Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire F-35 RAMP STRIKE

Interesting audio at 0:05 to 0:11....(look at the men) (I agree, we're going down this road again) (that'll be a bullet) , (you know she could be a)...(garbled)....(that's an understatement)....



She? Is that a reference to the pilot?

Rocky, years ago (‘82-‘83) time frame we had an Air Force exchange Pilot and WSO in VF 171, the F-4 Replacement Squadron (RAG) at NAS Oceana. The Skipper asked them if they wanted to go to the boat and they both said “heck yeah”. For CQ, it’s a chit load of night bounce hops with two day periods, the first and then another about halfway through with simulated emergencies, single engine, etc)

They did the full workup of day and night bounces and got their “field qual” which means they’ve developed the skills to do it. They went out and did really well with day quals. The Skipper asked them if they wanted togo for the night qual. Their response…

“No way”. 😁

In the Phantom on the cat shot, you had full aft stick to ensure the jet got to the climbing attitude off the bow. Just as the cat released, about a hand width forward of full aft kept you from over-rotating. Later in their fleet squadron, the new guy’s first heavyweight cat shot with full fuel fuel and missiles aboard always brought everyone to the ready room to watch.

On our exchange crew went off on their first cat shot, the Major was a fraction of a second too late in letting out that little backstick and they over-rotated big time. Somebody got a photo of it from the island and you could clearly see their little white helmets through the tops of the canopies. 😁

We took measurements of the length and wingspan on the photo, did the trig and we figured they were about 45-50degrees nose-up. Yee haa! A framed copy of the photo, signed by all of us was included with their squadron plaque at their going away party. 😊

It’s just a special skill that we start working on when they start jet training. It’s the only part of the flight where everyone on the ship can see how good you are.

I'm betting their eyes were the same size as their helmets, too!

As I've often said, military flying is never easy, but some of it is a wee bit easier than others. You guys did the hardest kind. I've always acknowledged and admired that.

yeah, I forget the salient facts here

Sounds to me like a movie or TV show playing in the background.

Most of it is just as you say.

I work with guys who have either flown it, been involved in its development, or doing contract tactics development for the F-35 and they say the system capabilities are incredible, really game changing. The multi-sensor integration between platforms is eye watering, you can have F-35's designated as strikers remain completely stealthy, not emitting anything, who can target the bad guys based off of data linked from aircraft 20 miles behind you. Every aircraft's sensors are feeding information to the other's so you see a picture of everything on your displays. You see everything on the battlefield, not just what your own sensors are showing you. It can integrate with other aircraft types so while the F-35 has limited internal payload for missiles and bombs to remain stealthy, it can act as a designator for a standoff F-15 or F/A-18 with a much larger loadout to designate while they shoot from behind.

The guys I know who've flown it say it really reshapes the air battlefield, it's like going form a flip phone to an Iphone.

Yeah, could be something like that.

Did the pilot survive?

I thought I heard the pilot ejected at some point, like when the bird was going overboard?

The pilot survived.

It is fascinating to see y'all expert guys discuss this matter. This is one reason I like this forum.
I knew some guys who were grunts in Vietnam, quite a few of them, but I don't know any pilots.

Maybe when the Navy finishes their investigations, they will fill in some of the blanks to the public.

They will, but that will be a year or more from now. That's just how these investigations go - there are NO rushed conclusions.

I'd imagine right now the biggest thing is recovering the aircraft before someone else does.

Glad he made it.

One of the guys I worked with is a retired Marine Bird whose last assignment was the F-35 and from what he told us, it’s exactly as you relate. By itself, the aircraft’s weapons system is incredible, especially with current missiles. We got to get in the mobile simulator and what it can do is simply amazing. Add to that data sharing with other sensors and aircraft is leaps ahead of any other systems. If you can see somebody visually or on your radar or any one else’s sensor, they’re in trouble.

Depends what comes out of the Mishap Investigation.

There is no doubt it's an incredible piece of technology. The problem comes in when you look at the cost and what gets sacrificed to have a few shiny new objects. The strength, and downfall, of any program is requirements and the three versions plus multi-national requirements drove those so we ended up with such a long gestation period it required multiple technology injections to end up with a modern fighter. That costs huge $. At the time, open systems architecture was a concept and the F-35 was the first time it was implemented so on the positive side, it should be much easier to upgrade and keep current than any fighter before it.

However, it will never live up to it's original range requirement for example and that means it needs some sort of tanker, and alas, the S-3 tanker went away as a result of needing money to fund the JSF. Now the CVW has F-18 E/F tankers with so little "give" that the Navy must rely on big wing coalition tankers (KC-135, KC-10 etc) to execute the mission.

Essentially, because of JSF, the bill came due and the Carrier battle group, that circa 1991 could do virtually any type of mission from Deep Strike, Nuclear and conventional long range attack, Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (My fav!) Long Range War at Sea, Long range and close in Anti-submarine warfare, Intelligence Surveillance and Recon, Close air Support all as a self-contained package, has now been reduced to doing power projection inside of about 500 miles if it needs to be done organically.

Are carriers still valuable? Yep, but a a lot less flexible and capable than they were. If we have to defend Taiwan it's going to be an interesting plan. As always, the guys at the tip of the spear will get it done but we've done them no favors with betting so much on JSF.

if I haven't killed all my Mini / Air Boss cells, I think it's 20 ft of movement in 5 seconds. there are a lot of inputs whether to cancel flight ops. The LSOs and the CO will make the ultimate decisions.

sometimes MOVLAS (manually operated) is an option, but just as much as the amount of pitch, the speed (period) of the movement can also be a disaster.

IFLOLS gets all its pitch and roll from the ship. SPN-46 (?) and if the period of pitch is too fast the lens can't keep up.

That's not what happened here, lol.

OH, edit. there's a section in LSO NATOPS if you can get it to load that talks about pitching deck, high winds, changing the basic angle and stuff. I had to memorize that at one time...

There’s a couple of really big negatives with the F-35. First is short legs. This is a huge liability. Way too many aircraft are acting as tankers and tanking has inherent risks and leaves assets vulnerable. Relatively slow. Speed kills. Third is the maintenance and lower availability inherent in such a complex system. The F-35 has so much new technology but I hope they use the lessons learned and quickly move to the next generation of aircraft.

But I thought all carrier landings were controlled crash landings... Guess some are less controlled than others.