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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

#81

Post by VLM »

greedo wrote: post #73
VLM wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, dirt cheap. Even if you use Hollywood accounting like "flyaway costs" you can get 100 Tomahawks for the cost of one F-35, and the point of the wargame was you only get roughly one sortie per F-35 unless you have air superiority.

So economically its far cheaper to not build one F-35 while buying 100 Tomahawks, then cruise missile every airfield, than to lose your entire stock of F-35 on one sortie.

Another way to phrase it, is every sortie you can either lose all your F-35, or "lose" one by not buying it and carpet bomb every single enemy .mil airfield minutes before the F-35 sortie. It seems pretty obvious which is cheaper, even before we get into pilot training costs and the long length of the .mil pilot training pipeline, etc.

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

#82

Post by dkhenry »

greedo wrote: post #73
VLM wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Enter the Rail Gun

http://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center/Fact-Sheets/Electromagn...

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

#83

Post by pyre »

runarb wrote: post #26
coldcode wrote: post #2

Having worked on the F16 at one point in my career it kicks the F35 is the ass every day and twice on Sunday. Plus you can buy 20 of them for every F35. It's all about money though, the F16 is too cheap to keep Lockheed in business no matter how much you upgrade it.

Can you elaborate a little more on which aspects of the 40 year old F-16 design you think is better than the F-35? After looking on the Wikipedia page[0][1] it looks for me that the F-35 outperforms the F-16 in all aspects: |------------------------|-----------|----------| | | F-16 | F-35 | |------------------------|-----------|----------| | Maximum speed | Mach 1.2 | Mach 1.6 | | Combat radius | 550 km | 1 080 km |…

Not sure howthe "First Flight" statistic has anything to do with one out-performing the other...

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

#84

Post by mpweiher »

runarb wrote: post #26
coldcode wrote: post #2

Having worked on the F16 at one point in my career it kicks the F35 is the ass every day and twice on Sunday. Plus you can buy 20 of them for every F35. It's all about money though, the F16 is too cheap to keep Lockheed in business no matter how much you upgrade it.

Can you elaborate a little more on which aspects of the 40 year old F-16 design you think is better than the F-35? After looking on the Wikipedia page[0][1] it looks for me that the F-35 outperforms the F-16 in all aspects: |------------------------|-----------|----------| | | F-16 | F-35 | |------------------------|-----------|----------| | Maximum speed | Mach 1.2 | Mach 1.6 | | Combat radius | 550 km | 1 080 km |…

The F-16 has Mach 2+ top speed, the Mach 1.2 figure is "at sea level", so the F-35 is significantly outclassed there, not just by the F-16, but also by most potential adversaries.

One advantage that the F-35 does have is "super cruise", the ability to go supersonic without afterburners (F-22 and Eurofighter Typhoon have the same ability). Other fighters are restricted to subsonic speeds except for short supersonic dashes.

Total thrust is not particularly interesting for a fighter's performance, thrust-to-weight ratio is, and the F-35 is quite a bit heavier. The F-16 has slightly better than 1:1 "loaded", with the F-35 only getting there by restricting it to 50% fuel.

I am not sure how exactly combat radius is calculated, but the combat radius of the F-16 is listed as half of that of the F-35 and to get decent thrust-to-weight you have to halve to F-35's fuel. Go figure.

One more thing to consider is that the combat radius appears to be with internal fuel only. The F-35 being a stealth design, it has been "optimized" for internal carriage of weapons and fuel, whereas with the F-16 you probably just add a drop-tank if you need more range.

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

#85

Post by protomyth »

caycep wrote: post #42
protomyth wrote: post #39

You pretty much knew it was having some serious problems when the US Navy started talking about long term F-18 upgrades. They are currently testing conformal tanks (like the F-15 has). It seemed like the F-22 folks were solving their problems while the F-35 has been doing press. Looking at it from the now, we probably should have built the full F-22 order and scrapped the F-35 for something far cheaper. I still think…

Or at least put some program in place to "upgrade" the 1990's electronics in the F-22, and make it several orders of magnitude cheaper...

If they had actually built the full run, it would have been cheaper. I would expect updated electronics over the life of the F-22 just as the F-15 and F-16 have been upgraded. Although they have done some pretty impressive things with those 1990's electronics. Embedded systems are a very different bird.

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

#86

Post by hindsightbias »

chiph wrote: post #75
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.

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…

He was right? His lightweight fighter isn't so light and has been more utilized in an air-to-ground role than as a fighter.

If he'd been right, the F-16 wouldn't have all those hardpoints or a radar (he believed air combat would be managed by ground controllers). You can say the F-16 evolved, but it sure as hell didn't evolve as he thought it should.

The AF and Navy/USMC need a plane for dropping bombs. They keep hacking fighters to do that. But they're more right than Boyd was.

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

#87

Post by gadders »

newbie12 wrote: post #56
gadders wrote: post #40

I'm surprised at the criticism the harrier gets in the article. They're popular in the UK and appeared to perform pretty well in the Falklands, for instance.

It is a UK developed plane and did do well in the Falklands-- a testament to the skill of British pilots as much as anything. In the U.S., one third of our Harrier fleet has crashed, here's the article cited in the parent: http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/6722

So why are they killing US Marines and not British RAF?

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

#88

Post by zokier »

dkhenry wrote: post #80
antubbs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Nope. F-16 and F-18 are of comparable class, F-18 being built for Navy requirements and F-16 for Air Force. IIRC they even evolved from a common program at one point. They separated as Navy and AF do not mix well, as is demonstrated by the JSF program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Fighter_program

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

#90

Post by chiph »

hindsightbias wrote: post #86
chiph wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He was right? His lightweight fighter isn't so light and has been more utilized in an air-to-ground role than as a fighter. If he'd been right, the F-16 wouldn't have all those hardpoints or a radar (he believed air combat would be managed by ground controllers). You can say the F-16 evolved, but it sure as hell didn't evolve as he thought it should. The AF and Navy/USMC need a plane for dropping bombs. They keep hac…

Compared to the F-111, the F-16 is very light (well, almost everything is lighter than an F-111...). He fought against the F-16 being certified in the nuclear role and lost.

I hadn't heard he was opposed to a radar in the F-16 -- depending on ground control doesn't make sense for an offensive unit. He probably didn't anticipate how lightweight modern electronics have become.

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