Aircraft Super Thread Mk.VII

[kalvasflam]

12 hours ago, slide said:

I hope you mean CALCMs [AGM-86C/D]...  as ALCMs [AGM-86B, the nuclear ones] would've made a mission all kinds of special lol.

Also since they lost that 117 in the Balkans it's not only old, but probably compromised tech too...

I've never wondered how Russia/China came up with the skins for Su-57, J-20 and J-31 all within a super-short span of eachother...

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.  

6 hours ago, sketchley said:

As you know, Japan doesn't have an army - it has a self defence force.  So calling the "Helicopter-Destroyer" anything but a Destroyer (a ship for self defence) will make both the citizens and the neighbours angry.

But they're not the only ones.  The Russian carriers are called "heavy aviation-carrying cruisers"; to be able to transit the Turkish Straights.  And those even have a ski-jump built in!!

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.  

[David Hingtgen]

The launch code for nukes for many years, in the early days, was "000000".  One guy's job was basically to check every base/weapon, and make sure that it was. Goal/thinking was "if we ever actually have to launch, we want to be absolutely sure that we get it right, the first time, without delay, as every second could be another city lost".   Preventing accidents seemed to be a "distant second", concern-wise.  

[Vifam7]

7 hours ago, kalvasflam said:

The funny thing about carriers today, only the US and French actually use catapults I think.  E

The Brits for a brief moment considered EMALS catapults for their Queen Elizabeth-class. Unfortunately, they chickened-out due to cost.

Edited November 4, 2018 by Vifam7

[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.

[F-ZeroOne]

Cost was definitely a consideration, but possibly also commonality with the rest of the F-35 fleet. Theres also the fact that at the time the carriers were being designed and these decisions made EMALS was still being developed and tested.

[slide]

14 hours ago, kalvasflam said:

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.

LOL... it'll be awesome, nuclear powered and made in China... when has china proven ANY of their paper capabilities in the last 30 years? [other than gathering so many people in one spot you can build an island].

afaik, China has a completely unproven and untested armed forces top-to-bottom, and their civilian leadership hasn't had to sustain/explain war-time losses to the public since, well a very long time geo-politically speaking... Kinda hard to maintain Ping's Cult-of-Personality if his first engagements are losers.

 

We'll see what's up after her shake-down-cruise I suppose...

 

Then there's the fact She'll be trailed by no less than 2-3 Non-Chinese Attack-boats 24/7 just in case...then there is the air/space-born recon assets...

Edited November 4, 2018 by slide

[slide]

23 hours ago, kalvasflam said:

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.  

They didn't, the Russians payed for it, then the Chinese stole it form them! 

Edited November 4, 2018 by slide

[AN/ALQ128]

On 11/3/2018 at 10:25 AM, kalvasflam said:

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.  

Its not that simple. Even if they got all the plans for an EMALS catapult design, they would still encounter a ton of difficulties actually making the damn thing work. This is the same country that had major issues making knockoffs of Russian engines despite having first hand access to them for years.

[slide]

1 hour ago, AN/ALQ128 said:

Its not that simple. Even if they got all the plans for an EMALS catapult design, they would still encounter a ton of difficulties actually making the damn thing work. This is the same country that had major issues making knockoffs of Russian engines despite having first hand access to them for years.

Was it they had difficulty replicating them, or mass-producing the replicas? [I ask because those are slight separate issues with their own complications; and I am, admittedly, woefully unfamiliar with the fine details of china's modernisation]

But I figures it's a lot easier to make the leap from "Modern Electronics/Theory -to- EMALS/Railguns" than from "Communist Peasants -to- Quality Metallurgists/Jet Propulsion Engineers", eh?

 

I also hear that China's new classes of Hunter-Killer subs are pretty nice and capable, so I would hesitate to rule-out their Naval Architects out-of-hand.

But if their "Super Carrier" shakes-down poorly as-is.............

Edited November 4, 2018 by slide

[kalvasflam]

4 hours ago, slide said:

They didn't, the Russians payed for it, then the Chinese stole it form them! 

