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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

#311

Post by koube »

hajile wrote: post #309
koube wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter battery radar + $50k gmlrs with better range and better time on target and 182k tungsten balls seems more like a winning plan than a spotting drone and $35k drone that flies slowly, has limited range, is vulnerable to to EW, and needs to hit the target directly. You have made a lot of points why the lancets MIGHT be very good, and certainly it's one of the most effective weapons on the Russian side today. How…

I've seen quite a few videos of Lancet drones taking out counter-battery radars. There are issues there (a Russian general got in big trouble for speaking out about this), but it is largely overstated. HIMARS are basically identical in capabilities to the Russian Tornado S MLRS (which is actually a little newer than HIMARS). Turn off the GPS and the accuracy is worse than artillery. Lancets don't generally run into E…

If we're comparing videos, HIMARS destroyed 5 SPGs, nearly an entire battery of 6[0][1]. GPS coordinates here of all of them being in the same field[2], likely from the same battery. The ability to film drone kills is useful, but that doesn't compare to eliminating entire artillery batteries in a day in an artillery war.

Tornado S uses GLONASS just like HIMARS uses GPS. They can both be jammed. Tornado S were also already used in Ukraine but they don't use them a lot. Perhaps the supply chain of guided munitions is not great.

We can compare Ukranian vs Russian weapons all day but the proof is in the pudding. It doesn't matter how great the features of Russian weapons are if they can't match the kill rate of Ukrainian weapons.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1497511/m142...

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1497hms/dest...

[2]: https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/166895463035136409...

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

#312

Post by lisasays »

Pixie_Dust wrote: post #295
7952 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western agression (if you want to put it like that) does not justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Nor would it reduce the threat Russia poses. Surely it would increase it!

> Western agression (if you want to put it like that) does not justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Nor would it reduce the threat Russia poses. Surely it would increase it! How many times has Russia invaded western Europe? How many times has Europe launched an invasion of Russia (3).

How many times has Russia invaded western Europe?

Since "Western" Europe now includes Poland, the Baltics, Moldova and Finland - perhaps you can answer that question for us.

For extra credit: which "Western" country did Russia sign an active military alliance with -- and not only join it invading one of the above countries; but march together with its troops in victory parades, afterwards?

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

#313

Post by dralley »

NikkiA wrote: post #286
ummonk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no phenomenon that causes the F-35 to magically lose its stealth coating at the end of exactly one flight. You can obviously delay maintenance for a few flights just fine.

I'm not so sure, the US at one point did talk about how if the F35 wasn't kept in climate controlled hangars then its stealth abilities would be negated rapidly.

You are thinking of the F-22 or perhaps the B-2. The stealth coatings on those are a lot more fragile.

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

#314

Post by dralley »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #117
thunderbird120 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 b…

Right now that is not verifiable. It is a clasiffied information, only supported by claims from manufacturer. And maintaince cost is already dispuded at court in Switzerland. >It would be completely impractical to operate if you needed to completely overhaul it every flight. And? Maybe it is every 2nd or 10th flight, that does not make it much more practical. Cost for operating F35 is astronomical. Old Soviet airplan…

>Cost for operating F35 is astronomical.

It's high but considering the expected number of flight hours the airframe can take, it's on par or not significantly worse than others.

For example the Eurofighter is a $120 million plane with an airframe lifespan of 6,000 flight hours, whereas the F-35 is an $85 million plane with an airframe lifespan of 8,000 hours. Even with higher maintenance costs the tradeoff is still pretty favorable.

Compare that to the Gripen E which is cheap to operate, but still costs $85 million, isn't stealth, and is less capable in many respects.

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

#315

Post by dralley »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #278
KeplerBoy wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least you guys have a backup. If the Eurofighter gets grounded Austria has no airforce, because we retired the Saab 105 without buying L39s or Grippens as replacement.

Honestly, I would just prefer good S300 system. At Ukraine it covered sky for almost a year. Jet fighters for air superiority are obsolete.

>Jet fighters for air superiority are obsolete.

Nobody in Ukraine would agree with this. For keeping Russian fighters out of your airspace, sure, ground based air defense is great. For taking your territory back, it cannot substitute for jet fighters.

