Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning and F-22 'Raptor' : News & Discussion

Panzerjager said:
How does that kool-aide taste my friend?



"Over the subsequent three decades, the ongoing sustenance and enhancements orchestrated at Newcastle Airport are forecasted to facilitate the creation of up to 750 direct and indirect employment opportunities throughout Australia."

it is often hard to tell if the French are illiterates, or if they understand completely what they read and ignore reality to advance an agenda. It must not be a coincidence ; it is always the same people.
This is an F-35 and F-22 thread but the French cannot resist coming in and making it all about the Rafale because they are small and petty and can't stand the F-35 beating them. since the F-35 wins, they must find any reason to salvage some kind of victory and we find ourselves going over the most insignificant minutia in order to pull something positive away from their humiliations. The belgians F-16s will use thales helmet sights, this is brought into an F-22 and F-35 for no other reason than an attempt to troll. Meanwhile the Belgians are buying F-35s, not Rafales which will replace the F-16s anyway but desperation is a powerful thing and destroys judgement. see the 1:4 F-35 ratio above!! lies must at least be somewhat believable! :ROFLMAO:




this is sad my friend. I notice these stories continue at a constant



Rafales have to fly more because they are harder to learn, less user friendly and more complex. 2 engines vs 1 engine. old cockpit vs new cockpit, old 4th generation sensors vs modern sensors. a Rafale must fly more than an F-35 to achieve competency. you are convinced this is virtue F-35s do more, and need to fly less which is the entire purpose and also why you lose abroad. my friend, you would rather get french cheers from flight hours than win contracts selling to people who don't want to pay so much for so many flying hours! look at swiss! You are on the wrong end of history. its like a swordsman telling a machine gunner how many hundreds of hours go into creating a good swordsman. meanwhile machine gun is easy to use, mastered in fewer hours and more efficient. You keep trying to sell swords to countries looking for buying guns.
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Thank you for addressing some points. You have to forgive me for not addressing points they raise. I skim the posts for an overview. If I actually read all the nonsense, I think my eyes would bleed.
myeyes-my.gif


For example. Google said : "croatian airframes have around 3,800 flight hours remaining of a 7,000h hour total, with the option of extending this to 9,000h. "
Risking damage to my eyes, I note that Herciv in his rant claimed about 420 a year flight hours. That would give the current Rafale a 16 year lifespan. 21 years with a life extension. You can see why I don't take anything they say seriously. If it was true, most of their fleet would already be retired. We can also work backwards and see when Croatian aircraft were built, for france to fly 3,200 hours. I just can't be bothered to do so.
 
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Further on google I note "The Rafales will be up to 14 years old when they arrive in Croatia, with around 3,800 flight hours per aircraft remaining" so it wasn't an effort to find.
That is 230 a year. They sure do need to fly them to get the practice, more than the 180hr NATO for other 4th gen. However you can see how deceitful they are, a far cry from 420hr.
 
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Optimist said:
Thank you for addressing some points. You have to forgive me for not addressing points they raise. I skim the posts for an overview. If I actually read all the nonsense, I think my eyes would bleed.
myeyes-my.gif


For example. Google said : "croatian airframes have around 3,800 flight hours remaining of a 7,000h hour total, with the option of extending this to 9,000h. "
Risking damage to my eyes, I note that Herciv in his rant claimed about 420 a year flight hours. That would give the current Rafale a 16 year lifespan. 21 years with a life extension. You can see why I don't take anything they say seriously. If it was true, most of their fleet would already be retired. We can also work backwards and see when Croatian aircraft were built, for france to fly 3,200 hours. I just can't be bothered to do so.
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As usual, you distort what you want to attack to make your argument easier. So let me clarify:

@Herciv said that the Rafale could fly 3 times more than the F-35, he did not say that the Rafale flew 3 times more than the F-35. I don't know how often the Rafale is used in India, for example, but in France management is constrained by the fact that it must not exceed 250 hours a year to preserve the aircraft's potential for a minimum of 30 years. And since we have 1.4 pilots per aircraft, this means that each pilot is entitled to 180 hours of flying time per year, which is the NATO standard.

For the USAF, on the other hand, the official target for the number of flying hours that the F-35 should achieve is 200 hours, and despite pressure from the hierarchy and the efforts of all the airmen, the number of hours achieved is of the order of 150 - 160 flying hours, depending on the year. We can therefore deduce that this is not the result of a policy but rather the effect of a constraint that leads to this result.

