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British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

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Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#141

Post by The_Colonel »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #113
gostsamo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you are part of a NATO operation against Serbia. Mentioning it, because the conflict in Kosovo is not resolved yet.

Or Hungary, it has far right government sympathetic to Russia. And they may get kicked out of EU any time soon. Also Slovakia and Poland are wobling... And Ukraine might get conquered by Russians. 35 years ago we would fight Germany. F-35 are supposed to last until 2050!

The chance of Hungary, Slovakia or Poland fighting with the West is very, very close to zero.

(weird thing to say since these countries are part of the global west / NATO).

Besides that, I don't really believe that Orbán is sympathetic to Russia, he's just using the situation for his own benefit.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#142

Post by hylaride »

thunderbird120 wrote: post #60
Thoeu388 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I know, we only have single military airport capable of supporting F-35. Fully loaded F35 needs 2.5 km of high quality concrete. It also needs extensive overhaul after every flight to maintain stealth coating. There is no "quick refual/arm" with stealth, it is more like operating Space Shuttle! There are also civilian airports, but we would propably run out of those very soon. And using civilian infrastruct…

>It also needs extensive overhaul after every flight to maintain stealth coating. There is no "quick refual/arm" with stealth, it is more like operating Space Shuttle! I don't know where you heard that but it's completely untrue. Some older radar absorbent material required intensive maintenance but the F-35 is not like that. It's not that much more difficult to maintain than a previous generation fighter. It would b…

Difficult, no. But it does require different and new support mechanisms for long term use (eg not a temporary site). A lot of the controversy in Canada with our F-35 purchase is that we're going to have to completely overhaul our military airports with new maintenance and storage hangars, though honestly we didn't keep them as up to date as we should have.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#143

Post by tomaytotomato »

nicholassmith wrote: post #108
Shrezzing wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vertical landing drops staight in from the sky, and comes to an immediate halt. These planes just need a strip of concrete wider & longer than the plane itself. Realistically you could comfortably put one down on a motorway service station carpark, and then lay a short portable runway along its off-ramp for takeoff.

> Realistically you could comfortably put one down on a motorway service station carpark I'm sure the exceptionally canny operators of motorway service stations would find a way to make some extra money off them then. Come for a coffee, stay for a jet launch.

Or get a parking fine for staying longer than 2 hours with your jet...

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#144

Post by Nursie »

wongarsu wrote: post #105

Cold-War West Germany had about 30 "Emergency Airstrips", about 3km long Autobahn sections that could be converted to airports for military use. Complete with parking lots designed for aircraft parking, mobile air control towers, etc. Large enough that we landed C-130 Hercules on them. Similar strips exist in Finland, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland. Though most of the German locations are now retired and removed.

Outback Australia has some dual-purpose sections of road too, but more for emergency medical flights!

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#145

Post by PedroBatista »

Yeah cool, and can the support necessary to keep an F-35 active be performed on a road?

The Harrier and Gripens can and kinda were designed with that in mind. The F-35? I doubt it.

I'm sure on paper someone will write and another one will approve, but in reality and in a real war scenario I have serious reservations.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#146

Post by Lukas_Skywalker »

H8crilA wrote: post #120
koheripbal wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true in the US and Canada as well.

Crucially this is also true in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Air Force has found a new clever way to keep using normal air bases. After a hangar got bombed by cruise/ballistic missiles they would print a 1:1 aerial/satellite picture of the rubble, hang it over the actual rubble and then clean up under the print. It took quite a few weeks for the Russians to understand this ruse. The doctrine of always having air superiority…

Boeing did a similar thing during WW2, and drew an entire city above a factory in Seattle. The article has some impressive pictures: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/prop-town-fake-roofto...

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#147

Post by KeplerBoy »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #135
avereveard wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And their circle of hit probability with preprogrammed missiles is misured in hundreds meters instead of a handful. The war for which they were built never materialised, and their performances now largely obsolete. And who's going to sell you replacement parts anyway if your principal adversary is also your plane supplier? You want suppliers that don't threaten to nuke you every other week. Soviet planes came at a mu…

I get your point. But: - right now we have fighters from Sweden (not Soviet design obviously) - Soviet planes came with technical plans, we would be probably capable to fix them by our selves to huge extend. Ukraine maintained their Soviet planes for 10 years during war. Also we manufactured some airplanes ourself, and even today Czechia produces fighter jets. - Many countries produces Soviet derived planes and spare…

Calling the L39 a jet fighter is a bit of a stretch. It's a trainer that can be armed and used to intercept general aviation aircraft.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#148

Post by syntaxing »

If you ever been to Xiamen (city close to Taiwan across the ocean in China), the highways near the coast have long stretches of straight with extremely low side barriers. I wouldn’t be surprised if these highways were designed specifically to land aircrafts during times of need.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#149

Post by smcl »

PedroBatista wrote: post #145

Yeah cool, and can the support necessary to keep an F-35 active be performed on a road? The Harrier and Gripens can and kinda were designed with that in mind. The F-35? I doubt it. I'm sure on paper someone will write and another one will approve, but in reality and in a real war scenario I have serious reservations.

To an non-expert like me the Gripen just seems so well-suited for Ukraine's Air Force in this conflict - relatively inexpensive, can land/operate in tougher conditions, can be serviced nearby (Czechia), outfitted to handle Western/NATO missile tech. I wonder what caused them to push so hard for F-16 instead.

Re: British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

#150

Post by gpderetta »

ethbr0 wrote: post #85
chipsa wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biological weapons also have the distinct problem of control: you can release them, but you can't stop them afterward. So, you need to be able to keep your own people safe from the release, which means expensive vaccinations across your population. And how do you test that your vaccination works? Or that it'll still work after your bioweapon mutates? Bioweapons are useless unless your goal is to kill off everyone.

Modern chemical weapons are a better example of a thing we've banned.

But they were banned because of the consequences on their extreme use on the battlefield, not because were controversial before use.
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