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

#316

Post by dralley »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #301
luuurker wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don't have any evidence (solid or otherwise) that backs up your claim about the F-35 requiring a "complete overhaul" after each flight. Do we even know where the maintenance costs go to? I also fail to see how the Russians are in a better position to build a stealth plane (cheaply or otherwise) when historically they've always been behind the US in that regard. Anyway, opinions aside, big claims should be back…

Here is the quote you want: For this reason, the aircraft exterior coating, panels, seams, are inspected after each flight, to look for anything that might affect the jet's stealthiness, identifying any damage or scratches. Removing sand particles and dirt that settle on the aircraft surfaces and may turn into abrasions of the coating. https://www.businessinsider.com/israeli-airmen-explain-the-c...

Inspection != overhaul.

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

#317

Post by dralley »

hajile wrote: post #187
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.

Ukraine has shown that when your airspace and airstrips are contested, the only real answer is limited CAS where you fly in low, drop your load from as far away as possible, then pop flares and head back. A plane that is highly survivable and resistant to MANPADS is going to be superior. For this, the US has the A-10 which was designed with this exact war in mind. It takes off from a short runway (and it can be a pre…

...No.

That's the best option when all you have are shitty short-range Soviet-era missiles and unguided rockets / bombs from the 1980s and radars that can't see anything past 35km.

If you have low-observability or stealth aircraft, with powerful radars, and weapons with 80km+ range, you would absolutely rather use anything else.

It doesn't matter if your plane is "highly survivable to MANPADS" when A) the enemy has a lot of MANPADS and larger AA weapons, and B) you run out of functional planes because they all got shot up. Not getting hit is strictly better than getting hit, regardless of how "survivable" the plane is.

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

#318

Post by genmud »

WeylandYutani wrote: post #282
H8crilA wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crucially this is also true in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Air Force has found a new clever way to keep using normal air bases. After a hangar got bombed by cruise/ballistic missiles they would print a 1:1 aerial/satellite picture of the rubble, hang it over the actual rubble and then clean up under the print. It took quite a few weeks for the Russians to understand this ruse. The doctrine of always having air superiority…

I immensely respect Ukraine but a US-China war would involve the best technology this planet has to offer and the Chinese have been preparing for it since the 1970s.

Maybe, their ambitions are definitely that they stand toe to toe with the US.

However, the fact they are just now starting to issue body armor to their soldiers and have not had any real combat experience in the modern age might be difficult challenges to overcome.

It's a lot different to push around your effectively unarmed neighbors than the US, who has been in large scale military conflicts since the 40's. To put it in perspective, the US spends over 800 billion dollars per year on the military. It's more than the next 10 countries, combined.

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

#319

Post by p1necone »

hajile wrote: post #185
kunwon1 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are airports supposed to be profitable, or are they there to provide a service? Should airports that are not profitable be shut down? Does the public good factor into that decision? Sorry for offtopic, but I (evidently) got triggered by the inclusion of the word 'unprofitable' in your reply

No. If they add enough value to justify their existence, shouldn't they also turn a profit? In all other cases, you are just taxing people who don't benefit from those airports to subsidize the few people who do benefit.

Transport adds value by allowing people and goods to move around with less friction. That value is realized by second/third/fourth order effects (bigger labour force available to businesses, money travelling around a wider network causing more price efficiency, improvements in production of goods in one area more effectively being utilized in other areas, all of these things resulting in more tax dollars as well etc etc etc).

These benefits are incredibly hard to quantify and likely don't even really directly/immediately affect the people using the transport. If the airport increased prices to try to capture that value in profit they would just be adding that friction back into the system and the benefits would disappear again.

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

#320

Post by p1necone »

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…

Public transport is not run at a loss as a form of wealth distribution, it's run at a loss because the impact on the economy/society via enabling people to move around more freely is not captured via ticket prices.

It's no different from building roads or sewage systems - you don't try to directly capture the building cost from the people using them because the higher order benefits from having a healthy, growing, functional society (both in the general wellbeing of the population, and in tax revenue) outweigh that.

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