I went to the air show at Andrews airbase this past summer. There was what I initially thought was an F-22 Raptor doing all sorts of wild turns & maneuvers that seemed like they could only be possible with thrust vectoring. Turns out, it was an F-35 doing wild stops/starts/Hi-low speed turns. At one point the same F-35 was flying in tandem with a P51 mustang. The F-35 stayed with that propeller plane turn for turn with only one barrel roll to bleed off speed. It was impressive. Now I will admit, I don’t often get to see fighter jets maneuver often, but I was genuinely surprised that it was an F-35 not a raptor.
I wonder if it was the STOVL "B" variant, which is super-maneuverable at low speed. An area that Soviet/Russian fighters outperformed US fighter historically is maneuverability because they often have vectored thrust. The only ones that have that in the US are the -22 and the -35b, and the -35b only has it because it has the downward-vectoring jet to do STOVL stuff.
I’m assuming this is the “harrier-like” version with vertical take-off/land? It was definitely not that model as I did get a good look at it. The thruster was stationary behind the F-35 the entire time. It was flying around the parking lot area as we walked to the shuttle/bus area to herded to the part of the base for the main air show. It was quite literally an awesome sight.
some f35s grounded also wtf the fuel is used as the hydrylic fluid???? idk if that is standard practice but to my non plane engineer brain that seems like you're asking for trouble? https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/israel-has-grounded-some-of-its-f-35s-after-texas-crash
My actual airplane mechanic brain can't seem to understand that. Interconnectivity of the hydraulic system or systems is like literally the opposite of what you want. To then connect it to the fuel system is like criminally stupid. I suspect this tweeter doesn't understand what he read or something and is regurgitating it wrong.
Using a fuel, especially as one as corrosive as JP8, in an extremely highly pressurized hydraulic system seems like a bad idea.
I thought it might be a mistake as well but more digging produced more references like this one https://www.flightglobal.com/engine...f-35b-fueldraulic-line-failure/108583.article "The fueldraulic line powers the actuator movement for the F-35B's STOVL vectoring exhaust system. Instead of traditional hydraulic fluid, the system uses fuel as the operating fluid to reduce weight." seems to be in a few others like the 777 https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/24787/why-is-fuel-used-as-a-hydraulic-fluid
Ok, interesting. It's not so crazy to me now. Fuel already is used in some engine components as a hydraulic fluid, this is just the biggest use of it I've seen. The tweet made it seem like fuel was the only hydraulic fluid
So when I was in Syria, we had Air cover from FA18s and F15Es, and because we were all bored as shit we had them in an unofficial "how low can you go" contest over our FOB. In related news I have tinnitus now because they were going over our heads with afterburners on at 150ft AGL. We tried to have some F35s do it but because they weren't "supposed to go below 10k ft" and I may have called a F35 squadron commander a pussy on the radio by accident because I was ranting about "this pussy ass pilots pussy ass flyby" while the JTAC had his radio on
I assume it’s the exact opposite of fun. Just some straight face melting stuff. Like a Gravitron accidentally did a bunch of meth.
It’s insane how loud the early version of the F35 are. I don’t know if it’s gotten better as the design has improved but they flew a lot of the first ones out of Fort Walton near Destin and their normal take offs were just loud af. I also loved the new Lockheed commercial talking about the next gen fighter.
The Air Force and Navy are already designing their Gen 6 fighter and the Air Forces may have already had it's first flight; both the AF and Navy are keeping VERY quiet about it though, but there's speculation that's why the Navy has been a bit cold on the 35 and sticking with the 18 until it's purpose-built 6th gen is ready. Both of them in theory will have unmanned "wingmen" and the rumored RQ-180 (rumored to be called the White Bat, or, I shit you not, Shaka) may be part of that for the Air Force
Because unlike the last 35 years, where the US's "adversaries" were tin pot dictators or terrorist organizations with effectively no Air Force or Air defense. But now China is the big thing (and Russia again to lesser extent) with modern fighters, radars, and SAMs. Same reason we're not getting computer games based on the new fighters before they even fly like we did with the F22. The RQ180, per the rumor mill anyway, is the true successor to both the U2 and SR-71, which may be why the RQ4 is already being retired
We’ve forever had f-16s up here as well as a-10s, and occasionally f-15s and f-22s. The 35s are so loud I always remark when they fly over “not very stealthy are they” to others.
probably wouldn't be long until they crash one in iran and give all the tech to foreign countries anyways tbh
I was on a beach in San Diego while a jet (no idea which kind) was doing some exercises. Even though it was miles away you had to yell to talk to the person next to you. Just impressively loud machines.
I had basically the same experience. In Tucson I worked directly next to the air national guard who were running F-16s nonstop. Davis Monthan down the street had A-10s which were cool. But holy shit come last fall they were getting ready for an air show at DM and brought in F-35 and F-22. I was with my kids at the zoo the day they were practicing which was about two miles down the road and my son had an absolute MELTDOWN when the raptors came overheard and tbh I could not blame him.
I had "F-22 Raptor", which was super fun as a 8 year old, and "F-22: Air Superiority Fighter" which was like a genuine flight simulator with controls so complicated I think I only ever got the plane to taxi around on the ground.
my brothers and i loved an SNES game called UN Squadron released in 1991 and an f-22 equivalent (the yf-23 that lost the bid) was in the game
Forgive my random posting but the fact we built this almost 60 years ago just absolutely blows my mind. Imagine the type of stuff we are working on now. LA to Washington DC. 64. Minutes.
ben Rich’s book Skunk Works on the sr71 development is phenomenal reading. So many cool stories about how it and the f117 came to be.
An old Air Force codger I work with told me he was at Ramstein AF base in the 80s when an Sr-71 was flying somewhere it could get shot at. I’m hazy on the details but I believe Russia scrambled Mig25s, they radioed to the blackbird that they were to lower their Altitude and be escorted or be fired upon, everyone was tense af listening to the radio when the blackbird pilot started laughing and said “sure come catch us and we will” and they were back over safe skies in like 20 minutes. probably a lot of urban legend there but I’ll take any story on the blackbird. They have one at the USAF museum in Warner Robins Ga. Awesome to look at it you are ever going down 75 in middle Ga
I’ve read similar stories where the only defense it needed against SAMs was to simply speed up. Such an amazing piece of machinery