You’re comparing a prototype (one which couldn’t fulfill certain aspects of the requirements without heavy modification) to a jet that’s in production and has had the benefit of over a decade of further development? That’s not even an apples to oranges comparison...

I think it’s funny how the people who actually have their hands on the F-35 have a much different opinion on the capabilities of the aircraft than writers at a military offshoot of an autoblog. Yeah, the program has it’s fair share of issues but many of the issues are characteristic of a brand new product that…

A lot of the interceptors in the 70s (Nike Sprint for example) used nuclear warheads (theory was that the neutron flux would disable the incoming nuke if the blast didn’t).

The Army talks a big game about expeditionary warfare but if you do any digging into how they plan to do it, it’s not comparable to the Marine Corps. A MEU (the smallest expeditionary unit in the Marine Corps) has organic arty, armor, recon, engineering, air assets and the logistical support to sustain that unit for…

“Simulated...”

Your post made me burst into laughter because you absolutely nailed it.

Yeah, because they’ll definitely take the same risks for an air show that they’d take in combat. Almost every rule in the book for military aviation ends in a sentence that says “unless operational necessity requires it” (or something similar). What constitutes an operational necessity in a combat environment is far…

Rotor RPM is fairly constant. It’ll droop temporarily when power required is increased (until the engine increases the amount of power being produced). It’ll also overspeed too if you Gee up the rotor system and you’ve got the collective (pitch) bottomed out. Helicopter aero is insane and makes flying them quite a…

If he’s anything like his brother he’s probably one of the coolest dudes on the planet.

Wrong. I’m not in the jet pipeline but in every stage of training it’s been pounded into our heads that they can replace planes, but not pilots. They wouldn’t give us ejection seats if the plane was the number 1 priority.

Doubt it.

On the ground is totally different from nose down with a high sink rate (and likely a large angle of bank as well). The ejection envelope charts in the NATOPS make that very clear.

Sounds like a very similar weight limit to that of the T6 II which is an aircraft that every pilot must fly during primary. This article is making a stink over nothing and indicates how little the author knows about the nuts and bolts of military aviation.