From the chans via X. Dont know if it is true..but SOMETHING happened.
(media.greatawakening.win)
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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
First, the altitude was above sea level, so it is not clear what it was in relation to terrain. But the odds are good that it was in what we call the "ground clutter" for any ground-based radar (half a mile up at 10 miles distance would be an elevation above terrain of about 3 degrees, farther being less), so it would not have appeared on any surveillance system. Can't see it for the nearby trees or buildings.
Second, it was performing hover flight maneuvers (as they declared). I expect this was a training exercise or possibly an equipment check.
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.
When I said I don’t buy it, did you know what I mean? What I mean that the airplane was giving maybe to Ukraine?
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.
I understand that plus I am not a dude.