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

  1.  @kschleic9053  The other way around. People involved in the OA-X program knew this would be a criticism raised against turboprops, so at Green Flag exercises the OA-X aircraft were pitted against Marines with Stingers. Allegedly, they couldn't get a lock. It makes sense. The turbine that powers the prop takes out so much heat from the exhaust, and prop wash itself mixes the exhaust with incoming air. And it is known that after the initial Stinger kills on Soviet helicopters in Afghanistan they responded by changing tactics but also installing diverter plates in the exhaust to help mask the heat signature. Meanwhile their jets were forced to fly higher. Soldiers on the ground jokingly started calling them "cosmonauts" for refusing to fly inside Stinger range.
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  2. The USAF brought back the Bronco to provide support for SOCOM for a year, but retired it again due to the cost of maintaining ageing aircraft.
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  3.  @oc3694  "Insurgents don't use helicopters and shit" - Yeah, but you do realize that many times the boots on the ground were essentially stuck waiting for helicopters to deal with the insurgents, right?
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  4.  @DefinitelyNotEmma  There's often unofficial names. The Thunderbolt II is the Warthog. The Super Hornet is the Rhino. The Strike Eagle is the Mudhen.
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  5. I had to look it up, when he was born it belonged to the Russian Empire. So he was Russian-American rather than Ukranian-American.
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  6.  @Markle2k  but the F-8 was the last "intended" to use the gun as the primary armament, those fighters you mentioned use missiles as the primary weapon and the gun as a backup. So it is indeed called "the last gunfighter" in aviation circles.
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  7.  @richardpatton2502  "Pilots love the A-10" - Show me a pilot who doesn't love his machine. "Soldiers love the A-10" - Emotional attachment should not be a priority. "Generals and politicians absolutely hate it with a passion and yet...it keeps coming back" - Because the programs to replace it were killed. "I think the only problem with the A-10 is that it doesn’t make enough money for the powers that be." - It made 5 billion with the Boeing wings contract. Keeping old airframes flying is deceptively pricey. "There’s no true replacement for it" - Already been replaced for the most part. 11% of CAS missions since 2014. The rest are performed by Strike Eagles, Hornets, F-16s, B-1s, etc.
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  8.  @bigblue6917  "The problem with reliance on stealth is that once they find a way to defeat it, and they will, the aircraft such as the F-35 is vulnerable." - If stealth is defeated, any non-stealth aircraft is too dangerous to fly and will be immediately grounded.
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  9.  Adam Lannerd  "I don't see how anyone could dislike the A-10" - It was outdated nearly 30 years ago when the Iraqis shot 7 down and damaged 13 to be written off, forcing the USAF to call for the grounding of the A-10. It was developed because of politics, because even though the A-7 was one of the best CAS aircraft in Vietnam the Army's fetish for getting men killed in helicopters pressured the USAF to take in a slower, less capable aircraft so that it could escort helicopters. Plus the A-7 was sort of the Navy's baby.
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  10. Except that most aircraft now are multiroles.
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  11.  @gregpeabody8536  No, there's a loud minority of contrarians that think the YF-23 should have won.
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  12.  @donaldsalkovick396  moving canards are a thing, yes.
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  13.  @ilikeskies  George Washington's place of birth was British America.
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  14.  @gregpeabody8536  Funny, it's easy to find the mentally ill. They always think they're being stalked by trolls whenever they see a dissenting opinion. I don't use my real name online because you don't need to know it. I don't need to know your name, Greg. In fact, maybe your name is John. And you're hiding behind fake screen names. Who cares? Stop being paranoid.
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  15. Considering that the Brazilians are paying 150 million per Gripen I don't see the "cost effective" part.
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  16.  @martkbanjoboy8853  most people focus on air to air, and most American losses came from AAA and SAMs.
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  17.  @atomicskull6405  the USAF did not cancel it. Lyndon Johnson having ties to Bell probably did a lot more to get it canceled than the USAF, which had already agreed to not influence rotary wing purchases. Plus the courts determined that there was no overlap of capabilities between the A-10 and the Cheyenne.
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  18.  @WillCarter1976  I don't know how to even start. Literally everything you said is incorrect. Strategic bombing has given way to precision strikes. Air power is absolute murder on the modern field. What about that engagement a couple years ago in which like 30-40 special operations in Syria killed 80 Russian mercenaries and 200 Syrian fighters or whatever without suffering a single fatality simply because they had air support? This was also seen in the last century, for example the Rhodesians with very few people killed 2000 insurgents simply because they had a bird in the air dishing it out. In 1991 Desert Storm was decided by air power. The Navy's power projection comes from the aircraft carrier. How is the air force fighting irrelevance when the main fighting power of the Navy is aircraft? Cruise missiles alone can't do the job.
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  19. It's not really secret, NATO inherited many MiGs and Sukhois when former Warsaw Pact nations joined.
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  20.  @johngalt2506  He confused him for his son Trudeau, Canada's PM.
