StrongHarm

Another option is to put some AI wingmen in your group, have them standoff from the AO and switch to each wingman after you spend your Mavs to use theirs. That's potentially 24 missiles. EDIT: RALT+J to switch to your wingman's aircraft

I wonder if the LM/Sikorsky announcement has anything to do with: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2015/07/22/future-choppers-must-share-more-parts-officials-say/ First they put Boeing to shame in the Xplane competition, now they might be aiming for their AH-64 with a multi-service platform based upon current Sikorsky R&D (Comanche?). Not a bad move.

Martin-Baker rescues this Hornet Pilot: http://i.imgur.com/jC6K4gi.gif

No need for a lengthy discussion: http://i.imgur.com/AP3IPYI.gif http://i.imgur.com/aZ2J3fT.gif http://i.imgur.com/tQNldOX.gif Problem solved.

I evolved as a child in the 70s with the aid of television.. and I'm slightly flawed as a result (still go Aaaa! and hold my thumbs up sometimes.. thanks Fonze). How will the practical use of technology and Moore's Law be effected by a few generations of tech knowledge beginning during adolescent development?

haha! Agreed. As much as I like CMANO, I question it's use as a reference in any military hardware discussion, much less a classified aircraft like the F-35. That's like using the D&D Dungeon Master's Guide for planning a big game hunt in Africa.. I'd trust 'The Onion' for news before 'War is Boring'. It's amazing that an entire site could be dedicated to 'trolling'. Here's another of their headlines ROFL!: How a Malaysian Playboy Controlled the Most Powerful Naval Force on the Planet Fat Leonard’s hookers and cash seduced the U.S. Seventh Fleet … and soaked taxpayers for millions ROFL!

I worked on seats in the U.S. Navy. At Red Flag one of the pilots came in the shop and asked if his seat was good to go.. he said was going to be doing some radical flying that day. One of my buddies said; "Sir, if it doesn't work bring it back and we'll give you a new one." The pilot had to eject that day... it was successful. Ejection seats are amazingly complex. It's more than just a rocket that pushes you out of the bird. The sequence operates pneumatically (small squib explosives) with hundreds of actuations just within the first second. It's like a Swiss watch. Here's an interesting read.

Great article Emu. It's a good no-nonsense piece by a credible source: a fighter pilot. He makes valid points: 1. The recent test with the F-16 was taken out of context and was not a 'dogfight'. The report context was tailored to make a political, not technical, statement. 2. Comparing this aircraft to previous generations is ridiculous. Note: I likened it to comparing a '68 Camaro with a 2016 Camaro... it's invalid because a chip and an engine trumps just an engine. They're almost two different types of land vehicles; the only similarities are that they share the same name and both have wheels. 3. In the same line of discussion as #2; this is such a departure from previous designs and the subsystems are so classified that for anyone to speak to it's lack of WVR or BVR fitness is laughable. See my previous posts in this thread for expanded discussion of the same points in this article: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=2428861#post2428861 http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=2428895#post2428895

AWESOME articles Alpha and Emu, thanks for sharing!

Thank you for pointing out the rules about politics.. really I mean that, people don't pay enough attention to them sometimes. Would you say however, if we were to be more realistic than politically correct (oops there's that word again), that referring to a politician is not the same as discussing politics?

It's a wonder they didn't win the war.. if they had in-dash GPS LCDs back then... I knew they had good engineers, but wow! Way ahead of their time.

Definitely.. there's been more Russian military activity this year than any since the cold war. There are currently large troop buildups at multiple border points. Putin actually had two flights of nuclear equipped Bears hug the borders of Alaska and California.. at the same instant he was calling Obama to say 'Happy 4th of July'. LOL.. the balls on that guy! I think he wanted to hear 'uh.. Mr. President, we have a situation' in the background while on the phone.. no kidding, it was in the news. Trolling points: 1000.

Think you have challenges as a virtual DCS pilot? Born without arms, record-setting pilot Jessica Cox

I understand that MIST-IR and EOTS can visually auto-validate targets in the distant BVR (with stable feed to JHMCS). I also read that the F-35 has 'Lock-On After Launch' capability with uplink, and can actually use the AIM-9X BVR and all-aspect. The IFF has an additional interrogation step before launch that does automated multipoint validation fed to integrated SA cues.

AH-64.. I'd gnaw on my monitor and whine like a mutt.

There are a lot of assumptions being made.. such there being any chance that IFF could still be unreliable, and the F-35 lacking in WVR capabilities. There's too little known about the F-35's actual capabilities and subsystems to assume anything. What we do know for certain; the F-35 has breakthrough SA and engage abilities, the *War is Boring* report was falsified to enflame the F-35 debate (see below), and the same people who designed this bird made the SR-71.. 48 years ago. I'm putting my money on Lockheed.

I see Tirak. It's probably language barrier. I apologize. My point was that truth had been manipulated to give a false impression. In my post I show 'Truth:' then 'Falsification:'. The 'Truth' is indeed true, but the 'Falsification' sites how they used that 'Truth' to mislead people.

