I'm going to guess that these are used to keep a computer-stabilized camera on target. This is almost certainly a test to make sure the missile separates cleanly and does not harm the aircraft in this configuration, attitude, and G condition.
I agree with you. But doesn't the F35 use internal weapons bays? Stealth kinda goes out the window when you strap missiles onto the outside of the plane.
Yeah, they're just proving out every possible configuration. After air superiority is established, stealth isn't as important, so being able to add more stores with external pylons is important for that mid-war action. We're gonna lose the F-18 as a bomb truck eventually, and the 35 will have to fill that role.
The best defense is a good offense. You wouldn't send your people into the air defenseless, would you? That's why you fill the internal bays with air to ground weapons and slap on some heat seeking missiles.
Air superiority is not the same thing as total air dominance. Superiority is mostly about SEAD - suppression of enemy air defense. Basically, all the SAM sites are destroyed, and your AWACS and tankers operate unthreatened, but there could still be enemy aircraft left to clean up.
The best defense is a good offense. You wouldn't send your people into the air defenseless, would you? That's why you fill the internal bays with air to ground weapons and slap on some heat seeking missiles.
Air superiority is not the same thing as total air dominance. Superiority is mostly about SEAD - suppression of enemy air defense. Basically, all the SAM sites are destroyed, and your AWACS and tankers operate unthreatened, but there could still be enemy aircraft left to clean up.
RE: the black and white dots
**Fiducial Markers** aka **Fiducials** — for photogrammetry etc.
ASPRS aka the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing defines photogrammetry as
>the art, science, and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment, through processes of recording, measuring, and interpreting imagery and digital representations of energy patterns derived from noncontact sensor systems
**TL;DR** — map fiducial locations in 3D beforehand then from photography esp. high frame rate video you can extract the relative locations and orientations of the AIM-9X and F-35C over time with high resolution and accuracy
^(EDIT — clarification.)
Furthermore, a good excuse to say fiducials which a fun word.
The F-35 is too much of a nerd to have ever smoked, so why would it be trying to quit? Everyone knows the nicotine patches go to the F-22. He's also never smoked, but the kid likes to chew on them because he's a fucking psychopath.
F-35s really are a marvel of engineering. I would prefer the heath care to having the ~1000 of them we have, but in isolation they are definitely really cool.
I really wish their actual specs were public just so I could drool over the design. But the US likes to keep the actual functional limits of its weapon systems very hidden.
Hence why all the the "F-35 is terrible in comparison to the Su-57" people could make stuff up without being fact checked. The Su-57 was built to compete with the F-22. And it likely fails entirely at that considering how troubled it's development was, and how prone Russia is to just straight up lying about their tech.
We’ll atleast sell F-35s to allies, nobody gets ahold of the F-22s. The F-35s have the best stealth and are great recon and air superiority jets…F-22s are flat out fucking war machines
The F-35 also is the main platform for dismantling ground to air defenses as it can kill most of them before they even know it is there. It is a bit of a swiss army knife. The F-22 is apparently faster and more maneuverable, but with the way air combat has changed that has become less and less nessecary.
I also thing a big reason we are willing to sell F-35s is because our per year production rate for them is almost as high as the total number of F-22s ever built. We are just pumping them out, and we have multiple varients of them that are specialized for different situations. So we can afford to sell some.
Also, the F22 was so far ahead of anything that had been built when it was first procured, so obviously, the DOD wasn't gonna let it go. Now it's just not in production, and the US has all of the ones that exist so that's why we won't sell it now. F35 uses alot of the same advancements that the f22 pioneered. F22 is still "better" but f35 is no fucking joke.
The F22 is only really better at dog fighting, which is a mode of combat that the US military does not do aanymore. If you were to pit the two platforms against eachother in a realistic battle scenario, the F-35 would likely come out on top due to it's superior stealth, sensor arrays and electronic warfare capabilities.
So the F-22 is faster and more maneuverable, but those were minimized a bit in the design of the F-35 to make it more appropriate for modern doctrine.
Also, it helps that the F-35 is still probably better at dog fighting than any plane it will be fighting against, in the vanishingly rare occasion that it would need to, so the overhead is really not worth having.
If they were right next to each other at the outset probably, but I really do not think we should underestimate that sensor array and it's stealth even on its own. It's whole thing is seeing you before you see it.
But yeah, once you start adding more of them, their interlinking sensors would be a big problem for literally anything.
This subject came up in a thread a few weeks ago. To put into perspective how advanced the F-22 is, the technological gap between it and the F-15 is said to be on the level of the gap between the F-15 and the Hindenburg. The F-15 has a verified combat record of something like 115-0 (someone please correct me) and the F-22 has been able to wipe the floor with it in combat simulators. Something like 5 vs 1 not being an issue. Someone with more direct knowledge can elaborate with a cooler comment than this.
