Luminox proudly presents F-22 and F-35 Flight Calculation/Chronographs

It is not that rare in watch industry to come upon the brand that could be referred to as a one-trick pony. I’m sure there are some of our more cynical readers who would be quick to observe the majority of the industry’s brands are nothing but that. In fact, you could just be right!
With an introduction like this, you can guess where the rest of the article is going. And you would be wrong. Almost. To be honest, when a brand calls themselves Luminox, they must expect some criticism at least. Light at night, or Luminox, is best (only?) known for their watches that glow at night. Wow, who could tell. Wait a minute, I hear you say, Luminox has been around for more than 20 years and you only just now realize this? Not really, it is just this news was a drop that overfilled the glass.

Luminox F-35 Lightning II Flight Calculation/Chronograph

Luminox recently released two new watches from their AIR collection, somewhat ostentatious and mystifying names: F-22 Raptor Flight Calculation/Chronograph and the F-35 Lightning II Flight Calculation/Chronograph. You gotta hand it to Luminox though. The perseverance with which they emphasize their connections with the military world is very admirable. Navy SEALs are mentioned at least thirteen times. There are also watches dedicated to SR-71 and F-117 airplanes, or as  Luminox would say “some of the most remarkable strategic aircraft in aviation history.” A fact that would be hard to argue with, but surely there are more iconic planes, other then just those build by Lockheed Martin?

Luminox F-22 Raptor Flight Calculation/Chronograph

Now, let’s see what makes F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II Flight Calculation/Chronographs an “amazing pieces of machinery.” Both of those watches feature a bidirectional rotating bezel with a black aluminum slide rule ring and a dial ring with tachymetric scale. A nifty analog gadget, but it is hard to imagine that any jet fighter pilot (let’s pretend that’s the target group for these particular watches) will have the time to calculate distances, flight times and fuel consumption while operating the plane at supersonic speeds. We have computers for that now Let’s continue. Movement employed is an unspecified 13-jewel Ronda’s quartz movement with traditional chronograph functions like 1/10 second, hours and minutes. Not exactly what you would call an amazing piece of machinery, right?

Last but not least, let’s consider the planes for which these two watches serve as a tribute. A bearer of the name of one of the most legendary fighters of the WWII, F-35 Lightning II, hasn’t even entered the service yet, and still it was a subject of controversy when in 2008 RAND Corporation ran simulated war games in which it was defeated by Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter. Worse still, the entire fleet of test planes was grounded couple of weeks ago! Ouch!

F-35 Lightning II

Sukhoi Su-35

As for F-22 Raptor, guess what?  Every single one U.S. Air Force Raptor, some 160+ planes, has been grounded since May 2011. The problem (apart from the obvious embarrassment), is that they have been grounded for so long that pilots of the F-22s are facing the risk of being actually disqualified from flying them! When you add the newest Russian 5th gen fighter, Sukhoi T-50 PAK FA, in the mix, you could say Americans are (again) being outmatched by the Reds.

Operational since December 2005, the mighty F-22, has never seen combat.

T-50 PAK FA – Cost: 50 mil dollars per plane, almost three times less than F-22. Overall program cost for the T-50 PAK FA is less than a sixth of development cost of the F-22.

Not exactly the type of publicity you would like to associate with your product… Luckily for Luminox, the majority of their target group is blissfully oblivious of anything happening outside of US border.