F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

[CougarKing]

Lockheed Martin's PR campaign for the F35 across Canada continues with Winnipeg and should be in Vancouver, BC, next week; the exhibition will include an F35 simulator.

CBC link

Excerpt from the Winnipeg visit:

Officials with Lockheed Martin stopped in Winnipeg Friday to promote their F-35 stealth fighter jet, part of a national campaign to promote the jet in Canada.

The U.S. defence contractor is in the midst of a cross-Canada publicity blitz to convince the federal government to purchase the jets.

The contractor wants the jets to replace Canada’s fleet of 80 aging CF-18s, but just one of the jets has a whopping $75-$85 million price tag.
This simulator was available at Lockheed Martin's presentation in Winnipeg Friday.This simulator was available at Lockheed Martin's presentation in Winnipeg Friday. (Catherine Dulude/CBC)
Canadian combat veteran Billie Flynn was brought on the promotional presentation to help pitch the jets.

“If you’re not stealthy, you are not going into bad-guy land,” said Flynn.

Flynn is currently a test-pilot for the F-35 jet.

(...)


Parts manufactured in Winnipeg

The jet does have local ties — some of the components for the F-35 are produced in Winnipeg by Magellan Aerospace.

It’s one of 70 Canadian companies that make parts for the jet.

“For us, it’s up to $2 billion worth of revenue over 25 to 35 years of production,” said Don Boitson, the general manager of Magellan Aerospace.

Lockheed’s promotional tour will continue in Vancouver next week.

Plus more on the PR campaign:

Still, Lockheed Martin is fighting on, sending its executives and a working F-35 flight simulator to wow Canadians with the capabilities of its brand-new, high-tech stealth fighter. The simulator will be on show in Toronto today, and in Winnipeg, Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa in the weeks ahead.

 

[Quirky]

p.s.  Thanks for the daily chuckle about fighters having a small foot print.  That's good stuff! 

Seems pretty small to me. http://goo.gl/maps/J2wEQ

 

[Good2Golf]

Sorry, a bit of a question and a point. First, weren't the helis also being used for quick JTF/troop insertion?

Also, I disagree that jets were "operationally ineffective against slow movers." CF-18s have been routinely tasked over the past 20+ years on drug interdiction missions where slow, low flying aircraft were intercepted. They developed a number of tactics to offset their relative speed issue. AFAIK that role still continues to this day (though I think the actual number of drug aircraft has diminished significantly)

1.  QRF insertion was one task, but so too was air intercept of low, slow movers.  ATI the air tasking order for OPs GRIZZLY, PODIUM and CADENCE if you wish...the truth will free you...

2.  You can disagree with your Government, but they had no confidence that Hornets could intercept and guide threat or interfering aircraft from the area.  The Hornet was a platform physically incapable of intercepting and maintaining same-speed contact with, and with appropriately effective small arms weaponry, influencing potential low, slow movers to leave the restricted area.  You cannot make the Hornet into something that is was not, and still to this day, is not.  "Number of tactics"...like what, "Go away...if you don't, we'll come back in a few minutes after a quick circling manoeuvre and blast past you again..."  Hard to "lock on" to something that could very well have less of a radar cross-section visible to the APG-73 than the fishing kit in the CF-18 pilot's survival vest...  :  As much as you and others may want fast air to be the "be all and the end all" of air interception/aerospace control, it is not.  Full stop.  Government tasking of other RCAF assets, time and time again, has proven this to be the case.  The problem with people that take their position too personally (fighter pilots often fit into this group), is that when their argued position falls, so to do their egos...

Regards
G2G

 

[smale436]

Seems pretty small to me. http://goo.gl/maps/J2wEQ

Thanks for the link! Man that brings back some memories. (Like a giant windstorm on Thanksgiving where a propane tank and screened gazebo went rolling across that entire ramp and a Paul Bunyan container rolled into a van and smashed the back windows ) In any case though, it was a small footprint. Many of the smaller buildings in the bottom right area were constructed on site and held admin, med, IT, CE, MSE offices that also provided service for the Hercs and Airbus and certain other groups. The four hangars were already in place and we only had use of 2 and 1/4 of them.

 

[SupersonicMax]

2.  You can disagree with your Government, but they had no confidence that Hornets could intercept and guide threat or interfering aircraft from the area.

Because you got tasked doesn't mean we were incapable of intercepting low/slow movers. In fact, on several occasions we did exactly that.  You were able to do so, because it was a very focal location and you didn't have a wide area to cover.  Had it been a wide area, you wouldn't have been able to get there in time. 


