The F-35 Can Manuever After All!

The flight demonstration of the F-35 at the Paris Airshow shows certain capabilities that the F-16 and F-18 E/F do not possess. I compared the footage of the F-35 to the Pak-FA, and they did similar things. High alpha attack, flat spin etc. You can watch the video and in particular at 3:30 it gets interesting:

Meh, never understood this fascination with low speed, post-stall maneuvers.

They say nothing about the actual maneuverability at combat speeds.

a reply to: TheChrome
Yes they can. But are they ?? Seems the F-35B's out of Arizona are grounded due to software issues.
More of that AI hacking perhaps I have been theorizing on??

Marine F-35s grounded due to software concerns
"Maj. Gen. Mark Wise, commanding general of 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, made the decision to temporarily suspend VMFA-211 flight operations pending fixes to a recent ALIS software upgrade within version 2.0.2 that has presented some anomalies," Maj. Kurt Stahl, director of public affairs with the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, wrote in a statement. "There is nothing wrong with the performance or safety of the aircraft itself, but it is imperative that we ensure the ground-based ALIS system is working properly before flight operations continue.

Well I hope they get them in the air ASAP!

a reply to: TheChrome

Keep in mind that I know nearly nothing about this subject other than what articles I read on line about the F35. Here is one I read just yesterday about the F35 is still a massively expensive mess.

foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com...

Availability of spare parts is getting worse. Repairs are delayed. Jets aren’t available when needed and pilots can’t get enough training hours. Surprise, everyone. The F-35 is still a spectacularly inefficient, super expensive #show that continues be the national leader in military procurement mismanagement.

According to a May 8 Defense Department assessment obtained by Bloomberg, costs for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 will only skyrocket unless the Pentagon starts improving the management of the platform. (Imagine that!) So far, the F-35 program is expected to cost $379 billion to secure 2,443 fighters for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

Even now, just 52 percent of the F-35 fleet is available, which misses the interim goal of 60 percent. What’s worse, 80 percent are needed to start combat testing in 2018. There is a glimmer of hope out of Utah—the 388th Air Force Fighter Wing at Hill Air Force Base there has up to 73 percent of its jets available.

Also, the Marine Corps temporarily grounded operational F-35s in Yuma, Arizona, because of reliability concerns with the jets’ maintenance diagnostic systems, Bloomberg notes.

(Skip to the end of the article)

Sadly, it is doubtful the Pentagon can do much to reverse this cycle of F-35 misery because, as our own Michael Ballaban wrote, this program needed to be cancelled 20 years ago if that decision was to be made. Canceling it now would cost hundreds of billions of dollars start a new program from scratch.

So, yeah, the Pentagon admits the platform is crappy. But that’s been obvious for quite a long time.

"Again, I only know what I read about this plane".

a reply to: TheChrome

After watching the video did anyone else notice the PIO (Pilot or computer induced oscillations) They were very noticeable to me as I used to do airshows.. Bob Hover the pilot or the plane is not.. Let's hope it was the pilot... Otherwise the software sucks

Another great video due to background clouds:



I've watched the reactions of people online - honestly it seems like people are seeing what they already want to see.

a reply to: 727Sky

Do you have a specific point in the video this occurs?

originally posted by: C0bzz
Another great video due to background clouds:

I've watched the reactions of people online - honestly it seems like people are seeing what they already want to see.

a reply to: 727Sky

Do you have a specific point in the video this occurs?

1:00 to 1:02 horrible pitch down either due to pilot over shoot or software. 1:12 to 1:17 PIO/software erratic pitch control. All time stamps are from the first video... The second video you posted is much better so I can only assume it was PIO in the first video and not software... Thank goodness

Now that you know what to look for view the video again there are several more PIO..

Put it this way if he were competing in any sanctioned aerobatic competition doing the show he just completed he would not even be in the hunt for a score or a ribbon

originally posted by: moebius
Meh, never understood this fascination with low speed, post-stall maneuvers.

They say nothing about the actual maneuverability at combat speeds.

Makes us ignorant folks wonder about how that would work in combat. An enemy is on your ass and you are going to virtually slow to stall speed, flip around and confront him? What's his missiles doing during that maneuver? On the other hand you are barreling down on the enemy and decide you really need to high-tail it outta there. Are you gonna drop to stall speed turntail and what, pray instead of prey?

On ground attack moves, would stalling-turn maneuvers be wise close to the ground and return fire? For what purpose when the enemy may have weapons that can reach out and touch you in your expensive plane?

