Entire F-35 Stealth Fighter Jet Fleet Grounded

[Jim Young 2,356]

In case no one has heard yet, this was probably expected - https://www.foxnews.com/us/entire-f-35-stealth-fighter-jet-fleet-grounded-by-military-after-crash-in-september.  Personally, I can see why it was grounded.  In P3D, for me, this is probably one of the most difficult fighter jets to land!

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I don't see this as out of the ordinary, after an accident. After the recent fatality of a passenger, Southwest had its entire fleet inspected for fan blade defects and then grounded 66 planes, because of paperwork mismatches. The F-35 may have a potential engine defect, so it makes sense to be cautious.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

46 minutes ago, Jim Young said:

I can see why it was grounded.  In P3D, for me, this is probably one of the most difficult fighter jets to land!

Jim, I was curious, does the P3D version have the ability to do vertical takeoffs and landings? 

[Jim Young 2,356]

If it does, I have no idea how.  I found the following from the LM Forums - https://prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=126831

It may be that LM cannot release this technical capability of the aircraft.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Dino C's payware version doesn't seem that hard to land. It's a tweaked version of the freeware version and the even simpler version included with P3d.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

 

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Impressive!

John

Edited October 12, 2018 by Jim Young
Removed the video in the quote.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I live not far from Luke AFB, where the F35 is stationed, and I've seen it fly over many times.  Although I do not believe they are the VTOL F35's, they are a sight to behold.  I've seen the F22 Raptor fly out of Luke at airshows and more than any, saw so many F16 flyovers as my old home was within their pattern area, within five miles of the base, and they flew over our neighborhood often coming in to land, though never on takeoff given the prevailing winds.  Usually they would fly in a formation of three or four overhead and from the park behind my home I could see the pilot's heads in the canopies if the light hit them just right. 

Whenever I flew a kite for the local school kids to watch, which I let out to five hundred feet, the height limit for the area, the F16's would fly right over it and do a wing waggle sometimes.  The kite had an eight foot wingspan and had 100# of force on windy days, so I went to a smaller kite with 200 feet of line and a six foot wingspan afterwards, more manageable with about 30-40# of force, enough to get a good arm workout.

I was able to hoist a camera on the eight foot kite, a Canon digital cam, and I found a hack that let it take unattended pics every few seconds at a fast shutter speed.  I called it "Kitecam" and posted pics popular on kite forums at the time, fellow kiters marveled at my simple rig which just used the camera's wrist band, looped into my kites keel, so it just hung and snapped pictures as it rotated in the wind.  It would take hundreds of bad pictures but out of those I got a couple of dozen good captures each flight, including one of my daughter's school which I emailed to her principal as a photo to hang in his office, which he did.  Later I drove the monster kite to Pebble Creek, south of Luke, on a windy day to take photos of where my Mom lived.  After all, everyone wants to see their house from the air.  I got many good photos that way, but finally retired kitecam and later RC cameras because I felt it infringed on the privacy of the astonished neighbors in their pools in their backyards, who sometimes went "clothing optional" in their homes, though I never caught that, they told me their worries, and I respected their privacy after that, and flew the kites without the cams until I moved away in 2015.

John

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

All new aircraft have teething, remember the F-22 was grounded as well leaving Alaska being defended by the Canadian CF-18's for a while there. F-35 is going to have even more teething problems. 

That said I was never a fan of overly high tech. It is the Cheap and Nasty's produced in high volume that will always win the war. F-35 will be useless against mass production of an advisory fighter with a faster production time, and higher numbers of them

It was the same with the Sherman Tank vs the Tiger Tank. High tech will always lose against mass production

Edited October 12, 2018 by Matthew Kane

[John_Cillis 2,406]

12 minutes ago, Matthew Kane said:

All new aircraft have teething, remember the F-22 was grounded as well leaving Alaska being defended by the Canadian CF-18's for a while there. F-35 is going to have even more teething problems. 