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

[F-ZeroOne]

Something that seems to have got a little overlooked, couple of days after the landings on HMS Her Maj, a USMC F-35B was lost. Pilot ejected safely, problem traced to a faulty fuel line component which are being/have been replaced fleet-wide where required:

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2018/09/28/an-f-35b-has-crashed-near-marine-corps-air-station-beaufort/

[Chronocidal]

Been following the news about that one from a few sources, it sounds like some folks are almost relieved that they finally lost one.  Comparatively, this far into the testing/development/deployment of an aircraft, many aircraft in previous generations had already lost multiple airframes, and pilots.  The plane has had a fairly pristine safety record thus far, so statistically speaking, the F-35 was "overdue" for this sort of incident.

As far as the discussion over catapults, F-35Bs, and the British carriers, I'll just leave this here.

 

[AN/ALQ128]

3DTVC equipped J-10 shown off at this years Zuhai airshow.

 

[slide]

52 minutes ago, AN/ALQ128 said:

3DTVC equipped J-10 shown off at this years Zuhai airshow.

 

It's so nice to see the Lavi get some respect!

[Sildani]

Yeah, it’s one of those “if only” designs I’d always wanted to have gone to fruition. 

[kalvasflam]

4 hours ago, Sildani said:

Yeah, it’s one of those “if only” designs I’d always wanted to have gone to fruition. 

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.  

Edited November 7, 2018 by kalvasflam

[slide]

Just now, kalvasflam said:

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.  

There's talk of Japan's interest in resurrecting the '23...

In my opinion Canada should push to get it, as it completely exceeds Canada's needs for an interceptor... and the Yanks won't [or wouldn't] export Raptor

 

Russian engines are Crude, but effective... the fact that Russia can do what they can is impressive

where they really seem to Lag is miniaturisation... 

 

 

Edited November 7, 2018 by slide

[Sildani]

Aligned single-crystal turbine blades seem to be beyond them for the moment too. But they're resourceful, so we'll see...

[kalvasflam]

2 hours ago, slide said:

There's talk of Japan's interest in resurrecting the '23...

In my opinion Canada should push to get it, as it completely exceeds Canada's needs for an interceptor... and the Yanks won't [or wouldn't] export Raptor

 

Russian engines are Crude, but effective... the fact that Russia can do what they can is impressive

where they really seem to Lag is miniaturisation... 

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.   

[Chronocidal]

2 hours ago, kalvasflam said:

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)

On the flipside of that issue, why do you think the F-35 has been such a budget debacle?  The extra work involved in producing so many export versions of the F-35 upped both the development cost and complexity by several orders of magnitude, and continues to be a major expense to this day, as every major upgrade has to be customized and filtered down to all the individual countries who operate it.

Keep in mind, in this day of cyber-enabled everything, the concept of national security goes far beyond just the platform level. 

[AN/ALQ128]

5 hours ago, slide said:

There's talk of Japan's interest in resurrecting the '23...

In my opinion Canada should push to get it, as it completely exceeds Canada's needs for an interceptor... and the Yanks won't [or wouldn't] export Raptor

 

Russian engines are Crude, but effective... the fact that Russia can do what they can is impressive

where they really seem to Lag is miniaturisation... 

 

 

Effective in the fact that they can lift a plane into the air? Sure.

But unless you have no choice, there are better options around.

[Chronocidal]

Granted, you might be able to temper that data with information on the relative difficulty of maintaining each of the engines.  Russian aircraft have a history of being built very rugged, and easy to maintain.  I don't know if that's still the case, or if it applies to their engines, but in days gone by, you could probably overhaul a MiG-21 in your garage.   

[Vifam7]

26 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

On the flipside of that issue, why do you think the F-35 has been such a budget debacle? 

IIRC, it was due to the whole "budget sequestration" and "continuing resolutions" thing that capped the defense budget and slowed down the purchase of F-35s - which in turn meant that the economies of scale couldn't take place.

Edited November 7, 2018 by Vifam7

[slide]

Just now, kalvasflam said:

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.   

actually... it's really easy to secure a database: Go full Nu-BSG about it... network it to NOTHING outside your in-house workstations, under no circumstance allow wireless connectivity to anything, and keylog every workstation.

if data does get out, then you can hunt down the perp for treason [or some equivalently harsh statute under the Espionage/Patriot act].

Plus a MASSIVE penalty to the company for allowing National-Security/Classified data to leak, maybe even some execs see a courtroom at least.

