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kalvasflam

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Everything posted by kalvasflam

  1. kalvasflam
    J-20 shows off its load... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/2172993/china-reveals-j-20-stealth-fighters-missile-carrying-capability Somehow, it looks a little familiar. The only question is how many of these can be fielded, and whether they can replace the engines easily. In other news. Is Boeing secretly saying that it has an override for human pilots? I jest obviously, but this seems a bit much, for pilots not to know about the way the plane can function. https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/airline-industry-rushes-to-understand-nuances-in-737-453602/
  2. kalvasflam
    Somewhere, someone is immediately thinking about a laser. A big powerful laser. Pew pew, die die....
  3. kalvasflam
    Oh well, I'm sure Lockheed will be happy if that happens. But there is still a good chance for pretty boy to go in with either the Typhoon or the Gripen. Those are not bad planes, and although they're 4th or 4.5th generation, it's not as if they are any worse off than F-18s. After all, did the Canadian government decide it was a good idea to rebid the contract? I have to admit, I don't know much about the Canadian aerospace industry other than Bombardier, wonder what other companies do a lot of work up there.
  4. kalvasflam
    You know, that half a billion is what people would call sunk cost. It also depends on how much the lifetime cost of the Gripen would be vs the F-35. In reality, the Canadians were always going to be better off with F-18s, and they acknowledged it essentially by buying second hand hornets. If you think about them and their role as junior partners essentially, they are better off with the F-18s, more guns, more missiles, let the Americans go all fancy with stealth and clear the air before sending in the Canadian bomb trucks. What the pretty boy really ought to do is to buy the super hornets that they have, just to show Boeing that Canada will never do business with Boeing military arm directly again. It would be hilarious.
  5. kalvasflam
    yeah, and the bigger question is why bother? All those WMGs, and all they were against were fodder. Guess I'll look forward to the subbed versions.
  6. kalvasflam
    Ah man, this brings back memories. I remember when that movie came out. Then I heard about the real Mig-31, I thought, wow, that would be so cool. Sure, they called it Foxhound, but real life Mig-31. Imagine my disappointment when the darn thing turned out to be a souped up Mig-25. Mikoyan & Gurevich so disappointed me, in my mind, it was like they were promising this: and then gave this instead: The disappointment was so palpable that not even the Mig-29 could make up for it. Thank God for Sukohi, they renewed my faith in beautiful fighter design with the Su-27. You know, the funny thing about Firefox is that at least they got one concept right, stealth fighters needed internal weapons bays. If I remember right, in the movie, the Mig-31 had internal missile bays, angled surfaces, not sure about RAM, but I remember it had a huge heat signature, at least it gave a good idea of stealth even if the engine takes looked like huge reflectors for radars. It's funny, the fighter manufacturers of the 70s/80s have all been folded into other companies, Grumann (F-14) into NGC, McDonnel Douglas (F-15, F-18) into Boeing, General Dynamics (F-16) into Lockheed Martin. Hopefully they'll do a good job with the next iteration. Is that a joke? It has to be Five Eyes certified? I didn't think the intelligence agencies would be out certifying warplanes. I' m sure if it means selling planes, the PRC would happy to get its planes Five Eyes certified... ha ha.
  7. kalvasflam
    Sorry, I need to be more careful with my phrasing. When I say kinetic, I am talking about its payload capabilities in various configurations. Not direct performance when it comes to dogfighting or delivery of munitions, which will likely be great given its stealth characteristics.
  8. kalvasflam
    Some interesting videos on Vimeo for the next chapter. Lots of action, curious to see all of this pans out even if it was a bit disjointed. And I noticed, there are no fighter on fighter action in these sequences, both sides have them, but both sides are using them as attack aircraft only. How interesting.
  9. kalvasflam
    Do you want to bet on that with our current CinC?
  10. kalvasflam
    It's called internationalization, yes, I know about it, I have a friend who does that type of work, it's all in the software. The date has to be in the right format, the code has to say the right thing to other types of code, and on and on... I suppose what you're kind of saying is that the F-35 is a really expensive computer that's made to work with international client, or better yet, a device driven by complex software. Odd, I thought Lockheed's expertise was in building weapon systems, not iPhones. No wonder they screwed things up so badly. They were outside the realm of their expertise. And for all of that software, the F-35 is still less kinetically capable than the -22, or even some of the 4th generation aircraft. Heh heh, the worst of both worlds, even with all that money. Shame.... But I suppose the upside is that at least they didn't have to sell to a mass market like China, imagine how much worse the internationalization would have been then, pilots no speak English, and everything has to be converted to Mandarin. Thank goodness the Taiwanese doesn't want that plane..... oh... oops.... yes, I'm trying to systematically use all of the emojis available at mwf.
