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

  1. Not everyone. Some pilots complained the gun required the use of a smaller radar and negatively affected handling characteristics due to the extra weight up front.
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  2. All combat jet aircraft are expensive Ferraris.
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  3.  @theboiofallbois  "The A10 can fly so low and slow that it's hard for radar missiles to hit it" - This was true before look down shoot down radar. Now radar uses Doppler shift filtering to detect the differences between the ground and aircraft. Not to mention that the turbine blades are huge radar reflectors from the front. "Once the other aircraft overshoots or the A10" - Why would it overshoot? If you go vertical, the A-10 doesn't have the thrust to keep up.
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  4.  @kemarlyjohnson2918  "Terrain masking makes A-10 immune to radar detection at long ranges" - Not from airborne radar. Terrain masks you from ground based radars. "BVR missiles are useless on small low flying aircraft" - Missiles have been used against Cessnas in air interdiction.
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  5. ​ @countvonthizzle9623  the Argentinians were at the edge of their range and couldn't use afterburner to build up speed or else they'd run out of fuel over the ocean.
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  6.  @peterbaker8443  No aircraft can "sustain" damage. If you get hit by a continuous rod warhead, the aircraft gets sliced in half.
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  7. Stealth is based on absorbing and redirecting energy. Reflecting radar into the big nothing prevents the signal from being picked up. If a stealth missile reflects radar to the aircraft, and the aircraft reflects towards the missile, more energy bounces back to the radar receiver.
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  8.  @PvtPartzz  That's a bad argumentative tactic. Nobody ever says they'd like to have less ammunition in a fight, but the problem is that a guns kill is a one in a lifetime opportunity, very unlikely to present itself, and if you're not well trained in air to air gunnery it's completely wasted on you. So instead of asking would they prefer to have no gun, ask: was the tradeoff worth it?
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  9.  Velocity Raptor TBC  Legends are just that. There's legendary boxers still alive, who don't belong in a ring.
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  10.  @scgrigsby  How is that related? F-16s, F-15Es, F/A-18s, etc combined do more close air support than the A-10. In fact, the F-16 alone already does more CAS than the A-10.
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  11.  @hf117j  You're literally a demoralization agent. "This is why I don't read comments" who cares? Seems like you're the kind of person who serves as an example of what not to do.
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  12. ​ @Shadow-n1c4l  The bolts you get at the store for 99 cents were not rated to work on aircraft. The military REQUIRES a lot of source controls and certifications before parts can be used. The costs are driven by the military's own standards. If the military wanted to, they could easily ask the government to write laws that let them buy Lowe's bolts without breaching the contract.
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  13.  @bombomos  How is it going to be obsolete in 10? The F-16 is old and modern Blocks allow it to keep up. For it to be obsolete in 10 years, a more advanced enemy fighter would have to have started development 5 years ago.
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  14.  @dennisyoung7363  the entire F-35 body is a wing. The F-16 has a higher wing loading than a F-4 Phantom on paper, but it's more nimble due to body lift.
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  15.  @dennisyoung7363  "the Aussies said" which ones? The crackheads at the local park?
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  16. ​ @luigimrlgaming9484  Not true. The AIM 9X is not like old missiles. It "sees" the aircraft. Clean flares, dirty flares, it just sees the object with cockpit and wings. The missile just failed to track.
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  17. The F-22 is still flying 90s tech in many aspects. Low numbers means upgrades are not very beneficial.
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  18. @Phillip Banes Tanks are not ejected until the fight progresses to a point where there's no turning back. You need fuel for ingress and egress so your speed is limited in most missions. You can engage from a position where ejecting the tanks is not necessary. Tanks do not grow on trees either so your commanding officers will want you to bring them back most of the time. External ordnance causes massive drag. Even in subsonic speeds aircraft use flush rivets because small dimples are enough to create tons of skin friction. Missiles hanging off the wings are like flat walls at supersonic speeds. All max speed figures you see are for unarmed and low fuel aircraft trying to score the highest value and get a fair comparison.
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  19. Lmao they were "arguing" for almost a decade? Laughable. The US builds 130-140 F-35s a year.
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  20. ​ @Vsor  Motor isn't everything. Aerodynamics, the lofting profile, and the guidance algorithm make a lot of difference given motors of the same size. Plus seeker and quality of mid course link is important. You can have the kinetic ability to hit a target at X range, but score no hits because the lock always drops
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  21. ​ @JayEy  "how many can you lose" my brother in Christ the US has more F-35s than other countries have fighter jets in total.
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  22.  @RadicalTek  Oh no, people hold on to towns that lost their value decades ago! That's totally related to Sidewinders!
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  23. Russia Today broadcasts from 2015 are not truthful.
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  24. No. The F-35 is equivalent to the F-16 and legacy Hornet. The NGAD and F/A-XX are equivalents to the F-15 and F-14/Super Hornet respectively.
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  25. It was. Exact same profile as the guys found in the Khinzal crash site Sept 2022.
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  26. Wrong time to post that bub, Ukraine is gaining ground around Bakhmut.
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  27. It's not armored like a tank. It has some degree of armor that prevents it from being totally taken out by certain types of damage. A gun burst or a missile is able to slice an aircraft apart in one hit. You can't put enough armor on an aircraft to defend it from such a direct strike and still be able to take off.
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  28.  @CrotchRocket78  False. 9Gs for the Air Force, 8Gs for the Navy and 7.5Gs for the USMC.
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  29. ​ @dirkbastiaandejong997  The flares story was not corroborated by the pilots.
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  30.  @Biden_is_demented  The coating issue happened once years ago, and since it has only occurred twice. It can't be replicated in testing. Thank you for playing.
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  31.  @Biden_is_demented  That's false. They did keep testing to try and replicate the issue, and it hasn't come up again.
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  32. That's completely unreasonable. Each needs different structural components but the engines, radar, systems, etc are the same.
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  33. ​ @cameronspence4977 Forcing the enemy to twist itself into a pretzel to exploit weaknesses is good, knowing he will do it so you will be ready is even better. Point the radar one way, enemy will haul his launchers to worse firing positions to try and exploit it. Russia can't fire land based systems from the south or west. Point the system east, you funnel enemy missiles into a known path from the north in Belarus. Or point it north, force missiles to fire from the east. You have to know the enemy but also know yourself. Once you do, you can control the enemy like a puppet on a string. Make him do what you want him to do, and beat him.
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  34. ​ @JayEy  Lesser stealth B-1s bombed Syria with impunity as retaliation against gas attacks, and they were defended by Syrian S-300s and Russian S-400s. If B-1s can get within range to drop payload, and the defenses can't intercept the incoming munitions, what makes you think the F-35 would be worse?
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  35. The US has been flying hypersonic air breathing missiles since 2004.
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  36. ​ @140theguy  Funnily enough the F-15C always had an air to ground mode from the factory, just disabled. The Israelis were the first to use the "hidden" F-15 ground attack feature.
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  37. They already confirmed it.
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  38. Because the self-destruct means would waste weight and volume inside the aircraft when not needed. It's more effective to have another aircraft bomb the crash site.
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  39. Gun runs are an absolute last resort. Have you seen how easily Su-25s go down?
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  40. ​ @alexdunphy3716  they fly nuclear bombers to probe airspace too. If they're mad at our ISR being provided to the adversary, I'm mad at nuclear threats. They don't get to cry about it. They also use Belarus to attack Ukraine while those countries are not at war, complicating the retaliation calculus. Russia is not above fighting dirty. Why should we honor their justification for the attack?
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  41. Poland had a program to use Sparrow missiles in Kub launchers in the 2000s. They probably used that as basis for the Buk/Sea Sparrow conversion.
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  42.  @haruruben  Both Russians and Ukrainians are flying it. The problem is, they can't fly over the battle. They come in at high speed, pitch up, fire rockets in a ballistic arc and turn away to head back to base. Giving them A-10s would mean tons of time wasted training pilots and ground crews for them to resort to using A-10s the same way.
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  43.  @robertrider1251  Su-25s have been shot down on both sides. Air superiority is irrelevant.
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  44. ​ @wisenber  The F-15EX does not have the speed when it carries the payload, most speed ratings are achieved clean and bolting weapons plus fuel tanks increases drag. The EX may have the range, but cannot go where the F-35 can. Stealth is the ticket to survive SAMs.
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  45. Post literally anything about Russia, even something millions of people saw on viral clips, and someone will post a comment crying "propaganda".
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  46. And they'd spend billions and 10 years to acquire and transfer an aircraft that's out of parts and in need of overhauls? Yeah, just send them to the boneyard.
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  47. Not just limited on how hard it would pull, if you pulled hard the aircraft would be slow at pointing the nose - the longer it takes for the nose to move where you want to, the more speed you bleed trying to maneuver. The conclusions segment written by the test pilot shows he requested the software engineers to give him a faster response time to help with retaining energy in the fight.
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  48. Non-stealth aircraft have to fire missiles at each other to force a defensive posture. Without the need to fire spoiler shots, 4 missiles in a stealth aircraft is better than 6-8 on a 4th gen.
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  49. The W76 refurbishment program was completed in 2019, what the hell are you talking about?
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  50. ​ @TheGrindcorps  in Russia, you don't need to be in the military to get free reassignment.
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  51. ​ @nexpro6118  Do you hear that Mr Anderson? It's the sound of inevitability. The USAF asked for A-10s to be retired every year. Congress is starting to fold. The less aircraft in inventory, the harder it is to keep the remaining ones.
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  52. It's not. By that logic ICBMs are hypersonic. By the same logic American pilots flew hypersonic aircraft in the 60s.
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  53.  @greenmedic88  "US Air Force close air support typically comes in the form of an AC-130, A-10, or on the bottom end of the tier, rotor wing craft" - No. Around 30% of CAS belongs to the F-16. The Strike Eagle, B-1 and B-52 also get a huge chunk, and the A-10 received around 11% of CAS missions since 2014. "Mostly for the loitering capability to provide overwatch on longer duration missions" - If you call in air support and a Navy F/A-18 with 15 minutes playtime is close by, that's what you get.
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  54. If you can't defend an airfield, you can't defend your ports, factories or power plants. Patching a runway only takes around a day.
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  55. F-4s got electro optical systems to identify tracks visually outside visual range. Too late for Vietnam. The F-14 got TISEO. The F-35 had the EOTS/DAS. You can see visually beyond visual range. Lenses and cameras do wonders.
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  56. ​ @gerolddo  It evaded the Patriots at the edge of the glide bomb range. Su-34 didn't get to drop, Russian comrades on the ground get no air support, lose battle and curse their "cosmonaut" friends. In Afghamistan while few jets were lost to the Stinger the Soviet troops complained that jets flew higher and missed their bomb drops - they started calling them "cosmonauts" to mock their cowardice.
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  57. BUT WHAT ABOUT????
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  58. Navy F-4s with no guns were scoring better than USAF.
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  59. Russia spending 65 billion is equivalent to America ~190 billion. For the dates mentioned the US was spending just under 700 billion in defense. So it's a three point something advantage for the US, even though in raw numbers the US has a theoretical tenfold advantage.
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  60. I kinda wish Mover had to do exercises against the F-35 while he gets his aircraft of choice. It would be a humbling experience.
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  61. Fravor has never corrected the UFO nutters on the contrast border around objects, which can be turned off in the MFDs. He allows them to claim there's cold air around the "craft" when no, that's a contrast line drawn around a hot object to help pilots see.
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  62. The A-10 was designed for Vietnam. It was meant to be the A-1 Skyraider replacement. Its problem isn't nukes but anti-air weapons.
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  63.  @ethimself5064  What "misinformation"? The US ambassador simply said the US did not intent to get into a conflict with Iraq. The invasion of Kuwait changed the situation.
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  64. So do ICBMs and 1960s NASA projects. If you want to count them as real hypersonics, the US beat Russia pretty bad at hypersonics. By several decades.
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  65.  @hsjawanda  Then America has had hypersonics and Russians need to shut up about their wunderwaffen.
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  66. In the aircraft world, multiroles are kings. They do refrigerate and they do bake the meatloaf. Like it or not, it works.
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  67. That would be because the F-16 was part of a light fighter program meant to prevent overspending on the larger F-15, and more of a point defense fighter (although drop and conformal tanks greatly extend range). If you look at a MiG-29 side by side with a Su-27, you'll notice the same size disparity.
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  68.  @WalrusWinking  "They already tried replacing the A-10 with the F-16 it didn't work out so well" - Except it did. In terms of percentages the F-16 does three times the CAS the A-10 does. What didn't work was adapting a 30mm gunpod to the F-16, which was a ridiculous idea anyway considering that the 30mm round hasn't been able to penetrate main battle tanks in decades, the DU round has been retired, and 20mm shreds up armored vehicles pretty good.
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  69. ​ @RadicalTek  So?
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  70. Isrel flew over S-400 protected airspace to strike Iran and Syria.
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  71. But that's wrong. Every second of flight you have a gun on, that's volume and weight working against you. For something that won't be used 99.99% of the time.
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  72. ​ @videorowtv5198  The F-22 dropped bombs in Syria. The F-35 already flew over Iran, causing the head of air defense to be fired over that blunder.
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  73. If the missiles had been destroyed then why did the coalition lose aircraft in the war? Stop saying nonsense. The UN was never in Iraq to disarm conventional weapons.
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  74.  @djl5634  "And it's cheaper to use than missiles rockets or bombs" - It's more expensive when you account for losses. It's cheaper to use expensive weapons that hit the target from 10 miles out, than trying to get within 2,000 ft of an enemy that knows that he has to shoot back at you. "Anything the gun can't kill the hellfire missiles the A10 uses will" - They use Mavericks, not Hellfires.
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  75. ​ @Clown472  air to air missiles use rockets (apart from missiles like Meteor, they use fuel and oxidizer).
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  76. Massive intakes facing forward would ruin stealth. They'd have use ducting to mask the blades if they were planning on it.
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  77. There's only one radar station capable of tracking small space debris in Europe and its limit is 2 cm objects. Not microns. It's large and I assume the power consumption is enormous. If an anti-stealth radar is so large and powerful that a continent can only have one, and it can't be packed up in a few hours and moved away then it's going to be hit by a hail of cruise missiles the moment the conflict kicks off. Failing that, the power output makes it a juicy target for ARMs so it will have to be shut down anyway. And now the stealth aircraft has free roam. Stealth pure and simply has physics on its side.
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  78. Holy mother of cope, batman!
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  79. Gripens are more expensive than F-35s. Look at the Brazil contract, they paid like 200 million per Gripen. JSF partner nations bought F-35s for 115-130 million I think.
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  80. I don't think Green Berets can jump that high.
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  81. And?
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  82.  @patrickfuller6025  Conventional aircraft are vulnerable.
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  83. ​ @JudgeDillon  Yugoslavia was not Third World. As a socialist country it was considered second world. And the shot that brought down the F-117 was taken from 8 miles. That's a pathetically small range.
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  84.  @buster8277  "What cost less ... bullets or bomb?" - The bullet, if delivering it requires an aircraft to go in a predictable straight dive that makes it easy to shoot down. "What can be used in danger close from 10 miles out? a-10 gun." - False. The gun can't hit targets at 10 miles.
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  85.  @buster8277  No, you can't. You can have one and a half A-10s. You're using 1970s dollars and the price of a very inferior aircraft that lacks all the upgrades.
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  86.  @buster8277  Nice deflection. You claimed that A-10s cost 2.3 million. The wings ALONE cost 10 million. By definition, the entire rest of the aircraft including engines and avionics has to cost more than 10 million. So at the bare minimum, you're lying about the A-10's cost by a factor of 10. We don't have the lifetime cost of other aircraft so we can't make that comparison easily. "The A-10 costs between $19,000 and $20,000 per hour to fly. Welsh said he would like to see an aircraft that cost between $4,000 to $5,000 per hour" - The Super Tucano costs $1,000 per hour. It was the contender for the OA-X program that they cancelled. Not my problem they decided to turn down cheap options and now are complaining about costs. "Earlier this year, Lt. Gen. A-10 cost about 10% of an f-35?" - What the hell does that even mean? Lt. Gen who? 10% of what? Flying costs? Unit costs? "Besides I was talking about cas" - So was I.
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  87. At least two of the videos showing this amazing performance are actually pretty mundane. All we have is a supposed radar track no other sensor could corroborate.
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  88. The US invented stealth aircraft
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  89. It was a follow up of the Indochina War, which resulted in France leaving. The Vietnamese were split between the North, aligned with the Soviet Union, and the South, aligned with the West. The US was following a policy of "containment" to fight the spread of communism so it backed the South Vietnamese government against Northern invasion.
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  90. ​ @pauljs75  The A-10 is extremely slow. A Super Tucano can almost match the A-10 cruise speed.
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  91. It's cheaper than 4th gen, and range comparable to other fighters with 2 fuel bags.
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  92. Insert the gif of Indiana Jones versus the knife guy.
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  93. ​ @nexpro6118  Yet the winning strategy seems to just make aircraft capable of handling all tasks instead of an aircraft that can't fly on its own and needs to be treated like a baby.
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  94. ​ @briandix4633  A pilot lost his life trying to land a damaged A-10. Everyone remembers "KC" Campbell for her success, but Lt. Patrick Olson is forgotten.
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  95. The third picture doesn't seem like bullet holes, they're extremely even in spacing and small in diameter which doesn't seem consistent with an autocannon. It seems like all the holes were punctured at the same time, possibly from either an AA shell with proximity fuse or a missile. The pilot that was flying the aircraft also only heard one bang.
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  96.  @adamboylan2307  The USAF actually proposed to retire almost 50 of them but it will probably be rejected. Since 2014 that the A-10 only does 11% of CAS while the F-16 does 33%. It's been replaced already, it's just Congress that refuses to let it happen.
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  97. Your country collapsed after invading Afghanistan.
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  98. They're holding onto the A-10 because they're OBLIGATED TO. They propose retirement and Congress shuts them down. They've actually requested 42 A-10s to be retired for FY2022 so they can use the money on actually useful aircraft. There's no super warthog. Stop reading buzzfeed-tier defense blogs. They're getting jam resistant GPS and small diameter bombs. That's not a "super" anything.
