There is so much wrong with this video I don't even know where to start. First, there are only two types of aircraft engines, piston and turbine. When a turbine is used to drive a propeller, it's called a turbo prop. When he is talking about turbo props, he shows pictures of a piston driven propeller aircraft (Cessna 41x), and piston engines are the most common type of engine used on propeller driven aircraft, not turbo props.

He mostly gets it right about turbo jets, except again, every aircraft he shows when talking about turbo jets uses a turbo fan (the F-15 and F-16 both use afterburning turbofan engines). They get their thrust from the hot expansion of exhaust gasses, but he gets it wrong with turbo fans, which get most of their thrust from the bypass air from the fan.

LOL I can't be a pig and Sarah Palin at the same time. Make up your mind

Those are all valid criticisms, but nobody apart from the flight engineers and test pilots truly know whether this plane is a lemon or not. If it does everything it's supposed to do, then it's exactly what the military asked for, just 10 years too late....

Any suitability and fit for purpose criticism that anyone has ever come up with for the F-35 also applies to just about any piece of military equipment that has been created in the last 70 years. Engineering is a balancing act, and an iterative process. Almost every aircraft, and vehicle in the military today was built to fight a soviet army. Luckily that never happened. But that means that most aircraft and vehicles in the military today have been grossly modified to make them fit for a different purpose. The F-35 will probably go through this as well over the next 30 years, because it's a normal part of the life-cycle of military equipment. Almost every plane dropping bombs now was previously designed as a fighter. But nobody ever calls them out for being mutants like they do with the F-35, they call it additional capability. The F-35 was born with these capabilities instead of being added over time.


Expensive: I'll agree. Could the money have been spent better else where? Definitely. You could argue that the cost is tiny compared to that of a full scale war, maybe F-35 is a good deterrent. Air superiority is the key to winning a war. If you're going to spend money then that's where it should be spent. When the oceans rise enough, is a country like Indonesia going to lash out and try to take land and resources for their civilians? Maybe. I doubt all 200 million of them will just stand there and starve. (Ok I'll concede, this does make me sound a bit like Palin. But hopefully not as dumb )
They could have probably made 3 different stealth planes for 1/2 the cost, but that has it's own strategic downsides. You have to have the right assets in the right places or you have to spread them quite thinly. With a multi-role plane you have all of the capabilities everywhere. Just a matter of a loading it with different weapons.

Not needed: Time will tell whether this is the right plane, but new planes are needed. And they absolutely must have stealth. Within 10 years, weapon systems will be so advanced that if you are spotted, you're as good as dead. We are currently dropping bombs on fairly unsophisticated enemies, but wars tend to escalate quickly. You just never know either way, and it's better to be prepared for the worst. There are plenty of countries with very good planes and pilots that could get sucked into a conflict. If you're really unlucky you could be fighting US made planes with pilots trained in the same way, and you don't want to be fighting a fair fight.
Further still, Russia, China and Japan are developing their own stealth planes, which pretty much forces everyone else to do the same thing.
Especially if Donald Trump gets elected. You never know who that crazy asshole is going to provoke into a war

Doesn't work: It's still in development and testing.

Overtasked: It does the same stuff the aging multi-role planes (that were originally built as fighters) do. With the addition of stealth, and better weapons/sensors/comms. Small performance variables don't win wars, superior tactics and situational awareness does.

Underpowered: Almost every plane ever built has had it's engines upgraded to give it more thrust through it's life. And engines on planes are almost a disposable item, they're constantly being replaced throughout the life-cycle of the plane. Like a formula one car.
The current engine, is already the most powerful engine ever in a jet fighter. It is good enough to fly super sonic without an afterburner, which none of the planes it's replacing are capable of.

Piloted: Agreed. But who knows, maybe a Boston Dynamics robot will be flying it soon

Test Failing: That's only a good thing. You want things to fail during tests, and not in the real world. Testing and finding flaws is a normal part of developing anything.

Fragile: That can be said for all US aircraft. They all need to have the runway checked for FOD, because one little rock can destroy even the best plane. Russian aircraft on the other hand are designed to be rugged though, because they're runways are in terrible condition. But in reality, all sophisticated equipment needs constant maintenance, especially when even a simple failure at 40,000 feet becomes an emergency.

Quickly Obsolete: Time will tell. Perhaps it would have been better to keep upgrading current planes with more technology like plasma stealth gas that make then partially stealthy, better sensors and more computing power. But by the time you've done that you've got a plane that's as heavy as F-35 anyway, and not as capable. Although it might have been cheaper in the long run.

Like I said in my previous comment. All of this doesn't make an interesting story so you'll only ever hear the two extremes which are "the plane sux" vs "it's invicible!!11" depending on your media source.

The F-35 can fly both faster, and slower than the F-16, and longer at high angles of attack that would stall most planes. It although can't out accelerate the F-16 though since F-35 is heavier. But having the best acceleration isn't really a factor in modern air combat, where missiles are being thrown at each other from any between 20-100+km's range. As long as you can accelerate good enough, which being a fighter plane it can.

