Nied

Interesting thing I found in a recent issue of Air Forces monthly. The vast majority of Harrier missions during OIF (both RAF and USMC) were flown with two LGBs at most, and ocasionally a pair of Air-to-Air missiles. Flight leaders would even give up one of the Paveways for a Litening II sensor pod, most flights didn't even carry their gunpods (something to consider for those who criticise the gunpod on the STOL and CV versions of the JSF). It's surprising how closely this matches with what the F-35 carries.

So some country is going to bankrupt itself on a massive overwhelming fleet of Bear bombers like the Soviets would have used? At most a moderately rich country could maybe get a squadrons worht of Bears operating (and getting them all operational at once would be quite a trick). Even then a Super Hornet Loaded to bear (say with 12 AMRAAMs and a pair of sidewinders) could with some luck take out the whole squaron on it's own, but of course it wouldn't be alone. Hell even if the Bears got off those big fat cruise missiles they carry before the Hornets could get them the Hornets could just go after the missiles. A more likely fleet defense scenario would be smaller fighter bombers (perhaps Su-30Ms) coming in at low altitude with Medium range ASMs (for arguments sake lets say Exocets). In that case a Pheonix armed F-14 would be at a disadvantage against the maneuverable Flankers. Pheonix missiles are great against the large lumbering bombers and single minded cruise missiles they were designed to take down, but only marginally effective against small maneuvering targets, and useless against small missiles like the Exocets. A Rhino on the other hand would have those 12 AMRAAMs, which were designed to take out fighters from long distances.

Unfortunetly the airframe is the problem. Without a total re-design of the airframe there's only so much you can do to make a plane more maintainable. 90% of an aircraft's maintainability doesn't have anything to do with technology, it has to do with the accesability to that technology. Take a look at the those pictures of the F/A-22 I posted a while back. Just about everything you need to get to for everyday maintnence is right there at eye level where it can be easily worked on, on an F-14 they're scatered about the airframe and they can't just be moved with out re-designing the whole thing. The other aspect of maintainability is how easily you can take it apart and put it back together, again this doesn't have anything to do with technology, it has to do with the design of the airframe. If you have to undo 20 little fasteners to get an engine out of a plane it's going to take you at least twice as long as it would to undo 10 big ones. And no amount of digital microchips are going to fix that, only an airframe re-design would. I don't think people realize the importance of low maintnence aircraft in the real world. Sure a Super Hornet might be only 80% as effective as a ST-21 when both are in perfect working order, but if the Hornet is in the air and fighting while the Tomcat would be in the hangar getting yet anohter overhaul it's 100% more effective. A plane in the air fighting is useful, a plane sitting in the hangar is not.

Actually now it's primarily a bombtruck, with a secondary role of fleet defense. And if we're talking about stuff like CAS, it apears that the Rhino could do just as good a job as the Bombcat. It was able to gain and lose speed at the drop of a hat, and the tight turn rate would mean turning around ofr another attack faster. Only problem was that it looked a little underpowered, sure it accelerated like a bat out of hell, but that was clean, and it didn't have much room to go vertical. What the Rhino needs now is a something better than a warmed over F404 (though it does have the afterburner from the GE120). Well I guess that would preclude jamming it into a Super Hornet. I guess they'll have to find another way to get some more power out of that thing. And David ties it back to the original topic, nice ! Well I guess that makes the solution somewhat easier than we all thought, just use the F-119 first stage blades on the F-35B, and use F135s on the rest of the planes.

Indeed. That was also a factor in choosing the F-22 over the -23. People need to remember that a high performance airplane isn't all that useful when it's in a hangar for an overhaul.

Having seen a Super Hornet in action I gotta say that is not the hopeless aircraft some here make it out to be. Would a ST-21 be more effective in some areas? Arguably. Would it have been cheaper? Absolutely. But that is besides the point, as I said the Tomcat is dead and it can't be resurected. The plane I saw had absolutely increadible high AoA performance, It pulled something close to a Cobra imedietly after takeoff, and were it's AoA limiter shut off (like they do for Su-27 shows) it probably could have pulled the whole maneuver off. It also showed some pretty impressive acceleration. Really the only problem it seemed to have was that it seemed to be a little low on power (good acceleration non-withstanding, it also seemed to avoid going vertical), so really what it could use is a good engine. Does anyone know the releitve dimentions of the F-414 and the F-119, if they're similar that would be ideal (commonality and all).

Nope it was Cheney all the way. If you do a google search on "DIck Cheney" and "F-14" you'll get plenty of hit's explaining this (more so now that Cheney has been criticizing John Kerry for voting to cut various military programs in the early '90s). Actually if you go real far into th elinks you may still be able to find the Air Forces Monthly article that first clued me into that fact, a harebrained scheme to purchase Su-33s from Russia. I'll give you two gueses as to who's idea that was...

