John Boyd fought for years to build single-purpose fighters, but the idea of one, all-purpose warplane is just too seductive. (See John Boyd's biography by Robert Coram)
It's the Windows 8||Ubuntu Unity of warplanes!
How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane
241–250 of 347 posts
Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane
#242Honestly, for those who really know the battles within the Pentagon about the design and procurement of equipment, it's no surprise. Too much design-by-committee, and mission creep from difference parts of different services who want a piece of the funding pie. When the program is billed as "one plane for all 3 services," you know there's trouble brewing on the horizon. It's telling that a lot of the quotes from this…
"The F-35 is succeeding brilliantly in its mission, though, which is to funnel taxpayer money to a nice fat cross section of the military-industrial complex." And in one of its secondary missions, which is to generate hundreds of thousands of votes for many Reps. and Senators, spread across many Congressional districts and states - and both parties.
I don't think most of the widely-spread military projects are all that good at generating votes. Rather, I think that the threat of losing votes for "killing jobs in the district" is a good way of keeping members of Congress in line behind the projects.
Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
You won't see A2A drones for at least another decade. In a non-contested environment, dropping Hellfire missiles is easy from a slow moving drone like a Predator. But this won't occur against a peer enemy. It's too easy to shoot them down. As to A2A, there are far too many obstacles for this happening soon. Plus, there's the whole notion that in a conflict against a peer opponent, that we'll somehow be able to manage…
Those are great points. I hadn't considered the ability to jam signals at all. That seems like a pretty huge challenge to overcome actually.
You could plug some serious AI into the drone so it can engage without a connection back to home base. Video game AI is getting pretty good. Just pray it doesn't go all Rise of the Machines on us...
Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane
#244I read this and think "man, these guys are going to be great at running healthcare"
Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane
#245I am not saying that the JSF is a good plane, or that VSTOL is a good thing. But the claims of the article are all resting on this: "In the scenario, 72 Chinese jets patrolled the Taiwan Strait. Just 26 American warplanes — the survivors of a second missile barrage targeting their airfields — were able to intercept them, including 10 twin-engine F-22 stealth fighters that quickly fired off all their missiles" To summ…
when did the straight of Taiwan stop being a nuclear tipping point?
Ah, good old theory, it's always more reliable than practise!
Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> however we still have the F-22 as our air superiority fighter which is still believed to be better then anything out there I'm just going to leave this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBKvlLzGkvU
There's also this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/13/olsen_raptor_case_ge... And the fact that the F-22's stealth coatings, even if they work, ablate in rain. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/f-35-gets-stealthier... And of course the ludicrous idea that the F-35 can replace the A-10 Warthog in combat. http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/a-10-f-35-air-force-... The A-10 problem bugs me more than the o…
It's hard to envision a conflict where the A-10's advantages over the F-35 are dispositive, given that there aren't divisions of Warsaw Pact T80s massed on the German border any more.
Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
The F-35 has EODAS for spherical optical threat detection vs OLS front only on a Su-35 Flanker. 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/…
I stand behind what I've said and encourage you to dig into the open source docs on this. The RAND study is worth a start but there's a lot more, including English language materials from the SU design staff.
"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."
Doesn't matter. Once you've got a launch flare that gives you a position fix to hand to the radar to do localized searching, dramatically weakening the likelihood of avoiding continued spotting.
Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane
#248Some 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…
My perspective on the canadian matter would be to simply ditch the f-35 and wait or finance a full fighter drone. We really aren't far from this technology.
Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Ottawa officially scraps F-35 purchase as audit pegs costs at $45-billion" http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-official...
This doesn't mean Canada won't decide to buy F-35's in the future unfortunately. It just means the government is open to forming a committee to consider the concept of possibly examining alternatives at an undisclosed point in the future.
True, but at least the headlong rush has stopped.
Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane
#250Earlier 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.
Once you factor in the entire program cost and logistics footprint, the Tomahawk is the absolute cheapest way the US military has to put a bomb on a specific spot on the map.