So for the Rafale, experience does not show what the upper limit of the number of hours it can perform is, but we know that in the Finnish proposal Dassault has undertaken to make it possible to perform 1,000 hours a year on a regular basis and even 350 hours over a period of one month in a mode they call 'surge'. 1000 hours a year is more than 6 times what an F-35 can provide, and 350 hours for a month is more than 26 times. So @Herciv was very cautious in claiming that the Rafale could fly 3 times more than the F-35.

And if there are 3,800 hours left out of a 7,000-hour operational life, that means that there are 5,800 hours left out of the 9,000-hour operational life that is now the norm, thanks to the reinforcements that can be installed during the aircraft's usual maintenance cycle and that have been added to the Greek and Croatian aircraft. Particularly for Croatia, where the aircraft don't fly much, this is a very good deal.

It's important to understand what it means to be able to fly 26 times more than the F-35. For example, this means that for a one-month mission, if the US wanted to have a carrier-based air group, for example to defend Taiwan, as effective as that of the Charle de Gaulle, it would have to equip its entire Nimitz-class aircraft carrier with 100% F-35s to achieve this!!!
 
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F-35, an update on the delays!

In anticipation of the F-35's Block4 standard, the LRIP 15 aircraft have been fitted with a computer system that has not yet been given the go-ahead to be marketed. What are the consequences for the purchaser countries?

Expected delays

The delays announced for the future F-35 standard, Block 4, are nothing new, but an unexpected factor is having an impact on the delivery of the Belgian F-35:

To enable the later arrival of Block 4, the central processor and memory unit need to be upgraded. This is done via an upgrade called Technology Refresh 3, or TR-3. The previous IT system, TR-2, is not sufficient to support the capacity upgrades included in Block 4. TR-3 represents the IT backbone for all future improvements. It is therefore essential to the implementation of Block 4.

The TR-3 is installed in all new aircraft in production, including the batch 15 aircraft due for delivery, and will be installed on older aircraft as a retrofit. The retrofits require around 14 days of downtime and will be carried out by Lockheed Martin during scheduled maintenance.

As well as significantly increasing the processing power and memory of the F-35's computers, the technology upgrade will migrate to an open system architecture designed to facilitate further upgrades in the future. One of the advantages of this approach is that it minimises the likelihood of users becoming dependent on specific suppliers for system enhancements.

But for the moment there is no system that works with TR-3, it's too new and experience has shown that porting the F-35 system to an upgrade of the aircraft's IT system is a complex process that requires a lot of testing and fine-tuning. We are in much the same situation as with the arrival of the TR-2, where the 2B standard had to be ported to the TR2 in order to obtain the 3I standard from which the current 3F standard was developed.

At the time, the ported version was plagued by instabilities because the dynamics of the computer task sequences were not the same on different hardwares, and this awakened dormant bugs, including a complete system crash when the radar was switched on. It took almost a year to get 3I up and running, and on top of that we had given up on the initial objective of being similar to 2B.

The problem is that 3F is much more complex than 2B, which should make it even more difficult to port.

What are the implications for delays?

L.M. estimates the delays at 6 months. For the Belgians, the initial plan was to deliver four aircraft by the end of 2023. This figure had already been reduced to two aircraft because of the slowdown caused by the health crisis. Now, in the best-case scenario, we will have to wait until the end of the first half of 2024 to see the first F-35 with Belgian roundels, and the most likely scenario is that we will have to wait until 2025 to see a 4I version equivalent to the 3F, but operating on the TR-3.
 
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Picdelamirand-oil said:
At the time, the ported version was plagued by instabilities because the dynamics of the computer task sequences were not the same on different hardwares, and this awakened dormant bugs, including a complete system crash when the radar was switched on. It took almost a year to get 3I up and running, and on top of that we had given up on the initial objective of being similar to 2B.
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Have you got a link stp ?
"because the dynamics of the computer task sequences were not the same on different hardwares, and this awakened dormant bugs"
Wow. They're going to have to reread everything to check that the c++ tasks are still in the right order and handle acknowledgements at the right time. That's quite a problem.
 
Herciv said:
Have you got a link stp ?
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DoD Completes F-35 Block 2B, 3i Software Development​


05/09/2016


The F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) has completed development of the aircraft’s software blocks 2B and 3i, according to a statement from prime contractor Lockheed Martin [LMT].

Lockheed Martin spokesman Mark Johnson said Monday Block 3i software will provide the F-35 with initial warfighting capability on upgraded computer hardware. Johnson said Block 3i is the software that the Air Force will use to declare initial operational capability (IOC) in August.

