Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "Ed Nash's Military Matters" channel.

  1.  @whitewidowgaming4887  Musk never did that either. Paying people to invent things doesn't make him a genius.
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  2. The F-16/79, a fighter that's not totally forgotten, but probably deserves to be.
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  3. Kind of too bad that Dassault didn't design a "Mirage G1" with a single Atar 9K as the cheaper option. But then again, "variable geometry wings" and "cheaper" would've run at cross purposes, so I suppose he made the right decision with the F1 even if it would've looked a lot cooler with swing wings.
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  4. The US Secret Service predates that other SS, but I'm sure that's exactly why "Secret Service" almost always gets spelled out rather than abbreviated.
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  5. The M-71 was an absolute beast of an engine, comparable in performance to the Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp yet 220 pounds lighter. And it seemed to have no particularly significant reliability problems either. It got cancelled because the Soviets' production capacity was insufficient to even meet the demands for existing engines, let alone also creating a production line for a new one.
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  6. You'd think they'd have the sense to use a 57mm rocket rather than 80mm. Even for Russia this was stupid.
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  7. At one point, the talk was of switching from 8 small engines to 4 large ones, instead of the 1-for-1 replacement with 8 mid-sized jets.
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  8. And by Lockheed bribery. The F11F-1F was demonstrably far superior to the F-104, and a J79 powered F5D probably would've been as well.
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  9. They don't want the F-35, they want to be able to design their own 5th generation fighter. They're hoping for the HAL AMCA to have a prototype ready to fly in 2027.
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  10. Trump isn't actually unpredictable. He does whatever will benefit Russia the most.
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  11. Argentina can't afford the Rafale.
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  12. The Shinden might well have ended up as successful as the Saab 21 if circumstances had allowed its continued development. Also almost certainly would've ended up with a jet version like the Saab 21R, since Kyushu Aircraft Company already had that in mind for the future when they built the 2 prototypes.
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  13. "Meizhou bao" ("American Leopard", the Chinese name for Leopard) doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. So I wonder what name/designation the PLA Ground Force intended to use for this tank had it gone into service.
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  14. Yeah, he's not unpredictable at all. He's very predictably pro-Russia.
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  15. The Navy was never going to accept a subsonic aircraft as a fighter, regardless of the Sea Harrier's performance in the Falklands. When Mach 2 is listed as one of the requirements, the Harrier and its side nozzles are removed from consideration.
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  16.  @grndzro777  I can't say for sure that the Tigershark would for sure have been better than the F-16, since it's a highly successful fighter in its own right. That said, I see no reason they couldn't have coexisted. The Gripen proves that there's a place in the market for a smaller, lighter, and less expensive to fly multirole fighter. The Tigershark would've been the Gripen of the 80s had Northrop just been allowed to sell them.
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  17. Shot traps aren't really a thing for modern long-rod APFSDS projectiles. If it fails to penetrate the armor, it's going to shatter, not ricochet. And that wedge style of frontal turret armor (which originated on the Leopard 2A5) isn't actually the front of the turret. It's a hollow assembly that's attached to the front of the turret. An APFSDS rod that penetrates it will tend to tumble while inside the hollow portion, meaning that it'll be the side of the rod rather than its penetrator that hits the main armor.
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  18. The F-104 is a perfect example of how you can't just strap bombs on a single-role fighter and call it multi-role. Some fighters turn out by accident to be easily adaptable to the ground attack role ("not a pound for air-to-ground" was the motto in designing the F-15A/B, yet the F-15E is an excellent strike aircraft), but some just aren't.
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  19.  @super-cacti  When a document gets leaked, that makes it publicly available. Even if said document is illegal to publish in a specific nation.
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  20. It certainly should've been, yes. As the video points out, it was quite a blunder on Rockwell's part to never fly the XFV-12 as a STOVL aircraft. Particularly given that decades of Harrier operations have shown that VTOL is more gimmick than useful capability for a warplane, while STOVL (still allowing operation off a short deck but allowing far more fuel and weapons to be carried) is insanely valuable.