That said I was never a fan of overly high tech. It is the Cheap and Nasty's produced in high volume that will always win the war. F-35 will be useless against mass production of an advisory fighter with a faster production time, and higher numbers of them

It was the same with the Sherman Tank vs the Tiger Tank. High tech will always lose against mass production

The F16 was originally supposed to be a cheap, mass production fighter but you know the military, cost overruns and so on.  But the Gulf War proved cheap cannot beat high tech in some circumstances, such as the M1 tank pitted against the cheaper, Russian tanks.  Iraq had cheap jets and they did not perform as well as ours did.  Same held true in Korea with the Migs vs. the F86.  We see some modern jet aircraft emerging from Russia and China but as back in the 80's when Reagan bankrupted the Warsaw pact, it will probably happen again, just look at our carrier fleet vs. any other country.

But with drones soon fighter jets and some surface vessels will become obsolete, why waste money on something to protect a human being when a robot will do.  It will become like Terminator until some John Connor from our present goes back into the past to ward off this type of unfeeling, evil technology where a nerd on a joystick can annihilate an enemy and cause collateral damage that never is mentioned.  As weapons get more expensive, and feed the military industrial complex, the soldier as we know him or her, or jet pilot, or ship captain and crew, will become obsolete.

But the flip side is such technology sometimes backfires and has spectacular failures.  Even today's failed Soyuz launch, which thankfully spared the astronauts, reminds us of the frailty of technology we have grown to trust, I think the Soyuz was the most trusted human carrying rocket system, even more than the shuttle.

Military today does not put the superpowers against each other but instead fights piracy, terrorism and drug wars, or is used to keep third world despots in place.  But drones will help local law enforcement ferret out the bad guys, or help the media where media copters used to be used.  In Phoenix we had a terrible copter crash years back where two copters collided during news coverage of some incident I cannot recall. 

Weaponry always has been the subject of controversy.  And without it, so many civilian inventions we use today just would not exist, our material economy has its dark side but since militaries are world wide, and weapons making, I do not hold the US guilty of something that other countries do anyway.  Eventually the war on terror will wind down as such cycles do, and we will have to shift our military economy slowly back towards civilian uses, or into space, or both.  It will produce a boom time when that happens, as my college economics professor in 1979 used to say, "Guns or butter"....

John

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

27 minutes ago, Cactus521 said:

The F16 was originally supposed to be a cheap, mass production fighter but you know the military, cost overruns and so on.  But the Gulf War proved cheap cannot beat high tech in some circumstances, such as the M1 tank pitted against the cheaper, Russian tanks.  Iraq had cheap jets and they did not perform as well as ours did.  Same held true in Korea with the Migs vs. the F86.  We see some modern jet aircraft emerging from Russia and China but as back in the 80's when Reagan bankrupted the Warsaw pact, it will probably happen again, just look at our carrier fleet vs. any other country.

But all this high tech puts the USA in the same situation that Germany was in at the start of WW2. They had all the high tech but inevitably lost against mass production. U-Boat was the most advanced equipment at the time, easily lost to the Corvettes that were cheap and nasty and produced at a much higher rate, no where near as advanced but easily beat them. Sherman Tanks had a loss rate of 4:1 against the Tigers but the production rate was significantly higher then that.  It didn't matter that they loss 4 to ever tiger because the Germans couldn't make those Tigers fast enough

Gulf war wasn't a large scale war but if a large scale war was to happen again. Those other places in the world that are currently producing the bulk of the worlds goods will convert to war production and will vastly outnumber the USA by producing at a much faster rate. Also the USA is only 4.4% of the worlds population, and not very good and mass production anymore. A little bit of High Tech won't be enough to keep up.

Hopefully it doesn't come to this in my lifetime but I wouldn't bet on High Tech when it comes to Large Scale War. 

Edited October 12, 2018 by Matthew Kane

[John_Cillis 2,406]

1 minute ago, Matthew Kane said:

But all this high tech puts the USA in the same situation that Germany was in at the start of WW2. They had all the high tech but inevitably lost against mass production. U-Boat was the most advanced equipment at the time, easily lost to the Corvettes that were cheap and nasty and produced at a much higher rate, no where near as advanced but easily beat them. Sherman Tanks had a loss rate of 4:1 against the Tigers but the production rate was significantly higher then that.  It didn't matter that they loss 4 to ever tiger because the Germans couldn't make those Tigers fast enough

Gulf war wasn't a large scale war but if a large scale war was to happen again. Those other places in the world that are currently producing the bulk of the worlds goods will convert to war production and will vastly outnumber the USA bu producing at a much faster rate. 

