So the very cool image above shows the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter dropping ordnance for the first time, technically anyway. You’re looking at an F-35B, sitting on the ground, dropping an inert 500-pound bomb onto a foam pad on March 29. The so called, pit test, was meant to make sure the jet is able to release weapons on command, paving the way for actual airdrops.
Here’s NAVAIR’s press release announcing the drop:
After ejecting a 500-pound bomb from F-35B test aircraft BF-3, the test team took a collective breath, and watched as it hurtled toward the concrete deck.
Coming to rest in the foam covering the pit floor, the March 29 “pit drop” marked the end of two weeks of testing nine different weapons combinations inside the Joint Strike Fighter’s two internal weapons bays.
“Completion of these weapons ejections into the pit gets us closer to in-flight release of weapons from the F-35,” said Navy Capt. Erik Etz, director of test and evaluation for F-35 naval variants. “It’s another step in expansion of the F-35’s warfighting capabilities.”
Weapons pit-drop testing collects data to measure stresses on the airframe and adjacent stores, ensures proper weapon and suspension equipment function, and validates the separation models for the munitions’ ejection characteristics, including trajectories and velocities.
“We pushed the team pretty hard on those runs to get everything done,” said John Fahnestock, lead government weapons engineer. “We’ll spend some time going through the data to validate our models, but so far it looks good.”
From the cockpit, the pit drops demonstrated minimal effects of weapons launches from the F-35B’s left and right internal bays.
“Having the test weapons on board isn’t really noticeable from the seat,” said Marine Corps test pilot Lt. Col. Matthew Taylor. “But what’s great about the team’s accomplishment is that we’re making progress toward delivering a warfighting aircraft to the fleet.”
Testing included inert versions of the GBU-12 Laser-Guided Bomb, the 1,000-pound GBU-32 Joint Direct Attack Munition and the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile.
More weapons testing on the F-35B and F-35C carrier variant is ongoing at Naval Air Station Patuxent River. Current test events including pit drops, captive carry and instrumented weapons environmental flights, lead up to flight separation testing scheduled for later this year.
The F-35B variant of the Joint Strike Fighter for the U.S. Marine Corps is capable of short take-offs and vertical landings for use on amphibious ships or expeditionary airfields to provide air power to the Marine Air-Ground Task Force. The F-35B is undergoing test and evaluation at NAS Patuxent River prior to delivery to the fleet.
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I am not impressed. This is not a real weapon release. The Super Hornet would be ideal for the Marines and they know it. They're just trying to delay buying Super Hornets. Here is why the USN and USMC should not buy the F-35: http://www.scribd.com/doc/88946660/Why-the-USN-an…
Ideal except that you can't launch or recover a Super Hornet from any one of the amphibs and it would cost a lot (probably too much) to modify them with cats and arresting gear. The Corps can't rely on the Navy since their carriers have their own obligations to carry out so you can't assign one to every MEU out there and it would be impractical to re-assign MEU AORs to coincide with that of a carrier task force.
STOVL aircraft have limited range, especially if they use vertical flight in any part of their sortie. With the way the F-35B is turning out at $291.7 million per (4.4 times the price of 1 Super Hornet) jet putting cats and arresting gear on an amphib might cost less or roughly just as much.
Long range air refueled fighters can be almost anywhere in a matter of hours and, as the Libya War proved, Harriers don't offer much since most of the fighting was done with long range air-refueled fighters, UAVs, and cruise missiles. The Harriers were stationed very close to the fighting and they still didn't do much of anything due to their short range. Why buy F-35B's, which don't have a range improvement over the Harrier that is all that great, when for the same price if three F-35Bs we could have a squadron of Super Hornets?
STOVL goes beyond just the LHA/D advantage. The F-35B has a higher sortie generation rate spec with reasons behind it that the child doesn't get either.
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During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, shore-based AV-8B Harriers initially operated from a 10,000-foot runway at Sheik Isa Airbase in Bahrain. This resulted in a 45-minute transit to Kuwait with in-flight refueling, yielding a 30-minute time on station. The aircraft then moved to King Abdul Aziz Airstrip, a 4,000-foot asphalt runway 90 miles from Kuwait. With the addition of a flight line made of AM-2 matting, this forward operating base (FOB) housed 60 AV-8Bs for eight months. It was often referred to as “the soccer stadium” since the Marines set up headquarters and billeting in the adjacent stadium; from there, the transit to Kuwait was reduced to 20 minutes, yielding the same 30-minute time on station without aerial refueling. This reduced the burden on tanker aircraft, increased sortie generation rates and allowed these aircraft to be more responsive to ground forces.
