There are very few things as scary as having a war plane coming at you firing its machine gun. The Aviationist found this video of a Syrian Arab Air Force Mig-29 Fulcrum strafing at rebel positions. Oh yes, that war is still going on, although nobody is paying attention any more.
     |
Strap yourself in your chair. Put down the coffee mug. And make sure you have an empty stomach because you’re about to take a ride in a flying roller coaster. Or well, the closest thing there is to a flying roller coaster. The video below gives you the backseat cockpit view of an ultra low flying RAF’s Typhoon frontline jet fighter. The sights are incredible, the speed is fierce and the turns are just ridiculous. What a powerful machine.
| |
It’s 2013. Of course Santa Claus has traded in his sleigh and reindeers for a fighter jet. That way he can zip around the world in the coolest rig possible. The US Air Force posted this picture of a pilot in a Santa costume for a bit of holiday cheer. Happy Holidays everybody!
| |
This photo of a Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter being tested in a wind tunnel comes from the archives of the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, the national aeronautics and space research centre of Germany. It doesn’t feel like a photo from 1940. This facility actually looks from the future.
| |
No music. No flashy moves. No missile launches. And yet this video is still incredible. It’s just flying sequence after flying sequence of Russian Air Force MiG-31s cruising through the sky. Filmed by GoPro cameras strapped to a MiG, this footage is probably the closest we’ll ever get to flying a fighter jet. Seeing the world from such a powerful beast of a machine somehow simplifies things.
| |
Oh, Iran. Your Qaher 313 stealth fighter jet sure looks intimidating but it will never get off the ground. So why do you insist on tricking everybody into thinking that the beast can fly? Iran’s latest transgression is especially hilarious: they’ve photoshopped the Qaher 313 onto a stock image of Mount Damavand to make it look like it’s flying. More »
We spend hundreds of hours on board a variety of airplanes each year, most often en-route to a trade show or product launch event, but occasionally we have a rare opportunity to hop on board military aircraft, to test out unrelated products, or, even more unusually, to take a seat behind the yoke. Sadly that’s not what we’re doing today — well, not exactly. We are taking a closer look at the F-35 fighter jet at Lockheed Martin’s Fighter Demonstration Center just outside our nation’s capital, but, being in the middle of a corporate complex, there’s no actual Lightning II on hand. We were able to take a simulated ride, however — this isn’t your ordinary 4D sickness-inducing amusement park thrill. The F-35 is by far the most advanced Lockheed jet to date, with updated radar, all-internal weapons, improved tracking systems, 360-degree infrared coverage with a visor readout, and a full-stealth design, not to mention the incredibly capable glass cockpit powered by more than 9.3 million lines of software code, and an overall smoother experience for pilots that could end up spending shifts of 12 hours or longer in flight.
The F-35 has already seen plenty of field time in the US, with more than 500 flights already in 2012, and it’s set to make its way to the UK armed forces next week and the Netherlands later this year, but while the aircraft is quite familiar to the pilots tasked with flying it, the public hasn’t had an opportunity to experience Lockheed’s latest airborne warrior. We flew a simulated mission within a grounded duplicate of the flyable F-35 cockpit, and the capabilities and improvements are quite clear — you definitely don’t want to encounter an F-35 from a previous-generation aircraft. The dual 8 x 10-inch touch-enabled displays combine to give you 8 x 20 inches of real estate, with dedicated modules for the weapons systems, targeting, and navigation easily accessible — you can also move them to different panels depending on your current objective. A pair of joysticks at the left and right side provide direct access, letting you move a cursor to track enemy crafts or ground-based targets as well, and a very slick heads-up-display mounted in the helmet provides infrared mapping and instrument readouts. Overall, it seems to be an incredibly powerful system. Unfortunately, the mock-up on display here isn’t accessible to the public, but you can join us for a behind-the-scenes look just after the break.
Filed under: Displays, Misc. Gadgets, Transportation
Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter cockpit demonstrator hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
