Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning and F-22 'Raptor' : News & Discussion
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RAAF reaches the 50 aircraft mark:
https://news.defence.gov.au/capability/f-35a-capability-bolstered-new-arrivals
ottawacitizen.com
www.reuters.com
https://news.defence.gov.au/capability/f-35a-capability-bolstered-new-arrivals
Canada requires first nine fully operational F-35 jets no later than 2027
The Liberal government plans to purchase 88 F-35s as part of a project expected to cost taxpayers between $15 billion and $19 billion.
Lockheed can deliver F-35 to Germany from 2026, sees more orders in Europe
Lockheed Martin said on Wednesday it could deliver first F-35 fighter jets to Germany in 2026 and expects more orders for the aircraft in Europe as Greece and the Czech Republic have expressed significant interest.
‘Magnum!’ Flying A Wild Weasel Mission With The Tornado ECR And The F-35
We had the unique chance to see how the Italian Tornado ECRs team up with the F-35s to carry out a SEAD mission. “Wild Weasel” is a code name given by the
theaviationist.com
During the hearing, Brown also confirmed that the Air Force’s reason for not including more F-35s on its unfunded priorities list is that it prefers to wait for the more advanced Block 4 version of the jet.
“The F-35 we have today is not necessarily the F-35 we want to have that goes into the future, that will have Tech Refresh 3 and Block 4 against an advancing … Chinese threat,” Brown said.
The Air Force has put more F-35s on its unfunded priority list for the last several years, and Congress has obliged, adding 12 jets every year to the Air Force’s request for 48. However, members of the HASC in previous hearings this year have said they would fight against adding more F-35s to USAF’s request because the previous adds have exacerbated parts shortages and lowered the aircraft’s mission capable rates.
Brown emphasized that, while there were F-15EXs in the unfunded priority list, that move is meant to swiftly try to reduce the average age of the fighter fleet, which now is about 29 years old.
“Even with the unfunded priority list, the majority of new fighters we’re going to buy will be F-35s,” Brown said. But the Air Force did put F-35 sustainment items in the list because improvement in this area is a critical priority, he said.
Internal documents obtained by Air Force Magazine have shown the service intends to reduce its F-35 buy through the rest of the Future Years Defense Program to about 43 per year, in anticipation of Block 4 aircraft, which start coming off the production line sometime after 2025. The Government Accountability Office recently reported further slips in that timeline.
www.airforcemag.com
“The F-35 we have today is not necessarily the F-35 we want to have that goes into the future, that will have Tech Refresh 3 and Block 4 against an advancing … Chinese threat,” Brown said.
The Air Force has put more F-35s on its unfunded priority list for the last several years, and Congress has obliged, adding 12 jets every year to the Air Force’s request for 48. However, members of the HASC in previous hearings this year have said they would fight against adding more F-35s to USAF’s request because the previous adds have exacerbated parts shortages and lowered the aircraft’s mission capable rates.
Brown emphasized that, while there were F-15EXs in the unfunded priority list, that move is meant to swiftly try to reduce the average age of the fighter fleet, which now is about 29 years old.
“Even with the unfunded priority list, the majority of new fighters we’re going to buy will be F-35s,” Brown said. But the Air Force did put F-35 sustainment items in the list because improvement in this area is a critical priority, he said.
Internal documents obtained by Air Force Magazine have shown the service intends to reduce its F-35 buy through the rest of the Future Years Defense Program to about 43 per year, in anticipation of Block 4 aircraft, which start coming off the production line sometime after 2025. The Government Accountability Office recently reported further slips in that timeline.
Brown: NGAD Will be a Multirole Fighter | Air & Space Forces Magazine
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. testified to the House Armed Services Committee about the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter and the F-35 purchases in the 2022 budget.
www.airforcemag.com
The cut has been for 2 years now and will ramp up again with TR3 next year for 2024 and block 4 is being loaded since 2018. The article said block 4 2025 and any slippage. You should also read the links you have previously posted too
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This plane is a real nightmare.
I give an advice to the US. Continue to buy those planes to preserve the jobs and in parallel buy in big numbers a real efficient fighter (and so much more easy to maintain) : the Dassault Rafale.
I give an advice to the US. Continue to buy those planes to preserve the jobs and in parallel buy in big numbers a real efficient fighter (and so much more easy to maintain) : the Dassault Rafale.
