Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Sandboxx"
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@arvont1 There isn't a $1.7 Trillion number. That's made up/guesstimate as to what acquisition, operations, and maintenance will cost into the 2070s, 50 years from now.
It would be like telling someone a particular new car is expensive because of what it will cost in gas, parts replacement, oil changes, dealer services, fender benders, and all costs for you, your kids, and grandkids who drive it in the future.
Makes you wonder what motive is involved behind those numbers.
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@Dr.Westside YF-23 represented several major risks that didn't exist with the proposed F-22A, which were already solved on YF-22 out of the gate.
1. YF-23 PAVs cracked several windscreens during sustained supersonic speeds.
2. Boundary layer diverters didn't allow speed past Mach 1.82, required a total redesign of the intake geometry.
3. Every control surface required 2 hydraulic actuators, laid on their sides.
4. Weapons bay storage and ejector racks were never solved, weapons bay was limited in AAM capacity to 5. Proposed F-23A would add another forward weapons bay, increasing the aircraft overall length even more, limiting g in pitch, yaw, and roll axes, still not reaching the 8 AAM weapons count.
YF-22 PAV1 demonstrated a classified time-to-climb record and Mach 2.2 on the same flight.
YF-22 could carry and separate 6 AAMs, while proposed F-22A would carry 8.
YF-22 could supercruise and maneuver extremely well across the regime.
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I spent 2 decades at the Air Force Flight Test Center from the early 1970s to the early 1990s, in addition to flight test assignments that took us to West Germany and UTTR. I became very familiar with aircraft recognition in the most diversely-represented airspace in the world when it comes to military aircraft, because we had everything in that area between Edwards, Plant 42, China Lake, Point Mugu, El Toro, Nellis, and Miramar.
We used to sit in the jacuzzi at night looking at the stars 2-3x per week. In 1987-1988, we started noticing a large, silent, airliner-sized aircraft with Nav lights flying into the Antelope Valley and into the landing pattern at AF Plant 42 in Palmdale.
This was a fairly-common occurrence, but I could never make out the shape other than the Nav lights.
Maybe it was YB-2A flights pre roll-out, but it was silent, about that size.
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@bigearl3867 There was no cut in defense spending, but reallocation of F-22 money to MRAPs.
USAF did not go along with it, as multiple USAF Chiefs of Staff literally sacrificed their careers trying to save the Raptor, and were fired.
They also knew and explained to Congress that not replacing F-15Cs with F-22s would cost more in the long run, and leave a fighter gap as F-15s built from 1979-1986 would time-out their airframe service lives, requiring billions in SLEP and sensor upgrades.
SECDEF Gates was on a mission to kill the F-22, and it had nothing to do with money.
The F-22 was going to be forward-deployed in Europe (UK, Germany, and other bases) to the tune of 200 aircraft.
Same for in the Pacific out of Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, and Guam. CONUS fighter squadrons along the coast would regularly rotate through Europe and the Pacific for Emergency Deployment Readiness Exercises like we have always done.
This would have given Theater Combatant Commanders the no-BS capability to erase any air force in those regions.
This is why the Russians and Chinese wanted Obama to keep SECDEF Gates on after Bush43, to see to it that the Raptor program was terminated politically before it could go into Full-Rate Production.
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@termitreter6545 F-35A current production lot is $77.9m. F-35B and C are more, but nothing is even remotely-close to $250m even in unit program cost.
Unit flyaway is the air vehicle engine combo.
Unit program is that plus spares, pylons, LAUs, ejector racks, support equipment, simulators, and a weapons package of AAMs, JDAMs, and whatever the customer orders, so unit program costs are elastic.
US average unit program costs projected for 2456 JSF airframes will be $157-$162m each with all the extras. That's less than Rafale F4 unit flyaway cost with no weapons right now (213€ million per India deal).
F-16E/F UAE Desert Falcons were $200m each unit program from 2005-2008.
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@Brian Waas As soon as the USMC saw how capable their F-35Bs and Cs were, they retired their EA-6Bs. F-35s in Israel, USMC, USAF, and RAF have been in combat since 2017, to include strike missions, ISR, Defensive Counter-Air, Interceptor, and Airborne Warning & Control.
Unit Costs on F-35As are lower than Gripen E, Rafale, and Typhoon.
Every single pilot with combat experience in 4th Gen fighters who transitioned to F-35 said they would absolutely take the F-35 into combat over the legacy birds, which are laughable in comparison. What is it that they know and understand that you don't? Start there and work up from that point.
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@Brian Waas The A-6 doesn't have better maneuverability in any flight regime than an F-35. This is one of the most preposterous claims I've heard to-date, and I've seen a lot of grossly-uninformed people commenting on F-35 over the years.
If you ever look at a combat-configured F-16, F/A-18, F-15C, Su-27/30/35, or MiG-29, they're carrying all kinds of external stores that create parasitic drag and reduce their speed and maneuverability.
All of them also have huge RCSs, so they show up in the JSF MADL web either on the ground, or shortly after take-off hundreds of km before they get into their WEZ profiles.
They're being tracked, PID'd, and enter into missile solutions before they realize it. They don't receive any spike or missile approach warning because of AESA LPI, fused passive sensors, and cooperative LPI midcourse data link guidance.
Their only notification of being targeted is the Mach 4 missile coming down through their airframe, igniting their fuel and sending their airframe into various flaming chunks of falling metal.
That's literally your missile warning when you're up against 5th Gen.
The F-35s fly faster and maneuver as well or better when combat-configured compared to F-16s and Hornets. A combat-configured F-16 won't even touch Mach 1.5 and a Hornet is lucky to hit Mach 1.2 when configured.
If you go faster in the Su-27/30/35, you just cut the Time of Flight for F-35 missiles and expand the No Escape Zone parameters, all while flying blind.
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@Mr.mysterious76 The planned acquisition budget for all 3 US services combined over the life of the program is around $400 billion for 2,456 airframes, support equipment, logistics, simulators, etc.
That’s an average unit program cost of $162.8 million per airframe, which is right about the unit flyaway cost for Rafales and Typhoons. Their unit program costs are well over $210 million per airframe.
Unit flyaway is just the aircraft + motor. Unit program cost includes spares, pylons, ladders, storage racks, test equipment, new logistics to maintain the aircraft, a basic weapons package, ejector racks, etc. Unit program costs vary a lot based on what weapons are bought in that fiscal year to accompany the fighter purchases.
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@brrrtnerd2450 I grew up watching them flying with AIM-9Js, then Ls, then Ms, so when I saw them start to fly later Block Vipers with -120s on the tips, I wondered what was going on. I first thought it was some kind of optimum stores management approach under the assumption that if they fired AIM-120s first, it would make the aircraft more maneuverable, but it was in fact due to the SFC and better performance with them there all the time. It’s counter-intuitive. They usually fly with 3x AIM-120C7s, 1 AIM-9X, and whatever A2G weapons on stations 3 & 7, either HARMs or GBU-12s, sometimes multiple GBU-12s on TERs.
