Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Ed Nash's Military Matters"
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2:28 Critics of the aircraft: The “bells and whistles” integrated into the JSF series are not nice-to-have extras for Canada, they are need-to-have capabilities in the modern air combat mission sets, whether they be NORAD CAP or NATO expeditionary Joint Air Component Forces missions. They are far more affordable in JSF as well, since legacy and growingly-obsolete counterparts are bolted-onto 4th Gen fighters in several key areas, ECM and FLIR being the biggest ones.
Critics don’t have the historical knowledge from which to view this whole subject, because most of them never lived through the development of the teen series and 4.5 Gen fighters. They are painfully-ignorant when it comes to actual acquisition and Operations & Maintenance costs on the legacy aircraft. They still accept major headlines as valid sources of information on an extremely complex subject that none of the major corporate presstitute brothel excrement spigots have even the remotest grasp of.
One of the most glaring examples of this is in acquisition and O&M costs. Right now, the F-35A and even the B an C models are more affordable than legacy designs. The Gripen E/F, Super Hornet Block 3, Dassault Rafale F3R and F4, and Eurofighter Typhoon are all more expensive to acquire, and are comparable or more expensive to operate and maintain...not including their required ancillary systems.
The presstitutes have droned on about how expensive F-35s are, when they seem to have totally ignored inflation and the relative costs of other fighters on the market, even after the Swiss and Finnish evaluations clearly stated how much more affordable the F-35A is compared to all of the competitors, some of which were twice the price.
The Gripen E/F is really a scandalous example of how badly the press has been about costs. It’s the least-capable fighter of them all in the West, with a much higher Unit Flyaway and Unit Program Cost compared to even the future priced F-35A Block 4. The Finns had so much money left over for weapons, that they’re staging their acquisition of weapons to the future when newer ones will be in-production.
They did detailed O&M analyses against Norwegian, Dutch, and US F-35A costs and found that there weren’t any significant differences between all of the H-X competitors that made it to the finalist stage. Swiss came to the same understanding with their detailed accounting methods. Meanwhile, the idiots in the Pentagon and press talk about crazy CPFH that don’t match up anywhere in the DoD Comptroller’s published budget, and are 1/3 of what the Norwegians Air Logistics Chief says they are seeing.
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@jamesunger6892 We were at Edwards AFB during the development of the F-5G/F-20A and I studied it quite closely. F-20A never had the weapons station count or payload of any F-16. F-16A had 9 hardpoints with higher weight allowances for stations 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9. F-20A had 7 stations with significant limits. If you carried AIM-7s on the F-20, weather conditions would result in fin strikes on the runway due to the instability of the roll axis with certain crosswinds. AIM-7 was a non-starter for that reason, as it would FOD a runway for every recovery in-practice without a perfect wings-level touchdown. F-20A also only had 1/3 the combat radius of an F-16A, even with the F-16 carrying more payload.
Fire Control Radar on the F-20A was a sad joke in terms of detection and tracking ranges. The avionics were great, but Radar antennae size was constrained by the tiny radome size, even with Northrop moving the bulkhead back to buy more radome volume.
Then there was the lack of rear visibility and limited thrust-to-weight ratio, even though it significantly improved on the F-5E’s anemic T/W.
F-16C was under development at the time and had USAF Mil-Std INS.
F-20 was dead on arrival. I liked the aircraft a lot, but wasn’t aware of all its limits until I saw the numbers.
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@MrClarkM If you look at the Brazilian contract, the Unit Program Cost was $155.5 million for Gripen E/F, which includes spares, weapons, training, support, pylons, external tanks, simulators, etc.
There's literally no way you get a $60 million unit flyaway from $155.5 million Unit Program.
If you look at the Gripen C/D contract for 24 aircraft at $1.8 Billion in 2002 to Hungary (cancelled, modified into a lease, bribery scandal involved), that puts us at $75 million per in 2002 dollars for a much less complex airframe. That would be $115.88 million today Unit Program Cost for Gripen C/D, not Gripen E/F.
Switzerland already said in 2015 the Gripen NG was $85 million unit flyaway. That was 6+ years ago. That would be $99.68 million unit flyaway today for the proposed Gripen NG (didn't exist).
We normally see roughly 75/25 ratios of Unit Flyaway to Unit Program, not always, but generally speaking.
