Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Military Aviation History"
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@jamesplant5280 The Saab Gripen series is a case study in politicians driving capabilities down due to not wanting to pay for what's actually needed.
Sweden's Riksdag had a really bad taste in their mouth after the Viggen, which had multiple variants for the different mission profiles. Biggest ones were the interceptor vs strike and reconnaissance versions, same airframe.
They told Saab the only way they're funding a replacement was if it cost way less, while combining the J, A, and S mission profiles into a single airframe, that also needs Foreign sales to fund it.
Saab purchased the design work already done by Convair in the 1960s for the Convair-200, which the Brits then acquired for the P-106A/B in the 1970s pre-ECA.
This meant the wind tunnel aerodynamics studies and overall structure had been done. They just needed an engine.
Problem was, Convair-200 and P-106 were designed around an F401 class motor (similar to PW F100). Saab couldn't get any F100s due to high demand from the F-15 & F-16 fleets.
They scaled down the British Aerospace P-106B to fit the GE F404 meant for the F/A-18 Hornet. This design compromise is what really hurt the JAS-39 series.
Fast-forward to their last iteration of the Gripen E/F, still underpowered and incapable, and the claims about technology transfer are laughable.
Saab was going to transfer US GE's F414-GE-39E engine tech?
Saab was going to transfer US Mil-1553B databus (Canada already has it.)
Leonardo Radar technology, licensed from Raytheon through US DACA?
US hydraulics, landing gear, weapons, servos, etc.?
UK Martin Baker ejection seats?
Canada has already been making thousands of far more advanced components for the F-35. Sweden had zero to offer in tech transfer because none of the technology belongs to Sweden.
This is why Sweden's marketing firm, BAE, was fined $400 million and plead guilty in the Gripen bribery/ITAR scandal to Czechia and Hungary for illegally representing and selling US tech to those countries via bribes.
Journalists could write really sensationalist stories that are 100% accurate if they wanted to, but they don't.
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@anordman9659 Maintenance between the F-16 (which variant?) and Grpen C/D are so close that the CPFH between Norwegian F-16AMs is the same as Gripen C/D, both at €11,000/hr.
You have to sift through Saab marketing and understand that most of the capabilities they advertise are baseline norms for the F-16 & F/A-18. Hot refueling/re-arming, easy access to common inspection and repair/replace subsystems, good Man Machine Interface, Data Links, (and a list of capabilities Gripen C/D don't have) are standard on the F-16AM MLU aircraft.
A problem for both the Gripen and F-16 is landing. Both have edge of static stability DFLCS, and are prone to ground effect, which usually causes longer than ideal touch-down points on a runway.
Gripen has 2 wheels for the nose landing gear for rugged conditions, but its main landing gear aren't as strong as the F-16's MLG. F-16A/C legacy nose landing gear is minimalist, with many incidents of NLG failure to deploy or collapsing after overshoots.
If Ukraine were to get F-16s, the Norwegian F-16AMs with drag chutes would make sense in the event of diverting to dispersed roads.
They're also surrounded by nations who are currently flying F-16s, with depot-level support nearby.
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@kevinw2592 I don’t see any similarities between the F-111 and JSF program, and I’m extremely familiar with both of them. We built 563 F-111s. 138 of them were lost, mostly to mechanical issues with the TF30 engines, flight control system, fuel system, control surfaces, Terrain-Following Radar, Radar Altimeter, mid-airs, CFIT, etc. F-111 was a mess on introduction and still had a pretty high mishap rate throughout its service. F-35s are opposite of that. Extremely reliable flight systems, ease of maintenance, capable of executing the F-111s, EF-111A;s, F-15C’s, F-16C’s, and F-117A’s mission sets.
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@SkruffyTalez_TheWarzone We're talking about air power. The Swedish Air Force doesn't have any experience against real adversaries in the air, real SAMs, real AAA, and doesn't have dissimilar aggressors to train against that replicate Russian fighters.
As to tanks, the US in Bradleys and Abrams destroyed numerically-superior forces with thousands of Russian tanks in Desert Storm. US NTC runs regular large force armor exercises Sweden could never generate, because again, NTC is populated with huge numbers of Red Forces tanks, real HIND-E helicopters, Mi-8s, and training ranges Sweden can't afford.
One force is constantly proven in tough, realistic exercises and combat deployments. The other gets the budget scraps from women in Riksdag who have engineered the societal degradation of Sweden from within.
