F-35 Achieves Three "Major" Flight Milestones on Same Day?

From the press release factory....

Flying from Edwards Air Force Base, an F-35A flew a 1.9 hour mission with the first-ever load of Block 3i hardware and software. Block 3i is the next level of capability and is planned to support U.S. Air Force F-35A IOC in 2016

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3i is just 2B that is able to run on the new TR-2 hardware (LRIP-6 and later jets and those pre-LRIP-6 that were taken back to the depot for refurb).

No real "new" capability except to establish that they can run the Block 3 software on the new Block 3-software-only hardware.

2 AMRAAMs at two drones!

Yes. About time for the snails-pace efforts. Use this as a reference to gauge aircraft ability in air-to-air combat.

And traps at a rate-of-decent at impact of about 1280 feet per minute. Someday we will find out how many traps it takes to trash the airframe.

3 traps, 1 bolter and some touch and goes / wave-offs.

OPEVAL any day now? The F-35C is 15 percent overweight compared to its 2002 design configuration.

Sounds like something was needed for the end-of-month report.


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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013 
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Bill Sweetman, Aviation Week and the F-35
-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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