Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "Matsimus" channel.

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  17. +wigon ah yes, Soldier of Fortune magazine. Because they're world renowned experts in aviation /sarcasm. It's a rag. Do you realize that your own link says "Breaking Defense had a rare interview with the Air Force in 2014" - meaning that their post is quoting sources from 3 years back? So no, the article isn't current even though it was posted in 2017. You're calling bullshit on what is common knowledge? In the Paris air show it was flying with Block 3i software which limits the F-35 to 7g and 50º AoA even though the AF-2 testbed has already flown 9g+ and 100º AoA - you're disputing the fact that software upgrades are used to unlock the true potential of the F-35. If you had bothered to read the "damning" report that said it couldn't dogfight, you'd have read that the report specifically claims that loads experienced by the airframe were nowhere near the limits so the F-35 had more maneuverability on tap but the software itself caused the energy losses - they recommended increasing the pitch rate (aka telling the software to allow the aircraft to turn more degrees/second) so that the F-35 did not have to waste energy entering and departing from high AoA. They recommended updating the software to allow the pilot greater yaw rate control authority. Increase alpha onset. The document the F-35 haters have been jerking off to literally says that the airplane was being limited by the conservative software limitations and that it should be changed to allow better energy retention and better dogfighting abilities. Look at this video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9re9tJckTlk at 5:24. She explains that the F-16 dogfight tests were meant to test the command laws of the airplane - which I have already explained to you but you called bullshit. She states that she's flying Block 2b (that was back in 2015). Here, two sources on the Norwegian pilot who contradicted the 2015 report: https://theaviationist.com/2016/03/01/heres-what-ive-learned-so-far-dogfighting-in-the-f-35-a-jsf-pilot-first-hand-account/ and https://www.defensenews.com/air/2016/03/01/norwegian-f-35-pilot-counters-controversial-dogfighting-report/ FROM 2016 WHICH MEANS THE CAPABILITIES WERE NOWHERE NEAR THE UPCOMING BLOCK 3F
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  20.  @bush_wookie_9606  "but ultimately the US airforce is not interested in CAS and never has been" - WHOOOP there it is. Yeah, keep parroting the old "military reformers" nonsense made up to write books. The USAF was always interested in the CAS role and history proves it. "the F16 was meant to replace the A10 and it never lived up to it." - But it already did. F-16 performs over 30% of CAS missions while the A-10 only perfoms 11% since 2014. "it has poor maneuverability" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0hWzaKEeZo "a lack of armament" - 18k pounds, babey. "it would be massively easier converting the A10'S to drones" - This has to be a joke, right? The majority of drone conversions is for use a TARGET drones. They're made to fly and get missiles launched at them. For actual drone use, we use drones. It's not easier at all to do a conversion. Just the wiring harness to connect all functions of the A-10 cockpit to a flight computer would be an absolute nightmare. The on-board computer would need to be completely new because you'd need to combine the remote flying of a conventional aircraft of drone conversions with the weapons employment of actual drones. You're severely underestimating the complexity of the aeronautical world. For the cost of converting a fleet of A-10s to drones you could just perform non-stop sorties of conventional drones for years. And in the end? You'd get an underpowered, slow drone that can't handle modern air defenses. And that's reaching the end of its lifespan.
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  23.  @elitedima9672  "Stealth technology is exaggerated." - and yet both Russia and China is implementing it. "Serbians shot down F-117" - due to 1) careless flight planning making the F-117 flights predictable 2) short engagement distance 3) bomb bay that was stuck open and broke stealth 4) lack of RWR, the pilot only knew he was targeted when he saw a missile breaking through the clouds. The fact that the feat hasn't been replicated ever since is a testament to how difficult it was. "Russian advancement in radar technology" - radar technology is a very broad statement. Stealth aircraft redirect some radar energy due to their angular faces and absorb some radar energy in their coating. You cannot detect energy that doesn't bounce back. Unless the Russians have managed to break the laws of physics, "radar technology" is just simply too vague. "infrared search and tracking systems" - stealth aircraft have reduced IR signature compared to conventional aircraft "electronic counter measures" - Is this a joke? If you beam anything at an aircraft you have signed your own death warrant because you never know if a flight is carrying missiles that can home-on-jam. "F-35 is supposed to replace A-10 warthog, which means it is mainly designed for ground-attack purpose" - the F-16, F-15 Strike Eagle, B1, etc already largely replaced the A-10, which receives less and less CAS missions. Neither the F-16 or the F-15 were designed mainly for ground-attack purpose so your argument doesn't even make sense and I don't even understand what you're trying to say. Your first link: it wasn't a "dogfight test". It was a flight test using an old version of the software. Those test results helped refine the control software so that the plane doesn't bleed as much energy when coming in and out of high AoA maneuvers. Your medium links are for War is Boring, which is as credible as Buzzfeed. Please. Real exercises show that the F-35 wipes the floor with the competition. Meanwhile salty soyboys write disparaging articles on their glorified blogs. Who do I trust? The powerful aircraft capable of destroying anything in it's way? Or the Buzzfeed rejects passing themselves off as military analysts?
