From the chans via X. Dont know if it is true..but SOMETHING happened.
(media.greatawakening.win)
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100%. "Small arms fire" is not going to hit an F35 at 2500 feet in the air with enough accuracy to not have collateral damage.
.50 BMG may pack a punch, but is it enough to go through titanium plating at 760 meters, upward while competing against gravity and drag? Obviously it would be enough if it were straight on (depending on the thickness of the titanium, but I would imagine the titanium around an F35 would not be very thick for aerodynamic reasons) but there are a lot of factors that would slow a large round like that down, and when speed goes down, penetrative force goes down.
I guess in theory it's possible, but while I don't have personal knowledge about being on the receiving end of that type of fire in an F-35, I would expect it to be noticeable if you were taking .50 BMG fire. Not just small "pings".
Small arms fire absolutely can hit a hovering F35 at 2500. Lots of shooters regularly practice 3000' shots with smaller caliber rounds like .308. Their targets are much smaller than an F35. Completely reasonable. Not necessarily easy at all but totally within the realm of very possible that someone with hobby experience in firearms could hit something as large as a hovering f35 at 2500 feet.
What is your point about collateral damage? A hit is a hit. A .50 bullet hitting an aircraft can absolutely still have enough kinetic force to cause some serious damage to an aircraft. Aircraft are not tanks, this is not an A-10. They are susceptible to damage from small arms fire. They are a multi role jet including close air support but are not built like an A-10 and might be susceptible to small arms especially something as large as .50 cal. If you're referring to the pings, watch some videos with cameras around targets getting hit like car frames or washing machines. Hits are like pings. An airfarme is very rigid design with a connected structure. Although im sure the cockpit is loud, you likely have a known "normal" noise signature and when something smacks the frame of your aircraft at 2500 feet per second at 650grains your going to hear that ping resonate through the frame. Ping is probably exactly how it would be described. At 2500 feet, .50 velocity should still be around 1500fps (based on some quick research). If you mean it should results in parts flying off, well that completely depends on what gets hit, I'm sure there are spots that will just cause fly through impacts. The post says alerts starting showing up. If your expectation is hollywood fireball and flames, it's not always like that.
Great analysis. And you invoking the a-10 only just goes to show how ludicrously stupid it is anyone thinking the f-35 could just casually step into the CAS role
I agree, and the repeated attempts to get rid of the A-10 make no sense other than as an effort to weaken protection for our ground troops. I don't know of anything more effective in this role than the A-10, and the troops clearly love them. A-10s do the job.
EDIT: Below, an A-10 pilot making a case for moving the F/A-18E/Fs Super Hornets into the role now occupied by the A-10. He makes a good case, and his major concern in getting rid of the A-10 is a loss of the knowledge base required to use air power (piloting and support) to properly supply support to ground troops:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/a-10-pilots-compelling-case-for-replacing-warthogs-with-super-hornets
I think collateral damage meant the rounds that missed had to land somewhere. Another question in my head, the official accounts talk about the transponder being off and then pretend that makes it invisible. Stealth tech has to be turned on, it's not automatically always on, so that plane was not invisible. If it disappeared from radar without the tech being activated, does that not mean it had to have dropped out/down? If the tech was activated, why, and why not say so? Why pretend that the transponder is what makes aircraft visible to radar?
Radar stealth is essentially a passive affair, established by the shaping of the fuselage and wings, and by special absorptive coatings. Active systems light you up, but may be necessary to dodge an air-to-air missile by using ECM. Transponders make the airplane "visible" to the transponder tracking system, which is not a radar.
The minute they go to hover the radar cross section is exposed. It’s a huge flap. Wtf was it doing hovering a half a mile up in the air? None of this makes sense
Stealth has a bunch of things working together, like the paint and the angles and shape of the plane. You can't "turn on or for that matter turn off" the paint or the shape.
In addition to your comment, there is also .50 BMG API ammo floating around in civvy hands.
API = Armor Piercing Incendiary
Velocity chart for anyone who cares
https://www.snipercountry.com/wp-content/uploads/swggun/2017/09/Graph-3-1.png
After 1000 yards (3000 feet) the 750 grain bullet still has 2000fps velocity.
It will kill, and shred anything less than 1.5 inches of titanium, wing skin is definitely not that thick
https://www.outdoorhub.com/news/2017/08/04/video-50-cal-vs-titanium-90-degrees/
Very good account. The only thing I might add is that the F-35 undoubtedly has some protection against (or resistance to) warhead fragments from air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles. Modern composite structure has much in common with Kevlar construction.
How much did it cost? 80 million to end up with pings. Does the technology F35 have is useless? I don’t buy it. Something is wrong here.