  11. kalvasflam
    No, the export variants have far less to do with the mess of the F-35, Vifam7 is right about part of the reason that the plane went so far over budget. The export variants comes down to two versions, the -A and the -B, most of the work would be done on the -A, because by far because that was where most of the export were and where most of the orders came from. The biggest problem was that the F-35 was designed to be a jack of all trades, but instead turned into crap for most of those roles, and Lockheed had to practically design three different airplanes. And if you look across variants, the US was the dominant buyer in every single case, so export was not nearly the issue, because at the end of the day, the F-35 just for the US armed forces would've been enough, everything else would've been gravy. The problem was that the plane was designed to replace the F-16, the A-10, the F-18, the AV-8B, and who knows what else. Do you know what those four aforementioned planes have in common? They are all in the US inventory, only two other countries I think have two of those variants, no other country have three. @Slider, I agree with your comments for the most part, except, F-23 variants would never, ever happen, Canada would sooner buy the Eurofighter or something from Japan than start up their own work on an equivalent fighter. Simply because it would cost far too much money to set up operation with their own factories. There is just no scale. The better solution might have been a combination of F-35s and F-18 E/F, the F-35 acts as forward observers and transmit data to the -18s, and then the -18s act as missile trucks for BVR engagements. But pretty boy hates Boeing because of the Bombardier row, and there will never be any new F-18s from the US as long as he is in charge, so the Canadians are hosed. Although I think he did say he would look at old second hand F-18s from the Aussies. Reimportation at its best, may be he could also buy some second hand F-15s or F-16s. (I don't think he hates Lockheed quite as much as Boeing). And yes, America is pretty good at playing politics, I know you probably mean Canada, but it's same for us south of the border.
  12. kalvasflam
    The decision to not sell F-22 to anyone was possibly one of the worst decision ever made by the government. Had they done so, not only would the line have remained open, and as a consequence the cost would've gone done, there would be many more -22s out there today. At the minimum, Japan and Israel would've gone for that plane. The national security rationale for not selling it was just plain stupid, only a fool would've expected the F-22 to continue to be dominant forever, and there was no way to have fully secured the information on that plane anyhow. Just look at what happened to the F-35. The data was leaked out anyway. The only way to become less vulnerable was to have the best of what was out there while pushing the envelop on the next best thing (sixth generation) Oh well, hindsight is 20/20. The chance of anyone outside of the US resurrecting the F-23 is exactly zero, Boeing and Northrop would never be able to provide the background designs and such. And the Canadians doesn't even have that much of an aerospace industry to support native builds, the Japanese might, but they may as well start from scratch rather than take a design that's now pushing 30 years old. No, our only hope for such an equivalent design is China.
  13. kalvasflam
    You mean like the F-23, Don't worry, China will rescue the design from its undeserved fate... at least partially. You have to admit, the J-20 superficially looks a little like the F-23, even though a lot of the details on the J-20 supposedly came from the F-35. Then there is the J-31 that is slowly going to come on line, given enough time, China will build a strike version of that, and we'll have the equivalent of the FB-22 design. Then your dreams may start to come true. The only thing China needs now is a good engine. Do you think P&W will be able to help there? Because obviously the stuff from Russia is garbage.
  14. kalvasflam
    Geez, it's not stealing, intellectual property should be shared for the benefit of mankind. Don't be so selfish, next you'll be telling everyone it's ok to charge a ton of money for life saving drugs, think about the children. As far as the EMALs are concerned, we'll see whether China can put something in place or not. It isn't necessarily easy, same for the stealth aircraft, just because you have the blueprint does not mean you have the capability to build something in the right way. Even if they have for example the exact formula for the stealth coatings, it's not necessarily easy to put it into production
  15. kalvasflam
    Yeah well, catapults have some pretty hefty requirements in terms of energy. But it's possible to do it with conventional carriers, after all, the US has demonstrated this since the 50s. But I can't wait to see the type 3 class carrier from China once it gets deployed, it'll be the first super carrier type outside of the US, it'll be awesome and nuclear powered. Once again, all thanks to the miracle of the internet. I would be curious to see how carrier air wings evolve in the next twenty years. Somehow I get the feeling that the USN will be upping the number of planes on the carrier as time goes on. Otherwise, the Nimitz and Ford classes are a waste of time, a carrier built to accommodate a 90 plane air wing ends up with only 60 planes... why bother.
