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

thedrive.com

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

#151

Post by t43562 »

The F-35 obviously needs more preparation so they're really going to do it first with Typhoons and those are cool and potent aircraft even if they're not completely "Made in the USA (TM)".

There's an internal BAE project to give them updatable computers which can be ripped out and replaced every few years. Like the Gripen the idea is to separate the flight critical software, which needs lots of certification, from everything else which can then be updated much more easily and rapidly.

They've also been flight testing a radar that can do electronic warfare as well as its normal job and the Typhoon, like the Gripen and Rafale carries the Meteor BVRAAM which is exceptionally good because it has a long range and a lot of energy to maneuver at the point where its nearing its target.

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

#152

Post by hengheng »

wongarsu wrote: post #105

Cold-War West Germany had about 30 "Emergency Airstrips", about 3km long Autobahn sections that could be converted to airports for military use. Complete with parking lots designed for aircraft parking, mobile air control towers, etc. Large enough that we landed C-130 Hercules on them. Similar strips exist in Finland, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland. Though most of the German locations are now retired and removed.

Oil pipeline routing in those areas is really funny.

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

#153

Post by fsloth »

smcl wrote: post #149
PedroBatista wrote: post #145

Yeah cool, and can the support necessary to keep an F-35 active be performed on a road? The Harrier and Gripens can and kinda were designed with that in mind. The F-35? I doubt it. I'm sure on paper someone will write and another one will approve, but in reality and in a real war scenario I have serious reservations.

To an non-expert like me the Gripen just seems so well-suited for Ukraine's Air Force in this conflict - relatively inexpensive, can land/operate in tougher conditions, can be serviced nearby (Czechia), outfitted to handle Western/NATO missile tech. I wonder what caused them to push so hard for F-16 instead.

I would guess the F-16 fleet is easier to quickly expand than one based on Gripens as the supply of F-16:s is larger. Also creates a direct link to US military industrial complex which will help with US support in coming years (good business). The intake in f-16 seems really troublesome for takeoffs in ruddy envorinments.

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

#154

Post by sidewndr46 »

t43562 wrote: post #151

The F-35 obviously needs more preparation so they're really going to do it first with Typhoons and those are cool and potent aircraft even if they're not completely "Made in the USA (TM)". There's an internal BAE project to give them updatable computers which can be ripped out and replaced every few years. Like the Gripen the idea is to separate the flight critical software, which needs lots of certification, from ev…

The Typhoon has a vertical landing variant?

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

#155

Post by PedroBatista »

smcl wrote: post #149
PedroBatista wrote: post #145

Yeah cool, and can the support necessary to keep an F-35 active be performed on a road? The Harrier and Gripens can and kinda were designed with that in mind. The F-35? I doubt it. I'm sure on paper someone will write and another one will approve, but in reality and in a real war scenario I have serious reservations.

To an non-expert like me the Gripen just seems so well-suited for Ukraine's Air Force in this conflict - relatively inexpensive, can land/operate in tougher conditions, can be serviced nearby (Czechia), outfitted to handle Western/NATO missile tech. I wonder what caused them to push so hard for F-16 instead.

One of the reasons is there are much more F-16s both in number of units and consequently support ( of all kinds ) and know-how from many operator countries.

Unfortunately the Gripen is the plane everyone talks and loves but "nobody" buys them. The Rafale is in a similar situation. AFAIK there are many minor reasons but the main one is: "Nobody got fired for buying IBM", aka the F-16, it's all fine and good, NATO, etc, etc, but America has A LOT of pull when someone wants to buy planes, they tend to be "persuasive"..

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

#156

Post by hef19898 »

smcl wrote: post #149
PedroBatista wrote: post #145

Yeah cool, and can the support necessary to keep an F-35 active be performed on a road? The Harrier and Gripens can and kinda were designed with that in mind. The F-35? I doubt it. I'm sure on paper someone will write and another one will approve, but in reality and in a real war scenario I have serious reservations.

To an non-expert like me the Gripen just seems so well-suited for Ukraine's Air Force in this conflict - relatively inexpensive, can land/operate in tougher conditions, can be serviced nearby (Czechia), outfitted to handle Western/NATO missile tech. I wonder what caused them to push so hard for F-16 instead.

Easy: avaiability, in every sense. There are many, many more F-16 in service to draw from. As are more operators, making training easier. And maitennace, everything from spqres to sites to people, is much easier to come by at scale for F-16s.

All of the above under the caveat of needing it now.

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

#157

Post by hef19898 »

PedroBatista wrote: post #155
smcl wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To an non-expert like me the Gripen just seems so well-suited for Ukraine's Air Force in this conflict - relatively inexpensive, can land/operate in tougher conditions, can be serviced nearby (Czechia), outfitted to handle Western/NATO missile tech. I wonder what caused them to push so hard for F-16 instead.

One of the reasons is there are much more F-16s both in number of units and consequently support ( of all kinds ) and know-how from many operator countries. Unfortunately the Gripen is the plane everyone talks and loves but "nobody" buys them. The Rafale is in a similar situation. AFAIK there are many minor reasons but the main one is: "Nobody got fired for buying IBM", aka the F-16, it's all fine and good, NATO, etc…

And Lockheed was really good at direct-to-decision-maker-marketing.

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

#159

Post by t43562 »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #154
t43562 wrote: post #151

The F-35 obviously needs more preparation so they're really going to do it first with Typhoons and those are cool and potent aircraft even if they're not completely "Made in the USA (TM)". There's an internal BAE project to give them updatable computers which can be ripped out and replaced every few years. Like the Gripen the idea is to separate the flight critical software, which needs lots of certification, from ev…

The Typhoon has a vertical landing variant?

The article is about landing on roads, not landing vertically.

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

#160

Post by justin66 »

smcl wrote: post #149
PedroBatista wrote: post #145

Yeah cool, and can the support necessary to keep an F-35 active be performed on a road? The Harrier and Gripens can and kinda were designed with that in mind. The F-35? I doubt it. I'm sure on paper someone will write and another one will approve, but in reality and in a real war scenario I have serious reservations.

To an non-expert like me the Gripen just seems so well-suited for Ukraine's Air Force in this conflict - relatively inexpensive, can land/operate in tougher conditions, can be serviced nearby (Czechia), outfitted to handle Western/NATO missile tech. I wonder what caused them to push so hard for F-16 instead.

Sweden was publicly clear they weren't going to make the Gripen available to Ukraine, the planes exist in small enough quantities that some new manufacturing would need to happen in order for any of its operators to swap their existing inventory out and give it to Ukraine (not impossible in the long run since there is a new variant that some countries might want to acquire someday, but not happening in the short term), and - this is the big one - there are roughly twenty times as many F-16s in service worldwide as there are Gripens.

Everything that's commonly said about the Gripen performing admirably in rugged conditions and the F-16 being particularly vulnerable to foreign object damage is certainly true, but Ukraine would happily throw people and resources at the problem of maintaining intact and clean runways.

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