You don't sound like the kind of guy who should be shopping for warplanes. They are expensive for a lot of reasons, and you can't expect to get high performance without a price tag. (A Bugatti Veyron costs $1.9 million on the hoof.) The technology (of which there are many involved) is not "useless." We simply don't know what the cause of the accident was. Time to be patient and not hyperventilate.
Just look up the program cost and realize that the vendor amortizes that cost across the production run. Lots of complicated software (not cheap to develop), sophisticated sensors (not cheap to develop), powerful and efficient engines (not cheap to develop), and lightweight, stealthy airframes (not cheap to develop).
Just as a comparison, the Eurofighter Typhoon, a less advanced aircraft, cost a total of 37 billion GP pounds for 250 aircraft, which amortizes out to $182 million each. These are not tricycles or even cell phones.
How would you actually "hear" a small ping with the engine running and helmut, ear phones and such?
Vibrations through a titanium airframe, and do you think 650grains at 1500+ feet per second smacking into your plane is going to be a quiet thing?
Kek !!
Pilot said "ping". Pings are quiet sounds.
I found a great article that actually gives a good explanation on this.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a35281371/f-35-history/
Thank you.
So that's not the weird part to me, because skeletal vibrations can still be heard. So if you are feeling a fairly consistent vibration and something suddenly changes in that vibration, it makes sense. It's also possible the above statement that they didn't know how to describe what they heard/felt other than "pings" makes some amount of sense too.
But why would you assume you were being fired upon within your own country and immediately eject from your very expensive craft?
Also, why would any militias be choosing that to be their fight? One F-35? That makes no sense. They would be better suited to taking on the White House or something if they really wanted to show their strength. Tactically, even that doesn't even make sense.
I dunno, the whole thing just smells like a hopium merchant trying to show that "see! If we fight them head on, we can win!" Facts not required.
I concur, but it's important to note that very little of the exposed surfaces of the f-35 are made of titanium. The skin is made mostly of military grade aluminum and composite materials, and you'd find titanium in the deepest parts of the plane, making up a large portion of the engine and its rotating parts
I thought it was more or less plated in titanium, my bad. That was an assumption, and you know what they say about assumptions. They make an ass of me. Thanks for the correction!
Just some back of the envelope physics - Gravity would only slow the bullet slightly. Wind resistance makes more of an impact, but the bullet is still potentially traveling over 2000 ft/s if the shot was relatively direct (2500 feet straight up).
Specs
Fastest .50 BMG: 647 [grain] or 42 [grams], 3044 [ft/s] (928 [m/s]) out of a 45 [inch] (1.1 [m]) barrel. Acceleration due to gravity: -9.81 [m/s/s] 2500 [feet] = 762 [m]
Gravity
Position given original position, initial velocity, time, and acceleration (so we don't need to do calculus right now).
Assuming it goes straight up at the plane, which would give the highest possible velocity and energy.
x = x0 + v0 * t + 0.5 * a * t^2 x = 762[m] x0 = 0 v0 = 928 [m/s] a = -9.81 [m/s/s] (solve for t)
(Use Wolfram Alpha to solve the polynomial formula: 762 [meters] = 928 [meters per second] * t + 0.5 * -9.81 [meters per second per second] * t * t) (text input: 762 = 928 * t + 0.5 * -9.81 * Power[t,2]) t = 0.824716.
Velocity given initial velocity, acceleration, and time: v = v0 + a * t v = 928 [m/s] + -9.81 [m/s/s] * 0.824716 The bullet is still going 919 m/s without wind resistance at 2500 feet up assuming there's no air, but it goes fast, so there is quite a lot of air.
Wind resistance
Hornady estimates a .50 BMG that starts at 2950 [ft/s] will be going 2085 [ft/s] at 2500 [ft]. (https://riflebarrels.com/barrel-lengths-velocities-for-the-50-bmg/) This would be at standard temperature and pressure. In real life, there would be less wind resistance as the wind resistance decresases with altitude due to lower pressure.
It goes about 70% of the original speed assuming constant pressure.
Since gravity only slowed the bullet an inconsequential amount, we can work with a number that has a little bit less energy than this (round down for ease of math).
We can reasonably determine the bullet to be traveling more than 2000 [ft/s], or about 600 [meters/s].
Collision energy
E = 0.5 * m * v * v m = 0.042 [kg] v = 600 [meters / second] E = 7,560 [joules], or 5500 [ft*lbs].
That's still quite a lot of energy, and an ideal shot could have been more than that.
For comparison, per a quick Wikipedia check, a 45-70 at the muzzle puts out 3,449 [ftlbs] (4676 [J]). A 30-06 puts out 3036 [ftlbs] (4116 [J]).
The .50 BMG put more energy out at 2500 feet in the air, and makes a bigger hole. It would likely damage any aircraft. It may not immediately make the airframe unairworthy, but definitely damage would occur, especially if multiple shots hit.