My enthusiasm for the news of Friday’s first flight of the F-35 would be at a somewhat higher pitch, I suppose, if there was a chance on God’s green earth that I could ever get my hands on one in a way that wouldn’t send me to Leavenworth for the long haul. Son Number One, now in his third year as an NROTC midshipman feels differently about the idea though, and so it was with some joint interest that we therefore viewed the video of the event found here, the link for which was provided by an occasional reader.
Gear down for the entire flight, SNO noted, and I replied in turn that it was very often thus, one less thing to worry about and no doubt they’d bring them up for the next bout.
Why did they make it with only one engine? he asked, and his perscipacity at such a tender age so far outpaces his progenitor’s at an equivalent developmental stage that I found myself heartened about the prospect of mankind’s perfectability. On account of the superior reliability that’s in it! cried I in return, slapping him on the back with hearty gusto and privately wondering the same thing, not for the first time. While also bemoaning the lack of an internal gun.
Because anyways, where’s the fun in all that if it’s to be nothing but missiles in the future I asked of myself, secure in the knowledge that while it’s been a history of measures and countermeasures and counter-countermeasures ever since we invited the brighter engineers into the smart weapons development party, that there’s nevertheless a very great deal to be said for a high velocity stream of brutally insensate, explosively tipped 20 mm rounds fired with the proper combination of lead, range and plane-of-motion, and which have nothing whatsoever to say to the blandishments of electro-magnetic or infrared deceivers, the scoundrels.
Isn’t it curious the way the clamshell canopy opens from the front? he asked, and I congratulated him once again on his perceptiveness while allowing that it was damned curious, and wondering – again privately – how they plan to get all of that clabber out of the way come ejection time, especially if there’s any speed on the jet.
Not that you’d ever be wanting to eject at high speed, but sometimes the choices, they are limited. And isn’t it nice when the wind – like God himself, ever-present but invisible – encourages your progress, rather than impedes it?
It is.
All part of the master plan, I’m sure. Nothing to concern ourselves with, and there’s some truly positive word in the company’s press release:
The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II lifted into the skies today for the first time, completing a successful inaugural flight and initiating the most comprehensive flight test program in military aviation history.
“The Lightning II performed beautifully,” said F-35 Chief Pilot Jon Beesley following the flight. “What a great start for the flight-test program, and a testimony to the people who have worked so hard to make this happen.” The most powerful engine ever placed in a fighter aircraft – the Pratt & Whitney F135 turbofan, with 40,000 pounds of thrust – effortlessly pushed the F-35 skyward.
For those of you keeping score at home, that’s a lot of thrust for a fighter-size engine. Each of the Hornet’s punks out maybe 16k or so in full grunt.
So, they got her airborne, and a good thing too: All sideline sniping aside, the sooner we get these to the fleet the better off we’ll be. Not only do they bring impressive capabilities that we’ve never had in naval aviation before, but they’ll be a whole lot cheaper to operate. Which that’s great news, because money’s too tight to mention.
Looking at the way the canopy blends in with the fuselage aft, it doesn’t look like there’s a good view to the 6 o’clock posit.
The will regret the lack of an internal gun. Period. Those who do not remember the past…… ask and F-4 driver … or the guys on the deck in the last couple of years that have gained from a nice run down the bad guys position from an F-16 or F-15E .. or F-14B in OEF and OIF.
The F-35A will have a gun though – the USAF version. Hate to say it, but they have us beaten on that. External gun pod just isn’t the same…or as ready to go.
Are the “Battleship Admirals” still alive or has Robert Strange McNanamra resurfaced? The lack of an internal gun cost lives during the Vietnam unpleasantness; and will do so again if the design is accepted. CDR Salamander is right-on in his reference to the CAS provided with a gun in recent years.
This appears to be a platform designed without a clear adversary identified, so who is so all-knowing as to be able to decide that a gun is not necessary?
PS: The Chinese have guns.
Ejecting the canopy won’t be an issue. It appears to have a single center hinge at the front, so fitting it with an explosive pin triggered in the ejection sequence would release the front of the canopy, and any speed on the jet would serve to flip it up and back. I’d guess there is a little assistance via a small rocket on that hinge as well for low-speed ejection capability. The rear lock-downs will likely just break away or were probably designed to allow the canopy to swing freely into the full vertical position. Nope, not worried about the canopy.
Regarding the single engine, if at sea I’d prefer two as well, but that Corsair just a few panels below had only one engine and it seemed to do just fine. Then again, a Corsair was a lot less expensive than a Hornet and was made in greater numbers. Perhaps occassionally getting the new ’35 wet is a price worth paying for the simplicity and lower cost of a single-engine design, both in terms of parts but also maintainence time?
There is no excuse for the lack of cannon, however. Somebody send it back — it’s not done yet.