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Someone should people of that. Oh yeah, someone did -about 2 Aug 11.
That's great. Guess what fixed wing aircraft did in the Gulf War? Everything else and then some. On top of those Harriers are lucky that their opponents weren't very smart and didn't use special forces to attack the stadium with light artillery. In October 2005 a base operating Harriers near Kandahar Afghanistan was attacked by terrorists using rockets. One Harrier was destroyed and another one damaged. If we went to war with an opponent that had better rocket artillery or skilled special forces then you can image what would happen.
If we didn't have Harriers or STOVL fighters and put the money we spent on them into making more fixed wing fighters it would actually increase our firepower and decrease our risk to losing aircraft.
Your Hornet obsession is getting dangerous……….
Your Hornet still is stuck to long bits of non moving runway. Don't like Harriers Or F-35B's? Fine Buy Saab Gripens. Cheaper, easier to maintain & STOVL .
Someone should also tell the child that if he's going to quote Supah Hornet $s bought in the future, they will have to have the same outrageous inflation factors applied to them for acquisition and O&S costs as any plane he compares them to.
And finally (for now), the reason the child was not impressed was because he has no idea what goes into this kind of testing. These instrumented drop tests are key to validating predictive models that are used to develop safe separation sequences. See all those camera targets and instrumentation wires? Data gathered will be analyzed and used to further develop/refine and predict launch kinematics prior to flight test drops. Quite frankly, given the tight spaces involved, I'm impressed they don't have spoilers that drop down in front when the bays open (ala B-2 and others) for drop (vs rail) weapons, . I'd love to see the acoustic environment data for the weapons bays.
Have the powers that be figured out a sortie rate for the F-35B vs the Harrier? Besides the difference in per hour costs, how much time is the -B spending in the hangar for maintenance?
The SGR is one of those metrics that are measured once the system has X flying hours under its belt. For a single aircraft program, that number is often f not nearly always 100K hours, I imagine the F-35 with multiple variants will have some total number plus number per variant before each variant hits the point where it is officially graded. If you 'Google up' F-35B Sortie Generation Rates you'll find slides with the spec SGR KPP. You will see that the B spec is 33% higher than the A or C due to reduced mission distances for the B's mission profile. You do not get higher SGRs if you are sitting on the ground for maintenance, and if the "B"s problems to date indicatedpotential impacts to the SGR KPP, is there any doubt we would have already heard the ululations of "doom!" from certain quarters?
Wow, you must obviously be a genius. Please enlighten me.
SMSgt Mac- The child refuses to listen to any fact that does not fit his already preconceived opinion. In fact he believes that having squadrons of aircraft stationed abroad with aerial tankers at multiple foreign land bases can respond better to the needs of a MEU for fixed wing air support than having at least 4 F-35's on board an LHA or LHD and be more cost effective, for example.
Behold the next Passingby.
Is it my eyes or is the left hand ordinance a AIM-7? As it appears to be falling the aft is hanging up a little. I thought that a kicker pad was used on air to air missiles?
It can't be an AIM-7 since an AIM-7 is a piece of ordnance and ordinance only exist on paper. In all seriousness now, it's probably an AIM-120 AMRAAM, in fact the article even says that an AIM-120 was used in the test.
I agree….weapon release it´s pulling G´s, If you put the plane over a bench and down landing gear you can say: Succesfull landing or first landing. The next new it would be: sucessfull pilot attached to the seat!!!
Harriers don't need replacement at all for another twenty years minimum. Esp with the addition of the recently upgraded Brit Harriers on hand. And if they aren't replaced after that, US national security will not be affected by one iota. Because fast jet STOVL is demonstrably a waste of time, money, and lives.
Oh, and correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Guadalcanal almost 70 years ago?
What about Inchon, 62 years ago ?
What about Grenada, 29 years ago ?
What about Iraq, 21 years ago ?
Even though in Iraq we never used the amphibious assault, it was still used as a bluff. Iraq still had to use men and equipment to counter the threat.
HOLY CRAP! You're right – Iraq (#1) WAS 21 years ago! Man, I can't believe its been so long.
And the best part is, it still ain't over!
What about them? The Marines were never 'abandoned' by the USN at any of those places. That event is supposedly why organic CAS is so indispensable to Marine combat doctrine.
Point taken, I miss interpreted your post.
Uh, that is not quite true. After the battle of Savo Island, the fleet ran away.
Roll on the in-flight weapon releases. Hopefully then we might begin to hear less from the chumps who think Hornets will be up to the job for the next 30 – 40 years.
This is going to be a great weapons system, despite all the revisionists who argue this is the first program to experience engineering hiccups and cost overruns. Welcome to the future of American force projection folks.
