RIAT 2018

Watching the footage from the Royal International Air Tattoo roll in on YouTube.

I think the naysayers of the F-35A need to offer some apologies.

The only other planes that came close to its display were the Eurofighter and a Finn F/A-18C.

The Sukhoi positively lumbered into the air by comparison.

That, by the way, is the plane to beat.

The sensor-fusion stuff is real.  Dismissing it is a mistake.

Being a C-DAT I might see this more clearly than aviation wonks.

The Abrams, in 1988, is another such leap in technology.  I remember crewing the thing and watching all manner of people saying what a boat-anchor the thing was.

Except I was CREWING one.

I knew what it could do and saw, personally, what happened to the OPFOR who'd not accepted the new paradigm of the thermal sighting system.

Them SAS guys was pissed at being lit up by a platoon of tanks on a moonless night.

That sensor shit the F-35 is bringing is more advanced than that F-22A's and I've been talking to fighter pilots who talk in terms of caveat about setting up a fight with one.

When you have to specify the distance, altitude, and airspeed of the start of the fight to win, you've lost.

I think that eventually we're going to be proud of the Lightning and happy to have them.

I also think that the Navy is going to have to go back and rearrange things to mount a gun internally on both the F-35B and F-35C.  It's just too useful a thing to have when you need to do air to ground on an ad-hoc basis.