Internationale fighter ontwikkelingen

[Elzenga]

Er zitten nog wel "oude" motoren in de J-20...die moeten eerst nog worden vervangen door modernere "stealthy" varianten...die heb ik nog niet in een proefmodel gezien...tot die tijd is de J-20 van achteren net zo goed zichtbaar als de F-35

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Surprise! China's Stealth Jets Are 2 Years Ahead of Schedule

By Spencer Ackerman
May 18, 2012 | 
Last year, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates was greeted in Beijing by China's experimental stealth jet buzzing over his head. Gates didn't sweat it: He proclaimed that the J-20 wouldn't be ready until at least 2020. Oops.

The Pentagon's top China official has now revised that estimate. The J-20, China's first stealth jet, will be operationally ready "no sooner than 2018," David Helvey, deputy secretary of defense for East Asia and Asia Pacific Security Affairs, told reporters Friday.

The new anticipated timetable for the J-20 hardly augurs the end of American military dominance. But it wasn't the only Chinese military development that took the Pentagon by surprise last year.

According to the Pentagon's new report (.pdf) on the Chinese military, China's got three nuclear-powered submarines — an advance that Helvey conceded the U.S. military didn't anticipate. China also fielded an "improved" amphibious assault vessel last year, while the U.S. Marine Corps is having trouble upgrading its own.



And that's just the stuff that the Pentagon can see. Helvey speculated that the Chinese military keeps its research, foreign military acquisitions and nuclear modernization off its books. The report estimates that China's declared $106 billion annual military budget is really more like $120 to $180 billion.

None of that means China's military will overtake America's anytime soon. China won't, for instance, have a global communications and navigation satellite network until 2020, which means it doesn't have a prayer of having a truly global Navy until at least then — even if it starts building its own aircraft carriers. Helvey disclosed that China still has neither built nor acquired any armed drones, and the spy robo-planes it has are the Harpies that Israel sold it nearly a decade ago. And while China may have an amphibious ship, the report says it can't actually invade or hold nearby Taiwan, let alone any target further away or better defended.

At the same time, it's hard not to notice that America's own stealth fleet keeps racking up #fails.

First there's the Air Force's F-22 Raptor. It's choking its pilots, and the Air Force doesn't know why. Gates' successor, Leon Panetta, this week restricted Raptor flights and hurried up an installation of a backup oxygen system onto the jets — which won't be complete until at least 2014. Panetta did not ground the F-22, so the nearly 200 planes will definitely be in Air Force's arsenal ahead of the J-20. But until the mysterious oxygen problems are decisively fixed, pilots may be wary of flying them, and the Air Force leadership may be wary of ordering it into combat.

Then there's the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a family of jets for the Air Force, Navy and Marines. It's already the most expensive weapons program in human history — current estimates peg the F-35′s lifetime costs over decades at $1.1 trillion-with-a-T — and not a single one of the advanced, powerful stealth jets is in the air. The Marines' variant was so riddled with cost-overruns that it was put on a timeout in 2011; it's off probation now. But testers keep finding expensive engineering flaws with the family of jets, and the Pentagon has given up predicting when it will actually patrol the skies.

The U.S. doesn't want conflict with the Chinese, whose economy is inextricably tied to its own. But it might not see one coming. Especially not if China's stealth planes are advancing while its own are stalling.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/china-stealth-jet/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=facebookclickthru

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Is this the biggest Chinese rip-off ever?

People's Republic unveils stealth fighter... but it looks remarkably similar to US jet
China's first stealth plane spotted on test runs, making China one of three nations with stealth jet technology
Critics claim this is a rip-off of America's F-22 jets, which cost $66.7billion to develop

By Eddie Wrenn
PUBLISHED: 10:42 GMT, 18 May 2012 | UPDATED: 15:22 GMT, 18 May 2012


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2146283/Chinas-stealth-jet-goes-strength-strength-U-S-air-technology-falters-just-Chinese-rip-off.html#ixzz1vGLLi9lr

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Our "Maginot Line": is the single-seat fighter pilot mentality killing our men and our nation?

