My point was I'm sure it is an improvement over what they are flying. Of course they're excited about that. I did watch one video, the RAF pilot seemed mostly relieved he didn't have to worry about the verticle landing for the whole flight. To be fair, 1960 was the first year the Kestrel flew. It's now 2016. Perhaps you don't choose to recognize that subtlety?
VTOL or STOVL is a really difficult design challenge. The Kestrel/Harrier is the only really successful/useful VTOL/STOVL fighter in all those years. And it is not for a lack of trying. Out of 45 VTOL/STOVL designs on that chart you posted four were successful. Four. And the Yak-38 wasn’t really that successful/useful.
An issue I have with your reporting is your attempts to generalize from a specific or 'flip channels' between the variants like a logical Fred Astaire. Just because it's pleasant to fly and potentially more well armed and capable than what they have now doesn't mean it's a good as it could've been.
I'm pretty sure it isn’t as good as it could have been. Very few design are. The basic fact is that the more radical the design the greater risk of failure. Most designs take some risk, but are mostly conventional. History is full of examples of exciting advanced new designs that lose out to more conventional designs simply because they can’t get them to work in time or on budget.
No that's not correct. Pilots & tactitions have very little to do with developing technology or exploring innovative design solutions and no qualifications in that domain. Again I'm sure it's better than the older equipment thay have.
You misunderstand. It is the pilots and tacticians of the various air forces – the end user – that will determine whether or not the F-35 is successful. Whether
it was worth the investment. The designers can only hope their choices were the right ones.
You are also wrong in that pilots and tacticians have very little to do with developing technology. I don’t know how many former military test pilots and former military personnel Lockheed Martin employs as consultants, but I’m pretty sure they could have their own air force if they wanted to. One larger than many countries'. To design something, you first need to know that the end user needs it, and what it needs to do. Then it needs to be tested and refined, tested and refined, etc.
Speculation? The JSF appears to be made out of almost exclusively conventional materials <shrug>
Conventional materials now yes. The JSF program started back in the early 90’s, and back then composites and stealth skins were very “exotic”. Stealth skins still are, really. You can’t really have exotic materials on a modern fighter because of the development time. The materials need to be mature before you can use them on a multi-million Dollar machine that must last for half a century.
And you
are just speculating on how much of the budget was diverted early on into researching emerging materials. You’re not privy to their budget plans. You’re not privy to all the materials used on the jet. And you don’t know how many of the emerging materials they’ve researched, if any, that made it to production.
I understood there have been two aircraft produced historically with (effectively) no hour limit on their airframes.
Which two aircraft would that be?
Many of those aircraft the JSF are replacing have ran out of airframe time and it was designed to replaced a large collection of aircraft. Ought it not to have been part of the design brief suggesting a longer lifetime in the replacement aircraft?
The F-35 is designed to have twice the flight hours of the F-16, F-18 and other legacy types. They were designed for 4,000 flight hours. The F-35 is designed for 8,000.
So when you write “ought it not to have been part of the design brief suggesting a longer lifetime…” I have to ask wtf are you on about? How long would it have taken you to google basic information like that?
Yup, for the five or six minutes it's needed during every single sortie, and for the rest of the time it's utterly dead weight. It can't even viff (or am I wrong about that?).
No it can’t VIFF. Yes, it is dead weight, but it is worth it for the capability it delivers to the USMC and other small carrier operators like the RN.
There was plenty in the documentary about the JSF flyoff I watched years ago. My impression was they copied the arse end of that Russian thing which left them to solve the front half. Seemed to almost lick a finger and stick it in the wind. Have you seen this?:-
Look at the core feature shared by the majority of solutions tried. Ever.
Yes, look at the core feature shared by the majority of solutions tried. Ever. Now look at what kind of aircraft most of them are: Subsonic rotorcraft. How many of the designs are supersonic? One… The X-32B which lost to the X-35B for the exact same reasons I stated above: They couldn’t get it to work in time or on budget. Tilt-rotors and vectored thrust is great for subsonic applications, but not for supersonic fighter jets.
If you look closer, you’ll notice that the only successful supersonic jet VTOL/STOVL designs are in the combined power plant for hover category, with vectoring rear engines and separate lift engines in the front: The Yak-38 and Yak-141. The Yak-141 would probably have made it into production if not for the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it was the most advanced VTOL/STOVL jet when the JSF program began. The F-35B replaces the hover engines for a fan to save weight and increase reliability. In other respects the F-35B was an already proven design concept. Which is why it won against Boeing’s more innovative (and butt-ugly) X-32B: It worked.
Following a non-explorative design process like they did in my institution would get your projects frozen. The process was inferior to the one we are trained to use. Sorry if that sounds arrogant but let's agree to call a spade a spade. In a development process if necessity is the mother of invention then trust me, assumption is the mother of all f*** *ps.
In the real world however truly revolutionary and innovative designs rarely make it into production. The vast majority of designs, be it aircraft or cars or whatever, are based on older designs already proven to work. And when we’re talking about international investments in the trillions of Dollars, risk aversion becomes a dominant factor in decision-making.
As a designer you may look at a more innovative design proposal and conclude that it’s the better option and should be developed further. However, the people who manage the financing of the project may choose the less innovative option because it represents less risk of failure. When you’re responsible for peoples’ jobs and companies’ futures you may have other priorities than your typical designer tinkering with fancy ideas.
Err yes, I know. The merge incorporated the mistake of not designing for the most restrictive case first, as the CALF programme did. What about the payloads?
What about the payloads? None of the CALF designs ever got beyond initial study phase before the program was merged into the JSF program, and they’re still classified, so you tell me. What about the payloads?
However, if we look at the Lockheed AFX-653 CALF proposal it is pretty clear that the F-35 is the ultimate result of the CALF program.
But there was a quote about strength (explaining the lengthy testing?) which said something like to be on the safe side? I'm too lazy to look actually but conventionally maximum loads are determined by overloading. Fatigue is tested by overlifing. Which was it then? If you're going to flip back and forth between explanations then that's just circular arguing.
Don’t be lazy. Find the quote.
They were fatigue testing for lifetime, not maximum loads.
We can go at this endlessly (and some probably will). I'm interested in participating in a discussion or the closest thing we can get to that. If this is to indulge your inbuilt need to act as a counterpoint to the consiracy theorists then best of luck. Hope you win your argument. Perhaps you'll even convince the odd one 
I’m here mostly for fun.
