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"PENTAGON WORKING TO GIVE F-35 JSF NUCLEAR-STRIKE CAPABILITY"



 
 
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  #121  
Old May 13th 09, 10:43 PM posted to rec.aviation.military,sci.military.naval,rec.aviation.military.naval
Ken S. Tucker
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 442
Default "PENTAGON WORKING TO GIVE F-35 JSF NUCLEAR-STRIKE CAPABILITY"

On May 13, 5:05 am, "Kurt R. Todoroff"
wrote:
In article
,
"Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

On May 13, 1:03 am, frank wrote:
On May 12, 5:13 pm, Andrew Swallow wrote:


Let me guess, corrections invited.
Today, software and computer enhanced flying is
well known to a military pilot. (The rumor that the
F-22's crossing the International dateline caused
the computer - via software glitch - to crash is a
typical example).
In a sense, software removes pilots burden.
When was software first used? I'm guessing it was
1st used to automatically control the F-111 wing
sweep.
Ken


Ken,

The pilot commanded the F-111 wing sweep position via a lever that was
mounted underneath the left canopy rail. It hung underneath the rail
and was hinged to flip up (outboard) to stay out of the way. The pilot
would move his left hand from the throttles up to the handle, grab it
and rotate it down, then push it forward or pull it back. Forward
equals wings move forward, back equals wings move back. When the handle
was stowed in the outboard spring loaded position, it was friction
locked from moving forward or back. The wing sweep control handle was
connected via manual cable (not electrical cable) to the high-lift
control system, which in turn controlled the wing sweep position. Wing
sweep position was directly proportional to wing sweep handle position.
The two hydraulic systems provided control power to move the wings. The
wing sweep actuator was a non-reversible system that prevented the wing
sweep position from being affected by airloads. The forward position
was 16 degrees leading edge sweep. The aft position was 72.5 degrees
leading edge sweep. The wings moved at 3.8 degrees per second. The
aircraft placard G limits were -3.0 to +7.33 symmetric when the wings
were stationary. This were later changed to -1.5 to +7.33. During wing
sweep, the placard G limits were 0 to +4.0 symmetrical. Assymmetric G
during wing sweep was prohibited.

The F-14 Tomcat used a more sophisticated wing sweep system. The
pilot's right throttle contained a five position thumb switch (button)
on the inboard side which was very similar to the trim button on the
stick except that unlike the trim button which was spring loaded to the
center position, the pilot could place the wing sweep button in any of
the five positions. The positions we

Forward: Sweep wings forward
Aft: Sweep wings aft
Down: Sweep wings to sixty degrees (I think)
Up: Autosweep
Center: No command

In the Autosweep mode, the Central Air Data Computer (an analog device)
commanded the wing sweep position according to Mach number, using a
pressure altitude bias. Furthermore, regardless of wing sweep mode, the
CADC would not allow the wings to be over-sped. If the pilot manually
commanded the wings forward, the CADC would stop the wing sweep movement
when they reached the computed Maximum Safe Mach value. If the pilot
left the wing sweep control in the center (no command) at takeoff
instead of up (Auto) then the CADC would start to sweep the wings aft
during aircraft acceleration to prevent overspeeding the them. The
forward position was 20 degrees leading edge sweep. The aft position
was 68 degrees leading edge sweep. The wings moved at 15 degrees per
second. The aircraft placard G limits were -1.5 to +6.5 symmetric even
during wing sweep. Grumman improved on the F-111's wing box to gain
this capability, unfortunately at the expense of a substantial amount of
extra weight. Variable geometry wings proved to be a great asset to the
F-111 in the interdiction/strike role. In my opinion it provided no
benefit to the F-14 in the A/A role. The F-15A empty weight was 28,500
pounds. The F-14A empty weight was 40,000 pounds. Most of this was due
to the VG component of the aircraft. These two aircraft are nearly the
same length.

The F-14 used a simple fly-by-wire throttle. The interconnect between
the throttles and the engine fuel controls was electrical. The F-16
uses a similar FBW throttle system, that compliments its FBW flight
control system which which GD borrowed from the F-111. GD used the
Vark's triple channel FBW flight control system, added a fourth channel,
and added a few more features (ie. limiters, some of which were
eventually added to the Vark's FBW FCS) and then used it in the F-16.
Kurt Todoroff


Thanks Kurt, We (wife and I) studied your post carefully,
For me, you put me into the F-111 and F-14 cockpit.

