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British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

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Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#51

Post by Mat3777 »

koube wrote: post #34
Mat3777 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you know who is qualified for what?

I don't have perfect knowledge of this but disagreeing with military leaders based on a couple videos is definitely non-credible. Linking Russian drone propaganda is useful to let people know that drones exist perhaps, but not for much beyond that. Beyond that central theme, certain things don't pass the smell test in my opinion. For example: - Lancets are winning the war. Who is winning the war is debatable but usua…

>and this makes me more knowledgable than military leaders and qualified to dictate the direction of military procurement. How would you know who is qualified for what?

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#52

Post by KingOfCoders »

Incipient wrote: post #48
KingOfCoders wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"resulting controversy is pretty much guaranteed to terminate the program." I'm not aware of any controversy that stopped weapon progress. We have biological weapon research, atomic weapons and the US used chemical agents in Vietnam. The US stopped tactical nuclear weapons because it thought they were not useful, not because of the protests in Europe. SDI was cancelled because laser weapons were not feasable in the 8…

Pretty sure "controversy" killed biological weapons and most use of nuclear (thankfully). They're even trying to get rid of certain cluster munitions.

We have enough nuclear weapons to kill off humanity. They have not been used because of fear of retaliation, the number has been reduced because of costs. But the US with it's largest conventional military would benefit from a removal of all nuclear weapons.

We'll see if Russia uses a tactical nuke when Ukraine enters Crimea.

Biological weapons have been killed because they are hard to be used operationally. You don't want to kill civilians, this creates more resistance (shown in WW2 and Iraq for example), also if you conquer a country you need people to run it. Biological weapons are not that useful.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#53

Post by chipsa »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #37

Highway landing and take-off on its own is useless. F35 requires extensive machinery to maintain, in needs proper airport and hangars. It is not possible to operate it somewhere from forest! And vertical landing/takeoff can not support any load, it can not even be fully fuelled! In Czechia we are replacing Gripens that can operate from almost anywhere. It only needs a few hundred meters of road, and single truck to r…

It's vertical landing, not vertical take off. It's still a short rolling take off. I actually wouldn't be suprised to find they do a short rolling landing too (rather than go full hover, use the lift fan to allow them to land at lower than normal stall speed would be). They've tested the rolling landing on board the HMS QE

And yes, for full maintenance, you do need need a proper airport and hangars. But for a quick refuel/arm and launch, you don't need that much. It's a trade off in capabilities: do you want to have a highway strip launch capability, or do you want something that is much less likely to get shot down. It's doubtful that the F-35 will only be able to operate at a single runway, unless your country only has one runway. It should be capable of operating off nearly any concrete runway you have (highways are typically not constructed to the same standards as a runway).

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#54

Post by koube »

Mat3777 wrote: post #51
koube wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have perfect knowledge of this but disagreeing with military leaders based on a couple videos is definitely non-credible. Linking Russian drone propaganda is useful to let people know that drones exist perhaps, but not for much beyond that. Beyond that central theme, certain things don't pass the smell test in my opinion. For example: - Lancets are winning the war. Who is winning the war is debatable but usua…

>and this makes me more knowledgable than military leaders and qualified to dictate the direction of military procurement. How would you know who is qualified for what?

I... just explained that. I am confident that the commenters talking about these things are not qualified based on the things they're saying. I wasn't making any allusions to being an expert on military matters. I'm saying these people are obviously not qualified, and I explained what makes me think that.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#55

Post by sillywalk »

chinathrow wrote: post #26
sillywalk wrote: post #18

"FTA: they would involve placing aluminum AM-2 mats along a strip of highway, up to 1,500 feet long. This will be sufficient for the stealth jets to carry out short takeoffs and vertical landings while protecting the road beneath them." "AM-2 matting consists of 1 1/2" x 2' steel rectangles coated with a epoxy nonskid material, available in both 6 and 12 foot lengths, and are assembled in a brickwork pattern to form…

> I wonder about FOD. i.e. all the crap in and around a highway that could damage the engines.. They would send out personal to remove FOD (foreign object debris) before any operations and before laying those mats, I assume.

Just some musing on the logistics and difficulties etc. of theoretical "distributed" highway F-35b operations..

[Numbers found by google search :_) ]

30 ISO containers for just the runway, = 30+ vehicles, + munitions, spare parts, maintenance personnel, that computerized logistics thing - ODIN/ALIS, food and water, security for the personnel, generators to power all the computers to support the aircraft, . would there need to be SAM support? anti-drone support?

