171–180 of 347 posts
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This really reminds of the F-4 disaster, doesn't it?
I wouldn't consider one of the best fighter programs we've seen a "disaster." Perhaps you're confusing it with the F-111 (TFX) program?
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the F-35 is one of the largest wastes of government money that is publicly known. by the time the aircraft has all the bugs ironed out, it will have cost USD 1 tln and be easily destroyed by much cheaper drones. the entire contract should be converted into drone development, which will actually pay dividends. trying to argue that we need the F-35 or that it will provide any kind of strategic military value is absurd.
"easily destroyed by much cheaper drones" To a certain extent, this has been true for more than two decades. I used to work as a radar engineer for the RAAF, and every time we went on exercises against US forces (both teams flying F 18s, but with different missile payloads, we had AIM9s, the Americans had AMRAAM), we would see our aircraft swatted from the sky before we could even get the bogeys on weapons-system rad…
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The nuclear deterrent is the only valid point, and that's a shaky one.
The nuclear deterrent is the only valid point, and that's a shaky one. I agree with this. WRT global trade, I couldn't find the source, but I vaguely remember an article that pointed out that global trade made up a similar percentage of economic activity prior to WWI and was offered as a reason why there wouldn't be another global war. The other factor to consider is the consequence if you're wrong. You want to take…
That presumes some foreknowledge about where that will happen. No part of the world is immune from a Hitler or Stalin coming to power, so for all you know he'll inherit those toys.
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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…
I understand the point the article is trying to make, but its not realistic. Having worked with the Navy for a few years I know that the biggest use of airplanes is not air to air combat ( which is what this article is complaining about ) It is air to land bombing. So why are we complaining about making an air force that serves our needs rather then one that might be useful for some other task. As a note he says this…
"So why are we complaining about making an air force that serves our needs rather then one that might be useful for some other task." Because the JSF is a shitty bomb truck too. It doesn't have the range, capacity or loiter time of nearly any other option. And for CAS vs bomb hauling, the JSF simply doesn't have the gun (and again, lacks the loiter time). "As a note he says this will be the 'new mainstay of the air f…
Also, a Su-35 Flanker cant fire a missile at 50km without radar lock, which would be difficult against a F-35. Even if they did fire a future Long-Range IR missile, the F-35 would detect and release flares to avoid the missile. Also, the kinetics of the missile would make it hard to track a F-35 during terminal phase.
A F/A-18 has significant less range and time on station than F-35, with both internally fueled. The F/A-18 carries all weapons externally.
As for your comment about stealth when the F-22 fires a missile, that assumes the F-22 doesn't change course after firing said missile. The F-22 would most likely turn away from the target, so they are not staying behind the missile relative to the target.
Pretty much everything you said in this entire thread is wrong or at least misguided.
"It could be that China doesn’t know how to build a working lift fan and that’s why they left it off, Aboulafia said. But for a country that has unveiled two different radar-evading stealth warplane prototypes in just the last two years, that seems unlikely. It’s more plausible that China could build a lift fan-equipped plane and has chosen not to." The major difference is in posture. The US military wants to be able…
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This really reminds of the F-4 disaster, doesn't it?
I wouldn't consider one of the best fighter programs we've seen a "disaster." Perhaps you're confusing it with the F-111 (TFX) program?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
the F-35 is one of the largest wastes of government money that is publicly known. by the time the aircraft has all the bugs ironed out, it will have cost USD 1 tln and be easily destroyed by much cheaper drones. the entire contract should be converted into drone development, which will actually pay dividends. trying to argue that we need the F-35 or that it will provide any kind of strategic military value is absurd.
Drones are great, but not failproof. what happens when you command links are taken down? (RF jamming, satellites destroyed, etc) You're gonna need a "human powered" "analog" fallback.
The increased performance of unmanned vehicles, as well as the cost savings of the whole life-support system (and perhaps, reduced pilot risk = lower training/HR embodied costs as well) seem like they might make such a system practical.
[1] Taking it a step further, you have a central control platform surrounded by defensive drone cloud responsible for point defence, active sensors (which you don't want to do personally since it tells enemies exactly where you are), and mesh/onion routed control links to your offensive drone swarm (so enemies can't infer the controller location from lines of sight intersections to the stuff they can see).
Even even further down the line, distribute the human controllers into the defensive swarm, so they're hard/impossible to distinguish from the "dumb" drones, and less of a Single Big Target worth hitting.