Hey, this last time non-withstanding, the Blue Angels generally put on a better show than the Thunderbirds. A good example, the last time I saw the Thunderbirds they taxied out and spent the next 5 minutes going over their preflight checklist before taking off. When I saw the Blue Angels this year, the formation team and the solo team took off from oposite ends of the runway, and the number 5 plane did a barrell inches above the ground after takoff.

As much as I'd like it to see a Tomcat 21 ST-21 or even jsut a bunch of upgraded Ds, it's just not going to happen. The Tomcat is dead Cheney killed it, and did it in such a way that it can't be brought back. With all the jigs and tooling gone it's nearly impossible (at least without spending billions of dollars) to make new planes. Hell as David pointed out there's not even any way to build spare parts for the planes we do have, let alone introduce an all new variant.

The Comanch was ment to be a replacement for the OH-58 Kiowa, but both of their missions have been suplanted by the Predator drone. The Apache is due to stay in service for quite some time now. It's Cheney who has it in for the Osprey (though I'm sure Rumsfeld is following suit). It was also Cheney who ordered all of the tooling for the F-14 to be destroyed thus making the prospect of any new F-14s highly unlikely. Hell with out the ability to manufacture new parts the Navy's having trouble maintaining the aircraft they have now, supporting our troops indeed!

My bad. I knew I was going to screw that up. Still I thought I'd put that in, I was getting tired of seeing custom VF-1s that were aparently bought in 1982!

Thx Max. Any chance you could use your mighty moderating powers to make those pics stick around a little longer in the test forum?

Eh. As the article points out, this is pretty normal this early in the production of a combat aircraft. If the plane were two years from service and this was the case I'd be worried.

Time to finish up the Raptor pics. Here's the other end of the main gear well. If you want to super detail a Raptor model your only oportunity would be this and the bays. Everything else is either featureless or would be increadibly hard. ..... Unfortunetly as I mentioned the engines were quite well hidden. I'm more convinced than ever that the details of the engine are still classified. ..... Wing detail, you can just make out a series of serations at the edge of the hydralics fairing. ..... Even the nav lights are shaped for low RCS! This would be one of those hard to model things. ..... Close up of the cockpit. You get a better feel for the metalic sheen that I was talking about, and the contrast between it and the composite sections of the plane (the area around the intakes. ..... Other tail. For those of you who've never read an Air Force tail before, the large number is called the modex, it tells you which aircraft in the squadron it is (for instance Hikaru's VF-1J's modex was 101), the two big letters are the tailcode, it generally tells you what air base the plane is stationed at, and finally the two numbers below the AF indicate what year the aircraft was manufactured. Something to keep in mind for all those doing color schemes or customs. ..... and finally a close up of on the (reletively) featureless nose gear. Note the air dams in front of the main weapons bay. .....

It's actually closer to three shades of grey. Most of the plane is just a variation of how they paint F-15s, the colors look a little different because of the weird paint they use on the F-22 (more on that later). Most of the spots around the edges are made up of composites (Radar absorbing composites if I remember), so it ends up being like F-16 nosecones, no matter how hard you try you can't get it to match with the rest of the plane. The painted sections are supposed to give off IR radiation at a frequency that disapates rapidly in the atmosphere, that might explain why it looks so weird. I didn't notice any real color changing, but the painted sections of the plane had an almost metalic sheen to them. If I were building a model I would use standard Eagle colors for the leading edges then add a couple drops of silver the the rest of the paint. It's either a remodeled X-35 or a really detailed F-35 mock up. I have some pictures of it that I'm going to post soon. The exhausts were covered I've got a few more pictures of the '22 to post and the engines will be among them.

OK everything is working now. I've reposted all the pictures in the test forum, so the links will eventually stop working after a few weeks.

Max Jenius and I edited things to try to speed it up a bit. It should be working now.

The F-22 was one of my main reasons for coming to the Air Show this year. They've been promising to have one for quite a while now but this is the first time (at least when I went) that they actually had one. By far I took more pictures of this plane than any other at the show, and despite looking rather featureless from a distance, there's actually quite a lot on this plane to look at. Raptor time! Big beak-like nose. Raptor nose! From the side. Note the odd bump right behind the canopy, I don't think this feature is going to be included in the final configuration. Raptor profile! Shot of the tail. Raptor Tail! Good close up of the sidewinder bay. The launch rail has been removed but if you look closely you can see the attach points for it. Also note how much of the internals (fuseboxs etc.) are accessable through this bay. Raptor Bay! Main Gear. Take a look at all the complex panels between the gear and the sidewinder bay. Raptor Gear!

For the life of me I have never been able to tell the difference between an A and C model Hornet. I had just assumed it was like telling A and C model Eagles apart, ie almost impossible.