In the late 1950s the advent of guided missiles made it necessary for the fighter pilot to have a radar operator behind the pilot to target track and fire radar-guided air-to-air missiles (AAMs) to destroy enemy fighters beyond-visual range (BVR). The culmination of the "guy-in-back" (GIB) was the mighty F-4 Phantom II aircraft. The GIB also offered a second set of eyes for the pilot to detect enemy MIGs and during ground attack missions locate targets so the pilot can concentrate on not flying into the ground. A quick survey of world attack helicopters will show almost all are 2-seaters so a weapons officer can focus on targeting to free the pilot to fly aggressively and more safely.

However, a strange thing happened over the skies of North Vietnam.

By the time of the war's end many enemy MIGs were shot shown by crews flying the mighty F-4. The question arose WHO would get the credit for the kill to become the "ace" with 5 kills or more to attain the glory, fame and career push? Should only the pilot get the credit or should the credit be shared with the GIB?

We talk a good game about "teamwork" in the U.S. military but the sad truth is that raw egotism runs everything, there must be "haves" and "have nots" according to the ruling hierarchy to drive people to have meaningful 20 year careers.

The USAF's worst nightmare happened when the war ended: the highest MIG killing ace with "6" shoot-downs was NOT a pilot, it was a GIB: USAF Captain Richard DeBellevue!!!

Not surprisingly in the egotistical fighter jock world, this was unacceptable that the "top gun" would be an inferior being, a nasty GIB.

One of the downsides of the missile interceptor mentality of the late 1950s that gave birth to the GIB, was that fighters lost their guns and became very big and heavy, resulting in close range dogfighting skills to be forgotten. Their extra power made them great fighter-bombers to do quasi-strategic bombing but NVAF pilots like Colonel Tomb flying very maneuverable day dogfighters like the MIG-17 would exploit our fighter-bombers lack of dogfighting capability by close-in attacks with cannon to get us to pre-maturely drop ordnance and prevent the mission targets from being bombed. We'd then go chase after the MIGs but not have a gun and dogfighter skills in an agile highly maneuverable aircraft to be as successful as we could have been.

Thus, at the end of the Vietnam war, the USAF and USN vowed the F-4 replacement would be a pure air superiority fighter with the ability to dogfight well with a gun and in the case of the USAF not have a GIB to ruin the ego pecking order politics of the service. The USAF would excuse getting rid of the GIB by stating that computer electronics made his radar operation unnecessary and they could get better raw flight performance and range by not having the extra weight/height of a 2-seat canopy/cockpit, resulting in the F-15 Eagle.

The Navy kept the GIB in the F-14 Tomcat so it could have a more powerful AWG-9 radar to fire Phoenix AAMs with 100 mile ranges. However both aircraft are very expensive to build and complicated to maintain with all the black boxes to replace the GIB, so a cheaper single-seat, usually single engine fighter was chosen to do the less glorious fighter-bombing and pitch in once in awhile with air-to-air if up against the Soviet hordes. Thus begat the F-16 Fighting Falcon and tweaked with a second engine for over-water flight safety, the F-17 which became the overweight F/A-18 Hornet.

Meanwhile, the Army wanted an attack helicopter with wings to destroy the Russian tank armies on the ground called the AH-56 Cheyenne. However despite the fact that the USAF agreed when the Army handed over its Caribou STOL transport aircraft to them that there would be "no limits" to helicopter parameters the selfish egotist liars at HQAF went back on their words and complained about the Cheyenne and got its funding revoked. However, Congress wise to the USAF's hidden BS agenda of fighter pilot self-exaltation insisted that it take up its CAS job it says it wants to do and develop a fixed-wing armored attack aircraft that can kill tanks for the Army and the magnificent A-10 was born.