In the early 70's there was a kind of renaissance in
aviation, (I was in the bearing business, SKF), and the
F-111 was maturing, as were the F-14, F-15, and the
fighter competition, F-16 and F-17 was hot stuff.
The B-1A was suffering from bearing problems, the
C5-A had wing strength issues.

I agree with your F-14 thesis, the VG weight penalty
was not worth the performance gain, especially in
view of the F-18, but also recognize the subtle diff
where the F-111 and then B-1 is concerned, as you
point out, in the long strike mission.
Regards
Ken
  #122  
Old May 14th 09, 09:15 AM posted to rec.aviation.military,sci.military.naval,rec.aviation.military.naval
frank
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 105
Default "PENTAGON WORKING TO GIVE F-35 JSF NUCLEAR-STRIKE CAPABILITY"

On May 13, 3:50*am, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:
On May 13, 1:03 am, frank wrote:



On May 12, 5:13 pm, Andrew Swallow wrote:


Ken S. Tucker wrote:


[snip]


For instance using ADC (Analog to Digital) and DAC
(Digital to Analog) converters going into an Elektronic
Brain....was nearly sci-fi.


It still is sci-fi.


Although nowdays it is the analog side they do not know about.


Andrew Swallow


Not really. We were collecting analog data as late as early 90s. Some
were doing digital , most data was analog. Had to do conversions, did
that on tape systems, read analog tape, created digital tape, ran
digital tape as input to computer systems. I don't know if they do
digital data recordings directly, now, would make sense but there are
reasons not to do it. you can get higher frequency of data with analog
data. highest was FM, could get 1000 samples / sec. Real interesting
looking at realtime data. Usually wouldn't print it until right at
where you needed data. Recorders spit out tons of thermal paper. Fun
to watch. Vast majority was 20 samples / sec at most, which was fine
for analog. I had some data requirements at 10000 cycles / sec, what
they did was run it at 10th of the speed it was recorded at. For some
reason, analog to digital was a 1:1 time write to tape. One hour of
data took one hour to convert to digital record. Then we had to run
the digital tape through some other programs to make sense of it all.
Usually was just a voltage point. Conversion created say acft, tail,
flight #, date, time, mach #, alt and whatnot. Lots of the conversion
literally was a patch board hookup. Flight data reels in raw format
were probably an inch, inch and a half wide, weighed about 50 lbs. One
wasn't bad, two were real strain to carry. Most fighters had one tape
recorder. Easier to do analog data right off of transducers.


Let me guess, corrections invited.
Today, software and computer enhanced flying is
well known to a military pilot. (The rumor that the
F-22's crossing the International dateline caused
the computer - via software glitch - to crash is a
typical example).
In a sense, software removes pilots burden.
When was software first used? I'm guessing it was
1st used to automatically control the F-111 wing
sweep.
Ken


Good question.

Incidentally, there was a problem in the F-16, I think early mid 80s.
OK, remember all your trig? Yeah, the class you never though made
sense. Had some function, was something divided by cosine of heading,
and something else divided by sine of heading. You guessed it. When
they hit due north, system went nuts. There was a reason they taught
us division by zero didn't work. Would fly great then just go nuts.
Took a while to figure that one out. Fix was if you went to something
divided by zero enter some other function into it.

I think guidance and control was the initial area. IF you ever studied
aero engineering, that was the course that would kill your prospect
for a degree. Yeah, in the real world, all those formulas were really
used. Honest. Except in the real world, you programmed it, not solving
it by hand to get all the sub sub sub sub scripts right. Been there,
did that, you know what I'm talking about.

The more complex the systems, the more problems crop up. Some aren't
found for years. Then the active AF comes back and screams that its
broke and it needs to be fixed. Keeps flight test funded anyway. Its
not like we broke it on purpose. Sometimes we sent it out knowing we
couldn't figure something out. B-1 had nose wheels getting stuck up in
flight. Every airplane probably has something.

Fly by wire in 80s was when computers really came into their own. Some
like the X-29 were all computer controlled. Forward swept wing. Test
pilots said it was real smooth. Feedback was something like 50 times a
second. You would say fly to this point, it would do it smoothly even
in turbulence.