Netherlands confirms buy of 6 more F-35 fighters, 4 Reapers
The Netherlands defense ministry has revealed plans to accelerate its purchase of an additional six F-35 fighter aircraft as well as four more unmanned MQ-9 Reaper aircraft. While the increase in numbers was already announced in the country's defense memorandum 2022, the defense ministry now said
defbrief.com
Navy slows F-35 orders amid rising readiness grades of its fighter fleet
Though top U.S. Navy leadership told lawmakers that COVID-related problems alone, including supply-chain shortages, drove the decision to ask for fewer F-35C Joint Strike Fighters in next year’s budget, that is only half the story.
www.defensenews.com
“I’m particularly concerned with the pace at which industry has been able to deliver F-35s,” Del Toro said at a May 18 House Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing. “For me, it’s a significant concern, and I just don’t think that we should be making those investments if in fact we can’t keep pace with the delivery of those aircraft to the Navy itself. There’s probably better uses for that [money] in the near term until they can recover from their supply chain issues and start delivering them at a faster pace.”
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Two factors were key in the Navy choosing to slow down its F-35 acquisition, they said: the service needed to free up funds for other top acquisition priorities, and the high readiness of the jets today made it a less risky decision to extend the shortfall and divert funding elsewhere.
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Hillson said “reduced F-35C procurements in the FY23 budget allowed investments in other Navy priorities.”
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In a Feb. 15 interview, Commander of Naval Air Forces Vice Adm. Kenneth Whitesell told Defense News the Navy had been aiming for 341 mission-capable Super Hornets but had upped the goal to 360. The service has touched the 360-mark many times and has often been in the 350s range, though the exact number changes day by day.
(..)
Whitesell said too many jets were caught up in the time-consuming Super Hornet Service Life Modification (SLM) program, which adds about 4,000 hours of flight time to each jet and upgrades them to a Block III capability configuration. Boeing’s SLM line currently has a turnaround time of about 18 months, Whitesell said, meaning a greater number of Super Hornets are inducted in the program than he’d like to see, which makes it harder to reach 360 mission-capable jets with the remaining inventory. Getting the turnaround time down would almost certainly boost the mission-capable rates for the Navy, he said.
Gilday told lawmakers that Boeing currently has a turnaround time of about 18 months for each jet that enters the program but that would be shortened to about 15 months by 2023 and then to 12 months by about 2024. The faster this turnaround time goes down, he said, the faster the strike fighter shortfall could begin to close.
JPO to implement active cancellation in F-35 and F-15 EX
www.airforcemag.com
The Air Force’s EW Quarterbacks
To implement an EMS strategy, the Air Force needs hardware. It gave up its dedicated electronic warfare aircraft, the EF-111 Raven and F-4G, in the late 1990s. Their functions have since been taken over by the F-16 Block 50 Wild Weasel, the EC-130 Compass Call, and a number of other tactical platforms, pods, and systems integrated with aircraft such as the F-22 and F-35.For the latter half of the 2020s, the Air Force’s tactical EW game will largely be handled by the F-35 Block 4, with its AN/ASQ-239 EW system, and the F-15, fitted with the AN/ALQ-250 Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS). The EPAWSS is actually based on the F-35’s suite, and BAE Systems, which makes both, expects that it will be able to produce modules common to both systems by mid-decade, sharply reducing sustainment costs while maximizing the efforts of software. The Air Force and Boeing are deciding whether to pursue that approach. Neither the Air Force nor BAE Systems can talk much about how, specifically, the EPAWSS works. Traditionally, such systems have either jammed enemy radars with so much energy that they can’t see targets in the cloud of electrons; or they send an inverse wave to fool the enemy radar that it isn’t there; or it manipulates the return signal to fool the enemy radar into thinking the jet is somewhere else.
Broadly, it’s an internal system—not a pod—that rapidly senses and collects “hits” of electromagnetic energy, even from low probability of intercept radars, creating a wraparound view of threats for the pilot. EPAWSS is integrated with the F-15’s chaff and flare dispensers, and is “interoperable” with the F-15’s active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, BAE said, meaning it can jam enemy radar without interfering with the jet’s own radar or radar warning receivers.
The EPAWSS has a modular, open-system architecture so that even small businesses with “neat tricks” will be able to get onto the platform, said Jerry Wohletz, BAE Systems vice president and general manager for electronic warfare. And while he couldn’t say how fast the EPAWSS can detect a threat and respond, it’s “the fastest system that has ever been deployed.”
“We’re using fundamental math and physics,” Wohletz said. “We’re not going after artificial intelligence or machine learning,” but “raw, brute force overmatch against what the adversaries can field in speed.” He said that provides an advantage in decision-making: “if you’re faster than your adversary, you own your adversary.”
The system will provide “freedom of maneuver” for the non-stealthy, 1970s-vintage F-15 near highly contested airspace, Wohletz said. The F-15 will be able to get “within meaningful ranges” of enemy air defenses with a large load of weaponry, “so they can use all of that armament … at a very extended combat range.” Without EPAWSS, the Air Force has said the F-15 would be unusable near contested airspace after about 2025.