Single Seat is bad for Air-to-Air

Thus until the advent of the AMRAAM missile, the F-14 had a BVR range advantage over the F-15 which had only shorter range Sparrow radar-guided missiles. This edge ended with the long-range AMRAAM missile which has its own mini-radar in its own nose cone to paint and track enemy aircraft, making almost any single-seat fighter capable of long range BVR air-to-air kills. The barely Mach 2 F-16 killed a previously untouchable Mach 3.2 MIG-25 Foxbat in the first Gulf War because the missile flew itself to target, overcoming the former's lack of speed and altitude. The woefully underpowered, overweight F/A-18 even looks like a fighter if it can shoot AMRAAMs at long range. As could A-10s or helicopters or anything. But therein lies the rub with the "magic missile" mentality.

You can only carry a limited X amount of AMRAAMs. And even the U.S. can only afford a limited X amount of $1 million dollar AMRAAMs.

What do you do if you have fired all your AMRAAMs and the enemy fighter force that outnumbers you 3 to 1 is still approaching?

You still have not done your job but you have guns and short-range AIM-9X Sidewinder AAMs: you must be able to dogfight. In a dogfight, he who sees the other guy first has the best chance of turning to get onto his tail. Thus, if you have a GIB you have an extra set of eyes to get the advantage in a dogfight. But a second set of eyes will not be immediately possible because the USAF and USN by pecking order ego have wed themselves to the single-seat fighter for bureaucratic manning simplicity and a marginal gain in flight performance.

But the weapons system versus countermeasure struggle is NOT a zero sum game.

Anything you can do with one pilot you can do better with two-----thus computer electronics can now have the pilot's helmet steer the missile's guidance head to aim/fire and track all the way to the target without him having to get a good angle onto the target aircraft. Thus, is a turning dogfight a Chinese Communist MIG though "inferior" in flight performance if its pilot has a helmet slewing missile firing capability could get a missile exploding into the American pilot's more expensive single-seat F-15, F-16, F/A-18 first. To fully exploit helmet offset aiming/firing as has been common in the U.S. Army attack helicopter community with first the AH-1 HueyCobra and now the AH-64 Apache, the USAF/USN's aircraft need a GIB to get the drop on the enemy fighters first.

However, the GIB is a curse word in the fighter jock community and this explains why the single-seat F-22 (oh, F/A-22) is so viciously fought for by the ruling AF hierarchy: its stealth and supersonic cruise features will enable it to shoot down the enemy first at BVR without itself being detected! And the internal weapons bay will carry lots of AMRAAMs! Once they are expended, the F-22 will have thrust vectoring to dogfight if it has any more missiles to shoot, but more likely allow it to break contact and run back to base immune to enemy radar guided missiles via its low radar cross section and countermeasures. The F-22 is really a BVR interceptor to shoot and kill all the blips it can from a safe stand-off then run home to base. Then the single pilots become aces and pick up chicks.

However, what if the enemy floods the F-22's radar screens with unmanned drones/decoys to absorb all of the expensive BVR AMRAAMs? After all these blips are shot down, then what? Then the F-22 will have to dogfight even (or at a disadvantage if the enemy pilots have helmet offset aiming/firing) or run back to base in the face of superior CHICOM aircraft numbers.

By trying to use gadgets to work-around having a GIB, the U.S.'s fighter aircraft are now so complex when called on to fly CAP over America's cities on a 24/7/365 basis they simply cannot sustain it. By wanting to fly high and fast, these aircraft lack long range fuel efficiency for loiter time like the straight, fat-wing A-10s attack plane can do, but when a threat like terrorist airliners diving into crowded buildings is in the public limelight the USAF hierarchy cannot afford to let the hated A-10 get the glory, so the fighter CAP over our cities has stood down.

So much for "Air Supremecy"!