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@allanasp771 The advantage is in spares, commonality of parts, training, maintenance infrastructure, weapons, communications, interoperability with friendly nations, and cross-pollination of improvements that Sweden would have benefitted from with zero RDT&E infested into those systems.
FiAF in their Hornets is just one example of that. They got aircraft that had been through 17 years of development, combat experience, upgrades, evolution into the C/D models, without Finnish Parliament spending a dime on Research & Development.
The Gripen only partially does this through the F404 or F414 engine, the missiles, Martin-Baker ejection seats, US Mil-1553B databus, Mauser 27mm cannon, while many of the components are specific to the Gripen airframe. Sweden had to invest the RDT&E for the overall air-vehicle systems development, while getting a low-capability multirole fighter as a result.
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@matchesburn In the first 10 years of actual operational service with the F-16, we lost 143 airframes with 71 fatalities.
Problems ran the gamut from engine failures, wire chaffing for the FLCS and instruments, leading edge flap brackets failing and flipping up in flight, EPU failures, lots of GLOC, landing incidents, and CFIT.
F-35s have been relatively problem-free. None of the 3 F-35A crashes have been mechanically-caused that we know of. The latest at Hill happened during goose migration season, and strange sounds were heard before the pilot ejected, so I suspect it was goose ingestion.
Only 1 F-35B crash was due to mechanical failure, but it looks like this crash landing is mechanically-caused. This will not result in total airframe loss, so this is borderline Class A or B depending on cost to repair.
There have only been 3 F-35Bs lost in crashes since 2008. That's 14 years of continuous flight and 200 F-35Bs built/delivered.
Harrier had 100 crashes and 20 fatalities its first 10 years.
The math doesn't even remotely support your statements and conclusions. The math is brutally in favor of all 3 JSF series being safer than any other current or previous fighter designs.
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@monty2654 Not sure what test program you’re looking at, but it isn’t the JSF series. Not only did they conduct more extensive testing, weapons separation, validation, and integration iterations, but they did it with cooperative test centers between the USAF Flight Test Center at Edwards, Naval Weapons Test Centers at China Lake and Point Mugu, Naval Flight Test Center at Pax River, UK Flight Test Center, Eglin AFB Climactic Chamber and Eglin Weapons Test and Eval Ranges in Florida, White Sands Missile Test Ranges, NM, and other integrated test locations that have never worked together in concert like that.
The opposite is true with the F-14, F-15, F-16, and F/A-18. None of those designs were ready for mass production with their A models, with maybe an exception to the F-15A. F-14 didn’t even have the F401-PW-400 engine the USN invested hundreds of millions of early 1970s dollars in for the planned production original F-14B (never happened), F-16A/B was unsafe and experienced over 600 Class A mishaps/100,000 flight hours its first few years with 143 crashes/total losses and 71 fatalities.
F/A-18A/B didn’t even have sound landing gear for safety, with an alignment bar that would come loose, send the thing skidding or cart-wheeling down the runway. Avionics were whacked, with the original APG-65 suffering all kinds of failures, triggered its own RWR, vertical stabs buffeted so badly that they cracked the underlying support bulkheads around the engines, and the wing tips fluttered so badly at transonic speeds they caused cracks and failures to wing structures. First 10 years of F/A-18 service saw 97 airframe losses with 27 fatalities.
Those of us who were involved in the development of the teen series look back, then look at the JSF program and just shake our heads at how wrong people are in their ignorant assessment of how unbelievably-safe all 3 of them are, and how smoothly the sensors and other avionics have been integrated in comparison.
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@redslate I’ll preface this with the fact that I have been following unit costs, programs costs, MLUs, SLEPs, and related programs since 1984 because we were directly or indirectly involved in several of them for the F-16C/D Block 30 and later, F-14D, F-15C/D, F-15E, and other programs with relevant metrics essential to this subject.
"The per unit cost of an F-35A is twice that of an F-16.” This is incorrect and also not specific to which F-16 model and MLU.
An F-16AM that has undergone MLU is considerably more costly than its 1979-1982 initial unit flyaway cost. You also have to adjust for inflation from the years of purchase, then add the MLU costs. There are MLU phases that exceeded the original unit flyway cost if not adjusted of inflation.
F-16CM Block 40/42/50/52 after CCIP 1 & 2 cost more per unit than an F-35A, not even including their necessary ancillary pods. Original unit flyaway costs were in the $40 - $50 million range, but CCIP per bird cost tens of millions. The labor and materials/systems costs are huge. Some of the CCIP schedules were 45 days per bird.