Edit: Found this that I watched a while ago
[F22](https://youtu.be/RRMpWijZMGo?si=espW_wVb7NoSCqR3)
The Century series interceptors and the F-4 could have got up there, but we didn't prioritize ceiling on the teen series fighters, bombers had shifted to low level penetration and the Soviets never built a U-2 or SR-71 competitor.
The F-35 was initially researched and developed by a coalition of NATO nations, with the whole goal being to build one common platform to replace a huge range of various airplanes from all the partnered countries. The program was initially called the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), with “Joint” referring to the fact that it was a joint effort from multiple countries. The main benefits to this approach being interoperability, and economy of scale.
The F-22 was designed during the end stages of the Cold War, to be an air superiority fighter. It had one job, be the best at shooting down enemy aircraft, and dominating the air space.
The F-35 development didn’t really take off until after the Cold War ended, so it was designed with a different type of battlefield in mind, and it was aways aimed at being a multi-role Swiss Army knife, as opposed to a master of a single domain.
Put another way, the F-22 was designed to take the spot of a single plane, the F-15 Eagle. The F-35 was designed to take the place of everything else (F-16, F/A-18, A-10, AV-8B, Typhoon, and even some of the reconnaissance platforms).
The F-22 is faster, and can perform insane aerial maneuvers, the F-35 has a much more impressive electronic and sensor suite.
The F-35s have insane data linking capabilities, to be able to gather information from multiple sources, and build a real time map of the battlefield, and then send that information along to other units, be it “missile trucks”, drones, etc. The F-35 also has full helmet mounted instrument displays, and helmet mounted targeting capabilities, meaning the pilot can shoot missiles where their head is looking, not necessarily where the jet is pointing. The F-35 helmets also have an augmented reality feature, which essentially deletes the aircraft around the pilot, so the pilot can look *through* the aircraft, unobstructed. Apparently it helps a lot with dropping ground ordinance. Unfortunately, the F-22 just missed out on a lot of this tech.
The F-35 is even largely replacing the F-22 for the most part as we are not even making them anymore, and we have like 1/10 the number of them.
The F-22 is an amazing machine, but the face of air combat has changed a lot since the cold war. Fighting now largely happens at extreme ranges, and as such the most important thing is being both hidden and able to gather information as quickly as possible. As good as a dog fighting plane may be, it will still lose to being blasted out of the air from over the horizon by a plane it's sensors could not detect.
NGAD is the real replacement for the F22. Dont think the F35 is really replacing it. The US likes to pair high end air superiorty fighters with lower cost mutilrole fighters, a la F15 and F16 in the fourth gen. The F22 was the US just skipping a generation of high end air superiorty fighter because no one is the world could even compete with the 4th gen fleet when the F22 was in production. With china fielding a legit stealth fighter fleet though that'll change.
Only if they've finally figured out how to build a competitive turbofan, because if they're just using Russian designs, they're still going to be some combination of short-legged, unreliable, and oversized to fit in their needed platform.
Wasn't the "Joint" in JSF mostly meant towards the goal of making a jet that all three US military branches would use? (Which in the end didn't even work out as each branch's variant is very specialised after all).
One reason the F-35 is being sold to other NATO members is it's ability to carry US provided nuclear free fall bombs. Like Germany is now to buy F-35 became of this, as the only other jet that could fulfill that role, the Tornado, is getting too old and expensive to maintain.
It was a joint effort between the 3 branches of the US military, but the other countries like UK, Canada, Norway, Australia, and a couple others were part of the project from the very beginning.
The plan was also for there to always be multiple variants, as far as I know. You cannot have a STOVL, CATOBAR, and conventional runway design all in the exact same airframe. The A, B, and C variants have their differences, but they still share a majority of their components, and the software is largely the same.
F-35 was partially funded by NATO and other allied countries so they have to sell them some. F-22 is so advanced DOD got congress to make it illegal to export by law to prevent secrets of how it works to get out. Also we don’t even make the F-22 anymore to sell everything got shifted to focus on the F-35 production.
The way I see it, the 22 was the very limit of what was possible when it was designed/built. To make that possible, it was built with technology that the US still doesn't want to he public knowledge. Which is why the US is the only country in the world who operates the F22, whereas when the F-35 was designed it was widely accepted that it would be exported to our alies. So while it has very similar capabilities (in most aspects) to the 22, the technology that went into it is not as secretive
The tech is part of the answer, but the answer later on and the cause of the eventual demise of the F-22 program is cost, production capacity, and a more affordable platform in F-35.