Single Seat is VERY BAD for CAS

To fly CLOSE air support attack missions to get a line-of-sight on enemy targets is very difficult from a 300 mph aircraft low to the ground, its next to impossible in a single-seat 500+ mph aircraft. A survey of the rash of single-seat A-10 crashes attrributed to "pilot error" begs the question that had the aircraft been a 2-seat OA-10B the GIB could have eased the workload by looking for targets and the pilot may have not made that error that flew him into the ground. Remember, every A-10 that crashes is one less of that hated platform the USAF fighter jock hierarchy has to pay homage to; if numbers dwindle like the B-26Ks in Vietnam, they will have a logistical excuse to retire the aircraft from service and no longer have a visible reminder that there are indeed other ways to bomb targets than from 10K and a stand-off. Congress and the public will not know any better from then on to question the USAF's egotistical prerogatives.

However, rather than embrace the GIB, the USAF is again looking to magic munitions to fly themselves to target so the aircraft can stay high and away from danger. That this mentality does not offer responsive CLOSE air support for U.S. Army ground maneuver units is immaterial, this is what the USAF wants to do. The USAF doesn't want to do CAS safely for the men on the ground by an armored, low-speed flight agile attack aircraft gun strafing by careful air or ground FAC nor safely for the men in the air by a GIB to manage the pilot's low-altitude workload. What the USAF wants to do is actually DAS--"distant air support"--from at least 10,000 feet above and several miles away which could be a B-52 dropping JDAMs within a glide path circle of reach to fly over the Army Soldier's heads and land on the enemy by GPS/INS coordinates. If the GPS is degraded or jammed, the INS is off, the ordanance fins get bent on release etc. and the JDAM lands on the Army Soldier's heads it c'est le guerre (ie: fuck you, too bad!). Like not wanting to close-range dogfight, the USAF doesn't want to do close-range attack missions with its (german accent) "Das is gewd" mentality, least of all to further the glory of their hated rival for Congressional dollars and public affection, the U.S. Army that gave birth to them in 1947 in the first place.

The precision bombardment from a distance mentality is just a manifestation of the DoD Tofflerian/RMA world-view that war is about blowing things up; when in reality war is about CONTROL; control of the ground where human being live on and the ruling ideas and governments that guide them. That dangerous enemies to the U.S. have escaped our so-called "global precision strike system" when it tries to win wars without decisive and in force Army ground maneuver, should come as no surprise. When a U.S. city is leveled to ashes by a nuclear 9/11 attack because we couldn't get the terrorists before they got us, will anyone be left standing to point out that the cause of this failure was our over-reliance on stand-off aircraft firepower to try to blow up problems on the ground instead of facing enemies up close and insuring they get taken care of?

Single-Seat is bad for maturing leaders

We talk a lot about "teamwork" and in the Army we do not ever send a Soldier alone on the battlefield, the very least he has a "Ranger Buddy" to look out for him. While having only one person die when a fighter crashes minimizes the pressure on the bureaucracy which can then write-off the tragedy as "pilot error", the fact being overlooked is a second set of eyes/awareness to include emergency flying capability could PREVENT many aircraft crashes and deaths. Two-seat aircraft could safely give a young pilot stick time with an overseeing mentor instead of him being totally alone in the cockpit where a second's inattention could cost him his life. But it takes HUMILITY to admit you need the help of a GIB, a virtue in short supply in the USAF!

A big thing is defined by the current AF buzzword of "situational awareness". Simply means you gotta know and take into account EVERYTHING affecting the mission. If you lock on to one facet to the exclusion of all other factors you won't last long even in peacetime. This is why GIBs are needed, because "two heads are better than one" Why should this be any less different in a fast moving jet? It should be even more urgent.

The ability to have situational awareness must be a factor that must be recognized by instructors and supervisors clear back in training - and acted upon. That last, acting upon - is where USAF Training Command has historically been weak - they tend to look at how much they have invested in the guy's training and are hesitant to throw it away by washing him out. This is short-sighted and extremely stupid because to cover their own asses and up the graduation rate they jeopardize a fifty million dollar airplane and pilot's lives down the pike. They'll claim their testing and evaluation processes are so good that any one admitted to pilot training is almost certain to graduate. That is not borne out by the evidence of dumb crashes after graduation.

