Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Grid 88"
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Because no E-6 or E-7 SF guy would have a place in Ranger Regiment unless they went into a Staff job or 4th RTB. You have to earn your way into the NCO Corps in Ranger Regiment, and it is more competitive than any place in the Army. There are only so many E-6 and E-7 slots in Regiment. Keep in mind that an E-4 in Ranger Regiment has kicked in more doors, done more CQB reps, more CQB, more breeching, and more FAST Ropes than most E-8s in SF, to include CIF guys (gone now).
Ranger Regiment just puts in more reps when it comes to kinetic work, whether it be rotary wing ops, Demo, live fires, Airborne Ops, and combined live fire exercises. All the stuff you see in the video on the left Rangers are doing, they are doing right now as I type this. All the action-based stuff shown representing SF is rarely done, as they are more focused on mission-planning for JCETs, getting their phonebook OPORDERs reviewed by 5 levels of officers who have no real jobs other than to make life miserable for ODAs, or deploying to countries within their AORs teaching basic courses to foreign soldiers or doing joint training with their Airborne and SOF units.
I trained and deployed with both and was thoroughly impressed with 2-75. I was very disappointed with what I found in SF and disillusioned with the organization as a whole, though there are many excellent leaders and soldiers within it. SF is not what most people who join it are looking for.
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A PFC or SPC in Ranger Regiment has more CQM, CQB, and CALFEXs under his belt than most E-7s and E-8s in SF. SF lets in a lot of soft skills MOS guys who might have experience in repairing vehicles, generators, and radios, but don’t have the core light infantry mindset built into them. Some adapt very well, but others don’t. Most ODAs have at least 50% of the guys as former 11Bs, but those could be a mix of Mech guys (lol), Light infantry, and maybe a Ranger Regiment guy or 2.
Junior enlisted in Ranger Regiment get far more reps at the basics than SF. SF brings a bunch of different MOSs together to deploy as a self-contained template for linking-up with, organizing, and training guerrillas or partisans in UW. You will absolutely be more lethal and survivable under-fire with a Ranger Squad than an SF ODA, no 2 ways about it. The Rangers will be in much better physical shape, have more endurance, far superior marksmanship, and superior proficiency with their weapons and equipment than a typical SF ODA. This is just the way it is.
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Douglas Jones F-35s have their own Local Area Network with Line-of-sight data link, not omnidirectional Wide Area Network like 4th Gen fighters have.
F-117A combat record:
1271 combat sorties in Desert Storm
850 combat sorties over Bosnia/Serbia
1 shot down
0 combat fatalities
It has no radar, no EW, no radar warning, nothing but a good navigation system and FLIR + laser spot tracker hidden in the belly for guiding its Laser-Guided Bombs.
They were ordered to fly the same corridor multiple nights in a row. The night in question, the EA-6Bs were down for maintenance, and Russian spotters in Italy relayed what aircraft were taking off.
No EA-6Bs with HARM missiles meant SAM sites could search longer, be a bit more bold.
Dani's SA-3 crew set their radars to lower frequency against orders, and got a brief glimmer of the F-117As when bomb bay doors were opened, then disappeared.
They had to turn around and fly over the same area by orders of Clinton's SECDEF, while SAM batteries were scanning actively.
Dani's crew saw them at 13km, manually tracked and fired a Salvo of 2 different SAMs from the site.
One missed, while the other proximity-detonated near the F-117, causing a wing to shear off and go out of control. Pilot ejected and went into E&E mode, got picked up by AFSOF CSAR elements.
Had that been an F-35, the F-35 pilots would have seen every tiny RF and thermal emission overlaid on high resolution AESA ground-mapping imagery from over the horizon, actively looking for SAM sites to smoke.
Totally different ballgame.
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@nathandougg9743 F-117A flew 1271 combat sorties over a much more advanced IADS and radar network in Iraq, and 850 combat sorties over Yugoslavia. 1 combat loss over Serbia, 0 pilot fatalities from combat. That was an F-117A with no RWR, no ECM, no AESA radar with ground-mapping, no ALR-94, no defensive systems at all, flying the same profile every night because the White House ordered them to do so and not approach from different vectors like in ODS.
