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

thedrive.com

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

#321

Post by pxmpxm »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #37

Highway landing and take-off on its own is useless. F35 requires extensive machinery to maintain, in needs proper airport and hangars. It is not possible to operate it somewhere from forest! And vertical landing/takeoff can not support any load, it can not even be fully fuelled! In Czechia we are replacing Gripens that can operate from almost anywhere. It only needs a few hundred meters of road, and single truck to r…

In Czechia we

Never any seen any Čech actually use that silly term...

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

#322

Post by sillywalk »

tolien wrote: post #87
sillywalk wrote: post #18

"FTA: they would involve placing aluminum AM-2 mats along a strip of highway, up to 1,500 feet long. This will be sufficient for the stealth jets to carry out short takeoffs and vertical landings while protecting the road beneath them." "AM-2 matting consists of 1 1/2" x 2' steel rectangles coated with a epoxy nonskid material, available in both 6 and 12 foot lengths, and are assembled in a brickwork pattern to form…

> "FTA: they would involve placing aluminum AM-2 mats along a strip of highway, up to 1,500 feet long. This will be sufficient for the stealth jets to carry out short takeoffs and vertical landings while protecting the road beneath them." They did this before as part of an airshow demo. The Royal Engineers (Army co-operation!) had built pads at RAF Fairford for RIAT then the F-35B flew in, engaged STOVL mode (i.e. li…

I'm curious how long it takes / how many people / what special equipment or vehicles were required to set up these types of semi-improvised runways.

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

#323

Post by nradov »

genmud wrote: post #318
WeylandYutani wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I immensely respect Ukraine but a US-China war would involve the best technology this planet has to offer and the Chinese have been preparing for it since the 1970s.

Maybe, their ambitions are definitely that they stand toe to toe with the US. However, the fact they are just now starting to issue body armor to their soldiers and have not had any real combat experience in the modern age might be difficult challenges to overcome. It's a lot different to push around your effectively unarmed neighbors than the US, who has been in large scale military conflicts since the 40's. To put…

The official figures on China's military budget are total lies. What they actually spend on a PPP basis is now comparable to the USA.

https://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/

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

#324

Post by KingOfCoders »

gostsamo wrote: post #78
KingOfCoders wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you jam a laser from a satellite to a drone, if it is one way? With the sensor on top of the drone, e.G. a Predator? Wouldn't you need something flying higher than the drone?

you can directly target the satellites. Currently in development in Russia, China, and the US.

I thought we were talking about jamming.

But if we talk about killing, we'll get thousands of micro satellites, good luck shooting them down.

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

#325

Post by ajuc »

Amiable5326 wrote: post #292
ajuc wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what people were complaining about in Poland in 00s when we bought F-16 in addition to our MiG-29. That the airplanes will be hard to maintain, aren't as rugged, can't handle street landing and improvised conditions. There was a huge scandal because one of the F-16 was flown from USA to Poland and did emergency landing on the way because of some minor technical issue. 20 years later and we lost two MiG-29 to b…

No idea where Poland got that idea about F-16s as they have a reputation for being a reliable and robust fighter even before Poland purchased the planes, unlike the MiG-29 which is a maintenance queen (particularly the engines) and has a reputation for being a mediocre plane whose career mainly consists of being shot of out of the sky.

There was a competition between F-16 and Grippen :)

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

#326

Post by sbierwagen »

sklargh wrote: post #303
sbierwagen wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maintenance and munitions. The F-35 needs 9 ground labor hours per flight hour. It's cheap and easy to add a flight apron next to a straight section of highway, but if you only have one maintenance depot then knocking that out will ground your entire fleet. Setting up redundant hangars and staffing them with trained aircraft mechanics is way, way more expensive than just pouring some extra concrete. Stocking them wit…

The perimeter security element is often overlooked. You’ve got a lot more very valuable assets to secure. In the European (particularly Nordic ) scenario it’s really not implausible that special operations teams could be dispatched to hunt dispersed aircraft on the ground. In addition, it’s a much wider area to offer short range air defense of. I believe the targeting problem created by dispersal outweighs these down…

Absolutely. Hardened aircraft shelters got a bad reputation after the first gulf war, but considering the tradeoffs, one might easily conclude one way forward is much, much more spread out airbases with many separate runways ringed by aircraft shelters, so that you can at least try some air defense rather than let the cruise missiles rain down unopposed. (If Patriot batteries are a billion dollars a pop, then that's rather contraindicated to do full integrated AD for every roadside apron, isn't it...)

Bas 90 had an extreme amount of dispersion because Sweden's threat model included nuclear weapon strikes with no way to retaliate. If you're a nuclear power and assume that nuclear attacks on military targets would automatically escalate to MAD, then you might feel better about doing a dozen megabases, rather than a gross highway airfields.

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

#327

Post by preisschild »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #278
KeplerBoy wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least you guys have a backup. If the Eurofighter gets grounded Austria has no airforce, because we retired the Saab 105 without buying L39s or Grippens as replacement.

Honestly, I would just prefer good S300 system. At Ukraine it covered sky for almost a year. Jet fighters for air superiority are obsolete.

S300 is only good against old jets, not against modern stealth jets such as the F-35. Modern western SAM systems such as PATRIOT and NASAMS are obviously much more capable.

> Jet fighters for air superiority are obsolete.

No they aren't. Why do you think Ukraine is asking for F-16s. You can deny air superiority to the enemies with good air defense, but not establish it for yourself.

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

#328

Post by tolien »

luuurker wrote: post #307
NikkiA wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure, the US at one point did talk about how if the F35 wasn't kept in climate controlled hangars then its stealth abilities would be negated rapidly.

Has that ever been confirmed? Because some variants operate from carriers and I'd be surprised if they have special hangars inside.

It does look like they develop a sort of "rust" through exposure to sea air [0], though what effect that has on low-observability remains to be seen.

0: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44067/the-f-35cs-radar...

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

#329

Post by genmud »

nradov wrote: post #323
genmud wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, their ambitions are definitely that they stand toe to toe with the US. However, the fact they are just now starting to issue body armor to their soldiers and have not had any real combat experience in the modern age might be difficult challenges to overcome. It's a lot different to push around your effectively unarmed neighbors than the US, who has been in large scale military conflicts since the 40's. To put…

The official figures on China's military budget are total lies. What they actually spend on a PPP basis is now comparable to the USA. https://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/

Hmm, well, if those are accurate numbers than the us spends more than the next 9 countries combined.

Still, the us spends more than 2.5x per year than China.

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

#330

Post by NikkiA »

dralley wrote: post #313
NikkiA wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure, the US at one point did talk about how if the F35 wasn't kept in climate controlled hangars then its stealth abilities would be negated rapidly.

You are thinking of the F-22 or perhaps the B-2. The stealth coatings on those are a lot more fragile.

I'm absolutely not, because I remember the argument was part of 'factor in the cost of improving hangars to be climate controlled when considering the purchase cost of the F35 from the US', in particular, I think it was when the canadian purchase of the F35 was being discussed.

Since the F22 and B2 are not exported at all, not even to canada, it cannot possibly have been a factor in purchasing either of those.

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