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  99. If you're spent, RTB. Don't bring a gun to a missile fight.
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  100. Look up the pictures of the crash site when a Khinzal went down in Russia in Sept 2022.
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  101. Lmao
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  102. "I fail to see how the frogfoot is still an asset but the A-10 wouldn't be" - The Frogfoot isn't a very useful asset. It's being used to launch rockets in a ballistic arc and haul back to base. Standoff weapons require altitude to get the targeting pod pointed at the target. They're good at PR, and yet you didn't see the Frogfoot obliterate that convoy. There's a reason for it. It's suicidal.
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  103.  @bthsr7113  "We're mainly fighting insurgents" - Afghanistan is over. At this point SOCOM having Super Tucanos and AT-6Bs is enough to fit the bill. "and vintage Soviet gear, some of which were the A-10's intended prey" - Okay. Vintage Soviet gear is getting clapped by drones, artillery and shoulder fired weapons, while Su-25 pilots hug the ground in fear of anti-air weapons. In Ukraine both sides have access to A-10 equivalents and they're either getting shot down, or flying very carefully rather than being the CAS beasts they're supposed to be. The intended prey is now the predator, as the biggest threat to the A-10 are the ground units with missiles and guns designed specifically to splash A-10s.
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  104. They took like 20 years to improve on reverse engineered Russian engines.
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  105.  @mgabino2  If you fired a ICBM horizontally it would also be used within the atmosphere. How do you get velocity from atmospheric reentry? By gaining enough velocity to leave the atmosphere.
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  106.  @robstone4537  Not just that, but F-4s were at a disadvantage because the Air Force had to travel through areas where they had no ground radar coverage while North Vietnam could see them coming with plenty of time to react. So they sent the MiGs around the border and came in from behind. Many times these F-4s were flying slow to escort strike packages so the MiGs did high speed passes to attack and fled before the Phantoms could speed up and give chase. The Navy Phantoms always had their ships giving them radar coverage from behind so they didn't have this problem. The USAF Phantoms that went out to look for MiGs didn't have this disadvantage either.
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  107.  @karlp8484  The problem is that removing the gun probably means having to put a huge concrete weight in the nose to retain balance, ahaha
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  108.  @Toblerone-j1t  The problem is that who the hell is manning hundreds of small airbases? There's security concerns with leaving thousands of gallons of fuel and live weapons dispersed around the country. I don't misunderstand the doctrine. I understand it perfectly. Sweden does not expect to take the fight to the enemy, so their doctrine is to make the fight as costly as possible to the aggressor so that they don't even try. The issue here is that in circumstances like Ukraine, a country has managed to fend off an attack and is in the "now what?" phase. Ukraine does not have the decisive means to throw the counterpunch which sends Russia rolling back towards its borders. You've planned to lose a war slowly. That's your doctrine. That's fine. Now you want to win the war and retake your land and liberate your people. Is your doctrine going to work?
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  109. It's not a gravity bomb. It's the penetrator casing of the warhead. The sane exactly warhead type was found in the Khinzal crash in Sept 2022.
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  110. They won't need them 99% of the time.
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  111. Because witnesses are notoriously unreliable? So many UAP cases have been solved by people in their bedrooms. How many people would swear on their mother's grave they saw something unexplainable, then someone looks up flightradar and shows that an airliner was at the exact spot the UAP was?
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  112. There were two missiles involved. Most likely a Russian missile was knocked off course by an Ukrainian S-300 which caused the large crater and the wreckage of S-300 parts. The story with the two missiles was dropped because NATO didn't want Poland to activate Article 5 on Russia.
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  113. ​ @wisenber  IRST and electrooptical systems like the one in the F-35 give you "visual range" beyond visual range.
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  114.  @altergreenhorn  why are they building stealth aircraft, then?
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  115. I remember when he said Ukraine started the war in a speaking event and the entire room started laughing at him.
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  116. That would force Russia to expend more Kinzhals. Forcing Russia to rely on their wunderwaffen would bankrupt them quick.
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  117. ​ @Bushodai  If the truck is an enemy asset and you plugged in the coordinates for a strike mission, that's combat. Like if you're driving a fuel truck as part of a logistics unit in the armed forces and the enemy takes it out, you think your family shouldn't get the benefits for you getting KIA?
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  118.  @snky6995  Are you kidding? The drone was body slammed. Of course it cut the feed. Lost satellite uplink.
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  119. ​ @notsure6182  If American planes don't need to go into S-400 range to attack places defended by S-400s, then the S-400 themselves could be attacked.
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  120.  @furkadurka  Actually, I'm pointing out there's no correlation. If good K:D ratios are scored without guns, that means you can't draw a correlation between guns and higher K:D ratios.
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  121. The AIM-9X failed the first combat firing which is understandable, the balloons are "cold" targets that were tracked by just imaging seeker. Not the hot exhaust of an aircraft.
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  122. The stories are similar because people's brains "fill in the blanks" with stories they have heard. Much like folk tales of monsters becoming warewolves or vampires. Why did people see warewolves? Because they heard of warewolves in stories.
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  123.  @DIREWOLFx75  "will be put in production by 2025 or maybe 2026" - Just like the thousand Armatas by 2020? "Irrelevant comparison as the Su-57" - It isn't. It doesn't matter which aircraft is comparable to the Su-57, the fact is that the US could get the show on the road and produce more F-35s in one year than Russia can produce in decades. The F-22 program was killed off too early because there were no threats that could match it. And even then, you're admitting that Russia today cannot beat the US production 20 years ago.
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  124.  @blurglide  This is false. You're claiming it's indisputable but you can't even substantiate your claims.
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  125. New cope just dropped.
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  126. The munition failed, not the plane. Could have happened to any aircraft. No aircraft is stealthy with burner on.
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  127.  @ethimself5064  What do you mean, right from the top. It was an ambassador, and he was asked about economic warfare. He didn't know what Saddam intended to do. Also, if you look at me to look for negative signs, I say nothing, and then you grab my girlfriend's ass, you will get hit. That's not an excuse. If you attack someone, you don't get to say you could do it because nobody told you that you couldn't. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
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  128.  @ethimself5064  I have no information on the Bush and cronies narrative. I know he asked an ambassador. Not only it was a weird question, it was decontextualized. And the answer is not biding in any way. You seem to be defending a dictator with malicious intentions who thought he could get away with violence scot free by asking the US permission. It went poorly for him. Womp womp. Thanks for your efforts.
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  129. No. It's birds. People have reverse engineered the footage into a 3d space with the aircraft moving and circling. The object seen was travelling at low speed and close to the water.
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  130. It's mostly symbology and using switches to change the aircraft configuration. There's for example air to ground mode, air to air mode, and dogfight mode in fighter jets, so you can focus on a task but change with the flick of a thumb.
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  131. Any satellite picture shows it.
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  132. Pilots sometimes fly their aircraft into the ocean because they got disoriented. And Gaetz paid for a 17 year old to travel across state lines didn't he?
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  133. Russia confirmed it.
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  134. Can't fly the A-10 off a carrier.
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  135. Above MANPAD range you're in SAM range. Layered defense. High drag bombs wouldn't do, Ukrainians won't fly over enemy positions with the Frogfoot. Too dangerous.
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  136. Improved fuel chemistry and geometry, better aerodynamics, more efficient control algorithms.
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  137. Russia barely advanced past Donetsk city, a location they control since 2014.
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  138. @Chris G Maybe 30 years ago. Modern Block 70/72 F-16s cost 120-140 million.
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  139. A "catfight" was already slang for two women fighting.
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  140. ​ @F22Lover  Hypersonic speeds will make objects look like a meteorite in the sky. The opposite of stealth. The heat and noise will broadcast the position.
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  141. The F-117 was extremely successful.
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  142. Patriot protected Ukraine, S-400 was filmed burning by a slow drone overhead.
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  143.  @RodriguezIsaac33  So like the F-16? Master of all trades?
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  144.  @deathlocus1571  The gun was not omitted on the Phantom over weight concerns. It simply did not need to have it. As a naval interceptor, it would have to go head to head with aircraft coming in to sink the aircraft carrier. If a Phantom driver had to get behind the incoming threat to get a gun kill, he would not have a carrier to land back on. Because it would have sunk.
    2
  145. ​ @Just_A_Random_Desk  loyal wingman tankers will give it legs.
    2
  146. Maintaining visual on the pilot is more important.
    2
  147. On the contrary. They're "extremely" heat resistant because they are heated to the extreme. It requires money to make those missiles survive the firing conditions, and adding protection increases weight which lowers performsnce. So they have to ride the edge on their one and only trip.
    2
  148. Cheyennes had control issues that took so long to fix, mechanical controls were starting to get replaced by digital controls. Imagine having to design a mechanical thingamajig that responds to the Cheyenne's idiosyncrasies and something like 7 years fine tuning it, for the rest of the aviation industry to just say "now we just tell the computer to handle it!". It was in development hell.
    2
  149. ​ @knowahnosenothing4862  All that drone tech is on A-10C aircraft too.
    2
  150. They lost the war the day they started. Individual weapons don't win and lose wars. Logistics does.
    2
  151. But the Mosquito's wood construction gave it the same characteristic. When everyone is stealth, nobody is.
    2
  152.  @no-one_no1406  The Ho 229 failed basic stealth with the exposed engine blades at the front.
    2
  153. Navy pilots didn't have a high opinion of him either.
    2
  154. No. The FLIR video is pretty mundane.
    2
  155. ​ @blahblah49000  But they're not testifying the same thing. Fravor claims there was a dogfight. Videos show birds and objects being lost from track making them appear to accelerate.
    2
  156. AIM-9X range is published as "over 10 miles".
    2
  157. The ones showing birds? lol
    2
  158. The correct use of the A-10 is sending it to the boneyard.
    2
  159. The F-35 has nothing to do with the F-22. Even if 700 F-35s had been produced as originally intended, the F-35 would still ned to replace the F-16.
    2
  160. The F-16 can kinetically defeat short range missiles the A-10s exhaust is shielded from. Taking out the gun would unbalance the aircraft. It would need to be reengineered and re-certified.
    2
  161. Imagine a world where the YF-23 and X-32 won and everyone would be making youtube videos on how the F-22 and 35 should have won.
    2
  162. It only entered production in 2006.
    2
  163. ​ @lastknownjedi5119  A Su-34 just crashed per Ru MoD report. Crew didn't make it.
    2
  164.  @Echo81Whiskey  Infantry elements will be supported. Gun runs will not happen in a peer war no matter if it's the A-10. They won't send it.
    2
  165. The crop-duster is a purpose-driven tool to fit the requirements. The A-10 was made for a battle that doesn't exist anymore.
    2
  166.  @djl5634  "And u don't use bombers for cas." - Wrong. The B-1 and B-52 have been used for CAS.
    2
  167. The Gripen can't replace a twin engine air superiority fighter.
    2
  168. ​ @olderchin1558  Problem with lasers is the thermal affected area. Material properties are degraded by heat. However there's a machine now that combines a water jet with a laser, and the water jet cools the edges.
    2
  169. If US naval ships are sitting ducks, how come isn't Russia or China controlling global trade?
    2
  170. Time on station means little when the enemy has a vote. You can't loiter over a modern battle. It's one pass, haul ass. If you want time on station, bring a Super Tucano.
    2
  171. It was a microphone probe tied to a balloon. It wasn't a craft of any sort, just a nuke blast sensor.
    2
  172. Split windows are common on bombers and cargo aircraft. The SR-71 had a frame right in front of the pilot, not a lot of aerial gunnery could be done on a recon aircraft.
    2
  173. Stealth isn't wasted. You want to win the fight or just pretend to have a military?
    2
  174. What happens when those three guys have nothingburger to serve and we're back to square one?
    2
  175. The F-117 did not have fighter capabilities. Engineers were adamant that trying to fire a missile off the bomb bay would scorch the RAM paint and ruin the stealth.
    2
  176.  @Dinops907  I'm not talking about flights but public reveal events. The B21 already flew too. But it wasn't public.
    2
  177. The drone has a high aspect ratio for efficient loitering. It's not going to jink to evade crazy Ivan.
    2
  178. And two Aliexpress drones into Sevastopol naval HQ lol.
    2
  179. That's just electronic warfare.
    2
  180. The gun wasn't effective against tanks.
    2
  181. It has anti-ICBM capabilities. That's pretty much it.
    2
  182. Didn't happen. An old wives tale. One Army general spitballed that idea and other Army officers explained to him it couldn't be done. The US Army brass never officially asked to operate the A-10 nor could they.
    2
  183. Congress refuses to allow its retirement. Don't worry, the USAF will continue to neglect it so that it can't fly anymore.
    2
  184. Oh no, they have mopeds now. Can't cheat physics. No amount of smugness would make this work.
    2
  185. At hypersonic speeds, they're not seeing anything either.
    2
  186. The DF-ZF/DF-17 combo is a ballistic missile that then releases a hypersonic glide vehicle. It's better in the sense that it's a greater achievement than launching a huge missile horizontally to go faster, but it's not impossible to intercept.
    2
  187. The F-16 did 12,000 sorties with only 3 losses.
    2
  188.  @Globalscanningeyes  Two crashed.
    2
  189. ​ @eldersilva9030  It has an internal bay, it just can't be pressurized because of panel gaps.
    2
  190. About as much gun kills were made with gun pods and the E internal gun. The majority of kills were missile. The reason for the increase in kill rate was the introduction of Teaball, the radar coverage and comms monitoring that exposed the North Vietnamese ambush tactics.
    2
  191. Because we don't need them? We researched hypersonics in the 1960s. We figured ICBMs made more sense. The biggest advantage of hypersonics is defense against aircraft carriers. We have the aircraft carriers. Hypersonics are a sign of fear from naval power so we never bothered to pursue it seriously.
    2
  192.  @danmcha.96  Keep coping and seething. Other countries need hyper weapons to protect themselves from our jet fighters.
    2
  193. It wasn't sabotaged. It was meant to be a fighter for export due to restrictions on F-16 foreign sales, and when those restrictions were removed everyone wanted a piece of that pie.
    2
  194. ​ @TraditionalAnglican  however when the US had to make a bunker buster for Iraq, they had to make a penetrating case made of a special alloy that was formulated for the air force, an offshoot of maraging steel. If the weapon does not have a thick penetrating case to survive the impact, the warhead will be crushed and detonated too early.
    2
  195. Not really. Anything that takes out stealth is even more effective against non-stealth aircraft.
    2
  196. ​ @JudgeDillon  The exposed cockpit was visible for maybe a few seconds and we don't know which directions it faced.
    2
  197. The merge is just a jousting match where both sides take an all aspect missile through the cockpit.
    2
  198.  @icewaterslim7260  They can get to altitude faster, they can get to the edge of their range faster, and they carry weapons that can be fired at targets 80 miles away. The most important range requirement is being able to meet an incoming aircraft firing a missile or providing targeting information to a missile.
    2
  199.  @icewaterslim7260  I don't know how else to explain it. Greater range implies larger tanks (or fuel fraction), less weight, more efficient power plants. The most efficient way to fly is not the one with the most thrust. The more weight cutting you do the more iffy your structure is so good luck doing carrier landings. Having "too much" fuel saddles you down which means you fly like a brick and don't get to carry a lot of weapons.. So now you have a highly efficient high-subsonic aircraft with a ton of range, payload isn't great, and it turns like a school bus because if you tried to maneuver too hard the structure would rip apart due to the forces involved. It's a complete sitting duck and can't even run away from trouble if it encounters it. We could just design a high performance aircraft and pump more fuel into it on the way to the objective. Drone killings are a matter of policy, not technology. Just look at how effective drones were in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.
    2
  200. Not ready to fight. Most of the aircraft damaged to that extent were written off. The A-10s that got repaired and got back into fighting only had external panel damage that could be patched up in a short time frame. Unfortunately one pilot got killed trying to land a damaged A-10 in Desert Storm.
    2
  201.  @buster8277  "A-10 is made to protect soldiers on the ground" - It's also made really easy to get shot down. "F-35 cost 3.5 billion" - Under 80 million flyaway cost for the F-35A. "A-10 2.3 million with upgrades" - FALSE. Adjusted for inflation a modern A-10 is anywhere between 40-60 million dollars. And the recent Boeing contracts for new wings put a cost of 2 billion on 200-something wings for the entire fleet. This means almost 10 million dollars for the wings alone. Just the wings cost 4x more than your claimed cost.
    2
  202. ​ @allenjones4160  nobody avoids it - F-35 readiness rates are perfectly normal. You just lack context.
    2
  203. ​ @gee-o8e  It's already been replaced. Only 11% of CAS missions have been done by the A-10 since 2014.
    2
  204.  @Nero-Caesar  and a ton of people have hopped on the "I support the opposite of current thing".
    2
  205. Not true. You're looking at late-2010s F-16 prices while comparing an inflation unadjusted A-10 in 1990s dollars. In 2022 dollars the A-10 is around 30 million (you can get used F-16s for 40-50 million) and that's not counting the upgrades to make it an A-10C variant. A modern A-10 is probably 50-60 million, but the costs amortized over time.
    2
  206. Marketing wank by Saab.
    2
  207.  @adamboylan2307  There's no A-10s in production. The last one to come off the assembly line did it in 1984 and the company went out of business in 2003.
    2
  208. Google the September 2022 Khnzal crash. Same exact warhead .
    2
  209. There's also 2000 T-14s on order since the 2010s. That order is indefinitely on hold.
    2
  210. Air superiority doesn't get rid of the ground threat.
    2
  211. The F-16 can kinetically defeat SAMs. The A-10 is a sitting duck.
    2
  212. How do you put a mechanical linkage when the guns are electric or hydraulic driven?
    2
  213.  @Battlestargroup  How do you make a gun that weighs several thousand pounds work by pulley? The electrical connection will always be necessary due to the MASTER ARM switch and if required weight on wheels sensors. Preventing the gun from going off and shooting other parked aircraft or crews is more important that whatever that fever dream is.
    2
  214.  @Battlestargroup  Artillery pieces have a mechanism to fire the initiating charge. Aircraft cannons are electrically primed. It wouldn't work. Simple as that. Artillery pieces also need to open the breach and reinsert a round. Rotary cannons in aircraft have to spin meaning there's no way you can link a pull cord. Simple as that. Artillery isn't an autocannon. Simple as that.