Meanwhile, F-22A and JSF series have the world’s best AESA radars, EW systems, and ability to see threat radars from hundreds of km away and geo-locate them within 1 sec and share with each other. The comparison between F-22A, F-35A/B/C, and F-117A doesn’t really tell the whole picture. Also, RCS values on the Raptor and F-35s are smaller than on the F-117A. Dani’s SA-3 crew wasn’t able to detect the F-117A until 13km, his own words. 13km on a larger RCS target flying the same profile every night. Good luck.
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@CaptainDangeax When you take the F-35A to Mach 1.6, then go to mil power, it takes a long time before it decelerates back down through Mach, unlike 4.5 Gen with external stores.
With any of the 4.5 Gen fighters, you're not going to accelerate to Mach 1.6 carrying EFTs, FLIR pods, pylons, and bombs. F-35 can do it every sortie if they wanted to.
Russians aren't going to push any of the Flankers there because of their notorious issues with engines.
Even the Su-57 shot a 20m long burst of flame out of its starboard motor in front of everyone at MAKS during take-off and quickly aborted, which was a national embarrassment.
With 4th and 4.5 Gen, the main reasons they go into low supersonic regime is for optimum weapons separation for BVR, and missile evasion techniques in BVR. Even in a Typhoon or Rafale, combat configured, they generally will not exceed Mach 1.2 to Mach 1.4 due to parasitic drag from external stores. You need a slick airframe to reach higher Mach values, like a Typhoon only carrying 4x AIM-120C or Meteors in the recessed stations, nothing else.
The US explored all this in the 1980s with the F-16XL and concluded that it was much better to go with a VLO airframe as a priority. Any airframe that relied on external stores would never perform as well as it did clean.
We had several different conventional designs, including the F-16XL, F-15 STOL/MTD with thrust-vectoring and canards, Agile Falcon (Big Wing F-16 sold to Mitsubishi for their F-2), F-16 VISTA and MATV (Multi-Axis Thrust-Vectoring), X-31 super-maneuverable delta wing with canards and 3D thrust-vectoring.
We could have wasted billions on all those programs for incremental improvements, but none of them addressed real increases in lethality or survivability.
Stealth, AESA radars, LPI data links, and improvements to missiles were found to be far more consequential.
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@CaptainDangeax I’m aware of Rafale’s 838 TRMs in the RBE2 AESA, vs the APG-81’s 1626 TRMs. RBE2 relied originally on US-provided AESA radar semiconductor technology transfer, which is then produced by Thales. I’m also aware of the SPECTRA RF antennae distribution, operating principles, and bandwidth coverage, including MAWS. Now compare that with F-35’s EW suite and integrated DAS/EOTS/AESA that are all closed-loop fed through the CNI/CPU bank with 4, more powerful computers, with mostly fiber-optic signal connectivity.
In each sensor example, you see a significant leap in capability over what’s on the latest Rafale SPECTRA suite, AESA, and OSF. Those are all excellent systems on the Rafale, so don’t think I’m trashing them. It is a far more capable swing-role system compared with every other 1980s/1990s design from the Eurocanards and Flankers. Dassault and Thales also did a superb job on configuring the pilot-interface with the systems in the cockpit, which seems more futuristic and clear-thinking than what is in the Typhoon or Gripen C/D. I like the Typhoon’s stores carriage configuration better in most ways, except for lack of wingtip stations like the Rafale has.
The man-machine interface on JSF is another leap above all that, where the pilot can configure the large panel displays how they want, at various stages of flight, minimize or maximize certain displays, with fused and interleaved sensor data from his and other F-35s in real-time, with far higher data transfer rates than what are in the Rafale.
Data links are a Wide Area Network vs Local Area Network comparison. Unlike an older WAN-based data link that broadcasts omni-directionally on Rafale, the JSF MADL LAN pipes high-saturation data via LPI Line-of-Sight antennae with multiple fallback modes for future-proofing against EW. Only the F-22 and F-35 series have this type of LAN/LOS/LPI/LPD Data link. This is another example of a generational leap over legacy data link architecture. It shows again that 5th Gen really is a thing. We can literally dissect every detail of these fighters and I can point out how each subcomponent and system is a revolutionary leap over the older generational approaches.