First of all, let me say…. it sure is PURTY!
Secondly, I agree with SNO. Why would they make it with only one engine? Curiously, that was the first thing I noticed about the design. The canopy didn’t jar my memory, and I’m sure they designed it with ejection in mind, so I don’t think that would be an issue.
Not having a backup engine… that’s an issue.
So is not having an internal gun, apparently, but being a non-aviator gurl, I didn’t notice that at first.
Through the glass worked fine for many of us in the Medium Attack community. Don’t see why it wouldn’t be OK for the F-35 kids.
I curious about the gun. Are there LO impacts for guns? Aero issues wrt supercruise?
Hmmm.
First flight of the “Lightening” maybe but I’ve seen a close version airborne before. It even hovered a bit here at Pax for the flyoff. Which it won.
Overall, I think it looked good if’n it performs and has a greater range…and costs what they say. Only thing I’d critique is that small bore nose gear..needs a little beef for Navy use.
Re the cannon et all. The requirements were written by aviators and pilots of all three flavors. Take that up with them. Ask Lex about all the advances in A-A weps and the real reason it doesn’t have one. If’n you think that’s an issue you’re just being a dinosaur and acting like me re the Hornet (status quo)!
Out with the old, in with the new! Hopefully we can git ‘em before the unmanned stuff supersedes it!
Bou- that is one hot engine.
B2
Good study motivation for the long Xmas break down here in Pensacola, Lex. It could have unicorns and rainbows painted on the outside and I’d still think it was the coolest thing in the world to fly.
~Ens Tim
Capt:
I had a question about the Hornet. Was firing the gun at night a problem? Looking at the gun posit doesn’t it ruin night vision when it’s fired?
Ens Tim,
Stand-by for the new Congress, the airplane may yet have “..unicorns and rainbows” painted on it.
All the best on this Holiday Season to all the STUNAV’s matriculating on the beach in/around P-Cola.
prowlerguy:
The f-22 has a gun in a retratable cover (i think on the port side where the wings meet the fuselage). The cover is designed to uncover the gun 1.5 seconds before firing (not sure of the ACM utility of this though).
re: night strafing
We never did it in my day, because it’s kind of scary at 1000 feet at night in a 15 degree dive doing 500kts even before the muzzle ruins your night vision. They’ve figured out a way to do it however, because some Army guys asked for it one night when the bad guys were up close. I think the tactics are still in development.
Cap’n,
Excuse me, but aren’t we taking a heck of of lot of chances with a bloody expensive bird having only one engine? No guns, one engine, I don’t even want to consider the ACM qualities.
Can we say hook, line and sinker?
40K worth of thrust eh? Recall the ill-fated J-40 just a little over 50 years ago, struggling to get, what, maybe 6800 lbs of thrust?
Re. the canon, concur, bad call. But maybe they are saving room for the super-secret directed energy weapon
- SJS
I’m guessing that the single engine made it easier to plug in the VTOL capability for the USMC. The rear snozzle twists 90 degrees down, and a single axle from the center-mounted engine turns a fan mounted front-center. With 2 engines, the symmetry is a bit more challenging? And then there’s the matter of weight.
Surely another design could have been found, but this works!
I wanna know how they get it to go supersonic witout afterburner — super cruise they call it!
It’s Seabee Green!
Re: the front hindged canopy.Apparently a lot of aviation enuthiasts have forgotten the Mig-21 ejection system. The seat is slanted at a 21 degree angle, as it leaves the a/c the canopy slides aft and connects to the bottom of the seat assembly thus providing wind blast protection to the pilot at speeds up to M2.0
I think we have learned a lot from our Russian adversaries. Guns are a different matter…
Actually Lockheed Martin had taken design advice from Yakovlev when developing the VTOL version of the JSF. Note the similar lift fan and nozzle configuration:
http://www.warbirds.be/web/e107_files/tek3/yak-141.gif
Hey Manly Dad-
F-22 also has supercruise (at least it is spec’ed to it- and I’ve never seen a military aircraft that didn’t meet or exceed the specs that the manufacturer listed).
N
How do it do it, Nose?
Real slippery skin?
I expect a lot of ‘oomph’ from the rear end — lots of fire — to get a ship up past the speed of sound.
I don’t know a lot about the KM-1 ejection seat on the Mig-21. It’s possible the seat/canopy was so designed in the F-35, but one would have to see inside the cockpit to make an assessment. Attaching a canopy to a seat at Mach 1+ while both are leaving the aircraft in a very short period of time is a risky proposition, and failure would seem to have the penalty of having the big sail of a canopy act as a bludgeon on the recently-ejected but slightly more aerodynamic pilot. If anybody has more information on this it would indeed explain the decision to go with the nose hinge design.