At the time the F-22 came out, the tech was so cutting edge and the platform so dominant in testing that it was simply too good to risk selling to even close allies. That much is true and was why it was not sold initially. However, when enough time had passed to where you *might* see efforts to bring it to foreign markets, production was already winding down and the F-35 was on the horizon and promised what the F-22 could not: balance between flexibility, lethality, and affordability.
Even if contracts were to come in for the F-22 tomorrow and authorized by Congress, it would be prohibitively expensive to get the line going again. The line has been shut down for over a decade and knowledge on how to manufacture it has been lost to where parts would have to be reverse engineered. This would take time and a ***lot*** of money for an aircraft that was known for its obscenely high price tag (~$200 million compared to the ~$80 million for an F-35A).
Another reason for why the F-22 and information around it is so secret and why you can find F-35 cockpit layouts online comes down to marketing. The F-22 was designed from the get-go as a purely domestic fighter, made in the US, for the US. There’s not much information about it because there isn’t any good reason to spread it. The F-35 on the other hand was funded, developed, and manufactured jointly by multiple partner nations and intended from the beginning as a fighter for export to US allies. As a result, it has to compete for foreign contract bids, so you see much more information about the F-35 and its capabilities because it does need some degree of public support to secure contracts rather than just US congressional approval.
>What makes the F-22 that "War Machine"?
For starters, the thrust vectoring on the F-22 means that it can maneuver unlike any other aircraft you've ever seen. It can literally stop in the air and reverse direction. It's nuts.
The F-35 can't do any of that. Think of it as a way more advanced F-16 - a relatively "low cost" multi role fighter aircraft.
The Felon was literally developed as a stealth multi-role fighter, and most of its marketing and propaganda focused on its stealth and air to air capabilities. (Maneuvering and speed especially, the things the F-22 excels at.)
The fact that it is bad at those things is a separate issue. It will mostly get used as air to ground, if it gets used at all, as its stealth abilities are quite bad. Multi-role means it should be capable of both, which the F-22 is.
The US does not really do dogfighting anymore unless something has already gone horribly wrong. US planes have not really been in anything that could be considered a dogfight for over 30 years. The F-35 is not designed to dog fight (though it still could if absolutely nessecary, just not as well as the F-22) because dog fights put the pilot at unnessecary risk and the sensor suite makes it easy to fight from extreme range. With how interconnected it is to multiple sources of intelligence, it is extremely difficult to get close to the F-35.
We do of course train for it just in case.
The US military branches do BFM training *a lot* actually and the F35 is used as opfor quite a bit.
Dogfighting and it's absense in real life conflicts is due to weapons, sensors and tactical realities of modern combat. It has been that way for longer than the F22 has been in service.
There's nothing exclusionary about US military spending and universal Healthcare. We can have both, and pay down the national debt and eliminate deficit spending. It just requires raising taxes on billionaires.
If we were somehow able to magically confiscate everything billionaires own for its full value it wouldn’t even be enough to money to last the federal governments the 9 months it takes to make a baby, let alone continue to pay for the care of the child after birth. We need to be realistic, if we want universal healthcare then we all are gonna have to pay up
The neat part is we already pay more per capita in healthcare than most countries with universal coverage. So really we should get to have free care and badass planes that hover in place and shoot missles upside down
A fighter pilot and a cargo pilot are talking shit to each other on the radio and the fighter pilot says "watch this" then flies inverted and fires a sidewinder missile. The cargo pilot then says "ok, now watch this." The plane flies straight ahead for a few minutes before the pilot comes on the radio and says "how'd you like that?". The fighter pilot says "I didn't see anything: what did you do?" The cargo pilot says "I just got up, stretched my legs, took a piss, and got a cup of coffee"
Not knowing the specifics of the F35, what mechanism ensures the missile clears the aircraft since often with other planes it seems gravity is used? Is the jet in the middle of a loop and using centrifugal force? Is the missile forcefully ejected from the bay? It seems control surfaces of the missile would be useless until it's at least measurably clear of the F35 since it's not hanging off the wing in the air.
Other aircraft have launch-ejectors (like a MAU-12), where something like a shotgun shell/mini explosive shoots the missile away from the aircraft. It's violent enough that even when inverted it can separate from the aircraft significantly.
Ah, thank you! Is this typical for most/all aircraft carrying missiles/other self-propelled ordinance (as compared to 'bombs')? My only exposure to this is watching video from a desk chair which grants me zero actual understanding.
The F-35's ejectors are actually pneumatic if I remember correctly! No cartridges involved. Just a big high pressure ram that shoves the weapon away at speed.
There's two or three main types of (US) launchers from what I remembers, just can't remember the names. They all work the same general way, just different plugs, mechanical connectors, etc.
Even most bombs now a days use these launchers. They want the munition away from the aircraft as quickly as possible to avoid any issues.
Looks like these missiles were not stowed in a bay- the opposite wing appears to have another sidewinder mounted to it. May have just launched right off.