I've been tracking defense acquisitions and FMS since the mid 1980s, but I'm always open to more valid info.
Right now in the Canadian proposals, the Gripen E/F bid is the most expensive of the 2, at $19 billion for 88 airframes. Do the math on that Unit Program Cost. That's like a Typhoon or Rafale.
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@MrClarkM Unless the Canadian Parliament wants to come out and say...
"Fellow citizens, we've chosen the more expensive, lowest-capability, step-down from current Hornet capability, underpowered Gripen E, which just lost 2 competitions in Europe and turning down the most affordable, highest-capability, biggest industrial share that we're already participating in F-35."
Even the most brain-dead anti-defense politician won't want to spend more for less.
RCAF will tell them the Gripen E is a major step down in several ways from the Hornets (payload, Radar, take-off distance, climb rate).
RCAF leadership already knows what's in JSF and wants to adopt it and stop delaying the inevitable.
The political games have been a smokescreen to mislead the public.
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@howardbartlett3026 I haven’t heard any of those former Navy FWS instructors say they wish the Navy had purchased the 145nm radius F-20 vs the 500nm F-16N. They even used the weaker, older APG-66 from the F-16A in the F-16N. F-20A didn’t have anywhere near as big of a Radar with the APG-67. I remember all that developmental work and advertised capabilities of the Tigershark well. F-20A would not have been a good platform to replicate Su-27 and MiG-29 in BVR, let alone WVR.
F-20A and F-16 were never designed for CAS, so I’m not sure why that would come up, but the F-20A especially has no legs from which to conduct CAS. I have personally called in F-16Cs and A-10As for CAS, but the B-1B and F-15E are better at it because they have legs and payload, with multiple crew to work the CAS call, gain SA, and maintain comms with Troops In Contact. Yes, F-16 is a 2-pass platform normally. One initial pass for gaining TGT and Blue Force locations, 2nd pass for weapons employment, depending on proximity to their basing to aerial refueler.
A-10s aren’t survivable in most theaters in the world, so their usefulness as a CAS platform is limited to a permissive environment, which means you can’t really use them in the Air Tasking Order other than standby QRF.
Venezuelan F-16A/Bs got left way behind technologically. F-16C Block 30 and up absolutely have BVR capabilities in excess of any F-5E/F. APG-68(V)8/9 is a very capable FCR, being replaced by SABR AESA radars currently.
Even before that, the APG-68/AIM-120 combo was quite formidable in BVR, as demonstrated live against the solid state electronics-equipped MiG-25PD, Serbian MiG-29As, MiG-23BNs, Su-24s, etc. F-16C has added 10 A2A kills in the past 10 years, much of which was with AIM-120.
The big problem with the F-20’s radome size is that we already had and were developing missiles that out-WEZ’d the APG-67, namely the AIM-7M and AIM-120. AIM-7M was an interim solution to the AIMVAL problems identified with lightweight fighters achieving mutual kills against the F-14A and F-15A in the 1970s out at Nellis.
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@Xenomorphine F-22 cancellation was purely treasonous, not economic. They spent the money we should have done for Raptors on MRAP vehicles, without even planning for MRAP spare parts. That gave the WH and SECDEF Gates the cover to make it look like they were taking care of troops, when it fact they were delivering a death blow to the fighter replacement for the aging F-15Cs. I’ve spoken with people in back channels who worked with Gates throughout his career, and they always suspected him of being an KGB asset back during the Cold War. Russia and China were feeling intense heat from the F-22 proposed acquisition numbers because it would mean the US has the ability to erase their air forces and there wasn’t anything they could do about it.
There were going to be over 200 Raptors in Europe, and over 200 in the Pacific, with Coastal US Wings on the Atlantic and Pacific bases able to plus-up the PACAF and PACEUR units as part of the JRDF if needed, same way we postured the F-15C units. The proposed Raptor fleet would have given theater commanders and unprecedented strategic capability of being able to conduct offensive fighter sweep operations without peer. They also would have provided theater commanders with Defensive Counter-Air options that could intervene in smaller-scale assaults on regional nations, eliminating any Russian threat air as if it were a sport.