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  21.  @ilikeskies  For example John McCain was born in what today is Panama but because the military base was US territory he was born in America. This isn't complicated. At the time Sikorsky was born in Russian territory, making his birthplace Russia. Cities have changed hands through history. If you're talking about a historical figure you don't say he was born in Istanbul, Turkey, you say he was born in Constantinople.
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  22.  @richardpatton2502  "Do you believe CAS will be ultimately left to other platforms?" - Already has been, for the most part. "Should a dedicated replacement to the a-10 be built?" - At this point, why? The only thing unique about the A-10 is the smaller danger close radius of the gun versus bombs/missiles.
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  23.  @andrewtaylor940  "heavy ammo and payload at low altitude" - There's zero advantage to that. "low attack speed" - Which is a negative. "stay above them a long time concentrating support fire" - the loiter time is a big plus but the A-10s niche is uncontested air space. Which means that tankers could make up for the inferior loiter time of faster jets. "Its judt it fills a specific niche that has not been duplicated. " - But could have, and the projects were canceled.
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  24.  @richardpatton2502  "But on your latest explanation on the software and reverse engineering. How confident are you that perceived enemies like Russia do not possess that info already?" - One one assume that as soon as enemy contacts started reacting to radars being turned on, they'd simply change the algorithms so that the frequency hopping becomes unpredictable again. Besides, if you were so assume that Russia broke American crypto there's a whole lot of more pressing issues that have to be addressed before stealth. "The Skyraider was supposed to be obsolete in Korea but when Vietnam came around there they were, down on the dirt." - You look at footage of cops flying the relatively "low and slow" helicopters and what do you see? FLIR. The mechanical eye sees more than you can with the human one. If you're gonna fly a modern turboprop like the A-19 Super Tucano like you'd fly a Skyraider, you're doing something wrong. For example the A-7 was a formidable bombing platform. But if you look at video from the time (this is a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8lVoK_APac) you can see it's not all sunshine and rainbows. You will either have to be queued about target information or you have to acquire it visually. The latter is much harder when you have to observe a pitched battle and mark your own targets. From my limited research the A-7 only got FLIR in 1978 and that was in the Navy, with the ANG A-7s only getting it in 1988. So, in the end there's nothing wrong with the machine, it's the human inside that limits the capabilities. You give the human machine eyes to see the target without requiring low and slow passes, and you solve the problem. "Also, this kind of air support is very good for morale on the ground, which importance is frequently and systematically ignored..." - If the morale gains come from using an inferior platform then we have to question if morale is even a reasonable goal. Are troops meant to see an air show or effects on target?
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  25. ​ @WillCarter1976 "Why wait till an enemy strike gets near coastline when a carrier launched sortie can intercept" - This is beyond nonsensical. That's like keeping your entire team on the opponent's side of the field assuming nothing gets through. Not to mention that it would essentially open up an avenue through the arctic. The Navy can handle national defense, as long as the Canadian Air Force defends the northern border. "The fact the the Air Force is the most over-educated and underutilized" - Underutilized, despite of the fact that air power has been critical in the GWOT.
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  26. @Cloud Burst 117 17 to 1 at Red Flag.
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  27.  @peterterpstra4038  the USSR didn't exist then
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  28. The US sent F-22s to Syria.
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  29. The "brains" made a "stealth" aircraft with exposed fan blades, rivets/screws, huge panel gaps and round engine covers.
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  30.  @msnpassjan2004  the government accountability office slammed the USAF for buying too many A-10s. Please stop listening to the people who told you that because they are/were liars who wanted to sell books.
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  31.  @NOLAgenX  "actually you are wrong about politicians hating the A-10. It’s the one smart thing that politicians have done in the last 50 years." - Ironic. The A-10 should have been retired after 1991. Politicians fawning over an aircraft that was outdated by the 1980s is exactly the type of stupid crap they do, but because of the memetic potential of the A-10 people people actually think it's smart.
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  32.  @NOLAgenX  "no other plane can loiter around the battlefield in a COIN type CAS role" - in a COIN environment you have tankers which are not in danger of easily getting brought down. Either way, turboprops like the Super Tucano seem to have good enough combat endurance. "it has proven itself to take way more damage and abuse and still return the pilot home than many of our faster jets can" - Both the F-15 and F-16 are on record as being able to return home with half a wing gone. One F-15 made it home with a wing ripped at the root. Meanwhile in 1991 the USAF had to pull the A-10 away from the Iraqi Republican Guard after 7 shot down and 13 written off due to battle damage. The aircraft was outdated by the 1980s. The bloody nose it suffered in 1991 should have been the wake up call.
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  33.  @rtrThanos  "RCS doesn’t matter once your radar is turned on to search and track targets" - modern stealth aircraft are able to turn their radar on by masking their emissions as background radiation. Basically only the emitting aircraft knows the specific frequency hopping so unless you somehow capture enough shot down aircraft to reverse engineer the software you won't be able to decrypt the hopping sequence. Passive radar/RWR will not understand it's being "painted".
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  34.  @mattbite  so a person makes a video about ONE airplane and now he's too nationalistic? Shouldn't the people demanding other unrelated nations to be mentioned be the nationalists?