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  21. ​ @offshoretomorrow3346  The 747-100's JT9D and the C-5's TF39 were both given their initial flight testing via a JB-52E, in each case replacing the inner starboard pair with a single larger engine. You're right that this wouldn't have worked for the outboard engines because of ground clearance issues. Boeing at one point suggested replacing each pair of TF33s on the B-52H with a single PW2000 (as used on the C-17), which isn't as large as the TF39 and JT9D. But it still would've required significant changes to the wings to have enough ground clearance for the outboard engines, which is why it never happened.
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  22. That's a perfect example of the abject idiocy of MAGA.
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  23.  @HollywoodMarine0351  You mean WWI and WWII where the United States showed up late, after Europe had already spent years fighting?
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  24. Trump desperately wants to be Putin.
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  25.  @TheMoodyLoners  No, they aren't.
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  26. IIRC, the TF30 worked pretty well in the F-111. Seeing as the Mirage F2 was meant to be primarily a low-level ground attack aircraft, the TF30 probably would've served it well enough. The Mirage G, on the other hand, was meant to be a fighter, and thus could very well have encountered the TF30's lovely tendency toward compressor stalls at high angles of attack.
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  27.  @FinsburyPhil  I seriously don't understand why nobody with STOVL carries is using an "EV-22 Osprey" for AEW. Hanging your radar under a helicopter seems like it should've only been a stopgap until tilt-rotors were available, but instead it's remained to this day the go-to solution for any carrier that can't launch an E-2 Hawkeye. It makes no sense. An Osprey has better endurance and can fly higher than a Merlin, both such obvious advantages for the AEW role.
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  28. I'm surprised that none of those nations were willing to just make a revised version using non-British ejection seats. For that matter it's also surprising that the US hasn't sold them F-16s, which uses the entirely American Collins Aerospace ACES II rather than a Martin-Baker ejection seat. Sure, that might piss off the Brits, but it's better for US interests than having Argentina move into the Chinese orbit.
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  29. Not without getting a new ejection seat for the Rafale. All current models use Martin-Baker seats and thus are subject to the British embargo. And not without subsidizing Dassault to sell them at a loss, since otherwise Argentina can't afford the Rafale.
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  30. It's a pity that Northrop didn't just sell the full blueprints to Taiwan "under the table". Basically a license production deal, except without the government's permission.
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  31. Canadian nicknames: Lawn Dart. Aluminium Death Tube. German nicknames: Erdnagel (tent peg). Fliegender Sarg (flying coffin). Witwenmacher (widowmaker). Pakistani nickname: Badmash (hooligan).
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  32.  @MrArgus11111  Even taking into account that 1960s jets pretty much all had high accident rates, the F-104 had the highest of any of the Century Series by a wide margin. And these were USAF pilots, who weren't brand new to supersonic jets like the Luftwaffe pilots. The F-104 was a challenging plane, and shoehorning it into roles it wasn't designed for definitely didn't help.
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  33. From what I understand, SOCOM already had a handful of Super Tucanos.
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  34. It's easy to imagine that if the Super Tiger had a successful export run, Grumman might've offered a "Super Super Tiger" in the same vein of how Northrop created the F-20 Tigershark out of the F-5: give it a new radar and an F404 turbofan. And then just like Northrop, they'd get screwed over by the Pentagon and Congress seeking to maximize F-16 export sales and thus reduce its unit cost to the USAF. Though perhaps Grumman's long history with the US Navy would've allowed them to snag that aggressor contract.
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  35. Imagine if the collaboration with Egypt on the E-300 engine had actually been followed through on. Then at the very least the HA-300 3rd prototype would've gotten to do flight testing to see if it would live up to expectations. And the HF-24 would've had the thrust it needed, making it a formidable all-purpose fighter instead of solely a ground attack aircraft.