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@techtical7079 Read what high hour Viper pilots have said once they converted to F-35A regarding BFM. Same with legacy Hornet pilots who converted to F-35B or C. Once they learn to use the 28°/sec yaw rate and the vertical, it's over for a combat-configured F-16 or Hornet, not that they would realistically merge anyway.
A lot of people make the mistake of viewing airshow demos of slick, stripped-down fighters flown by demo pilots.
Even after you jettison external fuel tanks and bombs, you still have an 800lb ECM pod, 455lb FLIR Pod, pylons, and 4 or more missiles on the LAUs. F-16CM will also have the HARM Targeting System Pod.
All of those things are heavy and draggy, noticeably reducing aerodynamic and kinematic performance.
An F-35 with internal bombs and missiles will still out-climb, out-rate, and get solutions on you first if for some crazy reason it allowed you near it.
They rarely do BFM in post E-Jett configuration, outside of Fighter Weapons School in USAF. WIC emphasizes combat configurations, which is why the F-22 and F-35 are what they are.
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@carlosamigosAUS Su-35S already is the standard for upgrading Su-27SM3 and Su-30SM2 for common Irbis-E PESA Radar, glass cockpit using Western electronics, common data link, and improved performance engines.
The Irbis-E is easily outclassed by the Rafale F4's tiny AESA, which is easily out-classed by the AESAs in the F-15C+, F-15E+, F-22A, and F-35s.
Super Flankers are literally at the bottom of the pile when it comes to modern fighter Radars, electronics, and overall systems, while also having huge RCSs.
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There are F-16XL test pilot reports openly published now. They loved the performance and handling, but all complained about the loss of T/W ratio. It had longer legs than anything except the Vark. The USAF fighter culture was heavily focused on the new capabilities of the F-15 and F-16, with pilots rating fighters by how well they could retain energy and execute excellent climb rate, as well as improved visibility from the teen series cockpits. HOTAS was also a new thing and a big deal, since many had F-4 experience to compare and contrast against. The XL was seen as a step backwards in the energy department when it came to turns, but was better at straight and level flight than the others. You didn’t need to touch burner to refuel when combat-configured like you do in a Viper.
The big pluses with the XL were combat radius and stores per sortie. You could service multiple TGT sites and TGT sets in a single sortie and still have tons of station time without need to refuel. If half of the F-16s in Desert Storm were F-16XLs, it would have increased the amount of deliverable ordnance in a much lower overall sortie count, which could have cut the length of the bombing campaign down. In combat configuration on an F-16A or F-16C, you only really have 2 primary mission-relevant weapons stations available. Every single other station is occupied with ECM, FLIR, or EFTs, plus AAMs for self-defense or rare opportunistic A2A TGTs that somehow slipped through the Grey Eagle’s claws.
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@kermittoad Gripen E estimated unit flyaway was $85m in 2015 before it even went into production. Saab refuses to say what the unit flyaway cost is. $85m in 2015 is $107.29m in 2023.
Since all the weapon stations but 2 require pylons, and Gripen is an antiquated legacy design, its unit program costs are higher. Here's why:
Lack of systems integration requires external fuel, Recce, FLIR, targeting, decoy, and other combat systems to be attached to weapons stations. FLIR and Recce pods are millions of dollars/Euros each.
So now you have a more expensive unit base price with added millions worth of pods, for less capability than an F-35 with all its FLIR, EW, targeting, and sensors integrated as a baseline without sacrificing any weapons stations.
Weapons stations on F-35s only carry....weapons.
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@Fng_1975 I lived through all of this and closely followed the development of the F-14 from the 1970s onward, so there’s no confusion over here. I wasn’t in a NAVAIR community, but in the AFFTC side, but we were always going to China Lake and Point Mugu was right nearby as well. Hornet pilots flying as impromptu aggressors within the Air Wing setting up attacks against the carrier group have stated that it was pretty easy to slip past F-14/AWG-9 coverage. APG-71 had the multimode features since it was basically the same Radar as in the Mudhen, but with some additional features specific to Navy requirements. My family did a lot of work on F-15E APG-70 systems integration with various weapons, developing the various modes and expanded employment capabilities in the early days of that program, right after we did AIM-120 integration and certain IFF features on the F-16C at Edwards.
Baby Hornets were never meant to replace the Tomcat, nor did they. They replaced the F-4J/N/S and A-7E. Super Bug replaced the F-14 and A-6E, which was definitely a compromise. F-35C is not a compromise relative to the F-14D in any metric. F-35C can execute deep strike into the MEZ where no Tomcat could ever go, and prosecute a longer mission radius in any mission set, to include Fleet Air Defense. F-35C creates a whole new level of networked Fleet Defense while simultaneously contributing to maritime patrol, ISTAR, and ASW.
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@Fng_1975 I’m not sure what Navy sources you’re listening to, but the major comments coming out of the current deployed carrier air wing operating F-35Cs is that they finally got long legs back to the strike group. That and the networking are the main things they’re talking about. (MEZ I’m referring to is Missile Engagement Zone common to modern IADS, not legacy IADS where Tomcats, Hornets, and A-6Es were shot down).
The F-35B for the USMC and UK has the same mission radius as a 2-tank F-16C or better, and it has the least amount of internal fuel of the 3 separate airframe designs (there isn’t 1 airframe design). F-35B carries 13,500lb, about the same amount of internal fuel as an F/A-18F, but only has one engine and mostly a clean aerodynamic profile for most common configurations.
The F-35A carries 18,250lb internal, while the F-35C for the Navy carries 19,200lb, while having very large wing and tailplane area.
Senior F-14 pilots who worked on F-14D development praise the JSF program, as do all the pilots who convert into it. The criticism isn’t from people close to JSF, but from people who don’t know what they’re looking at and have very limited frames of reference to it.
JSF is legit. I’ve called in CAS as well, so I know somewhat about that mission set and legacy profiles vs the modern profiles for weapons employment. Even the A-10C has gone to SDBs and LGBs as primary weapons, superseding the AGM-65G and CBUs from the A-10A profiles. There is no reason for the down-on-the deck close target eyeball CAS profile nowadays with SDB. The whole re-attack requirement for A-X in the early 1970s is what really pushed the A-7D out, which should not have happened. A-7D had crazy legs better than any of the teen series, including the F-15E.
JSF-A and -C bring back the range/radius of the A-7D/E basically, but with better payload and the ability to do A2A better than the Raptor in many ways (IR spectrum sensor fusing with RF).
