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The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

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Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#71

Post by ArkyBeagle »

ghostberry wrote: post #63
WalterBright wrote: post #21

When the F-4 Phantom was developed, it was decided that air-to-air missiles had obsoleted guns. No guns were put in the F-4. Fast forward to aerial combat in Vietnam, and mechanics were jury-rigging bolt-on machine gun pods under the wings. I fear we're making the same mistake again.

When the F-4 Phantom was developed, missiles were extremely unreliable, only around one in ten hit the target they were launched against, and they could only be launched in a fairly limited circumstances. Around 1975-1985, technology advanced and new generation of missiles entered service. They became reliable, and they could be launched successfully from a wider ranger of circumstances. Around 1995-2005, technology…

If the mission becomes opposing ISIS style forces, I doubt guns will be obsolete.

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#73

Post by jleyank »

krapht wrote: post #19
spiritplumber wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So get rid of the USAF / fold it back into the Army, this way the Navy has an air wing, and the Army has an air wing. Large sky battles are unlikely to happen ever again... the USAF was designed to deal with those, right around when they had become obsolete. Hooray for Parkinson's laws. The A-10 is a magnificent brute of a plane and does exactly the job it was designed to do, very well... so of course they want to mo…

The A10's minigun is ineffective at killing modern main-battle tanks, so I wouldn't say it's a raging sucess. In addition, it would certainly be blown up immediately if it came within shooting distance of a tank by any number of man-portable anti-air missiles. What it can do is provide reasonable close air support against Toyota pickups and infantry, but replacement parts for the plane or the molds to create them don…

Prove this statement. Given that the A-10 shoots from above, that's where the armor's thinner. DU penetrators do a fair bit of damage, independent of the rumoured radioactive burst upon compression. Couple of rounds in the engine probably turn the tank into a bunker.

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#74

Post by philwelch »

queensnake wrote: post #17
chernevik wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The services guard their missions jealously. They don't want competition within their various roles -- those roles are their justifications for budget, status and involvement. There are good reasons for specialization, of course. But the institutional politics can't be ignored. I've heard that the Marines actually have really good air support, because they have their own planes and the generals make damn sure those p…

> I've heard that the Marines actually have really good air support, because they have their own planes Why can't the army buy the same planes, are they not being manufactured any more?

The Marines use the F/A-18 Hornet and, for close air support in particular, the AV-8B Harrier. Both are slated for replacement by F-35 variants.

They also fly the AH-1 Cobra, which the Army already replaced with the Apache.

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#75

Post by philwelch »

krapht wrote: post #19
spiritplumber wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So get rid of the USAF / fold it back into the Army, this way the Navy has an air wing, and the Army has an air wing. Large sky battles are unlikely to happen ever again... the USAF was designed to deal with those, right around when they had become obsolete. Hooray for Parkinson's laws. The A-10 is a magnificent brute of a plane and does exactly the job it was designed to do, very well... so of course they want to mo…

The A10's minigun is ineffective at killing modern main-battle tanks, so I wouldn't say it's a raging sucess. In addition, it would certainly be blown up immediately if it came within shooting distance of a tank by any number of man-portable anti-air missiles. What it can do is provide reasonable close air support against Toyota pickups and infantry, but replacement parts for the plane or the molds to create them don…

> What it can do is provide reasonable close air support against Toyota pickups and infantry

So can helicopters, drones, and Harriers.

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#76

Post by ghostberry »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #71
ghostberry wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the F-4 Phantom was developed, missiles were extremely unreliable, only around one in ten hit the target they were launched against, and they could only be launched in a fairly limited circumstances. Around 1975-1985, technology advanced and new generation of missiles entered service. They became reliable, and they could be launched successfully from a wider ranger of circumstances. Around 1995-2005, technology…

If the mission becomes opposing ISIS style forces, I doubt guns will be obsolete.

For attacking an enemy that doesn't have and real air defences they shouldn't be using a multirole jet fighter like the F-35 or a jet ground attack aircraft like the A-10. They're both way too expensive to run.

They should be using a counter-insurgency aircraft, like the A-26s the Afghan Air Force is about to receive.

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#77

Post by philwelch »

javajosh wrote: post #61
sithadmin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not talking about scaling out cloud deployments or something here. Building a military takes an incredible amount of lead time. If you don't have a strong standing military force during peacetime, you won't have one during wartime.

Utterly false. Prior to involvement in World War 2, the US had hardly any standing army and rather weak tooling industries (being wiped out by the Great Depression) and yet still managed to field like 2 million troops and vast amounts of weapons for allies in a very short period of time.

The US began the WWII draft over a year before Pearl Harbor, and was manufacturing arms for the Allies months ahead of Pearl Harbor as well. Even a weakened American industrial base was significantly larger than that of any other country in the world at the time (http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm).

World War II was an unusual case, though. Every war since then has been a relatively limited one in the sense that no one on the home front really made any kind of sacrifice or even any substantial contribution to the war effort. In World War II, as much of the country's productive output as possible was dedicated to the war effort. Civilian consumption was strictly rationed, and the population actually went along with this. People gardened and learned to get by with less because every gallon of gasoline they didn't burn, every tire they patched up instead of replacing, every bit of food or cloth or wood or steel that you didn't needlessly consume could be shipped off to the front lines and contribute to victory. Every dollar you saved could be invested in war bonds. There was hardly a single American who lived through that war who didn't make sacrifices and materially contribute to victory.

If you were able to get that level of dedication out of the population again, you could scale an effective military force in very short order the way the US did in WWII. But that just isn't going to happen again for any foreseeable conflict.

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#78

Post by sukilot »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #72

Surprisingly, one of the best examples of the use of public choice economics is the BBC comedy series "Yes, Minister." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister

Yes Minister had a confidential consultant who fed the writers real stories from parliament negotiations.

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#79

Post by remarkEon »

venomsnake wrote: post #62
remarkEon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah good thing no one we're dropping bombs on today has any armored vehicles. http://defensetech.org/2015/01/07/us-airstrikes-agaisnt-isis...

US also don't have boots on the ground. And it's not as if ISIS has the vaguest idea how to use what it has.

Yes that's right there's no one over there right now and that hardware is a black box impervious to anyone figuring out how to use it.

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/1-000-soldiers-from-the-82nd-...

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#80

Post by mcv »

ghaff wrote: post #27
joncp wrote: post #23

I've never understood how any engineer would think that a plane could be built to fulfill all of the demands from all military branches. My guess is that they don't, but they get to play with cool tech. And hey, the money is flowing so why not try?

The F35 program has been pretty much a disaster. But, that said, the concept of departing from a model in which every service branch and every allied country to which we sell military hardware has largely unique equipment for every mission isn't inherently a bad one. But we've apparently discovered that, among other problems with the program, it's harder to come up with a viable common design than many apparently tho…

Reducing the number of commonly used planes from dozens to a handful is a great idea. Reducing it to one is not.

But there already are fighters that are widely used. The F16 is used by practically everybody, for example. It's a perfect backbone for a small air force, and still a very versatile fighter in a large air force. But some missions require something more specialized, and it makes sense for a large air force to have more specialized jets for those roles.

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