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  35. In the movie one of the SAMs crashes into the party HQ and detonates. The CO later chastises Dafoe because a children's hospital was hit by collateral damage. Dafoe defends himself by saying it was the party HQ. The CO says he knows it was, but the media are reporting it was a hospital.
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  36. They are durable when you have a thousand planes to pull parts from. Individual aircraft themselves are finicky. I think MiG-29 engines have half the hours of a Western fighter jet engine. So a MiG will need twice the engine replacements in its service life. If you can't get new engines, they're difficult to maintain.
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  37. No need to be salty, Russia had every chance to get the Su 57 right and what did they do? Allowed it to remain vaporware.
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  38.  @johnteeling4679  That's not necessarily true. The VariViggen and VariEZE designed by Burt Rutan are canard controlled aircraft made to be homebuilt and use mechanical linkages for the controls, not a fly by wire computer. What happens is that on modern fighters the canards are not placed to prioritize maximum stability but to allow quick departures from stable flight. So the canards are controlled by flight computer and move on their own. On the Rutan designs the canards are placed for stability.
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  39.  @ratherbefishing4225  Early jets using canards had stability problems, but these were solved with the close-coupled canard design. So it's not as simple as saying "canard jets are unstable" because it all depends on the design and intent. Rutan designed a propeller canard aircraft for stability and it was successfully flown with a jet engine until the unfortunate crash caused by build defects. Adding a jet engine does not suddenly make canards inherently unstable, but early jets with canards had design issues that could only be dealt with by changing the design or computerized flight control.
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  40. @J the morale argument is absolute hogwash because weapons that target morale just send insurgents running to their dirt bikes and go back to their normal lifes until they decide to attack next week. You target their morale, they come back. Target their bodies, and they'll be a red smear on the ground. Forget morale.
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  41. Hello Glavset, still haven't got your morguilization papers?
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  42.  @ProjectFlashlight612  but the nickname "the last gunfighter" is still valid because it was the last designed to use the guns as the primary weapon. The narrator simply forgot to add that "primarily". It's extremely common, it's almost a game to find the mistakes in these videos.
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  43. There's a cover on the seeker head, it doesn't look like that while in operation.
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  44. There's around 170 F-22s in flying condition and we already have a replacement lined up. Stop coping.
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  45.  @Nightdiver20  the issue is that stopping communism by propping up an unpopular puppet head of state didn't work, and the destruction caused by the war turned many people against foreign occupation.
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  46. F/A-XX babeeeey!
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  47. It was occupied by Russian troops during the Tsardom, thus making it part of the Russian empire. It was made the capital of the Ukranian Republic after 1917.
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  48.  @VangelisKontogeorgakos  You're too focused on binary concepts. Air to air isn't just dogfights. A MiG-25 that fired a R-40 shot down and killed a Navy pilot in 1991. He was flying a F/A-18. The claim that X aircraft cannot shoot down Y aircraft because Z reason is simply not a good argument. It's not just about the tools, it's about the situation and skill. Sure, a F-15 can evade a missile. Is the pilot aware a missile has been fired? Many shootdowns occur because the pilot is not aware there's an enemy in the area, not as a result of a 1vs1 fight.
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  49.  @acidbot666  It works doesn't mean it works well. Combat in Syria? Doing what? Sight seeing? In Ukraine? What munitions did it use?
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  50.  @demomanchaos  Does the F-15 do Mach 2.4 with external tanks and weapons? "The electronics package on the F-35 are good, but it isn't going to be winning many turning fights" - If you have the situational awareness you don't get into turning fights in the first place. Even the Red Baron knew to always come from behind/blind spots and preferably with the sun on your back so that the glare would make it impossible to see the dot in the air getting closer. "It can't match the F-22 in air supremacy" - Because it's not meant to. "it doesn't even belong in the same paragraph as the A-10 in terms of ground attack capabilities" - The A-10 already had its job taken over by F-16s, Strike Eagles, B-1Bs, even B-52s. Stepping outside the realm of manned USAF aircraft you also have drones, the F/A-18, the Harrier, Apaches, etc doing CAS. Almost every aircraft does CAS now. Other countries use F-16s, Dassault Rafales, etc for CAS. The A-10 is not unique or special.
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  51.  @demomanchaos  "simply a better air superiority fighter" - Yes, like the F-15 is a better air superiority fighter compared to the F-16. The F-22 is the F-15 analogue. Twin engine air superiority. The F-35 is the F-16 analogue. Single engine multirole. "falls so short it went a few miles backwards when trying to compare its ground attack abilities against the A-10s" - Substantiate. "expected operational costs exceeding the Trillion dollar mark" - Okay, have you done the math for all aircraft too? Can you get the inflation adjusted numbers for how much it cost to keep the F-15 fleet running all these decades? "according to test pilots can't even compete with an F-16 in a dogfight" - If you read the test pilot's report you'd realize that he asked for a better software governing of the control laws. But you didn't. You read the hit pieces based on David Axe's flawed reporting of the facts.
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  52. And who did he go to war with? The world.