  16. kalvasflam
    ok, sure, if we want to get specific, CALCMs, not ALCMs, most people wouldn't even know what the acronym stand for. Yeah well, the Serbs were more than happy to sell the wreckage of the F-117 immediately, but honestly, they should've bombed the heck out of the wreckage. Use B-1s to do saturation bombing, and then coated over with thermabaric.b As for the Chinese, I doubt they would want to pay money to the Serbs for the stealth coating... too cheap, easier just to get it legitimately by hacking servers from Lockheed. It was probably unsecured anyway, so, it was treated like the open internet. The funny thing about carriers today, only the US and French actually use catapults I think. Everyone else uses ski jumps, although I think the next Chinese carrier will use a catapult, although they're probably skipping steam, and straight to EMAL, easy enough to get the designs for it through the open internet, and when the secured servers has the password as either 123456 or password.
  17. kalvasflam
    True, the B-2s are forward deployed at Anderson, and the only hull loss also occurred there. But it doesn't matter. The B-2 had to add the ninja missions of the F-117 because, well, they chopped up the -117s since it was "old technology." However the B-2 has to live somewhere since there is no SAC any more. The nice thing of course is that there is much longer range on the B-2, and the ability to carry more ordinance. But unfortunately, the B-2s have never been used to their full potential, which was to penetrate Soviet air space. Let's face it, most of the B-2 missions up until now could've been done by the B-1s or ALCMs. There was nothing special about those missions.
  18. kalvasflam
    yep, a 100, a nice round number, let's hope they don't end up with 21 units. But if you think about it, the B-2s now are used in tactical actions on the first day anyhow. In fact, it would be fair to say that the B-2 has more or less replaced the F-117, with the biggest difference being that the aircraft aren't forward deployed like the -117s were. I think the B-1s do get fairly forward deployed, right? Then the B-21 is probably also going to have the nuclear strike role too. After all, that's the original purpose of the B-2, I believe it is still considered a part of the triad along with the B-52s, although I don't think the B-1s are nuclear capable any more under START.
  19. kalvasflam
    meh, now we're talking a question of business and how the government wants to spend its money. This is why the aerospace industry is so screwed up. The Pentagon wanted cheap and good, and Lockheed apparently knew how to play the game better than anybody else, so they won. And in reality, the Pentagon go neither cheap nor good. They got barely middle of the road in terms of capabilities and expensive. Imagine if the Pentagon went out to Boeing, NGC, and LM, then said there were five programs, USAF air superiority fighter, USAF tactical bomber, USN long range strike, USN air superiority, and something for the marines. My guess is there might have been more up front costs, but you would've ended up with best in class on multiple single role weapon systems. But now we're getting way beyond the merits of the plane. But the die is already cast, the USN is going to be all about having F-35 scouting things out to provide targeting data to F-18s, which are basically missile trucks. One better hope that entire chain is robust, because the F-35 needs to tank at some point, the E-2s are fairly vulnerable to potential stealth fighter, and the F-18s have large RCS. So, we'll see what happens. As Bill Paxton would say: "tip of the spear, crack of my ass"
  20. kalvasflam
    I think the difference here is that the F-117 had a dedicated role and were built in low quantities, 50 something units altogether. The F-35 is a multi role fighter that will see production in excess of 2,000 units and be slotted into a bunch of different roles. So, it's the envisioned role that matters, F-35 is supposed to be a fighter bomber designed to conduct a variety of different mission. The F-117 was designed as a tactical penetration bomber. Not meant to act as a dog fighter, or a bomb truck, or any of those missions. I figured it could probably be really good at SEAD, but somewhat limited given that it carried only two weapons, although I suppose if it was still around, it could've been used to carry more than two SBDs. After all, nobody wanted to buy thousands of F-117s each carrying two bombs or four AAMs, you can imagine the cry of consternation if that had happened.