The F-35's afterburner-less supersonic speed is more important in a BVR(beyond visual range) engagement, since that's what allows you to put more distance between you and an enemy missile. The idea being that you fly perpendicular to a missile making it cover more ground and it runs out of fuel and speed so it falls out of the sky before it can reach you. Of course to lock onto a stealth plane you'd need to be quite close in the first place, by which time it would have shot you down, at least that's the theory.

If it comes to a close range scenario, say enemy AWACS manages to detect the F-35s, and direct a bunch of enemy fighters through a set of mountains to sneak up on the F-35s. And a visual range or even dog fight ensues. Then the F-35 would use a short range missile that can turn 90+ degrees and shoot behind itself . Which no other plane can do since all of the sensors are forward facing on all other planes.

But you're of course right, there is always eventually going to be a way of countering the stealth advantage, it's an arms race after all. Most likely it will be countered by some kind of cheap jamming drone swarming, which would make the F-35s sensors useless, and missiles too few, forcing the engagements to happen at shorter ranges.


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What I mean by dog fighting is a one on one engagement where each plane is trying to furiously out maneuver the other. That is a rare occurrence. There is a WW2 era video that explains the tactics used that make the one on one style dog fighting obsolete. https://youtu.be/C_iW1T3yg80?t=530

The planes have a system where as soon as one plane is engage by an enemy, then your wingman, or a spare clean up squadron comes and mops it up, since the enemy makes it self an easy target when engaging a friendly.

i wasn't aware trains had afterburners

Engage afterburner!
*engineering

The afterburner uses the 2 main exhausts, you can see it in action when the plane lifts at 0:23 just before the central flame starts. I think it's switched off after a few seconds.

I'm not sure what the point of this is, I can only think it is to ensure dumped fuel isn't rained upon anyone. Maybe pilots can roast marshmallows when they're at base, I don't know.

Does anyone know if this is the planes actual afterburner? I can't see how this is usefull otherwise?

And if it is the afterburner it doesn't seem logical. A heatseeking missle would LOVE it. Night stealth would be impossible.

edit: according to OP afterburner seems to be separate, that makes this feature even more puzzling to me? Why not dump from wings like other planes?

>> ^kronosposeidon:
Wow, I had forgotten about so many of those games. Defender, 1942, Arkanoid...wow. If I had all those quarters back I could buy Google. But I regret nothing!


Still remember the first time I saw Afterburner. One of the first "articulated" video games. You sat down and it rotated back and forth to simulate G force. I must have dumped $400 that summer.

Neato! I knew this thread had the could be a generator of information.

>> ^bareboards2:

From my ex-military pilot, currently sim military pilot trainer big brother, in response to this vid:
My Fuel Boom Operator Friend says the static discharge is no biggie, he would plug this guy and give him all the fuel he wants. He wouldn't let him close within a 1/2 mile without seeing him though. Once he sees him he will let the vis drop a bit more. He estimates the video is showing greater than 1/2 mile vis. Which means he would be closing on a radar return outside of the 1/2 mile point - skin paint only. The WX radar has to be off when he gets this close. Theoretically, the WX Radar might trigger a big boom.
I dumped fuel inflight in the vicinity of lightning once as we were in a world of hurt (Unsafe gear, no brakes, hydraulic leak all over said gear and brakes) - and there were no rules against it - and since I didn't blow up no new rules were written. This was my best opportunity to have my own WARNING in the aircraft manual - they are usually written in someone's blood.
I had an F-111 driver tell me the story about when he was frustrated with his wing man during a rejoin because his wingman couldn't find him in the weather at night. His dump mast was between the engines near the exhaust. So he hit dump, turned ff fuel dump, and then quickly went to afterburners. He claims the resulting fuel air blast could be seen with your eyes closed.

From my ex-military pilot, currently sim military pilot trainer big brother, in response to this vid:

My Fuel Boom Operator Friend says the static discharge is no biggie, he would plug this guy and give him all the fuel he wants. He wouldn't let him close within a 1/2 mile without seeing him though. Once he sees him he will let the vis drop a bit more. He estimates the video is showing greater than 1/2 mile vis. Which means he would be closing on a radar return outside of the 1/2 mile point - skin paint only. The WX radar has to be off when he gets this close. Theoretically, the WX Radar might trigger a big boom.

I dumped fuel inflight in the vicinity of lightning once as we were in a world of hurt (Unsafe gear, no brakes, hydraulic leak all over said gear and brakes) - and there were no rules against it - and since I didn't blow up no new rules were written. This was my best opportunity to have my own WARNING in the aircraft manual - they are usually written in someone's blood.

I had an F-111 driver tell me the story about when he was frustrated with his wing man during a rejoin because his wingman couldn't find him in the weather at night. His dump mast was between the engines near the exhaust. So he hit dump, turned ff fuel dump, and then quickly went to afterburners. He claims the resulting fuel air blast could be seen with your eyes closed.

>> ^silvercord:
I like the way he turned on the afterburners when he saw what was coming.


Yea, rather than stopping, he speeds up. He must have had something real important to get to.

I like the way he turned on the afterburners when he saw what was coming.

Afterburners of course don't work without substantial air compression. The air is compressed when the plane is travelling really fast, say 500mph. Even if an F-15 could control the vertical takeoff (no way in hell with no control surfaces or nose rockets), it would never have the thrust from a standstill.


Also, this has to be a dupe. It is ancient video...