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  53.  @mikeks8181  That is a severe misconception. No, it wasn't switched out pretty quick. The Navy never added guns to their Phantoms. The USAF E variant with the internal nose cannon hindered the performance of the aircraft by shifting that much weight to the nose, and required the use of a smaller radar. The majority of USAF Phantom kills were scored by missile. Even the "last gunfighter", the F-8 Crusader, scored most kills with missile. The myth that the air war over Vietnam somehow was decided by guns is not real.
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  54. In the beginning they were composed of Army personnel and followed Army doctrine. Instead of blaming the child, blame the parents.
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  55. There's been prototype weapons pressed into service in Ukraine, like one of a kind T-80 variants. However, they're not scared of losing a T-80. Losing a Su-57? Big no no.
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  56. Don't see how air forces around the world would have loved it. Canada is a huge country. Most nations do not have to defend enough airspace to justify such an aircraft.
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  57.  @michaelhatch1974  And how does that matter when you can't even get that performance without invading the airspace of two other entire countries? Raw performance is just a number on paper. How to use that performance? It has to be about territorial size when you can't even get that performance in a country the size of a post stamp. Israel's newest fighter is the F-35, which is rated for max 1.6 Mach. And Israel often intrudes into foreign airspace to perform strikes. If anything it's the neighboring countries that need interceptors.
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  58.  @tachikomakusanagi3744  the Navy did not add guns.
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  59. Carrier borne aircraft often have folding wings to maximize deck capacity.
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  60.  @vonschwendeman2611  High reliability doesn't mean maintenance costs aren't high. How are aircraft kept reliable? Maintenance.
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  61.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  "The main mission of the A10 as originally envisioned, the defense of the Fulda Gap" - Not really. It was meant for Vietnam. The Fulda Gap thing was a repurposing of the aircraft, and it was estimated that aircraft and pilots would not be coming back from that mission if it happened. "They're putting more and more glass cockpit components in because they can't get the damn instruments to replace the old ones." - No, they're doing that because the A-10 needs modern avionics to operate. Without modern sensors the A-10 would be outclassed. "If you try to use an f-35 in the close air support role, you have to hang wing pylons on it to carry external stores. Caring external stores negates a great deal of the f-35 stealth." - So what? It's still stealthier than any jet with external ordnance. "One of the things it was proven in Vietnam was that no matter how fast your aircraft was during weapons release it had to slow down enough" - This is not true. Nothing was proven, simply put aircraft did not have the avionics that allowed them to be effective. "The F35 does not have the loiter time of the A10" - You can't loiter in a modern battlefield. "The 25 mm gun in no way shape or form can outperform the 30 mm gun on the A10." - But it does. The 25mm APEX round was designed for that purpose. "The pilot in particular is much better protected" - No, he isn't. He is strapped to a vulnerable bullet and missile magnet.
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  62.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  But the A-10 was built specifically to bring the capabilities of visual targeting back, as fast jets like the A-7 made it difficult. Once again, the most desirable CAS in Vietnam were visually aimed rockets, guns, cannons and bombs. The whole point of the A-10 was the fact that fast jets did not have the electronic targeting means they have now, so jet pilots were dependent on ground controllers directing their fire while Broncos, Skyraiders, etc could see infantry in the jungle and gun them down. The A-10 was built specifically do to what you're saying it would be bad at. As a strike/bombing aircraft it was objectively worse than the A-7. But even the advanced bombing computer in the A-7 depended on being able to place a marker in the HUD by eye.
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  63. Disregard the hundred and something kills by USAF Phantoms and another 40 by Navy ones.
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  64.  @johnthepreceptor3575  If you have nothing to say simply don't post.
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  65.  @I_Cunt_Spell  You people get baited into using slurs easily
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  66. A small car didn't make much sense when gas was cheap, nowadays it doesn't make sense when any SUV or truck will crush it like a beer can in a collision. The Smart car was successful in Europe thanks to the higher gas prices, narrow streets, lack of parking space and having that frame that gives reasonable protection to the occupants.
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  67. Navy F-4s never added guns.
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  68. Except that the Army allowed the project to continue for years so that Lockheed could fix the issues, and in the end they were still trying to figure out a mechanical solution to the control instability by the time aircraft were now starting to get digital control. It simply missed the boat.
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  69.  @atomicskull6405  The Cheyenne project was cancelled in 1972 and you're telling me a helicopter that first flew in 1967 and was adopted in 1970 managed to get the rigid rotor right. So tell me how the hell the USAF was responsible for the Cheyenne not going into production, and not Lockheed's own failure.
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  70. Their primary armament was missiles.
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  71.  @damianhoratiu2287  but they weren't designed to use it as a primary weapon, they were designed as missile platforms first. The F-8 is the last gunfighter because it was a plane caught in a transitional age.
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  72. This is cope. The Su-57 program died when India rejected it.
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  73.  @chadbernard2641  laugh all you want, just like the Armata it needs foreign investment to finish
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  74.  @chadbernard2641  They have prototypes. Big whoop. They build them slowly because of lack of money and they're prototypes, not mass produced.