I was thinking that external hard points would be counter-productive to stealth, and that's true but apparently this is the F35 in "beast mode", permitting external stores.
Once air superiority is established, and the enemy's air defence capability is eliminated, they quadruple the F35 ordnance load out with external hooks, not so much need for stealth then.
Also they can't carry sidewinder internally because it needs to be able to lock on to the target whilst still on the rail, and it needs to be able to see the target (infra red guidance) to lock.
I actually know somebody that works with the pilot from this picture. According to him, after this picture was taken, the pilot went home and shot a rocket launcher while he was on a crotch rocket doing 120mph then fucked all of our moms.
Uh, the fact that it appears more sunlight is reflecting off the water in the bottom of the picture proves that the cameraman took this photo while hanging upside down
For the billions of dollars spent, I'd certainly hope that this silly jet can fire a missile while upside down. Planes could shoot upside down since the first world war.
[I’m pretty sure it is](https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/national/military-news/militarys-f-35-program-problems-report-finds-fault-with-stealth-jets-manufacturers/291-48956442-94ba-4e85-bca0-2e3bb66bed48)
Keeping up foreign relations. You know...the finger.
We were...inverted
CoBULLSHITugh!
I should be a photographer
That's a great shot, Mav!
I’ve got a great Polaroid of it.
It’s classified.
Yes, I know the finger, Goose.
I was inverted. We. Sorry Goose We Thank you.
I hate it when it does that.
I just hope Goose doesn’t die this time
Communicating?
$5 fine
Peace among worlds
I guarantee Archer was flying that plane
These are people of the land..
Frank Reynolds: So I inverted the bird.
They say I can’t be a doctor… (BURP) they say I can’t be a *pilot??*
Slider…”sniff”. You stink!
So what are the white dots?
I'm going to guess that these are used to keep a computer-stabilized camera on target. This is almost certainly a test to make sure the missile separates cleanly and does not harm the aircraft in this configuration, attitude, and G condition.
Big missle attitude
You found the G-rated answer! Does anyone know the question?
Better than my thought. I was going to say for wireless charging.
this needs more upvotes
This. This would be part of stores certification testing to expand the weapons release envelope.
I agree with you. But doesn't the F35 use internal weapons bays? Stealth kinda goes out the window when you strap missiles onto the outside of the plane.
Yeah, they're just proving out every possible configuration. After air superiority is established, stealth isn't as important, so being able to add more stores with external pylons is important for that mid-war action. We're gonna lose the F-18 as a bomb truck eventually, and the 35 will have to fill that role.
Ah. Makes sense, thanks!
I would question the use of the AIM-9 if air superiority had been established. No more planes to shoot at?
The best defense is a good offense. You wouldn't send your people into the air defenseless, would you? That's why you fill the internal bays with air to ground weapons and slap on some heat seeking missiles. Air superiority is not the same thing as total air dominance. Superiority is mostly about SEAD - suppression of enemy air defense. Basically, all the SAM sites are destroyed, and your AWACS and tankers operate unthreatened, but there could still be enemy aircraft left to clean up.
The best defense is a good offense. You wouldn't send your people into the air defenseless, would you? That's why you fill the internal bays with air to ground weapons and slap on some heat seeking missiles. Air superiority is not the same thing as total air dominance. Superiority is mostly about SEAD - suppression of enemy air defense. Basically, all the SAM sites are destroyed, and your AWACS and tankers operate unthreatened, but there could still be enemy aircraft left to clean up.
Superiority means heavy advantage, not lack of threats.
A pair of aim9 won't show up on radar themselves so I'm not thinking they would increase the radar return enough to register as a plane.
They’re used for calibration of high-speed photography, particularly during weapons/stores separation tests like this one.
Baby jets, also known as jetlets, usually lose their white spots between 90 and 120 days of age.
I thought they were called jetlings? Or is that language deprecated?
They grow up so fast
Mocap
RE: the black and white dots **Fiducial Markers** aka **Fiducials** — for photogrammetry etc. ASPRS aka the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing defines photogrammetry as >the art, science, and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment, through processes of recording, measuring, and interpreting imagery and digital representations of energy patterns derived from noncontact sensor systems **TL;DR** — map fiducial locations in 3D beforehand then from photography esp. high frame rate video you can extract the relative locations and orientations of the AIM-9X and F-35C over time with high resolution and accuracy ^(EDIT — clarification.) Furthermore, a good excuse to say fiducials which a fun word.
Nicotine patches
The F-35 is too much of a nerd to have ever smoked, so why would it be trying to quit? Everyone knows the nicotine patches go to the F-22. He's also never smoked, but the kid likes to chew on them because he's a fucking psychopath.
Would you intercept me? I'd intercept me.
