Last week, Lockheed Martin conducted the first in-air refueling test for the F-35B (with a KC-130J tanker). Check out this video shot in the skies over Texas. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6ChG9_eS8A&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Browsing: Aviation
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlbEbQ6TJMc&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ecrunchgear%2Ecom%2F2009%2F08%2F10%2Fuav%2Dcontrol%2Dtheres%2Dan%2Dapp%2Dfor%2Dthat%2F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] So check out this video — some of the geniuses up at MIT in Boston have developed an application for the iPhone that can fly a UAV. Just tilt the phone, and the plane moves. One of those geniuses was Missy Cummings, one of the Navy’s first female fighter pilots back in the early 1990s. She was at a UAV conference in Washington. “My lab’s general philosophy is that anybody should be able to operate a UAV,” she said.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTNMcs4-29Y&eurl=http://www.strategypage.com/military_videos/military_photos_2009080412920.aspx&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] Check out this video of a Royal Australian Air Force F-111 landing without wheels at RAAF Base Amberley in Queensland. Good thing to tailhook worked. Crikey!
Here’s a photo from Forth Worth this afternoon, where Lockheed Martin rolled out its first F-35C, the carrier variant of the Joint Strike Fighter. That’s Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead at the podium. Here’s a little background info. The F-35C will undergo some test flights up at Pax River in Maryland later this year, and the first carrier landing is scheduled for Spring of 2011.
Capitol Hill is buzzing about this report today from Congressional Quarterly: The Pentagon’s Joint Estimating Team, established to independently oversee the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, determined that the plane won’t be able to move out of the development phase and into full production until 2016, rather than in 2014 as the program office has said. But we’re not so sure this is really all that new. We’ve heard about the Joint Estimating Team’s critical assessments before, in this GAO report from May. That report notes a two-year gap in completion dates cited by the Joint Estimating Team and the JSF program office.…
There’ve been a lot of rumors swirling around Washington that the 50-year-old national defense strategy (being able to fight two big wars at the same time) is about to get canned in favor of a new one. Really? What happens if the senior-most military leaders decide that preparing for asymmetrical conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan is more important than fighting a second peer competitor? What are the implications of that for the Navy? That was a question posed by Navy guru Ron O’Rourke the other day during a panel discussion of Naval aviation in Washington. “That would amount to a change in the current force sizing…
Local fishermen in search of some record large-mouth bass in a San Diego-area lake last winter found something else on their electronic fish finder: A World War II carrier bomber. A cursory look determined the airplane is a Curtiss SBC2 Helldiver, a daring dive-bomber that apparently had made an emergency landing into Lower Otay Reservoir, southeast of San Diego, during a bombing test run on May 28, 1945, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The Navy had bought more than 7,000 of the Helldiver, which joined with the better-known Douglas SBD Dauntless on bombing runs during the Pacific theater campaigns in the…
Maybe Congress can only fight over one aircraft at a time. And these days, it’s not the Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornet. Lawmakers have been quietly inserting millions of extra dollars into this year’s budget so the Navy can buy more Super Hornets — airplanes many say are needed to close the looming “fighter gap.” A retired naval aviator who watches closely the mechanics of Washington tells Scoopdeck that the very public battle over the Air Force’s pricey plane is providing some political cover for the Super Hornets’ advocates. “With all the controversy over the F-22, the F/A-18 is kind of…
There is some pretty clever technology coming down the pike along with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Another reporter and I were wondering the other day about whether the U.S. is actually going to sell all of those bells and whistles to all of the eight foreign militaries that are also buying the F-35. So I posed the question to Cheryl Limrick, the spokeswoman over at the JSF office. Will all of the F-35 international customers really have the same, peer capabilities? Or will the U.S. keep any of the technology for itself? She said: “All JSF participants (US and…
Yesterday we heard rumors that legislators on Capitol Hill would tell the Navy to buy more Super Hornets — despite the fact the Navy has not formally asked for any. That’s no longer a rumor: Today Rep. Gene Taylor marked up the defense authorization bill to include permission for the Navy to enter into a new multi-year contract with Boeing to buy more Super Hornets. Here’s his logic:“This mark clearly indicates that the Navy should build more of these planes instead of trying to extend the life of the older and less capable F/A18A thru D Hornets. It makes absolutely…