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  75.  @chadbernard2641  I'm quaking in my boots. Lockheed Martin delivered the 600th F-35 last year. Let's settle that one in the air.
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  76. Secrets are released to the public through releases or FOIA requests after secrecy lapses. It was a very secret program.
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  77.  @pickeljarsforhillary102  it wasn't a moving of the goal posts because his point was that Germany could not have cloned the B-29. He was wrong in his assumptions, but the argument was about something that holds true even if he was wrong on the details.
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  78.  @tucopacifico  Navy F-4s did not get guns.
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  79.  @tucopacifico  that's like saying we're still in the Wild West because you saw someone wearing a cowboy hat. USAF Phantoms scored something like 90 percent of their kills with missiles, meaning that the age of the gunfighter was over. Navy Phantoms did not carry guns.
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  80.  @tucopacifico  Killing someone with a gun doesn't make someone a gunfighter. Cops sometimes use their guns but that doesn't make them gunfighters. They aren't employed as gunfighters. They aren't trained as gunfighters. Plenty of private citizens use guns in self-defense every year but they're business owners, teachers, taxi drivers, lawyers, retirees, etc. not actual gunfighters.
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  81.  @tucopacifico  Then I don't know what you're even trying to say. The F-8 deserves it's place in history for what it represents, and the afterthought of adding guns to the F-4 doesn't change that. The Navy didn't add guns to the Phantom either and most variants did not have the internal gun.
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  82.  @tucopacifico  The G, J, K, M, N and S variants did not have internal guns. Pretty much only F-4E derivatives had the internal gun because it either interfered with nose radar or other equipment that had to be carried where the gun was. "When they got them and whether they were USAF or USN makes absolutely no difference," - It does make a difference, because an entire branch not adopting the internal gun means that it wasn't a critical need. "despite your semantics, the F4 gunned down enemy planes" - There's no semantics. The F-8 was the last gunfighter, because every platform that succeeded it was designed primarily to shoot down opponents with missiles. I don't know what you're trying to argue here. "go bother someone else" - You're the one bothering me.
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  83.  @tucopacifico  "which was changed to missiles only, then changed in later variations" - But later versions did not have internal guns. "the last US fighter in service to gun down enemy planes was the F4" - Which is irrelevant to the topic. This doesn't contradict anything. "that must bother you a lot" - You're the one bothered because you're here trying to argue something that I don't even get the point of. Somehow you were so offended that the F-8 was the last fighter designed to use guns as primary armament. Everyone else carries the gun as a secondary weapon.
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  84.  @tucopacifico  Why would it bother me? The F-4 is one of my favorite planes. It's you who has a problem.
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  85. The Germans had gyros on their V2 rockets so yes, they had been invented by then.
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  86. By that logic the USAF should try and have an infantry even better than the Army. When all's said and done you're paying taxes for two armies and two air forces. It's the end it's us pounding sand.
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  87. Since the rotor was all-composite, they probably used a "radar transparent" external skin and internal geometry that disperses and deflects radar energy. Plus radar absorbent materials and coatings.
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  88.  @MrDCrosswell  there were like three crashes in a span of a month in Russia/Ukraine which is the sane number as the F-35 had in 15 years.
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  89. Waan't that one for the Boeing X-32 and Lockheed-Martin X-35?
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  90. The Taliban were hosting the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Iraq attacked US allies Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
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  91.  @yellowgreen5229  I am better than Putin. I was actually against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and although we did go in we didn't intend to conquer the countries.
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  92.  @yellowgreen5229  But we didn't. Iraqis did it to themselves. The Ba'ath party started sowing sectarian division and Iran started funding militias. The hundreds of thousands were not killed by Western troops but Iraqis.
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  93. A lot of it was. You could beat it with a hammer to fix it, but it was dainty in the sense that it broke down often.
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  94.  @testy462  It also means rushing towards incoming fightets because bombers often bring fighter escorts.
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  95.  @VangelisKontogeorgakos  you keep talking about "dogfights" when interceptors are meant to score kills from head on
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  96. You don't use thrust vectoring to outmaneuver missiles. The missile goes fast enough that the tighter you turn the less adjustment the missile needs to slam into you.
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  97.  @RacerX888  The problem is that - turn radius. Only at the very last second would a missile use turn radius. All the way up to impact the missile figures the X, Y, Z coordinate of the predicted intercept path and flies as straight as possible towards there. Trying to do flips in the air is like the sword tricks against Indiana Jones, who pulls the revolved. Thrust vectoring? Okay, you're killing air speed. Direct impact, airframe torn to pieces.
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  98.  @ShadowMKII  It has less range than the alternatives.
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  99. The Dassault Mirage IIIV prototypes were able to perform vertical take off and supersonic, but the project was cancelled beforevthey could do both in the same flight.
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  100.  @martinsavage6838  Russia can't fly over the airspace they own, needs to use Iranian drones.
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  101.  @martinsavage6838  Very busy spamming unguided rockets and running away.
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  102. But why be one sided? Why isn't the Army brass considered whiny for trying to cutthe UASF out of the business by establishing their own air forces?
