RAAF F-35s will be altitude and performance limited against regional threats

(image-APA)

The goal of the F-35 is to be a strike aircraft. Air domination was supposed to be taken care of by the F-22 They work as a team for different pieces of the over-all air plan puzzle.

The PW135 jet engine and the now-gone GE/Rolls F136 jet engine for the F-35 program were designed to give their best efficiency at 25,000 ft. and below. Specifically to give good loiter performance. When you have a bunch of tankers in your hip pocket, loiter in the combat area is more important than harping on combat radius.

This overly optimistic graphic shows the dream of the F-35 but even if it was able to meet its design requirements, it would never match an F-22, or SU-3x, or PAK-FA and so on.


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Sales force or no.

So why is Australia getting an altitude limited aircraft to replace the F-18?

Yes the F-35 may go above 40,000 ft, but that is not its original purpose. Nor will that help its inherent weakness in design requirement.

The program has been struggling with aircraft performance for years:

Similarly pilots are looking forward to a larger part of the flight envelope being cleared. “Flying at 400 knots and pulling 4.5 g’s in this fighter is difficult because it wants to do so much more,” Miller said. “Tactically we are rarely going to be flying the aircraft at less than 400 knots.”

The upcoming Block 2B software provides weapon capability and expands the flight envelope to Mach 1.2, 5.5 g’s, and fifty degrees AOA. The F-35Bs will eventually be cleared to operate at Mach 1.6 and seven g’s.

All this becomes interesting when you look at the LM F-35 brief to Norway.


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25,000ft.

An earlier Norway brief had the altitude higher. But that was before they started flying the jet. In addition, a sickly area-rule hurt because the core airframe design had to be fat to fit in the lift fan for the STOVL F-35B. Yet again, the STOVL requirement helped ruin the A and the C. If it wasn't for the B, we might even have functioning F-35s by now.

Given the program management incompetence thus far, maybe I am being too hopeful with that last one.

A big SU, to be even more common in the Pacific Rim...and worse threats, will perform comfortably at twice that altitude.

Australia wants to get an aircraft that is completely uncompetitive with current and future regional threats.

The public should be asking why.

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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013 
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Aviation Week (ARES blog) F-35 posts (2007 to present)
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)
-A look at the F-35 program's astro-turfing
-F-35 and F-16 cost per flying hour
-Is this aircraft worth over $51B of USMC tac-air funding?
-Combat radius and altitude, A model
-F-35A, noise abatement and airfields and the USAF
-Deceptive marketing practice: F-35 blocks
-The concurrency fraud
-The dung beetle's "it's known" lie
-F-35's air-to-air ability limited
-F-35 Blocks--2006 and today
-The F-35B design is leaking fuel



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