Russia leaned hard on their old assets who were in high positions of influence in US DoD and the WH, along with the Chinese, while both acquired as much technical data as possible for their own domestic programs. The Chinese rubbed this in Gates’ face when he visited to have talks after he betrayed the US, flying the J-20 officially for the first time during his visit. Russia flew the T-50/PAK-FA prototype around that same time as well. Gates was on record of saying we don’t need Raptors to bomb the Taliban and that Russia and China didn’t have anything like it. They played the traitor like a fiddle and made a mockery of his usefulness to them.
The Bush and Obama White Houses were in-on this whole treasonous affair, and multiple USAF Chiefs of Staff sacrificed their careers trying to save the F-22 so they could get it int Full Rate Production where the unit costs would have dropped down to $93.2 million with an open assembly line. Killing it bought time for China and Russia to try to catch up, which they have done their best attempts to do with J-20 and Su-57.
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@laughingdaffodils5450 You don’t want to close within visual range of any legacy or modern fighter equipped with Helmet-Cued HOBS missiles, and you won’t really get that chance against a fairly-updated 4th Gen anyway with the current state of AESA Fire Control Radars and BVR missiles. If you’re in a 4.5 Gen fighter, you will really struggle to get first-look against the Su-57 if they continue to make strides in the RAM theft/development of US tech. The production Su-57s are looking much cleaner than the prototypes. They will have superior first-look, first-shoot against unsuspecting airborne targets if they get their BVRAAM act together, which has been delayed even since the end of the Soviet times.
F-35s actually can carry plenty of AAMs. Block 3 F-35As configured for A2A carry 6 AAMs, 2 AIM-9X Bock 2+ missiles and 4 AIM-120D-3 BVRAAMs. Pk from F-35 delivered missiles is much higher than pk from 4th Gen fighters due to unobserved/undetected releases from unfair No Escape Zone parameters. The stowed kill count of an F-35A Block 3 is therefore in practice higher than the stowed kill count of an F-16 or F/A-18 in common configurations.
F-16s and Hornets typically only carry 4 AAMs while the other stations are occupied with FLIR pods, ECM pods, External Fuel Tanks, leaving only 2 stations for their relevant strike missions.
F-35s carry that same combat load internally, without having to use any stations for ECM or FLIR pods, leaving all of the weapons stations open for weapons. Even with an internal load, they carry a more relevant, more lethal and effective load, along with more internal fuel than the combined internal and external fuel of a Viper or Hornet.
In BVR exercises between AESA-equipped F-15Cs vs new pilots in F-35As out in PACOM, the F-35s humiliated the F-15C folks in their core mission set because they had no SA the whole time.
F-35A is cheaper to operate than any other fighter in USAF inventory. F-16C airframe costs less, but once you add the LITENING FLIR, ECM Pod, HARM TGT Pod, the F-16CM is actually more expensive and it has a higher break rate of 10% (the lowest of any USAF fighter until F-35A). F-35A break rate is 6%, which is unprecedented. F-35A CPFH dropped about $4000 from 2020-2021, putting it into the $13,000 range. F-22A went from $44,000 to $50,000 during the same timeframe since they have very limited airframes and a closed production line.
F-15C, F-15D, F-15E all cost more to operate and maintain, not including ancillary podded systems, which are not reported openly.
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@chm985 Nobody is entitled to their own set of facts. This is a huge and continuous problem with kids who were raised in the 1990s-2000s. Everyone got positive feedback for simply breathing and showing up. Reality doesn’t work that way, and the Gripen is especially an example of this.
It embodies the entitlement mentality quite succinctly. People think that because a small country who makes a fighter is on equal footing somehow with nations that have been building higher-capability fighters for generations, where those fighters have been designed based off many decades of lessons-learned in combat and forward-deployed theaters.
The Gripen doesn’t benefit from the same experience channels directly because nobody cares if it can perform, since Sweden doesn’t normally participate in allied air component forces. The Swedish Parliament didn’t care either, other than a side show jobs program for Saab, so they restricted Saab in what they could build by benchmarking it to FMS (Foreign Military Sales).
Saab couldn’t find a good engine source in a higher thrust class (the Viggen had the most powerful fighter engine until the US IPE program, but it wasn’t optimized for high AOA reliable performance and would compressor stagnate). This left Saab with the option of buying the GE F404 from the US, which was designed from the outset to be 2 engines powering the F/A-18, not a single engine powering a LWF.