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@Fng_1975 You'll find National Interest isn't a reputable source for information on any of this, but one of the many ad revenue click-bait sites.
With the Super Hornet, Fleet Air Defense sortie generation increased over the Tomcat and with Block II SH with the AESA Radars and JTIDS, the detection ranges and coverage smokes the APG-71 & AWG-9 easily. F-14D doesn't compare well to a Block II Super Hornet in that regard, especially with ATFLIR slaved to the AESA.
Regarding CAS with JSF: F-35s can PID from over the horizon in bad weather at night better than A-10 can do in clear wx on top of you, and PID both Blue and enemy forces in ways that really push more into what was traditionally spyplane and ELINT aircraft territory.
The resolution of the early Radar Ground Mapping TGT mode was good enough to count windows on buildings at 80 nautical miles, which it fuses with the zoomable EOTS FLIR in the nose. At certain very far distances, they can read your IFF patches.
F-35s don't use the legacy omnidirectional data link network like previous gen fighters. They have adapted comms with it, but MADL is extreme narrow beam LPI, so it can't be intercepted between F-35s, and they can specifically direct who they're sending to in a high ECM environment.
A-10s have been involved in more Blue-on-Blue dating back to ODS, killed many US, UK, and Canadian forces in ODS, OEF, and OIF, all using visual approaches even against units with VS-17s clearly visible. I've seen the HUD footage with comms traffic. They threw PID out the window with buck fever, slaughtered guys in their APCs on multiple occasions, and stray rounds on danger close runs are high probability with a pilot with less than 1000hrs of experience. That's why A-10C has been focused on using Small Diameter Bomb, GBU-12, APKIWS, and GBU-31 vs the legacy weapons assortment.
If you talk with JTACS who have actually employed F-35s, the story is totally different than what "experts" have been saying about F-35 and CAS. They were shocked what the F-35 pilots could see and know around them, while not even being visible or heard from the ground.
You can't deceive the MADL networked fused picture from the AESA, EOTS, DAS, and RF sensor suite. You can't get anything in between 2 F-35s linked via the MADL, so now you have triangulation of over 30 different sensors covering the entire signature spectrum, 28 of those sensors being passive.
It forces CAS into a new generation of capability that's hard for legacy TACPs and JTACs to understand without a detailed capes briefing. It not only exceeds what is known or expected in a traditional 9 line approach, but opens up Electronic Warfare options that were typically provided by certain fixed wing platforms that are vulnerable to MANPADS and AAA.
In many cases, JSF can provide 10 digit coordinates to your organic fires assets and help manage the fight that way without needing to drop anything, while conducting exploitation of the extended threat forces order of battle and TGT their mobile nodes, tunnels, bunkers, Radios, vehicles, and nearby supporting forces.
They see and share things that make the EW, ELINT, and AWACS systems officers envious without even breaking squelch. It's a revolution in CAS as we know it.
As to airframes, they're all quite different, but share sensors and much of the propulsion to reduce costs from what was being proposed. If you look back at all the designs being explored during ASTOVL, then JAST, almost everyone had settled on the same basic fuselage configuration independently, with different variations in wings, canards, and tailplanes. The McDonnell Douglas fuselage/nose designs looked the same as Lockheed. There were dozens of these designs.
Merry Christmas to you too!
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@brrrtnerd2450 Every time a new weapons system or external store is introduced, it has to undergo a pretty lengthy series of tests starting from ground, and working all the way up to supersonic edge-of-envelope separation tests if it is jettisonable/launchable.
You never know how an attached load will behave until you actually test it. A big surprise for me was what they went through with AMRAAM testing on the F-14D.
I think it was fine in the tunnel/fuselage stations, but on the wing glove pylons, it created peculiar aerodynamic drag conditions that were unworkable according to a senior F-14D test pilot, so the F-14 is the only teen fighter that never got AIM-120. Even the AV-8B+ and Sea Harrier FA2s got AIM-120 integration.
I also find it interesting that the Viper is the only one of the 2 teens with wingtip rails that carries -120s there, while the Hornet and Super Hornet do not. They have so many options for AIM-120 carriage though, it doesn't matter.
Back to the XL. They never carried actual AIM-120s on it, but dummies painted white. AMRAAM was just barely in development and early testing then, after the recommendations from AIMVAL in the mid-late 1970s out at Nellis.
F-16XL could have made a very capable interceptor with supercruise and long duration with all that internal fuel, didn't need bags. It just needed more thrust.
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@Grebogoborp US major weapon systems that have fought against numerically-superior forces and prevailed overwhelmingly:
F-15C APG-63(V)1 AIM-7M AIM-9L
F-16C/D Blocks 25, 30, 40
F-15E APG-70 LANTIRN, GBU-series
F-111F with PAVE Tack and GBU-series
F-4G with HARM
EF-111A
F-111A
F/A-18C
A-6E
EA-6B
M1A1 Abrams MBT
M2A2 Bradley IFV
Iraq had 768 Tactical Combat Aircraft, which exceeded the combined allied air power assets deployed to Desert Shield and Storm.
Iraqi Air Force was decimated within days. In the armored warfare tank battles, the M2A2s and M1A1s humiliated the Iraqi tanks, self-propelled howitzers, and BMPs.
Every single one of the above systems has been replaced, retired, or upgraded with greater capabilities.
If we had F-35s for Desert Storm, the war would have been over within a few days, not 2 weeks.
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@quasimotto8653 It’s physically impossible to integrate the sensors, IPP, internal weapons bays, and VLO features into any 4th Gen platform.
The entire mold line and bulkheads all have to change for starters, which means a completely-new airframe design. At that point, you’re back into the design cycle that resulted in F-35.
There’s no place for DAS, MADL, and EOTS on the Viper. These technologies were tested on the AFTI F-16 at Edwards, which is the coolest F-16 you will ever see.
They put LANTIRN pods in the LEX roots so you wouldn’t have left or right blanking of the pilot’s FOV when trying to lase or observe a ground TGT with the FLIR. That’s more expensive than going the EOTS route, since EOTS is centerline under the nose.
The Flight Control System in the F-35s are actually more simple than in the Viper since they have independent ElectroHydrostatic Actuators (EHAs), with their own self-contained hydraulic fluid that doesn’t need to be piped under pressure to them from the central hydraulic reservoir and pumps.
This makes safety and maintenance so much better than the Viper, and they’re not fly-by-wire, but fly-by-light.
On the Viper, if replacing an actuator assembly, you have to bleed the hydraulics, disconnect the FBW system, disconnect the hydraulic line, unbolt the fasteners, install the new unit, fasten, reconnect the FBW, reconnect the hydraulic line, re-fill the hydraulic reservoir, pressure up the system and measure if it is too full or not full enough, and you have to manually index the actuator position with the control surface to make sure they’re tracking correctly with each other and the DFLCS position cues.