  21. kalvasflam
    Ah, here we get into the definition of combat radius. It is really a question of what load is being carried, right? I think we could probably use some better definition here, the F-15E does indeed have the same combat radius as the F-35, but the devil is in the details. Is this combat radius a reference to while the F-15 is loaded with 22K lbs of ordinance and full fuel load or something else? Because the F-35 combat radius is similar only when loaded with internal air to air configuration. It doesn't say anything about what the interdiction mission load out is with just a 670 nm of combat radius. Whether that is an internal load of ~6K lbs, or the full max load out of 18K lb s, it isn't really stated. I noticed also that Lockheed is a little vague in their other literature. And it would make a big difference if this was beast mode vs the I carry just two JDAM internally mode. Just pure curiosity. But I think you'd see the obvious difference. I suppose we'll never know until the F-35 goes into a well defended air space that actually stretches its capabilities and have demands to kill multiple targets. The Israeli experience with Syria doesn't count that much given how close the actual targets are. But in truth, such flights would never operate alone, it would be a part of a package. The only real question is whether those packages are optimal with just F-35s or could they have done it with a combo of 4th and 5th generation aircraft.
  22. kalvasflam
    Odd though, no one has mentioned what the range would be for the beast mode F-35. Cause all of a sudden, it's carrying about an extra 10K lbs. Would be hilarious if the F-35s neutralized the anti-air threat, loaded up for beast mode, and then found out that the plane just can't get there. Yes, yes, I know about tankers, and F-18s and jointness and all of that. Doesn't it seem like after a while, all of the F-35 defenders are just making excuses for this plane.
  23. kalvasflam
    If you believe Wikipedia, the combat range of the A-6 with max payload is 878 nm. The F-35A with internal load only is 760 nm, so I would have to guess it would be lower if it carried a full load out which would compromise stealth. The funny thing is that the proponents of the F-35 has alternatively said that the plane is needed because its stealth characteristics would enable it to survive modern air defenses, and access regions that were defended by modern day SAMs. Then, they tout the fact that to compensate for the lack of ordinance, the F-35 has so called beast mode that sacrifices its stealth characteristics so that once the area's defenses are fully suppressed, the F-35 can roll in with max bomb load to blast the ever loving crap out of the ground targets. So, this makes beast mode sounds great, but why would you even need an F-35 with beast mode in that case. Why not just have F-35 in SEAD role only, and then followed it up with two dozen F-15Es or F-18E/F which carries either comparable or more ordinance into the defended area. Both types would be cheaper, although in the case if the F-18 E/F, you'd have to argue that they don't have legs. And both would make a fantastic missile truck, without ever worrying about compromising stealth, because, hey, they aren't stealthy. The USN really needs to bring back something like the A-6, something that can carry a load, have legs, and don't have to be necessarily stealthy. Also, isn't the F-35B designed to replace the AV-8Bs? I think the marines are supposed to get some F-35Cs too, right?
  24. kalvasflam
    I agree, if it wants to have an RCS like the old A-6. But you know the funny thing is, it doesn't have quite the legs like the A-6. I suppose the advantage is that it can go much faster. The F-22 did have high costs, which would have come down with more production units I think. But we won't know for sure. The only real truth is that the Pentagon were staffed with fools who thought Lockheed Martin could be trusted with not going over budget. It's reasons like this why there is such a thing as firmed fixed pricing, and why companies like ULA gets their butt handed to them by Space X.
  25. kalvasflam
    That is true, and I think so far the deliveries are somewhere in the 300 units range. But planning to buy vs actual buys are two different things, do you recall how many B-2s the service was originally slated to buy, how about F-22, I do recall at one point the USAF was also planning to buy 750 at the very start of the program, then it got cut over and over again until we ended up with 180+ units. I do think that you're right, under any circumstances, the F-35 will be the numerous 5th generation aircraft. Mainly because of all of the other countries committed to the program, that is unless the Chinese decide to mass produce their versions in any number. But we'll see how many units the USAF actually buys. One other fun statistic, the F-35 carries 180 rounds of 25 mm ammo, compared to the 500+ rounds of 20 mm ammo carried by an F-16. I would guess the F-35 won't be doing much of a gun run, and don't get me started on that vs 1100+ rounds of 30 mm the A-10 can carry. Sure, we can say that the F-35 don't need no stinking guns for close air support, because it can tote JDAMs and other munitions in its place, just to note, the internal stores on the F-35 is about 5700 lbs, sure it can install external hard points, and get up to about the same load as an F-16. But then, the plane won't be so stealthy with those external stores sticking out. By the way, for those that think my only goal is to slam the F-35, it isn't. I think sadly, the problem with the F-35 is that it is set up for the wrong missions, or rather, the USAF has decided it needed to buy so many units to make it economical that it was forced to shoehorn the plane into a multitude of missions it wasn't really designed for. Going back again to the multirole vs single role argument.
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