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  103.  @atomicskull6405  That's not true at all. First, the chiefs of staff had a meeting and agreed to not step on each others' toes. Second, Congress actually determined that the Cheyenne, A-10 and Harrier (yes, the Harrier was involved in this mess too and you people never mention it) were all different enough that each branch was free to pursue their projects. Just stop spreading this lie. The Cheyenne died due to having a multitude of issues that required years to fix.
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  104.  @katrinapaton5283  "the Grippen is around 60 million US" - Uh, no. That's for the cheap, completely outdated Grippen. A modern Grippen costs way more. Look up the Brazilian deal. It's more than 100 million per aircraft.
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  105.  @atomicskull6405  You'll have to find "The Warthog and the Close Air Support Debate" by Douglas E. Campbell because that's the source for the meeting between chiefs of staff in 1966.
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  106.  @katrinapaton5283  It's a 5.44 billion deal for 36, meaning that I'm already assuming roughly 100 million for the aircraft and 50 million/unit for the rest of the deal.
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  107.  @katrinapaton5283  My assumptions are driven from the cost of similar 4th gen fighters like the Rafale and Block 70/72 F-16s. Your assumption is a very optimistic 40% discount on premium 4.5 gen performance - which is frankly unreasonable - combined with an insane and unheard of 90 million/unit value for the technology transfer. The numbers are beyond clear. The Gripen cannot be that cheap, and a country is not going to increase their purchase order costs by almost 200% just for the tech.
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  108.  @katrinapaton5283  The National Interest is a garbage website. My point with the Rafale and F-16 is looking at contracts and figuring out where I can place the Gripen. When something sounds too good to be true, it isn't. I'm not using the Rafale as a starting point. I'm doing a comparative analysis. If the Gripen was that capable and as cheap as Saab claims, it would be winning contracts left and right. The claim that it's the cheapest to run is also somewhat misleading. Supposedly, the Gripen should be cheaper to build than the F-35. Now we know that it isn't. So how is it more expensive to build the thing as a unit, but when getting spares to maintain it the parts will be cheaper? The Gripen E is simply "too little, too late" materialized.
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  109.  @iraqafghanistanmarine6905  in the Fighter Pilot Podcast the interview with two F-4 pilots really dispels that myth. They liked the idea of having a gun, but the weight in the nose negatively affected flight performance and required the use of a smaller radar - and then they barely got to use it because most kills were achieved by missile anyway.
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  110. The AC-130 is mostly limited to attacking at night because of how easy it is to target it with manually aimed AAA, which is common enough in insurgency use to be a threat. Even in Afghanistan they authorize more daytime flights but there's still danger because the Taliban would try to put AAA on top of mountains to get extra range and get harassing fire on them, thankfully not effective fire. By no means is it an invalid idea, but these gunships are somewhat vulnerable and the ability to pylon turn and fire sideways doesn't bring much to the table especially at a smaller size. With cheap counter insurgency aircraft like the Super Tucano and weapons like the APKWS it's possible to fire rocket volleys while flying forward from miles away and have the rockets guided to target by a lasing pod on the aircraft itself, or lased by a MQ-9 UAV. You get the same effect as a gun burst on the ground but without having to do the pylon turn and fire sideways.
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  111.  @korbindallis  the Cheyenne was not killed by interservice rivalry, the case went to court and it was determined that the Cheyenne, A-10 and Harrier were not redundant.
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  112.  @msnpassjan2004  Unsuitable for carrier ops.
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  113.  @korbindallis  Do you understand how that relates to the topic or am I going to have to explain that also?
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  114.  @korbindallis  That doesn't make any sense. Both the agreements between chiefs of staff and the court case determine that there was no objection to an Army purchase of Cheyennes. How would have it worked for the Air Force? No, it wouldn't have done the job of the A-10 because they're extremely different airframes. The Cheyenne was rejected more likely due to Bell lobbying, especially since Lyndon Johnson had ties to them.
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  115.  @LuvBorderCollies  The Army generals acted like children, the USAF gave their all to resolve their differences but Army kept pushing them away and trying to become self-reliant. Literally every historical detail shows the USAF bending over backwards to satisfy the Army, but somehow a few people who wrote a few books with a slanted narrative managed to make people believe the exact opposite happened.
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  116. That was the Eurocopter Tiger.
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  117.  @Rick_Sanchez_C137_  The A-10s were made until 1984 and except for the ones made in in the last year of the production run, they had fuselage defects that lead to early stress fractures and required a structural upgrade. The airframes are still in use because some of them had entire sections replaced.
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  118.  @zlpatriot11  The A-10 was supposed to have been retired in the 90s. Saying they "want to replace it for the more costly F-35" is a very misleading way to put it.
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  119. The F-35 has a 25mm cannon and they are not "gunfighters" because the gun is either a last resort or a strafing weapon for close air support. The F-4 was originally an interceptor so no need for a gun when used as intended.
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  120. They've deployed one of a kind tanks in Ukraine. That's not the issue. If the Su-57 gets shot down it will be an embarassment.