F-16E/F are more than twice the cost of the F-35A. F-16E/F were $200 million per, due to a totally new program set of requirements ordered by the UAE.
But here’s another cost nobody is talking about: Projected airframes loss costs vs airframes retained. F-16s crash on a regular basis to this day, with many fatalities. F-35s do not. You pay more money for an F-16CM, F-16E/F, or F-16V for a higher chance of losing the airframe and experiencing pilot and other fatalities. You pay less for each F-35 with extremely low probability of airframe losses and fatalities. There has only been 1 fatality in the JSF program to-date, with 16 years of flight on the F-35A. That’s unheard of.
"An F-35B is three times that of an F/A-18.” This is also incorrect. F-35B is currently $101.3 million.
F/A-18Cs had an initial flyaway cost, then have undergone numerous fixes, improvements, SLEP, airframe structural repairs, and several in USMC and RoCAF service are getting new and expensive APG-79(V)4 AESA Radars with GaN Transmitter Receiver Modules.
So we’re looking at F/A-18C+ unit costs pushing well over $100 million.
Here’s the math: F/A-18C built in 1988 and delivered for unit flyway (no spares) at $29 million.
2022 dollars = $72.98 million for the stripped airframe, no SLEP, no pylons, no racks, no support equipment.
F/A-18C/D SLEP 1 = $16.3 million per aircraft (Swiss paid $490 million to SLEP 30x F/A-18C/D fighters.)
Add the APG-79 AESA, ATFLIR or LITENING, new EW system, and we’re over $100 million for the respective USMC and RoCAF birds.
That’s an F/A-18C+ that has maybe 1/8 the capability of an F-35 on a really good day, with one of the FMC birds that isn’t broken.
"The published numbers are future projections or don't include the cost of engines: $15M (A&C) / $32M (B).” This is also incorrect. For some of the early years of JSF production, airframe and propulsion system costs were accounted separately, but they merged many years ago. Unit flyaway costs have included the motors since then. I think it was 2015 off the top of my head, maybe earlier. I have spent hours looking that all up before from reputable contractor and DoD publications.
Hopefully this information helps correct some of the bad data you came across, and you can look back on the corrupt data sources and remove them from your feed. Happy New Year!
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@johanmetreus1268 So you think Finnish Air Force pilots and planners wanted some other fighter to send their best up in against Russia, but chose the F-35A instead?
They listed the 5 military performance domains. F-35A exceeded the minimum threshold of 4/5 in all of them. No other entrant came close.
Ask yourself this. Which fighters would you rather have right now up against MiG-31BM and Su-35S lifting hypersonic R-37Ms at you from extreme long range?
* Gripen E with 1m2-2m2 RCS, limited payload, range, detection range, networking not even remotely developed, needs GlobalEye for SA, legacy maintenance problems, lack of prognostic systems management, no upgrade path/last of the series, costs more than F-35A, all major and subcontractor tech comes from US, UK from 2-3 decades ago under 2nd tier licenses
* F-35A that can't be seen outside of 13-27nm, superior SA to anything currently, with 6x BVRAAM, LRASM, JDAM, JASSM, NSM, LPI MADL, best fighter AESA in the world, easy to fly, easy to land, maintains itself practically, can go deep into Russian MEZ if it wants, D-SEAD beast, offensive EW capable, scary anti-ship platform, automated theater networking and industrial base with Norway, Poland, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, UK, Switzerland, US...
* Rafale F4 at € 216m unit program cost, 1-2m2+ RCS, expensive mx w/2 French motors, French missiles, underdeveloped strike SEAD capes, no industrial share, F4 variant likely last of the production series, old gen data link
* Super Hornet Block 3 + Growler combo, last production models, USN already looking to divest of theirs in favor of F-35C Block 4, good systems maturity but lacks survivability in latest R-37M MEZ both due to RCS and weak kinematics to Flankers and Foxhound
* Typhoon at over €200m unit program cost, no industrial share, 2 motors, expensive mx, legacy data link, 1-2m2 RCS, etc.
The choice for Finland was glaringly-obvious just in terms of capabilities and cost. The others just didn't cut it no matter which angle you want to look at it from.
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@petesjk You have to consume valid data, not broad media reports on aviation. Reports on the HMDS making pilots sick is a new one, and I’ve read all the erroneous reporting from click-bait sites who literally don’t know anything about aviation. Let me give an example:
Australia has been on board with JSF since 2013, with a planned IOC of 2020.
"...Lt Gen Bogdan said that despite the problems experienced in the past, he was confident in the ability to deliver a more advanced, survivable jet to the RAAF and other partner nations.