Early B-1A crash, #059 was due to going to test point high speed at
200 ft, wings swept back. When wings went back, all the weight in the
wings caused CG to go aft, once it pitched beyond limits, nose went
up, then everything went South real fast. Couldn't move fuel fast
enough to get over it, departed controlled flight. There was a FCGMS
Fuel Center Gravity Management System but it was turned off. That was
upgraded, pretty much harder to turn off. Spent a lot of time on
stability with vanes on nose of a/c and TF and other stuff.

About mid 80s lots more TF or TA (terrain following, terrain
avoidance) showed up. Some were tied to altimeter, keep this distance
to ground, some looked ahead worked on some sort of mapping data to
figure where they were going. Some were IR systems instead of RADAR.
That got tied into autopilot. Big deal to convince somebody to fly 200
ft at .85 Mach and say, trust me it works. I think that was lowest
limit, at least what we used.

Heard Tornado pilots were absolutely insane. Then again they were RAF
and sort of didn't have to follow our regs. Were supposed to, but its
their airplanes. Heard all sorts of stuff about those guys being just
no fear at all. USAF used to be higher faster farther, they were
pretty much lower & faster.

Once you put computers in airplanes, data increased a lot. B-1 had I
think 6000 possible data points. Not all used at once, not all in one
airplane. Usually 200 or so realtime in a flight test, others post
flight. By the time AC-130U and MC-130H showed up, they were up to
80,000 parameters. Instrumentation Engineers went insane. Then again,
they could add stuff all over the airplane. Pretty much all digital.
Literally took 8 hours to run the program to set up what you were
looking for off the airplane for each flight test, this was to
determine what parameters to look at from the data stream. Data for
instrumentation sort of was like swiss cheese. Think parameters in
columns, rows were calibration coefficients, thickness was flight
number. Insane. Even decades later. Stole it from AEC or whatever it
turned into.

F-22 wanted 2 Gb / second data rate, sent to I think 5 locations real
time, ability to quick look at data instead of strip charts. No ARIA
following it. Forgot how many parameters. Some high data rate. Usually
used 20 samples / sec or less (1991 anyway). That was what RADAR was
set to capture data at. Cameras also, so if you merged RADAR, camera
with other data it all fit at 20 samples / sec. Engineers would slice
and dice data depending on what they were doing tests on.

wing sweep was set initially with a level. Only had a few settings.
Wasn't like you could do 12 degrees, 13 degrees. Was like 15, 30, 67.
On B-1 both wings were at same setting. F-14 had problems where one
was say 50 , one was 15. Real emergency to get it down. That
eventually got fixed, but don't know the details. Don't know if F-111
would have that problem. But, it had other problems to solve. Big one
was fatigue on wings moving in flight. Lost more than a few with wings
coming off. GD eventually solved that but it was pulled when sent to
Vietnam pretty quickly. Got a real reputation as a problem child until
Desert Storm and the Libyan raid.

Considering how far we went with from pretty much levers and all that
to hydraulic controls to computer controlled, its nothing short of
just amazing. Obvious when you look back, at the time pretty much
computers in an airplane?????
Especially when punch cards and 8 inch floppy disks were state of the
art.
  #123  
Old May 14th 09, 01:20 PM posted to rec.aviation.military,sci.military.naval,rec.aviation.military.naval
Alan Dicey
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 24
Default "PENTAGON WORKING TO GIVE F-35 JSF NUCLEAR-STRIKE CAPABILITY"

Keith Willshaw wrote:
"Ken S. Tucker" wrote in message
...

In a sense, software removes pilots burden.
When was software first used? I'm guessing it was
1st used to automatically control the F-111 wing
sweep.
Ken


AFAIK the first aircraft to use a digital flight control system was
a modified F-8C with the F-16 being the first aircraft fitted
with the system on the production line.


Actually, Keith, the initial FCS for F-16 was analog. F-16 didn't get
digital FCS until Block 40, where it was necessary for the LANTIRN
capability. 1989 onwards.

The first production fighter with digital FCS was the F-18 Hornet,
digital from the start. First flight 1980, into service 1983.

Trials aircraft using digital FCS begin with the NASA F-8C, as you note.
1972 is incredibly early for digital systems, the NASA program was
given some support by Neil Armstrong and used digital FCS and inertial
systems from the Apollo LEM. So there's a spinoff from the Apollo
program that you don't often see mentioned - digital fly-by-wire!

