Sweetman on JSF/F-35 Stealth and Future

Design News - Blog - What's the Future of the World's Costliest Fighter Jet?

The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is the most advanced military aircraft developed by the US. It is also the most expensive in history, with a lifecycle cost of $1 trillion.The JSF is also years behind schedule and billions over budget. Critics maintain that the aircraft is over-engineered and say its procurement requirements have run amok.

Three versions of the JSF exist: conventional takeoff and landing for the Air Force; short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) for the Marines; and a carrier-based variant for the Navy.


With the fighter jet inching toward initial operating capability (IOC) in 2017, I asked Bill Sweetman, an editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology, to discuss its engineering advances but also setbacks. (Full disclosure: I periodically work as a contributing editor with Sweetman at  AW&ST.)


In talking about the F-35’s engineering pros and mishaps, Sweetman also reviewed the jet fighter’s stealth technology and whether it will be a defense asset, as spec'd.

DN: How effective are the F-35’s stealth capabilities?
Sweetman: That’s hard to answer definitively in the unclassified realm. A big problem is that the US committed, in the mid-1990s, to a set of stealth attributes (e.g., more radar reflectivity from certain aspect angles and at certain wavebands) for most of its combat force. To some extent, adversaries could determine those parameters when the first JSF drawings were released. So, by the time the jet is in full service, they have had 25 years to respond.
There are two threats to stealth: a new class of very large early warning radars with active, electronically scanned arrays, working in the lower radar bands down to VHF; and infrared search-and-track systems that render the main element of stealth -- radar cross-section reduction -- moot. It seems that emerging post-JSF programs, such as the new Air Force bomber and various unmanned combat aerial vehicles, use broadband/all-aspect stealth technology -- that’s why they incorporate flying-wing shapes.