Flying into the ground is a dumb crash.

I just got an e-mail from a friend down in Australia whose friend was washed out of RAAF fighter training 4 missions short of graduation.

He's now flying Caribous.

Hurrah for the RAAF!

A lot of guys can fly multi-motor transports perfectly well but are not suited for fighters. Things happen lots slower in transports, there's at least two brains divvying up the load, and they don't have such a demanding mission as fighters do.

The USAF should set up a limited-duty career field - fighter pilot - and weed out the clucks and keep the good guys in the cockpit instead of trying to make everyone a general. The guys who decide they want a career path to General would transition to GIB before leaving the cockpit for the armor-plated desk.

Instead, today, once a guy makes major or LTC he is shipped out of the cockpit just when he becomes a world-class expert and gets a big fat desk to fly. A guy is still fit to fly fighters at any age if the docs pass him and he measures up to the job and is competitive with his colleagues. Just think what the services would be like if we took our 35-40 year old NCOs and stuck them all behind desks? So why in hell should we park a pilot with 15 years experience so some second lieutenant of unknown capabilities can take his cockpit slot, fly some single seat missions, destroy the aircraft and get himself killed?

USAF/DCS Personnel calls it "career progression"

I call it fucking stupid.

Since when did career progression rank combat capability?

The USAF must become a 2-seat aircraft, humble, war-fighting force

The fix is simple; embrace HUMILITY.

Being a fighter pilot does not make you a god with a small "g".

Realize an air show at 10,000 feet exploding a lot of dirt does not impress an asymmetric enemy giving you decoys to waste expensive ordnance on. Wars require ground maneuver from the brothers in arms, Army and marines and this maneuver should be embraced by the USAF and magnified unselfishly. The Warden BS of concentric circle Douhet bombing must be scrapped. If the Army wants ANY kind of aircraft (to include fixed-wings) to help its men win and stay alive if the USAF cannot provide it, it shuts the fuck up and stays out of the way. Realizing that one size or aircraft type cannot be possibly optimized for all flight arenas, the slower and armored attack plane must not be looked down upon. By going to two-seat air force we can get non-pilot ground observers in the back to better spot and hit ground targets as well as provide a way to transition pilots and non-pilots to the desk leadership positions that will take the AF into the 21st Century. No longer will there be a two class AF society of "haves" (the pilots) and the "have nots" (everyone else) who can never reach high command.

With 2-seaters we will have simpler, less costly and easier-to-maintain aircraft with more reliability by an extra set of thinking awareness eyeballs that can fly in an emergency if the pilot is killed/incapacitated. We might be actually able to do long-term CAPs over cities. For long range and difficult missions where human flying cannot be replaced by an autopilot the GIB/emergency co-pilot can keep the main pilot fresh for when reaching the target area. Reduced pilot work-loads means less dumb crashes into the ground and millions of dollars in aircraft and lives saved. 2 pilots means better CAS and more enemy ground targets hit to enable decisive U.S. Army ground maneuver to locate, encircle, collapse and destroy enemies.

And we might not bankrupt our nation with ever more expensive and costly fighters in the fatal "Death spiral" that afflicts DoD.

http://www.combatreform.org/singleseatdeathsentence.htm

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

The House of Representatives has voted to require the United States to sell 66 new fighter-jets to Taiwan, with lawmakers saying the deal would close a growing military gap with China.

Dat wordt weer een "relletje"  

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

US House of Representatives votes to sell Taiwan jets

The US House of Representatives vote for the selling of 66 new fighter-jets to Taiwan to reduce the military balance of power with the militarily-growing China, Taiwan's greatest Asian rival

AFP, Friday 18 May 2012

The House of Representatives has voted to require the United States to sell 66 new fighter-jets to Taiwan, with lawmakers saying the deal would close a growing military gap with China.

