consciously, the developers work through the functional hierarchy, addressing the most mission-critical must-have functionality first, and scheduling the less critical stuff for later. It's both an iterative process and one of continuous new development, adding capability and addressing less-critical bugs/flaws according to a defined multi-decade schedule.

Along the way, Pentagonistas and budget mavens are driven to get new budget allocations from Congress, so they'll naturally report that stuff isn't finished and more needs to be done. That's largely a political game.

Once you understand this, you'll see why the F-35 and successor software will never really be "finished" or "bug-free". But with each step/release/block, the capability increases. By design.
 
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