By way of introduction, I’m a retired industrial engineer who has enjoyed Lex from afar for several months and only recently aquired the intestinal fortitude to contribute, if I may call it that, to the discussion. I’m certainly not an expert on these matters, so take what I opine here with a healthy dose of table, rather than sea, salt.
Max,
Somewhere floating about are tech drawings showing the ejection sequence for the Mig 21. Your concerns aside, that is the way the seat works. Try looking up project “Have drill” or “Have doughnut” on Goggle.
Guns, engines, canopies: whatever.
My question is this: when did we collectively lose our ability to name things? Thunderbolt II. Texan II. Phantom II. Avenger II. Corsair II. Lightning II.
It’s a fleet of sequels!!
Any new aluminum -or composites-aboard is certainly a good thing.
Maybe the forward hinge has something to do with RCS reduction(?)
I’ve wondered about the name recycling as well. Its been going on for a generation now and seems to coincide with a decline in innovation in design.
Just to preface. I have no desire to see a return to “the good ole’ days” of previous aircraft types(not that my opinion matters one nit anyway of course)…
But I gotta wonder why a 750nm combat radius for a carrier aircraft -especially given the meager payload (yes, there is the factor of munitions effectiveness)- is now declared “remarkable” when unrefueled ranges were nearly doubled -with several times the payload- a half century ago by aircraft that were essentially WWII engineering specimens.
But hey, its better than pulling museum pieces out of the desert…
Yowsers! I sullied up the good Captain’s bandwidth without pasting in a link! Off my game. Either its this awful free coffee here at work…or maybe it was the just as awful Mexican sprits imbibed over the weekend…
But anyway, for some historical perspective on Naval Aircraft Procurement, this is an essnetial read:
http://www.georgespangenberg.com/index.htm
George Spangenberg spent his entire professional career in naval aviation, particularly in the acquisition of naval aircraft. He established the design basis and directed the procurement of many aircraft still in the fleet today in addition to serving as an outspoken advocate of Naval Aviation.
A “work in progress” at the time of his death was his oral history; a project initially started in 1989 under the auspices of the Naval Museum in Pensacola, Florida.
His oral history is below. Its wordy, so those interested in later developments may want to weigh in around the middle of part 2.
http://www.georgespangenberg.com/gasoralhistory.htm
Interesting comparison of cockpits from 1955 (Navy to use flat panel TV!) to 2006 (F-35 to use flat screen panels in cockpit):
The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same
- SJS
Is this ‘test pilot gig’ reserved for the more mature (read: retired) guys? Or were the young guns unavailable?? I mean, I expect that the guy’s probably a great pilot and all, but he’s looking pretty grandfatherly . . . and I say that while I’m 54, so he’s got some miles on him.
Steve,
That grandfatherly dude “test-piloting” the Lightening has more test flight hours than all the total flight time of all the people who read or write on this blog, put together.
Up through the 70′s prototypes were routinely crashed on flights 1-5.
Hasn’t happened much the last cuppla decades and grandfatherly dudes like him, backed up by more sophisticated engineering and modeling have made it so. Because of those factors it’ll make it to the fleet faster.
Of course, after reading all the ankle-biting above, only the politicians can f$%k it up now.
b2
Wow, Bob,
Quick to jump to the defense of the elderly! Did something push your buttons?
How about a discussion of raising mandatory pilot retirement age to 65?
N
OK Nose, I’ll take da bait!
I woulda said the same dumb thing when I was his age! Once, I did.
However someone set me right once about the same subject and I remember being corrected. My RWR picked up a disrespectful tone.
My age has nothing to do with it
.
The guy (despite being a geezer-HA) is more than highly qualified to do the test job. Not only is he still flying the hot suff, I’ll bet he’s making over 400K a year. Plus, for every hour of flight time he gits I postulate he spends 50-100 writing test reports, crunching/brainstorming data and managing hi-tech-50lb head teams. Finally, I would add that something tangibly worth .4-1 bill wouldn’t be trusted to a “plumber”…(although the AF MAY do that every day with the B-2)
Re- my admittedly prickly disposition over the ankle biting. Gee Nose, it’s been one engine for years, no integrated gun for years, etc. etc. Know what I mean? Not that I want to stifle any discussion. Sincerely sorry, just trying to entertain.
b2
Something about old pilots, and bold pilots?
Bill, thanks for the pointers. From what little I’ve found, it seems utterly complex, and hence failure-prone without extravagant expense on what is supposed to be a fairly inexpensive (for government levels of inexpensive) aircraft.
Given things are fly-by-wire these days anyway, my new goal is to find why ejecting the cockpit as a unit has been rejected in the design phase. Unfortunately, there seems to be very little information on why things are discarded that early.
– Max