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  36. From what I've read, the RAF rejected the P.106 in favor of what would eventually evolve into the Eurofighter Typhoon as being "half the effectiveness of the two-engined aircraft at two-thirds of the cost". Though given comparisons of the Typhoon vs the Gripen, I think the RAF probably got that backwards. BTW, when it comes to lightweight fighters with an Adour turbofan...did BAE ever give any consideration of adding reheat to the Hawk 200? Or would have been pointless without also completely redesigning the wing for higher speed, thus giving up on the advantage of being a low-cost modification of the Hawk trainer?
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  37. That was the premise behind some 1960s tanks like the Leopard 1 and AMX-30. They were armored only against light weaponry because it was presumed that the latest tank guns and ATGMs would defeat any conceivable armor. These days, though, armor has advanced to the point that you can provide good frontal protection against tank guns without impeding the tank's mobility, and hard-kill active protection systems can counter top-attack ATGMs.
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  38. Another good comparison would be the Grumman F11F-1F Super Tiger, in that both were in part brought down by outright bribery. This time around, rather than Lockheed it was British Aerospace paying out the bribes. That's why when the Saudis decided they needed non-American aircraft (out of worries that the Israel lobby might succeed in blocking further F-15 sales), they ended up with the less capable Panavia Tornado instead of the Mirage 4000. Not that the Tornado is worthless, but the Mirage 4000 is clearly much better. Whereas the Tornado required separate ground attack and interceptor models, the Mirage 4000 could simply perform both roles without modification. The Mirage 4000 also had a better than 1:1 thrust-to-weight ratio at typical combat weight, while both versions of the Tornado fall well short of that. And the Mirage 4000 is much more maneuverable.
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  39.  @keithmoore5306  As did Japan. And Germany had a fighter with both pusher and puller engines.
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  40. The Convair 200 seems like it was by far the more promising of the two designs, but for some reason the XFV-12 was the one that got a prototype built.
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  41. The F-14, F-15, and F-16 were all originally designed to be single-role, and turned out to be readily adaptable to other roles. Had the Crusader III entered service, I can't imagine it would've taken long to start strapping bombs under the wings too. No, it still wouldn't have been able to carry as many as the F-4 Phantom could. But that doesn't necessarily matter, because being both cheaper and physically smaller, you'd be able to have more Crusader IIIs on each carrier.
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  42.  @iiwhatisyouremailprivatenn2470  The Yak-141 uses a similar system that was developed independently. Lockheed Martin (which now owned all the Convair designs via their purchase of General Dynamics' Fort Worth division) licensed all the Yak-141 test data from Yakovlev, since the Yak-141 had actually been built and flown whereas the Convair 200 had not. Thus, the F-35B's nozzle isn't directly based on the Yak-141's, Lockheed Martin just used the Yak-141 to verify that the system would work they way they expected it to.
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  43. Argentina knows they're never going to seize the Falklands. It's only a fantasy they sell to nationalistic voters.
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  44.  @DH.2016  Which is why you'd buy a license to manufacture the Leopard 2A7 domestically, like what Switzerland did for the 2A4 and Sweden for a modified 2A5. You'd still get to build the tanks in Britain and produce British jobs, but you get brand new tanks at a lower cost. Whereas with these Challenger 3s, Britain is spending more simply to avoid admitting they're still fielding a de facto German tank.
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  45. Rafales use Martin-Baker ejection seats. Even if Argentina could afford Rafales (and they can't), they're subject to the British embargo.
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  46. The Merkava Mk 5 Barak started coming into service this year. It's basically the Mk 4M with Iron Vision added; they're just calling it Mk 5 because they consider that a significant enough upgrade to merit a new mark number.
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  47. Unfortunately, Lockheed's bribery made sure Europe was focused at the time on the F-104.
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  48. Buy Chinese seats instead.
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  49.  @ohredhk  Landing vertically seems like it'd be less challenging than taking off vertically. You don't actually need enough thrust to hover for that, just enough thrust to come down slowly.
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  50.  @allangibson8494  A Mustang with a Griffon engine would have been quite interesting.
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