Recently in Joint Strike Fighter Category

Lockheed Martin recently released this video of test pilots at Edwards AFB, California, intentionally departing the F-35A and testing recovery procedures.

This sort of testing is vital since operational pilots will find a way to depart the jet no matter how departure resistant the aircraft is. It happened during operational testing for the F-22 when one of the pilots managed to get himself into an inverted spiral despite assurances in the Raptor's dash one manual that the jet could be maneuvered with "reckless abandon." If it can happen to a veteran Weapons School instructor pilot, it can and it will, at some point, happen to some brand new B-course graduate--it's just a matter of time.

Incidentally, the Lockheed pilot in the video is Dave "Doc" Nelson, who was formerly a F-22 developmental test pilot, and as he points out, the F-35 really does have excellent high angle of attack (AOA) characteristics. And if what Lea Haubelt, one of the flight test engineers, says in the video is true about the high AOA handling characteristics being better than expected, I'm not sure why the angle of attack limit is set at 50 degrees AOA when they have gone much higher during flight tests.

It may not be a capability that is used often, but extreme AOA performance can be useful at times. A good friend once described pulling more than 63 degrees AOA in the Raptor to escape being from being "shot down" by a high off-boresight missile-equipped Red air threat. It may have been useful for only a few moments, but sometimes it's the difference between life and death.

Unmanned aircraft have been grabbing the headlines today. First, there is now a clearer picture available of what appears to be China's first stealth UAV--but little more than that is really known, everything else is pure speculation. However, one industry source says that to his very experienced eyes, the aircraft is a genuine advance in Chinese aerospace development--unlike the farce that is the Iranian toy that was presented last week.

Meanwhile, the US Navy launched a Northrop Grumman X-47B from the USS George H W Bush earlier today--our very own Zach Rosenberg was there. The Navy got Flightglobal a slot on the helicopter even though they initially told us there was no room. The launch looks like it was quite successful--take a look below.

However, the X-47B did not carry out an arrested landing upon returning to Pax River. That could be because the unmanned jet was having difficulty making even that first trap it did the week before where the Navy showed off a video of the aircraft snagging a wire. Sources told the DEW Line, at the time of the earlier trap, the aircraft now had a 10 percent field boarding rate... So hopefully, this isn't an indication of a major problem. The X-47B guys have had to redesign their tail hook a number of times now due to the same inaccurate Navy-supplied wire dynamics model that was partly responsible for the F-35C's woes.

Meanwhile, back in scenic Crystal City, Lockheed showed off this picture of their Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) aircraft mockup. Lockheed hopes to displace Northrop's  entrant--likely X-47B derived--for the Navy's UCLASS effort.  The UCLASS program will actually take four separate designs to a preliminary design review before downselecting to one. The UCLASS, which is an operational successor to the X-47B demonstrator, will likely be smaller than the Northrop-built prototypes and will likely only have a light strike capability. Speaking of Lockheed--the company showed us a video of the F-35B performing a vertical take-off from last Friday, but paradoxically because of the Navy and Joint Program Office, are not allowed to release it--which sucks for you guys. Frankly, it's just bizarre--it's a big base with lots of people and when a large 40,000lbs fighter takes-off vertically and hovers, folks are going to take notice.

Sources say that test pilots at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, performed the first Lockheed Martin F-35B Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) vertical take-off on 10 May.

The US Marine Corps' short take-off vertical landing (STOVL) variant has always had a requirement to perform vertical take-offs right from the outset of the JSF programme. However, the capability is not emphasized because the F-35B would not be able to carry a tactically significant payload in that configuration.  Operationally, the USMC envisions its F-35Bs performing short rolling take-offs carrying a full load of ordnance and fuel and only performing a vertical landing once the aircraft returns to the amphibious assault ship or expeditionary airfield.

The concept of operations is similar to those currently flown by the USMC's Boeing AV-8B Harrier II squadrons.  Though the Harrier is often touted as a vertical take-off and landing machine, it normally flies a similar short take-off and vertical landing profile for the overwhelming majority of its missions.