    2
  215. That's a weird way of putting it. The S-400 purchase was political. Turkey did not expect getting kicked out of the F-35 program, they wanted to play both sides.
    2
  216. ​ @verdebusterAP  Iraq had a network centric air defense. It was called Kari and it was French built. Because "Kari" is "Irak" backwards, and the French often spell "Irak" with a K. The thing is that while Russia tried Shock & Awe the US deliberately targeted long range warning radars and HQs with Tomahawks while Apaches flew nap of the Earth and struck smaller radar stations close to the border. The F-117 had its chances of success maximized by a proper plan instead of just firing missiles at targets via Google Maps and 1980s Soviet maps. The firepower Russia brought out Feb 2022 was massive. It was an implementation problem.
    2
  217. If you don't use A-10s on their own, then the other platform can perform the mission and the A-10 stay home.
    2
  218. The brochure always lies. Turkey bought the S-400 and complained the Russians were not being honest with its range.
    2
  219. Did your 18 wheeler fly over Iran in such an embarrassing event that they had to fire the head of the air force?
    2
  220. A waste is leaving them in warehouses. They were built to fight the Soviets in the Cold War. Now after decades they fulfill their purpose.
    2
  221. ​ @TerranSupremacy  There is no way to measure Russia's economy so all economic growth figures come from Rosstat, the Russian government agency.
    2
  222. Fun fact, in air combat you have to shoot "spoiler" missiles to make your enemy go defensive. You shoot knowing you will miss to force the enemy to turn and then you use your aggressive position to fire the actual killshot. This means BVR with aware enemies always involves low Pk shots. With the F-35, you can just fire killshots because you don't need to waste missiles to force the enemy to defend.
    2
  223. Because nobody who matters is confused.
    2
  224. Yes.
    2
  225. Ukraine has no means to cover A-10s. The Frogfoot is doing a desperate job by releasing rockets in a ballistic arc and fleeing back home. The F-16 can't stay on call? Neither can the Su-25 or the A-10. They'd arrive, release rockets, and turn back to head home.
    2
  226. AIM-7s couldn't see, they're semi active radar homing.
    2
  227. A single Patriot shot down 5 Russian aircraft in rapid succession last year. The Kiyv system also defended itself from a saturation strike involving drones, cruise missles, ballistic missiles and even Khinzal hypersonics. As a S-400 claimed 5 American aircraft in a single day? No. Has a S-400 defended a saturation strike with 4 different kinds of weapons? Also no.
    2
  228. The F-117 isn't flying combat, it's to assist in training and R&D.
    2
  229. Nope. Sensors in the visual and thermal spectrum will still beat the naked eye.
    2
  230. They didn't put a gun in the F-4 because it was a naval interceptor meant to protect the carrier group. If it had to chase the enemy carrying anti ship missiles witha gun; it would have to be ditched at sea because the carrier would be in the bottom of the ocean.
    2
  231. They saw the F-117 Nighthawk. It was only revealed later.
    2
  232. ​ @Chaosoftheunicorns  Not annexed.
    2
  233. Most of them are Soviet built.
    2
  234.  @williamzk9083  Inertial systems are accurate but accumulate an error or "drift" so they compensate by updating through GPS. Inertial moving maps are also old technology (A-7 Corsair, for example) and a screen with a digital map is useful.
    2
  235. How are the Marines gonna fly it off a short deck carrier? The amphibious assault ship requires STOVL aircraft like the Harrier or F-35B as it has no catapult or arresting wires.
    2
  236. Buk seems effective against drones, incoming cruise missiles, etc from what we've seen in Ukraine. They should be ahead of S-300 or S-400 batteries as a protective layer. Pantsir/Tor should be the last resort to protect them, but they seem to not be dependable. If an incoming missile is about to hit and nobody in the S-400 notices, it might be too late for the Pantsir/Tor to react.
    2
  237. ​ @anngo4140  It's not even that. 35M is most likely labor cost plus materials. When the Russian MoD buys, they're paying for R&D, the development of all the facilities, and the wages of the workers even when they're not tasked with construction.
    2
  238. Cope. Already confirmed by Russians on telegram.
    2
  239.  @Madmaxxxx1984  prove it's a Turkey, prove it's not worth the money and prove it leaves lots to be desired.
    2
  240.  @-007-2  The A-10 needs the loiter time and durability to make up for its poor performance.
    2
  241. Even in the early days it was known that there's a difference between SEAD and DEAD. If you want a SAM site to be truly knocked offline you'd need to use bombs and rockets on the equipment, and if necessary use the gun too.
    2
  242. Take your meds.
    2
  243.  @meoffmymeds1770  Cope.
    2
  244. ​ @Mountain-Man-3000  Fewer soldiers doesn't mean higher pay.
    2
  245. It was designed to survive the conditions of Vietnam, where far too many A-1s were shot down. Taking hits is a bad idea in the age of missiles which split aircraft in half. You don't want to get hit at all.
    2
  246. Russians are gonna rush Kiev again? Let's see them try.
    2
  247. That's the equivalent of running out of ammo in a 300 yard rifle fight, so you fix bayonet and run across an empty field with only a bladed weapon while the enemy still has bullets. Just because you ran out of missiles, the enemy will not be a gentleman and let you get close. He's just gonna sling a missile.
    2
  248.  @johns70  I'm not American. My perspective is that if you try to preserve military assets at all costs, the enemy will ignore them. Look at how any mention of the F-117 will bring the nationalist Serbs out to brag about bagging one, and how highly they praise the SAM crews for surviving the American SEAD operation. While they preserved their military in the NATO intervention, Milosevic tapped out and gave NATO what it asked for to begin with. The point of having a military is ensuring the executive and legislative power of the state inside its borders and thus its sovereignty. If your military hides and the enemy just keeps hitting you until you give up and concede, then what is the point of that military? If you can't defend your airports and air bases, then you can't defend your power plants. Your ports. Your oil and gas storage facilities. A dispersed doctrine makes no sense because none of your infrastructure is dispersed. While you're busy flying Gripens off stretches of highway, your enemy shut down your trade, your electric power, your economic activity, your heat and water. You devoted so much thought into packing your planes into hidden holes that you left your country's entire jugular exposed.
    2
  249. They said they didn't want them, and he didn't really outline how it would be good.
    2
  250. ​ @CC-gm4ch  There's footage of Danish and Portuguese F-16s operating on taxiways with flowers and grass coming out the cracks in concrete.
    2
  251. The S-400 is getting dabbed on in Ukraine.
    2
  252. Combat veterans are a very diverse bunch. Some went to college, some became murderers and drug dealers. Taking part in combat is not a character defining trait.
    2
  253. ​ @shadmansudipto7287  Let's see you try to build a F-35 helmet that complies with govt/DoD standards for 10,000 lol
    2
  254. ​ @Hon2fun  The mark up us because of stuff like finding a Chinese magnet in the product requires a change in supplier. When DoD requires a laundry list of tests, background checks, audits, regulations, standards compliance, etc everything costs 16x. By all means try to make a targeting pod with an aliexpress camera. It would make for a guaranteed 1 million views video on youtube. But no government in a developed country would buy it.
    2
  255. The S-500 is not an air defense system but an ABM system. It's supposed to augment the A-135 system which protects Russia from ICBMs. Not aircraft.
    2
  256. Only B and C variants, during peacetime.
    2
  257.  @claymclaren5788  You do realize that most aircraft have diagnosis programs, right? In the majority of trials held countries did not find the Gripen cheaper or easier to maintain. In fact the Finnish trials found the F-16 was cheaper to fly, and in a Swiss parliamentary inquiry it was revealed Saab had lied about the CPH of the Gripen by a factor of almost a third. The Canadian forces have issues, and purchasing Gripens would not solve them.
    2
  258. The A-10 would be unbelievably expensive to produce today.
    2
  259. The Marines are going back to an amphibious force for an island hopping campaign. They don't want tanks because they'll be fighting in a naval setting.
    2
  260. The decoys are painted on the ground rather than built into 3d structures.
    2
  261.  @edl653  " Su-25 are surviving the battlefield in UKR by flying very low, something that the A-10 can do better than F-16 and other US aircraft." - They're surviving because they release rockets and run back home. They barely do any fighting. The A-10 would be the same. Arrive, pitch up, release rockets, turn back and head home. "the A-10 has much armor and redunancy that make it more survivable than manpads" - If a MANPADS shreds the A-10, you can maybe fly it back home. It's gonna be written off. Worse, it's probably going to be severely damaged and crash land. Armor and redundancy doesn't mean much when the aircraft is physically mangled. The armor is overstated, it's just to keep the aircraft flying long enough and the pilot alive enough to pick a place to ditch. One pilot died trying to land a damaged A-10 in Desert Storm. The aircraft's reputation killed him. Should have ditched it in a safe zone.
    2
  262.  @MardukTheSunGodInsideMe  How do you know you're outside MANPADS range? You can be several miles away from the target when you release, but there could be a guy with a MANPADS also several miles away from the target. Right under you.
    2
  263.  @MardukTheSunGodInsideMe  Why would the A-10 be carrying those?
    2
  264. ​ @EEEEEEE354  Not true. The SA-2 and MiG-21 delivered to Vietnam were state of the art. They were even many times operated by Soviets because of how new those weapons were.
    2
  265. You can dominate the skies, and still get brought down by a guy with a tube-launched missile on his back. You can can for fighters in the air, but not an entire country for guys with a tube.
    2
  266.  @konstantinshev1320  Lose the pilots, you lose the air battle. Period.
    2
  267. ​ @Rimasta1  The missile failed.
    2
  268. ​ @nexpro6118  This issue has been raised by online commentators for decades. The issue is, IRST and modern missiles still mean there's not much room for traditional dogfights.
    2
  269. Spiders Georg is an outlier who must not be counted.
    2
  270. Russia can't even beat the Ukrainian air force.
    1
  271. Over a thousand F-35s built means support and parts for decades to come.
    1
  272. If you fly low, the AGM-65 seeker can't pick p the target.
    1
  273. "engaging artillery pieces" - Already being done with artillery and drone-dropped grenades. "The GAU-8 had kills on T62s and T-72s during the gulf war so I don't understand how you can spend 10 minutes arguing that it can't kill them now" - Pilots had to dump ammo on them and circle around until they saw fire. A missile and they exploded in one shot. Waste of ammo to strafe them. Su-25s are unable to loiter. They release rockets and turn back. The A-10 would suffer the same fate - rocket launching platform.
    1
  274. An F-16 with drop tanks wouldn't be able to chase down a F-35 until it got close enough.
    1
  275. @Roger Smodher an invasion of Taiwan? Surely the Ukraine situation has showed the CCP that even victory would come at a great cost.
    1
  276. @Roger Smodher The Russian arms industry took T-90s meant for India and sent them to Ukraine. Trusting their arms industry right now is like trusting an obvious ebay scammer.
    1
  277.  @JohnDoe-yq9ml  Then why do they use foreign chips?
    1
  278. @Roger Smodher "They're at war" - So? That's not an excuse. "If Russians can get the orders for the su-57" - But they can't. The project has been on the backburner for decades and nobody is lining up for it.
    1
  279. The British had the ALARM which deployed a parachute and waited for the radar to turn back on before firing a second rocket motor.
    1
  280. Several.
    1
  281. They already have Su-25s.
    1
  282. @@phillipbanes5484 Yes. You're still not meant to jettison tanks until strictly necessary. A dogfight is already a dire situation. You already messed up.
    1
  283.  @saquist  4th gens with full internal fuel have limited range. They fly with bags. Couple of missiles? They need more for the BVR timeline.
    1
  284.  @44R0Ndin  Okay, then drones will just have safeties to detect jamming and switch off the radio to seek the last known target position, use image recognition to seek the target independently or use the microwave radiation as a beacon to home onto.
    1
  285.  @44R0Ndin  But it doesn't. Shutting off radio comms is free, the accelerometers and gyros are used in the design already so they're also free. "Good enough" computer vision that runs at 60 frames per second is possible with commercial components worth 300 bucks. I guess the home-on-jam feature would be a little more expensive but not by much. If the radio is off the drone still completes the mission, just not under human control. And no, it's not a EMP. It's a disruption of comms. There's a reason why there are unjammable drones in the field. Simple commercial quadcopters can often be jammed through a signal that forces them to waste power and drain the battery for a forced landing. Some military designs are virtually invulnerable to jamming. The enemy spent 2k to destroy a decoy, and the other 2k is able to see the target after the jammer was destroyed. 4k to make a hit. Sounds great.
    1
  286.  @44R0Ndin  150 in parts? The Ukrainian FPV drones with a RPG-7 warhead have a 10 minute battery endurance, tons of issues with signal/visibility, and those cost 600. Regarding vision models, that's overthinking it. Sensor fuzed munitions have been a thing for a long while. There's no equivalent to a Stop sign. All you can do is make a metallic box the shape of a vehicle to get it to function.
    1
  287. ​ @snky6995  how is that suspicious?
    1
  288. Quantum radar doesn't exist.
    1
  289. The cannons weren't a decisive factor.
    1
  290. Boards of executives probably didn't approve anything. Order was made to John Smith Electronics and they delivered. Turned out John Smith Electronics was owned by Russian assets. The boards never saw the name anywhere, it was in a shipping manifest in some warehouse.
    1
  291. The SR-71 wasn't stealth, it just went full throttle whenever a radar-guided SAM was fired at it.
    1
  292. They have China and North Korea to worry about. They need a serious fighter, not a budget one. Also, the F-35B can take off from their carriers, the Gripen can't.
    1
  293. It's not a foundry's fault if distributors are ignorant about shell companies.
    1
  294.  @dcastro8492  But the high explosives are the same thing. If a high explosives manufacturer fills a warhead to fulfill a contract, and the warhead is then sold to a country they're not supposed to sell, it's not the explosives manufacturer that the arms company is skirting the rules.
    1
  295.  @luigimrlgaming9484  It didn't pop flares. It just failed to track. The pilot who took the shot made no mention of flares.
    1
  296. That's marketing wank. That's like saying you have a light that makes you invisible. You CAN use a light to overwhelm an eye or camera, but everyone knows the light is turned on. You can't create a black hole.
    1
  297. We all saw the S-400 burning in Crimea.
    1
  298. Morale boosters work both ways. Now imagine US troops witnessing an A-10 being shot down. Morale would collapse.
    1
  299. Russia just lost a S-300 and S-400 in a single day. This after a few S-300/400 losses over the past few weeks. If ATACMS and GMRLS can take out Russia's premier air defense, and even trainer aircraft loaded with explosives can fly almost a thousand kilometers deep into Russia, why bother keeping the facade?
    1
  300.  @DIREWOLFx75  "The Russian Army initially planned to acquire 2,300 T-14s between 2015 and 2020.[11][12][13] By 2018, production and fiscal shortfalls delayed this to 2025,[14] before Russia announced the apparent cancellation of the main production run on 30 July 2018.[15] However, as of 2021, the Russian state-owned TASS media agency claimed the Armata had been expected to begin serial production in 2022, with delivery of a test batch of 100 to the 2nd Guards Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division expected to begin in 2022.[16]" - The Armata was meant to be in mass production right now.
    1
  301.  @DIREWOLFx75  "you can buy a squadron of SAAB Gripen for the purchase price of each F-22." - And the Gripen isn't meant to win wars. It's meant to "Winter War" the Russians. Basically Sweden loses, but retains independence by using Gripens in a guerrilla war against the Russian air forces. The Gripen is something you get when you know you can't defeat the enemy. That someone was Pierre Sprey, who was a jazz music producer. He hadn't worked with the military for decades. The F-35 has fought with 2,000lb bombs against F-16s with no weapons.
    1
  302.  @DIREWOLFx75  What reality check? The Gripen has failed almost every evaluation it took part it.
    1
  303.  @DIREWOLFx75  You said it wasn't meant to be mass produced, I pulled the evidence to show the Russians claimed it would be, now you're pretending you didn't get BTFO. You got demolished son, try again. How can it proven to be mass produced if they're not mass producing it? Working by hand is what they're doing with Su-57s. The pictures of the facility show that there's no assembly line.
    1
  304. Long supply lines also means you have to go deep into enemy territory to get them.
    1
  305. The range of the S-400 is for high altitude targets. Earth's curvature hides stuff hundreds of miles away.
    1
  306.  @HD46409  But the original Wild Weasel mission is a Vietnam era doctrine. Now Wild Weasel starts firing HARM before entering the SAM effective range so that there's a HARM already coming down the moment the radar starts illuminating.
    1
  307. ​ @jimjones9239  You can't merge in the age of all aspect seekers and HOBS shots. Merging is just a jousting match where both sides get hit.
    1
  308. ​ @leecrumble3921  the S500 is an anti-ballistic system, not an upgraded S400.
    1
  309. Vectored thrust is meaningless in a missile fight. Pointing the vector away from the centerline costs energy, and losing energy means becoming missile bait.
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  310. Firing 1000 rounds at a single vehicle is a waste. The redundancy systems won't do much against modern missiles, which can cut aircraft in half. The Ukrainians had Su-25s to handle the convoy - didn't use them. They knew it was suicide. The F-16 does more ground support than the A-10. The Ukrainians don't have the multiple types of weapons to make the A-10 effective. So in the end, they aren't worthwhile. A-10s aren't "cold war" in systems. They have modern cockpits like multirole aircraft.
    1
  311. After it ran out if missiles, the enemy ran out of air force.
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  312.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  Read the report. Energy management was precisely the issue. Just read it. The pilot specifically said that changing the software would waste less energy.
    1
  313. The F-22 is an extremely limited aircraft in comparison. If that was done, we'd be now spending billions and billions to keep it up to date.