The Hornet was a platform physically incapable of intercepting and maintaining same-speed contact with, and with appropriately effective small arms weaponry, influencing potential low, slow movers to leave the restricted area.  You cannot make the Hornet into something that is was not, and still to this day, is not.
[/quote]

You are thinking 1 dimension. Think 2 or 3 dimensions.  Because we are flying at a faster speed doesn't mean we cannot maintain the same downrange travel as a low/slow, especially as a 2-ship.  Having intercepted operationally a slow platform, it is possible (and I am pretty sure gives a bigger shock than a helicopter to the TOI)

Hard to "lock on" to something that could very well have less of a radar cross-section visible to the APG-73 than the fishing kit in the CF-18 pilot's survival vest...  :

Based on what expertise?  What is the RCS of a Cessna?  What is the ECR of that Cessna on the APG-73?  Which mode/PRF is that based on?

 

[Good2Golf]

Because you got tasked doesn't mean we were incapable of intercepting low/slow movers. In fact, on several occasions we did exactly that.  You were able to do so, because it was a very focal location and you didn't have a wide area to cover.  Had it been a wide area, you wouldn't have been able to get there in time. 

The Hornet was a platform physically incapable of intercepting and maintaining same-speed contact with, and with appropriately effective small arms weaponry, influencing potential low, slow movers to leave the restricted area.  You cannot make the Hornet into something that is was not, and still to this day, is not.

You are thinking 1 dimension. Think 2 or 3 dimensions.  Because we are flying at a faster speed doesn't mean we cannot maintain the same downrange travel as a low/slow, especially as a 2-ship.  Having intercepted operationally a slow platform, it is possible (and I am pretty sure gives a bigger shock than a helicopter to the TOI)

Based on what expertise?  What is the RCS of a Cessna?  What is the ECR of that Cessna on the APG-73?  Which mode/PRF is that based on?

See the neat little red highlighted part above...try a bit of TWS...you're scanning all over the place, but you lost track.  The 'intercept' was logically "AND-ed" with the 'maintain same speed' part...which you missed.  You want to talk about one dimension?  That's you, my friend.  You're too proud to read what I was writing.  I didn't ever say you couldn't intercept a low, slow mover.  I said you couldn't intercept AND maintain same speed with a low, slow mover and using an appropriate weapon system, influence the slow mover to exit the restricted area.  The fact that the Government in all three stated cases (GRIZZLY, PODIUM and CADENCE) indicates that, and I'll repeat myself here in the hope that perhaps you let your ego pause for a minute to let you understand what is being said...the Canadian Government did not have the confidence that the CF-18 could capably intercept and influence a low, slow mover to exit a Restricted Area, and tasked other RCAF assets to conduct the mission.  It is a statement of fact that the CH146 and the CH124A were tasked to conduct this mission for the aforementioned National operations.

No matter how much you argue, the fact is that the CF-18 absolutely WAS NOT TASKED with the low, slow mover intercept mission for OPs GRIZZLY, PODIUM and CADENCE.  Said before, repeated again.  There are some things that assets other than the CF-18 are better at doing, and that's why the government tasked them.  Specifically for OP GRIZZLY, the valley location of the venue was such that the CF-18 couldn't get anywhere close to a defensive position, hence why both the CH146, and before it's withdrawal from service, the ADATS were used as low, slow mover and vital point defence.

You keep saying the CF-18 can do the low, slow intercept mission.  Maybe, maybe not.  However, when the chips were in, the government gave the task to slow green or grey helicopters, because they could do the task that Government desired of them better and more capably than the higher altitude, air defence jet interceptor could.

The upshot of this is that more than likely, the F-35 would also be as limited in its ability to deal with low, slow movers as the CF-18 currently is, DAS or APG-81 notwithstanding.

Oh, by the way, unless someone is a "choo-choo" train engineer, odds are that they think in more than one dimension.  Even little slow granny drivers in the left lane, with their turn signal stuck blinking, think in two dimensions, and odds are that people who operate in the air naturally think and operate in three dimensions.

Regards
G2G

p.s.  just to humour you, let's say you were running A/A RWS with a 4-bar search and a combination of interleaving high and medium-PRF modes.  Because it's a low, slow target, that wasn't able to violently manoeuvre at several Gz, the narrow high PRF monopulse operation of TWS single-track mode would be a bit of overkill.  With RWS, you can use the high PRF base FM mode (unmodulated) with a follow-on sweep and stabilizing on a medium FM, getting the best of both worlds by resolving any range ambiguities as you approach the target, yet still keeping eclipsing to a minimum.  Since the target is a slow mover and doppler would likely not be a significant issue, an FM chirp would result in better SNR than a steady PRF.  As well, the medium PRF of the interleaved high-med PRF forms in RWS mode would still let you use phase-locked pulse compression to increase range resolution and reduce the effect of clutter, particularly important as the target is a low flier.

