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F-ZeroOne

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  1. F-ZeroOne
    I seem to recall that it was a limited time thing, and I read that a while ago, so I would not be surprised to find that its closed by now but I don't know for definite.
  2. F-ZeroOne
    There is actually a property that would cover similar ground but without the rights issues (as far as I know) - Terry Pratchetts "Only You Can Save Mankind".
  3. F-ZeroOne
    Can't believe we got this far without someone saying...
  4. F-ZeroOne
    The Battle of the Atlantic. Even Churchill stated it was the only part of the war that really worried him. Also, the naval clashes between the Royal Navy and the Kriegsmarine during the Norway campaign, which effectively ended any hope the Germans had of carrying out Operation: Sealion (the later planned invasion of the U.K; it was always going to be a dodgy proposition in ideal circumstances, but losing many of the required escort vessels didn't help much). Not sure it counts as a "battle" as such, but the D-Day landings. Oh, and the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean - Taranto was a bit of a pointer for the Japanese when they were planning a certain something thats also being discussed here...
  5. F-ZeroOne
    My guess is ol' Tomino himself.
  6. F-ZeroOne
    Its perhaps worth pointing out that what makes it onto screen is not necessarily what was originally written - compare "The Star Wars" with "Star Wars: Episode IV", for example...
  7. F-ZeroOne
    An A400M has crashed in Spain; four people on-board have died, at least two seriously injured. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32673713
  8. F-ZeroOne
    Slightly curious thing to notice, but in that shot of the TIE fighter strafing the hangar (er, assuming its not just a really incompetent pilot or something), the design of the steps to the left - very defined edges, almost like the smooth surfaces of angled Lego bricks,,,
  9. F-ZeroOne
    Quote is in the Wikipedia article on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2 "All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR-2 simply got the first three right."
  10. F-ZeroOne
    Thanks for the pictures, though I think one of those planes is slightly older than the 80s...
  11. F-ZeroOne
    It was always an interesting design to me that disappeared almost as soon as it was revealed. Oddly enough, the same book that reminded me of it has a concept drawing for the Affordable Lightweight Fighter - the programme that eventually resulted in the F-35. The pictures shows a small canard delta with rounded edges and a flat engine nozzle, sort of like a stealthy Gripen, Whats interesting to me is that in the background, one of them is shown approaching, with wheels down, what appears to be a helicopter carrier, with choppers on board. There is no room on the deck for a conventional landing; its quite possible that the artist used a stock photo of the carrier (the fighter concepts are drawings but the carrier is either a photo of a real one or a a photo of a model), but it suggests to me that for all the griping about how the "B" ruined all the other variants, should have been developed separately, should have been nuked from orbit etc that S/VTOL was being considered at a very early stage, possibly instead of other variants (in other words, it could be argued that the "A" and "C" ruined the "B"! ). Edit: correction to the development programme name.
  12. F-ZeroOne
    (At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, but was inspired a bit after looking through an old military aircraft book today. A news story from parallel universe 199X... ) "The Russian Navy said today that it still plans to introduce a controversial jump-jet that can take off and land like a helicopter in two years time, despite claims from critics that it is too slow, doesn't carry enough missiles, and has already suffered a major crash in testing. The Yak-141 is a supersonic jet fighter with a vertical take off and landing capability. Production has already started, with nearly a hundred airframes undergoing testing presently. The aircraft is to be a major component of the Russians fleets on-going moderisation efforts and is intended to ensure air dominance over its opponents for the next twenty years. However, the programme has attracted strong criticism. The Russian military had trouble funding the development of the aircraft, which was only completed after an injection of cash was provided by another, foreign company. At least one prototype was destroyed in a serious landing accident on a navy vessel, an ominous development for a type intended to operate at sea for the majority of its service life. It has also attracted major criticism from military commentators as being more expensive than alternatives like the rival Su-27, only able to carry four air-to-air missiles, and for being too slow - the Yak-141 has a reported top speed of Mach 1.4, whereas Americas F/A-18 can do Mach 1.7, a significant difference. Other critics have additionally pointed out it is more complicated than the aircraft it is replacing, using a sophisticated combination of lift engines and a remarkable "lobster-back" swivelling nozzle to enable vertical capability. Some experts suggest that this is an overly complex arrangement that will increase the likelihood of mechanical failure... " (stats from Wikipedia - the true figures are probably never going to be known; my original source lists Mach 1.8, which may well have been optimistic... ).