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  314.  @austinlowrance5943  The starting superiority was against 1990s Soviet Union. It ceased to exist in 1991. The F-22 is severely lacking in features. That's why it was estimated that retiring it and replacing it with an entirely new aircraft is more feasible than a fleet upgrade. It's not about competitors but the fact that it lacks features. The F-35 masks its exhaust. Yes, you would have to still need F-35s because the F-22 was only meant to replace F-15s. That's the High in the High/Low combo. You'd still need the Low aircraft. You can't escape that expenditure, the F-22 would not be a feasible Low aircraft. Upgrading the F-22 would not save any money. No, the F-22 can't be upgraded at leisure. It was designed prior to such considerations being adopted. It's a very difficult aircraft to upgrade upon. The F-35 is easier to upgrade and the NGAD will be even easier to upgrade than the F-35.
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  315. But the Frogfoot has been reduced to a ballistic rocket launcher. The "anti-everything" was solved with the F-16 and F/A-18. Not the 35. Even ignoring that, the A-10 is simply a slow sitting duck. With a F-16 you have a chance to "outrun" a SAM by depleting its energy. Using a Maverick requires climbing up, getting a visual on your targeting pod, and firing. The current use of Su-25 shows pilots are not willing to pop up and deploy guided weapons. Instead of arguing about "sortie rates" and "operational costs" they're slamming artillery and drone-dropped grenades on tanks. They don't need a tank-buster. They need true air support.
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  316.  @nekomakhea9440  Well, then please add the 2 billion spent on A-10 wings to the operational cost, because I think per hour costs should reflect the fact that ageing aircraft need expensive contracts to run. I think it's funny you claim to be talking about logistics while defending the "tank buster" concept (a tactic).
    1
  317.  @nekomakhea9440  CAS is a mission, not a platform. Also, I specifically referred to your "tankbusting" proposition, not CAS. "A dedicated platform can do a job cheaper than a jack of all trades" - But it's not cheap. It's stupid expensive to keep it in the air. It just doesn't get added to the CPFH. "extra capabilities cost money and maintenance" - This is an extremely poor argument, because the A-10s capabilities come from the fact that it uses many systems multiroles also use. The helmet mounted cueing system, the targeting pods, etc are added capabilities that cost money and maintenance. Without the capability upgrades, you'd have a A-10A. The A-10A is woefully inadequate compared to the C. "Even with the aging airframes, the A-10s are still way cheaper" - Because the costs are swept under the rug. Over the last 10 years Boeing was awarded two contracts valued at 1 billion each to manufacture wings. That's two billion, with a B. "USAF keeps flirting with the idea of bringing back propeller CAS, like a Super Tucano or similar, for the same reasons." - No. They had the OA-X program because a COIN aircraft for COIN was actually more productive than using the A-10 for COIN. But since the A-10 can't get retired the USAF will not purchase another aircraft that can't be used in a near-peer fight. "a supersonic airframe is swatting a fly with a sledgehammer, real militaries don't have unlimited budgets or maintenance manpower" - So basically the US is the only real military. Gotcha. The fact of the matter is that many nations have their "supersonic airframes" as their bespoke CAS platform. Dassault Rafales, F-16s, etc. The US and former Soviet states/clients are the exception with the A-10 and Su-25. Nobody else made equivalent aircraft. And this conflict has both sides proving how inadequate Su-25s are. "Germany lost because it was outproduced and outsupplied by the allies economic might" - Okay. You'd need to send the whole ~230-240 fleet in the USAF and Air National Guard to "outproduce" the VVs. "its too advanced for them to produce domestically" - Forget about domestic production - I think Arestovich said their military industry was targeted and almost taken out. "they have to fall back to using lower end platforms like attack helicopters and CAS and tube artillery for striking depos" - Striking a depot is not CAS. "That's why they have a mix of high and low end platforms, rather than all-or-nothing" - Okay but the "low end" aircraft are barely doing anything. They need the high end. Or else you're just sending pilots to keep doing ballistic rocket releases. They're not being helped by being given more of the same.
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  318.  @nekomakhea9440  There's no such thing as a CAS airframe. It can be performed by a MQ-9 drone, by a Cessna, by a B-52. "specialized platforms make sense" - They haven't made sense in decades. Package Q proves that it's a complete shitshow. And naval aviation imposes the limited deck space. "while disagreeing with the premise of the video that the A-10 is useless" - It would be, because it would be forced to just do lofting rocket releases. At that point just send them BAE Hawks or other cheap jet trainer and slap rocket pods on them.
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  319.  @batzing  "Russia conducts hundreds of sorties a day" - With helicopters doing blind rocket fire because they can't fly over enemy positions. The "Russian way of war"? You mean getting your soldiers humiliated by being filmed dangling out of burned out IFVs, being unable to deal with just 8 HIMARS launchers in an entire country? Russia grinds itself for ground they'll give up.
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  320.  @batzing  "You need to look up the NATO definition of air superiority. I think you are confusing it with air supremacy. Russia is currently meeting the definition of air superiority" - By the same token, so does Ukraine. Russia has air superiority over Russian territory. Ukraine has air superiority over Ukrainian territory. Neither side will penetrate each others' airspace.
    1
  321. Same reason Ford made the Mustang for decades despite car tech progressing.
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  322.  @ethimself5064  The issue isn't that the US had no business being there, my issue is that you're trying to claim it's okay to invade a country if you ask first.
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  323. How is that an escalation? Has Russia not bombed Ukrainian airfields?
    1
  324. It was a control law software test. It was part of developping the aircraft. A merge is suicidal - both pilots will fire their missiles and waste their aircraft in a jousting match.
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  325. Just yesterday a S-400 went poof in Crimea.
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  326.  @TF2enjoyer2008  A S-400 was hit south of Kherson last year.
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  327. No. Dogfights happen with missiles too.
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  328. That makes no sense. The tank losses are a reflection of attrition in an advance. If Russia loses a thousand but gets bogged down that's worse than Ukraine losing a hundred but succeeding in their mission.
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  329.  @EzekielDeLaCroix  Sure, but the USSR planned to actually make gains off those losses. If they lose tanks, but don't make gains. Uh oh, NATO is gonna counterpunch.
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  330. But it's already great.
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  331.  @beastywvu4523  Small wing is meaningless because the fuselage is a lifting body too. The entire aircraft is a wing. Even the nose is a wing, the edges on the sides generate lift.
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  332.  @linusa2996  the Marines can't fly a C off a helicopter carrier
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  333.  @linusa2996  Okay? And all of those were dependent on the Navy carriers. The whole point of a Harrier replacement is something that can fly off helicopter carrier decks. How does flying F-35s reduce close air support? Did you also complain about the Harrier? Either way, partner nations without catapult carriers can now also replace the Harrier with a 5th gen fighter. How is this not more important than whatever wacky idea to make Marines dependent on the Navy catapult carriers?
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  334. The issue is that for example in the 70s the USAF purchased a hundred and something F-15As and retired them 5 years later to buy F-15Cs, with the As being given to the national guard. People think the C variant is how the F-15 started as. The F-35 openly entered the service unfinished and was allowed to have hundred and something early variants upgraded to Block 3. People don't remember or don't understand the trickery involved with previous aircraft. The F-35s major issue is honesty.
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  335. Seems very significant. B-1s were used against Syria. The defenses were near peer level (Russian S-400s) but the targets weren't. Near peer sells to lesser countries.
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  336. ​ @ThatGuyKazz  Burst limiters take care of that.
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  337. Who would buy a system they can't get training for or ammunition?
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  338.  @xchazz86  The US most likely has kill systems that actually destroy it if it gets lost, or trying to reverse engineer it will cause all the data to wipe itself off.
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  339. Doctrinal difference between SEAD and DEAD.
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  340. What failures? The F-4 was ambushed while escorting bombing runs, not the aircraft's fault. When Phantoms went hunting for MiGs they wrecked the NV air force to bits.
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  341. They're forced to offer masdive discounts.
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  342. The 2015 report isn't valid because it was still a test airframe with old software. Jesus Christ would it kill to pay a little attention?
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  343.  @david834  Yes it is a software problem because the SOFTWARE CONTROLS THE AIRCRAFT. Read the report. Look at the pilot's own words. He asked for software improvements to address turning abilities.
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  344. Russia can't even beat Ukraine armed with our surplus.
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  345. The AIM-9X seeker is extremely hard to fool. The missile just failed, it happens. The 9X sees a thermal image. It can see the difference between a shape with wings and tail and cockpit and just glowing orbs that aren't aircraft shaped.
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  346. It has excellent range.
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  347.  @Galfeo  There's also examples of A-10's that got hit and crashed, and one example of a pilot who died trying to land his damaged A-10. He should have ditched it near the base instead of trying to land that wreck but the A-10s reputation killed him.
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  348. Because it's >40 years old. Aircraft aren't built like classic cars. They have to take off, which means being light. That means the materials bend and fatigue due to forces.
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  349. ​ @h8GW  the inlet screens are just for take off and landing
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  350. ​​ @chadbernard2641 he Saudis hide in ditches and behind rocks while Houthis run up to them and gun them down like it's national sport. Whatever the Saudis say can be ignored because of their cowardice and incompetence.
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  351. There's a big reason - company that made it doesn't exist anymore, parts are running out.
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  352. They keep changing the materials.
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  353.  @francisvantuyle  I sincerely doubt a C-17 ever took off from a carrier. The C-130 is a legendary plane. The A-10 would need to be designed for catapult take off and arrested hook landing. It would fare ever worse off a USMC ship. They're even smaller. There's a reason F-35Bs use the short take off and vertical landing.
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  354. Logical fallacies aren't illogical. That's why they're fallacies, they obey logical structure at a surface level. - Planets aren't made of cheese. - I am not made of cheese. - Therefore I am a planet. The conclusion actually follows the premises, but I am comitting a fallacy.
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  355. To be fair, a submachine gun is easily replaced by a carbine.
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  356.  @inVINSONable1  "Detectable range" against radar. A MANPADS can still do the revenge shoot-down. MANPADS will have warning, it's called "having eyes and ears". They're on the hunt for small drones, you think they can't find an A-10 in the sky? You mean CCRP. With CCIP you have to be above the target and dive to put the pipper on target. The use of the Maverick requires popping up. It's like lying on the road and trying to look for coins in the sidewalk. If you're low, the Maverick seeker can't see anything but tree tops. You have to climb and expose yourself to SAMs. Mountains? Ukraine is very flat. You can't do that in Ukraine. Modern seekers have flare rejection algorithms and Doppler filtering allows chaff to be ignored. Jammers simply activate the Home-on-Jam seeker mode. If you call in Wild Weasel, SAMs will shut down and refuse to provide a radar signature to SEAD aircraft. When the A-10 comes they'll turn on and fire. Very basic SAM tactics, in use since Vietnam. The claim that no opposition has defeated this tactic is laughable considered that Iraqis sort of did it, and Serbian air defense units became famous for their "guerrilla" tactics.
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  357. Why? A single nuke launched means the entire nuclear triad is fired at Russia.
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  358. How does an uparmored humvee or MRAP get turned into a missile? Most of the "weaponry" left behind were vehicles that were more expensive to bring back than just buy new.
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  359. It's not a lie.
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  360. They can't even prevent a slow Alibaba drone attack on their own Black Sea fleet HQ.
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  361.  @briant5685  Don't change the subject. You claim they have the best defenses and they aren't working.
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  362. Everyone has a plan to dogfight until they get an AMRAAM through their canopy.
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  363. Except that quality has curbstomped cost savings. Quality means the ability to drop bombs on factories and power plants. There's no mass production in a country that got struck by quality.
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  364. Improved fuel chemistry and geometry, better aerodynamics, more efficient control algorithms.
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  365. They are failing.
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  366. ​ @timbreitkopf9613  stealth aircraft hide the engine intakes. The Ho 229 had massive engine intakes exposed right at the front.
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  367. Carbon fiber isn't radar absorbing.
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  368. The F-35 is great my guy, what are you on about? The F-35 will cost over a trillion once you figure ARMAMENT, REPAIRS, PARTS, MAINTENANCE, REFUELING, ETC for almost 60 years with a fleet around 2000 planes large. Any other aircraft will cost a trillion by having the sum of all operatong costs for decades.
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  369.  @brushylake4606  Guns were a thing of the past. The "muh guns" narrative was pushed by a lot of documentaries but if you look at the statistics the Phantom with missiles only was excellent.
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  370.  @brushylake4606  The F-35 can carry 2000lbs more than a Warthog, and it doesn't taje punishment at all because unlike the Warthog it doesn't have such a pathetic performance that it needs to fly inside AAA range.
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  371. The countries that actually evaluate their options don't think the Gripen is cheaper. Only online commenters think it is.
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  372.  @LackofFaithify  All those numbers are nonsense. I've been reading those numbers for years. In actual evaluations, the Gripen never comes out as massively cheaper. It's a wash. In the 1992 Finnish eval the Gripen C wasn't even the cheapest option per hour (the F-16 was) or in lifetime costs. In a 2012 Swiss parliamentary discussion about the Gripen, it was revealed Saab had advertised a 10,000 franc CFH but it turned out it was actually over 24,000 franc (about 26k USD). Different countries measure costs differently so often a country rates their CPH by including everything from staff salaries to airfield maintenance along with depot level maintenance, while another figure may be the cost of taking an airplane for a spin (cost of fuel, lubricant, a few conscripts to turn a few screws and replace a couple of parts in the hangar).
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  373. Missiles need to pull 60 Gs because the faster you go, the more angular acceleration you need to keep up with a maneuvering target. Fire at a subsonic aircraft pulling 9Gs, if you're at Mach 4 you're not going to hit by pulling 9Gs. You're gonna miss by a mile.
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  374. It's not deflection. When the issues were fixed, the USAF increased their kill rate to 14:1.
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  375. Footage is downgraded. There was a trade show where they had a TV linked to a F-35 flying near Las Vegas and the footage looked like someone was standing in a hotel rooftop with binoculars.
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  376.  @TrampMachine  IFFs can reliably identify friend, but never reliabily tell you who is a foe. A malfunctioning antenna or even IFF turned off will not guarantee you won't shoot a friendly.
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  377. The body is a wing.
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  378. ​ @galvinstanley3235  Jamming cannot predict what a radar will do. Unless time travel becomes real, a jammer will always be behind what the radar is doing.
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  379. You have no idea how many programs cost trillions. The F-35 was the first to be judged by this metric. Nobody ever estimated the cost of fielding >2000 airframes for 60 years.
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  380. Why?
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  381. ​ @riskinhos  Please refrain from talking about what you don't know. If you took a F-16's control software and hindered its rudder authority, it would suffer in performance.
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  382. ​ @riskinhos  F-35 pilots have said they won simulated engagements, and afterwards the other pilots asked them why they went to the bomb range before landing. The F-35 pilots said they were carrying bombs in the internal bay during the whole fight.
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  383. ​ @major__kong  Devolving into a close range fight is like a soldier attaching a bayonet to his rifle and rushing towards the enemy. Sure, technically it can happen. It's just suicidal.
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  384. ​ @casematecardinal  Modernizing 4th gen doesn't work because there's airframe life limits, and a new 4th gen costs as much as a F-35.
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  385.  @major__kong  If you run out of missiles, you turn back and let your wingmen take the shot. You don't run like a headless chicken towards enemy missiles.
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  386.  @REgamesplayer  It was a control laws test. This was announced before the actual test took place. The report also goes into detail on how the control laws need to be fixed.
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  387. @@JimCarner AIM-120 courtesy of the F-35 you didn't see.
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  388. @@JimCarner Thrust vectoring and supercruise ability isn't required for air superiority, you're making stuff up now.
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  389.  @alexincobra7379  The NLAW has a MASSIVE warhead. 30mm HEI is a firecracker.
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  390. They had a better Sidewinder than the USAF. But their Sparrows were poorly maintained until the reports came in and started to address the issue.
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  391. DCS is not a stealth simulation. Stealth aircraft will detect each other before visual range because stealth degrades as it gets closer to the radar source. Plus IRST.
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  392. The 400km range is on a target flying at 20km. With a 5km (around 15k feet) altitude, range is degraded.
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  393. They aren't. It's the F-22 that will get a replacement.
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  394. ​ @andersgrassman6583  Yeah and in a wargame that A-hole general also sank the US fleet. In real life? Operation Praying Mantis. Losing wargames wins wars. There's a reason China created their own BluFor. They have a military unit trained to use American tactics and they crush the PLA in exercises. Because China realized that winning wargames for prestige only makes your troops weak. They need to be defeated in training to become stronger. People who actually do this for a living want to lose war games. Online commenters pretend that losing in training is bad.
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  395. You need stealth for defense too.
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  396. Their SAMs have been hit by ATACMS and modified S-200 missiles.
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  397. Every American getting 50 billion? Or every American getting 50,000/330 = 151,51 dollars? You want 150 bucks? Do a double shift at McDonald's lol
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  398. Bronk has been shilling the Gripen non stop. But the fact is that Sweden could not be counted on as a supplier if you needed to use the Gripen for real. When a war breaks out, you want the guys acriss the ocean, unmolested, to be sending you the stuff because they built a thousand units.
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  399. No.
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  400. Not when they're hauling external tanks and missiles/bombs with fins under their wings.
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  401. Returns are still reduced independently of angle, and another aspect of stealth is IR reduction. There's no "close combat support maneuvers". The maneuvers are just a reflection of what you want to do. You can provide CAS while flying straight. You can provide CAS while orbiting in a circle overhead.
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  402. Electro optical systems give you visual beyond visual range. These were even installed in F-4s and made famous with the F-14. No need to merge to see stuff from far away.
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  403. Sub hunting is a thing too, so they shouldn't get too cocky.
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  404. ​ @paulbarclay4114  Iraq was not stable. Saddam had to murd3r from 110,000 to 190,000 people to maintain his regime. Basically in a decade Saddam alone caused almost as much fatalities as the war and insurgency did the decade after 2003. A regime which needs bloodbaths to prevent rebellion is not stable.
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  405. ​ @paulbarclay4114  Syria was destroyed because when people started demanding freedom and protesting in the streets, Bashar Al-Assad released extremists from prison to false flag the protesters as terrorists. Al-Assad doesn't care that he rules over rubble as long as he's the ruler. The men he released later became ISIS.
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  406. ​ @paulbarclay4114  That's not accurate as that number was based on an interview study that could not be replicated. There's ZERO scientific backing for that number which media and propagandists repeat.