With the EHAs in F-35, you disconnect the fiber optic line, remove the fasteners, pull the assembly, install the replacement EHA, reconnect the fiber-optic line, the system automatically indexes the actuator to the control surface position and registers the position with the DFLCS....done.
Maintainers complain that it basically maintains itself.
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YF-23 cracked several windscreens in supersonic tests, so it never exceeded Mach 1.82 if I recall the graphs correctly.
It also had problems with the intakes and boundary layer control systems at supersonic speeds.
It also had dual actuators laid sideways for each control surface so they could keep the thickness of the wings as thin as possible for VLO, but added mechanical complexity to the FLCS.
It still didn't have a solution for its weapons bay storage and ejection racks, and couldn't carry as many weapons as the YF-22.
All of these issues represented serious cost risks to the whole program, so even though it met the requirements, it was a much riskier option from a company that had already demonstrated massive cost overruns with the B-2A in production and delivery to USAF.
The YF-22 PAV-1 (GE YF-120L motors) was the only ATF prototype that exceeded Mach 2. They already had weapons bay solutions for AIM-9 & AIM-120 with demonstrated separation capability, and had an excellent bowless canopy with all-around view.
The one area the YF-22 failed was weight. It was too heavy for the desired 1.2 T/W ratio on take-off, so engine performance increased to 35,000lbs per in production.
As a result, the F-22A has monstrous T/W ratio and excess thrust throughout the regime.
If the YF-23 had gone onto the F-23A, it was going to grow even more in length to accommodate another forward weapons bay and still not have the weapons load that the F-22A has.
There were aspects of the YF-23 test pole model that had better VLO, but others on the YF-22 test pole that were better, especially looking at serpentine intake ductwork vs the YF-23's partially-exposed cold stage turbofan inlet guide vanes from lower frontal-oblique angles.
Best thing going for the YF-23 was combat radius/range.
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If you look at the average life of carrier aviation jet platforms, the F-14 series had a nice long run of 32 years, which was pretty normal compared to the F-4B/J/N, A-4, A-6, A-7A/E, and even the F/A-18A-D. All the A model airframes were trashed/timing out by the 1990s. The flight control system problems still remained in the D until it dealt with them with the DLFCS upgrade, but the mechanical architecture still had all the same issues.
Wing sweep mechanism box was Titanium, and required electron beam welding. The Navy spent $369 million on development of a new engine for the F-14 in the early 1970s (1970-1973), the Pratt & Whitney F401-PW-400, which was an F100 variant to share commonality with USAF engines in the F-15 for better management from an industrial perspective. That engine never got put into the planned F-14B, and all that money was basically blown very early in the program, leaving the Tomcat with the temporary stop-gap TF30 engine from the F-111 program. The costs seem to have robbed the F-14 of additional upgrades that all the other teen fighters got.
AWG-9 was a nightmare too, with disconnection issues, tubes, antiquated display for the RIO that burned images into the screen, and the system suffered from lag and drag when offsetting for better angles at BVR.
F/A-18s regular out-performed F-14s even in the BVR fight, and that was before the Super Hornet. F/A-18 had a Radar that could look-down/shoot-down over land and sea, whereas AWG-9 only worked over the ocean (when it did work). There wasn’t enough processor memory to handle ocean and land background clutter when the F-14 and E-2 Hawkeye were developed. That changed in the mid-late 1970s with the solid state electronics and digital revolution, which hit at just the right time for the F-15, F-16, and F/A-18. F-14 just barely missed the boat on that one, and had its whole combat avionics architecture built on the AWG-9.
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@ericpotter4657 If they even delivered 75% of what was claimed with ASF-14/ST-21, it absolutely would have been an improved Fleet Air Defense and Multi-Role Strike platform with excellent range, payload, and endurance.
I still don't think they could have improved the maintainability enough to see significant increases in readiness rates though.
The Super Hornet with its far less complexity and even reduced control surface count compared to the legacy bug (no speed brake) still hasn't had a stellar FMC/MC rate, which is really a challenge with any carrier-based fighter.
I looked at FMC/MC rates from the 1970s-2000s and was disappointed by what I saw in NAVAIR compared to what was advertised in the 1980s.
The F-14 would require significant redesign for engine replacement for starters, taking into consideration maintenance crew procedures, access, reach, and touch points.
The Super Hornet uses a lot of composites and better design in this space compared with legacy, and still suffers pretty lackluster readiness rates, which the Navy now hides.
Ancillary systems go down all the time too. That F/A-18E that was used to shoot down the Syrian Su-22 had its ATFLIR fail during the mission, so he swung into a Defensive Counter-Air profile while the rest of the flight did their mission. That's why he ended up on the Su-22. His AIM-9X went off the rail and disappeared as well, which is likely a result of continued carrier ops beating up the guidance electronics.
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@markwalker3499 JSF production is over 716 airframes, which is more than Rafale, Typhoon, or Super Hornet and built in less time than any of those fleets. Will not be “a couple of trillion soon” since we haven’t even reached the initial acquisition costs of $251 Billion for 2,456 JSF-A/B/C for the 3 services. The worst-case forecasts from bean-counters in the Pentagon is $1.5 trillion by the year 2070 for all 3 variants, upgrades, and operations and maintenance costs over the life of the program. That averages $25 Billion per year from a $767 Billion defense budget, with that $25 Billion divided by 3 services, most of which will be USAF.
6th Gen is meant to integrate with JSF, using JSF data link architecture. They are also meant to replace top-end fighters in USAF and USN like the F-22A and Super Hornet, not in the same track for JSF series. JSF is superseding F-16C, F-117A, F/A-18A-D, AV-8B, EA-6B. There are always multiple fighter tracks in each service.
I know you don’t realize this, but F-15EXs cost more than F-35As by quite a bit, and cost more to operate. F-15EX at a minus with its relevant combat systems attached so it can reach a fraction of F-35 performance take it up to over $103 million per airframe/pods/EPAWSS minimum. The baseline stripped aircraft with no pylons, fuel tanks, FLIR sensors, EW system, or the new Legion IRST pod costs $87.7 million. When you add the CFTs, 12 specific pylons that attach to the CFTs, wing and centerline pylons, LAU rails, and ejector racks, the price goes up even more over $103 million.
That’s a non-deployable F-15 into the high-threat areas of the world, unless F-35s fly ahead of it and provide EW support. Wherever you got the idea that 10 or 12 F-15s cost what one F-35 does, the math is way off and flipped. You can buy 1 F-35A with its full weapons suite, spare parts, support, and still be less than an F-15EX with no weapons at all.
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@christoff124 Even the F-35C has dramatically-superior readiness rates and lower MMHPFH than any F-16.