The AFTI F-16 program used digital FBW from 1982, and the BAE Systems
FBW Jaguar demonstrator (quad digital FBW) began in 1981.
  #124  
Old May 16th 09, 02:45 PM posted to rec.aviation.military,sci.military.naval,rec.aviation.military.naval
Ken S. Tucker
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 442
Default "PENTAGON WORKING TO GIVE F-35 JSF NUCLEAR-STRIKE CAPABILITY"

On May 14, 1:15 am, frank wrote:
On May 13, 3:50 am, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:



On May 13, 1:03 am, frank wrote:


On May 12, 5:13 pm, Andrew Swallow wrote:


Ken S. Tucker wrote:


[snip]


For instance using ADC (Analog to Digital) and DAC
(Digital to Analog) converters going into an Elektronic
Brain....was nearly sci-fi.


It still is sci-fi.


Although nowdays it is the analog side they do not know about.


Andrew Swallow


Not really. We were collecting analog data as late as early 90s. Some
were doing digital , most data was analog. Had to do conversions, did
that on tape systems, read analog tape, created digital tape, ran
digital tape as input to computer systems. I don't know if they do
digital data recordings directly, now, would make sense but there are
reasons not to do it. you can get higher frequency of data with analog
data. highest was FM, could get 1000 samples / sec. Real interesting
looking at realtime data. Usually wouldn't print it until right at
where you needed data. Recorders spit out tons of thermal paper. Fun
to watch. Vast majority was 20 samples / sec at most, which was fine
for analog. I had some data requirements at 10000 cycles / sec, what
they did was run it at 10th of the speed it was recorded at. For some
reason, analog to digital was a 1:1 time write to tape. One hour of
data took one hour to convert to digital record. Then we had to run
the digital tape through some other programs to make sense of it all.
Usually was just a voltage point. Conversion created say acft, tail,
flight #, date, time, mach #, alt and whatnot. Lots of the conversion
literally was a patch board hookup. Flight data reels in raw format
were probably an inch, inch and a half wide, weighed about 50 lbs. One
wasn't bad, two were real strain to carry. Most fighters had one tape
recorder. Easier to do analog data right off of transducers.


Let me guess, corrections invited.
Today, software and computer enhanced flying is
well known to a military pilot. (The rumor that the
F-22's crossing the International dateline caused
the computer - via software glitch - to crash is a
typical example).
In a sense, software removes pilots burden.
When was software first used? I'm guessing it was
1st used to automatically control the F-111 wing
sweep.
Ken


Good question.

Incidentally, there was a problem in the F-16, I think early mid 80s.
OK, remember all your trig? Yeah, the class you never though made
sense. Had some function, was something divided by cosine of heading,
and something else divided by sine of heading. You guessed it. When
they hit due north, system went nuts. There was a reason they taught
us division by zero didn't work. Would fly great then just go nuts.
Took a while to figure that one out. Fix was if you went to something
divided by zero enter some other function into it.


Yes, the heading indicator needed to go from due North to
due South, going over the North pole.
It's peculiar to using "spherical coordinates" with latitude
using 180 degrees and longitude using 360.
(I have a program on that, I'll look it up).

I think guidance and control was the initial area. IF you ever studied
aero engineering, that was the course that would kill your prospect
for a degree. Yeah, in the real world, all those formulas were really
used. Honest. Except in the real world, you programmed it, not solving
it by hand to get all the sub sub sub sub scripts right. Been there,
did that, you know what I'm talking about.


Yes, an Array like A(a,b,c,d). Once the array variables
are properly defined, it really becomes straighforward,
but documentation is the key.

The more complex the systems, the more problems crop up. Some aren't
found for years. Then the active AF comes back and screams that its
broke and it needs to be fixed. Keeps flight test funded anyway. Its
not like we broke it on purpose. Sometimes we sent it out knowing we
couldn't figure something out. B-1 had nose wheels getting stuck up in
flight. Every airplane probably has something.

Fly by wire in 80s was when computers really came into their own. Some
like the X-29 were all computer controlled. Forward swept wing. Test
pilots said it was real smooth. Feedback was something like 50 times a
second. You would say fly to this point, it would do it smoothly even
in turbulence.

Early B-1A crash, #059 was due to going to test point high speed at
200 ft, wings swept back. When wings went back, all the weight in the
wings caused CG to go aft, once it pitched beyond limits, nose went
up, then everything went South real fast. Couldn't move fuel fast
enough to get over it, departed controlled flight. There was a FCGMS
Fuel Center Gravity Management System but it was turned off. That was
upgraded, pretty much harder to turn off. Spent a lot of time on
stability with vanes on nose of a/c and TF and other stuff.