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  407. How is it hype and nonsense? The report involved a test airframe woth old software. The original claim was disproven. Want to make another claim? Burden of proof is on you, not the channel.
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  408. I live in the EU. You're wasting your money buying organic. The existence of rules does not mean they are followed.
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  409. Pilots have actually said that once they had F-22s on visual, they had trouble getting weapons lock.
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  410. Anyone who'd start nuclear war over a Patriot is already unhinged enough to start it over anything else.
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  411.  @OscarZheng50  Doesn't matter. Seeing him touch down and report his safety is more important.
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  412.  @abc-eq9so  how many Afghan shepherds did you fight?
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  413.  @abc-eq9so  You caught them without their RPGs though.
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  414.  @abc-eq9so  Oh I mean, the SEALs got killed by all of them being inside a helicopter that got hit with a RPG, you threw hands with some random guys who weren't even armed. Still seems the SEALs were tougher than you. Plus they were fighting abroad, you have home field advantage.
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  415. Too bad, air space is contested anyway. Enemy gets a vote.
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  416. Forget air to air. It can't survive a fight with the ground. That's the problem. The air space will be contested by fighters but the ground units themselves.
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  417. They aren't weapons components. They are components which have industrial applications too.
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  418. The Ukrainians already had the Su-25. They had the "plus" in that situation. They didn't use it because they knew it was suicide.
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  419. Malding lol
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  420. I recently read that the latest Osprey crash was due to the crew ignoring three magnetic particle detector warnings. The gearbox was fighting for dear life and the pilot could have saved it by diverting and landing after the second warning.
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  421. ​ @taylorc2542  let's not exaggerate.
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  422. One battery interlinks with the Hawk, NASAMS and IRIS-T systems they already have.
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  423. And Stuka pilots (same as IL-2 pilots) massively overstated their own importance by overclaiming tank kills. It got so ridiculous they often claimed to have killed more tanks than were present in battle.
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  424. One S-400 taken out today.
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  425. They had massive exposed engine intakes on the front.
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  426. They won't be used for that. And those drones are upwards of 100k. 20k USD doesn't even cover the components.
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  427.  @beefsuprem0241  Shooting down 4-5 million dollar missiles, and also integrating with the system as a whole. Force multiplier.
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  428. You can visually identify beyond visual range thanks to electro-optical systems.
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  429.  @nicolaeionescu6538  Can't jam the visual spectrum.
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  430. If you're in that situation, it doesn't matter - the enemy is well within kill range.
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  431. Nobody wants to take over Russia. It's full of Russians, which drives down the real estate value. Their military is weaker. They lost most of the repairable Soviet stockpiles, and their professional military had to be replaced by convicts and mobilized men.
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  432. The missiles are connected via plugs. Usually called "umbilical".
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  433. Says who? I'd put money on a F-35 anyway. The report was debunked. It was an experimental test airframe loaded with outdated control software. A F-16 today still flies like a F-16 from 2015. A F-35 today is much more capable than a 2015 F-35. It's not a sluggish airplane.
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  434. ​ @tbe0116  The radar data wasn't released and the FLIR videos don't match the claims.
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  435.  @blahblah49000  There's no evidence of radar track that matches the FLIR footage. If you're going to have corroborating evidence mentioned, you have to present it. We have heard of a radar track showing an instantaneous drop from 70-80 thousand feet to sea level. But that wasn't captured on FLIR. We can't put those things together.
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  436. What?
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  437. "Western media" you mean schizo websites complaining about "da joos" and satanists that happen to be based in Western countries
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  438. Right but MLU upgrades bring it to the 2000s standard.
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  439.  @roycavitt4544  Afraid of what?
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  440. The F-4 didn't need a gun. 90% of its kills were by missile.
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  441. ​ @duman5596  Doesn't matter. It's internationally recognized as illegally annexed. Also, Russia flies bombers near American air space. How are they playing victim?
    1
  442. Pretty much all GPS guided weapons have INS backup. A weapon coming in at supersonic speed will only spenda second inside jammer range, causing minimal drift.
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  443. Full scale invasion is silly. You don't need to capture vast amounts of land when you can easily cripple a country's economy.
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  444. The F-35 has a lot of tech more advanced than the F-22, which due to being a more dated program it still flues 80s and 90s tech. The F-22 was not produced in sufficient numbers so upgrades are avoided. Plus, we're moving to 6th gen so it's okay to export 5th gen.
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  445. Yeah but the US didn't have to ask the Soviets to make aircraft parts because we couldn't figure out how to work titanium.
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  446. ​ @vdotme  Again, there was no reason for it. The US was fighting the GWOT and Russia/China seemed to be liberalizing. When tensions rose it made more sense to get something new.
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  447. Remember when you people said the same about Kherson?
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  448.  @Connor_Roush  "Ukraine should have taken Kherson by now" - you last year. How many more humiliations will you endure?
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  449.  @Connor_Roush  How is that related to you just being humiliated over and over again?
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  450.  @Connor_Roush  They convincingly retook Kharkiv and Kherson. They convincingly destroyed elite units in Vuhledar. How much convincing you need? Just watch.
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  451.  @Connor_Roush  That's 1/8th of the yearly defense budget. The US has spent trillions to counter Russia over the decades. The Ukrainians shredded their army for 100 bil. That's cheap.
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  452.  @Connor_Roush  Ukraine deserved to be invaded? No. Now Russia pays the price.
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  453. Valid for a COIN conflict where you have free reign over the air. You can't do gun runs when there's Buks and MANPADS around.
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  454. What the hell does that mean? Russia has had trouble with 30 year old American weapons.
    1
  455. But dogfighting will just lead to a jousting match where both aircraft claim each other due to all aspect missiles. Trying to get into close range for a dogfight will be a waste of an airframe and potentially pilot.
    1
  456. The point is that the "elsewhere" completely missed the shell companies used to send the components where they were legally not allowed to sell to.
    1
  457. ​ @NateDogMXtv  The vote was done under illegal military occupation. The international observers were fringe people like far-right members of European extremist parties. Doesn't count. Let's remove all the troops and Russian immigrants since 2014 then hold the vote again.
    1
  458. Over 600 F-35s delivered.
    1
  459. The US was able to develop their titanium welding techniques to manufacture the SR-71 rather than fall behind technologically.
    1
  460. Accept it. Aircraft are flown by software. Refuse to believe in reality all you want, even your airline pilots are flying through software.
    1
  461.  @mSparks43  But they change drag characteristics of a maneuver. Read the report. The pilot himself wrote that the software was causing energy loss due to limiters. The more restrictive the software is, the more time an aircraft requires to pull a maneuver. The more time spent at high AoA, the more work done by drag and thus more energy loss. The software in a well designed airframe, if loaded with restrictive limiters for a testing and evaluation flight, will cause it to fly like a brick.
    1
  462.  @Chuck_Hooks  To get 50 miles out of a SDB, you have to lob them at high speed and high altitude. The A-10 can't do it.
    1
  463.  @whatdoesntkillyoumakesyous6707  "That depends on the range of detection and the radar horizon for the s300/400" - But there's Buks, Osas, Pantsirs, Strelas, Iglas... it's a nightmare for the A-10. There's SAMs big and small covering each other, not just S-300/400.
    1
  464.  @jamestimlin856  Nice catchphrase, but no. The NGAD and F/A-XX are different platforms from the JSF.
    1
  465.  @tmsmqwx  That has nothing to do with the NGAD or F/A-XX.
    1
  466. The USMC benefited greatly. They had a legendary but somewhat medioce attack jet, and got an overpowered 5th gen fighter.
    1
  467.  @Echo81Whiskey  The F-22 is not on the same category of the F-35. The enemy gets a vote? Typically they get Tomahawked on the ground. Let's just say, we like to stuff the ballot on our favor.
    1
  468.  @gomahklawm4446  Software can't beat physics. Also, Israel already flew F-35s close to Russian defenses in Syria. The F-22 dropped bombs there too.
    1
  469. The S-500 adds anti-ICBM capabilities. It's not a "better" anti aircraft system, it's a more broad defensive system.
    1
  470. It's not an all rounder. It's an air superiority platfrom that can drop JDAMs. Also the claim that nobody wanted the F-35 is blatantly false because many countries needed a Harrier replacement. The F-35B can take off from short deck carriers which allows nations to project fixed wing air power without investing in massive catapult carriers. The F-22 never had a naval variant produced, let alone a STOVL one that could give these countries a new Harrier.
    1
  471. WRONG. The USAF ordered 750 of the damned things, and GAO slammed the USAF for buying so many A-10s with no justification for such a high number of aircraft of the type. Liars accused the USAF of loving the A-10 too much, then liars switched their tune to say the USAF hated it from the beginning.
    1
  472. They have. They sent HIMARS. HIMARS fired GMLRS rocket artillery at S-400s. So Lockheed Martin proved the US can beat the S-400.
    1
  473. One bomber with less payload does more damage on target than 30 bombers that get shot down in the way in.
    1
  474.  @sidpierce1  The B1 or B2 have not been operational in future theaters of combat. Fighting the last war fallacy.
    1
  475.  @sidpierce1  Uh... the B-21 is made for future conflicts. That's why it's relevant. It's like the F-35. It carries less missiles internally. However, you need less missiles to do the job if your aircraft is all around better at hiding and at seeing others.
    1
  476. Emma could probably slaughter Mobiks for sport at this point.
    1
  477. There's no CAP. There's no Hellfires. There's no fog of war. They have what they have. The A-10 would get shot down used like you propose.
    1
  478. What if a malfunction causes that signal to be broadcast during combat?
    1
  479.  @errorcode1133  A signal stored in memory is like saving GPS coordinates in a phone and then losing it. Apple won't be able to recover that.
    1
  480. They'll see each other through other means such as early warning radar and AWACS. And they wouldn't have a dogfight, first one to shoot the missile would have a 99% chance of kill.
    1
  481.  @wind_runner6836  Typically when cutting something and the friction heats up the material or blade, there's coolants splashed on the blade.
    1
  482. Germany invested in silly projects while the US had proximity fuzes, drones, a working nuclear project, etc. The US had the most advanced weaponry.
    1
  483. They started with the B because the CALF project was always intended to be a USMC aircraft that would then be modified for Air Force use and the USAF would buy it as a way to cut development costs down. The Navy was the last branch to join the project.
    1
  484.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  The F-4 Phantom scored 90% of its kills with missiles. You were sold a narrative.
    1
  485.  @rrp54q95  Being fast requires a lot of sacrifices. Dedicated interceptors went the way of the dodo when nuclear bombers were replaced by ICBMs.
    1
  486.  @apostle100  Seethe.
    1
  487.  @apostle100  Global trade as it exists right now is essentially enforced by the US and allies. If there's a threat to US naval power, whoever wields that threat becomes the de facto ruler of the seas. You don't understand... if US ships are sitting ducks, things don't need to go kinetic. The only option is to submit rather than get the Navy wiped out in a foolish last stand. An 8 year old would understand that a large bully in the playground can beat him up, so it's best to not start a fight.
    1
  488.  @apostle100  So for nukes to offer deterrence they need to be used? A weapon can deter an enemy without being used, by virtue of nations not being totally suicidal. If Russia or China have global sea domination, all the US can do is take a bow and leave the podium. Not fight and lose all its Navy in a pointless last stand. Stealth aircraft have offered a major deterrent to hostile nations because they know that US air power can cripple them. They never had to be used for strikes against China or Russia. "Russia and China do not need to control global trade for US ships to be vulnerable to hypersonic weapons" - Talk about missing the point. US ships being vulnerable to hypersonic weapons automatically awards Russia or China the control of global trade because they just became the world dominant sea power. You read it completely backwards. "US could control global trade and yet its ships are still vulnerable to hypersonic missiles" - If a weapon has outpaced your Navy and essentially made it obsolete, you have no control of global trade. "nothing but a straw man because there is no war" - But that's my point. The scales being tipped doesn't lead to war, it just leads to a country having an undisputable trump card. Instead of conflict, the trump card grants you the biggest leverage in the negotiation table. "Who said anything about starting fights" - You're the one requiring things to be kinetic for a weapon to tip the scales of power. "if you're in a state where a lot of people conceal carry and most people don’t - guess what.....the people who don’t carry would be sitting ducks to those who conceal carry (or those who open carry for that matter) in the event the armed turned against the unarmed" - The issue is that people in the street to not have disputes with everyone they see. In the global stage, everyone has their own interests and competing for the same thing. For a good comparison, there's one person who open carries (everyone knows about their weapon) and the local stores only sell one of each item per day. So whenever the person who open carries shows up, people just let him take what he wants and wait for another day instead of fighting him. Without the gun ever leaving the holster, this guy controls the entire town. "There is no war" - Yes. And still, the US has a huge naval presence to enforce its interests. Having a warring force out at sea is a form of diplomacy even when no shots are being fired.
    1
  489. Fiberglass is good material. Since carbon fiber can block signal you need sections of aircraft built with fiberglass to put comms and radar antennas.
    1
  490.  Fred Garvin  The problem is that the F-22 had to replace the F-15C fleet. It can't. The numbers are enough for your scenario, but in terms of inventory they needed more than what they have.
    1
  491.  Fred Garvin  Okay, that's still not changing the fact that the primary 5th gen fighter cannot replace the 4 and 4.5 gen F-15, meaning that it's going to have to be replaced by the NGAD.
    1
  492. The F-35 can defend itself. It can turn. It can climb. It can run. You're just parroting the late Pierre Sprey and Russia Today articles. The RAM issues are rare and only happened in the B and C variant.
    1
  493. At point blank range, after attempting lock three times, and the first missile lost track. They never managed to do it again, and the F-117 bombed Serbia into submission.
    1
  494. They literally do this with nuclear bombers in America and Canada and we don't shoot them down. Maybe their best interests includes us engaging those Bear bombers kinetically.
    1
  495. It links to other Western batteries sent. It's a force multiplier.
    1
  496. Passive arrays isn't "passive". It's still an active emitter.
    1
  497. Center of mass will be changed, though.
    1
  498.  @oldmandoinghighkicksonlyin1368  most military equipment prioritizes stability and efficiency so the chips and code base are "out of date" compared to consumer electronics. But consumer electronics has to harvest your data, run bloated websites and check the weather, etc so the military can spend the time and moneu optimizing the code.
    1
  499. Nothing's been dragged. Ukraine gave up nukes for security. The US, UK and France gave their word.
    1
  500. Marines can't fly them off short deck carriers, Army can't afford to spend billions to adopt aircraft that will need to be retired immediately. They're over 40 years old.
    1
  501. Undisputed, undefeated, never lost a round.
    1
  502. Look up "Who says dumb shells can't kill tanks?", a pdf of an article by a US officer. Artillery does work.
    1
  503. They fly "low and smart" but also accomplish very little. American air power means flying over the enemy with impunity, picking targets at will and dishing out punishment. Ukrainians are desperately using unguided rockets in ballistic arcs.
    1
  504.  @classicgalactica5879  I'm sure the US Navy still has theoretical knowledge of stealth "just in case" as they could face J-20s. Or Su-57s, if we wanted to have a laugh.
    1
  505. The F-16 and A-10 mostly carry the same weapons, but the A-10 wouldn't be able to use them without getting shot down. The A-10 would have to put itself in the way of incoming damage. The F-16 hits without getting hit.
    1
  506. The F-22 was not designed with those capabilities in mind. In fact it has weaker sensor and linking capabilities.
    1
  507.  @kazedcat  independently of the use of a bullet, there are practical limits to bullet velocities. Around 4,000 feet per second you start to ruin the barrels way too fast.
    1
  508. Screeching "muh nooks" would be the ultimate cope.
    1
  509. That's great but losing radars is often worse than losing the launchers.
    1
  510. Gamma and X-rays are electromagnetic, stuff like Alpha, Beta and neutrons are particles.
    1
  511. They have nerds too, you know?
    1
  512. As the other commenter said, letting Russia come up with a story before the video is released means that they don't know what we know, so have to come up with a narrative "blind".
    1
  513. Also nobody included the last page of the report where the pilot flying the F-35 said he believed the software behind controls could be "let loose" and allow him to turn the F-35 harder. Basically asking to turn off the steering assist because he believes the prototype is ready to drift around corners.
    1
  514. Lower range than the F-35.
    1
  515. ​ @luckpeddler  Subtle replica? Getting bogged down in Basra a year after the war started was not a thing in 1991.
    1
  516. There was a Nighthawk official reveal event too.
    1
  517.  @Dinops907  First public display was April 21, 1990 at the Nellis AFB.
    1
  518. The MBT isn't over. Russia is just suffering from strict adherence to doctrine with no junior officer initiative, which means recon by fire and walking into ambushes. Their non-mobilized "peacetime" military has personnel shortages, probably exacerbated by corruption because there's probably bribery going on to have "ghost contracts" where officers claim they have X soldiers who never show up. Without infantry screening, armor falls into ambushes. This was true in WWI, in WWII, in the 1970s, etc. Every time tanks fell victim to anti-tank weaponry, and yet they survived.
    1
  519.  @electricdonut8592  on paper it seems less capable than the most recent Patriots.
    1
  520. Air superiority means the ability to conduct air operations with little concern for enemy air forces. It doesn't mean superiority over the ground forces. Air superiority was quickly achieved in Iraq and Serbia, but ground threats were still active.
    1
  521. TWO GULF WARS!
    1
  522. The Gripen E is as expensive. Even the Gripen C was more expensive to operate than the F-16 despite much lower performance. You think Sweden won't cut you off? First, Sweden's Gripen exports have to be cleared by everyone making the parts. That means Britain, Germany, US, etc. Second, if Sweden doesn't agree with your fight you're not gonna get parts and replacement units. So you have to be aligned with Sweden as well.
    1
  523. Russia claimed they'd hit HIMARS and every other weapon in transit. So far they haven't had any luck.
    1
  524.  @jaanikaapa6925  How's a >90% defense rate a weakness?
    1
  525. Ironically the "influencers" in the west hate US equipment. Pierre Sprey went on RT to criticize the F-35. Col James Burton wrote Pentagon Wars and a movie was made where the Bradley was supposedly a terrible vehicle.