F-16 MMHPFH range from 11-22hrs depending on type, airframe hours, and year.
F-35A has been 3.5-5.4hrs, which just has never been a thing. CPFH is much lower too, despite what all the legacy media sites claim.
Su-27s are maintenance hogs with very low availability, cannibilization for spares, twin engine, failure-prone mech-scanned Radar, garbage Russian electronics, stress fractures in the neck/fuselage bulkhead region due to drunken idiots over-stressing the airframe, already on Serial Modernization 3 to keep them barely relevant. Half of the Su-27SM and Su-27UB fleet isn't even worth upgrading according to internal Russian air force statements.
Su-35S is their latest operational 4.5 Gen fighter, already being shot down by themselves or Ukraine due to its huge RCS and lack of coherent IFF among Russian forces.
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@Globalscanningeyes So I've been in the developmental and operational world in this space since the 1970s, with decades spent at the USAF Flight Test Center and deployed abroad. We got used to taking GAO, Pentagon, and "watchdog" reports and just laughing at them, then realized that people that far out of touch are actually influencing or calling the shots on funding.
But here's a way any layman can understand how much you're being lied to.
In their first 10 years of operational service, here are the airframe loss and fatality rates for the following aircraft:
F-14: 73, 19
F-15: 54, 26
F-16: 143, 71
F/A-18: 97, 27
Harrier: 100, 20
A-10: 59, 26
That's 526 airframes with 189 fatalities.
F-35, all types:
F-35A: 4, 1
F-35B: 4, 0
F-35C: 1, 0
Only 1 person has died in operational service with F-35s, a Japanese Defense Forces pilot who seems to have had a physiological episode, then plunged into the sea from high altitude.
This type of safety record is unheard of in fast jets. Over 920 F-35s have been delivered to services all over the world.
Pilots who flew fighters before transitioning to F-35 absolutely love the engine, the controls, the flight control system, ease of flying, ease of landing, and the systems interface.
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@soulsphere9242 F-16 costs more than the F-35A, believe it or not. Just within the F-16’s first 10 years of service, we lost 143 of them, with 71 fatalities. Just for the early Blocks 1-25 airframes, that would be $7.82 billion today, not having gone through any upgrades like CCIP. Current operational F-16CMs have over $102 million sunk into each airframe. We’ve also never seen a comparison including all the ancillary systems that the F-16s need to execute their basic mission sets. That includes ECM pods, HARM Targeting Pods, LITENING FLIR/LST Pods, EPIDSU pylons, JHMCS, the sunk costs on older Block 40 LANTIRN NAV and FLIR pods, the SNIPER Pods that were between LANTIRN and LITENING, etc. FLIR pods alone cost $1.16-$3 million each, with about $54,000/year O&M costs for each. These costs don’t get reported or accounted for in both acquisition or O&M, so we’ve never seen a true and comprehensive cost/benefit analysis. The F-35A has been in USAF service since 2006, with only 1 crash after a former Mudhen driver tried to land one with the speed-hold left on at 202kts, bounced it off the runway and ejected. JADF crashed another one, pilot disoriented or incapacitated. We’ve never seen anything even remotely this safe. Safety saves airframes and lives, which are worth billions.
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@ericpotter4657 Did I say somewhere that they weren’t? I lived through the whole engine evolution and still remember the red and white painted Tomcat with the GE F101 DFE before the F-14A+ upgrade program.
Off the top of my head, F-14 engine development went like this:
Initial 18 production F-14As were to be equipped with interim TF30 1970-1972. This was bumped up to 30 airframes as the F401-PW-400 for the planned F-14B was delayed.
F-14B/F401-PW-400 received $369 million in early 1970s money for RDT&E, was cancelled due to similar problems with compressor stalls, AB unstarts, slow throttle response, and general problems that plagued the TF30, though it had significant improvement in thrust.
This left the fleet with the unwanted TF30. They used the same initial F-14B testbed from 1973 later in the early 1980s to test the F101 DFE motor, around the same time they put it in the F-16/DFE, but didn’t fund it.
It wasn’t until the late 1980s when they started doing the F-14A+ modernization program with the GE F110-GE-400. The F-14D came later with a totally new avionics suite based around the APG-71 (derived from the F-15E’s APG-70).
I still remember wondering why the Navy never acquired and funded the F-14B in 1981, and why it took so long to get a good motor in the Tomcat. In total, they spent hundreds of millions of dollars on engines that were never contract-awarded for mass production, which is crazy.
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@WembysTRexArms The US out-MiG'd the MiG-21 with the F-16. Every time the 2 have met, the MiG-21 went down in flaming scrap metal.
On top of that, the F-16 can do strike, anti-ship, SEAD, CAS, BVR, and night. MiG-21 is day, short range, within visual range fighter with 4 hardpoints, pilot can't see for squat, strafe rag.
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F-106 cruised at supersonic speed without burner. It could also break Mach 2 with external tanks at altitude, very slick jet.
A slick F-16C big mouth with a -229 will break Mach 1 without burner, but it can't do it in a combat configuration.
The main benefit of supercruise is with 4th Gen BVR metrics where you have mutual detection and awareness of each other, can start off at a higher energy state for weapons separation, then crank after launch to avoid incoming, while also reducing IR signature by not blasting reheat from side or rear aspect for the threat IRST to get a great non-radar track on you.
The problem with supercruise is that aerodynamic thermal loading of the leading edge surfaces of your aircraft also presents an excellent IRST long-range detection and track that isn't subject to EW/ECM, so you can slave the radar to the IRST and filter out ECM for an improved dual-spectrum track.
Supercruise is a two-edged sword that gives your BVRAAMs longer reach with reduced ToF to compress the WEZ timeline in your favor, but also increaes the detection and tracking range of the threat sensors against you, giving them an earlier separation timeline.
With F-22, they've been able to use it to reposition quickly while outside of threat sensor detection envelopes, but high subsonic is really where a lot of the fight seems to have settled.
F-35A dominates that space since it loves to fly at .95M, and has the most capable sensor suite of any modern "fighter".
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The A-10 was conceived and built as an armed escort for Airmobile units because of Vietnam, which I’ve been forced to consider was an ill-advised concept outside of SEA. They had A-1 Skyraiders that were perfectly capable of armed escort for rotary wing formations, but the A-1 didn’t have the payload to take out the emerging self-propelled AAA platforms like the ZSU-23-4 and tanks. The A-7D had that capability, but couldn’t re-attack with visual acquisition on its first pass like the A-1 could. So they basically wanted select features from the A-1 and A-7 combined into one, purposely handicapping its power so that it would be slow, while giving it more payload to be able to bust tanks with AGM-65s, drop CBUs on light vehicles and troops in the open, 500lb bombs on emplaced gun positions and relay stations and trucks, then use the 30mm gun once other ordnance was expended.