The aviation forum is great on puff pieces of stuff we pay heavily for (while ignoring triangle talk), so let's have a explanation of just how a fancy stall and flip is going to save pilot and plane in any situation. Those are expensive built-in capabilities. What are they worth in actual warfare? As someone suggested yesterday about the Russian propensity of building impressive airshow equipment that never goes the full route. With the F-35 we may be overboard in the same way but with the dollars to throw that way.

originally posted by: Aliensun

originally posted by: moebius
Meh, never understood this fascination with low speed, post-stall maneuvers.

They say nothing about the actual maneuverability at combat speeds.

Makes us ignorant folks wonder about how that would work in combat. An enemy is on your ass and you are going to virtually slow to stall speed, flip around and confront him? What's his missiles doing during that maneuver? On the other hand you are barreling down on the enemy and decide you really need to high-tail it outta there. Are you gonna drop to stall speed turntail and what, pray instead of prey?

On ground attack moves, would stalling-turn maneuvers be wise close to the ground and return fire? For what purpose when the enemy may have weapons that can reach out and touch you in your expensive plane?

The aviation forum is great on puff pieces of stuff we pay heavily for (while ignoring triangle talk), so let's have a explanation of just how a fancy stall and flip is going to save pilot and plane in any situation. Those are expensive built-in capabilities. What are they worth in actual warfare? As someone suggested yesterday about the Russian propensity of building impressive airshow equipment that never goes the full route. With the F-35 we may be overboard in the same way but with the dollars to throw that way.

You gain the advantage if you do something unpredictable. If the enemy plane overshoots and flies past you, you can fire IR/radar missiles at them. No different from the prohibition era tactic of running round a corner, stopping, lying flat against the wall, waiting for the cop to run past you and then running back the way you came.

DARPA did some research with genetic algorithms/neural networks to see if there were any manoeuvers that pilots hadn't
thought of. This vertical U turn was one of them or even the only one.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

They were grounded at one base, for 24 hours. They updated the ALIS system to 2.0.2 beforehand and were checking some issues that the B model had with the upgrade that the other two didn't have. They grounded them on Thursday of that week and were flying again Friday.

a reply to: CharlesT

You should read more than Jalopnik and Bloomberg. The F-35s excelled at Red Flag and every other exercise they've been involved in. Yes, Yuma grounded them for a whole 24 hours after a major software upgrade. And Luke grounded them for 11 days after five minor oxygen system incidents.

Show me any platform that didn't have serious problems during development. So many aircraft started out as programs that needed canceling and turned into something good. This one will too.

a reply to: 727Sky

Except he wasn't, was he. These aren't aerobatic competition maneuvers, they're maneuvers that can be used in combat. They don't have to be super precise and perfect.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Shunderbar (Yiddish for wonderful).

a reply to: Zaphod58

Seems to me that it's going to be obsolete before they finally get all of the bugs worked out of it. Turns out to be just too complex a system to get it all right. It's been in production mode for more than 20 years now, hasn't it? Just my opinion but I don't see the project as being money well spent at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if they are already working on another massively complex and equally expensive platform to replace this one already. Who are we going to fight with to justify the expense? Create/fabricate another imaginary enemy to blow the hell out of? Just my opinion.

a reply to: flatbush71
Yea right, they hit the only S-300 in Syria manned by Russians at their Naval base??? Sure they did.
Well F-22's have been flying over Syria since last year, Anyone heard anything official about the 35's yet though??

a reply to: worldstarcountry

Plant a seed and watch it grow.
The work of a constant gardener never ends.

a reply to: CharlesT

There is nothing else even remotely close to it even in development, and it's going to be obsolete before they work the bugs out? So was the F-22 supposedly. So were other systems, supposedly.

So because you don't think we might fight a high tech enemy, we should stop development of new systems? Who are Russia, China, and India going to fight that they all need carriers and stealth aircraft? Yet they're all developing them.

a reply to: flatbush71

They supposedly flew combat with them before they even them familiarized with the crews flying them other than the instructors flying them.

a reply to: Zaphod58

They are just being forced to try keeping up with the Joneses. They, Russia and China, understand that the US perceives any and all nations to be their potential future adversaries and will eventually come after them. The US has been fighting almost continually since it's inception. This is straying off topic so I'll let this post go now.

a reply to: CharlesT

Oh of course. If the US just stopped then everyone would miraculously get along and war would suddenly stop and peace would break out all over the world.