    1
  526. ​ @randomdude2832  I don't even understand what you're getting at. Ukraine used an euphemism or surrender, who cares? Russia LIED about the NATO generals. Like you said, they'd be in a Russian POW camp.
    1
  527. In fact the GAO slammed the USAF for buying over 700 A-10s without justification for why they needed that many of them. The claim that the USAF didn't want them doesn't even pass the smell test considering they were criticized for spending too much of them.
    1
  528. The Avenger was saved for IFV and trucks. Tanks in Iraq? Maverick. The missile blew them up in one shot. Losing an airplane also means losing an Ukrainian pilot. Why would we send "aid" that kills pilots?
    1
  529. It's better than everything else we have, the Gripen is too expensive and not capable enough, a modernized F-15 is just as expensive as a F-35. Its range is better than other fighters with external tanks, the armament is satisfactory with internal only.
    1
  530. The US first tested its air breathing hypersonic in 2004.
    1
  531. The cheap drones will be brought down with everything from AKs to Gepards to MANPADS.
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  532. ​ @TheStealthEcho  NATO did not take Iraq. It was just the US, UK, Australia and Poland.
    1
  533. It can't use them at speed.
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  534.  @TheDude50447  Electro-optical systems are a thing and the F-35 comes stock with one of the most advanced. We use telescopes, binoculars, etc on land and sea because our eyes are limited. We put them on airplanes and suddenly everyone thinks it's still the 60s.
    1
  535. Hopefully it wouldn't show up on radar at all, because aiming radar at a road and not even using doppler filtering means the entire screen will be flooded by clutter.
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  536. Not really?
    1
  537.  @outlawfly664  They aren't. Air power is absolutely decisive in modern warfare, Ukraine shows what happens when neither side has air superiority focus.
    1
  538.  @outlawfly664  Air superiority is defined by the ability to conduct air operations without strong enemy air power resistance. By definition you NEED air power to use air power. If you haven't noticed. It's not obsolete in any way. Air power beats air defenses. Remember in 2018 when B-1 bombers used standoff weapons in Syria? The S-300s couldn't stop them. Ukraine showed that without air power, you are forced into a painful exchange in artillery fires.
    1
  539.  @outlawfly664  "they are not as cost effective any longer (an important issue)" - They are extremely cost effective. Air power can hit the rear areas of enemies, cripple their logistics, take out command and control, etc. Doing that with ground forces only is extremely costly because you'll lose men and materiel doing those missions. "The unit prices are overwhelmingly large" - Extremely cheap compared to the men and vehicles you lose on a ground war. "and are vulnerable to most modern air defense systems" - The other way around. Defense systems are destroyed with aerial SEAD campaigns. Which is why the US gave Ukraine HARMs. 90s HARMs, by the way. The next generation HARM will have an even better seeker and longer range. "you also need airbases or aircraft carriers to operate them which are very vulnerable to modern accurate missile attack (ballistic and cruise missiles)" - The craters seen in satellite imagery show that half the missile strikes on Ukrainian air bases missed the runway. Runway attacks are also temporary, there's a reason purpose built anti-runway weapons often deployed AP mines to threaten the engineering works to repair the surface. "Hence why i see why Iran isn't investing heavily in modernizing its fleet even though Russia offers them their su-35 series, or China offers them J-10s etc." - Maybe that's just because Iran doesn't want to go bankrupt. Is Iran the smartest country in the world? Because you're just admitting that Russians and the Chinese see a future in aircraft. But Iran doesn't. Are you saying Iran is the wisest country or just use Iran as your example for everything?
    1
  540. Harvesting 1 component from one machine means you lose that machine for every component sourced. Buying 100 components off the shelf gives you a lot of missiles. Russia disabling their economy by stripping components out of all their industries to make weapons is a perfectly acceptable outcome.
    1
  541. They never intended to make anything stealth, they just liked flying wing designs.
    1
  542. The Sky Warsen is not meant for modern combat. It's something you fly in Africa to overwatch SOCOM guys and not let them fall into ambushes like that famous one.
    1
  543.  @Grastiars1  that was sleight of hand. People used the discretionary spending pie chart to claim defense spending was the biggest slice, but that's just discretionary spending.
    1
  544. "Most wars are won through attrition" - More like, attrition is the end result of a losing war.
    1
  545. Not if the convoy has any air defense.
    1
  546. It only worked with the F-14 and the AWG-9 radar. The AIM-120D gets close enough
    1
  547. Iraq did have WMDs, but this was not reported because they were Iran-Iraq war stockpiles which could be traced back to the US and France.
    1
  548. When quantum radar comes out (donxt hold your breath) the F-16s will be prohibited from flying into combat. Stealth becomes the price of admission.
    1
  549. That doesn't make any sense. Paratroopers or cargo never go into airspace that's still defended. If it doesn't "waste" itself on F-35s, the F-35s will simply drop bombs on it. The US faced SAMs in Vietnam and Iraq. Syria doesn't have handheld rockets. They have S-300s.
    1
  550.  @stephendoherty8291  The VDV are paratroopers, they did air assaults instead of airborne insertions. Airlifting out of Crimea is extremely dangerous. Crimea was under control of Ukraine for decades, so special forces know how to get in and out. They've done raids there after 2014, in one they were caught and had to shoot their way out. Trying to airlift them under SAM coverage is suicide.
    1
  551. Adding to the comments above, the combat footage filmed by Houthis makes their enemies look bad. They cower in ditches and behind rocks while lone Houthi rebels charge uphill and gun them down at point blank range. They abandon entire columns of armored vehicles when ambushed. It's not very inspiring.
    1
  552. The problem is that a bird is much smaller than an aircraft, so the inverse square law is working against you. By the time you get a contact at 350 kts heading your way, you should probably start running. There's already a glide bomb about to fall on your radar site.
    1
  553. Who?
    1
  554.  @haruruben  They're not flying it because of value, but because they have it. It's desperation. They are using it properly. That's the problem. They know better and know the Su-25 (or the A-10) can't survive. So they're releasing unguided rockets and go back home while men die under them.
    1
  555. That makes no sense because the AIM-9X doesn't see bands of radiation like old seekers, it sees in thermal imaging. There's footage of a 9X being fired at a QF-4 target drone and it can clearly see the wings and even cockpit canopy glass. Instead of chasing heat exhaust the 9X is made to try and slam into the fuselage to ensure the kill.
    1
  556. It doesn't explain anything. In the US it's a total scandal for weapons to have minor issues (F-35). A ton of money is spent on testing and evaluation. In Russia their crap fails a large percentage of the time. They make weapons for parades, when they actually use them missiles fall off the aircraft and crash in a field instead of starting the rocket burn. Happened to a Khinzal.
    1
  557. More like, don't believe the hype, the HK416 doesn't offer that much over a M4.
    1
  558.  @mis6106  Always with the emojis...
    1
  559. lol that's a cope
    1
  560. The US spends more on medicare and medicaid than it spends on the military and foreign aid.
    1
  561. How would air superiority solve the issue? Wars can be fought without air, as we often seen between poorer countries or between two former Soviet states with dense air defenses. Air power would not protect tanks from ambushes. Only proper tactics could.
    1
  562. ​ @JudgeDillon  Anyone not at war with the US will track F-35s. Any country at war with the US will have their radars Tomahawked at Zero Hour.
    1
  563. ​ @Chaosoftheunicorns  the fact that Russia hasn't shown pictures of an intact Su-27 is highly suspicious to me.
    1
  564. Even outside of NATO most countries don't train for dispersed operations.
    1
  565. It's not stealth. Stop this sales pitch.
    1
  566. Yea, because so many buyers will pay millions for a system they can't use or get rockets for. Think before posting, or get sober. Get back to your antics at your family's Christmas dinner.
    1
  567. Because they were writing the software for the aircraft and needed to perform tests and gather data? How exactly do you think stuff gets done?
    1
  568. If it had to haul the external tanks to get near the F-35, it would be too slow to catch up. If it jettisoned the tanks too early, it would run out of fuel before getting close.
    1
  569.  @penskepc2374  The F-22 wasn't available for purchase before the F-35 was matured. Now the factories are just impossible to rebuild so they can't be purchased even if the US allowed it. The F-35 at least uses 2000s and some 2010s tech, and was made to be easily upgradeable. The F-22 is fixed to 90s tech for the most part.
    1
  570.  @penskepc2374  It was the most advanced jet. You can't buy it over the F-35 because the factory doesn't exist anymore.
    1
  571.  @penskepc2374  Yes. There wasn't an option to buy it. Then the production was shut down. The F-35 is more recent and more advanced than the F-22, which cannot lase targets for example.
    1
  572. It's not disappearing.
    1
  573. Enfield was a nationalized armory and the first iteration of the SA80 they built was garbage. The Brits had to pay H&K (then owned by BAE Systems) to fix it.
    1
  574. About the same cost versus Iskander.
    1
  575. 700 jets weren't in Germany. A deployment can't have the entire fleet overseas.
    1
  576. Thanks youtube for the shadowbanning of my comment. With a high ROF and explosive-incendiary rounds, you can't deliver a non-lethal blow.
    1
  577. Good thing we made electric eyes which see better than humans.
    1
  578. The Soviet Union was crippled by their inability to compete with Western chip manufacturing and a dip in oil prices. Also, Chernobyl was extremely expensive to clean up. SDI was just the nudge that pushed the rotting structure down.
    1
  579. Your skepticism is warranted. The source for that figure is about 20 years old and the person behind it isn't exactly an authority on the matter.
    1
  580. Tankers are simply a fact of life and will always be necessary. The A6M range thing is possibly very misleading. It could not do that range at the same speed, climb to the same altitude, and carry the same weapons. A modern fighter can carry a greater payload than a B-17.
    1
  581. Israel flew an F-35 over Iran, leading to their head of air defense getting fired.
    1
  582. Most US fighters were designed before people had PCs at home. The benefit of hindsight is a factor here. The US is also introducing modular software, the problem is that there's aircraft from the 1970s still loading data from magnetic tape.
    1
  583. The West defeats enemy aircraft in the air. When our aircraft destroy enemy aircraft, few come close enough to our air space. Russians also shoot down their own aircraft.
    1
  584. Hey Connor mind coming back?
    1
  585. A lot of Americans have Germanic/Nordic heritage.
    1
  586. The Cheyenne was stopped by itself. It was plagued with control issues which made it dangerous to fly.
    1
  587. Russian missiles that hit playgrounds and pedestrian bridges.
    1
  588. How would aliens know what radar we use?
    1
  589.  @chillout1109  We most definitely can find habitable planets. We look for stars and calculate their habitable zone.
    1
  590. A trillion has not been spent. Stop quoting RT propaganda.
    1
  591.  @1001001a  extremist camps like the ones in Xinjiang?
    1
  592. Not how it works. A crash landing is a belly flop into grass. A collision is jumping off a second story building and landing on an anti parking bollard.
    1
  593.  @cubiczirconiabeard5366  Because we don't have cameras in their bases? They could show video of their intact fighter. Why won't they?
    1
  594.  @Simobunjevac  the F-117 was essentially shot at point blank range. Stealth uses the inverse square law, radar reflections are very weak at a distance. Get the radar closer, you'll get returns.
    1
  595. Most of the electronics inside the Gripen are made in the UK, US, Germany, etc.
    1
  596. Ursula van der Lyen is the European commission president. They quote her as a gynecologist as a way to take a jab at her and make her sound like she's not qualified for the job.
    1
  597. In real combat, Ukraine has destroyed a S-400.
    1
  598. No, it doesn't. Even the F-14 had electro optical systems that gave you visual on something beyond human visual range.
    1
  599. Russia tricked Ukraine by depleting their missile stocks. Amazing how Russia has all these fancy tricks, but then can't make an attack while the Patriot is vulnerable.
    1
  600.  @markxfarmer6830  How would a flick of a switch affect the F-35? It doesn't take external control inputs.
    1
  601. Russian aircraft are either firing from Russian/Belarusian airspace and turning back, or absolutely hugging the weeds. They need to go low due to existing SAM threat.
    1
  602.  @kameronjones7139  When Vietnam got SA-2s, more US aircraft started getting shot down by AAA. What you're doing here is like saying Vietnam has no SAM threat, look at the US aircraft shot down by AAA! That's the point. The SAMs forced the US pilots to fly low, and take their chances with AAA. In Ukraine the SAMs are forcing Russian pilots to stay low, and take their chances with MANPADS. You don't need to fly low to deliver unguided bombs. You fly high, dive to a lower altitude, release and pull back. Flying high keeps you out of MANPADS and AAA range, and saves fuel because there's less air resistance in thin air. If you're flying across a country while hugging the weeds, it's because you're afraid of SAMs. It makes no sense to hug the ground when you could just fly at a thousand feet, or even five thousand feet and drop to a thousand feet when you reach the target area.
    1
  603.  @kameronjones7139  No, it's you who did not read. Let's say an attack run lasts 30 seconds to one minute. Why would you fly for an hour, ingress and egress, at low level? You only need to be at low level to drop the ordnance. Are they dropping bombs for an hour? Explain. Explain right now the thought process. Why would you need to fly low when returning home when you do not have bombs? You do not have guided or unguided bombs. You won't drop more. You don't need to fly low because you will not drop a bomb. Why are you wasting fuel and risking hitting power lines by flying low?
    1
  604.  @kameronjones7139  There's plenty of footage of jets flying close to the ground to evade defenses while not on attack runs.
    1
  605.  @kameronjones7139  No, just flying. People hold their cellphone out and see aircraft zipping past.
    1
  606. Could be worse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DK-zGLK6GQ
    1
  607.  @wahwahweewa  It wasn't a dogfighting trial. It was a control laws software test. You can go back and see power points refering to it as a CLAWS test and not a dogfight trial.
    1
  608. Russia just lost a S-300 and S-400 in a single day.
    1
  609. Maneuver like a sidewinder? Sounds fake.
    1
  610. They were S-125 (SA-3) and 2K12 Kub (SA-6). These are the later systems, the SA-2 is the S-75 Dvina which was used in Vietnam.
    1
  611. That's not a dogfight. You waste the missiles' energy, not yours.
    1
  612. Russians fly nuclear bombers near American airspace. Are you saying we should shoot them down? Say it. I want you to say we should shoot them.
    1
  613.  @gort8203  It didn't bugger up the design. This is just a made up "factoid" that people parrot.
    1
  614.  @gort8203  "The F-35 airframe would likely be more efficient it didn’t include compromises for the VTOL role." - How? Actually explain and substantiate your claim. I want to hear how you came to this conclusion.
    1
  615.  @gort8203  That's not how it works. You made the claim, you back it up. You cannot ask me to prove a negative. I first need to know what you think the VTOL requirements did, for me to be able to counter the argument. I'll be the better man and bite. The structural arrangements for the lift fan are inconsequential because not only is the A variant lighter as a result of not needing those specific structural arrangements and actually carrying the damned thing, but the A and C variant also benefit from a slightly larger weapons bay and greater fuel capacity. The A and C variants are like an athlete training with a weighted vest. Take the vest off, and you've increased the performance. That's not a reduction in potential. It's an increase. Again, me responding to your challenge is completely inconsequential. You admitted defeat by making a claim and requiring others do disprove it. I simply chose to take the high ground.
    1
  616.  @gort8203  Exactly. Someone confronted you and you complain. You should be complaining about your stubbornness and your lack of knowledge on the topics you INSIST on pretending to be an expert on. Not about the people calling you out on your BS. Calling out BS is healthy. It keeps people in check. Apparently you don't enjoy being checked. Sure, I don't get to decide how it works. Over 2000 years of theory of logic and rhetoric do. And it's the claimant that shares the burden of the evidence. Don't point the finger at me. Go tell the courts you should have the right to accuse anyone of anything and not have to provide evidence. They get to decide how it works. Point the finger at them. "A bigger weapons bay and fuel tank may improve payload and range but does not make the airframe more efficient" - Prove that the airframe is not efficient. "is based on the airplane structure being larger and heavier than than it would needed if not for the VTOL gear" - FALSE. The VTOL fan does not make the structure larger. In fact the X-35 prototype was smaller and capable of STOVL. The structure is a result of avionics and weapons capacity. If you remove the B variant from the F-35 line up, you cannot reduce the sizes of the A or C variant without suffering from the loss of capacity in the weapons bay, and obviously range reduction due to lower fuel capacity. Therefore, the lift fan does not create a size disadvantage, because the F-35 cannot be made smaller even if the B variant was eliminated. The structure is not heavier as evidenced by the fact that the A model had weight reduction. The C variant requires structural strength due to the demands of carrier operations. "It's an intuitively rational notion that I can accept" - But if you are rational and accept that reducing the size of the F-35A or C would cripple it, you cannot claim that the B variant is responsible. It's cause and effect. "it's not my job to prove it to you" - It is if you make claims about it. "You can prove it's not true if you possess real documented evidence" - Not really because it's proving a negative. There's no documented evidence of a smaller F-35A because such aircraft was never developed. There was a smaller JSF. The X-35. Which had the B variant STOVL capabilities. The size was augmented to increase its combat capabilities. Either way, I can point to the logical train of thought that absolves the B variant from wrongdoing, but asking for documented evidence that CANNOT exist, and even if it did, COULD NOT be published due to secrecy, to prove a negative is a massive faux pas. Those who make the claim have to prove it. Otherwise I can claim the universe's largest planet is made of pudding and not prove it. It's you who has to analyze every single planet.
    1
  617.  @gort8203  Buddy. When you make claims and when questioned you tell others to go pound sand, that's confrontation. Don't throw stones when you live in a glass house. Oh, but I am stubborn. Nothing wrong with stubbornness. The problem is that you would rather complain about being questioned rather than have some self-awareness and realize what caused others to question you. The opinions are not unsubstantiated. The X-35 was smaller than the F-35. Fact. Not even an opinion. And it's more than substantiated. Again, wrong. Maybe a nice cup of "stop talking about what you don't understand" would do you nicely too. Go away now. Run.
    1
  618.  @gort8203  It's not a ramble, it's just scathing criticism. Perhaps you've lived through life with people handling you with kid gloves. I don't care if you're not interested. It's here for other people to read this and think twice about parroting what people say on the internet.