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  24.  @Lonewolfmike  "It does matter when it takes forever to turn your aircraft" - you're confusing turn radius for turn rate. "The A-10 has a much tighter turn radius than an F-35 could ever dream of and that is fact" - And the F-35 is a better plane and that's a fact. There's facts to support any argument you want, what matters is correctly using them in context. Within context, turn radius is not that important. You could probably get a better turn radius out of an acrobatic biplane. So what? "a tighter turn radius means more to troops on the ground than all the fancy electronics an F-35 has" - bullshit lol. With all the friendly fires involving A-10s they should be worried about the man in the sky accurately telling friend from foe and not how many feet it takes to make a turn. If the guy up there takes a tight turn to then blast you to bits by mistake because his situational awareness is lower, electronics start to make a whole lot of sense. "an F-35, to my knowledge has not been used for close ground support." - and the F-22 has never shot an air target down. So what? "And the A-10 had been PROVEN to be of great help to ground troops" - it also has been proven to be worse than the F-16, F-15 Strike Eagle, F/A-18, etc. "Watch this and you will see why an A-10 is so much better at ground support" - Really, a history channel documentary? Not to beat a dead horse by questioning the History Channel's accuracy (because that is a concern) but right from the gate they interview Pierre Sprey, who is considered a lunatic and a paid shill who has appeared multiple times on RT aka Putin's propaganda machine (not saying "MuH RuSsiA" but if Putin doesn't want the US to trust the F-35, it's because it's an amazing aircraft). He also got demolished in a debate with 'Chip' Burke, former pilot and JTAC who both flew the top fighter aircraft in USAF inventory but also fought on the ground with special operations teams. The rest of the documentary is basic-bitch information for any newcomer to aviation. Sorry, but a History Channel documentary that seems to have been made at least 15 years ago isn't the best source to state your case when real world combat records prove that the A-10 is hopelessly outdated and has been on life support for too long.
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  32. +bandholm your assumptions are correct. However, it's important to know that a missile's rocket only typically has a boost phase, or a boost-sustain which typically give the missile around 10 seconds of powered flight. Outside that window, pilots often do what is called (if I'm not mistaken) an F-Pole maneuver, in which they force the missile to turn in a direction they don't want to go without actually increasing the rate of closure, and then turn into the intended direction. The unpowered missile is pretty much a glider on a ballistic path, and if it had to turn again it will bleed a lot of energy and become unable to keep with a plane. At close range the issue changes - although there's missiles capable of pulling 40 G's, when powered the missile is much faster which means the turn radius is much larger than a slower airplane. This means that a 9 G pulling airplane can out turn a missile capable of pulling hundreds of Gs. The issue is, modern missiles probably have computing power to work out the least stressful maneuver necessary to meet the airplane. So if you're pulling 9 Gs the missile won't try to follow your tail, it will turn in a predictive pursuit and then slam from the side (almost like an "S"). So it all comes down to how modern is the missile being fired. " anywere near the power to detect incoming missiles, at a range where they can outfly them" typically what aircraft use is a RWR, which is a passive sensor which does not need high power - it detects the radar emissions of either the launching aircraft or the incoming missile. The strength of modern missiles is that they can be fired in Track-While-Scan mode and have GPS/inertial navigation course corrections meaning they won't tell the victim that there's a radar lock until the missile is close, becomes independent and turns it's own locking radar on. Meanwhile, the F-35 actually has an always on passive electro-optical system with 360 degree coverage which is said to be able to detect missile launches. "But air-to-air missiles are mostly heat-seekers, with a targeting radar in it as well" not quite. Both the radar and IR sensor would require line of sight to the enemy plane. But IR guided missiles can be slaved to the aircraft's radar and given these inputs it's what probably allows the missile to perform trajectory computing rather than just doing a pure pursuit on the IR signature like the old heat seekers. "It is not really its job anyway, but that of the bombers" Actually multirole-fighters have been doing the role of bombers for quite a while. The F-4 Phantom II was able to carry a bomb load greater than the B-17 Flying Fortress over Vietnam, the F-16 was used by the Israelis in a long range operation to bomb out a nuclear reactor, etc. The major advantage of the F-35 is that you can clear out defenses before an assault due to it's stealth capabilities allowing for more paths over enemy territory where the radar coverage isn't sufficient to detect stealth aircraft and if needed, firing missiles that lock onto the radar emissions to clear the way for conventional aircraft. The F-35 will serve the Marines for the same purpose as the Harrier - clearing the way for an amphibious invasion. Again, most of your assumptions are correct but modern air combat has many intricacies and caveats.