The House of Representatives voted late Thursday to force President Barack Obama's administration to authorize the sales, as part of a slew of amendments to a defense bill adopted without objection in a marathon session.

The measure, which still needs approval by the Senate to become law, would require that the Obama administration approve Taiwan's request to buy 66 new F-16C/D jets in addition to plans already under way to upgrade existing planes.

The amendment's main sponsor, Republican Representative Kay Granger of Texas, said that Taiwan needed more than an upgrade of its aging fleet in light of the rapid growth in military spending by China, which claims the island.

"The sale of F-16s to Taiwan ensures our key strategic ally in the Pacific has the defense capacity to defend its own airspace," Granger said in a statement when she introduced the measure.

"Our support for a democratic Taiwan is consistent with our national security priorities in the region and demonstrates that we will continue to stand by our friends and allies no matter who or where the threats are from," she said.

The Obama administration authorized a $5.85 billion upgrade of Taiwan's existing jets in September but held off on the sale of brand-new jets.

The administration argued that the upgrade would bring more immediate benefits to Taiwan than a sale, but the move was widely seen as a way to limit criticism by China as a time the United States sought Beijing's help on other issues.

China publicly denounced the upgrade plan but US officials say that they have seen little concrete retaliation, such as a freeze on military relations, of the kind Beijing carried out after previous arms sales to Taiwan.

Senator John Cornyn, also a Republican from Texas, until last month blocked the confirmation of a Pentagon official until the White House said in a letter that it would give "serious consideration" to the sale of new jets.

The US Congress is a stronghold of support for Taiwan, where China's nationalists fled in 1949 after losing the civil war to the communists. The self-governing island has since developed into a prosperous democracy.

When the US switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, Congress approved a law that requires the administration to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/9/41990/World/International/US-House-of-Representatives-votes-to-sell-Taiwan-j.aspx

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Russia to Sell Off 18 'Indian' Su-30 Fighters

(Source: RIA Novosti; posted May 16, 2012)
 
MINSK --- Russia is to put up for sale a batch of 18 Sukhoi Su-30 multirole fighter aircraft, rejected by India on concerns about their engines and returned to Russia in 2003, a defense official said on Wednesday.

"The 18 Su-30s previously used by India and then returned, are in an aviation repair plant in Belarus and are on sale to potential buyers," said Alexander Fomin, deputy director of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation. He added that the aircraft could be modernized before being sold on.

The Su-30MKI is India's lead fighter aircraft, and around 140 have been produced under license by HAL Aeronautics in India. The Indian Air Force is expected to buy a total of around 280 during the next decade.

Development of the Su-30 began in the 1980s for the Soviet Armed Forces, based on the Su-27UB conversion trainer.

The first batch of 18 Su-30s delivered to India were Su-30MK and Su-30K standard, and were built to a lower specification than the later Su-30MKI. This meant that they did not have thrust-vectoring engine nozzles or canard foreplanes, enabling extra maneuverability.

Their avionics systems were also built to a lower specification than the later Su-30MKIs built by HAL, which included a high level of Israeli and French-built systems.

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/135294/russia-to-sell-off-18-%27indian%27-su_30-fighters.html

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Russian AF to Get First T-50 Fighters in 2013

(Source: RIA Novosti; posted May 17, 2012)
 
VORONEZH, Russia --- The Russian Air Force will receive the first batch of prototypes of its fifth-generation T-50 fighter for performance testing in 2013, Col. Gen. Alexander Zelin said on Thursday.

The T-50, developed under the PAK FA program (Future Aviation System for Tactical Air Force) at the Sukhoi experimental design bureau, is Russia's first new major warplane designed since the fall of the Soviet Union.

"The work on the fifth-generation fighter is going according to schedule," Zelin, a former Air Force commander, told a news conference in Voronezh (central Russia). "The third prototype has joined the testing program and the fourth is being built."

The T-50 made its maiden flight in January 2010 and three prototypes have since been undergoing flight tests.