In every relevant metric, the JSF is simply a superior system. We can go through it component-by-component, subsystem-by-subsystem, and performance-to-performance. The facts are what they are, but precious few people have the relevant background to recognize and understand it.
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@michaelkeller5008 The only theoretical radars people are talking about are quantum radars, which is based on quantum entanglement theory, and therefore is in a research stage with only very short range laboratory observations made. The laboratory-based short-range quantum photon experiments, use super-cooled liquid nitrogen systems (extremely heavy, require tons of equipment footprint). While you’re working on your quantum radar, stealth technology will be working on how to defeat it with entanglement-transparent RF and photonics-breathing surfaces, with better-funded research underway.
Stealth technology is not static or constrained, just like sensors.
The IR concealment measures on F-35 don’t just “do a little”. They would not have funded and implemented them had they not been game-changing. Already on the F-22, within visual range, you can’t acquire it with a helmet-sight and wide FOV IR missile seeker. Pilots equipped with JHMCS and AIM-9X have complained about this when doing Fox 2 BFM with F-22s.
Engineers all over the world have been working on how to try to deal with the F-117’s RF stealth, while mostly overlooking the IR stealth. Same with the F-22 and F-35. They have not been successful, since improvements in IRST detection range don’t extend that range into significant BVR distances, and leave a pilot with the same problem of flying blind. The pilot never knows what his sensors have not detected because...they haven’t detected anything.
You’re commenting about applied physics matters that require significant study and knowledge of the math behind them, and making a lot of assumptions with no real framework from which to understand the basics.
“Everyone knows about the issues that keep the birds on the ground for most of the time”. No, everybody doesn’t know anything about actual readiness rates of JSF series. They are reading clickbait articles written by total ignoramuses who couldn’t tell the difference between a tow cart and an ordnance load cart, or what FMC vs MC rates are, MTBF vs CPFH, etc. Operational F-35 squadrons are experiencing very high readiness rates, including on deployment.
Red Flag? This is a major oversight, not knowing that F-35s have been at RF for 4 years straight now. F-35s have been attending Red Flag since 17-1. You can watch hours of videos showing F-35s taking off and landing out of Nellis for RFs since early 2017. At RF 17-1, they achieved a 20:1 A2A kill ratio against Red Air, which has only ever been done by F-22As before. The “1” loss in that denominator was from Red Air re-spawning without following the admin ROE and going back to the assigned re-spawn points after they were killed, so they could at least get a chance to see them WVR and claim a kill. So "already dead" Red Air fighters got 1 kill for every 20 of them killed.
No, I don’t remember when Gripen C used IR detection against F-22s to “annihilate” them in 2015, because Gripens have never attended a Red Flag where any F-22A units were there at the same time. Not in RF Alaska (Gripen’s first RF attendance in 2006, second in 2008, third in 2013). None of those RFs had F-22s there for the exercises. The only time Gripens were focused on A2A were in 2006, where they were part of Red Air. The only USAF fighters in attendance of that Red Flag where from an Air National Guard strike-focused F-16C unit, not even active duty Fighter Squadrons who do A2A as a priority. So Gripens working with USAF Red Air F-16Cs and F-15Cs beat up on an Air Guard Viper unit. It’s kind of sad really to think of how many Gripen fans still use that as evidence of Gripen’s "vast superiority" over anything in the US arsenal, but is worth a chuckle.
The Gripen E is not anywhere close to being survivable against F-22 and F-35s, starting with RCS consequences on first-look, followed by the superior sensors on F-22 and F-35, followed by first-shoot into NEZ parameters that the under-powered Gripen won’t even detect until it’s too late, and can’t evade.
F-15EX has nothing to do with F-35 fleet purchasing schedule. F-15EX is because F-15Cs are timed-out (and Boeing had a marketing executive as acting SECDEF until he was fired), with no F-22s to replace them because the prior 2 White Houses (with their enemy-within SECDEFs Rumsfeld and Gates) killed the F-22 program before we even reached 200 airframes.
Typhoon, Rafale F4, Gripen E, Su-35S are a huge generational gap behind the F-22 and F-35 and there isn’t anything they can do to effectively close that gap. Even the Gripen E would have parity or slight advantage over Su-35S since it has a smaller RCS and a GaN based AESA, along with the Meteor. Su-57 is what causes problems for the Eurocanards.