That constraint really doomed the Gripen from the start to being a low-capability fighter, with a low payload, poor Thrust/Weight ratio, poor climb rate, and long take-off roll, going backwards from the 4th Gen fighters-all of which could take off from extremely short distances and climb into the vertical with unprecedented authority.
There doesn’t need to be any emotion associated with these facts. They just are what they are. Denial is the first stage of coping with reality, and accepting the fact that the Gripen marketing has ignored these facts while promoting capabilities that aren’t there should be recognized and called out.
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@laughingdaffodils5450 F/A-18 Stations:
AIM-9X, A2G, 330gal EFT, R Cheek-BVRAAM, centerline-ECM or ATFLIR, L cheek-BVRAAM, 330gal EFT, A2G, AIM-9X
15,000lbs total fuel
F-16:
1-BVRAAM, 2-AIM-9X, 3-A2G, 4-370gal EFT, 5R-FLIR, 5-ECM, 5L-HARM TGT (CCIP Vipers in USAF), 6-370gal EFT, 7-A2G, 8-BVRAAM, 9-BVRAAM
12,000lb total fuel
F-35:
1-AIM-9X BLK 2+
2-Empty/VLO
3-Empty/VLO
(4-A2G internal bay
(5-BVRAAM
6-Empty centerline
(7-BVRAAM
(8-A2G
9-Empty
10-Empty
11-AIM-9X BLK 2+
18,250lb internal
FLIR/LST/LRF/IRST is in the nose and all over which also acts as MAWS. EW suite is integrated into all the sensors, including a much larger AESA array.
F-35 has 100-200nm longer radius easily over the legacy lightweight fighters, carrying more payload, can still max-perform speed and g, with better climb rate, acceleration, and cruise speed.
Block 4 will add 2 more internal weapons stations.
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@shade9272 F-35 has better payload, longer legs, better durability, and the most affordable acquisition and O&M costs compared to any of the competitors. If you think F-35A maintenance is nothing short of abysmal, why was it the most available fighter in USAF in 2020 with the highest rates? For 2021, it’s the 2nd most-available after they got the A-10C fleet wings done, so F-35As are still more ready than F-16Cs/CMs. The F-16 has been the gold standard in FMC/MC rates for the past 4 decades. You might want to consider finding better sources of information, because whatever ones you’re using are simply full of errors and no facts. Dump them.
F-35’s roles only credible in ELINT and tactical strike? What about A2A? When brand new F-35A pilots in a newly-formed squadron from Hill AFB deployed to Kadena several years ago and went up against F-15Cs, they wrecked them as if it were a sport. Same in all the Red Flags, to the point where they told Red Air you don’t even have to play by the rules anymore, do anything to get a kill. Same thing in Atlantic Trident or Northern Edge. It doesn’t matter. They’ve been defeating F-22As since 2017 in A2A.
For the Iceland ADIZ shared rotational NATO interceptor role, Norwegian and Italian F-35s worked together with common data link and were able to execute VLO intercepts against live Bears. Norwegian F-35As integrated with B-2As for D-SEAD and escort.
Israelis have been flying over Syria as if they own the place, turning Syrian SAMs against Russian ELINT birds, destroying the latest IADS nodes, to the point now instead of the regional news reporting on F-16s striking targets, it’s “unidentified aircraft” struck targets in Syria.
None of the current European fighters on the market are cheaper or better. They are far more expensive, with Rafale and Typhoon being twice the price for nowhere near the capability, and more O&M costs.
Your information sources are bad.
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@laughingdaffodils5450 Frontal RCS of some legacy AIM-9 profiles is already .0002m2, so you’ll see operational F-35s carrying the 2 AIM-9X Block II+s quite commonly without concern of that load causing any practical degradation to their VLO profile for a lot of sorties. In LFEs and deployments, you see a mix of aircraft in those configurations. Carrying 2 out of the 7 external stores stations isn’t loading them all up, so that’s a hyperbole fallacy from you on that one. I’m not talking about loading stations 2, 3, 9, and 10, just 1 and 11 with the angled pylons mean to deflect RF and not create right angles.
There is no spin, just recognizing key traits of the design that were obviously meant to allow VLO carriage of the AIM-9s.