Zelin earlier said that the number of T-50 aircraft involved in testing would be increased to 14 by 2015.

The fighter was first shown to the public in August 2011, in Zhukovsky near Moscow, at the MAKS-2011 air show.

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/135298/russian-af-to-get-first-t_50-fighters-in-2013.html

[Elzenga]

Langley's F-22 pilot oxygen emergency during Red Flag caught on audio tape May 17, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in Aviation Safety, Military Aviation.

The F-22 Raptor was among the players of the recent Red Flag 12-3 exercise at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.

Belonging to the 27th FS from Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, the planes did not feature the famous Increment 3.1 that gives the stealthy fighters the capability to use air-to-surface weapons, and could only play the air-to-air role.

Youtube user "pdlgs", a reader of this blog, has recorded some interesting radio comms of the exercise that he also uploaded on his YT channel for everyone to hear.

Among the several minutes of recorded pilot and controller chats, he has also caught an F-22 pilot using callsign "Rocket 04″ experiencing an in-flight physiological incident during a mission: suffering hypoxia like symptoms, the pilot declares an emergency requesting immediate descent to FL180 (18,000 feet) to face the oxygen deprivation condition.

Click below to hear the formation leader, informing the Nellis Range controller of the emergency.

Pdlgs has also recorded very weak audio file about Rocket 4 leaving the airspace and being escorted home by Rocket 3.

Noteworthy, the Squadron attending the last Red Flag is a unit of the 1st Fighter Wing, and Maj. Jeremy Gordon and Capt. Josh Wilson, the two "whistleblowers" appearing on CBS 60 minutes to explain why they were "uncomfortable" flying the Raptor (before changing idea few days later) belong to the 192th FW of the Virginia ANG, an associate unit of the Air Force's 1st FW at Langley.

Because of the mysterious problem that is still choking F-22 pilots without a known root cause, the Pentagon has restricted Air Force Raptors to fly near a "proximate landing location" in order to give pilots the possibility to land quickly if their planes' On Board Oxygen Generating System (OBOGS) fail.

As done by "Rocket 04″.

[Elzenga]

J20：Maiden Flight of P2002 on May 16, 2012 (long version)
After the images appeared on the Chinese Internet few hours after the aircraft had landed, a video showing the China's second J-20 stealth fighter prototype performing its first flight at Chengdu on May 16, 2012 has just been uploaded to Youtube.

[dudge]

Hier had Engeland zo maar op eens een overwacht probleem kunnen hebben. 

En schotland, wales en noord Ierland ook.

Tja, dan zijn ze opnieuw mjarden kwijt.

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

House turns down amendments against F-35B, V-22

Hier had Engeland zo maar op eens een overwacht probleem kunnen hebben. 

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

House turns down amendments against F-35B, V-22

By Kate Brannen - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday May 17, 2012 20:25:09 EDT


A handful of Democrats put forward amendments that would have canceled or cut funding to weapons so that more money would be available for deficit reduction during House debate of the 2013 defense authorization bill Thursday. All of the amendments were voted down.


http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2012/05/defense-house-turns-down-amendments-against-f35b-v22-051712/

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

The F-35: Super Plane for Super Cruise

By Ben Freeman | May 17, 2012

Tom Cruise steps onto the tarmac – cool and confident in his flight suit and dark aviator glasses. While his co-stars still call him Maverick, this isn't Top Gun and that's not an F-14 fighter plane. This is Top Gun 2, and the fighter plane he's getting into is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) – the most expensive weapon program ever, which is slated to be the mainstay of the U.S. Navy, the Air Force, and the Marine Corps for decades to come.

While the recently announced Top Gun 2 won't be the F-35's first movie appearance – an F-35 tried in vain to kill Bruce Willis in Live Free or Die Hard, and the F-35 had a cameo in The Avengers – the announcement that it will be the plane of choice for Maverick's triumphant return to the big-screen has sparked controversy given the program's celebrity-like exorbitant spending and breakdowns.

