Note that we are talking about 'survivability testing', we are talking about actual live fire testing with real weapons.
The conclusion?
Quote: The FUSL testing conducted on AA-1 was very successful meeting all defined test objectives and success criteria. Addressing synergistic effects, the electrical power and flight control systems successfully isolated failures and protected the redundancies built into these systems, allowing continued safe flight. The VSN architecture is robust, providing multiple paths to transfer data. Testing highlighted that fire is a significant threat to flight critical systems. The test team was able to verify that the actual ballistic damage response correlated very well to previous pilot in the loop simulator testing. Over the course of the test program, the LFT team witnessed firsthand the robustness of the F35 flight critical systems, no cheap system kills.
It appears F-35 is doing very well from a survivability standpoint if one were to get hit.
MadameConcorde From San Marino, joined Feb 2007, 10241 posts, RR: 40 Reply 1, posted (1 year 1 month 3 days 20 hours ago) and read 2993 times:
Just bumped into this article via a twitter feed
Non-US F-35 takes to the skies: first UK’s Joint Strike Fighter inaugural flight (with some nice low-visibility markings)
Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth facility has been deafened by the first non-U.S customers F-35 taking to the skies for the first time.
BK1, the UK’s first of three development aircraft which rolled off the production line during November 2011 and will fly with the RAF serial ZM135, made its inaugural test flight on Apr. 13 with Lockheed’s pilot Bill Gigliotti at the controls.
Quote: NAVAL AIR SYSTEMS COMMAND, PATUXENT RIVER, Md. – After ejecting a 500-pound bomb from F-35B test aircraft BF-3, the test team took a collective breath, and watched as it hurtled toward the concrete deck.
Coming to rest in the foam covering the pit floor, the March 29 “pit drop” marked the end of two weeks of testing nine different weapons combinations inside the Joint Strike Fighter’s two internal weapons bays.
This will lead to the eventual inflight tests beginning later this year.
Both Italy and the UK have cut their orders. Australia is assessing the program again. Here in the Great White North responsibility for the program has been taken away from DND and given to Public Works (with the very talented Rona Ambrose as minister). Even the US military concede they won't get the 2,300 they wanted.