"If it's worth encrypting, it's worth Never Putting on a Network!" -- unknown

 

as far as Canada's aerospace industry goes: we do, but it'll require a lot of investment...

Funnily enough: investment in manufacturing in Ontario is EXACTLY the kind of thing that might save Soy-Boy-Trudeau's but next election... 

 

as far as '23 being an old design:

We need to lob as many AMRAAMs as possible from stealth platforms at anything that comes near us, and also sling some mud-moving capability for meeting our NATO obligations.and IIRC f-23 was faster than '22, all the better.

Canada doesn't need to get in knife-fights with Sukhois as we generally don't forward deploy anywhere without the USA, and that's raptor's job. 

Money being a big problem, a design that is off-the shelf and already exceeds the requirements is almost a no-brainer. This would obviously necessitate a "re-engineering" period to resurrect the design to State-of-art computers/avionics. like the HMSS helmets etc.

still not cheap or easy, but a hell of a lot cheaper than developing a sub-optimal platform like F-35... it's single engine [instant fail for Canada], it doesn't have the legs to patrol our airspace [Canada does not own any Flying-Boom Refueling aircraft, only probe/drogue because of our F-18s], it can not mount an effective interceptor load-out [or even carry Sidewinders] without compromising it's biggest [only?] advantage... at least we insisted on the A because it has an internal gun to defend itself...

 

F-35 is great........... if you're planning on never getting into a fight with any kind of capable adversary.... which would be stupid considering all the other powers are swiftly closing the gap in what they can produce.

Since Canada plans to have only 65 F-35's and no other combat airframes to even take advantage of it's data-link/Drone C&C capabilities, the plane is almost completely pointless/unacceptable for us.

as far as Canada's needs are concerned, F-35 is a 3 dressed up as a 9. 

 

Just now, AN/ALQ128 said:

Woof.... especially the part where "the engines are so good, we're going back to the old soviet-method of shipping our engines out so that other people can overhaul them for us..."

Could 4 gopnicks with wrenches, hammers, a hoist, and a half-hour perform that necessary maintenance? [we need a Russia-dance emoticon lol]

How much do each of those engines cost?

an RD-33 runs US$2.6M per unit.... I can't find a per-unit cost of the PW

 

Just now, Vifam7 said:

IIRC, it was the whole "budget sequestration" and "continuing resolutions" thing that capped the defense budget and slowed down the purchase of F-35s - which in turn meant that the economies of scale couldn't take place.

That's what happens when you play politics instead of outfitting your armed forces with what they need to do their job...

[Chronocidal]

1 hour ago, Vifam7 said:

IIRC, it was due to the whole "budget sequestration" and "continuing resolutions" thing that capped the defense budget and slowed down the purchase of F-35s - which in turn meant that the economies of scale couldn't take place.

I think it really goes far beyond just the sequestration issues.  The program's been a 50 million specification pileup since inception due to all the parties involved, and all of their differing requirements.  I consider it a small miracle that they were ever able to produce something for all three services that shares as many common components as it does, let alone the handful of other countries that all want custom hardware and software configurations.  Just because the individual countries are buying their own fleets doesn't mean the cost of making the platform flexible enough to handle all those configurations wasn't passed on to the US.  The countries buying their planes later reap the benefits of all that front-end work being done early in the program.

[kalvasflam]

7 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

On the flipside of that issue, why do you think the F-35 has been such a budget debacle?  The extra work involved in producing so many export versions of the F-35 upped both the development cost and complexity by several orders of magnitude, and continues to be a major expense to this day, as every major upgrade has to be customized and filtered down to all the individual countries who operate it.

Keep in mind, in this day of cyber-enabled everything, the concept of national security goes far beyond just the platform level. 

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.

Edited November 8, 2018 by kalvasflam

[slide]

18 minutes ago, kalvasflam said:

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.

Yea, we're both in the boat together... just ask Ike Eisenhower and John Diefenbaker................................ Bomarc anyone?

[Chronocidal]

1 hour ago, kalvasflam said:

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. 

You're thinking just about the airframes themselves though.  True that getting them working correctly was no small task, and the B-model was the biggest budget hog there by far. 

I'm not talking about airframes, and mostly not at all about hardware.  The F-35 is insanely software intensive, to a level no other existing aircraft can probably even approach.  The airframe itself is pretty much done, but the computer systems that run the aircraft will be in continual development for probably the entire service life of the aircraft, and those are where the lion's share of export work is done. 

