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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

#221

Post by ceejayoz »

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 ability to field ten times as many planes at the same cost should probably figure in an evaluation...

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

#222

Post by rainman47 »

chiph wrote: post #20

The USAF intends to replace the A-10 with this turkey, and it's an awful idea. A-10: holds 1350 rounds of 30mm ammo. F-35: holds 180 rounds of smaller 25mm ammo internally, plus 220 rounds externally A-10: 1.8 hour loiter time. F-35: Not listed, but as a high subsonic (stall speed) fighter, it's going to be shorter A-10: Has titanium armor protecting the pilot & critical systems. F-35: Already overweight, no chance o…

Your A-10 to F-35 comparison with respect to guns is even worse when you consider that only one variant, the F-35A, has an internal gun. The F-35B and F-35C would have to have a gun pod carried externally on station 5 (right in the center of the belly, between the inboard weapons bay doors).

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

#224

Post by dools »

dragonwriter wrote: post #219
dools wrote: post #212

If the VSTOL capabilities are only required to launch the aircraft in a really narrow set of circumstances (ie. from a ship with a helipad rather than a landing strip) why don't they have a detachable booster model? I'm imagining something that sits on top of the aircraft and provides the vertical thrust during take-off then detaches as the plane blasts off horizontally, leaving the booster free to lower itself onto…

That's not a detachable VSTOL module, its a detachable vertical/short take off module plus a much more expensive and complicated airframe designed to be regularly handle water landings without complications. Of course, even if "ditch it in a convenient large body of water" was a suitable substitute for vertical/short landing capability for carrier-based aviation, it wouldn't provide the same benefits for, e.g., impro…

plus a much more expensive and complicated airframe designed to be regularly handle water landings without complications.

Even if you could slow the thing down enough to deploy a parachute ... if the results of building VSTOL into the plane are so disastrous then surely it's worth exploring other options to be able to deploy fighters from boats without needing an carrier with a full airstrip on it.

it wouldn't provide the same benefits for, e.g., improvised land-based airfields.

Right, so from what I read just now (about the harrier at least) it doesn't have those advantages anyway because the vertical thrust ruins the landscape and kicks up dirt which clogs the engines ... perhaps that's fixed by the thruster fan of the F-35?

But the point is that the main reason they wanted this capability is so they didn't need carrier support to have their own aircraft, not so they could land in random spots on land, right?

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

#225

Post by shirederby »

michaelt wrote: post #149
sshconnection wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all spending is equal. If they want to pour money into projects, there is plenty of infrastructure that needs to be built here.

Ah, but you forget the myriad other benefits: 1. If you don't believe in globalization, you can legitimately lock out foreign competition and insist on an all-American supply chain, keeping jobs and money in the US. 2. It allows you to bring home the pork. Military contractors have a proven willingness to situate assembly plants to deliver jobs in politically convenient locations. 3. It's compatible with Libertarian/…

> 3. It's compatible with Libertarian/Tea Party beliefs, as military spending tends to get a free pass from the balanced budget brigade.

Tea Party, maybe, but not libertarian. Reason, Cato, and the like are highly critical of military spending and very frequently chastise mainstream Republicans for focussing on discretionary and entitlement spending while ignoring the military spending.

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

#226

Post by thufry »

dkhenry wrote: post #3

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…

Here's the reason that nobody likes to say: at some point, we're going to have a war with China, and then we'll need air superiority.

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

#227

Post by anigbrowl »

dragonwriter wrote: post #187
anigbrowl wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...from 2002. Since then, the Chinese have kept developing their own carrier capability: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_progra... Possibly they are only doing this to fake us out, and I don't disagree with the war nerd's argument that carriers make worryingly good targets...but I wouldn't write off the whole concept just yet.

> Possibly they are only doing this to fake us out No, they are doing it to maintain their regional position with regard to potential conflict areas with regional rivals in the Indian Ocean/South China Sea area, particularly, India. http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/12/world/asia/india-aircraft-carr...

I think that too, but you need to read that remark in the context of the post it was replying to (which suggested that such carriers were obsolete and referenced an article suggesting that China would rely on submarines).

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

#228

Post by bch »

beloch wrote: post #207

Some U.S. allies are almost certainly going to bail out of the F-35 program. Spiraling costs, the ideology requiring VSTOL, and some bizarrely secretive aspects of the JSF project are conspiring to kill the F-35 as a viable option for countries like Canada. A surprising thing is that countries taking part in development are not permitted complete access to program data. The U.S., despite making use of other nations e…

"Ottawa officially scraps F-35 purchase as audit pegs costs at $45-billion"

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-official...

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

#229

Post by mparr4 »

newnewnew wrote: post #115
mparr4 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the entire contract should be converted into drone development, which will actually pay dividends ...or, maybe, education?

I don't understand. Is education good for killing your enemy? Why would that be the purview of the military?

I'd rather not take it as a given that we are going to spend $1T on our nation's next war plane. That it is potentially ineffective further compounds what surely must be a disastrous waste of a considerable portion of our nation's financial resources.

The $3k cost per person of a $1T plane makes me feel inclined to think about what else could be done with that kind of money.

So, while drones might be a "better" way for the military to spend $1T, I think it's worth entertaining the idea that there might be a better way for a nation to spend that money. Like, say, on education.

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

#230

Post by Mindless2112 »

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…

I've only watched this one clip [1] from "The Pentagon Wars", but it's a good one. (It was referenced in a software engineering article I read once.)

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyakI9GeYRs

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