Ultimate Fighter: Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: Lockheed Martin F35 Kindle Edition

This book provides a history of the F-35 and how it was developed, including the special paint covering the aircraft to increase its stealthiness. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the current aircraft being manufactured and put into service.

This is more of a coffee table book. There is very little excitement when reading through the book. The book is even less exciting than the BBC documentary of the same account of Boeing and Lockheed competing for the winning design. Most of all, you don't sense the human factor, the human drama in this book. Contrast this book with the Skunk Work book by Ben Rich and you can see the difference. Again, this is just a coffee table book that you look flip once in a while and not a book like Mr. Rich's that you go back to for inspirational ideas.

Usual excellent detail from Bill Sweetman. Having been involved in the fly off from the Navy perspective I was last little disappointed that there was not more detail of the work done at Pax River. It would be really interesting if someone would do a history of this program from the perspective of the government folks watching the fly off of both aircraft. The stories that could be told...

Good resources for how we got here in the JSF. A few editor type errors and a little dry at the beginning. A lot of acronyms that made it difficult to read on Kindle. Overall worth the read.

We know how to build a stealth fighter. We know how to build a long-range agile fighter. We may even have a good way of building a fighter that can land and take off vertically. But trying to build a fighter that can do all three is very, very difficult."But that's exactly what Lockheed Martin is building in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Perhaps trying to build is a better term. It looked like possible in 2001 when the contract was let. By 2004 the plane had gained weight and the lift wasn't quite there to take off vertically.This is a great book. It is mostly on the details of the competitive designs being proposed by Lockheed Martin and Boeing. For five years these two companies worked on the design of the fighters they were proposing, even to building flying prototypes. Reading the book gets you deep into the design effort, the philosophies of the two companies, and the politics involved. You know more about the F-35 than you imagined possible.

タイトルはF-35となっていますが、JSFにいたるV/STOVL戦闘機の開発史および敗者のX-32に多くのページが割かれています。特に開発史については、1980年代後半から1990年代にかけて各紙を飾った数多くの風試模型や想像図等が、カラーで掲載されているので、この時代に興味のある方には便利な一冊です。肝心のF-35については、実機飛行前なので値段の割に情報が少ない感じは否めません。アビオニクスに関する記述がマンマシンインターフェイスやセンサーに偏っており、アーキテクチャ面での突っ込みが無いところは少々淋しい感じがします。とはいえ大判でオールカラーなので、写真集としても楽しめると思います。

I know its been a year since I bought this but for what its worth the group was great value for money. Arrived promptly, in good condition and was well packaged.