This article first appeared in AviationWeek.com.
The first three squadrons of F-35s — with at least 59 aircraft — will be formed at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., between 2010, when the first aircraft arrives, and mid-2013 when No. 60 is due.
Of the three training squadrons to be stood up, one will be U.S. Air Force with 24 conventional takeoff aircraft, one will be Marine Corps with 20 short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing aircraft and the last, with 15 aircraft, will belong to the Navy.
The Air Force’s bed-down decision involves temporary operational limitations on flight training to minimize noise impact in the nearby town of Valparaiso. Meanwhile, supplemental environmental studies will be conducted as the Air Force works on a final study on F-35 noise.
Details have yet to be pinned down, but the Joint Strike Fighter is expected to be louder than the F-15 and F-16 and about the same as the F/A-18E/Fs and F-22s, says USAF Maj. Gen. Charles Davis, the current F-35 program manager and the incoming commander of Eglin’s Air Armament Center.
As part of a two-tier, environmental agreement — after the first 59 aircraft are in place — the Navy and the local community will consider increasing the number of F-35 training aircraft on the base to 113, according to Davis. Along with the integrated pilot school house, all JSF maintenance training will be conducted at Eglin.
The first Marine aircraft arrives in 2011. The fleet is expected to grow at the rate of about one per month. By 2014 the unit also will begin establishing its relationship with the Air Armament Center where the armed service develops its new kinetic and non-kinetic weapons and studies the introduction of new missions. For example, all initial F-35 Block 0.5 aircraft, because of their advanced electronically scanned array radars, will arrive capable of training for cruise-missile defense, Davis says.
To keep down the noise impact for Valparaiso, operations will be largely restricted to Eglin’s East-West runway. Later, the North-South runway may be re-oriented away from the town and extended to the south to allow limited use, according to Kathleen Ferguson, deputy assistant secretary for installations.
If the number of training aircraft isn’t allowed to expand, the Corps will likely establish its own flight training center at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, S.C. The first F-35 operations base will be established by the Marines in 2013, Davis says.
Read the rest of this story, sob over JSF cuts, check out the Sing armor, and see where German troops are going from our friends at Aviation Week exclusively on Military.com.
– Christian
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Christian- you forgot to insert a Title for this article!
If noise is such a huge concern, then why not station the aircraft somewhere more remote? Or is studying the towny reaction the point of deploying the aircraft to this particular base?
If Eglin has been selected as the site of the first three F-35 squadrons, does this mean that Luke AFB in Arizona has been ruled out as a training base? The extended article mentions more than a hundred possible bases for F-35 training, but I can’t imagine more than a handful of these locations would make any sense. You have to have access to reliably good weather, bombing ranges and unpopulated areas where low level manuevers can be conducted.
I’m surprised that they anticipate all three versions being available that soon.
I would have expected that there were be more F-35As built, before the F-35B was produced in those numbers, and similarly that there would be more F-35As and F-35Bs produced, before the F-35C was in production.
The decision to base initial squadrons of all three types at the same base (presumably for maintenance and expertise sharing purposes) does seem to necessitate a coastal location — I don’t imagine it would be very workable to practice carrier landings and takeoffs in Arizona.
There is also some irony in the fact that the F-35A which was sold as a stealth replacement for the F-16, is louder than the plane it replaces. Admittedly, radar stealth was the primary concern, but given the importance of ground to air operations in its mission, one might have expected something a bit quieter than an F-16.
Does anyone know if there are any decent non-classified estimtes about how effective the JSF will be in a cruise missile defense role?
Re: all 3 services getting their birds.
I imagine if each service stands up JSF units at the same time, it’ll be more difficult to cancel them.
F-35 noise footprint is only an ‘airport noise’ issue. If one looks down the long line of aircraft that have operated out of Eglin over the years, you find the F-35 is still a lot quieter than anything preceding the F100/F101 engined airplanes of today OR the F-22. I’d say overall the real sound difference between a F-16 and F-35 is the frequency: the F-35 engine has a bigger resonant cavity. In any case, Mo’power comes from moving Mo’ air and, if you can, Mo’ air faster.
This is a issue for the F-35 at Eglin only because of local politics. There is a very noisey ‘activist’ in particular who was latching onto the F-35′s noise footprint from the first day that base realignment plans called for taking out test squadrons and inserting operational ones at Eglin, so it is a dB and number of flight ops issue for the local cranks. Almost makes one wonder what is the incentive for making quieter engines if it becomes a way to bar more powerful ones down the pipe. Airfield encroachment is a problem everywhere that is easily solved: If you don’t like jet noise, don’t live by an airbase.
Anecdote: Del Webb used to bus Seniors into Phoenix’s Sun City near Luke AFB on the weekends in the early 70′s. Folks would buy into the ‘quiet’ golf resort sales pitch and then on their first Monday morning, reality would slap them as most of a fleet of 200+ F-4Cs and Ds and most of a fleet of 100+ German F-104s would start heading out on training sorties at the crack of dawn. Now THAT is jet noise. At Dusk, night training sorties would begin. Luke at the time was the busiest single runway airbase in the Air Force, maybe the world.
Oh how they screamed (and probably still are today).
For the love of God, someone needs to have the balls to outright cancel F-35A and F-35C, and take that funding and divert it towards the purchase of more F-22s. We need that fighter a hell of a lot more than F-35A/C.
I have to agree with “firebrand” on this one. A military unit or air power unit can be considered to be like a football team. you can have great linemen, halfbacks,tightends, WR’s, and etc. But, you need a strong back bone, hence a great quarter back. The F-22 is our great quarter back. Something we can always depend on. Now the statement to outright cancel the aircraft variants a and c maybe a little strong or over zealous, but it is agreed a diversion of money to the F-22 program would be a better option. My two cents.
- E-Breaux50
firebrand,
Only someone as ignorant as you could make such a ridiculus statement.
We NEED the F-35A to replace the F-16 & the F-35C to replace the F/A-18 – just as we NEED the F-22 to replace the F-15. One size (fighter) does NOT fit all!