That sign single handedly made us some two hours late. Further up the beltway it directed us to a metro station that ended up being on the oposite end of the Green line from Andrews. Very anoying. They were giving away free Spam from that trailer. I did get in line to try some, but then the A-10 demo started and I decided it would be better to get good pictures of that then eat some over salted pork by-products

I forgott I that I reformated some more pics earlier this week. This would be the squadron leader of VMFA-321 "Hell's Angels" By far the best looking plane on the tarmac. side on Nose on. Bug nose From behind. That would be my Father and Brother-in-law in the foreground. Bug Butt Close up on the squadron markings. VMFA-321 Trident and halo on the inner tail. You know David if you wanted a good color scheme to paint one of your Hornets in this would be a good one. Trident Markings on the intake splitter plate. Bug shield Here it is from the other side. You get a better view of the tail here. Other side

Well that sounds like an update to me! Are you working on the regular cockpit or the VC? I think I mentioned before that I loved that VC even without gauges (now that FS9 has clickable virtual cockpits I don't even use the 2-D panels anymore). If you need any assistance with the layout I'd love to help.

Woah this thread is getting kind of far down the list. Any updates on how things are going Chronocidal?

Boy do I have a treat for you!

Well it's taking me a while to get things cropped and re-sized so I figured I'd start posting things now and continue over the week. But first a little summary of how things were: The Good: Just about every flying demo was excelent, particularly the Super Hornet and A-10 demos. Also being able to see a real F/A-22 and and V-22 (and a JSF mock-up) was a real treat. The Bad: Not a single Navy combat aircraft was on the tramac, I don't know if the Navy was miffed about something or what, but it was pretty disapointing. The Ugly: Getting there. The restrictions put in place after 9/11 have really made it dificult to get to the show. The website said to go to Fed Ex Field and take shuttle buses from there, but the highway signs directed us to take the Metro (DCs subway system), and ended up directing us to the oposite side of the system from the Air base. Ended up there about 2 hours after the show started. And now the pics: Snowbirds. Canada's equivelent of the Blue Angels or Thunderbirds. This is the first time I've ever seen them, they actually started performing just before we arrived. ..... These guys were awfully good, better than the Blue Angels were this year (more on that later). Lots of good starbursts and more variation in their formations. ..... Next up was the B-1, it took off did a fly by and landed. Not very exciting but boy did it sound good. ..... This was the best picture I could get of the Yak-9 that flew. It's to bad too since it's such a beutiful plane, looks like a cross between a Spitfire and a P-51. ..... More props planes. This is Sean Tucker, who IMHO is the best aerobatic pilot today. It's hard to capture what he does on film, but suffice to say he apears to defy the laws of aerodynamics. ..... THe A-10 demo was next. I saw this same team at Hanscom AFB in Massachusetts in '02, and they were even better this year. I gotta say the the A-10 demos have really evolved, when I first started going to airshows the Air Force didn't even want to fly them. Then the Warthog gained some noteriety after the Gulf War and they started having them do some lame flybys, or watered down copies of the F-16's routine, both of which were pretty lame. Now they've gotten down a good routine based off of actual maneuvers the A-10 flies in combat. Now it swoops dives and rolls in a deadly ballett that has it's own functional beuty, just like the Hog. ..... Here it is straight and level. If you look closely you can jsut make out the sharkmouth on the nose. It looked plain grey while I was at the show, I only noticed it after looking at the photos. ..... Here it is turning away, the false canopy is actually more prominent than the real one. ..... The Viper demo was probably the worst of them all. which isn't as bad as it sounds, It's just the Super Hornet and Warthog were so good. Still the F-16 showed that it was the king of high speed maneuverability. ..... One of the problems the F-16 had was bad music. The A-10 flew to Radiohead, whle the F-16 flew to a bad synth version of Eye of the Tiger. ..... The Super Hornet put on the most impressive show of all. In this shot it has just taken off and gone into a roll (you can't tell here but it's gear is still retracting). It then proceeded to turn around before it reached the end of the runway, pitch down and drop roughly 50 ft before leveling off and finishing with a sort of half Cobra maneuver (it pitched up to about 80 degrees instead of past 90), all within 30 seconds after taking off! ..... Here it is pulling another high alpha maneuver. It spent most of the show like this. ..... I gotta say I've changed my mind about the Super Hornet. I watched it pull some of the same maneuvers I watched Sean tucker pull in a a highly modified aerobatic plane, and it wieghed several times as much. Until the F/A-22 comes into service it is by far the most maneuverable plane in the US inventory, and about the closest thing you can see to an Su-27 at a US airshow. ..... F-117: They've gotten pretty good at having the stealth planes sneak up on you. I saw it pre-flighting but never saw it take off. It just showed up suddenly out of nowhere buzzing the crowd. ..... The Blue angels actually put on a pretty lame show this year. The four ship formation just did a bunch of fly bys in various formations, and the solos just did the same trick where they look like they're going to fly into each other over and over again. Does any one know if they were reprimanded for bad behavior lately or something? Because I know they are better than they were this weekend. ..... Fortunetly I got my best in air picture from the Blue Angels. Suitable for wallpaper even. ..... Well that's it for now. My apologies to the mods for posting such a pic heavy thread. I may put the pictures of the static displays on a different thread. No matter what they'll be up sometime this week.