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  56.  @heinrichnitschke5485  What are the sources? Are they describing 1990's prices? The Royal Bahraini Air Force will be getting 16 F-16s for 1,12 bil which amounts to 70 mil per aircraft. Taiwan's F-16 deal including 66 aircraft and 75 engines amounted to 8 bil which is roughly 120 mil per aircraft + extra engine. Morocco wants to buy 25 F-16 Block 72s plus pods and weapons for 3.787 bil. If we subtract the cost of the 40 AIM-120s and 60 GBU-39s, that's around 31 million, leaving the cost of the F-16 plus pods and other equipment as 150 million. The upgrade of older F-16s to V will cost 42 million per aircraft. Slovakia will be getting a 2.91 billion aircraft for 14 Block 70/72s, 16 engines and an assortment of weapons. I'm straight up just adding up the cost of the weapons, ignoring that some are just guidance kits, so worst case scenario it's 41.6 million for 30 AIM-120s, 100 AIM-9Xs JDAM and Paveway kits plus 400 bombs. The F-16s plus pods, equipment and extra engine will be roughly 200 million. Let's take it back a good while - in 2009 the Block 50 sale to Turkey was a 797 million contract for 14 aircraft. That's 50 million per plane. It's perfectly reasonable that a decade later, a better capable F-16 costs 70-90 million per aircraft, with contracts reaching over 100 million because of spare parts and equipment. Do you think a modern F-16, with the capabilities you expect from a modern F-16, can be obtained for the prices of the previous variants? When you buy a F-16, you're not just buying the aircraft. You're buying the entire assortment of pods and extra equipment that act as force multipliers. Not to mention that the radar you get today is more advanced than the radars you got in the past. You need to buy all the bells and whistles that the F-35 already carries internally.
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  61.  @andrewostrelczuk406  This is all being argued from the wrong perspective. Yes, new things have unforeseen costs. But so do old ones. There's not bringing the A-10 "up to date". What technology can you cram it with that will make a significant improvement? Power plant? What? No. You're not getting a new engine for it, I don't remember when but plans for new engines were scrapped or else you wouldn't get much needed upgrades. Thrust vectoring? Are you out of your mind? Dude, adding a new power plant would definitely require a redesign of the aircraft because a new engine with more thrust would probably increase fuel consumption enough for an entirely new fuel and engine management system to be added. The higher thrust would probably require redesigning the engine mounts and section of the fuselage. Thrust vectoring would DEFINITELY require the fuselage section to be redesigned because by vectoring the thrust... you're also changing the vector on the reaction force so the engine mount will suffer forces from angles that was never designed to handle. You make a bold assertion by accusing others of being armchair quarterbacks while you make a joke out of the aeronautical field. In 30 seconds I could think of severe issues with your upgrade proposal without even having to run any simulations or pick up a calculator. If aeronautical engineering was that easy any idiot could thrive in that field. Mind that the last A-10s to come out the assembly line did so in 1984. They're ageing. Airframes have limits. And you want to soup them up and add thrust vectoring for no discernible reason. "thank goodness we have had a few laying around so they could reverse Engineer it" - Reverse engineering it is literally more expensive than buying a new plane. "more swept back wings" - Why would you sweep the wings back if it's not going to reach transonic speeds? Are you goddamn serious?
