One other thing that's out is how heavy the F-35 is. People rant about how heavy the bird is, but empty weight is something that's held fairly close to the vest, since gross weight is a published number. Not necessarily classified (it might be), but not public knowledge either. F-22 went through the same "weight…

The link you referenced is just an op-ed piece, and, IMO, Reuters has never been known as balanced reporting on defense issues. Again just my opinion. Trust me, F-35 has problems, but I frankly think they've been overblown, *and* nothing has been a showstopper. The carrier variant's tailhook problem was laughable,…

"and do a bit of digging, issues with the aircraft are all over the web. "

I think you'll find that the "warmongers" in general feel the same way. I've found very few people that might get tossed into that category are actually eager to go to war.

People knew about the F-117 about 2 years before the first gulf war, in a puzzling strike where they dropped two bombs in an open field in Panama during our invasion to ouster Noriega.

One thing about the YF-23 that doesn't get much, if any, mention, is that the thrust vectoring nozzles didn't pitch down below 0 degrees. This limited the -23's high alpha maneuvering capability. It would pitch up just fine, just couldn't control it.

Honestly it's a hard question to answer, because Low observable technology is still pretty classified, so in the public eye all we can go by is actual combat, which is exceptionally rare (thank heavens). The only time a stealth aircraft was downed by enemy forces was when the aircraft was being used horribly wrong,…

Raptor has had a datalink almost from day 1 (fielded, not flight test), AIM-9X is being integrated in the near future (I think it requires upgraded AIMs due to internal carriage), IRST I've not heard about.

Tyler, are you talking about to existing airframes? The basic system architecture of the F-22 should make it relatively easy to upgrade the hardware & software. But, if you're talking about actual airframe changes (FB-22) that's a tall challenge. Contractors really wanted to keep the tooling "warm", but DoD wanted…

How "worthless" is the F-35? Do you remember the "worthless" comments about the F-117 prior to the first gulf war? Neither you, nor I, *know* how capable the F-35 is, and we won't for many years, I hope.

I had the great fortune to spend my career working on the AFTI F/16, F-22, and F-35 programs. Most of my flight line experience was with the Raptor, but I got to experience a few F-16 starts from the run station. Three things always stuck with me:

There actually is a fair amount of adjustability. You can adjust the seat along the seat back axis, plus adjust the rudder pedals fore and aft.

Mouse/rat nests are one of the things that always worried me. Those little critters can build a dangerous nest in one night, and can get them in places you would think impossible. You literally have to seal the engine cowling up, and most planes don't have that.

Because the intake of the carb heat system is a shroud around the exhaust manifold.

The article says the engine ingested a mouse nest when he selected the carb heat. From experience I can tell you that it's impossible to visually inspect the interior of the carb heat duct work without disassembling the system, which is a maintenance item that would required either an A&P to do the work or witness it…

Lower left corner of the HUD shows Mach at 0.66, probably a decent cruise speed.

That's an awful lot of guardrail that he deformed!

You stated that Hamilton has let Rosberg get the psychological edge, but I saw things a bit differently. Hamilton knows that with Rosberg in front of him he can, assuming both get the kind of starts they have all year long, he can slot in behind Rosberg and manage his risk. If he had the pole he'd run the risk of…

Pretty sure Rhinos had hydraulic control systems ("power steering"). T-birds and Blues are both fantastic, loved watching them through the years, starting with the T-38s and A-4s in my airshow-watching career. Falcons and Hornets were great airshow improvements on those, and I expect that's what we'll be seeing for…

One thing to remember is that a big chunk of those delays and overruns is the Navy changing their production order schedule, cancelling one development jet, then adding it back in a year or two later.