The original X-35B prototype demonstrated the ability to take-off vertically in 2001.

Below is an image of the F-35B hovering--but this is not the aircraft that performed the VTO.

Operating costs for the conventional take-off version of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are expected to be roughly 10% greater than those of the Lockheed F-16 Fighting Falcon.

According to the Pentagon's F-35 joint programme office (JPO), Lt Gen Christopher Bogdan, who leads the tri-service effort, provided some preliminary numbers to the Dutch parliament comparing costs per flying hour between the two aircraft on 18 April.

 "In his statement, Bogdan indicated that the cost per flying hour of an F-35A is estimated to be $24,000 per hour; roughly 10 percent higher than F-16 cost per flying hour," the JPO says. "This data was derived in cooperation with the US Air Force and the Department of Defense Cost Assessment & Program Evaluation Office (CAPE). Comparable baseline assumptions were used to evaluate relative operational costs between F-35 and legacy aircraft."

The final cost figures are due to be released in the Pentagon's 2012 selected acquisitions report for the F-35, which is due to be released in May. 

Earlier in the year, USAF chief of staff Gen Mark Welsh had told reporters that the JPO was attempting to reconcile two different sets of cost estimates--one from the USAF and another from Lockheed. The cost numbers diverged because of differing underlying assumptions upon which either side based their estimates.

The US Air Force does not intend to keep the Block 30 Northrop Grumman RQ-4B Global Hawk in service past the end of calendar year 2014 because the Lockheed Martin U-2 and other "classified platforms" can take-over its mission, senior service leaders told the US Congress on 17 April. However, service officials acknowledge that it will be hard to convince Congress to go along with the USAF's plans.

"We did not do that without carefully considering how we'd cover that mission with the U-2 and other classified platforms," says Lt Gen Charles Davis, military deputy for the office of the assistant secretary of the air force for acquisitions. Davis says that further discussions of those classified capabilities would have to be conducted behind closed doors. "There are systems out there that can do this in a variety of different ways," he says.

This is NOT the aircraft in question--this a Lockheed Skunk Works concept for a VTOL UAV.

The USAF would like to use money already appropriated for three additional Global Hawks to help buy back between three and five Lockheed F-35 production aircraft that the service expects it will have to cut later in fiscal year 2013, Davis says. The USAF also hopes to use part of the money to try restoring flying hours for portions of its operational combat aircraft fleet it was forced to ground in recent weeks.

Analyst Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group says that among the classified platforms in question could potentially be a long-range stealth reconnaissance aircraft that has long been rumored to be flying in the Nevada desert. While it is hard to say for sure, it would make sense for such a platform to have low observable characteristics and have high altitude capability, he says. Given the lack of information, it is difficult to say if such a platform is manned or unmanned, however an unmanned aircraft would have far greater endurance. It could potentially be part of the USAF's long range strike family of systems--which includes a new bomber, cruise missile, electronic attack capabilities and hardware, Aboulafia says.

USAF intelligence chief, Lt Gen Larry James, speaking at an Air Force Association sponsored breakfast on 18 April, declined to comment on what classified platforms might compliment the U-2 to fulfill the Global Hawk's mission. But James did say that in the future the USAF hopes to gather and process intelligence data from "all sources" including satellites, manned and unmanned platforms among others for operations in an anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) environment.  

For penetrating intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, the USAF would rely on the Lockheed F-22 Raptor and F-35, James says. But those aircraft cannot yet download the data they gather to the intelligence analysts located at the service's distributed common ground stations. "That's a desire, we don't necessarily have the money to do that right now," James says. "But we're thinking about how do you go after that."

Boeing is unveiling an updated version of its F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter concept at the Navy League's Sea-Air-Space Exposition in Washington DC this week.