I guess it goes to the "Human Wave" attacks of China in the Korean war, when we were on the brink of winning they intervened and a stalemate took hold instead.  In the end, commitment of military hardware, from any country, will be dictated by cost.  The bigger countries will tire of the military costs when the temptations of global trade and a global economy are so ever present.  China will probably invest the most in military hardware but they have lagged behind and need a blue water navy to protect themselves against the same things we do--dangers to their shipping in waters where pirates can bring down a tanker or container ship if left unguarded.  The newer generation growing up today does not want to see the wars the older generations have fought, they want a world of creature comforts.  And with the moves away from oil, as battery tech evolves with some amazing changes coming soon, the Middle East will be less in our sights as it once was.  There may even be a resurgence of newer, safer, fission reactors with nearly unlimited fuel.  The tech has been there for years but safety was always a key issue.  If that moves us away from coal and oil safely, military objectives will change and a Middle Eastern terrorist will no longer have oil to back them up.  I feel Russia, the US and China as well as Japan and the EU all want to change to a better energy system.  It is natural resources that have been fought over for so long now, not the former wars of ideologies.  Global trade will become the key factor in deciding whether we continue wasting money on weapons of World War when regional conflicts are what we deal with now.

John

[tutmeister 695]

3 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

U-Boat was the most advanced equipment at the time, easily lost to the Corvettes that were cheap and nasty and produced at a much higher rate, no where near as advanced but easily beat them.

Being British and from near to Liverpool i’m a big fan of Corvettes and the whole escort force involved in the battle of the Atlantic. The Flower Class Corvette was the cheap way to bulk out the number of destroyers involved in escorting the convoys. However, numbers were not the reason U-boats were defeated and they certainly did not easily beat them.

So many times during the war, especially in the earlier days, invention and high tech allowed us to defeat greater numbers with more capable vehicles. The use of Sonar, Radar, improved longer range patrol aircraft, aircraft with surface radar and most importantly the cracking of German enigmas codes with the use of computers allowed us to know where wolf packs were targeting. Excellent use of more capable early warning radar with integrated fighter control allowed the Battle of Britain to be won or the advanced breakthrough in ground scanning radar and radio navigation systems along with air navigation computers allowed Bomber Command to start to navigate accurately at night and time raids to the minute rather than the earlier more vague bombing of areas. High tech advances in computerised bomb sights allowed pin point precision that took out key infrastructure rather than the older less accurate bombsightes that again only allowed a rough area to be targeted. The use of these along with high tech munitions that were developed allowed strikes against supposedly impervious U-boat pens.

All these were very high tech top secret inventions that gave us an edge. High numbers of low tech generally do not fare well when facing cutting edge tech that they do not have an answer to although can be dangerous when you do not have a clear tech advantage with a reasonable number or assets.

Chris

[KevinAu 441]

4 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

But all this high tech puts the USA in the same situation that Germany was in at the start of WW2. They had all the high tech but inevitably lost against mass production. U-Boat was the most advanced equipment at the time, easily lost to the Corvettes that were cheap and nasty and produced at a much higher rate, no where near as advanced but easily beat them. Sherman Tanks had a loss rate of 4:1 against the Tigers but the production rate was significantly higher then that.  It didn't matter that they loss 4 to ever tiger because the Germans couldn't make those Tigers fast enough

Gulf war wasn't a large scale war but if a large scale war was to happen again. Those other places in the world that are currently producing the bulk of the worlds goods will convert to war production and will vastly outnumber the USA by producing at a much faster rate. Also the USA is only 4.4% of the worlds population, and not very good and mass production anymore. A little bit of High Tech won't be enough to keep up.

Hopefully it doesn't come to this in my lifetime but I wouldn't bet on High Tech when it comes to Large Scale War. 

The experience of our shermans against the panzers is one of the reasons of our obsession with the highest technology. Never would the US subject its servicemen to fight as an inferior force. The casualties we would suffer as an inferior force would never be acceptable today. This aversion to casualties that drives our politics and policies is why the US has not won a war since WWII.

[GHarrall 494]

13 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

Jim, I was curious, does the P3D version have the ability to do vertical takeoffs and landings? 

No, it’s only an F35A in p3d v4. (It is in fact Dino’s payware version of the A that’s included in v4 minus a few things)

if you want the VTOL B version you need the payware package 

Edited October 12, 2018 by GHarrall