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  121.  @pulaski1  The A-10 has already been replaced for the most part.
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  122. Not true. Most Western air defense were short range IR seeking MANPADS. Su-57s would be able to fly over them with impunity.
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  123.  @1SCme  To deal with Iranian drones.
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  124.  @kanyeeast8450  but the US's VTOL jet is in the hands of the Marines and the further away it has to fly from the less it can stay on station. Meanwhile the Army could use it as fire support since the Air Force accepted that rotary aircraft with fixed wings and forward propulsion did not break the Key West agreement.
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  125. The problem is the jet. It's not in production so a foreign country would have to pay for it to be finished.
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  126. Cope. The Russian army was shredded and now they're using civilians and prisoners as cannon fodder.
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  127. ​ @johnfrost1814  Even the F-15C technically has air to ground features and the Israelis have used it on strike missions to drop bombs. The F-16 is a truly "do everything" aircraft. It's not "just" a light plane. The A-10 barely gets missions. It's there because Congress refuses to allow the retirement.
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  128.  @choppergunner8650  Apart from how media reports on it, what exactly makes you feel the F-35 is not a good jet? They didn't do anything that the F-16 and F/A-18 didn't already have. It is very maneuverable, and it is fast. F-35 pilots say that in dry thrust the F-16 has to use afterburner to keep up. If other aircraft have to use afterburner to keep up with a F-35 in dry thrust, that means it's a rocket. Internal cannons? Under which use case do you think the B and C will need them? The B will not waste time trying to use the gun, it will be flying back to get more payload and come back and drop it - because it's going to be delivering the equivalent of artillery for the USMC. The C trying to go for guns is just going to allow the incoming aircraft to get close enough for an anti-ship missile shot. What good is a cannon when the carrier is sinking and now you can't land? Glued to the F-35's butt? And how is that going to happen? That is Hollywood. Air combat isn't what you see in the movies. 80% of air combat is shooting unaware opponents. That's the reality, who sees the enemy first typically gets to shoot first. The F-35 is not only a mini-AWACS but also is one of the hardest aircraft to "see".
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  129.  @johnfrost1814  Okay. My point is that even the "not a pound for air to ground" F-15 ended up having multirole features. And sure, there's a dedicated multirole variant. But that's only a point in favor for multiroles. Its multipurpose has nothing to do with being light or heavy, it's simply the fighter built in larger numbers so it gets to do the most missions. The Mirage and Eurofighter are "heavier" than the JAS 39 Gripen. They're all multiroles, thought. The A-10 was better suited against insurgents and nearly worthless in a near-peer engagement - Iraq taught the USAF a lesson in 1991 and forced Gen. Chuck Horner to pull the A-10 back.
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  130. Pure hopium. What sanctions? After India pulled out, there's no chance it gets produced.
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  131. Surface area is similar (some of the wing becomes recessed) but only from above. The area you are interested in to reduce drag is measured from the front. Either way, the issue with supersonic flight is that you need a swept back wing to delay the onset of shock waves, which increase drag independently of frontal area. A wing optimized for this flight regime will have a very high stall speed and thus be extremely difficult to land. Variable geometry allows the aircraft to slow down and remain airborne.
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  132.  @northroad1  This is not true. Troops showed satisfaction with USAF CAS in the 20th century, the USAF investigation determined it was Army officers who refused to call in CAS more frequently because of their grand plans of replacing the Air Force with rotary wing aircraft.
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  133.  @northroad1  Andrew Krepinevich’s 1986 book “The Army and Vietnam” explains the internal conflict between the regular Army and the airmobile supremacists better than I could. Additionally, in 1966 the USAF Chief of Staff directed a study on CAS and found out that Army troops were satisfied with USAF CAS, but they were being excluded from the CAS role by the Army brass. Quote: "Meanwhile, U.S. Army advisors were working to develop ARVN airborne helicopter assault tactics, using equipment of two U.S. Army companies which had arrived in Vietnam in late 1961. Almost at once a problem arose over fixed wing/air-ground coordination. According to directives issued by the newly organized U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (USMACV), all helicopter operations into areas where enemy opposition was expected were required to have fixed-wing tactical air cover. U.S. Army corps advisors who controlled helicopter usage, however, tended to ignore the requirement. In April 1962, during a visit to South Vietnam, General LeMay learned that Army advisors were not calling for fixed-wing air support, that only about 10 percent of ARVN heliborne operations were accompanied by VNAF aircraft, and that the Air Support Operations center at Ton Son Nhut frequently were not informed of such operations. Concerned about this situation, LeMay subsequently obtained permission to assign air liaison officers (ALO’s) to all ARVN corps and division headquarters and USAF forward air controllers to augment VNAF liaison squadrons…," “The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia 1961-1973” (Office of Air Force History, 1977)
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  134.  @Rocketsong  That's absolutely the wrong move. The B variant is critical because it both gives the USMC 5th gen capabilities from short deck carriers, it also allows other nations to get Harrier replacements and thus fly them off carriers without ramp/catapult.