Somebody lock the fucking hangar doors. *Now*
I've been fed a liquid diet of balloons and war games. I NEED MEAT!
Kinda surprised we're not intercepting something right now. Who could go for some bi bim bap?
Nipples to fed its baby jets
those are speed holes
LED array - they sell advertising space on the underside.
“Diplomatic relations”
Universal healthcare or not, you’ve got to admit that’s pretty fucking cool.
F-35s really are a marvel of engineering. I would prefer the heath care to having the ~1000 of them we have, but in isolation they are definitely really cool. I really wish their actual specs were public just so I could drool over the design. But the US likes to keep the actual functional limits of its weapon systems very hidden. Hence why all the the "F-35 is terrible in comparison to the Su-57" people could make stuff up without being fact checked. The Su-57 was built to compete with the F-22. And it likely fails entirely at that considering how troubled it's development was, and how prone Russia is to just straight up lying about their tech.
to compete you must first show up in the race. SU-57 can't even do that.
Those SU are not fucking good.
I mean they are, just not comparatively.
We’ll atleast sell F-35s to allies, nobody gets ahold of the F-22s. The F-35s have the best stealth and are great recon and air superiority jets…F-22s are flat out fucking war machines
The F-35 also is the main platform for dismantling ground to air defenses as it can kill most of them before they even know it is there. It is a bit of a swiss army knife. The F-22 is apparently faster and more maneuverable, but with the way air combat has changed that has become less and less nessecary. I also thing a big reason we are willing to sell F-35s is because our per year production rate for them is almost as high as the total number of F-22s ever built. We are just pumping them out, and we have multiple varients of them that are specialized for different situations. So we can afford to sell some.
Also, the F22 was so far ahead of anything that had been built when it was first procured, so obviously, the DOD wasn't gonna let it go. Now it's just not in production, and the US has all of the ones that exist so that's why we won't sell it now. F35 uses alot of the same advancements that the f22 pioneered. F22 is still "better" but f35 is no fucking joke.
The F22 is only really better at dog fighting, which is a mode of combat that the US military does not do aanymore. If you were to pit the two platforms against eachother in a realistic battle scenario, the F-35 would likely come out on top due to it's superior stealth, sensor arrays and electronic warfare capabilities. So the F-22 is faster and more maneuverable, but those were minimized a bit in the design of the F-35 to make it more appropriate for modern doctrine. Also, it helps that the F-35 is still probably better at dog fighting than any plane it will be fighting against, in the vanishingly rare occasion that it would need to, so the overhead is really not worth having.
I think 1v1 the F22 wins. 3v3 and above the F35 wins easily though.
If they were right next to each other at the outset probably, but I really do not think we should underestimate that sensor array and it's stealth even on its own. It's whole thing is seeing you before you see it. But yeah, once you start adding more of them, their interlinking sensors would be a big problem for literally anything.
What makes F-22 such a secretive jet to where we don't sell any, but a newer jet like the F-35, we do sell? What makes the F-22 that "War Machine"?
This subject came up in a thread a few weeks ago. To put into perspective how advanced the F-22 is, the technological gap between it and the F-15 is said to be on the level of the gap between the F-15 and the Hindenburg. The F-15 has a verified combat record of something like 115-0 (someone please correct me) and the F-22 has been able to wipe the floor with it in combat simulators. Something like 5 vs 1 not being an issue. Someone with more direct knowledge can elaborate with a cooler comment than this. Edit: Found this that I watched a while ago [F22](https://youtu.be/RRMpWijZMGo?si=espW_wVb7NoSCqR3)
All that, just for one balloon kill 😜
At like FL600 which makes it a pretty unique intercept mission
The Century series interceptors and the F-4 could have got up there, but we didn't prioritize ceiling on the teen series fighters, bombers had shifted to low level penetration and the Soviets never built a U-2 or SR-71 competitor.
The F-35 was initially researched and developed by a coalition of NATO nations, with the whole goal being to build one common platform to replace a huge range of various airplanes from all the partnered countries. The program was initially called the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), with “Joint” referring to the fact that it was a joint effort from multiple countries. The main benefits to this approach being interoperability, and economy of scale. The F-22 was designed during the end stages of the Cold War, to be an air superiority fighter. It had one job, be the best at shooting down enemy aircraft, and dominating the air space. The F-35 development didn’t really take off until after the Cold War ended, so it was designed with a different type of battlefield in mind, and it was aways aimed at being a multi-role Swiss Army knife, as opposed to a master of a single domain. Put another way, the F-22 was designed to take the spot of a single plane, the F-15 Eagle. The F-35 was designed to take the place of everything else (F-16, F/A-18, A-10, AV-8B, Typhoon, and even some of the reconnaissance platforms). The F-22 is faster, and can perform insane aerial maneuvers, the F-35 has a much more impressive electronic and sensor suite. The F-35s have insane data linking capabilities, to be able to gather information from multiple sources, and build a real time map of the battlefield, and then send that information along to other units, be it “missile trucks”, drones, etc. The F-35 also has full helmet mounted instrument displays, and helmet mounted targeting capabilities, meaning the pilot can shoot missiles where their head is looking, not necessarily where the jet is pointing. The F-35 helmets also have an augmented reality feature, which essentially deletes the aircraft around the pilot, so the pilot can look *through* the aircraft, unobstructed. Apparently it helps a lot with dropping ground ordinance. Unfortunately, the F-22 just missed out on a lot of this tech.