With development of these two blocks complete, Johnson said the program will now focus on completing software Block 3F, which contains the full initial warfighting capability for all variants. Johnson said the improvements to blocks 2B and 3i have been transferred to Block 3F and all developmental test aircraft and labs have also been upgraded to Block 3F. This, he said, will allow the F-35 program to focus development and testing on the final Block 3F capability, moving it closer to ending the system design and development (SDD) portion in 2017.

Johnson said as of May 1, the F-35 program has flown more than 100 flight hours with the Block 3i software and it has shown approximately twice the level of stability as the previously-fielded Block 2B software and three times better stability than the original 3i software. The JPO, Johnson said, will begin upgrading the F-35 fleet (low-rate initial production aircraft lots 6, 7 and 8 aircraft) with 3i software starting Monday.

F-35 Program Executive Officer (PEO) Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan told lawmakers in March that Block 3i software instability is caused when miscommunications between the aircraft’s computers and sensors build up, eventually triggering the sensor to restart mid-flight. He said in April that the F-35 program reduced software instability incidents from once every three to four hours to about once every 15 hours (Defense Daily, April 26).

Johnson said the same stability and mission effectiveness enhancements have also been incorporated into a new version of Block 2B software for the benefit of earlier fleet aircraft. The new version of Block 2B software, he said, will be used to start upgrading low rate initial production (LRIP) lots 2-5 aircraft by the end of May. Johnson said the entire fleet of fielded F-35 aircraft will eventually be upgraded to these two new software versions by the end of 2016.

Here we learn that the initial 3I had instabilities every 3 or 4 hours, that the 2B had them every 7 to 8 hours (twice as often as the final 3I version) and that the final 3I version had them every 15 hours. This last performance was deemed sufficient to develop 3F on this basis. :love:
 
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First time i see a futur F-35 customer having reference to a former customer not happy with the F-35.

"At this point we want to highlight the total cost of the program and the more general prioritization of equipment needs and priorities for the Hellenic Armed Forces. A possible delivery delay, or a similar problem between our country and Belgium regarding the suspected fighters, will certainly affect the operational arm of our air force.

Even for the PA itself, the needs that exist in no way rank the acquisition of the F-35 as the first and foremost priority.

It is certainly a weapon system with new capabilities. But the Greek Armed Forces are in need of other even more important capabilities which are ranked in higher positions."
 
Picdelamirand-oil said:
As usual, you distort what you want to attack to make your argument easier. So let me clarify:

@Herciv said that the Rafale could fly 3 times more than the F-35, he did not say that the Rafale flew 3 times more than the F-35. I don't know how often the Rafale is used in India, for example, but in France management is constrained by the fact that it must not exceed 250 hours a year to preserve the aircraft's potential for a minimum of 30 years. And since we have 1.4 pilots per aircraft, this means that each pilot is entitled to 180 hours of flying time per year, which is the NATO standard.

For the USAF, on the other hand, the official target for the number of flying hours that the F-35 should achieve is 200 hours, and despite pressure from the hierarchy and the efforts of all the airmen, the number of hours achieved is of the order of 150 - 160 flying hours, depending on the year. We can therefore deduce that this is not the result of a policy but rather the effect of a constraint that leads to this result.

So for the Rafale, experience does not show what the upper limit of the number of hours it can perform is, but we know that in the Finnish proposal Dassault has undertaken to make it possible to perform 1,000 hours a year on a regular basis and even 350 hours over a period of one month in a mode they call 'surge'. 1000 hours a year is more than 6 times what an F-35 can provide, and 350 hours for a month is more than 26 times. So @Herciv was very cautious in claiming that the Rafale could fly 3 times more than the F-35.

And if there are 3,800 hours left out of a 7,000-hour operational life, that means that there are 5,800 hours left out of the 9,000-hour operational life that is now the norm, thanks to the reinforcements that can be installed during the aircraft's usual maintenance cycle and that have been added to the Greek and Croatian aircraft. Particularly for Croatia, where the aircraft don't fly much, this is a very good deal.

It's important to understand what it means to be able to fly 26 times more than the F-35. For example, this means that for a one-month mission, if the US wanted to have a carrier-based air group, for example to defend Taiwan, as effective as that of the Charle de Gaulle, it would have to equip its entire Nimitz-class aircraft carrier with 100% F-35s to achieve this!!!
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Well what a silly post you made. The f-35 could fly more than 3 times the rafale too, using this logic.
Just to confuse things, in grammar, could can be used as a statement of fact.
 
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