The technology news website Gizmodo quipped: "The first question: What will Tom Cruise do? Stand on a runway, staring at his grounded F-35?"

It's not just technical problems that plague the plane. A couple months ago, the Department of Defense released new estimates for how much the F-35 will cost over its lifetime, and the price tag is staggering. The entire program is now expected to cost taxpayers nearly $1.51 trillion, more than any weapon in history. Those costs grew by more than $100 billion from last year's estimate.

Each individual plane now is estimated to cost $160 million – more than double the $74.5 million the DoD initially estimated they'd cost — and four times the price tag on the F-14 Tomcat that Maverick flew in the original movie [editor's note: movie-ticket prices have gone up, too – but merely doubled since the 1986 Top Gun].

There's ample reason to believe that even these astronomical costs will only grow.

First, the DoD continues to lowball the cost to operate the program, meaning the estimated $1.11 trillion in operating costs for the F-35 will only climb. These cost estimates assume that the F-35 will not face major design changes. Yet "much of its developmental and operational testing remains and the risk of future design changes is significant," the Government Accountability Office recently warned.

Major design changes mean increased costs. The GAO said some critical technologies were "not mature and present significant development risks" and a Pentagon review stated that there were major issues whose combined impact "results in a lack of confidence in the design stability."

The programs exorbitant cost crowds out funding for other military needs. According to the GAO, the future procurement funding needed for the F-35 is "enough to fund the remaining procurement costs of the next 15 largest programs." While it's true that the F-35 is, by design, a large program, it was supposed to be affordable. But the dreams of a cheap F-35 are long in the past.

There is an alternative, however – the FA-18 E/F Super Hornet. Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars can be saved by replacing the most expensive and troublesome variants of the F-35 – the Navy and Marine variants – with Super Hornets (the Air Force variant is having markedly fewer problems and appears to be substantially cheaper than the other two).

While the Super Hornets lack the F-35's stealth, the U.S. military does not need this capability on all of its planes—the Air Force has stealthy F-22 fighters, and its own variant of the F-35, as well as the B-2 stealth bomber and a planned new long-range bomber, not to mention the possibility of stealthy drones.

Otherwise, Super Hornets have many capabilities that rival the F-35. The Super Hornet, unlike the F-35, is proven, and has "established an extraordinary record in operations around the globe, in combat, under all kinds of conditions," according to Admiral John Harvey, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command. And, despite the recent crash in Virginia Beach, the planes mishap rate is, "as low as it's ever been in naval aviation," according to Rear Admiral Ted Branch, commander of Naval Air Force Atlantic.

Combine this with the fact that the Pentagon can buy three Super Hornets for the price of one F-35 Navy or Marine variant — and that these variants cost six times as much to fly as a Super Hornet — and the choice is easy.

The F-35 may be a movie star, but it's draining the Pentagon budget like Lindsay Lohan drains cocktails. The time has come for Congress and the Pentagon to stop believing that the F-35 program, in its current form of producing three variants, will ever deliver the capabilities it promised at a price taxpayers can afford, and start considering viable options. Our economic and national security demand it.

Ben Freeman is a National Security Investigator at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). He specializes in Department of Defense personnel issues, weapons procurement, and the impact of lobbying by foreign governments on U.S. foreign policy. He's the author of a forthcoming book on lobbying by foreign governments in the U.S., The Foreign Policy Auction, due out this summer.

Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/05/17/the-f-35-super-plane-for-super-cruise/#ixzz1v7wCruL1

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

A-10s vanaf vliegdekschepen? dit toestel is echt niet stuk te krijgen. De USAF wilde er al vaker vanaf...maar het ding blijft gewoon doorvliegen. Geen vervanger voor te vinden...of men moet gewoon nieuwe gaan bouwen. Met landingshaak en opvouwbare vleugels dan.

Ik denk dat er een opvolger gaat komen zodra de A10C aan vervanging toe is. En vanaf een carrier... waarom niet...

Ook voor de Klu graag een sqn.