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  96.  RC213V  Well, for that comparison we have the Tornado, which was given suicidal missions compared to the A-10, and suffered similar losses - with some going as far as claiming the Tornado did poorly even though it flew extremely dangerous missions at low level in the first days of the conflict. It's honestly amazing. The A-10 was spared from the hardest missions after getting a bruised eye and sent to turkey shoots against undertrained troops, gets a hero's welcome. The most effective aircraft against insurgencies are dedicated COIN aircraft. Turboprop ones, even. The F-35 can go supersonic. The recent hubhub only affects B and C variants flying supersonic at high altitude. B and C variants have a limit on how long they can maintain supersonic flight at certain altitudes. To my knowledge the A variant isn't limited. The F-35 can carry external stores, I don't know what kind of showdown you're expecting but multiple F-35s in the air all capable of shooting 4 missiles each makes for a formidable anti-air force. The A variant can fit 3 AMRAAMs in each bay for a total of 6. The F-35 can fly in the rain. You're confusing an initial restriction from flying under thunderstorms because the F-35 had not yet been fitted with an on board inert gas generator. After it had been fitted and passed environmental testing, the restriction was lifted for 5 years until an issue with the onboard gas generator was found. This only affects the A variant and the restriction will be lifted once the issue with the gas generator is resolved. Can't turn? Check out the air show footage. The F-35 is not an air superiority fighter nor an interceptor. It's the F-16 to the F-15. The F-15C maintains its role as the interceptor since not enough F-22s were produced to replace it. This is a critical concept to understand and you're accusing the F-35 of being unable to fill shoes it was never meant to wear. "critical air-frame issues" - that's rich considering that A-10s, except the ones delivered 1983-1984, also had structural issues. "the supersonic limitation problems (they have just accepted it)" - It will be fixed, but it's going to be resolved with another change in coating. No point in having it pinned in the job board, doesn't mean it's not going to get resolved.
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  98.  RC213V  Like I said, the government doesn't see fit to spend the money developing a new coating. It will be applied if a new thing comes up. The F-35 coating has already received upgrades. "So 2 of the 3 variants cant go supersonic" - This is borderline lying. They have limits on HOW LONG they can go supersonic AT HIGH ALTITUDE. I don't care if you're sleepy, or you've been drinking, or you're distracted with something else. If you keep carefully stepping around words to create a narrative that is false, I have no option but to start assuming you are a liar. Do you want to be a liar? Or are you going to start paying attention? "Whys the F22 the most maneuverable, and the best dog fighter and air superiority fighter we have" - Because it's the F-15 replacement, and the F-15 was designed for pure air superiority. "When german civilian radar makers can track the F35 across europe" - You do realize that in peacetime stealth aircraft wear radar reflectors to make themselves visible to air traffic controllers and also to prevent enemies from analyzing their true RCS, right? Why give up the goods to anyone who's watching? Also, if the radar isn't enough for a firing solution, all it can do is watch as the F-35 moves around your territory with impunity and bombs all your defenses to hell. Knowing that the F-35 is in the air doesn't do anything. Unless you can shoot weapons at it, all you can do is watch a screen while your comrades die. "The fact that USAF we are upgrading F15s, to the F15x for dogfights and air superiority to plug that gaping F35 hole" - The F-22 was the F-15 replacement. The F-35 is a multirole and thus replaces the F-16s job. But because people like you claimed the F-22 was useless and too expensive, the F-22 project was canceled. Now F-15s have to fill the F-22 hole. Careful. Again I will ask you to speak the truth or else I'll have to accuse you of something I don't to accuse you off. I'm treating you with respect. If you can't respect me enough to avoid using falsehoods, I'll have no option. "the huge cost overruns and flaws make the F-35 look increasingly like the world's most expensive lemon." - The F-35 is literaly cheaper than the F-16. Look at F-16 purchase contracts. The cost of a single aircraft plus all the pods that actually give it worthwhile capabilities is over 100 million. The F-22, if production was restarted, would cost 220 million. "you have now sunk to claiming all the warthog kills were not the most elite units, as if that matters!" - It matters that the Iraqi Republican Guard tore into the A-10 so hard that the air force had to keep them safe and baby it by giving them the regular army units which were much less capable. Sorry. If a plane can't be used against a trained force that proves something's wrong with it, and that does matter. "they got 900 tanks" - Most of them by Maverick missile, which multiroles can carry. And the F-111 got 1500. "If you think the loss of 7 aircraft, and 20 damaged(A10 is made to absorb it)" - I don't think you get the picture. There were many more damaged A-10s, the list is of coalition losses. Many more A-10s received damage without loss of the plane. The fact is that the A-10 had its losses limited by handling it with kid gloves. Had it been forced to go in for real for the total of the war there would have been more. Also, you're really missing the big issue. The Air Force made its decision after losing two in one day and having 14 receiving damage repairs on the ramp. If you're losing planes, and the ones that come back are sitting getting repaired at one point the fleet will not be mission capable.