Dominating the Spectrum | Air & Space Forces Magazine
Foreign advances and U.S. neglect have realigned the electromagnetic battlefield. Here’s how USAF is fighting back.
www.airforcemag.com
To implement an EMS strategy, the Air Force needs hardware. It gave up its dedicated electronic warfare aircraft, the EF-111 Raven and F-4G, in the late 1990s. Their functions have since been taken over by the F-16 Block 50 Wild Weasel, the EC-130 Compass Call, and a number of other tactical platforms, pods, and systems integrated with aircraft such as the F-22 and F-35.For the latter half of the 2020s, the Air Force’s tactical EW game will largely be handled by the F-35 Block 4, with its AN/ASQ-239 EW system, and the F-15, fitted with the AN/ALQ-250 Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS). The EPAWSS is actually based on the F-35’s suite, and BAE Systems, which makes both, expects that it will be able to produce modules common to both systems by mid-decade, sharply reducing sustainment costs while maximizing the efforts of software. The Air Force and Boeing are deciding whether to pursue that approach. Neither the Air Force nor BAE Systems can talk much about how, specifically, the EPAWSS works. Traditionally, such systems have either jammed enemy radars with so much energy that they can’t see targets in the cloud of electrons; or they send an inverse wave to fool the enemy radar that it isn’t there; or it manipulates the return signal to fool the enemy radar into thinking the jet is somewhere else.
Broadly, it’s an internal system—not a pod—that rapidly senses and collects “hits” of electromagnetic energy, even from low probability of intercept radars, creating a wraparound view of threats for the pilot. EPAWSS is integrated with the F-15’s chaff and flare dispensers, and is “interoperable” with the F-15’s active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, BAE said, meaning it can jam enemy radar without interfering with the jet’s own radar or radar warning receivers.
The EPAWSS has a modular, open-system architecture so that even small businesses with “neat tricks” will be able to get onto the platform, said Jerry Wohletz, BAE Systems vice president and general manager for electronic warfare. And while he couldn’t say how fast the EPAWSS can detect a threat and respond, it’s “the fastest system that has ever been deployed.”
“We’re using fundamental math and physics,” Wohletz said. “We’re not going after artificial intelligence or machine learning,” but “raw, brute force overmatch against what the adversaries can field in speed.” He said that provides an advantage in decision-making: “if you’re faster than your adversary, you own your adversary.”
The system will provide “freedom of maneuver” for the non-stealthy, 1970s-vintage F-15 near highly contested airspace, Wohletz said. The F-15 will be able to get “within meaningful ranges” of enemy air defenses with a large load of weaponry, “so they can use all of that armament … at a very extended combat range.” Without EPAWSS, the Air Force has said the F-15 would be unusable near contested airspace after about 2025.
Μαχητικά F-35: Το επίσημο αίτημα της Ελλάδας και το επικείμενο ταξίδι Παναγιωτόπουλου στις ΗΠΑ
Η Ελλάδα ζητά να υπάρξει αρχική δέσμευση για την προμήθεια αρχικά 20 αεροσκαφών τελευταίας γενιάς, ενώ τα υπόλοιπα 20 να βρίσκονται υπό την αίρεση της ελληνικής κυβέρνησης #CNNgrNews
www.cnn.gr
South Korean defense agency backs buy of 20 more F-35A jets
A South Korean defense agency has backed the purchase of more F-35A fighter jets as part of the country’s F-X project, which comprises the government’s preemptive strike strategy Kill Chain, meant to counter North Korean nuclear and missile threats.
www.defensenews.com
Don't pollute this thread with your 'active cancellation' nonsense. AFAIK. the US doesn't use the very specific active cancelation, because it is BS for a fighter and wouldn't work in a modern battlespace anyway. It was studied for the old 'carrier wave' radar. It seems the French use it interchangeably with EW/EA
@BMD, it's been a busy week for the F-35. I'm losing count, to how many country's that say they need it.
Well Greece is buying 40 F-35's. Buying 20 now and 20 more later. That is more than Rafales which says a lot of what they think of the plane. I think India was supposed to buy like 120 Rafales but something happened and settled for 36. Hmm. 
What kind of modifications?
Wait a minute.Well Greece is buying 40 F-35's. Buying 20 now and 20 more later. That is more than Rafales which says a lot of what they think of the plane. I think India was supposed to buy like 120 Rafales but something happened and settled for 36. Hmm.
24 Rafale purchased. Onother squad needed....
20 F35 intended to be purchased. We will all have to wait what about the 20 others...
As for now it is 24 vs 20.