Fuel would seem to be a real issue especially - an upgraded refuelling tanker-truck holds ~20k litres, and an F-35b can take ~10k litres I think. One refuelling tanker-truck = two air sorties.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#56

Post by sillywalk »

madaxe_again wrote: post #49
sillywalk wrote: post #18

"FTA: they would involve placing aluminum AM-2 mats along a strip of highway, up to 1,500 feet long. This will be sufficient for the stealth jets to carry out short takeoffs and vertical landings while protecting the road beneath them." "AM-2 matting consists of 1 1/2" x 2' steel rectangles coated with a epoxy nonskid material, available in both 6 and 12 foot lengths, and are assembled in a brickwork pattern to form…

I can’t help but think it must be about protecting the aircraft rather than protecting the surface, as in ukraine roads are commonly built out of reinforced concrete slabs, and somewhat less commonly, but still frequently, they are built to take the weight of tanks, and are wide and straight enough to accommodate even large aircraft - there’s a strip of highway north of Mariupol that was originally built to accommoda…

Well protecting the surface protects the aircraft - the exhaust from the F-35B version is so hot it melts the concrete and could kick of bits of debris.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#57

Post by Thoeu388 »

chipsa wrote: post #53
Thoeu388 wrote: post #37

Highway landing and take-off on its own is useless. F35 requires extensive machinery to maintain, in needs proper airport and hangars. It is not possible to operate it somewhere from forest! And vertical landing/takeoff can not support any load, it can not even be fully fuelled! In Czechia we are replacing Gripens that can operate from almost anywhere. It only needs a few hundred meters of road, and single truck to r…

It's vertical landing, not vertical take off. It's still a short rolling take off. I actually wouldn't be suprised to find they do a short rolling landing too (rather than go full hover, use the lift fan to allow them to land at lower than normal stall speed would be). They've tested the rolling landing on board the HMS QE And yes, for full maintenance, you do need need a proper airport and hangars. But for a quick r…

From what I know, we only have single military airport capable of supporting F-35. Fully loaded F35 needs 2.5 km of high quality concrete. It also needs extensive overhaul after every flight to maintain stealth coating. There is no "quick refual/arm" with stealth, it is more like operating Space Shuttle!

There are also civilian airports, but we would propably run out of those very soon. And using civilian infrastructure for military purposes (like bombing foreign country) would not be politically very digestible!

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#58

Post by Mat3777 »

koube wrote: post #54
Mat3777 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and this makes me more knowledgable than military leaders and qualified to dictate the direction of military procurement. How would you know who is qualified for what?

I... just explained that. I am confident that the commenters talking about these things are not qualified based on the things they're saying. I wasn't making any allusions to being an expert on military matters. I'm saying these people are obviously not qualified, and I explained what makes me think that.

How do you know your preferred experts are experts?

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#59

Post by koube »

Mat3777 wrote: post #58
koube wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I... just explained that. I am confident that the commenters talking about these things are not qualified based on the things they're saying. I wasn't making any allusions to being an expert on military matters. I'm saying these people are obviously not qualified, and I explained what makes me think that.

How do you know your preferred experts are experts?

This seems like a very philosophical discussion. I'm not sure what you want here. Do you want me to explain reading the news? You take in new information, and if it disagrees with your prior knowledge, then you make a judgement call on what the truth probably is. We don't understand global politics from first principles.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#60

Post by thunderbird120 »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #57
chipsa wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's vertical landing, not vertical take off. It's still a short rolling take off. I actually wouldn't be suprised to find they do a short rolling landing too (rather than go full hover, use the lift fan to allow them to land at lower than normal stall speed would be). They've tested the rolling landing on board the HMS QE And yes, for full maintenance, you do need need a proper airport and hangars. But for a quick r…

From what I know, we only have single military airport capable of supporting F-35. Fully loaded F35 needs 2.5 km of high quality concrete. It also needs extensive overhaul after every flight to maintain stealth coating. There is no "quick refual/arm" with stealth, it is more like operating Space Shuttle! There are also civilian airports, but we would propably run out of those very soon. And using civilian infrastruct…

>It also needs extensive overhaul after every flight to maintain stealth coating. There is no "quick refual/arm" with stealth, it is more like operating Space Shuttle!

I don't know where you heard that but it's completely untrue. Some older radar absorbent material required intensive maintenance but the F-35 is not like that. It's not that much more difficult to maintain than a previous generation fighter. It would be completely impractical to operate if you needed to completely overhaul it every flight.

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