joint strike fighter

[ocs_hopeful]

Does anybody know when the joint strike fighter is coming online? How do they decide who gets to train on them first?

 

[phrogdriver]

I won't claim to have the latest skinny on when JSF will be fielded. However, I expect that the manning process will be similar to the Osprey selection process. Slots will first be filled by board selection. The first couple of boards will probably lean toward more experienced pilots. As the instructor base solidifies, later selections will be drawn from a wider spread of junior to senior pilots, so that the experience and rank structure of a squadron is as close as possible to a regular squadron. Somewhere along the line, they'll start filtering in new pilots out of flight school.

 

[HeyJoe]

See this very recent thread for answers to some of your questions:http://www.airwarriors.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14571

 

[Brett327]

Does anybody know when the joint strike fighter is coming online? How do they decide who gets to train on them first?

Bottom line, it ain't happenin' for 7-10 years, so don't worry about it.

Brett

 

[Raptor2216]

I was talking to a test pilot yesterday here at cTBS and he say's that of the 5 total F-35's, they have not even had a chance to test a single one. Therefore, as bret stated, don't worry about it for now.

 

[bwildcat]

Hey OCS Hopeful! Man good question. If you can't ask a question here about naval aviation then where can you ask it? I know that some said not to worry about it but jeez that shows your interest and concern for naval aviation. Good question I think.

 

[loadtoad]

Well the first F-35 iis on the floor at lockheed martin right now. They are going to fly it for a while then turn it into the STVOL version and fly it that way so its starting to spool up

 

[HeyJoe]

I was talking to a test pilot yesterday here at cTBS and he say's that of the 5 total F-35's, they have not even had a chance to test a single one. Therefore, as bret stated, don't worry about it for now.

There isn't a single complete F-35 in existence yet so that's not quite right. The fly-off between the X-32 and X-35 were not truly representative JSF aircraft in terms of size or final configuration. They are assembling the first full scale F-35 right now and it will fly later this year.