In tragic news, the F-35 program was set back another year when Lockheed Martin employees accidently used live bombs to test the F-35 bomb-release facilities.
Sounds like we're making progress, but it also sounds like they are making a mountain over a molehill.
*waves small flag*
Woot Woot.
Soon, my precious, soon you will reveal your full potential! BWHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!
Bombay looks small compared to a F-22s bay. overall that's alot of wire sticking to the ceiling.
The A to A is attached to the bay door? Huh.
Those talking about the continued use of harriers for the next 10+ years, have you seen the videos of them hovering then sudenly fall from the sky? They are great aircraft but simply do not have the capabilties as the F35. In regards to the F-18 its a great aircraft but if we never expaned and dove into new technologies we would still be with a Mustang. Research takes time and there will be problems, but that’s the name of the game when produceing an aircraft of this caliber.
Not that great.
F35A/B/C are all going to be world-class game changers. Our Netcentric approach to warfare will be enable the US to remain steps ahead of opponents on the current/future battlefield. So, the Su-27 class of aircraft can do all the fancy airshow tricks they like (and it is a sexy aircraft), but it will not even get the chance to dance with an F35 should that day come…
I do not defend the cost overruns, missed benchmarks and overstated promises on readiness/capabilities (shame on Lockheed)…but, this aircraft is going to dominate the future battlefield.
You talk as if the software and communications gear that makes netcentric warfare possible isn't available to other nations, or that they can't be incorporated in other platforms. They can.
Just as it's well within the tech capability of near-peer adversaries to develop jamming systems that will degrade or even totally annul those vaunted netcentric systems.
Esp considering that the F-35 isn't slated to be changing any games, world-class or otherwise, until after 2019 at the earliest…
Netcentric? Oh you mean like the Super Hornet.
"Netcentric" is a word that gets used way too much, but the avionics and information-sharing systems on the F-35 are a step ahead of anything else out there, including the Super Hornet.
I'm only using the term because marketing jargon is all the fanboys seem to be able to hear…
And BTW, what exactly is it about the avionics and info-sharing on the F-35 that precludes their being installed in other platforms? Are they made out of exotic magical compounds that only Lockmart company sorcerers know the spells for?
There is the matter of finding room on existing platforms for the extra avionics and there's making sure that it will even work on existing platforms. That's one of the problems that we run into with legacy platforms, of all sorts, after a point you simply don't have enough room left to put in anything new and even when they do fit they don't always work well with the older equipment already in place.
What might be interesting is observing the effects of weapons release while the aircraft is at speed. Mount aircraft on sled with height over a long strip of thick padding. Accelerate the aircraft, release weapons and observe for effects. That doesn't even test things like how the aircraft behaves when firing weapons while maneuvering, just accelerating in a straight line.
I'm more interested in when they get to testing the -B releasing ordnance with full external stores at speed since that's what we're really expecting it to do.
Wind tunnel would be infinitely easier to simulate speed with or without acceleration
Looks like one of those alien movies…
There are children that walk and say their ABC's faster than this test program……
You must be very proud.
How right you are, Tiger.
I'm not at all impressed!! How long has this aircraft been flying??? It's just now doing simulated weapons drops? I find this to be totally ridicules, for my money this should have been done long ago.
Granted I haven't kept up with the early testing done on aircraft but has this baby step test ever been done on another aircraft in development?
Yes, every modern aircraft has done this sort of testing before in flight weapons separation tests. Separation is one of the hardest things to predict (see the Super Hornet), so they are very careful when doing the drops for the first time.
Dangerous Falcons !!!!
LM and DD are working overtime to create good press – they've already got lots of the other kind. LM/DD are both largely to blame for the extensive delays that have led to the criticism and negativity, but most of that is both wrong and ignorant. We don't yet really know how effective the F-35's will be in actual combat conditions; however, they should be one or two generations better than the already tired aircraft they are replacing, and they should prove that quality and fighting smart are better than quantity.
We don't have anything else in the pipeline that doesn't represent upgraded 30-40 year old designs, so why people complain, lobby for more F-22's or bringing back the F-14 (there are apparently 40+ that could be brought back within a short time), more 16's or 18's or ??? makes me wonder.
if LM promoted this aircraft as a cheap replacement for the teens fighters, they should be using filtered down technologies from F22 program, just like every car company the most expensive model gets all the toys and then filtered down to lower models. If they took on this model, i'm sure the plane is already in service and future upgrades as per block standard.
