FIGHTER PILOT Bro Chat 8.0 with former Lead F-35 TEST PILOT

[@Helibeaver]

Pretty cool chat. Please keep them coming for us ground dwellers. 🙏

[@AfterburnPodcast]

Haha, will do!

[@LRRPFco52]

Just to back up what Billie was saying with the intro of F110 into Block 30 Vipers, there were times where operational squadrons in Europe were flying with no AB allowed due to major safety problems with it. Look at the development cycle of TF30 and F100. Nightmares all around, but the performance improvements were worth it. They finally got it right with -220E and -229, but it took 2 decades.

[@javaace9746]

Great content! I love listening to people who have actually ‘walked-the-walk.” Regardless of what level that may be, hearing genuine insight is very refreshing. Billy’s background is just bananas. The whole crew here is so solid. Nice work!

[@AfterburnPodcast]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@RKW1138]

Fun times, sorry I missed it live. I must have also missed the debrief on "Benders" shiner.

[@petervare]

Awesome guys...we love you in the UK..

[@AfterburnPodcast]

Thanks!

[@LRRPFco52]

I talked with 3 senior NAWDC/USMC Weapons Instructor F/A-18 guys who are all flying F-35B at Yuma now, then talked with a bunch of USAF F-35A drivers at Hill right next to each other, same day. It was night and day how they described their approach to BFM. One of the USMC pilots said he loves to use the 28˚/sec yaw rate after going vertical to humiliate people in BFM, whereas the USAF guys seemed like they were learning BFM from flight leads who came from the Viper community. The age differences were dramatic as well. The senior USMC pilots looked like they could be the dads of the young F-35A drivers. Bender looks old compared to these guys. Maybe an emphasis on getting more USMC Hornet drivers on exchange could help improve the exploitation of F-35 in BFM. Senior Norwegian F-16AM drivers said they started off being dominated by F-16s in BFM, then learned how to fight the jet and get dominant over F-16s. Dutch said they started off dominant against Nellis F-16C older Block Aggressors with bags on 4 & 6, until the Aggressors started stripping off all their stores and showing up to BFM slick.

[@erichuff2538]

Dude I couldn't watch it live . My 10 year old buy was playing basketball 4 and 0 . 4 more to go. So I'm here now. God bless you guys and your family's.

[@AfterburnPodcast]

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[@CAPEjkg]

Nice to hear from former company test pilots tell it how it is and not constrained by the company what to say and not say.

[@boggy8557]

Loving these bro chats , it's such a nice format.

[@JonnyJets]

Loving the Bro Chats!

[@AfterburnPodcast]

🤟🏻

[@smax7019]

Am I the only one that notices how much Vader looks like Neil Peart with the 'stache?? 😂

[@Andromedon777]

Listening to this while playing DCS is pretty awesome. Especially when referring to the DED trying to swap X to Y for TACAN and I am doing that exact thing haha

[@Dstew57A]

Brilliant Chat…Is Billy From Canada? I think I detect a bit of a Canadian accent…more of these please

[@AfterburnPodcast]

He is, he's a jack of all trades

[@jordanwilson1238]

Love the bro chats! How did we get to 8.0 from 3.0? 😂

[@LRRPFco52]

JSF is a massive success with the concurrency approach. Evidence is in the safety record. We never saw anything so safe in any of the other fighter development programs-most of them having gone into production too soon. People talk about costs up-front without ever accounting for airframe losses and fatalities. Just within the first 10 years of service for the teens: Airframe write-offs, fatalities F-14A: 73, 19 F-15: 54, 26 F-16: 143, 71 F/A-18: 97, 27 A-10: 59, 26 Harrier: 100, 20 We lost 519 airframes with 189 fatalities within their first 10 years of cumulative service. Put a price on that, then look at JSF. I was shocked they never cashed one of the X-35s, to be honest. When we weren’t losing any birds for years with F-35A/B/C, I was even more shocked. We just never saw anything like that before.

[@_c_y_p_3]

Not one, THREE!!!! 😳🙀

[@jhk8396]

I suspect Bender discussing the F-35's night vision functionality at 38:06 is regarding the green-glow issue. The HMDS design up to and including Gen 3 used LCDs, which depend on backlighting. In low-light situations, the backlight would seep between the emitters and cast a green “glow” onto the visor (even at the lowest brightness setting), obscuring the pilot's sight. OLEDs discard backlighting entirely, so an OLED upgrade was developed and tested. The USN/USMC adopted the OLED upgrade when it was validated in 2019 both for retrofit and for new helmets, but USAF and foreign operators have not ordered it. It’s a shame this issue will persist for most F-35 operators despite the solution’s success in the Navy and the information supremacy the HMDS facilitates. Most likely, had the cost overruns plaguing both the F-35 and other DOD programs been less severe, the OLED upgrade could be made standard. Though in the F-35 program’s defence, OLED technology was and somewhat still is an infant technology in a military context.

