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How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

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Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#71

Post by Nelson69 »

lmg643 wrote: post #24
Daniel_Newby wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't the air to ground bombing mission be done mostly by drones? Manned aircraft will be increasingly reserved for special operations and dirty little wars, which is pretty much the Marines' job description. Also, the vertical takeoff capability will be mandatory for a hypothetical future war against a major power. Once the huge, lumbering aircraft carriers are sitting on the sea floor, they will be replaced by heav…

Agree on drones and unmanned aircraft. Manned combat planes are going to be the cavalry of war in a few years (if not already) for the simple fact that a pilot cannot withstand the g-forces that an unmanned plane or missile can. US hasn't realized this yet because we are currently using our military might to pick on folks who are decades if not a century or more behind us technologically but would likely be a differe…

Has it not been realized? I think it has, there is a ton of drone stuff going on. The DoD hasn't rewritten the war fighting manual and strategy yet though so manned fighters and bombers are still part of the plans but I don't think UAVs haven't proven themselves. This is a titanically slow moving organization... lives and deaths are on the line with their decisions.

One of the real lesson of the JSF is the amount of institutional inertia surrounding it. We were effectively pot committed before they had demo planes to play war games with. They spent 10+ years selling the idea. How do you kill a project like that? There is a certain irony to how the US picks weapons platforms too, everybody wants a new toy so who says "no" when the toy isn't quite up to snuff? So politically, we kill all the things the JSF is going to replace, we build love for the new platform, promise the world when nobody has even seen it.

The whole "jump jet" fascination is an interesting one, why do you need to land or take off a fighter/bomber from a place where you can't fuel it, can't reload it, and it doesn't carry cargo and people? Now the concept is cool, I get that, I just don't see where it fits in to the war fighting plan in a general way, not until planes have like nuclear reactors for fuel or something like that. It just doesn't seem generally useful.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#72

Post by VLM »

ryusage wrote: post #11

To be honest, I'm surprised they haven't started switching to air-to-air drones yet. They seem to be using them for everything else these days.

A short range, relatively dumb, more or less autonomous "air-to-air drone" is also called a missile.

We already have human piloted aircraft carrying and launching what amounts to air-to-air drones. Essentially a modern fighter is a flying aircraft carrier which carries a load of short range drones.

There are some interesting optimization problems where the shorter the range, generally the faster and more maneuverable and effective the weapon is. I think a 500 mile range air-to-air cruise missile would be pretty ineffective and easy to avoid compared to a modern short range missile.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#73

Post by greedo »

VLM wrote: post #36
nkuttler wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the biggest use of airplanes [...] is air to land bombing But what happens to your bombers when you don't have air superiority?

A solved problem, you launch cheap cruise missiles until you obtain relative superiority.

Cheap? Hardly. A Tomahawk is far north of $1M a shot, and JASSM is above $1M as well.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#74

Post by brudgers »

I am not saying that the JSF is a good plane, or that VSTOL is a good thing. But the claims of the article are all resting on this:

"In the scenario, 72 Chinese jets patrolled the Taiwan Strait. Just 26 American warplanes — the survivors of a second missile barrage targeting their airfields — were able to intercept them, including 10 twin-engine F-22 stealth fighters that quickly fired off all their missiles"

To summarize this scenario:

  () Successful Chinese first strike.

  () 72 Chinese aircraft.

  () Operating at short range

  () With initiative
versus

  () 10 F22

  () 16 F35

  () Operating at long range

  () Without initiative
Fastest with mostest trumps technology - e.g. the US didn't prevent the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the Tigers didn't stop the Shermans in 1944 [or less famously in North Africa a year earlier].

In assessing the probability of the scenario, my questions:

  () how many allied drones?

  () where is the Navy?

  () when did the straight of Taiwan stop being
     a nuclear tipping point?

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#75

Post by chiph »

greedo wrote: post #67
caycep wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed...compromised designs will be compromised designs. The A-10 was made to work with the grunts in the mud. The F-35... Of note, I think it was Pierre Sprey's (quoted in this article) baby.

Sprey was part of the fighter mafia pushing the LWF concept. I don't think he had any role in the A-10.

If you haven't read it yet, Robert Coram's book "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War" is good. He pissed off a lot of people, but he was right. Which is criminal behavior in the Pentagon.

Speaking of which, watch "The Pentagon Wars" sometime. Has Cary Elwes and Kelsey Grammer in it. It's all about the M-2 Bradley. "What it needs is a turret on it!" Col. Burton sacrificed his career to make the Bradley less of a danger to the troops it was designed to protect.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#76

Post by VLM »

caycep wrote: post #38

Honestly, for those who really know the battles within the Pentagon about the design and procurement of equipment, it's no surprise. Too much design-by-committee, and mission creep from difference parts of different services who want a piece of the funding pie. When the program is billed as "one plane for all 3 services," you know there's trouble brewing on the horizon. It's telling that a lot of the quotes from this…

Here is the startup lesson of the story.

You can draw numerous analogies between the development and "success" of the space shuttle, and the F-35 program.

Identical management style means identical results, more or less. Its going to cost a lot more than planned, satisfy no one, kill a bunch of the good guys, take a lot longer to develop, cost more to operate. This is the "startup lesson" of this story and why its on "Hacker News". You wanna screw up your startup, go ahead, do it just like the STS or the F-35 did and have a committee promise everything to everyone.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#77

Post by losethos »

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C:\TAD\Text\WEALTH.TXT

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Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#78

Post by VLM »

brudgers wrote: post #74

I am not saying that the JSF is a good plane, or that VSTOL is a good thing. But the claims of the article are all resting on this: "In the scenario, 72 Chinese jets patrolled the Taiwan Strait. Just 26 American warplanes — the survivors of a second missile barrage targeting their airfields — were able to intercept them, including 10 twin-engine F-22 stealth fighters that quickly fired off all their missiles" To summ…

A simpler question is why did all the cruise missiles targeting airfields work over Taiwan, but apparently none worked over China? Hidden assumption of cyber warfare or ?

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#79

Post by greedo »

masklinn wrote: post #70
greedo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sprey was part of the fighter mafia pushing the LWF concept. I don't think he had any role in the A-10.

Pierre Sprey is the one who wrote the A-X detailed specifications. Saying that the A-10 was his baby is not wrong, if the A-10 has a father it's Sprey.

You're correct, I was confusing Sprey with Boyd.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#80

Post by dkhenry »

antubbs wrote: post #19
dkhenry wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is to replace the F16. The F22 replaces them. How do you think the F35 compares to the F18 ?

I don't believe this is accurate. The F-16 is the "low" part of the "high/low" multirole fighter strategy. For the air force, the "high" jet is the F-15. The F-22 is predominantly designed for air superiority, and thus is most directly a replacement for the F-15C. Whether it really even replaces the F-15C is questionable, since the quantity produced is extremely small compared to the overall legacy fighter fleet. The…

I thought it was F-16 as the high fighter and the F-18 as the low fighter ?
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