The argument that JSF wasn’t supposed to do A2A doesn’t hold any water at all. I’m referencing the JSF program history from ASTOVL all the way through CALF and JAST, with specific KPPs called out by the lead program engineers in the 741 page book on JSF written by those engineers and early test pilots. Every single JSF airframe type of the 3 variants was meant to meet or exceed the A2A capabilities of the F-16C and F/A-18C. The F-16 and F/A-18 designs came from an A2A-only focus, then were adapted to multirole by the service customer requests.
ATF was supposed to get AIRST, but it was cut due to cost spirals, as was the supersonic ejection seat and STOL thrust reversers. JSF got EOTS and DAS out of the gate which constitutes a dual-plane, multi-length IR spectrum IRST better than AIRST. DAS was an evolution of the F-22’s MAWS into a more capable spherical IR spectrum SA system, fused with the RF and EOTS sensors, which is why it is more capable than the Raptor in A2A as far as first-look is concerned. APG-81 is also more capable in stand-off jamming than the Raptor’s APG-77, so they’ve been upgrading the Raptor based on capabilities demonstrated in the F-35 program. It was openly revealed that F-35s were able to jam Raptor’s APG-77 in force-on-force exercises. APG-77 went through an upgrade overhaul after that quietly, as did the other sensors. The money they could have spent on a HMS in the Raptor was spent on more important sensor upgrades that aren’t detailed, but some of us can make very good guesses about what they did.
Cost of a current Lot 14 production F-35A ($77.9 million flyaway) is less than half the cost of an F-16E/F for UAE. The UAE Desert Falcons were over $200 million each.
Saab won’t reveal what their Unit Flyaway is on the Gripen E/F, but the Unit Program Cost for Brazil was $155.5 million per. That includes spares, weapons, support, pylons, EFTs, etc. F-35A unit program cost for Finland was lower than any of the other competitors. The whole contract details for pricing was published by the Finns for all to see.
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@laughingdaffodils5450 The ATF program was also managed with the assumption that the Stealth might not work, so it had to have significant leaps in raw performance over anything the Su-27 and MiG-29 could do. A lot of people had their doubts about the Stealth and the IFDL data link took 7 years to get to finally work reliably from 1997-2004, but they pulled it off after a Herculean effort at Edwards. After they started Initial Tactics Development, they saw that the VLO actually worked better than expected, so the raw performance wasn’t really a factor.
JSF had already been envisioned and the fly-off conducted by that point, so the initial concept of a Hi-Lo mix following the F-15/F-16 force structure for ATF/JSF was still being pursued under 4th Gen assumptions. The more work they did in operational test and force-on-force exercises really highlighted that the other distinguishing factors of 5th Gen were far more important than legacy metrics of speed and maneuverability, with information-sharing being at the top of the list.
Pilots who have flown both describe the Raptor as a huge factor advantage over anything else in the 4th Gen world, but the F-35s have even more of a factor of those features that make them significantly-more capable due to the sensor fusion, IR spectrum fused with RF, and a faster data link with higher transfer rates. Since one of the production Lots on JSF, the RAM was changed significantly and the RCS was dropped considerably once they went to Carbon Fiber tailplanes. That made the frontal RCS and certain aspects lower than the Raptor in RF spectrum.
You can’t just do an “upgrade kit” to reach into JSF sensor suite capabilities. The Raptor is the closest thing architecturally, and they still haven’t been able to fund it.
So I’ve been closely tracking US fighter and weapons acquisition since 1984. We haven’t seen a $20 million F-16 since about that time. The first Block 25 F-16Cs were a little over that. F-16A Block 15 in the early-mid 1980s was $16 million. Block 30s made in the mid-late 1980s were $32 million. Block 40 Night/All Weather-Capable Vipers with LANTIRN were over $42 million. You could basically look at the production Block number and it would correlate with how many tens of millions they were for unit flyway cost. After CCIP on Block 50s, 52s, then later on 40s and 42s, we have well over $115 million sunk just into the airframes. All the different podded systems are on top of that price, as is JHMCS.
Same with the MSIP partner nations in NATO with their F-16AMs. The MLU program added tens of millions per jet to get them up to speed for JTIDS data link (Link-16 incremental protocol adherence), AIFF for enhanced AIM-120 employment envelope expansion, JDAM integration, WFOV HUD, improved cockpits, structural mods, and other things. We worked on some of that critical development that was supposed to be part of Block 30G, but didn’t get into production until Block 50 in the 1990s.