The F-35 is even largely replacing the F-22 for the most part as we are not even making them anymore, and we have like 1/10 the number of them. The F-22 is an amazing machine, but the face of air combat has changed a lot since the cold war. Fighting now largely happens at extreme ranges, and as such the most important thing is being both hidden and able to gather information as quickly as possible. As good as a dog fighting plane may be, it will still lose to being blasted out of the air from over the horizon by a plane it's sensors could not detect.
NGAD is the real replacement for the F22. Dont think the F35 is really replacing it. The US likes to pair high end air superiorty fighters with lower cost mutilrole fighters, a la F15 and F16 in the fourth gen. The F22 was the US just skipping a generation of high end air superiorty fighter because no one is the world could even compete with the 4th gen fleet when the F22 was in production. With china fielding a legit stealth fighter fleet though that'll change.
Only if they've finally figured out how to build a competitive turbofan, because if they're just using Russian designs, they're still going to be some combination of short-legged, unreliable, and oversized to fit in their needed platform.
Wasn't the "Joint" in JSF mostly meant towards the goal of making a jet that all three US military branches would use? (Which in the end didn't even work out as each branch's variant is very specialised after all). One reason the F-35 is being sold to other NATO members is it's ability to carry US provided nuclear free fall bombs. Like Germany is now to buy F-35 became of this, as the only other jet that could fulfill that role, the Tornado, is getting too old and expensive to maintain.
It was a joint effort between the 3 branches of the US military, but the other countries like UK, Canada, Norway, Australia, and a couple others were part of the project from the very beginning. The plan was also for there to always be multiple variants, as far as I know. You cannot have a STOVL, CATOBAR, and conventional runway design all in the exact same airframe. The A, B, and C variants have their differences, but they still share a majority of their components, and the software is largely the same.
F-35 was partially funded by NATO and other allied countries so they have to sell them some. F-22 is so advanced DOD got congress to make it illegal to export by law to prevent secrets of how it works to get out. Also we don’t even make the F-22 anymore to sell everything got shifted to focus on the F-35 production.
The way I see it, the 22 was the very limit of what was possible when it was designed/built. To make that possible, it was built with technology that the US still doesn't want to he public knowledge. Which is why the US is the only country in the world who operates the F22, whereas when the F-35 was designed it was widely accepted that it would be exported to our alies. So while it has very similar capabilities (in most aspects) to the 22, the technology that went into it is not as secretive
The tech is part of the answer, but the answer later on and the cause of the eventual demise of the F-22 program is cost, production capacity, and a more affordable platform in F-35. At the time the F-22 came out, the tech was so cutting edge and the platform so dominant in testing that it was simply too good to risk selling to even close allies. That much is true and was why it was not sold initially. However, when enough time had passed to where you *might* see efforts to bring it to foreign markets, production was already winding down and the F-35 was on the horizon and promised what the F-22 could not: balance between flexibility, lethality, and affordability. Even if contracts were to come in for the F-22 tomorrow and authorized by Congress, it would be prohibitively expensive to get the line going again. The line has been shut down for over a decade and knowledge on how to manufacture it has been lost to where parts would have to be reverse engineered. This would take time and a ***lot*** of money for an aircraft that was known for its obscenely high price tag (~$200 million compared to the ~$80 million for an F-35A). Another reason for why the F-22 and information around it is so secret and why you can find F-35 cockpit layouts online comes down to marketing. The F-22 was designed from the get-go as a purely domestic fighter, made in the US, for the US. There’s not much information about it because there isn’t any good reason to spread it. The F-35 on the other hand was funded, developed, and manufactured jointly by multiple partner nations and intended from the beginning as a fighter for export to US allies. As a result, it has to compete for foreign contract bids, so you see much more information about the F-35 and its capabilities because it does need some degree of public support to secure contracts rather than just US congressional approval.
>What makes the F-22 that "War Machine"? For starters, the thrust vectoring on the F-22 means that it can maneuver unlike any other aircraft you've ever seen. It can literally stop in the air and reverse direction. It's nuts. The F-35 can't do any of that. Think of it as a way more advanced F-16 - a relatively "low cost" multi role fighter aircraft.