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@alexdarcydestsimon3767 F-35s in all 3 services demonstrate higher readiness rates and dramatically less required maintenance hours than any other fighter, including the F-16.
"F-35 has no range." F-35A has better combat radius than F-15E or Rafale, which were the 2 highest combat radius-capable fighters in the West.
F-35A internal fuel capacity is 18,250lbs, which is huge. All of that fuel is drag-free aerodynamically, unlike any 4th Gen fighter.
A big oversight people make with payload comparisons is that most of the payload on 4th Gen fighters is external fuel, not weapons.
Additionally, you sacrifice weapons stations with podded sensors if you want a useful swing-role fighter that can employ a modern FLIR TGP for ISR and precision strike.
F-35s don't have this problem because they have FLIR integrated with EOTS in the nose, while carrying more internal fuel than any F-15, Rafale, or other 4th Gen fighter can.
We shouldn't be seeing uninformed comments about JSF range in the year 2022 anymore. That myth was busted many years ago.
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@alexdarcydestsimon3767 AIM-120D can match and outperform the Meteor, which has been demonstrated on live drone targets with the longest recorded air intercept in history, not theoretical. Meteor generally out-ranges AIM-120C5 and C7, but -120D has comparable WEZ/NEZ.
The numbers that amateurs look at and think are static don't apply to the real world, and aircraft sensors and kinematics also play a significant role in employment metrics.
An F-35 equipped with older AIM-120Cs is devastatingly-more lethal than Rafale equipped with the next model Meteor upgrade that hasn't been fielded.
The employment envelopes and unfair postures from F-35s or F-22s simply out-class anything you can do in legacy fighters like the Rafale.
He who sees first, gets into unfair parameters first, generally wins.
With F-35s, they remain unseen and no RHAWS or MAWS is triggered pre- and post-separation, so you just die instantly without knowing why.
SPECTRA is not in the same class as 5th Gen EW suites. SPECTRA is more like the US late 1980s-era ASPJ, which is an awesome self-defense suite, but nothing like what is in Raptors or F-35s.
ASPJ-type suites integrate RWR and run algorithmic automated countermeasures employment responses to specific threats.
F-35 has simultaneous offensive EW that can run in-parallel with whatever else it's doing at the time, which can be employed tactically in concert with other F-35s on an LPI data link network.
Rafale simply does not have that, as good as the Rafale is.
F-22 can offensively jam and interfere with RBE2 at its pleasure. F-35's APG-81 has jammed the Raptor's APG-77 and the Raptor community doesn't like being out-Radar'd, so they got a major incremental upgrade.
In terms of jamming and EW:
F-35 > F-22
F-22A >>>>>>> Rafale
Rafale >>> Su-35S
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Not anymore in today's world.
A low hour pilot with good training is superior to a high hr pilot in an inferior fighter.
Examples:
Chinese PLAAF sent their best pilots in Su-27SK against Royal Thai Air Force Gripen C/D in Falcon Strike, 2015.
In BVR, Gripen with its very small RCS, better radar, longer range AIM-120C, and superior pilot interface resulted in extremely heavy losses for Su-27SK.
Now once they let the exercises progress to WVR, the Su-27SK raped the Gripen because it out-maneuvers it easily, and had more WEZ envelope with the helmet-cued HOBS missiles.
But that didn't really matter if they can't make it to the merge.
Frustrated, the Chinese brought their J-10 fighters, and later J-10Cs with smaller RCS, big AESA radar, and very long range PL-15 missiles and erased all of the Gripen's advantages in BVR, while still easily defeating it in WVR again.
Now if you could make a fighter that had an even smaller RCS, give it better sensors, better pilot interface, and better weapons, a less experienced pilot will have an even greater advantage, regardless of the experience of his adversaries.
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@arnobozo9722 The JSF series all out-perform the F-16, Hornet, and Mirage 2000 when combat-configured.
F-16 & F/A-18 wheeze at higher altitude. If you fly a slick Mirage 2000, it will do well but then it has lost combat capability.