I can help you understand; read the article.. it's not from the person who made falsifications, it's from another test pilot (and expert) who's saying the report was taken out of context. Read first, post later.

The report is the warped result of someone taking advantage of partial truths to further an agenda... aren't you the least bit curious as to why any professional attached to a military test facility would want to leak this information to *War is Boring*? Truth: An F-16 was involved with an F-35 in a dogfight scenario to test the F-35 Falsification: The F-16 was just a maneuvering reference, they weren't trying to best one another Truth: The F-35 didn't have the same energy retention as the F-35 Falsification: The F-35 wasn't using all flight surface assistance software available (intentionally as it was part of the test), and the test was done in the F-16s sweet spot.. it was conducted to check for unexpected airframe response (hardware only) to out of envelope maneuvers. Here's an interesting post at The Aviation Forum by someone that's a test pilot attached to the same squadron. He has a masters degree focused on flight test, flight dynamics and control system design; facts with no agenda: http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?135460-test-pilot-quot-F-35-can-t-dogfight-quot&p=2237974#post2237974 Here's the response from the USAF on the matter: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2015/07/01/pentagon-defends-f-35-after-report-says-it-cant-dogfight/ Here's the F-35 results at Green Flag 2015 (A+): http://aviationweek.com/defense/f-35-unscathed-hostile-fire-green-flag Here's my theory on the agenda from a previous post in the thread: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=2428861 Personal Observation: The whole matter seems to be a hard hitting revelation that points to conspiracy and incompetence.. but that's your Hollywood intellect speaking to you. It's all being taken out of context. Similar sensationalist crap happened with the F-15 when it was going through acceptance testing.. the end result? 104 kills 0 losses and money well spent. And how did military and DOD personnel working with the bird respond to the media circus? Giggles and gets back to work; it's all inconsequential. Even if the F-35 had subpar energy retention, if the F-16 were able to find it.. and then also perform the impossibility of sneaking up on it.. the F-35 pilot would look through the cockpit floor, see the threat, lock it immediately, and fire an all aspect missile at it before they got into these maneuvers. I love the F-16.. but it's not 5th gen. It would never stand a chance.

GGTharos makes some valid points about the direction of military technology. The USAF announced that the F-35 operated in Green Flag this year with several kills, more time on station and targets destroyed than the A-10, and was the only bird that took zero losses. Turn energy becomes irrelevant when the pilot can look down *through* the cockpit floor, immediately lock a bogie, and launch an all aspect missile at it with an OODA loop that takes a fraction of the time of all previous known sensors. This is a bigger technological leap than we saw between the F-4 and the F-15... and that's really saying something. But we have no context in which to judge this bird. With the attacks on this project by the media, an ambiguous mission profile, and the secrecy of the subsystems, that's really no one's fault. But I hope we're all too intelligent in these forums to believe that this bird is *a lemon* as they would have us believe. The F-15 and AH-64 killed a lot of pilots, went through many groundings and modifications, and generated much worse public opinion than the F-35 has.. and look where those birds stand now.. kings of the mountain. Never forget that the company that made the F-35 is the same company that made the P-38, F-104, F-4, F-16, not to mention the SR-71 and U-2. A lot of us here were in the military. Think back to the one thing that shocked you the most when watching the news after becoming a civilian; civilians (especially the media) know nearly nothing about the realities of war, strategic planning, or military logistics... period dot. Of course there are a lot of sound bites out there aimed at swaying our opinions. The F-35 is enemy of the 'media state' second only to oil. They hate it not only because it's related to war (which we all know is an outdated concept now that we have universal harmony) but because it's money that they could put in their own pockets if it wasn't being 'wasted on that evil worthless war machine'. Best we realists look past all that and not let them provide our opinions and talking points to us. This isn't a Hollywood film where Jack Nicholson makes a bet with another general over the 9th hole that he can scam the country into making a plane that doesn't really fly. The U.S. Military is full of fighting men who understand what's at stake... and Lockheed (along with partners like BAE) have the proven ability to make breakthrough aircraft that always get the job done. As to the A-10; I fully anticipate the F-35 can take the job over eventually and do it well.. just not yet. But you can't trust my opinion on that one.. I'm biased as hell because I do love that Hawg.

I think we can probably take a story leaked by "War is Boring" with a grain of salt. This was a sliced up version of the F-35 used to do flight sciences testing.. kind of like the NASA F-18s covered in weather gear... which would probably lose a dog fight against an F-4. Here's the article: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2015/07/01/pentagon-defends-f-35-after-report-says-it-cant-dogfight/ Pay special attention to the OODA and aspect capable weapons comments. This is what I do for a living, and I can tell you that clean information delivery always makes the difference.. in military or business context.

Oculus does A LOT to enhance depth perception. I enjoyed looking down at the ground and estimating my elevation to a pretty close approximation. It jacked up my inner ear though because it was so much more realistic that my inner ear kept anticipating Gs on bank. I can't deal with the illegible sensors though, so I don't use it much. Looking forward to the release ver.