The A-10 was especially ill-suited for the European Theater of Operations with NATO, since it was a suicide mission into Soviet mobile IADS nets that were part of their armored regiments, made even more unsurvivable with the advent of SA-6 and double-digit SAMs. The A-7D was a much better for for the Fulda Gap. In ODS, the A-10 had to be grounded until strike aircraft could effect the D-SEAD mission set and clear out most of the AAA and SAMs, because they shot down or damaged so many A-10s in the first 2 weeks of the war. 20 of them were lost (7) or damaged (13) from Iraqi AAA and SAM fire from January 17 - February 27, 1991. It was still very effective once SEAD had been conducted, but the F-111F as just one example, killed more tanks than all A-10s combined in 1/4 the sorties flown by A-10s. F-111F with PAVE TACK Pod and LGBs was a brutal hunter of Iraqi tanks at night. Only 3 F-111Fs were hit by AAA, able to return safely to base each time, no losses. It was one of the most survivable platforms of the war.
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There is a tiny window of time where Putin has to invade before Finland’s F-35A Block 4 orders start delivering and get into operational status with the Finnish Air Force. Once Finland has enough of its order, any Russian invasion will be curb-stomped with blistering losses to their force structure in the Saint Petersburg Military District and any additional forces allocated for the invasion of Finland. The problem is that Russia has intelligence based on what it wants to see regarding Finland, not what the reality is. They don’t even understand or accept the events of the Winter War and Continuation War history, but instead have created their own version of the Russo-Finnish wars from 1939-1944 that have very little relationship to reality.
Either way, they see Finland as belonging to them, created by the Czar in 1809. Due to Finland’s tiny population, they assume it’s just a pushover to take, far less of a challenge than Ukraine. What they don’t understand is the Karelian Isthmus and how it channelizes any ground combat elements into a kill zone. There are no basing footprints from which to stage and successfully invade north of there, because there’s nothing but forest and lakes along most of the border, uninhabited on both sides.
Putin appears to be leaning on NATO members like Turkey and Hungary to delay Finland’s accession to NATO, in preparation for the invasion so that Article 5 can’t be implemented.
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@marsmotion DoD programs are some of the only ones that are audited and often by 3-4 different agencies. For example, you have the GAO, program oversight directors, SAR, and CBO. None of these entities report relevant or timely reports to Congress because it takes them 8 months to 1yr to collect and compile their data, which is outdated before they even organize it.
They also ignore the service data, which is accurate and relevant.
For example, in this video, Alex refers to the F-35 program forecasted total cost projection at $2 Trillion, which is rounded up from $1.7T, which is an exaggeration of $1.5T, which was a false projection up from $1.3T over the entire life of the program that nobody really knows how much it will cost.
In the DOT&E reports, if you read through them, they're using assumptions from the F-16 O&M to forecast F-35 O&M.
F-35A CPFH is far lower than advertised, and is dramatically-easier to maintain than F-16C/D, so the forecasts can't be accurate. Also requires fewer people to maintain, and doesn't have hydrazine HAZMAT requirements like the F-16 does.
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@seanbailey1901 The USAF has been trying to retire the A-10 for decades because it's a single mission set platform that can't get to the fight very quickly, and isn't survivable even in a 1970s SAM/AAA threat environment.
It had to be grounded in Desert Storm because so many were shot down or hit by SAMs and AAA.
The billions we've spent on the A-10 could have gone towards more capable, survivable airframes, but guys like John McCain intervened and kept the A-10 alive.
I like the A-10, but it just is a limited asset with limited survivability and limited force projection in a timely manner, for a lot of organizational costs in training and manning that would be better served in a multirole platform.
A mix of F-16Cs and F-16XLs would have been better, with A-10 money going to F-16XLs. XL has way more station time, range, and payload for CAS, and could still swing to deep strike, hit multiple TGT sets on a single sortie, and do A2A.
The A-10 was purposely handicapped in speed so it could fly armed escort for airmobile ops. The AH-64 Apache has had that covered since the 1980s, so the A-10's niche roll was filled.
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No, JF-17 does not have GaN TRM AESA, nor do any of China’s fighters. China can’t even make legacy TRMs with the density that the US does. They don’t have the machines, engineers, technicians, experience, or tooling to do it. That’s why Chinese fighter Radomes are huge. Limited TRM density = larger TRMs and antennae arrays, more weight, bigger radome, bigger nose, and bigger aircraft as a result.
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@bigstaceinc ASTOVL started in 1983, kicked-off by UK approaching USMC and USAF, then DARPA got onboard to develop the next generation STOVL fighter that would also be capable of supersonic flight, but with much longer combat radius and heavier payload than a Harrier.
JSF-A came from CALF. JSF-C came from A/F-X. There were multiple technology paths being developed by the US and UK National laboratories, Flight Test Centers, and contractors that all existed or were in development before any JSF demonstrator design was finalized and down-selected in the 1990s. Each JSF airframe was able to be engineered and developed for each specific take off and landing scenario, and optimized for performance. The main performance requirement was combat radius, followed by kinematics to match or exceed the F-16 and F/A-18 in combat configurations, without need for any ancillary sensors to be attached, but integrated into the airframes instead.
Baselining the Naval CATOBAR variant would not have been ideal for the USAF for several reasons, and would be a non-starter for the STOVL airframe.
The way they set up the JSF program variants was ideal really. F-35C was last to enter IOC because they have the smallest orders for airframes of all the JSF variants. A and B get priority, with the B models a very distant 2nd from the As. 760 JSF airframes with engines have been delivered to-date, with most of them A models.
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@bernieeod57 F/A-18 was meant to replace the A-7E, A-4M, OA-4M, and F-4N. USN and USMC had too many airframe types with legacy turbojet engines and outdates Radars, electronics, and failure-prone systems, lack of easy access maintenance panels, and the F-4 had limited combat radius with a 2 crew pipeline that needed to be populated cyclically. Solid state electronics allowed both the A-7E and F-4N to be replaced with a single crew multirole fighter with better availability rates.
F/A-18C/D were not a whole new plane. They were structurally-upgraded F/A-18A/Bs with improvements to avionics. I agree that the A/B models were no production-ready, and resulted in many accidents and fatalities. I would describe them a dismal failure though, more like prototypes that were allowed to go into production without being even ready for safe landing. The MLG often decoupled from the alignment bars, causing them to cartwheel down the runway or collapse on the flight deck.
Super Hornets were maybe 66% new airframes compared to the C/D.