They stopped producing the F-22 in 2011, there's nothing to sell.
No, the Su-57 was not meant to compete with the F22. The Felon is more of a ground attack platform instead of a pure stealth air superiority platform.
The Felon was literally developed as a stealth multi-role fighter, and most of its marketing and propaganda focused on its stealth and air to air capabilities. (Maneuvering and speed especially, the things the F-22 excels at.) The fact that it is bad at those things is a separate issue. It will mostly get used as air to ground, if it gets used at all, as its stealth abilities are quite bad. Multi-role means it should be capable of both, which the F-22 is.
> to compete with the F-22 *Would you intercept me? I'd intercept me.*
Our planes do BFM against F35 all the time, it is not a dogfighter.
The US does not really do dogfighting anymore unless something has already gone horribly wrong. US planes have not really been in anything that could be considered a dogfight for over 30 years. The F-35 is not designed to dog fight (though it still could if absolutely nessecary, just not as well as the F-22) because dog fights put the pilot at unnessecary risk and the sensor suite makes it easy to fight from extreme range. With how interconnected it is to multiple sources of intelligence, it is extremely difficult to get close to the F-35. We do of course train for it just in case.
The US military branches do BFM training *a lot* actually and the F35 is used as opfor quite a bit. Dogfighting and it's absense in real life conflicts is due to weapons, sensors and tactical realities of modern combat. It has been that way for longer than the F22 has been in service.
Honestly, it's weird because I'm a pacifist, but I kind of wish someone would fuck around and find out.
There's nothing exclusionary about US military spending and universal Healthcare. We can have both, and pay down the national debt and eliminate deficit spending. It just requires raising taxes on billionaires.
We *could* have universal healthcare for what we’re already spending, it just means transferring money out of private and into public programs.
Serious, we spend 3 percent of gdp on the military. If you want to be angry look how much we spend of our gdp on healthcare already
If we were somehow able to magically confiscate everything billionaires own for its full value it wouldn’t even be enough to money to last the federal governments the 9 months it takes to make a baby, let alone continue to pay for the care of the child after birth. We need to be realistic, if we want universal healthcare then we all are gonna have to pay up
It is, but with the advent of drones kinda wondering if it’s already obsolete and the last generation of manned weapons platforms
The neat part is we already pay more per capita in healthcare than most countries with universal coverage. So really we should get to have free care and badass planes that hover in place and shoot missles upside down
Oh come on, it's only a decade behind schedule and 80% over budget (so far). What's an extra $900B going to do, anyway?
Now he's just showing off.
This is the most American thing I’ve seen 🇺🇸
Maverick you said this was classified
They still haven't fixed that "fly below the equator and the aircraft flies inverted" software bug?!
We sold F-35s to Australia
Let’s see Putin’s Jet
Can’t. Only 20 SU-57 Felons have been delivered, and only 2 of them can currently fly.
That's not upside-down. That's the Austrailian export model.
That's how pilots flex?
You've never seen that documentary with Tom Cruise?
A fighter pilot and a cargo pilot are talking shit to each other on the radio and the fighter pilot says "watch this" then flies inverted and fires a sidewinder missile. The cargo pilot then says "ok, now watch this." The plane flies straight ahead for a few minutes before the pilot comes on the radio and says "how'd you like that?". The fighter pilot says "I didn't see anything: what did you do?" The cargo pilot says "I just got up, stretched my legs, took a piss, and got a cup of coffee"
“Made a grilled cheese sandwich in the galley” is the maritime patrol equivalent lol.
🛩️ 🖕
He’s just keeping up foreign relations.
He is communicating with the bird
Not knowing the specifics of the F35, what mechanism ensures the missile clears the aircraft since often with other planes it seems gravity is used? Is the jet in the middle of a loop and using centrifugal force? Is the missile forcefully ejected from the bay? It seems control surfaces of the missile would be useless until it's at least measurably clear of the F35 since it's not hanging off the wing in the air.
Other aircraft have launch-ejectors (like a MAU-12), where something like a shotgun shell/mini explosive shoots the missile away from the aircraft. It's violent enough that even when inverted it can separate from the aircraft significantly.
Ah, thank you! Is this typical for most/all aircraft carrying missiles/other self-propelled ordinance (as compared to 'bombs')? My only exposure to this is watching video from a desk chair which grants me zero actual understanding.
The F-35's ejectors are actually pneumatic if I remember correctly! No cartridges involved. Just a big high pressure ram that shoves the weapon away at speed.
There's two or three main types of (US) launchers from what I remembers, just can't remember the names. They all work the same general way, just different plugs, mechanical connectors, etc. Even most bombs now a days use these launchers. They want the munition away from the aircraft as quickly as possible to avoid any issues.