    1
  619.  @gort8203  The proof has been presented. You cannot change the A variant without sacrificing fuel or weapons. The B variant sacrifices fuel and weapons to fit the VTOL. Therefore it's the B variant that sacrifices capabilities to keep the VTOL, not the A. Again, what can you do to the aerodynamics of the F-35 without reducing the internal fuel volume or the weapons bay? They call it the Fat Amy because derogatory names are a thing. The F-4 was also called a lead sled. Did you ever heard about the BUFF or the SLUF? However, if you look at the frontal cross section the F-35C is not any fatter than the F/A-18E. The name is just a funny joke, not a factual statement about aerodynamics. The pilots actually praise how the F-35 flies.
    1
  620.  @gort8203  "if you didn't need the space and structure for the VTOL equipment the airplane could have been smaller/lighter/more slippery" - Again, making it smaller reduces range and weapons capacity. "I have read more than once" - Okay, and who wrote it? Because there's plenty of hack frauds who made a career out of complaining about the F-35. "Imagine a version of the Harrier with the rotatable nozzles and other equipment necessary for VTOL stripped out of it [...] it would still be a slower and less efficient airplane" - I mean, it would have performance in line with what other attack aircraft had. It wasn't a multirole fighter in USMC/RAF service, essentially only the Sea Harrier was expected to perform air to air fleet defense and their main strength was being so far away from enemy air bases that even supersonic fighters could not light their afterburner otherwise they'd have no fuel left to make the trip back. So they had an advantage even against technically higher performance aircraft by playing on home turf. Either way, the Harrier was designed much earlier than the F-35 and you don't see the issues with the STOVL design. Frankly, the Harrier flies like a Cold War attacker. The F-35B flies like a fighter. "it could have been an even better airplane" - But how? Making it "better" according to 1960s metrics by kneecapping range and weapons capacity is not my idea of a good trade off. "and available in greater numbers" - The reason the F-35 went over 600 units delivered is precisely thanks to the STOVL variant. It gives allied countries with shorter carriers 5th gen capability. By giving up the B variant, the product would not have been such a success.
    1
  621. You need to go behind enemy lines to do that. Every Ivan and Vladimir with a MANPADS would be salivating to bag an A-10 kill.
    1
  622. Most Phantom kills were by missile.
    1
  623. You literally can.
    1
  624. I also remember the 300 instructors and NATO generals in Azovstal. Why is it always 300 people?
    1
  625. Modern HARM variants save the last known position.
    1
  626. We had the ability to work titanium. And when we faced problems we used our own science to solve the issues with titanium welds. The SR-71 was also never used to bomb civilians.
    1
  627. Whataboutism.
    1
  628. One battery that links to the NASAMS and IRIS-T already in theater. Force multiplier.
    1
  629. Not at all. Aircraft have accidents. The F-35 is actually safe.
    1
  630. Even without S-300/400s there's still Buks, Osas, Pantsirs, Iglas, Strelas, etc.
    1
  631.  @butterwaffeln  In Iraq the US performed a very complex fight night operation involving stealth, decoys, cruise missiles, SEAD, jammers, etc. Does Ukraine have a bunch of Tomahawks, Prowlers/Growlers, F-117s, etc?
    1
  632.  @butterwaffeln  Highway of hell was caused by USMC A-6 intruders. They flew over the convoy and dropped Mk 20 Rockeyes. Each bomb contains 247 bomblets.
    1
  633. Yeah, peace and cooperation would be great. Such a shame Russia doesn't understand any language that isn't violence.
    1
  634. America has ballistic and cruise missiles.
    1
  635. Because it was being tested and developed. They weren't proving anything, they were developing the aircraft and gathering data.
    1
  636. Bias.
    1
  637.  @GroovyVideo2  What truth? The attacks on the Patriot system were constructed by phoneys like the man who thought the fireball was hundreds of yards in diameter so the missile missed by hundreds of yards. Man's can't even get a sense of scale. Complete incompetence.
    1
  638. S-125 Neva, you mean?
    1
  639. Losing a twitter account is not as bad as Russian prison.
    1
  640.  @rogermccarty783  The massive resignation story is internet BS, as much as it would be poetic justice there's just no evidence.
    1
  641.  @nomayor1  That's an insane conclusion. The obvious answer is that the S-400 could be used to gather data on the F-35. Meanwhile the Israelis have flown F-35s close to Russian defenses.
    1
  642. Can't even kill GMLRS rockets or aliexpress drones.
    1
  643. How so? It's cheaper than 4th gen jets, absolutely curbstomps everything else. Rookie F-35 pilots can score kills on veteran F-16 pilots.
    1
  644.  @michaelwhite3615  Are you just here to spam the same old and tired reformist talking point? If so, you are the ultimate Pierre Sprey fanboy. Take a look at Ukraine and see what happens when you say "ahhh to expensive". Well, the cheap stuff gets shot down. Either spend the money, or don't have an air force. Trying to cheap out is deadly.
    1
  645.  @michaelwhite3615  I'm not the one spamming all the "waaah waah" cope from 2015.
    1
  646.  @michaelwhite3615  Your 2015 talking points.
    1
  647.  @michaelwhite3615  It's also not my fault you post wrong opinions that need to get fact checked. Does National Interest send you a check?
    1
  648.  @michaelwhite3615  Okay. And a perfect example why some issues should not be decided by the uniformed voter. You don't get to decide anything. The people you elect know that they will be sinking their own air force is they stop buying F-35s. So don't flatter yourself. Your freedom of choice ends where the freedom of choice of our military leaders (who want F-35s) begins.
    1
  649. Mostly true. The Navy noticed issues wth Sidewinders and requested an upgrade before the conflict. The USAF started Vietnam with poorly performing Sidewinders and had to request an upgrade to play catch up. On the other hand, Navy Sparrow missiles got banged hard during carrier landings and were exposed to salt water mist for months at a time. Many aircraft never had their Sparrows removed from the pylon for maintenance which lead to failures. USAF Sparrows weren't handled as roughly and were usually fired at higher altitudes so there was less ground clutter to confuse the seeker. So the Navy was smarter with their Sidewinders but neglected their Sparrows, the USAF started off with the infamous AIM-4s and the weaker Sidewinders. Both branches had to adapt after reports brought these issues to surface.
    1
  650. It wasn't a mistake. Guns were a distraction. Most Phantom kills were by missile.
    1
  651. Well good thing combat isn't decided by looks.
    1
  652.  @november6259  It does need a thick head. Without it, the explosive warhead would squash on impact and go flying everywhere before detonation. I don't know any Khinzal brand of cars. Look for Stavropol Khinzal crash.
    1
  653. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, etc.
    1
  654. The C/Ds will be taken apart to cannibalize parts and components for the E.
    1
  655.  @AlexRMcColl  Originally, the Legacy Gripens would be rebuilt as Gripen Es. Then as it turned out, much like the Legacy Hornet and the Super Hornet, they're actually different aircraft and can't be upgraded directly. However, it was reported that parts from the Legacy Gripens would be taken out and used on the new pure-built Gripens when compatible. I didn't know the plan changed again.
    1
  656. Once purchasing power parity is taken into account, their military budget is around 220 billion a year. That doesn't include their mercenaries and national guard.
    1
  657. Afghanistan was an exercise of nation building where very few outside the cities even want that nation to exist. The guys with AKs were consistently losing fights. The issue is that they don't need to win, they just need to not lose. If Afghanistan was America and the people living there were American, the Taliban would not be able to operate. The people are Afghan, and not all want Americans there.
    1
  658.  @chungalunga9815  That only reinforces my point. It's possible to control cities somewhat, but the mountains make it hard to hold political control over the whole territory. Same thing happened with the Mongols, they massacred the Afghans in larger population centers but those who fled to the mountains survived. The people living in these regions don't even see Afghanistan as a nation and have no reason to want to fight for Afghanistan as a nation.
    1
  659. That's splitting hairs. If you look at any other fighter aircraft the numbers will be the same. But they just use "operational" and "non-operational". On the F-35 you have fully operational, partially operational and non-operational. That splits the operational numbers into two categories, making it look bad.
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  660. The F-117 had no means to detect AWACS and it even retracted the comms antennas when over enemy territory. The engineers were also skeptical about firing a missile because the rocket burn would scorch the RAM coating.
    1
  661. Links get flagged as spam and removed.
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  662. ​ @PrezVeto  No, there would be no secrecy with automotive paint. The real secret is that glitter was originally shavings from precision cut rings the government purchased for the Manhattan Project. Workers swept up the shavings and put them in bags to sell as Christmas decorations. A lot of precision cutting is used in DoD contracts so those machines are used to this day, and glitter companies are obligated to not disclose what they're doing.
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  663. The F-35's electro-optical system allows it to put eyeballs on target from beyond visual range.
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  664. The F-117 was angular and planar because computers then did not have the CPU power to caculate the radar equations on complex curved shapes. The F-117 isn't better, it was limited by technology at the time.
    1
  665. No, it's a jobs program because otherwise Boeing would have to close the St. Louis plant. Look at procurement numbers. The USAF has 144 but proposed cutting to 80. The Navy asked for Super Hornet production to stop and it's lawmakers and lobbyists that want it to continue. The Corvette comparison makes no sense. The F-15EX is a very expensive 4.5 gen with twin engines. Its operational costs are on par with the F-35. It's a Corvette too!
    1
  666. I also heard the A-7 was kneecapped versus the YA-10 flyoff because the YA-7F money could be used to purchase A-10s instead.
    1
  667.  @JSFGuy  The YA-7F never entered production. The last variant was the E and the USAF gave their airframes to the air national guard. The choice was upgrading the A-7 or buying A-10s and the USAF preferred to get the A-10s and ditch the A-7s. The YA-7F would have been the ultimate version as the fuselage would have been lengthened and an afterburner installed.
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  668. More expensive and less capable
    1
  669. No. They wouldn't be more maneuverable because the structure wouldn't handle it. Humans can over-G the aircraft they ride on.
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  670. Then a Strela or Igla brings it down.
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  671. >builds stealth aircraft >doesn't use it because it could be detected by radar Israel practically flaunted the F-35 by flying over Beirut and Iran.
    1
  672. ​ @korana6308  >truth an liberty >calls an aggressive war and oppression "SMO" lul you're for the same truth and liberty Stalin and Mao defended
    1
  673. Russians believe Ukrainians are too incompetent to fight back so anything they do is actually Americans/Brits.
    1
  674. There is at least two photos of separate shootdowns.
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  675.  @outsidethebox1876  What do you mean tell it to the Ukrainians, it crashed inside Russia.
    1
  676. The shape is the worst part because of the huge intakes in nthe front.
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  677. Lockheed Martin made a point to have a weapons release test even though it was not required, while the 23 had a questionable and unproven weapon bay.
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  678. The AIM-9X isn't a traditional heat seeker. It sees a picture like a camera, it can see the difference between an airplane with wings and other irelevant heat sources. It's more like the Javelin missile which locks onto the image of a tank rather than pure heat. But with aircraft.
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  679. What did they do?
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  680.  @ghost307  the bombs didn't delay the program
    1
  681. Because "everyone" gets their talking points from media rather than thinking. Appealing to the knowledge of the "everyone" is a bad move when the public is pretty ignorant.
    1
  682. The issue is that if a F-16 somehow managed to survive and close the distance it wouldn't be the airframe but the technology dictating the terms of the fight.
    1
  683. That's like saying they wouldn't make the F-22 and F-35 because they'd rather make inferior fighters to force the US to buy more.
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  684. The F-35 is more affordable than 4th gen aircraft.
    1
  685. And Lt. Patrick Olson? Does he deserve to be ignored?
    1
  686.  @luckyluke1503  Just like Putin didn't think we'd sanction Russia as hard as we did, Erdogan didn't expect us to be cold blooded enough to kick them out. We also denied them turbine engines for their helicopters so it's not just about F-35.
    1
  687.  @luckyluke1503  No, they didn't. Yale School of Management did a study on Russian sanctions. Just from looking at credit card activity in the retail space, their economy is dying. Manufacturing is down. They're selling their fossil fuels at a massive discount.
    1
  688. It's sensible when there's no parts and the airframes are close to needing major overhauls.
    1
  689.  @daniellabbe916  Complain about what? None of them have S-400s. Turkey got one, still waiting for the total delivery because Russia and producing advanced military equipment is like pulling teeth. Russian missiles hit their mark? Outhouses, playgrounds and pedestrian bridges? The thing about war is, you don't start them just to see weapons in action. You have to buy them before the action starts. Turkey bought the S-400. Now they're stuck with it.
    1
  690.  @daniellabbe916  lmao nice cope. Russia does have kill quotas (10k for Wagner mercenaries who kill a foreign legionnaire), Russia does target residential areas.
    1
  691. Showing up with 7 tons under your wings to a field full of guys with MANPADS is a deathwish.
    1
  692.  @GulNadar  Not unless you simply fly too high and too fast for MANPADS to catch up. The issue with MANPADS is that they have the be man-portable, as the name implies. This means a lackluster rocket motor. You said the A-10 has 11 pylons and load capacity of 7260 kg. What's the point of bringing up that performance metric if you're not going to use that much weight?
    1
  693.  @GulNadar  " ignores the rest of its ordinance abilities" - The ordnance isn't specific to the A-10, so something else can be used instead. The A-10 isn't bringing much to the table. "Also 25k feet up and fast doesn’t exactly make for quality close air support." - The word "close" refers to troops being in close contact with the enemy, not the aircraft having to be physically close. Doesn't matter is a bomb drops from 2,500 feet or 25k feet. It only matters that it lands where it's supposed to be.
    1
  694. ​ @EvLSpectre the sturdy frame is 40 years old, running out of flight hours
    1
  695. ​ @TheStig_TG  The Cheyenne had issues that took almost a decade to fix.
    1
  696. Then after the merge the laser is used to dazzle the optics/pilot. Seems like a bad idea to get close.
    1
  697.  @davidschupbach2113  I'm not missing the point. There's a ton of things individuals have done that can't be done at scale. It's hard to convey in a small number of words, but things that work in a vacuum many times don't work outside those conditions. Such as, how would power and wavelengths interact with such a surface? Would it even hold to high subsonic speeds? Would it work if the aircraft had to fly in arctic conditions? Or over Kuwait? There's a reason there's people being paid the big bucks to say that rotating the bolts by 25º will reduce the radar returns. That's right, the insides of the F-35 were modified because they could get less radar returns from changing the orientation in which bolts were pointed when fastening pieces together. These are highly complex subjects that require time and money to research, and an 18 wheeler that beats speed traps isn't gonna drop bombs on Kim Jong Il's palace.
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  698. The drones do not cost 20k. The components alone are worth more than that.
    1
  699.  @benghazi4216  No. The debris have been catalogued. There's components that are 7k each. The cost should be closer to 100k, it's impossible to manufacture them for 20k. Nevertheless, Shaheds are brought down by Gepards and AK fire if needed. These are for 4-5 million USD missiles.
    1
  700.  @benghazi4216  Iran buys the components from Europe, the US, Japan, etc. Doesn't matter how much 20k USD is worth in Iran, they have to pay someone to smuggle Texas Instruments products to them. So the engine alone is 10k? Not doing yourself any favors. It also uses 500 USD HS-1005SGT servos, 5800 USD ADIS16488BMLZ, $1800 MTi-100, two AD9361 for 500 bucks a pop and AD-FMCOMMS5-EBZ evaluation board is around 1500 USD. This doesn't include smuggling costs, the actual materials to build the airframe or the warhead. Then add labor costs to it.
    1
  701. That's not how it works. There's no such thing as "equal footing" when US doctrine is sending decoys, HARMs and cruise missiles at radars. Look up the first night of Desert Storm. Target drones were sent flying to bait SAM crews, cruise missiles fired at radars and HQs, Apaches flew close to the ground to sneak up on Iraqi bases and take out their radars. Then the F-117 flew over the chaos. If you're trusting multiple angles of radar source (which isn't reliable anyway) then first consider that radar sources will have a time limit on them until a missile hits them.
    1
  702. The Concorde supercruised for most of the trip. It used afterburners for the takeoff and pushing through the transonic region.
    1
  703. It is. Speed is life and altitude is insurance. The purpose of the A-10 was brute forcing warheads onto foreheads back when you couldn't guide them. You had to go low and slow because otherwise unguided weapons would miss.
    1
  704. Well, defenses over Baghdad fired at random into the air precisely because the F-117 wouldn't show up on radar.
    1
  705. The Soviets were using 80% of their GDP on defense while the US was spending 30%. No collapse.
    1
  706. ​ @Hebdomad7  Not really. If Ukraine was more mountainous or had dense forest, trenches wouldn't be as necessary.
    1
  707. The US wrote the book on unravelling ground based air defenses.
    1
  708. Russia blasted so many empty fields with Soviet style doctrine that they needed North Korean ammo. And Russians complain their ammo isn't very good.
    1
  709. Missiles riddled with fragments can still fall and detonate on the ground.
    1
  710. ​ @FreedomForce100  How many targets has it engaged at 400km?
    1
  711. ​ @iamspock  Venezuela has F-16s, Russians could just ask them. DCS isn't exposing anything new. Especially since it's based on a circa 2005-2006 F-16.
    1
  712. Finland's analysis put the Gripen operating cost higher than the F-16. And this was the older variant because it was in the 90s. An E variant will obviously be more expensive. If you can't afford a F-35 you can't afford a Gripen either. South Africa famously put half their fleet in storage because they couldn't afford to fly them.
    1
  713. The fuselage is driven by weapons and fuel requirements, not the B. There's a reason why the B has a slightly smaller weapons bay.
    1
  714. ​ @ulooqulg  Holy king of whataboutism... what about when a Russian nuclear missile failed in the arctic in 2019??? What about that one?
    1
  715. You can't be up in the air without technology. You can't get off the ground without technology or even aim and fire the gun without technology. F-117s served with distinction until around 2006-2007 and retired due to age.
    1
  716. The Budapest memorandum essentially gave security assurances to Ukraine in exchange for their nukes. Want to pull out? Give them back the nukes.