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@pogo1140 Your math will be way off when basing strike and armed reconnaissance taskings on AV-8 payload, which is anemic. JSF payload even on the B model is world-class. You can keep an F-35B slick if you want to and still take 8 precision-guided Air-to-surface weapons into the fight, along with 4 AAMs. The AV-8B typically only has 2-3 hard points available for Air-to-Surface weapons, though it can be configured a number of ways. Because it is so small with little wings, and has significant maximum weight restrictions for vertical landing, it has a very limited operational payload.
Additionally, the average weapon weight is significantly higher for the A2S munitions carried by F-35Bs, as is the count. F-35B can also carry the 1000lb JDAM internally, which opens up the mission set taskings for the MEU. There are massive cultural changes going on within USMC and because they are a smaller force, they have adapted to and harnessed JSF faster than most other operators.
1 F-35B can configure several ways:
2x AIM-9X
2x AIM-120
8x SDB
or
2x AIM-9X
2xAIM-120
4x SDB
1x GBU-12 or GBU-32, or GBU-35
or any of the above plus
4x GBU-12
or 4x APKWS rocket pods
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@xyzaero The terminology gets confused by people in the absence of a baseline understanding of the applied physics and math.
VLO/Stealth = Very Low Observables, extremely hard to detect in RF and IR spectrums
LO = Reduced signature to take some of the edge off, but is still easily detected after that. Su-35 departs from the Su-27 and Su-30 by using more composites in the airframe, as composites are RF permeable, like all fighter radomes. The problem for the Su-35 is what’s underneath those composites is highly-reflective, and it has no IR signature reduction around the engine cowlings, which are Titanium in the white.
Typhoon, Rafale, and Super Hornet use some LO features, mainly the serpentine duct paths from the intakes to the engines, to help reduce or prevent RF NCTR Radar PID modes by hiding the cold fan stage of the motors from direct RF Line of Sight.
SH also uses quite a bit of RAM in strategic locations to help reducer signature and evade NCTR features.
B-1B has a lot of LO features incorporated into it, with a frontal RCS that is smaller than an F-16’s.
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@edthompson9569 The differences in the jet fighter generations are very clear and easy to contrast if you study the technologies.
Propulsion, structures, avionics, sensors, man-machine interface, weapons employment, FLCS, and performance all show how different they are.
Sit in the cockpit of an F-86, F-100, F-4, F-16, and F-35 and then say generations are just marketing terms.
Look at the specs of the propulsion for each of those aircraft and talk about marketing.
Look at the structures, manufacturing processes, flight control systems, sensors, and weapons.
There are demonstrable differences in each that represent collective generational technology sets that only a fool would ignore.
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@chrislong3938 The costs we have sunk into Late Block Vipers via CCIP I & II are far more than initial acquisition/unit flyaway costs. Total sunk costs in acquisition and CCIP for Block 40s, 50s, & 52s puts the unit cost well above $100m for each jet. CCIP takes at least 90 days, lots of man hours, millions in new systems, overhauled engine, new Radar, new cockpit, new wiring harnesses, AIFF, JHMCS sensors and wiring, cold-working any bulkheads that need it, new landing gear, new canopy, etc.
Making them into an F-16CM+ with full HARM Targeting and position locator antennae is a very involved process.
Totally different birds than how they rolled off the line from 1987-2005.
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@seantu1496 F-16XL was not as maneuverable and had a significantly reduced T/W ratio. Its level flight performance and handling was excellent though, and it had a superior combat radius to the F-15 even with CFTs. I was there for the development of the F-16 from the 1970s-early 1990s at Edwards. F-16XL really needed a step up in propulsion at a time when they were decreasing the max thrust of the P&W F100 motors, along with some major improvements to cut down on flame-outs, compressor stalls, and catastrophic failures. Original F100-PW-200 in the Viper had 23,900lb of thrust in burner, but suffered from many stalls, hard starts, and failures so they really needed an Improved engine and got it in the late 1980s. Even with the F110 GE motor in the F-16XL, it needed more power, but was better. All that internal fuel capacity added a lot of weight, which was more useful for how the USAF actually employed the F-16 as a strike aircraft.
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@ericpotter4657 The Navy was faced with several different paths moving forward after the failure of the A-12 program (almost $2 billion thrown down the drain with that). The A-6E had already proven to not be survivable in ODS and airframes were timing out anyway, so A-6E would be last of the subsonic medium attack capability in the Carrier Air Wing. That created a big void in strike capability looking at payload and range, plus the various mission sets A-6Es could perform including SEAD with the HARM.
The more expanded multirole versions of the F-14 like ASF-14 and ST-21 were one path to consider. Pros were the possibilities in payload, range, improved avionics, and multi-mission set wing-role options with more clean sheet structural/propulsion/electronics evolutions of the Tomcat. Cons were 1) risks associated with an airframe design whose complexity never allowed it to realize a consistent mission readiness rate much above 60% throughout its career, 2) Costs spiraling away from any initial projections, which were already high, 3) Continual discoveries of systemic problems with F-14 structures even into the late 1990s/early 2000s, 4) The discovery that the AIM-120 required a new solution to the wing glove pylons due to aerodynamic problems with separation and roll, 5) Requirement for a 2 crew platform demand on the training pipeline, and 6) the incompatibility with the design yielding to application of Low Observables.
Another option for NAVAIR was to adopt an enlarged Hornet with bigger motors, taking advantage of the development of the A-12 engines and making them afterburning, increasing the combat radius to match the F-14’s, adding 2 more weapons stations for a total of 13, acquiring a force mix of mostly single seat E models, but with enough 2-seat F models to handle the A-FAC mission and some other more involved strike and SEAD mission sets where a WSO would be helpful, and incorporating some low observables into the airframe design, specifically with the intakes and serpentine airflow geometry to hide the inlet guide vanes and fans from line of sight RF reflectivity.
While the maintainability of the Baby Hornet fleet was overstated initially, it was still quite superior to the Tomcat, which helped increase readiness rates of the air wing while afloat, with far less MMHPFH exerted by Hornet wrenchers. It also had a more reliable avionics suite that used solid state/digital revolution along with the moving map display, and could genuinely flip from A2G to A2A while headed to prosecute strike missions, and had Non Cooperative Target Recognition capability that the F-14 didn’t have. Especially after Desert Storm, the tables flipped from all the ridicule that Hornets had received from the Tomcat community for "not being real fighter pilots", etc., to Tomcat guys eating crow for not getting any fighter kills in the most target rick environment since Vietnam (far more fighters than Vietnam has or ever will have).