That was a sad experiment. IIRC it was called pilot error.
Reminds me of the the F-23 excursion, the fly by wire
is good, but has limitations, imposed by flight dynamics,
like if it's too tail heavy, the horizontal stabilizer over-shoots,
and complex oscillations set in. The horizontal stabilizer
near a stall condition, drags and so on.

About mid 80s lots more TF or TA (terrain following, terrain
avoidance) showed up. Some were tied to altimeter, keep this distance
to ground, some looked ahead worked on some sort of mapping data to
figure where they were going. Some were IR systems instead of RADAR.
That got tied into autopilot. Big deal to convince somebody to fly 200
ft at .85 Mach and say, trust me it works. I think that was lowest
limit, at least what we used.

Heard Tornado pilots were absolutely insane. Then again they were RAF
and sort of didn't have to follow our regs. Were supposed to, but its
their airplanes. Heard all sorts of stuff about those guys being just
no fear at all. USAF used to be higher faster farther, they were
pretty much lower & faster.


Watched some video of Tornadoes during Iraqi war,
it looked like them guys were blowin' dust off the sand,
bet the occasional guy went to 30'.

Once you put computers in airplanes, data increased a lot. B-1 had I
think 6000 possible data points. Not all used at once, not all in one
airplane. Usually 200 or so realtime in a flight test, others post
flight. By the time AC-130U and MC-130H showed up, they were up to
80,000 parameters. Instrumentation Engineers went insane. Then again,
they could add stuff all over the airplane. Pretty much all digital.
Literally took 8 hours to run the program to set up what you were
looking for off the airplane for each flight test, this was to
determine what parameters to look at from the data stream. Data for
instrumentation sort of was like swiss cheese. Think parameters in
columns, rows were calibration coefficients, thickness was flight
number. Insane. Even decades later. Stole it from AEC or whatever it
turned into.

F-22 wanted 2 Gb / second data rate, sent to I think 5 locations real
time, ability to quick look at data instead of strip charts. No ARIA
following it. Forgot how many parameters. Some high data rate. Usually
used 20 samples / sec or less (1991 anyway). That was what RADAR was
set to capture data at. Cameras also, so if you merged RADAR, camera
with other data it all fit at 20 samples / sec. Engineers would slice
and dice data depending on what they were doing tests on.

wing sweep was set initially with a level. Only had a few settings.
Wasn't like you could do 12 degrees, 13 degrees. Was like 15, 30, 67.
On B-1 both wings were at same setting. F-14 had problems where one
was say 50 , one was 15. Real emergency to get it down. That
eventually got fixed, but don't know the details. Don't know if F-111
would have that problem. But, it had other problems to solve. Big one
was fatigue on wings moving in flight. Lost more than a few with wings
coming off. GD eventually solved that but it was pulled when sent to
Vietnam pretty quickly. Got a real reputation as a problem child until
Desert Storm and the Libyan raid.

Considering how far we went with from pretty much levers and all that
to hydraulic controls to computer controlled, its nothing short of
just amazing. Obvious when you look back, at the time pretty much
computers in an airplane?????
Especially when punch cards and 8 inch floppy disks were state of the
art.


On behalf of the NG, thanks for the post Frank.

For me, it was about 1975 (22yo slow learner) when I
had a "holy ****" moment and realized analog had pretty
much run it's course but digital was unlimited, which I
think is still true.
Once IC's (including OP amps and ADC's) got reliable
and cheap enough that I could buy 1 for a couple of $'s,
the digital revolution had already begun.
Regards
Ken
  #125  
Old May 25th 09, 10:41 PM posted to rec.aviation.military,sci.military.naval,rec.aviation.military.naval
Stephen Harding
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1
Default "PENTAGON WORKING TO GIVE F-35 JSF NUCLEAR-STRIKE CAPABILITY"

Paul J. Adam wrote:

Might as well claim that since a reasonable shot can break clay pigeons
most of the time, the US doesn't need a national missile defence
program: one man atop the Washington Monument with a shotgun and a box
of cartridges can take out any incoming ICBMs just fine.


I'm a pretty good shot but I think I'll not be volunteering for
that assignment!


