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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

#231

Post by unethical_ban »

dahfizz wrote: post #205
unethical_ban wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Service to society is not always a money maker. Value does not imply profit. Now, not every unprofitable service is worthy of government funding.

What is an example of a service which provides a lot of value but is not/ could not be profitable? There are public services we choose to run at a loss, like the postal service or public transit. These services definitely could raise their prices in order to turn a profit (they provide enough value that people would still pay the higher prices). We choose to run them at a loss as a sort of wealth redistribution progr…

If we ran the post office or certain public transit at a profit, they wouldn't be the services they are today. You admit this. Post office wouldn't run daily service 6 days a week. They wouldn't run last mile to millions of people. Public transit wouldn't serve unprofitable communities. So no, they couldn't operate the same way.

Hand-waving that away because it is wealth redistribution is invalid.

Profit is not a prerequisite of value.

Profit should not be the driving force of every mechanism in society.

Caveat, not every public service which costs money is able to cost too much. Rejecting the profit motive is not equal to rejecting a bounded budget for programs.

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

#232

Post by hajile »

lisasays wrote: post #214
hajile wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence to back this up? Look at Civilian vs Soldier dead for various major wars. Only ONE war has WAY more soldiers killed than civilians. If Russia is trying to target Ukrainians, they are doing a worse job than any war you can name. Civilians Soldiers WW1 10M 7M WW2 50-55M 21-25M Korea 2.7M 0.8M Vietnam 2.5M 1.1M Kosovo 1-5K 0.5-1K Afghanistan 500K[1] 100K Iraq 135K[2] 40K Ukraine[3] 9K 65-250K [1…

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

#233

Post by NikkiA »

Bayart wrote: post #223

Wouldn't the F35-B be sensitive to random crap laying on the ground ? I don't know that its air intake was made for anything else than spotless surfaces. As far as I'm aware only the Soviets/Russians designed planes with that in mind.

The F35B is also known to have damaged existing aircraft carriers by melting the flight decks during testing.

This won't work, it'll fail for the same reasons the proposals to use highways for the Harrier fell apart in reality - too much damage to use it at any time other than wartime, resulting in no training for landing on highways, so it'll never happen even in wartime. Besides which, if you're at war where you need a defensive air force to be able to use make-shift airbases, you've almost certainly already lost.

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

#234

Post by wongarsu »

dahfizz wrote: post #205
unethical_ban wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Service to society is not always a money maker. Value does not imply profit. Now, not every unprofitable service is worthy of government funding.

What is an example of a service which provides a lot of value but is not/ could not be profitable? There are public services we choose to run at a loss, like the postal service or public transit. These services definitely could raise their prices in order to turn a profit (they provide enough value that people would still pay the higher prices). We choose to run them at a loss as a sort of wealth redistribution progr…

Running public services "at a loss" (= tax funded) is the entire premise of a government. Some as wealth redistribution schemes, but most of them because society as a whole is better off if we do so.

If we only put out fires if the property owner has paid their fire fighting fees the fire might uncontrollably spread to other properties, so we are better off just having a public fire fighting service. Every trucking company paying for their own armed escorts is much more expensive than taxes financing a police force that ensures safe travel. Transportation infrastructure, no matter if that's streets, subways or airports, promotes trade and efficient resource use by allowing people and resources to get to places more easily.

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

#235

Post by michaelt »

aembleton wrote: post #183
Theodores wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is never going to be for the UK. With Ukraine you want the plane to take off from Ukraine, not the UK, or else it is seen as direct involvement. So the plane takes off from the UK, lands in the motorway somewhere near Keeeev and then the Ukrainian pilot hops on, to carry out the mission. He then lands on the highway again, the plane stays still for the British pilot to get in, he does so, flying up to meet a tanke…

But what about if you want to disperse fighter jets away from runways so that its not so easy to destroy all of our planes?

The UK has 30 F-35Bs, ~50 RAF bases, and over 200 airports. (mostly hastily built WW2 airfields kept in operation by local flying clubs [1]) Every country within the plane's operating range except Switzerland and Ireland is a NATO ally.

