(Lockheed Martin)
Business Insider: I saw where the F-35 gets one of its most classified features, and it's fascinating
"This room is the most advanced painting facility in the world," retired US Air Force pilot and F-35 simulation instructor Rick Royer told me as we toured Lockheed Martin's highly secure plane facility in Fort Worth, Texas.
The Aircraft Final Finishes bay is where America's most expensive weapons system gets coated with a highly classified stealth technology, which makes it invisible to radar.
After the jet is assembled and before it can take flight, three laser-guided robots apply the Radar-Absorbing Material (RAM) to each of Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II variant aircraft.
Here's all we know — and can share — about how the F-35 gets its invisibility cloak:
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WNU Editor: Now that is one big paint-room.
2 comments:
Why let journalists observe the 'super-duper-secret' process? This is Lockheed Martin propaganda as far as I'm concerned.
"Our program is way over budget, behind schedule, underperforming, and the per unit cost has soared, but check out this super cool painting facility, and, uh look, secret cool stuff!"
As for "propaganda" the opposition to this program is pulling out all of the stops with one of the most sophisticated media blitzes of all time. In the beginning of the information campaign against this program, I was inclined to believe them. At this point though an old line from a play comes to mind, "thou doest protest much" to roughly paraphrase."
If the plane were really this bad and the facts really on their side to the level they claim combined with the media blitz, this program would have died along time ago. As such, I'm beginning to think the opposition to this is part of enemy and adversary messaging to try and kill a military program they are concerned might aid the United States in a possible battle against them someday.
I tend to agree why is the media being allowed to observe this process? I suspect it is as follows. 1.)Adversaries and potential adversaries are well aware of the paint process. As such, nothing is being revealed that isn't already known. 2.)Given the vast, well organized, and well funded opposition campaign against the project, it seems reasonable that the builder would want to engage in an information campaign of their own, "propaganda", if one will.
If this is an information campaign, this message by the builder is a bit like bringing a toy water pistol to a gun fight when the other side has military grade weapons such as AK-47s and M-16s. As such, I would not expect this to make much difference.
With all of this said should the F-35 be scrapped? I think it probably should. This is a weapon likely designed to compete with the major world powers. With Russia and China the world's dominant military powers now and no real possibility for America to close this gap at any time in the foreseeable future all while faced with massive debt and a sinking economy which makes things even more problematic for America it seems the funds used on this could be better spent elsewhere.
The major threats to America are 1.)an Islamic terrorist attack involving the use of suit case nuclear weapons or other "dirty bombs" detonated across multiple locations simultaneously by ISIS, Al Qaeda, or some combination of them. 2.)A decapitation Russian nuclear weapons strike. 3.)An invasion of the American mainland by Russia, China, both of them, or all of them along with some combination of their allies. 4.)A situation similar to scenario 1 except substitute Iran for ISIS and Al Qaeda.
The most dangerous threat is scenario 2 and it should get top priority. In none of these situations does a very expensive stealth plane seem to be of much utility. As such, the program probably should be scrapped.
With all of that said given the actions of the opposition to opposition by the hysterical protests leads me to wonder if there could be something to the program as well. We may never know, as I suspect the program will be killed in the next couple of years anyway.
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