If you’re looking up Unit Flyway Costs online, prepare to find all kinds of totally erroneous sources uploaded by kids who weren’t even alive at the time, that know almost nothing about this subject. It’s a big problem I see in the AvGeek world now. Lots of kids looking up things online from dubious sources and taking that as gospel. There’s a whole ecosystem of erroneous information that doesn’t match up well at all with those of us who actually lived through these things and were intimately familiar with the details.
Unit Program Costs vary with the customer. You could see contracts for the exact same fighter off the same production line from the same year with different UPCs. Biggest factor in that is the weapons suite the customer orders through DCA. A general rule of thumb I’ve seen is roughly a 75/25 ratio of Unit Flyaway/Unit Program, but there are plenty of contracts where that margin is larger. The recent F-35A, Rafale, and Typhoon contracts hold to it pretty well.
As far as O&M costs go, Saab’s very own H-X campaign manager, Magnus Skogberg, said that the Gripen C/D costs roughly 11,000 euros to operate, fuel, maintain, replace spares, and pay personnel. That’s the same price Norway’s Air Logistics Chief said it costs them to do all the same on their F-35As. Magnus said they think Gripen E will cost the same as Gripen C/D, which is odd because Gripen E carries more internal fuel, has more systems, more complexity, and a heavier airframe. There are literally no positive selling points for the Gripen E. Not a single one. It excels at nothing.
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What perceived weaknesses do you think there are relative to the F-35A? It matches or out-performs all of the 4th Gen fighters in basic speed, range, climb rate, take-off roll, cruise speed, service ceiling, and payload metrics when you look at combat configurations, while being a VLO airframe that is extremely hard to detect, track, and PID. Gripen E costs more for far less capability. It came in dead-last in all the metrics in the Finnish H-X challenge. The Super Hornet Block 3 did not even break over the minimum required threshold of a cumulative score of 4/5 for military performance, and was 2nd place with 3.81/5. F-35A was 4.47/5, the “clear and dizzying” superior performer in the words of the Finnish Air Chief.
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It was the Gripen of its day. Viggen is more like a mix between the F-4 and F-106. Viggen used a licensed Pratt & Whitney JT8D if I recall, with a large cool stage bypass fan up front, and an afterburner stage attached to the back that also had a weight-on-nose wheel thrust-reverser feature for STOL short landing. It was very costly to maintain, and they had engine stall problems since that motor was never designed to operate in high alpha with that intake arrangement. The Viggen played a huge role in influencing the Swedish Riksdag to pressure Saab into agreeing to a Lightweight, multirole fighter design that could do Jaeger, Attack, and Reconnaissance (JAS) all in one airframe, as opposed to all the mission set-specific airframes of the AJ-37, JA-37, SK-37, SF-37, etc. Viggens.
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The USAF never ordered the F-15EX. It was forced on them by acting SECDEF Shanahan and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith. What do those 2 people have in common? Shanahan, who was fired for conflict of interests, was a career 31yr Boeing executive who handled marketing and sales of several different fleets of aircraft. Adam Smith is from Seattle, where Boeing has had a major industrial hub for decades but mainly for their commercial airline assembly at the Everett facility. Guess who butters Adam Smith’s bread?
USAF immediately sent the F-15EX into Red Flag Alaska after it was ready to fly, and it was shot down repeatedly as anyone would expect from a 4th Gen fighter. The main reason the F-15EX is a thing is to maintain a fighter production line open in Saint Louis, which was historically McDonnell Douglas’s main fighter plant, where production of the F-4, F-15, F/A-18, and Super Hornet was/is.
F-15EX does not have greater range or loiter than the F-35A, nor does it have more A2A payload. When configured, it doesn’t have the same take-off or climb rate either. F-15EX is about the same price as a Gripen E and Super Hornet, which is more than an F-35A by tens of millions of dollars, especially when you throw in EPAWSS, CFTs, pylons, EFTs, and IRST-21.
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@jaxastro3072 Whatever pilot you spoke to simply doesn’t know any facts about the F-35 then, or this story is fabricated. The F-35A has a longer mission radius than any current US 4th Gen fighter. It does not need or carry external fuel tanks. It has far greater range than the current Hornets, F-15C, and F-15E. Former senior F-15C and F-15E pilots have all stated that they have more legs in F-35As that they fly now. I thought the “short range” fallacy had been pretty well-debunked long ago, but it seems that it still hasn’t died.