 

[HB_Pencil]

1.  QRF insertion was one task, but so too was air intercept of low, slow movers.  ATI the air tasking order for OPs GRIZZLY, PODIUM and CADENCE if you wish...the truth will free you...

Please reread what I wrote. I clearly state I'm asking a question and at the same time acknowledge that other assets were being used to intercept slow movers.

2.  You can disagree with your Government, but they had no confidence that Hornets could intercept and guide threat or interfering aircraft from the area.  The Hornet was a platform physically incapable of intercepting and maintaining same-speed contact with, and with appropriately effective small arms weaponry, influencing potential low, slow movers to leave the restricted area.  You cannot make the Hornet into something that is was not, and still to this day, is not.  "Number of tactics"...like what, "Go away...if you don't, we'll come back in a few minutes after a quick circling manoeuvre and blast past you again..."  Hard to "lock on" to something that could very well have less of a radar cross-section visible to the APG-73 than the fishing kit in the CF-18 pilot's survival vest...  : 

The tactics I note were the ones meant to deal with slow moving aircraft due to the speed differential, like wide arcs or two aircraft circuits. I can completely understand why jets may not be appropriate for intercepts in certain circumstances, like podium and grizzly. In built up or challenging terrain the CF-18 is going to be ineffective. I was just questioning your blanket statement that it is operationally ineffective, when CF-18s have been continually tasked to such missions through NORAD over the past 20 years in different circumstances.

As much as you and others may want fast air to be the "be all and the end all" of air interception/aerospace control, it is not.  Full stop. 

Where, anywhere, did I say this? While I'm not assured that we currently require ADATS, I never said that CF-18 should be our only response. 

 

[McG]

This thread has gotten silly if we are talking about be all and end all solutions but nobody has identified that we really need the VF-1S Valkyrie.

 

[Quirky]

Seems pretty small to me. http://goo.gl/maps/J2wEQ

Thanks for the link! Man that brings back some memories. (Like a giant windstorm where a propane tank and screened gazebo went rolling across that entire ramp and a Paul Bunyan container that rolled into a van and smashed the back windows ) In any case though, it was a small footprint. Many of the smaller buildings in the bottom right area were constructed on site and held admin, med, IT, CE, MSE offices that also provided service for the Hercs and Airbus and certain other groups. The four hangars were already in place and we only had use of 2 and 1/4 of them.

Not to mention the heat, my god the heat. Plus the 1 hour drive to/from the resort, what was that all about? :-X

 

[smale436]

Not sure when you were there as I was there May-Nov with the Hornets. I didn't care for that long drive either out to the Baglio Basile but I was told they moved a certain group of people out there from Trapani due to behaviour that caused unwanted attention.

That long drive to work was at times the most dangerous part of the tour. A few vehicles totalled. The Italian drivers are insane with many men driving vespa scooters with 2-3 kids hanging off with no helmets. We had one vehicle that broke down from a broken clutch and was towed away by what we thought was the rental company's tow contractor. I was driving to work a month later and was being followed by an irate woman who worked for the rental car company and recognized the car we were driving as one of her. She asked what happened to the car that was towed. Apparently it was never seen again. I could a write a book with all the experiences like that we encountered.    ;D

 

[Bird_Gunner45]

The tactics I note were the ones meant to deal with slow moving aircraft due to the speed differential, like wide arcs or two aircraft circuits. I can completely understand why jets may not be appropriate for intercepts in certain circumstances, like podium and grizzly. In built up or challenging terrain the CF-18 is going to be ineffective. I was just questioning your blanket statement that it is operationally ineffective, when CF-18s have been continually tasked to such missions through NORAD over the past 20 years in different circumstances.

Where, anywhere, did I say this? While I'm not assured that we currently require ADATS, I never said that CF-18 should be our only response.

IF CF-18s are not as effective at these tasks as say, a helicopter or a GBAD system (as it could be well deployed in an urban environment, small footprint, etc) than why are we putting $9 billion into a newer system which would be no less effective? 

We know that the US or Britain will provide air cover, but also by the nature of GBAD systems no sort of GBAD (as it is tasked to manoeuvre and will only defend the nation it belongs to while aircraft will defend the larger area).  CAS and AI could be much more cheaply (and I would argue effectively) done by UAS or AH.  GBAD could allow for the SHIELD function within expeditionary operations more effectively as it would protect against the PGM, missile, UAS, and aviation threats (which are the real future threats... if you want I can post the future air threats analysis done by the army).