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  99.  RC213V  All your links claim the issue only exists at extremely high altitudes. And like described, the Pentagon isn't paying for the fix but as soon as a new coating is developed it will be applied. The F-35 already changed coating twice, and it's coating was an improvement over the F-22's in the first place. "As i agree with the USAF that the A10s be kept for the foreseeable future." - And by extension you agree with the USAF not giving them CAS missions, instead issuing them to mudhens and vipers. Fair deal. The boomers with nostalgia goggles are placated, and the USAF pours millions into keeping A-10s in service for no reason other than keeping oldheads happy. "yes 80% of tank kills used maverick(never said they were not)" - But the important aspect is that other aircraft can fire Mavericks so the tank killing potential of the A-10 came from something that wasn't exclusive to the airframe. "But the 2000 other vehicles, and 1200 artillery pieces were mostly gun" - Wouldn't take a 30mm GAU-8 to destroy those. Hey, the first night of Desert Storm low flying Apaches wrecked all sorts of shit by firing the cannon at everything that was around the radar dishes they popped with missiles. So there's nothing exclusive to the A-10. "in the 6 day war when israel destroyed egypts air force on the ground, people did not say, it wasn't a huge feat or was a big part of winning the war, and didn't drastically change the strategic situation in the mid east, because they were easy kills, of planes on the ground, who thinks like that" - I don't even know where you're trying to go with this. If Israel got wrecked by a trained force, it would shatter some kind of ideal about them being a big military power. If you try to start a bar fight, and someone who knows boxing knocks you out, everyone will think you're a joke if you wake up and start beating a smaller guy who isn't trained. "I don't think the F22 is too expensive, or a waste of money" - You would have if you were born a generation earlier. And if you were born two generations earlier, you'd think the F-16 was a waste too, full of failures, a lawn dart, etc. Or the Harrier. "The F22 handles the best because it replaced the F15?" - Are you mocking me? The F-22 was designed to meet the parameters of the F-15. The F-35 wasn't. It was designed for other use cases and roles. So it doesn't perform like the F-22. Just like the F-16 doesn't perform like the F-15. "They are not going to replace the stealth coating at this time, lmao" - Aircraft go under maintenance all the time. As soon as a new coating is tested and approved, F-35s in need of refurbishing will get it rebaked into their skin instead of the old one. "The plane overflying europe did not have stealth coating?" - Are you mocking me? UNLESS CLASSIFIED AS SECRET, FLYING STEALTH AIRCRAFT IS DANGEROUS BECAUSE THEY WON'T BE SEEN BY AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS AND POTENTIALLY CAUSE DISASTERS. STEALTH AIRCRAFT WEAR RE-FLE-CTORS TO MAKE IT SAFE AND ALSO TO PRESERVE SECRECY OF THEIR TRUE RCS. I never said they had no stealth coating, you smartass. http://www.f-16.net/forum/download/file.php?id=17770&mode=view http://www.f-16.net/forum/download/file.php?id=10657&sid=411af222e10c18d60ec144671bf7660a&mode=view here's a picture of a F-22 wearing a radar reflector. "Your telling me the Russian S400 in syria does not pick them up all the time, with its range and complexity, but a german civilian radar does?" - Because the F-35 will not wear the radar reflector in a combat mission. I'm starting to think you have trouble reading. Also, the radar vendor is trying to sell its radar. You believe their claims? "When in 2018 the syrians claim to have downed an IAF F35 with a S200" - This didn't happen. Like the second F-117 or the B-2 that was supposedly shot down by Serbians. It's all lies. The damaged F-35 happened two weeks before and it landed, and there's no source for the bird strike happening at 30k feet high. "Of course the F16 is cheaper per unit. Ones 4th generation, the other is 5th gen." - Composite, titanium, aluminum and steel do not care what 4th or 5th gen is. They cost the same. You're paying highly specialized technicians to operate high tech factories, to forge aircraft-grade metal alloys, to lay carbon fiber weave in vacuum bags and stick them in big ovens. If you want a F-16, you're paying for an aircraft. Aircraft cost a lot to make. But if you want the F-16 to actually be useful, you'll be paying 30-40 million dollars for targeting pods and other avionics. The F-35 comes with this already in the plane. "Its a 1970s design with old technology" - Do you want a 1970s F-16? Can't fly at night, can't fire radar guided weapons, can't fire air to ground missiles, etc. "How do 180 or so F22s,replace close to 500 F15s." - People like you said it was expensive and useless so they canceled the project.