  13. F-ZeroOne
    But... removing the excess armour and equipment is what they did with the Zero [1] and look how that eventually turned out... I think we're just going to have to accept that the whole Buffalo in Finnish service thing is just one of those oddities that crops up from time to time in war... [1] Well... I say, "remove", what I really mean is that it wasn't there in the first place...
  14. F-ZeroOne
    I think he was referring to the TSR.2, IIRC the quote correctly theres a last part which goes something like "...it got the first three right!".
  15. F-ZeroOne
    Pretty much. In fact, I can think of another aircraft that was nearly cancelled because it cost too much, had severe production difficulties, was hard to maintain and there were other options available, including older types [1] that could do the same job at less cost and were more agile and why do we need these new fangled things anyway? It eventually went into RAF service as the Vickers-Supermarine Spitfire. My stance on the matter is... well, I think I just get irritated by some of the things I see in comments, which are always very "black and white". My tendency is towards a more middle-ground view. [1] Biplanes.
  16. F-ZeroOne
    Bringing up the subject of the Plane-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named again, I can receive PBS America despite living in the UK. They've been running a series called "Air Warriors" lately, which looks at various U.S. military aircraft. The actual documentary aspect is a bit underwhelming (the MiG?) but they do have a lot of very neat archive footage (most of the time - I'm pretty sure at one point they were talking about F-15s whilst showing a low-light shot of MIG-29s on-screen) and have covered a few things I didn't know, like the time a few years ago Congress tried to cancel an expensive, underwhelming aircraft after it had already gone into production because it was, well, expensive, underwhelming, difficult to maintain, had had a couple of accidents and didn't work in the wet. I thought it might be amusing to let you all guess which aircraft we're talking about, but for the impatient modern internet generation answer under the spoiler tag:
  17. F-ZeroOne
    There have been reports that at least one U.S. company, possibly Lockheed-Martin, has been looking into producing a small missile that can be mounted on fighter planes and used to intercept incoming anti-aircraft missiles. It will be interesting to see if railguns will wind up competing with or complimenting laser systems.
  18. F-ZeroOne
    Psychological screening appears to be on a company-by-company basis, some of the reports I've seen indicate that Lufthansa at least do undertake such screening. The cockpit locking appears to be the result of terrorism fears; presumably it works the way it does so that one member of the crew can't be coerced by threats of violence to another member of crew to open the door (or, for example, by forcing the person on the outside of the cockpit to give up the entry code). Edit: possibly its worth pointing out that such incidents are rare; one report I heard the other day stated that one of this type of Airbus involved in the incident takes off from an airport worldwide every twenty seconds.
  19. F-ZeroOne
    The A-10 is so hard, its the personal aeroplane of Chuck Norris... http://defensetech.org/2015/03/23/chuck-norris-writes-to-save-the-a-10-warthog-from-retirement/
  20. F-ZeroOne
    Oh, can you imagine the forums if its gets named "Tomcat II"...
  21. F-ZeroOne
    The US military is looking into the development of new engines, for the 2022 timeframe, intended for use with its fighters. They're hoping for a 35% increase in fuel consumption efficiency. Obviously this isn't a hard and fast figure but it would be interesting to see what that will mean for the F-35B, which is always getting stick for having a lower fuel payload than the other variants...
  22. F-ZeroOne
    If it doesn't win this time, I think I'm going to take up trainspotting.
  23. F-ZeroOne
    I think I overstated my case a little (I'd forgotten about the tooling and meant to ask if the F-22 tooling was still around); I think what I meant is that I don't think we'll see a F-22 as is now, but something that may use a similar airframe but with improved avionics etc and that it won't be called a F-22, because twenty-year old designs aren't sexy enough for the marketing and P.R. people.
  24. F-ZeroOne
    There aren't going to be any more F-22s. Its just not going to happen, the same way the F-14 is gone. If we're (by which I mean, us who like fly-y/shooty/carry-y things) really lucky, the "sixth generation" fighter might be based on it or the YF-23 (more likely, all that development). And this is the thing with the F-35; like it or lump it, its pretty much the only game in town. Chronocidal, you make a good point about the F-35. To a certain degree, its probably no wonder its had issues, and its certainly been ambitious. And the more ambitious the aircraft, the more trouble is likely to pop up during the programme. Incidentally, I'm reminded that the F-15 was originally supposed to be Mach 3 capable like the Foxbat...
  25. F-ZeroOne
    So... not much chance of "Danger Zone" being on the soundtrack then?
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