From the big picture, NAVAIR looked at these 2 paths and saw a lot of risks and challenges with the ASF-14/ST-21/Super Dooper Tomcat, vs less risk with the Super Hornet, and went with the Super Hornet. The acquisition costs alone for any Super Duper Cat were a known larger quantity than Super Hornet for sure, as was the training pipeline for an all 2-man crew platform. In secret, the US Navy had already been working with Royal Navy, USAF, DARPA, and USMC on a next generation stealth platform anyway, which would benefit from all the RDT&E spent on A-12 and ATF, so AST-14/ST-21 might have threatened that program as well. Imagine trying to acquire JSF-C right now while also supporting a Super Duper Tomcat fleet. The Navy is going to be talking more about how they wish they had more F-35Cs than Super Hornets after this current deployment, and they already announced a 20% reduction in upgrades from Block II Super Hornets into Block IIIs.
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@garydobbs5159 F-35 pilots refer to F-22s as "legacy 5th Gen" because the F-35 AESA, Stealth, engine, cockpit, MADL data link, IR sensors, central brain, FLCS, are better than what's in the F-22. The combat-coded Raptors are getting upgrades to get them more on par with F-35s in those spaces, but there are some things that will just never be as good.
Modern fighter designs dating back generations even have used lifting bodies combined with wings for total lift. A single engine F-35A will take off faster than a twin-engine F-15C, and the F-15 has all kinds of low wing loading plus lifting body.
Most of what you hear from amateurs running their mouths about aviation can be ignored. They simply don't know what they're talking about.
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@WembysTRexArms There is a 360° passive RF sensor network fused with the 360° IR DAS, so it does have a level of surround situational awareness that doesn't exist on other fighters.
The RAM is not compromised from flying within its performance regime, including supersonic. There were 2 of the 6 original developmental F-35s, 1 F-35B and 1 F-35C that exhibited some slightly higher temps in the h-stabs that concerned engineers because of embedded antennae in those structures.
They tried duplicating the problem on the other birds with extended supersonic runs, dives, and maximum Mach value between 2 tankers up and down the East coast, and never saw those temps in those structures again.
The production F-35s after that didn't even use the same materials in the rear tailplanes, so the whole thing was a fluke. That was over 10 years ago, never duplicated.
The F-35 series doesn't rely on RAM paint like other VLO designs. The paint is mostly IR spectrum camouflage. The physical structure of the 3-later skin has carbon nanotubes with wide spectrum RF energy defeating characteristics.
The common maintenance access points have seam covers that don't require removal of and reapplication of RAM paint or treatments.
There are periodic inspection and mx points like around the wingtip nav lights that have RAM tape covering them that does need to be scraped and reapplied, but they aren't day-to-day squadron-level operations.
As a result, F-35A has less than half the mx hours of a stripped, new F-16. It's just a vastly-superior aircraft from a mx perspective, and former F-16 wrenchers have said as much repeatedly.
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@WembysTRexArms Hardened shelters you mean. Only a few get in, while they deal with incoming headed their way too, and every Chicom-flagged coffin floating in the South China Sea starts eating stealth anti-ship missiles and submarine-launched weapons. Meanwhile, USMC and US Navy start casting their votes, outside of Chicom missile ranges as well, while the anti-satellite program uncorks.
Any oil tanker headed to China gets orders to go ahead and hold up just a bit, or find another port to dock in away from the conflict zone. Remember that 85% of China's energy comes from the Persian Gulf.
China is watching how a bare bones army in Ukraine with none of the real high-capability US systems is keeping Russia at bay in the land, air, and sea.
Now imagine Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, who have been building their defenses for the last 70 years, combined with US and Australia.
The last thing China can afford is launching missiles at US bases in the Pacific. It would see such a dramatic loss in their combat power overnight, and cause massive humiliation for Xi and the CCP.
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Anyone who refers to the Century Series as a model to emulate now, clearly has no freaking clue what the Century Series was. Each design never really reached its intended potential, and several of them served their ultimate purpose as QF-1xx target drones for AIM-120s.
F-101A was meant to be a Strategic Air Command supersonic escort fighter. Due to transcontinental capability of bombers, that was ill-conceived, so they made the F-101B interceptor variant, and RF-101B tactical recon variant.
F-102 was meant to be a higher supersonic interceptor. Couldn't reach much more than Mach 1.2 clean, was put into Air National Guard service quickly.
F-104 was never asked for by USAF, and instead served as an interceptor or multirole fighter among NATO partners. USAF literally had no use for it outside of flight sciences and NASA test bed work at Edwards AFB.
F-105 was meant to be a supersonic tactical nuclear strike fighter. Early variants were structurally unsound, broke apart in-air, so it had to be upgraded and was most produced in the F-105D model. This was probably the most successful of the century series, but it had all sorts of problems, was shot down in Vietnam repeatedly, until being replaced largely by the F-4 and F-111.
F-106 was what the F-102 was meant to be, but was limited to Air Defense Command as a Mach 2 interceptor. This video incorrectly showed a Mirage in place of the F-106.
The real success story of that era around the Century Series was the F-4 Phantom II, which wasn't a Century series at all, but initially a US Navy fleet defense interceptor.
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@xyzaero Demonstrating carriage and separation does not equal multirole. You have to work out the systems, implement the profiles into weapons manuals, and train on those in order to be truly multirole.
Grey Eagles and F-14A never had that. F-14A didn't even have the AIM-54A working throughout the 1970s, and was hit & miss in the early-to-mid 1980s until the bugs were ironed out and the -54C finally got into the fleet.
There's only so much money for things. With F-14A, they burned $369m on the F401 engines in the 1970s, which were never produced. That was supposed to be the production motor for the F-14B, with only a handful of initial F-14A LRIP birds as stop gaps.
After that fiasco, Tomcat money was allocated to developing the TF30-P-412A into the P-414A. They were hurting on RWR and other systems money and didn't get ALR-67 until much later, and were stuck with an old analog AWG-9 Radar that couldn't look-down/shoot-down over land.
Same with AIM-7F integration from AIM-7E2, then AIM-7M and AIM-9L. These aren't plug-and-play, but require a lot of testing and systems integration, live fire weapons testing on TGT drones, and weapons manual additions, as well as weapons school syllabus updates.
With F-15, the money went for Radar upgrades when we did Programmable Digital Signals Processor that went into F-15C, plus its EW systems were sucking up funds to get that side working better.
We also had problems with the F100-PW-100 motors. Nozzle sections ripped off at high supersonic speeds, and it suffered compressor stalls, AB unstarts, and blades letting go.
All the money going into F-14A and F-15A-D upgrades was focused on propulsion, A2A Radar, A2A weapons, and EW equipment. None of it was going towards A2G.
The only funded additional role for Tomcats was for select F-14As to become TARPS birds as we retired the RA-5C Vigilante.
The multirole F-15E was and is treated as a separate program, though we did have both F-15C/Ds and F-15Es on the CTF at Edwards. There was cross-pollination in A2A modes between APG-63, APG-70, and APG-71, but Grey Eagles never got any of the A2G capes from the APG-70 because it wasn't part of Grey Eagle community mission set allocation or training.
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