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F-35 carries 22,000lb of ordnance?


Enzo the Magnificent

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Just found this on www.F35.com

 

"In stealth mode, the F-35 can infiltrate enemy territory that other fighters can’t, carrying 5,700 pounds of internal ordnance. Once air dominance is established, the F-35 converts to beast mode, carrying up to 22,000 pounds of combined internal and external weapons, to return to the battle to finish the fight."

 

What a Beastie!!

Edited by cngaero
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1 hour ago, Enzo Matrix said:

The weapons certainly aren't.  Paveway II was a British bomb with US guidance.  All subseuqent Pavveways have been purely American.

ASRAAM is British or largely British, being a lineal descendant of the Hawker-Siddeley Taildog.

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2 hours ago, cngaero said:

Just found this on www.F35.com

 

"In stealth mode, the F-35 can infiltrate enemy territory that other fighters can’t, carrying 5,700 pounds of internal ordnance. Once air dominance is established, the F-35 converts to beast mode, carrying up to 22,000 pounds of combined internal and external weapons, to return to the battle to finish the fight."

 

What a Beastie!!

all fine, but the B model that Britain has is limited to 2 1000lb class weapons and 2 Amramms in the weapons bays...

the A and C models might be capable of doing so though!

 

it is always the details that matter and make the difference.....

Edited by exdraken
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17 hours ago, Alan P said:

I love the recurring BM threads full of snark and incredulity about the F-35.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity

Come on, bring in some alternative facts and first hand knowledge! ;)

 

Edited by exdraken
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4 hours ago, exdraken said:

Come on, bring in some alternative facts and first hand knowledge! ;)

 

Why? Everyone seems very happy in their little world of fun, why let facts spoil a good time? 😂

Edited by Alan P
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Ok let's deal with the reality. Unless the Russians decide the 'West' is about to attack. The  F35 will only ever be used to snuff out, without extreme precision, various terrorists.

It's stealth or it's otherwise virtues are irrelevant.

An A10 would do the same job, rather less expensively.

 

Let's be honest it's a solution for a non existent problem.

 

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According to Wikipedia the aircraft can carry up to six external hard points rated up to 15000lb (6800kg) and an internal weapons bay that can accommodate 7500lb ( 2590kg) of ordnance. It also say that the total weapons payload is 18000lb (8100kg ).

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9 hours ago, noelh said:

Ok let's deal with the reality. Unless the Russians decide the 'West' is about to attack. The  F35 will only ever be used to snuff out, without extreme precision, various terrorists.

It's stealth or it's otherwise virtues are irrelevant.

An A10 would do the same job, rather less expensively.

 

Let's be honest it's a solution for a non existent problem.

 

It's a long-term solution for a future problem whose roots are very much in today. Secure, real-time communication of large amounts of data is critical in tomorrow's war. 'Snuffing out terrorists' is merely an amuse-bouche for the conflicts the F-35 was designed to fight.

 

And while we're talking about Russia and conflict, the West has finally woken up to the cyberwar it has been unwittingly part of for the best part of fifteen years. Guess which project was the prototype for the kind of disinformation war the Russians have been perfecting? Yes, the F-35. They want it dead because it's the one weapons system they can't match. And look at us, happily crying BS at the very real capabilities of one of the most startling weapons systems the West has managed to produce, because we read some stuff on the internet and popular press.

 

There are lots of reasons for fringe and conservative voices to hate the F-35: it's a massive project, it's extremely expensive and it smacks of big government and military-industrial might. But capability is not among its failings, and people who persist with rubbishing 5th Gen with spurious claims of parity with the A-10, Harrier and Tornado are not being clever.

 

Yes, let's deal with the reality.

Edited by Alan P
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9 hours ago, noelh said:

Ok let's deal with the reality. Unless the Russians decide the 'West' is about to attack. The  F35 will only ever be used to snuff out, without extreme precision, various terrorists.

It's stealth or it's otherwise virtues are irrelevant.

An A10 would do the same job, rather less expensively.

 

Let's be honest it's a solution for a non existent problem.

 

This is IMHO a very dangerous approach...

It is impossible to know today what threat will appear tomorrow and given the time needed to develop a new aircraft it is necessary to have in service at any time something capable of dealing with the worst possible threat.

Following your logic the RAF should have not bothered developing high speed fighters in 1933 as the only use of air power in the previous 10 years had been colonial policing operations.. imagine fighting the BoB with Lysanders..

It is also not true that An A-10 could have performed the missions typical of the kind of war fought in the last 10-15 years by Western air forces.. operations over Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan have required precision strikes that the A-10 was never capable of carrying out and in conditions where an A-10 would have been totally unsuited for. 

There's also the matter of power projection: the deployment of a wing of modern fighters is a deterrent that most countries will take seriously, a wing of A-10s would be a joke for anyone with a half decent air defence system

 

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On 12/7/2019 at 11:31 PM, noelh said:

Ok let's deal with the reality. Unless the Russians decide the 'West' is about to attack. The  F35 will only ever be used to snuff out, without extreme precision, various terrorists.

It's stealth or it's otherwise virtues are irrelevant.

An A10 would do the same job, rather less expensively.

 

Let's be honest it's a solution for a non existent problem.

 

 

I can guarantee that having F-35s along for Op ELLAMY would've been handy given the RF threat that existed. Iran has a handy AD system, as does North Korea. The Syrian AD system is fairly handy - ask the IDF (who won't tell you all the cunning stuff they do to defeat it, but they do worry about it and defeat it - and one of their solutions is the F-35A Adir), particularly the crew of the F-16I which was bagged by it. We never got on top of the Serbian IADS during ALLIED FORCE (see the loss of the F-117 and F-16). The Russians and Chinese are prepared to sell fairly decent AD systems to client states, while there are strong suspicions that some friends of Iran have at least sought to obtain kit which is a bit more of a threat than a 14.5mm DShK or similar. 

The 'non-existent' problem exists and has been combated, by the RAF, in the last 24 hours - but as no aeroplanes were lost and no adversaries bombed/shot down, you'll not hear about it until the squadron F540s appear in the National Archives in about 20 years. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 07/12/2019 at 23:31, noelh said:

 

Let's be honest it's a solution for a non existent problem.

 

Necessity is the mother of invention. There must be a problem to which the F-35 is a solution otherwise nobody who have spent a lot of time and money on the design and build. Governments like collecting taxes not spending them, that normally goes way over budget and then they have to answer awkward questions. Forgive my cynicism.

P.S.

Are we talking English or American pounds? There is a 2 ounce difference.

Edited by Abandoned Project
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