SMH


  #126  
Old May 27th 09, 07:19 PM posted to rec.aviation.military,sci.military.naval,rec.aviation.military.naval
KorbinDallis
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1
Default "PENTAGON WORKING TO GIVE F-35 JSF NUCLEAR-STRIKE CAPABILITY"

On Apr 29, 7:06*am, Mike wrote:
Inside the Air Force - 4/24/2009

GENERAL: PENTAGON WORKING TO GIVE F-35 JSF NUCLEAR-STRIKE CAPABILITY

The Defense Department and a handful of allies have launched an effort
to ensure the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is capable of
conducting the most devastating mission in modern warfare --
delivering a nuclear bomb.

A senior Pentagon official announced the initiative, which aims to
fulfill a long-standing requirement for the stealthy fighter, two days
after The Wall Street Journal reported that cyber spies had
successfully penetrated the $300 billion JSF program -- the most
expensive weapons program in history.

“We have a cooperative effort under way to move the F-35 into nuclear
capability,” Maj. Gen. Donald Alston, assistant Air Force chief of
staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, said during an
April 22 speech to a group of military and civilian officials in
Arlington, VA. “All the right deliberate steps are under way.

“This involves the nations together who are involved in that program
to come together, but we’ve been working in the Pentagon -- let alone
inside the Air Force -- and with the allies,” the two-star continued.
“The right next deliberate steps are being made with that, and we’ll
hope to see that come to conclusion here in the near term.”

F-35 partners include a number of nuclear-capable NATO alliance
members and Israel, an undeclared nuclear power. Four non-nuclear NATO
countries -- Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy -- have a
nuclear strike mission.

Air Force B-2 and B-52 bombers and F-15E and F-16 fighters are the
only Air Force aircraft that can currently deploy nuclear weapons.
Aircraft that carry nuclear weapons require special circuity that is
different from the technology used in conventional weapons.

Pentagon officials declined to provide additional details about plans
to add nuclear-strike capability to the F-35, such as whether all
variants will be configured for the strategic mission.

"Nuclear capability has been an F-35 requirement since the program's
beginnings, but it is not a component of the current system
development and demonstration phase," a program official said in an
April 23 e-mail.

In December 2008, a task force led by former Defense and Energy
Secretary James Schlesinger reported that some allies “are already
pursuing an option for replacing their [dual-capable aircraft] fighter
forces by investing in the development of the F-35, which has an
operational requirement for delivery of nuclear weapons.”

The highly publicized report concluded that the Pentagon “must ensure
that the dual-capable F-35 remains on schedule” and that “further
delays would result in increasing levels of political and strategic
risk and reduced strategic options for both the United States and the
Alliance.”

The F-35 is designed to carry two large 2,000-pound Joint Direct
Attack Munitions. Some nuclear weapons weigh around 500 pounds and are
roughly the same size as a 500-pound JDAM.

The F-35 is still several years away from entering full-rate
production and only a handful of test jets currently exist. The Marine
Corps jets are not expected to reach their initial operational
capability until the beginning of next decade.

“Usually way before this stage of the program you’re beginning to hear
about that sort of thing,” Richard Aboulafia, a senior aviation
analyst at the Teal Group said in an April 22 interview.

Part of the certification would include the development of a mission
attack profile, according to Aboulafia.

“What is your plane expecting to do when it drops the bomb; there’s
all kinds of performance parameters,” he said.

Early-generation fighters were designed to launch and then pull
straight up in order to propel the bomb away from the plane, the
analyst noted.

“You’ve got to make the plane technically able to get away fast after
launching, so . . . there’s all sorts of calculations there,” he
said.

Placing nuclear weapons on the JSF would also have treaty
restrictions, which limit the number of nuclear capable aircraft the
United States can operate.

Air Force and Lockheed Martin officials referred all questions about
the JSF’s nuclear strike capabilities to the F-35 joint program office.


what about the B1B and F/A18E & F are thoes not nuclear strike
aircraft !
  #127  
Old May 28th 09, 01:18 PM posted to rec.aviation.military,sci.military.naval,rec.aviation.military.naval
HVAC
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1
Default "PENTAGON WORKING TO GIVE F-35 JSF NUCLEAR-STRIKE CAPABILITY"


"Stephen Harding" wrote in message
...
Paul J. Adam wrote:

Might as well claim that since a reasonable shot can break clay pigeons
most of the time, the US doesn't need a national missile defence program:
one man atop the Washington Monument with a shotgun and a box of
cartridges can take out any incoming ICBMs just fine.


I'm a pretty good shot but I think I'll not be volunteering for
that assignment!



Now all we need is for the bad guys to yell, "pull".


 




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