FighterJet
Latest
'Elephant Walk-ing' $3 billion worth of F-35 fighter jets
After years of cost overruns and criticism, the US military has started to deploy its stealth-enabled F-35 fighter jet. To communicate that message in no uncertain terms, the Air Force's 388th and 419th Fighter Wings carried out combat exercises meant to test the capabilities of their F-35As. The drill started off with an "Elephant Walk" that placed 36 of the jets (one is missing in this photo) on the runway all at once, worth $3 billion, at least at the current $90 million per airplane price.
Watch the US Navy’s electromagnetic catapult launch a fighter jet
The US Navy's next-gen Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) has already shown it can hurl weighty dead-loads. Now, after months of trials, it just propelled its first actual aircraft. A jet fighter performed the first EMALS launch and recovery from the USS Gerald R. Ford on Friday.
US Air Force says the F-35 is ready for combat
The F-35 Lightning II has faced more than a few technical problems and cost overruns in the 15 years since Lockheed Martin first won its production contract, but it's nearly done overcoming those hurdles. The US Air Force has declared that the F-35A (that is, the conventional takeoff model) is officially ready for combat. The first squadron to get the advanced jet, the 34th Fighter Squadron at Utah's Hill Air Force Base, can now deploy it on real-world missions if necessary.
Visualized: F-35B fighter's vertical landing, in the dark (video)
The jury's still out on Lockheed Martin's F-35B fighter. The aircraft is expected to cost the US more than $1.5 trillion over its lifetime, and it's been described as being too heavy and too sluggish -- one critic has gone so far as to call the jet a "dog." One thing's for sure, though: the F-35 looks mighty impressive, especially when it's landing vertically on an aircraft carrier. In the dark. Click past the break for a look at Lockheed's trillion-dollar light show, courtesy of Uncle Sam.
US Navy's X-47B is the first unmanned plane launched from an aircraft carrier (video)
After limbering up with taxi tests since December, the X-47B unmanned combat air system has finally taken off from an aircraft carrier, making it the first pilotless plane to have successfully done so, and with a catapult launch to boot. Despite the craft's ability to fly on its own, it was controlled by a human aboard the George H.W. Bush after it was flung from the ship. Once in the air, the Northrop Grumman-built craft was guided back for a landing on a runway planted on terra firm. Now that the bird's proved it can handle launches at sea, other excursions will put the automatic navigation and landing features through their paces. Hit the break for a video of the X-47B taking to the skies.
Operational F-35B fighter jet's first vertical landing was years, billions in the making (video)
Lockheed Martin's F-35 program has been a political whipping boy seemingly forever, but a production VTOL 'B'-variant of the pricey supersonic jet finally did what it was made for: a vertical landing. That happened nearly three years to the day after the estimated $304 million (each!) jet's first mid-air hover test, at which point the Pentagon pegged the cost at $83 million. Inflation aside, the US Marine's variant seemed to make a fine, if solid three point landing and Lockheed Martin says it's made considerable strides in the flight testing program over the last couple of years, despite all the overruns and delays. Hopefully that means the US Marines, Britain's Royal Air Force et. al. will be able to deploy that capability on their F-35B's soon -- ie, before they're already obsolete. Check the video after the break. Update: As commenter daveschroeder pointed out, this is the first vertical landing of a production version of the F-35B. Test copies of the fighter (with test pilots aboard) have been performing the feat since late 2011, so we've tweaked the article to make that point clear.
X-47B unmanned combat aircraft starts light workouts aboard USS Truman (video)
While the USAF has been tacking missiles onto Predator drones for quite some time, so far a true unmanned attack plane has yet to grace any carrier decks -- until now. The US Navy has started flogging an X-47B Unmanned Combat Aircraft System (UCAS) aboard the USS Truman, with a video (below the break) showing it taxiing around the flight deck. The current round of tests has focused on "handling and control characteristics," but officials have said the robotic stealth fighters could be launched from the ship's catapult "if all conditions are nominal." The X-47B has already completed some flight tests, and was even launched from a sling on November 29th, but all that happened at naval air bases, not on the open water. With all the unmanned aircraft coming into the military's system, we can imagine a lot of pilots on the Truman were giving it the stink-eye.
Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter cockpit demonstrator hands-on (video)
We spend hundreds of hours on board a variety of airplanes each year, most often en-route to a trade show or product launch event, but occasionally we have a rare opportunity to hop on board military aircraft, to test out unrelated products, or, even more unusually, to take a seat behind the yoke. Sadly that's not what we're doing today -- well, not exactly. We are taking a closer look at the F-35 fighter jet at Lockheed Martin's Fighter Demonstration Center just outside our nation's capital, but, being in the middle of a corporate complex, there's no actual Lightning II on hand. We were able to take a simulated ride, however -- this isn't your ordinary 4D sickness-inducing amusement park thrill. The F-35 is by far the most advanced Lockheed jet to date, with updated radar, all-internal weapons, improved tracking systems, 360-degree infrared coverage with a visor readout, and a full-stealth design, not to mention the incredibly capable glass cockpit powered by more than 9.3 million lines of software code, and an overall smoother experience for pilots that could end up spending shifts of 12 hours or longer in flight. The F-35 has already seen plenty of field time in the US, with more than 500 flights already in 2012, and it's set to make its way to the UK armed forces next week and the Netherlands later this year, but while the aircraft is quite familiar to the pilots tasked with flying it, the public hasn't had an opportunity to experience Lockheed's latest airborne warrior. We flew a simulated mission within a grounded duplicate of the flyable F-35 cockpit, and the capabilities and improvements are quite clear -- you definitely don't want to encounter an F-35 from a previous-generation aircraft. The dual 8 x 10-inch touch-enabled displays combine to give you 8 x 20 inches of real estate, with dedicated modules for the weapons systems, targeting, and navigation easily accessible -- you can also move them to different panels depending on your current objective. A pair of joysticks at the left and right side provide direct access, letting you move a cursor to track enemy crafts or ground-based targets as well, and a very slick heads-up-display mounted in the helmet provides infrared mapping and instrument readouts. Overall, it seems to be an incredibly powerful system. Unfortunately, the mock-up on display here isn't accessible to the public, but you can join us for a behind-the-scenes look just after the break.%Gallery-160208%