F-35A internal fuel is 18,250 lbs.
F-16C internal fuel is 7,000 lbs. Always configured for combat with 2x370gal for an additional 5,000 lbs, brining total to 12,000 lbs.
F-15C internal fuel is 13,850 lbs. Always configured for combat with2x600gal for an additional 8,000 lbs bringing total to 21,850 lbs.
F-15E internal fuel is 13,550 lbs. Always configured with 2 CFTs and 2x600 EFTs for an additional 18,000lbs, bringing total to 31,550 lbs.
Once you hang all that parasitic drag on the legacy fighters, their fuel consumption goes way up. F-35A’s fuel fraction is huge, much greater than any other single engine fighter design. None of that fuel causes parasitic drag on the airframe because it’s all internal. None of the 4th Gen fighters operate normally without EFTs, so their aerodynamic designs are compromised in favor of adding some range to them when carrying draggy weapons and pods off pylons.
Next fallacy: Low speed. None of the 4th Gen fighters when configured for combat can reach their maximum placard limits, and never have been able to. The fastest of them all, the F-15A, was never able to reach Mach 2.5 even stripped of paint, Radar, pylons, HUD, all combat avionics, etc. That was the Streak Eagle time-to-climb demonstrator in the 1970s. It reached Mach 2.2 during those runs.
Hornets and F-16s rarely even get near 1.5 Mach when lightly configured. When carrying FLIR pods, ECM pods, EFTs, bombs, and missiles, they normally don’t even go supersonic. F-15E is largely a subsonic platform in its standard configuration with CFTs, EFTs, and bombs.
F-35A is a Mach 1.6 capable platform all the time when configured with many of the standard weapons loads currently used on the Hornet and F-16 (4-6 AAMs, 2-8 A2G weapons, FLIR, ECM). It has faster start-up due to the IPP, faster take-off when configured, faster climb rate, and faster cruise speed at profile altitudes. These are the facts, so the math doesn’t add-up when someone says it isn’t as capable. It is far more capable in the raw performance metrics that we use to measure 4th Gen fighters, and on top of all of that, it isn’t G-limited when configured.
Gripen is in even a worse boat in that regard because it doesn’t match any of the 4th Gen fighter raw performance capabilities for QRA. Take a heavy F-15C with 2x600 gallon wing tanks fully loaded with 8 A2A missiles. That F-15C can take off in 12 seconds after break release and can zoom-climb up to cruise altitude in 30 seconds.
A lightly-loaded Gripen C even with only 1 EFT and 4 AAMs takes 18-21 seconds, and struggles to climb. They can’t go into the vertical because their thrust-to-weight is so poor and anemic. These are basic mathematical facts that get overlooked by the majority of the AvGeek world, which means our math skills have deteriorated that badly even among the nerds. Gripen E has even worse T/W compared to Gripen C because Gripen E starts off with 2200lbs more empty weight, and 2300lb more internal fuel, while only getting 3,900lb mx thrust increase from RM12 (18,100 lb) to F414-GE-39E (22,000 lb). It has less payload than the existing F/A-18 by quite a large margin. Current F/A-18 can carry 12 AAMs and 1 EFT on centerline for a pure A2A high magazine depth mission if it wanted to.
Climate advantage to Sweden fallacy: Sweden doesn’t have anywhere near the experience testing and building fighters that will operate in extreme cold conditions. The USAF is the king of that game, with over 70 years of experience in Alaska, Northeast US, Norway, and Iceland, let alone all the REFORGER exercises, permanent basing (UK), and rotations with NATO countries. The cumulative flight and maintenance hours aren’t even close.
Of all the modern fighter designs, none have been subjected to extreme climatic testing and validation than the 3 JSF series, including the F-35A. F-35As are currently operating from permanent basing locations in Alaska, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, and Japan, while Finland just selected the F-35A Block 4 with drag chute after their extensive 7-year H-X challenge.
Gripen has zero range advantage over F-35A. If you’re looking at Wikipedia for performance data on the Gripen, it won’t be helpful to understanding anything about this subject. Saab has been caught misrepresenting the Gripen so many times as to be laughable now. The Gripen is an unintended scam that Saab was forced into when Riksdag set such tight budgetary restrictions on the program, leaving them with a really limited choice for propulsion.
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