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  717. Because you turn your back when going cold. Turning away is a valid military tactic, as you never enter a fight you know you'll lose. If a F-22 squadron faced three squadrons of Su-35s, they'd probably turn back too. Since the WWI days that air combat is ruled by "see without being seen, and never get into a fair fight".
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  718. Don't you think Ukrainians seeing A-10s get shot down would have a massive (negative) psychological impact? Effectiveness is more important than psychological impact.
    1
  719.  @sirmingusdewiv8325  It was implied. What do you think the word "also" means?
    1
  720.  @FirstDagger  by asking if the F-16 would "also" have an impact, the "also" clearly refers to an alternative aircraft. The context makes it clear it would be the A-10. If the OP meant another aircraft he needed to specify.
    1
  721. 1.6 losses per 100,000 flight hours btw. How many flight hours does the entire Su-57 fleet have?
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  722. The Navy already requested in 2021 to stop the Super Hornet purchases as they fear they'll be forced to fly them past an age where they're obsolete.
    1
  723. No. There's no cheap 6th gen multirole in the pipeline.
    1
  724. The CIA must have had hundreds of thousands of employees in the last few decades. You can find anyone willing to say anything. There's a former Greenpeace director who says climate change is overblown.
    1
  725. A congressman believed a bad photoshop of Sam Hyde in a F-16 cockpit was the Ghost of Kiev...
    1
  726. Russia already probes American airspace. Are you saying we should shoot next time?
    1
  727. The F-35 is a success with over 1000 produced while the Gripen continuously fails bids.
    1
  728. Stealth works due to the inverse square law. If you're inside gun range, radar stealth isn't helping.
    1
  729. The US had to use Patriot to defend their bases from Iraqi Scud attacks. Those are not sandals.
    1
  730. "Russians would never!" yeah this war had a lot of firsts, they're doing everything they'd never do.
    1
  731. At that point, boneyard F-16s and F-15s would be brought out to be repaired abd refurbished.
    1
  732. The US didn't lose to Afghanistan. Afghanistan lost to itself. The Taliban signed for peace, then waited for the US to leave.
    1
  733. So Russia goes for power but their engines are weaker than Western ones. They go for maneuverability when maneuverability has been countered by tactics in the Pacific and Vietnam. They go for close in fighting in the age of BVR, and they brag about the R-37M missile... Seems like it's just cope. They don't have a different philosophy. They're just poor.
    1
  734. Electronics are shielded and the skin of the aircraft acts as a Faraday cage.
    1
  735. It's from a Pakistani nationalist, but the levels of delusion are the same.
    1
  736. They'll probably remain nameless for decades as they were drone pilots.
    1
  737. Is Lt. Patrick Olson thankful? He got posthumous promotion to Cpt. after trying to land a damaged A-10.
    1
  738.  @Zulu4impi  If those grunts were in Ukraine, they'd be watching A-10s get swatted out of the sky like the Su-25s are. Instead of talking to grunts in a bar who punch people, talk to people who were in a "real" war. GWOT veterans who volunteered in Ukraine said it was nothing like they were used to.
    1
  739. They're doing defense in depth, though.
    1
  740.  @ericconnor8419  I fat fingered my phone screen, meant to type "they aren't" and it probably autocorrected.
    1
  741. ​ @matso3856  As opposed to Swedish arrogance? They even tried to bribe governments into buying the Gripen, and proposed to take part in Libya to get some advertising for the Gripen.
    1
  742. Yes. The president was elected in 2019.
    1
  743. No, that's for ballistic missile defense.
    1
  744. The B-21 kind of looks like the B-2. But the helicopter probably has nuances that can be picked up by observers.
    1
  745. What an ignorant statement. Read the report yourself.
    1
  746. But not Soviet made parts. We could make the parts ourselves.
    1
  747. Big cope.
    1
  748. VW has experts in automobile engineering. So if they say they didn't cheat in emissions tests, they didn't. Of course, we know they cheated in the emission tests. Experts can lie. That's why you have to use evidence.
    1
  749. To fire a AGM-65, you have to pop up (to be able to see over terrain) and lock on the target. This exposes you to a MANPADS operator.
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  750.  @tobiasfreitag2182  There's bigger SAMs than MANPADS. Climbing exposes the aircraft to them. In US service the aircraft doing SEAD, CAP and CAS can be the same. Flying 3 different aircraft with 3 different engines and 3 different fuel tanks is asking for disaster. Package Q had F-16s loaded for strike go into combat with no F-15 air cover or F-4G SEAD because they ran out of fuel and had to turn back.
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  751.  @tobiasfreitag2182  I did read. That's why I addressed your claims.
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  752.  @tobiasfreitag2182  If it doesn't do better, then we're not helping anyone by sending them. They need something that fights in the air to save the guys on the ground. By giving them A-10s we're just continuing the cycle of a powerless airforce unable to help the guys dying on the ground.
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  753.  @tobiasfreitag2182  It barely works within the US military. 20% of CAS since 2001, 11% of CAS since 2014. The F-16 does 33% of CAS.
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  754. The engine is kind of underpowered for that kind of circus trick.
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  755. The 4 missiles is only a limit without the Sidekick expansion program that extends it to 6. Also, missiles on a 4th gen are used for spoiler shots that are never meant to hit, just for the enemy to go defensive. With stealth, you can position yourself to have every missile be a kill shot. Hang 10 AMRAAMs on a 4th gen all you want, half of them won't be able to score kills on a purely statistical basis. It's not the slowest jet. A F-16 needs to punch afterburner to fly in formation with a F-35 in dry thrust according to F-16 pilots. Ground radar and AWACS doesn't make stealth irrelevant. It doesn't have limited AoA, it's in fact a nose pointer. Pilots describe it like a F/A-18 where the nose pointing authority can be used to defeat more nimble fighters. It's not bulkier than other modern fighters.
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  756.  @saquist  1. Okay. In the old days aircraft were made and only had the ability to fire AIM-9s and had to wait for Sparrow integration. Big deal. 2. Low probability of intercept radar. Also, there's other means of acquiring lock. 3. The F/A-18 doesn't have thrust vectoring. Or canards. Your "doubt" does not contradict real pilots. I don't know who taught you about aircraft but get a refund. 4. All the other aircraft carry external tanks so they're in a worse spot than the F-35.
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  757. The country building defensive weapons is currently attacking a nation.
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  758. Most aircraft pile too much into the package at once. It works fine.
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  759. Cruise missiles don't have a pilot. Drones don't have a pilot. Helicopters hide behind terrain.
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  760.  @sammcbride2464  The point is that your arguments don't apply to the items you're enumerating. Cruise missiles are literally expendable, they're meant to blow up. Drones are considered less of a liability if lost. And the slower speed, smaller size and stealth shaping of drones makes them harder to detect. Helicopters can hit without getting hit by using the sensors in their mast to look over the horizon. They can for example target SPAA from behind the ridgeline and shoot a guided missile at the anti-air defenses without them being able to shoot the helicopter down. All the other piloted planes aren't as vulnerable as the A-10.
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  761. You can read the report. Skip to the conclusion page. It's essentially "I'm noticing flight regimes where I lose performance, please remove software restrictions and performance will improve".
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  762. Yep. Rate of speed would be acceleration. Rate of closure is more apt.
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  763. The NGAD is a F-22 replacement, and the F-15EX is both a bone being tossed at Boeing by their friends in government, a way to keep military manufacturing busy, and a source of fresh F-15s that can then be passed down to the air national guard.
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  764. Which aircraft would get close enough to deploy an anti radar missile? Ukrainian MiGs have to get close to the frontline and pitch up to fire HARMs into frontline radars. Would Russian venture near Kiev without getting shot down?
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  765.  @arbelico2  So why haven't they done it?
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  766. "and the most advanced air defenses have been removed from the board" - Which is impossible nowadays. "I personally think we need these aircraft well past 2050" - That's just not happening. The "youngest" A-10 was manufactured in 1984. It will be 40 years old in two years. Aircraft cannot fly forever. "But a lot of the threats aren't modern" - The Soviets made air defenses to deal with the A-10 in the 1970s and 1980s. A lot of non-modern threats exist specifically to splash A-10s.
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  767.  @RickySpanish12344  They didn't do amazing in Iraq, six of them got shot down. Insurgents in Afghanistan did not have the means to shoot down aircraft, the OA-X program was considered precisely to deal with insurgents in those circumstances - it was a program for a turboprop like the Super Tucano or AT-6B.
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  768. ​ @Chaosoftheunicorns  Since when do they need examples?
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  769. Can't fly A-10s off a Navy carrier.
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  770. Sensors are fallible and able to be spoofed. Most sensors can't even detect origin of something.
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  771. ​ @stephenguthrie3907  By that logic, North Korean and Iranian weapons are attacking Ukraine.
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  772. Russians penetrate American and Canadian airspace all the time. Are we saying we should shoot them down next time? Are you?
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  773.  @michaelmoorrees3585  Export control just means that Mauser was approved to buy it, and Mauser is legally liable if they knowingly sell to places like Iran or Russia. The end user doesn't have to be aware of export controls.
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  774. Full missile loadout? The drag will prevent them from chasing down F-35s.
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  775. Define built for CAS use.
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  776. No. Both sides use the same frequency ranges. Early warning radar can "see" stealth but can't shoot weapons. It's not accurate.
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  777. The SR-71 had American parts. The titanium may have been Soviet, but it was bent, machined and welded into shape in America. At no point did America say the science was too tough to develop.
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  778. Ridiculous. Neither the A or C variants have vertical landing. The B requires it. It is useful. It allows helicopter carriers to launch and recover fighters. The S-400 has been humiliated in Ukraine. Even the GMLRS rocket artillery breaks the S-400 defense.
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  779.  @Riceball01  "The A-10 can already carry a ton of ordnance with the GAU-8" - It really can't. If you look at Bagram air base footage, they take off lightly loaded. One of the A-10s problem is that the engines are weak enough to the point that at 5k ft above sea level you can't even take off with a full load.
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  780. Northrop stays in business by making parts for non-Northrop aircraft.
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  781. Low frequency radars are not proliferating. They're larger and harder to move. They're the first targets for cruise missiles day one.
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  782. Ironica because the Gripen has been plagued with bribery scandals.
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  783. The coup didn't remove the government. In fact the government had a vote to strip the president of his power. The military was not involved. Why do you lie?
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  784. Right but the Su-57 seems circumcised. Aircraft are fragile.
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  785. What does that have to do with anything? The current president was elected in 2019, beating Petro Poroshenko.
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  786.  @genxrush1773  Why not? If anything, the pro-NATO candidate lost and the Russia-appeaser won.
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  787. Now the entire center of gravity and fuel consumption has changed. You'll have to redesign it again. And then redsign it to address the issues caused by the redesign.
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  788. And yet they're better than everything else in the air.
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  789. They can't even shoot down aliexpress drones over Sevastopol.
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  790. The F-16 is a do everything multirole.
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  791. ​ @4dbullshitpatroll6  Why would they use HIMARS on a building that was 5 km from the frontlines?
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  792. Ukraine has proven the US has no real peer, and the F-35 has been tested against Russian built defenses.
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  793. Six A-10s were lost, and they were re-tasked. The F-111 killed more tanks.
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  794.  @jwenting  the A designation had just been used in the A-10 when Have Blue was being developed.
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  795.  @jwenting  Okay, right before the A-10 adoption the USAF picked the A-7 as the interim close air support aircraft. And nowadays there's the A-29 Super Tucano.
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  796.  @johns70  How do you defend infrastructure when you already admitted you can't defend an airfield? Instead of taking the airports out, the enemy - knowing you have a doctrine of dispersing forces - will instead target the stuff you can't disperse and cripple your country. I'm looking at Ukraine. 2/3rds of the missile attacks on airfields missed, and those that hit runways were repaired.
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  797.  @craigfinnegan8534  But if you have a vulnerable location, you can address its vulnerability.
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  798. Nobody's making modern A-10 analogues. No aircraft manufacturers are proposing it and no country is issuing contracts for such types of aircraft. That's a hint.
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  799. Only in the B and C variants, at very high altitudes. It's a freak situation that is hard to replicate.
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  800. Do you fly formation with Cessnas?
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  801. Star Wars ripped off Dambusters and 633 Squadron. It was Lucas who stole the trench run from aviation movies.
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  802. Missile trucks would be vulnerable and thus fire from further away, reducing range. Unless these missile trucks are orbiting at outrageous altitudes or strapping booster rockets to air to air missiles, they'll be very limited in usefulness.
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  803. Please. Let them get all their ammo destroyed, their troops will get slaughtered on the ground while they wait for the aircraft.
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  804. Cry more vatnik
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  805. A-10s would do any better than the Su-25s.
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  806. That doesn't make ANY sense. The F-22 and YF-23 are, like the F-15, an over-engineered and overpriced aircraft that beats everything in the air. It's just too expensive. So a smaller number of expensive, large, twin engine air superiority fighters are purchased. To make up for the low numbers, a smaller and cheaper multirole aircraft is purchased in high numbers. That was the F-16 in the F-15s case. The YF-23 would still need the smaller and cheaper F-35 to exist in large numbers.
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  807. Ironic because Saab desperately tried to lower their bids to get sales and even resorted to bribes.
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  808. It has excellent range. Estimated 600-700 combat range which matches 4th gen with three external fuel tanks.
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  809. UAP just means unidentified. If a bird flies in front of you, just you just see a black blurry shape speeding past, that's UAP.
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  810. How does the targeting computer know? Radar only points forward with a certain scan angle. But look at a target, and you can tell the targeting computer about an enemy the computer can't see.
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  811.  @youtubeurevil  The A-10 was "invented" for Vietnam (A-1 Skyraider replacement), then repurposed against the Soviet Union. It's old.
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  812.  @solarissv777  To fire a Maverick you have to climb over the horizon to get eyes on the target. You can't "rocket artillery" a guided missile. You have to have eyes on the sky.
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  813.  @solarissv777  A GPS one? No, there's the electro-optical, thermal seeker and laser. I guess you could provide lasing with a drone that has the compatible designator but those can be shot down more easily than the quadcopters spotting for artillery.
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  814. ​ @knowahnosenothing4862  They wouldn't, the engines would need to bave a similar size and weight. Aircraft are very sensitive to changes in center of mass.
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  815. It alters drag, center of mass, etc which can cause issues with the weapon mounted during flight or even cause a low pressure zone to suck the weapon into the wing or fuselage and cause an accident during launch.
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  816. Literal fake news, the 1 trillion is the cost to buy and operate two thousand aircraft until 2070.
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  817. Lt. Patrick Olson made it back on an A-10 and he still lost his life. Amazing how A-10 fanboys always remember Campbell but make sure nobody knows about Olson trusting the A-10 to bring him back. He should have ejected but the plane's reputation kįlled him. And you people NEVER say his name because it counters the narrative around "KC" Campbell.
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  818. The SAMs from the 90s and 2000s don't seem that much improved from the 1970s. In the 70s the Soviet Union was making bank from the 1973 Oil Crisis. In the 90s the Russian economy was in dire straits. In the 2000s the recovery was only starting,
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  819. Completely unrelated. The only think air power could do would be filming neat tank kill footage, because aircraft can't remove mines or stop artillery in mid air.
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  820. And yet no actual trial for fighter adoption has found that price differential. Funny how the people who look at the actual numbers don't see the Gripen as cheap, but the people who look at two decade old marketing wank think it's the best thing since sliced bread.
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  821.  @claymclaren5788  Nobody thinks its cost effective except for the internet. If you're chronically underfunded, you can't afford the Gripen. The South African military put half their Gripen fleet in rotating storage because they couldn't afford the per hour flight costs. If you can't keep 100 tanks running, you can't keep 4 Gripens running. Aircraft are expensive. Either pay up or give up on having an air force.
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  822. The F-35 won't be in danger. The eagle and viper aren't abandoned.
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  823. So they copied a bunch of stuff (they had spies steal nuclear secrets from the US). Basically had the Brits not allowed them to buy jet engines and walked around the shop floor for the shoes to pick up metal shavings, and had the US actually cracked down on leftist sympathizers, the Soviet Union would have been nerfed.
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  824. Pantsirs are often missing from the S-400 battery.
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  825.  @michaelwhite3615  It was Russia's fault. Thank you.
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  826. Not true. Many of the captured tanks were inoperable due to Russian lack of maintenance.
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  827. Not true. Many of the captured tanks were inoperable due to Russian lack of maintenance.
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  828. Cope.
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  829. But during daylight aircraft are visible, it was night time bombing that made radar the big threat.
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  830. The older the aircraft, the more ut costs to keep flying.
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  831. Usually stealth aircraft incorporate all of them.
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  832. It isn't. Your eyes can't measure accelaration without a frame of reference.
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  833. They just trained Ukrainians. Same as all equipment. They're motivated, Americans can compress training schedules for an emergency. You won't know they've been trained until the stuff is on the field.
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  834. Dozens of AMRAAMs are necessary when you are not stealth and you need to fire "spoiler" shots not intended to hit but force the enemy into the defensive. When you are stealth, you just take the shot and hit.
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  835. The Frogfoot is forced to fly at high speed, pitch up, release unguided rockets in a ballistic arc and turn back home. There's no difference - we'd send A-10s to do a pathetic job. Mobile ballistic rocket launcher. I'd be ashamed to claim that "help".
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  836. PESA (Passive Electronically Scanned Array) means that multiple antennas in an array are fed signal from a lone transmit module. AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) means every antenna has their own transmit module.
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  837. False. It will be more stealthy than the A-10. And it will have the performance to evade danger.
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  838. ​ @mathewvanostin7118  Russia's military industries do not have a good reputation. What breakthroughs did they have post USSR collapse?
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  839. ​ @debraoroark49  What Russian metallurgy? They constantly have to overbuild their equipment so they can use weaker alloys.
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  840.  @wisenber  It does.
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  841.  @luigimrlgaming9484  Old missiles received infrared as an impulse. They tracked this impulse, which caused them to seek flares. AIM-9Xs don't see impulses, they see objects. Like FLIR.
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  842. The problem is that the A-10 is also starved of spare parts, and we'd need to train ground crews for months for them to just use the A-10 as they currently use Su-25s anyway - ballistic rocket launchers.
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