Please, F-35 haters, continue to over reach. continue to throw out the baseless 1 trillion dollars number, over 50 years. continue to not fact check. Even former F-35 haters are starting to tire of the constant crying over every single program.
try to see it as a business case, will the program still run as it is now if it is not a government but private project? you may say this plane will save American lives and throw every patriotic books to our faces but i'm certain this program has/is/will fattened up LM exec bank accounts.
Your not making sense. 1 minute you says it wouldn't survive as a private program and then bash LM for making money. I want to see you build a plane that can fly super sonic, Land vertically on a wasp, Have greater than B-2 stealth, greater than F-16 maneuvering, and at a 50 million dollar price. Further more I find the Anti- F-35 CABAL that seeks to censor anyone who doesn't agree on the F-35 disgusting. Ive been banned or censored, on key-publishing, Ares, and now here, I refuse to give up the fight versus the Mass anti-F-35 conspiracy
Compared to the Anti V-22 hate club, the F-35 is well loved.
I have a question. How will the F-35 B drop its bomb/s while carrying a center-line fuel tank or it's gun pod?
Weapons bays are lower outside fuselage and not center fuselage.
There was another country that went with the most technologically advanced equipment there was, but because they were Very Expensive and took so long to build they could only have limited numbers of their superior machines. They thought having the best "Quality" equipment was better than large "Quantities" of not quite as good equipment. Well they lost!!! The ME 262 jet, the Tiger & Panther Tanks, etc. Stalin said it best "Quantity has a Quality of it's Own". We need to cancel the JSF before America and it's Allies make the same mistake.
too bad the US also has quantity in terms of weapon systems ^^
also, didn't the Panzer divisions during operation Barbarossa trump the Soviet armies with superior equipment (excluding the t34 of course hahaha) and training??? Generals such as Mainstein and Guderian had demolished legions of Soviet forces until Hitler delayed the final assault on Moscow. Sorry, just wanted to say that we should be alot more afraid of major strategic screwups. The US has quantity and quality hands down. Stalin did say that, but the USSR also suffered the worst casualties, something that Americans are crazed over… something even Saddam Hussein pointed out long ago.
The T-34 didn't make it's first appearance till the battle for Moscow. When the Russians moved their Siberian Troops to defend it. They were the only troops that had the T-34 at that time. If we keep throwing $$$ away on the F-35 we won't have either ( Quality " Doesn't work as promised, and they keep lowering the requirements so it can pass the ones it has passed" and Quantity" because we will never be able to afford the numbers that we need to have because it was based on CHEAP about $60 Million per plane and they are now anything but cheap their current prices.
F-35A Cost: $172 Million
F-35B Cost: $291.7 Million
F-35C Cost: $ 235.8 Million
So Quantity is out the window as well.
The Germans had other industrialization problems. They were short on tungsten and vanadium for steel alloying and petroleum sources, necessary for plastics, lubricants and fuel products.
Besides, the German economy wasn't particularly large, and only able to do what it did by hyperfocusing on certain fields. It could not deploy Plan Z, make strategic bombers and advanced fighter aircraft while building out their ground forces. Even with a ground forces focus, they still had insufficient trucks and used horses for pack animals.
If anyone attacks us with mattresses l guess we are ready….
expensive p o s !!!!!!
I love how any thread or post inferring the non-need for the F-35B always states that "the USMC cant depend on the USNs CVN force". WTF over? There is no where on this planet that a USN CVN cant be within 48-72hrs to support Marines. Across the Pacific at Flank speed From the Panama canal to Taiwann F-18E/Fs can launch and recover within 72 hours with more firepower than a handful of F-35bs from Amphibs. This is a SecDef and CNO problem with the USMC wanting everything their way. After Obama is re-elected(not my choice), even with 8 CVNs(its coming) there can always be a CVN shadowing a Amphib group with many to spare, since we can only float 30K Marines at anyone time anyway.
f-35 тот же не осмысленный проект, нашего як-141.
The Gripen isn't a STOVL fighter. The only sort of "vertical landing" that could make would end in a smoking crater.
Agree the Gripen NG can take off and land on an 800 meter stretch of highway and be refueled & rearmed in 10 min. At current prices you could get 6 Gripen NG's for the price of one F-35B. And don't you think 6 AIM 120's or 6 Meteor's and 2 Sidewinders X 6 Gripen NG's will do more damage than 1 F-35B with 4 AIM 120's????
Short take Off & Landing (STOL)
Vertical take off & landing (VTOL)
Should not have added the V. My error.
Sorry would only be 5 Gripen NG's at $60 million not 6 so the Gripens would only be firing 30 AIM 120's or Meteors compared to the F-35B's 4 AIM 120's.
Only one problem with the Gripen NG, you can't launch or recover it from an LHA or LHD. The F-35B can.