F-16s, Hornets, Rafales, Typhoons, whatever...when carrying FLIR, EFTs, bombs, ECM, and missiles, perform nothing like they do when slick. The E-M diagrams shrink considerably.
The F-35, while not as light as a slick/stripped 4th Gen, out-performs them in practice since it doesn't suffer from parasitic drag like the others when configured.
Carrying the same fuel and weapons, it has the same Thrust/Weight as the Rafale.
Rafale is lighter empty, but has 9000lbs less thrust, while also saddled with its external stores.
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@SuperSy99 If Star Wars is your reference, then the Jedi are in CAG. Guess who makes up the majority of Operators there? Ranger Regiment, by about 73-78%. SF is maybe 15% of The Unit, with the rest onesies and twosies from Infantry Recon Platoons, Marines, and other MOSs.
GT Score requirements are the same for Ranger Regiment and SF, but PT standards are much higher in Ranger Battalion. It's why Rangers have such a higher selection rate than SF.
Used to be LRSC & LRSD had the highest selection rates, but Ranger Regiment still made up the bulk of CAG because LRSUs were a small assortment of units throughout the Army before we were disbanded.
Half of LRS guys all came from Ranger Regiment since they were already Airborne Qualified and Ranger tabbed with tons of experience in mission planning, rotary wing ops, and fixed wing ops. Ranger NCOs often were already Pathfinder qualified too, and made great candidates for LRSLC, most moved into ATL and TL slots quickly, were some of the best NCOs in the whole Army.
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@dominique4700 USMC F-35B IOC 2015
USAF F-35A IOC 2016
Israeli Air Force F-35I IOC 2017
USN F-35C IOC 2019.
Israeli AF saw first combat in 2017.
USMC 8 month combat deployment 2018-2019.
USAF F-35A combat deployments 2019-present
UK F-35B combat deployments 2019-present.
You said they aren't operational yet, but they've literally been in constant multinational deployment and combat operations since 2017, flying more combat sorties than Rafale's entire history.
They've been doing everything from gun runs (with the gun you say doesn't work), to armed naval escort in the Mediterranean, to ISR and Defensive Counter-Air all in the same sortie.
They've found SAM sites that dedicated surveillance assets couldn't locate, conducted precision strikes on HVTs, penetrated deep into the WEZ in Syria and Iran, been shot at by SAMs over 100 times and destroyed the SAM sites in response, and intercepted numerous fighters who can't see them, are forced to return home.
OBOGS was a universal problem across the fleet, a new way of O2 generation that requires less ground support equipment, and has been corrected years ago.
HMDS is matured to Gen III helmet, lighter, better, and addressed the complaints from pilots.
Operational unit readiness rates are 70-95% even on F-35B.
Dassault promised India they will work with them to meet 75% readiness rates with Rafale, and $25,000 CPFH.
A lot of your information is old.
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@sigma_frenchie4075 Every Western fighter developed over the past 4 decades has been primarily focused on managing the BVR realm while avoiding WVR. They have all been designed with compromises between the 2 regimes of A2A encounters, with altitude and transonic acceleration being the biggest dividers.
F-14 & F-15 were focused on higher altitude and optimum dash speeds for intercept profiles, with excellent maneuvering against the MiG-21 if they got WVR.
F-16 & F/A-18 were designed for lower altitude with lighter airframes leaning on more maneuverability in thick air against the MiG-21 if they got WVR, which was more likely due to smaller radars. USAF and USN wanted them primarily for strike platforms.
JSF cruises like a slick F-15 or F-14, JSF-A accelerates through transonic better than a slick big mouth Viper, and can reach speeds none of them can while combat-configured.
When you say the F-35 is slow, it doesn't match up with reality, and this is coming from the pilots. F-16 & Hornet pilots immediately notice the excess power and drag less behavior of the slick airframe.
F-16 guys love it because it has so much internal fuel, and when you do aerial refuel with it, you don't have to constantly punch afterburner.
As to BVR, JSF elevates BVR into something much different than even 4.5 Gen. Its networked SA is game-changing and unfair. WVR, it regularly beats F-16s, F-15s, Hornets, and even does well against F-22s. In BVR, none of them can get first-look/first-shoot on F-35s.
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