[@jonaslinell]

Brilliant show:-) But: Can you not write some quick intros / bios / presentations in description, so we know you are?:-)

[@mxcollin95]

After listening to that chat, I’m wondering at what aircraft gen will the military start looking pro gamers instead of pilots. 🤔 (And for 2 person fighters maybe the ideal setup will eventually be a pro gamer up front and a speed typing secretary in back. 😂)

[@djsmith2871]

Wait a minute. So did the glass make it back to Cold Lake or does it stay with Billy? 'Cause I'm pretty sure Air Canada would lose it or break it or both.

[@AfterburnPodcast]

hahaha

[@billieflynn1943]

I have the 441 Squadron stained glass window in my home in Maryland. I don’t dare trust getting it north on Air Canada!

[@djsmith2871]

@@billieflynn1943 Ha! Nice

[@indy500tabasco8]

😊😊😊good cahnnel😊😊😊

[@erichuff2538]

Hey RAIN , what is AOA ?

[@AfterburnPodcast]

Angle of Attack. You could do a whole semester on AOA but the short story is you use it a good bit. The Viper is limited to 25 units or AOA (random number). So, you can pull as hard as you want but you won’t be able to just “turn and point” in a fight.

[@erichuff2538]

@@AfterburnPodcast thanks man.

[@corystansbury]

I don't know a single person that uses voice control for anything. So, not shocking on the F-35 (especially with all of that noise) that it's useless.

[@GregWampler-xm8hv]

Dog gone it all if you could just convince the customer is all that AND a bag of chips eh wut? Remember the old sales joke when the President of a dog food company rolls out a new dog food and a multi million $$ ad campaign but sales are terrible. Yelling at his sales department why the product isn't selling and old hand stands up and wisely says "Because the dog don't like the food." I know, I know your masters have demanded and you want to please your masters and all, but see the Director of OT&E well you can't seem to push enough rah rah in his eyes to get him to buy in. 😎 Do me a favor save it for the actual decision makers m'kay. We're not the ones you need to convince and watching all y'all keep pounding that ol' dead horse is annoying as Hell. FYI speaking of nags this ol' fart-35 is for the knackers yard joining his stablemate the fart-22.

[@djsmith2871]

Ok. I'm gonna bite on the fantasy football angle. Super long post, but here we go... Not sure what the forum would be, as I don't think Canada or Australia have the podcast platforms to host the discussion, but I am very curious how Billy thinks both countries 🇨🇦 / 🇦🇺 COULD have addressed their needs differently than the F-35 given the tyranny of distance both face, and in Canada's case at least, the lack of pilots to fly no matter how many airframes are bought. Right now the F-35 is getting heat in Australia due to lack of range plus the technical hiccups. Back in the day, Air Power Australia advocated for the RAAF to upgrade its F-111s with Desert Falcon (Block 60) tech and F119 engines to go along with an F-22 purchase. Documents suggest the RAAF got very close to being cleared for the F-22 or at least an export version. Given Canada's lack of pilots, one wonders whether the RCAF could have taken a similar approach to the F-111 idea by buying retired B-1Bs from the US and concurrently upgrading them with a combo of F-15EX (Monster AESA Radar / cockpit displays) and F-35 (EOTS, F135 engine) tech as it developed. So by 2025, a fleet of 16 Super Bones could be matched with say 48 F-22s in Canada. Given Billy's comments about the impracticalities of putting an F135 engine in an F-16, it seems retrofitting the tech on older platforms would not be so simple or even possible. Setting aside all of the practical challenges, fantasy football me a world where the RAAF could sortie upwards of 72 AESA radar F-111s with 4 LRASMs, tank them in secure airspace and then have them push to the South China Sea, covered by F-22s. Or the RCAF cycling 4 B-1B packages from Cold Lake to 24 hr cover different sectors of the Arctic (and/or its Pacf and Atl coasts) with a mix of long range AAMs (AIM-120D or better) and JASSMs. Again supported by F-22s (and Eielson F-35s). Then both 🇨🇦 and 🇦🇺 could transition to B-21 and NGAD in the late 2030s / early 40s. Seems like a collective win for both countries, as well as US security interests. Not to mention it would have kept F-22 production alive for a couple of years, potentially saving the program, as Russia took off its sheep's clothing in 2014. However, sadly, the pipedream is just that, but as much as Billy has pumped the 35's internal fuel and range, I don't see how it effectively works in Australia or Canada given how tanker support is now vulnerable to ultra long range AAMs, and Canada is going to have a tough time staffing 88 birds over the long haul. Billy addressing the F-35 in both Australia and Canada in detail would be an awesome listen for fans in each country.