The tail-less twin-engine stealth fighter design comes in "manned and unmanned options as possibilities per the US Navy," Boeing says. The design features diverterless supersonic inlets reminiscent of those found on the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The Boeing concept also features canards, which is somewhat of a surprise because the motion of those forward mounted control surfaces is generally assumed to compromise a stealth aircraft's frontal radar cross-section. But the lack of vertical tail surfaces suggests the aircraft would be optimized for all-aspect broadband stealth, which would be needed for operations in the most challenging anti-access/area denial environments.

Also of note in the manned version of the company's F/A-XX concept is the placement of the cockpit--rearward visibility appears to be restricted without the aid of a sensor apparatus similar to the F-35's distributed aperture system of six infrared cameras.

The Boeing F/A-XX concept is a response to a USN request for information (RFI) from April 2012 soliciting data for a replacement for the service's Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler fleets in the 2030s. The Super Hornet fleet is expected to start reaching the end of the jet's 9000h useful lifespan during that time period.

"The intent of this research is to solicit Industry inputs on candidate solutions for CVN [nuclear-powered aircraft carrier] based aircraft to provide air supremacy with a multi-role strike capability in an anti-access/area denied (A2AD) operational environment," the navy RFI had stated. "Primary missions include, but are not limited to, air warfare (AW), strike warfare (STW), surface warfare (SUW), and close air support (CAS)."

Navy leaders had said at the time that they expect any new F/A-XX design to have greatly increased range and offer far superior kinematic performance compared to existing tactical aircraft.

This is a picture of an old Lockheed Martin concept for the A/F-X, which the US Navy once hoped would replace its Grumman A-6 Intruders and F-14 Tomcats following the A-12 debacle and US Air Force hoped would replace the Boeing F-15E, General Dynamics F-111 and Lockheed F117.

Initially it was simply designated the A-X program and focused on developing an advanced high-end carrier-based multi-mission aircraft.  The Navy wanted an aircraft with day/night/all-weather capability, low observables, long range, two engines, two-crew, and advanced integrated avionics and countermeasures. Greatly increased air-to-air requirements were added in 1991 after the Naval Advanced Tactical Fighter was cancelled.

The program was ultimately terminated on 1 September, 1993, during the bottom-up review in favor of what eventually became the Joint Strike Fighter program--which could be why the Navy has always been tepid in its support of the F-35C.

This Lockheed concept--this is a wind tunnel model--according to an industry source who worked on the design almost a lifetime ago, would have had performance that rivaled even the F-22 Raptor. It wouldn't have been quite as spritely, but it would have come pretty close.

The company did a lot of work with making the design's variable geometry wings and especially the wing/fuselage joint stealthy.  But it was apparent even at the time that this was going to an expensive proposition--new engines were probably going to be needed since even the Raptor's Pratt & Whitney F119s weren't going to cut it.

But it would have been pretty awesome if the Navy had actually bought this thing. Oh well...

A Lockheed Martin F-35B Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) completed its first night short take-off and vertical landing during a test sortie at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, on 2 April.

According to Lockheed and the F-35 Joint Program Office, USMC test pilot Maj CR Clift conducted the flight to gather data on the aircraft's helmet and lighting conditions for night time operations. The test was flown as part of ongoing efforts to prepare for the jet for the second of three scheduled sea-trials for the F-35.

"The completion of this test event demonstrates the F-35B is one step closer to delivering a critical capability to the US Marine Corps and F-35B partners in the United Kingdom and Italy" says Lt Gen Chris Bogdan, the F-35 program executive officer. "There is plenty of work to be done and progress to be made, but we're on a solid path forward."

The first F-35 ship trials happened in October 2011, when two F-35Bs performed 72 vertical landings and take-offs aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp off the Virginia coast.

Lockheed Martin chief test pilot Al Norman flew the third F-35B on it first flight yesterday at Fort Worth, Texas.  The aircraft called ZM137 will join two earlier British aircraft at Eglin AFB, Florida, later this year after it finished off its check flights.

The Lockheed Martin F-35B has undergone its first weapons separation test for the Raytheon AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland. The sortie was flown by US Navy test pilot Lt Cdr Michael Burks on 26 March.