We can disperse the fighter jets without needing to resort to landing on roads.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_the_United...

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

#237

Post by wildzzz »

MiscCompFacts wrote: post #203
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…

Here’s a video showing STOVL(Short Takeoff and Vertical Landing): https://youtu.be/hO5mZxaiyUQ . The distance it needs to take off is incredibly short, should work on any short straight road with enough clearance on both sides. It does need to come slow crawl engage STOVL landing.

For some context, that F-35B took off with only 600ft of runway. A Cessna 172 can take off with as little as 800ft meaning you really don't need much for the F-35B. You can find this airstrip on Google maps when searching Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, it's the one out in the desert. It looks to be abandoned now but the runway markings in the video are still visible.

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

#238

Post by ianburrell »

wonderwonder wrote: post #209

I still have no idea what to expect from the F35. I'm not someone that knows a lot about fighter aircraft. The F22 was quickly hailed as the pinnacle of what it was designed to do, essentially unmatched today. Then they just stopped making them. Reviews of the F35 are vague. Israel is buying them but it's essentially getting them for free. So why not? Anyone have a true read on if the F35 is actually a dominant platf…

The F-22 and F-35 are different. The F-22 is an air superiority fighter, it is stealthy F-15. The F-35 is a smaller multi-role fighter, it is sort of stealthy F-16 or F-18. The F-35 is significantly cheaper; the F-22 was cancelled because of the expense.

Lots of countries are buying the F-35. It hits a sweet spot of multi-role fighter with a big bonus of stealth. Also, there is VTOL F-35 variant that the US Marines and other countries with smaller carriers are buying.

The F-22 is still better in many ways. The F-35 is what is available now. The Air Force and Navy are working in two separate programs for replacing F-22 and F/A-18E/F respectively. The result should be much better than F-35, but also more expensive.

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

#239

Post by mlinksva »

sklargh wrote: post #221
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.

This is an issue I care deeply about as I believe effective dispersal is a useful conventional deterrent to conflict. To add - this is a more trodden upon path than many realize. The RAF trained extensively on establishing dispersed airfields for the Harrier force. They dedicated a lot of resources to being able to conduct dispersed operations from modified fields (fields, not airfields) https://youtu.be/QOf1AAf1yqc…

I'm inclined to agree, but am almost totally ignorant, would enjoy pointers to/reading critical takes on the role of dispersal. The reason I'm inclined to agree is that war is a worst case scenario, and very uncertain (bottom of worst could fall quickly) so it seems odd to prepare to fight war under ideal (large intact airfields) rather than very ugly circumstances. Perhaps the cost efficiency in peacetime of centralization allows (the US anyway) such an overwhelming advantage that the correct calculus is to maintain that advantage rather than prepare for the worst?

Here's another video talking a bit about the costs of dispersal, and costs basically being the reason for not doing it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-lcu2kBXQI

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

#240

Post by lumost »

gostsamo wrote: post #195
lumost wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most modern aircraft, the aircraft over g's long before the human body. When aircraft are pushed to the limit in a combat situation, you'll hear the warning alarm blaring "over-g, over-g" as continued operation in that domain will either tear the wings off - or permanently degrade the airframe. The main advantage of a drone is expendability - sending a pilot to certain death is not something the military wants to…

Sure, but you base the assumption on the ai being deployed on a current design, and not on something developed without that constraint. I'm not sure if such designs are viable, but someone is sure to look into it.

aye - my assertion is that the limits of the human body are not a major limiter in current military aviation. You can see an example of how current military planners are thinking about things with the B-1R concept (ultimately rejected, due to overlap with F-15EX). The limiting factors are observability, radar, sensors/data-link, payload size, range, and speed. None of these restrictions are problematic for a human pilot.

Maneuverability improvements such as super-maneuverability were rejected due to being counter-productive in Beyond Visual Range combat. You have to give up to much energy for fancy acrobatics to be worthwhile.

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