[@jhk8396]

Combat range is one of the hotbeds of F-35 misinformation and *Lockheed Martin / DOD PR is partly to blame.* The initial combat radius requirement thresholds (unrefuelled BTW) were 590nm for the *A*, 450nm for the *B*, and 600nm for the *C*. Only the F-35B's payload is specified in SARs (2 GBU-32s, 2 AMRAAMs, STOVL) but I presume they involve full internal payload. Annual Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs) kept updating the combat radius as testing progressed, with the most recent update revealing a 670nm combat radius for the F-35A/C and a 505nm combat radius for the F-35B. Further, in 2016, Lockheed also revealed a figure showing a 760nm combat radius with only internal AMRAAMs. The thing is, Lockheed Martin and JPO official media never revised these updates; clips even last year stated the threshold requirements as the combat radii and f35.com as well as the branch website fact sheets provide an ambiguous " > [Threshold Radius]". There wasn't any significant pushback against misinformation on range, unlike the "dogfight" talking piece which resulted in Paris 2017. The F-35 is more than enough for Canada. Put those revised combat radii on Google Maps or the like, and you cover a surprisingly large area, even with the Canadian Arctic being deceptively large. A range requirement Canada specifically had in mind that is not often discussed was unrefuelled diverting from Inuvik, NWT to Cold Lake, AB or to Alaska's Eielson AFB; the F-35A's internal fuel crushed that requirement. I can't speak much regarding Australia's general requirements or fighter considerations, but I would address the presence of drama in and of itself with a grain of salt. I've read a few trending articles from the country and they were mostly full of misinformation. I would also caution that Air Power Australia i.e. Carlo Kopp is simply disingenuous. The majority of the articles there are both inaccurate and out of date and you'd be wise to notice more than half his works cited are his own articles.

[@djsmith2871]

@@jhk8396 I'll buy this for a dollar. $70 billion dollars though... we'll have to see. If Block 4 lives up to the hype, then I'll be a full convert to Fat Amy. Still wonder whether Canada will be able to crew it and maintain it going forward. Would not be surprised to see the actual operational fleet size around 65, which is far too small for our size.

[@RaySqw785]

well those guys are just talking about the AWESOME F35 as the great refuelling or touch screen BS? what is the point of this postcast ? lol

[@johnross6314]

Fat Amy, is Fat Amy, nothing more, nothing less. The difference between a “old” F22 and Amy is so much more than airshow maneuvering. F22 is a stone cold killer. To this day. The only thing that would mop the floor with the F22 would have been the F23. So, what do we do until the “new” ATF program is producing 100 planes a year? Well, look at the long term value of the B1 B. The B1 A had older production line designs. Reagan and team said, let’s bring the B1 back in a modern era (at that time). So too, bring the F22 “B” back. Better production line, modernized in a simple fast way. Let Skunk works do this, produce 150-250 planes. Or more. Would be in their preview of production. They could have produced 200 F117s for today cost or $59mil a copy. It was the dumb ass weakling generals, commie influenced civilian politicians who killed the F117 to 59. Rockwell could have built 250+ B1 Bs. I know.. instead limited to 100. Today the B1 still plays a great role. Apply the same logic for the F22 “B”. It would last decades of usefulness. Bring it back. Put GE motors in it, wipe the floors with all the serious adversaries. This will work. I get so sick od the “can’t do” brainwashing and social mood. Run the 6th Gen program in parallel. Like the F16 before, build thousands of F35 to arm US and the world too. Wake up team. I love your content. However, quit playing small ball. It will take in the trench leaders to rid all of us all brainwashed decision makers. Find the next disruptive potential POTUS, press into the vision of what needs to be done. Let’s go full send on making real dent in our protection of what he hold dear. BTW, the bone should not be retired for decades. It is such a great fast super weapons platform for ocean domination, anti air, hypersonic and more programs. Sending it to the scrap heap it as stupid as killing the F22 line. Oh, one more thing… put tail hooks back on F22, use the Navy landing gear design that was created years ago.. Navy need long range F22 B with Phoenix+ function like missiles that will make mince meat of hyper sonic delivery systems and their missiles. Super cruise, long range, true stealth, will place these way out into the enemy that would make a F14 blush. Lasers can wipe out 12-1 ChiComs. No worry running out of missiles. Just saying.

[@MetaliCanuck]

Billie's a Legend