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  108.  @bush_wookie_9606  The A-10 is not firing THE armor piercing round because DU equals bad. Plus the DU round hasn't been able to pen MBT since the late 70s so who gives a shit. The A-10's main tank killer weapon is the Maverick missile and the gun is mostly relevant to strafe people made of meat and bone too close to friendlies to drop a bomb on them. 20mm high explosive should work fine at shredding humans. 25mm APEX should be even better. If you need stealth you can't do CAS either because the battlespace will be too dangerous to send CAS aircraft. The moment you hang shit on the F-35s wings you already kicked in the doors, blew all the radars to hell, dropped bombs on runways to make sure nobody can take off, and anyone who dares turning the air defenses is gonna deepthroat a HARM. The F-35s can hang a F-16 under the wing if it wants to, at that point. Loiter time doesn't mean much when a. any scenario that allows the A-10 to operate allows tankers to refuel F-35s b. the F-35 can get to the action faster and drop munitions more accurately which means it can do its job in less time c. the whole goddamn point of multiroles is that you don't need to wait on a particular kind of aircraft. If a F-35 runs out of ammo or fuel, it can just call another nearby F-35 that was doing an aerial patrol to keep going and finish the job. Or a nearby F-15E. Or nearby F-16, F/A-18, etc. If the only thing that can replace the other A-10 is another A-10 then why are more than 80 percent of CAS missions done by non-A-10 aircraft?
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  109.  @bush_wookie_9606  Regarding survivability, we know that an F-15 has landed with only one wing and about two feet of the other wing left attached at the root. A F-16 has also landed with half a wing after a collision, and the pilot was a novice if I'm not mistaken. This is thanks to body lift. We know that the F-35 employs even more body lift than those planes. So it's safe to say, the F-35 can probably fly after getting a wing ripped off, at least after losing half a wing. That's about as much as you can rip off from an A-10 and remain in control. The A-10 has a dual redundant hydraulic system. The F-35 actually has isolated hydraulic systems so if you shoot one off, you're only bleeding that one. An A-10 can still have the two hydraulic systems shot off and bled out. The gun is cheaper but it's also harder to employ. It may take a minute and a half for a bomb to fall from the bay, but maneuvering into a firing position can take finesse. We're now fitting laser guided rockets to helicopter rocket pods. This may just be theorycrafting, but wouldn't it be feasible to fit a F-35 with rocket pods in the wings - make the pods stealthy or not, who cares if you're performing low level CAS there's probably no air defenses around - allow the F-35 to fire the rockets from further away and at higher altitude than a gun, allow the dive to be shallower and less dangerous, and improve accuracy even over the 30mm because you're literally pinpointing the target with the laser that the rockets can maneuver into? A whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh and you get nearly the same effects on target as a 30mm gun run. 2.75 rocket and the guidance kit, probably cheaper than a bomb and already in use with helicopters.
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  117.  @LupusAries  "How so?" - Any plans on a gun that fires backwards? If your argument hinges on the defending aircraft reversing on the attacker due to both IR and radar missiles failing, I think that the fight was already lost. "And it's another case of the situation being perfect for the US fighter, it had the iniative" - I don't have the real statistic with me but I'm pretty sure it's widely known that most aircraft shot down were unaware they were being attacked, so having the initiative is the goal to score the kill. "Yes the missile should reject the flares, but then whole point of Flares is to confuse missile" - You're making my argument for me, yeah no shit the IR missile missed, it was fooled with countermeasures intended to fool it. The problem is that the 9X should have an imaging sensor capable of determining that a flare doesn't look like an aircraft. Even pseudo-imager seekers had some degree of flare rejection. So yeah, we're paying for tech that should work but it isn't. "You can't expect countermeasure designers to sit around with twiddling their thumbs doing nothing...." - The problem is, the seeker was outwitted by something that probably did not have the amount of design you seem to be implying. Look at footage seen by the 9X seeker. It can see the fuselage, the wings, etc. If your job is designing a canister that burns how exactly are you going to make it look like an aircraft? https://youtu.be/myuZUxS3Uww?t=243 This stuff was available in the 90s, if a hockey puck can determine what kind of SAM site it's looking at its outline against the ground clutter how exactly can we fool an AIM-9X with a burning tube? Raytheon better come up with a good excuse.
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  136. 1