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  135. MiG-21s were shot down like it was a sport during the Cold War, you're seriously worried about them now? Sending the F-35 wouldn't be a risk, it would be a turkey shoot.
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  136.  @_Epsilon_  The Su-57 doesn't carry the R-37 missile.
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  137. Radar also "flows" around the circular surface and return back. The F-22 and F-35 noses have angles on the sides to break up this flow.
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  138. The F-35 is in service in multiple countries and has over 600 delivered. There's only 16 Su-57s produced, two crashed, and you have never heard of the rocky development because there's no transparency in Russia while Western media profits from reporting on the F-35 as a failure.
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  139.  @Lawrance_of_Albania  "my common sense says that future radars will be upgraded" - Can't upgrade physics. Radiation emissions weaken with distance by the inverse square law. Only a fraction of the radar energy hits the plane. An even smaller fraction bounces back into the receiver. If a radar has a small cross section, at one point you get so little radiation back it's ignored as noise.
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  140. It's a misconception that the pilot is that much of a limiting factor. What happens when you pull 12Gs with a 2000lb bomb? That's a lot of load for even an unmanned aircraft. In fact, pilots have overstressed their wings. The structure was the limit, not the pilot.
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  141.  @danielm6049  Please stop propagating this myth. The government accountability office actually slammed the USAF for buying too many A-10s in the past.
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  142.  @Predator42ID  Which missiles scored direct hits? Because apart from shoulder fired MANPADS I don't see anything not instantly splitting any aircraft apart.
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  143.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  I'm not sure which seeker is being used on Stingers currently.
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  144.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  That's just a lie. The USAF was actually criticized for buying too many A-10s in the beginning. Please stop parroting narratives made up by lunatics in the Reformist crowd.
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  145.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  Meanwhile in the real world the USAF commissioned the A-X program, axed the A-7 upgrade plans to buy the A-10, got so many that the government had to start grilling them, and only really started trying to replace it two years before it was meant to. 1993.
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  146.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  "the criticism for the number of a10s purchased started around the so-called end of the Cold War" - This is not true. It happened in 1979.
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  147.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  How would the 30mm the ineffective in Vietnam? Its use is mostly against infantry, and the best aircraft to target infantry in Vietnam fired machine guns/cannons/rockets into the jungle.
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  148. They took their sweet time. It's never going to be produced, India pulled out.
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  149.  @ratherbefishing4225  I don't see how that matters considering that you can make stable jet powered aircraft. Either way, there was a jet powered VariEZE - that crashed from structural failure caused by lack of resin impregnation in sections of the wing fiber weave, not flight instability - and a rocket powered LongEZE.
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  150. So the Army conspires to make the USAF obsolete and even sacrifices lives by avoiding calling in CAS during the 20th century because they're obsessed with being independent, but it's the USAF's fault?
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  151.  @TheMrPeteChannel  Hell the Army should have their own ships too. That simple.
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  152.  museack  not a fighter
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  153. The F-35C will be the next single engine Navy fighter though.
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  154.  @johnharris6655  Who asked?
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  155.  @colonel-klink14  that's not how it works. Russians claim they have a radar blocking grid. But it would block incoming air. Serrated edges do nothing, the speed of the fan blades would cause doppler shift.
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  156.  @colonel-klink14  there's photos of the intake, there's a straight shot into the fan blades.
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  157.  @_Epsilon_  The F-117 radar blocker worked by following the shape of the aircraft and by having the intakes above the "belly". The entire aircraft looks weird due to how it was designed, so the blocker and intakes are part of the design. The Su-57 looks like someone glued F-22 parts to a Sukhoi fighter. The radar blocker doesn't complement the design, it's an addition to a more conventional intake duct.
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  158. The F-5 is still in service.
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  159.  @djsoldier76  The guys in the back are not paratroopers. They're meant to disembark on the ground. Not to mention that failures close to the ground would mean the chute would not be open for anyone tryimg to bail.
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  160. No. This was settled back then and the USAF chief of staff agreed to not meddle with rotary wing purchases.
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  161.  @johnthepreceptor3575  You didn't say anything. Having no home bases is a bad idea and the USAF is always on call for the GWOT.
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  162. Over 600 F-35 deliveries achieved last year, with over 100 yearly production schedules. It's doing very well.
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  163. There were rumors about a F-19 and triangle shape aircraft. But it was assumed to be rounder.
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  164. Red Flag is done with "aggressor" squadrons. A-4 Skyhawks to mimick MiG-17s, F-15s to mimick Su-27s and F-16s to mimick MiG-29s. These are the secret aircraft that were used to gather information on the real thing, rather than simulate it.
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  165. How is the F-16 inferior?
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  166. No, they didn't. Both court case and a meeting settled that issue and the Army was free to purchase the Cheyenne. It was only killed off after failing tests.
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  167. NASA does a lot of aircraft research and they do have Broncos. Haven't seen anyone about them doing restoration work.
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  168.  @Ijusthopeitsquick  Exactly.
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  169. "Nooo you can't be heckin' negativerinooo to the airplane or address the root causes of its problems..."
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  170. We know very little, we need to take indirect observations.
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