You think it's difficult getting the Air Force, Navy, and Marines to play nicely together?  Try developing a platform with all the proper software and hardware interfaces to work with all the localized weapon and systems variants from the UK, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Spain, and all the other nations buying into the aircraft.  Every country is going to have requirements that it works nicely alongside something they already own, and some have country-specific weapons systems that no one else uses.  You may as well be developing a game console that supports every game for every console in history, as well as every PC- and Mac-exclusive piece of software ever produced.

Laying the foundation for a system that can be developed and exported to that many countries, support all of their unique requirements, and remain secure in the cyber-warfare environment of the coming decades?  There's a quantum leap in development effort right there.

Comparatively speaking, developing the F-22 was a cake walk.

Not saying the budget issues in Congress haven't had a hand in things, because they've absolutely complicated things to an extensive level.  But there are some very good reasons why the F-35 has been in development for so long, and cost so much.

Edited November 8, 2018 by Chronocidal

[kalvasflam]

4 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

You're thinking just about the airframes themselves though.  True that getting them working correctly was no small task, and the B-model was the biggest budget hog there by far. 

I'm not talking about airframes, and mostly not at all about hardware.  The F-35 is insanely software intensive, to a level no other existing aircraft can probably even approach.  The airframe itself is pretty much done, but the computer systems that run the aircraft will be in continual development for probably the entire service life of the aircraft, and those are where the lion's share of export work is done. 

You think it's difficult getting the Air Force, Navy, and Marines to play nicely together?  Try developing a platform with all the proper software and hardware interfaces to work with all the localized weapon and systems variants from the UK, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Spain, and all the other nations buying into the aircraft.  Every country is going to have requirements that it works nicely alongside something they already own, and some have country-specific weapons systems that no one else uses.  You may as well be developing a game console that supports every game for every console in history, as well as every PC- and Mac-exclusive piece of software ever produced.

Laying the foundation for a system that can be developed and exported to that many countries, support all of their unique requirements, and remain secure in the cyber-warfare environment of the coming decades?  There's a quantum leap in development effort right there.

Comparatively speaking, developing the F-22 was a cake walk.

Not saying the budget issues in Congress haven't had a hand in things, because they've absolutely complicated things to an extensive level.  But there are some very good reasons why the F-35 has been in development for so long, and cost so much.

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.

Edited November 8, 2018 by kalvasflam

[AN/ALQ128]

32 minutes ago, kalvasflam said:

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.

I doubt the Taiwanese will ever get the F-35 in any near future time frame.

 

[kalvasflam]

1 hour ago, AN/ALQ128 said:

I doubt the Taiwanese will ever get the F-35 in any near future time frame.

 

Do you want to bet on that with our current CinC?

 

Edited November 8, 2018 by kalvasflam

[Vifam7]

8 hours ago, kalvasflam said:

 

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....

 

That's simply not true.

https://theaviationist.com/2016/03/01/heres-what-ive-learned-so-far-dogfighting-in-the-f-35-a-jsf-pilot-first-hand-account/

https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/operational-assessment-the-f-35a-argues-full-program-procurement-and-concurrent?aliId=1895829143#_ftn10

 

[kalvasflam]

3 hours ago, Vifam7 said:

That's simply not true.

https://theaviationist.com/2016/03/01/heres-what-ive-learned-so-far-dogfighting-in-the-f-35-a-jsf-pilot-first-hand-account/

https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/operational-assessment-the-f-35a-argues-full-program-procurement-and-concurrent?aliId=1895829143#_ftn10

 

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.

 

 

[electric indigo]

6 hours ago, Vifam7 said:

https://theaviationist.com/2016/03/01/heres-what-ive-learned-so-far-dogfighting-in-the-f-35-a-jsf-pilot-first-hand-account/

 

I can't wait to walk into the office and announce that I'm having a "bad g-day" today 

[AN/ALQ128]

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/french-firm-dassault-pulls-out-of-fighter-jet-competition-sources

Canada requires any replacement fighter jet to be Five Eyes certified, which means the Rafale is now off the table.

That leaves the F-35, Super Hornet, and Typhoon as potential replacement aircraft. What a complete mess of a procurement process, sadly not something new to Canada.