There's also a line of argument that states that incidents such as Tarnak farms would be less likely if UAS were involved, as there would be less likelihood of pilot error.  UAS pilots have more reaction time and better access to the wider picture than jet pilots.

So.... is the F-35 a self licking ice cream cone?

 

[Loachman]

UAS pilots have more reaction time and better access to the wider picture than jet pilots.

That is entirely situationally-dependent.

It was true in Afghanistan, where we could watch somebody for hours, but may not be in a future conflict.

Mistakes were also almost made despite that. "More reaction time" does not always equate to better decisions. A Tarnak Farm-like error is less likely due to improvements in command and control measures rather than partial substitution of manned aircraft by unmanned ones. It is not, however, impossible. That is direct experience.

I will not be willing to put all of my eggs into the UAV and GBAD baskets for some time to come. All systems have their strengths and weaknesses, which is why we require several in order to cover their individual weaknesses.

It is not yet time to give up on manned fighter aircraft, and won't be for a while yet.

 

[MarkOttawa]

GBAD:

" Brazil is set to buy 34 used German anti-aircraft tanks. This is the latest in a series of deals to bolster the armed forces ahead of two major international sporting events – and a visit by the pope.

A Brazilian army statement confirmed on Friday the military's intention to buy 34 used anti-aircraft tanks from the German armed forces, but said the price was still being negotiated. The contract, which is to include provisions for training and maintenance, would be signed shortly...

The German tanks are equipped with two 35 millimeter guns mounted on a rotating turret atop a Leopard 1 tank chassis. This model, the "Gepard 1A2," was phased out three years ago by the Bundeswehr and replaced with missile systems.

Brazil's latest purchase follows a deal in February on Russian medium-range missiles and artillery batteries..."
http://www.dw.de/brazil-buys-german-tanks-ahead-of-world-cup-olympics/a-16739361

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Bird_Gunner45]

That is entirely situationally-dependent.

It was true in Afghanistan, where we could watch somebody for hours, but may not be in a future conflict.

Mistakes were also almost made despite that. "More reaction time" does not always equate to better decisions. A Tarnak Farm-like error is less likely due to improvements in command and control measures rather than partial substitution of manned aircraft by unmanned ones. It is not, however, impossible. That is direct experience.

I will not be willing to put all of my eggs into the UAV and GBAD baskets for some time to come. All systems have their strengths and weaknesses, which is why we require several in order to cover their individual weaknesses.

It is not yet time to give up on manned fighter aircraft, and won't be for a while yet.

you're right that's it not time to give up on manned fighter aircraft... perhaps we dont need a $9 billion Gen 5 though

 

[Loachman]

I see nothing else worth buying, especially for the length of time that we'll need to keep it in service, and no significant, if any, cost advantages to any of the other contenders.

 

[SupersonicMax]

you're right that's it not time to give up on manned fighter aircraft... perhaps we dont need a $9 billion Gen 5 though

It'd be better to get a 12B$ 4th gen ?

 

[Quirky]

you're right that's it not time to give up on manned fighter aircraft... perhaps we dont need a $9 billion Gen 5 though

AFAIK, the money is already set aside or budgeted for the NGF. It doesn't matter what we buy, the money will be spent either way. So why bother with inferior equipment when we can get the latest technology available for the same (or in this case cheaper) price? I don't understand the hatred that goes towards the F-35, Canada isn't losing any money on developing the jet. All the costs are on the US.

 

[dapaterson]

AFAIK, the money is already set aside or budgeted for the NGF. It doesn't matter what we buy, the money will be spent either way. So why bother with inferior equipment when we can get the latest technology available for the same (or in this case cheaper) price? I don't understand the hatred that goes towards the F-35, Canada isn't losing any money on developing the jet. All the costs are on the US.

Canada is in fact contributing to the development of the aircraft, but through a miracle of modern accounting, those development costs are not being considered as costs for the acquisition.

And, as reported by DND/CF last December, the $9B may not be enough; their mitigation plan is to buy less aircraft.

 

[Canadian.Trucker]

And, as reported by DND/CF last December, the $9B may not be enough; their mitigation plan is to buy less aircraft.

Which after all the discussions I don't think anyone wants to see.  Fewer airframes in my feeble mind mean less capability no matter which way the cake is sliced.

 

[drunknsubmrnr]

Probability of needing that contingency money is baked in to their figure. Basically, the auditors think they'll need that contingency or they'd put in a higher figure.