“Relative to the schedule, if the plan which Australia intends on moving forward with stays to IOC in 2020 with the [initial warfighting capability software Block] 3i, I will tell you that Australia doesn’t have much to worry about,” he said.
“Why? Because in 2015 I have to deliver the same capability to the US Marine Corp. Eight months later I have to deliver the same capability to Italy in 2016, then in the middle of 2017 I have to deliver the same capability to the Israelis. Then there will be a three year wait until we deliver to the Australians.”
“So even if I screw this up royally – and I do not intend to do that – I’m pretty sure I’ll meet Australia’s 2020 date.”
What happened?
RAAF declared IOC in 2020 with F-35A. I’ve been following this program before it existed, and this is the first I heard that RAAF is better off for getting Super Hornets, because RAAF Super Hornet IOC was in................2010.
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Typhoon is like an old flip phone text message being sent on the network. F-35 is like a smartphone that can screen time between other F-35s, and still get texts from older gen, but can’t pipe high-fidelity data to the lower tech aircraft. Still better than what we had before by leaps and bounds. Once 2 F-35s are in the air, AWACS is kind of pointless and doesn’t have good PID tracks or high resolution location data for airborne TGTs, especially altitude and exact position. Everyone has moved onto a net-centric battlefield now in the West, and the US is many generations into net-centric warfare already.
F-35s are meant to be different things for different nations. For the USAF, the F-35A will ultimately supersede the F-16, while several other platforms on different tracks will remain. For countries like Norway, Switzerland, Finland, Japan, and Australia, it holds a very dominant position in the force mix.
For USMC, F-35C and F-35B are the new fast jets, replacing F/A-18A-D and AV-8B.
For Poland, F-35A will accompany F-16C/D Block 52 in the Air Force mix.
For UK, F-35B complements Typhoon in the RAF, and is the replacement for the Harrier in the RN.
F-15EX is a strategic industrial base plant program to keep workers at St. Louis, not a planned future program USAF ever asked for. Once the NGAD orders are contracted, especially for Unmanned systems, St. Louis won’t have to go looking to re-hire all the assembly line people. I’m not sure F-15EX will ever go feet-wet, as they are only being assigned to Air Defense National Guard units.
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@madrooky1398 We worked on Typhoon development when it was still "Future Fighter 1990" from 1980-1982. It's the whole reason we PCS'd from Edwards AFB to West Germany on scientific exchange.
Typhoon not only has federated systems architecture, but Brits, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards who were all fighting over the design in broken English designed it. The French were still on the program back then, and punched out because they weren't going to get the industrial share they wanted or a carrier variant, hence the Rafale program.
So a lot of the systems layout is wonky with Typhoon, starting with the cockpit. Funding for upgrades has been done at a trickle pace through the European parliaments, which are filled with Social Democrats, Labor Parties, Greens, and straight up communists. It's why their premier air interceptor still doesn't have an AESA Radar in 2024 yet. A lot of these politicians have been on Russian payroll or ideologically aligned as well, even at senior leadership levels throughout the Cold War and since the rise of Putin.
So Typhoon has been handicapped from within in many ways. Brits/UK have done the most in upgrades for A2G and systems development while the Germans have dragged their feet.
By the time EFA went into Full Scale Development, the US had already committed to VLO designs moving forward, based on losses from SAMs in Vietnam and analysis of newer Soviet systems in Arab-Israeli wars.
ATF was funded in 1981 while we were still in Munich, for example. Typhoon really came decades late and billions short in development.
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@Albertkallal JSF were initially envisioned as Multirole Fighters. Due to the inertia of technological advancements across the systems, it turned out to be an Omnirole Combat System capable of networked Air Dominance, VLO Strike, EW, AW&C, ISR, Anti-Ship, Remote Terminal Guidance, CAS, etc.
The naming conventions were constrained to 1980s thinking, even as they broke free from those concepts with the F-22.
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19:00 "Swedish Air Force operates with a special approach to managing risks, while NATO air forces don't."
This is patently false and any NATO air crew who has deployed or participated in Large Force Exercises where maintenance and ordnance crews are pushed past their previous limits can attest to conducting hot re-arm, refueling, Battle Damage repairs, NBC, Arctic, Desert, FARPs, and base attack scenarios for real and in training.
Then the Swedes come along and talk about their amazing doctrine. They haven't fought a war since 1809, but talk from a condescending air of superiority in things they have never experienced or proven themselves in, to people who have generations of continuous institutional combat experience in modern air combat.
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