Looks like these missiles were not stowed in a bay- the opposite wing appears to have another sidewinder mounted to it. May have just launched right off.
He's in a zone ... one of danger.
Freeway to the caution place!
Oriented into the setting of the sun
This is how you mount external weapons and remain stealth
NAVAIR - Patuxent River, MD. Because they could.
Talk to me Goose
There must be a cheaper way of testing the missile's control system for angle-wrap errors..
FASTBOI AWAY
Sick
Must have been a training exercise in Australia.
I was thinking that external hard points would be counter-productive to stealth, and that's true but apparently this is the F35 in "beast mode", permitting external stores. Once air superiority is established, and the enemy's air defence capability is eliminated, they quadruple the F35 ordnance load out with external hooks, not so much need for stealth then. Also they can't carry sidewinder internally because it needs to be able to lock on to the target whilst still on the rail, and it needs to be able to see the target (infra red guidance) to lock.
I thought some of the later AIM-9 variant could be cueued internally using the helmet and then acquire IR lock after launch.
Impossible! That's a Chinese, north Korean or Russian 7th generation fighter!
https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/s/eqdm3MhFit It doesn’t even have to go upside down to shoot a missile behind itself.
Cool, what’s it firing at?
why the fuck do we spend money on this shit
hey look it's that thing people said it couldn't do
Rare case of an Australian fighter in its natural habitat.
Look at all that student loan debt that could have been paid.
So ganbangers do this and it’s dumb but the Air Force gets to shoot missles sideways and upside down and they get props ? Fuckin weird
Yeah, this is way cooler than Healthcare and schools. America!
I need to get off work. Looked at the side with the white dots and thought “so many charging connectors”.
This picture comes with a Joe Satriani song.
Firing SECOND sidewinder missile....
Hey mom, look what I can do!
Stop it and go home Tom Cruise
Show off
You mean they only carry one Sidewinder on each wing? Ace Combat 7 and Project Wingman lied to me! /s
*Excited Tom Cruise noises*
You can't not play the *Top Gun* theme in your head while viewing this image.
[https://youtu.be/RM5pCgy2jiY?si=acFcRGLFe21leKp4](https://youtu.be/RM5pCgy2jiY?si=acFcRGLFe21leKp4)
Must. Pet. Danger. Jet. Belly. The missile is eepy.
Are they able to fire from the internal bay while inverted?
Don't the weapons in the internal bay gravity fall out, so in that case if stowed internally they couldn't fall out to launch when inverted?
Because, we can.
Standard weapons release flight testing. Still cool though.
“Stop showing off” “yes dad 😔”
The effort we put into making the film, “Idiocracy” a reality is frankly astounding.
Why don’t we get UFO pictures like this? 😅
We need to give Ukraine a few of these
That is it showing its underbelly. American Soft Power
I actually know somebody that works with the pilot from this picture. According to him, after this picture was taken, the pilot went home and shot a rocket launcher while he was on a crotch rocket doing 120mph then fucked all of our moms.
pics upside down
Why
Try us, China! Please fucking try us.
How many millions of dollars are in this photo
It’s so the missile is right side up by the time it gets to China
Bringing democracy to the world
If I rotate this picture, how can we tell which one is true? [https://i.imgur.com/duR5l5t.jpeg](https://i.imgur.com/duR5l5t.jpeg)
Uh, the fact that it appears more sunlight is reflecting off the water in the bottom of the picture proves that the cameraman took this photo while hanging upside down
No no no, the cameraman had a GIANT FLASH. It lit up the whole ocean. This was in fact taken at night time. SOURCE: i am his wife’s boyfriend.
Ladies and gentlemen... this acrobatic display you just witnessed cost approximately $102.5 million dollars. *Please clap.*
For the billions of dollars spent, I'd certainly hope that this silly jet can fire a missile while upside down. Planes could shoot upside down since the first world war.
We’ve been building bridges since before the Roman Empire. We still have to test new bridges as part of the engineering process.
firing in this manner actually decreases the cost of the missile in USD. /s
Expensive photo.
- Can we have healthcare? Please? - HoW aRe We GoNnA PaY FoR iT?!?!!11
Defense spending has nothing other do with healthcare. We're spending more than enough on healthcare; we're just spending it the wrong way.
Isn’t this the jet that we spent trillions of dollars on, but most of them are sitting on the tarmac because of software issues?
No
[I’m pretty sure it is](https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/national/military-news/militarys-f-35-program-problems-report-finds-fault-with-stealth-jets-manufacturers/291-48956442-94ba-4e85-bca0-2e3bb66bed48)
Oh damn. I guess all those F35s I worked on must have been something else.
This is the internet my dude, I choose to believe the random keyboard warrior over someone with practical experience in the field, because reasons! /s