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Servicio en Espanol posted:Back in WW1, there was a politically awkward situation for the British where Vickers was paying Krupp a royalty in exchange for using their patented artillery fuses as part of some ten year old business agreement. The payments were suspended during the war on account of Parliament making GBS threads bricks when they found out about it, but after the war Vickers and Krupp got together to work out the compensation Krupp were due based on artillery casualties Germany sustained. Something similar exists regarding Mauser and the US Government over the action for the Springfield. Though IIRC unlike some reports it was not the result of a judgment, but mutual agreement....eh I'll just let Cyrano go into Mecha Mauser mode and post all the good info (I'm in a lazy mood). Its similar, but not the same as the Vickers Equation to the best of my knowledge.
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Jan 22, 2014 21:22
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gfanikf posted:Something similar exists regarding Mauser and the US Government over the action for the Springfield. Though IIRC unlike some reports it was not the result of a judgment, but mutual agreement....eh I'll just let Cyrano go into Mecha Mauser mode and post all the good info (I'm in a lazy mood). Its similar, but not the same as the Vickers Equation to the best of my knowledge. grover fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 00:06
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grover posted:It's not nearly as interesting a story; the 1903 Springfield was largely an M98 knock-off; Mauser sued for patent infringement and won, and US ended up paying royalties on every 1903 Springfield produced until 1917. Close, but not quite. You're mixing up a couple of separate but related cases. The 1903 borrowed heavily from the m93 Mauser rifles that Spain had in Cuba. The over-all design was pretty derivative of it, but what got the US in trouble specifically were some patents that Mauser had earlier filed in the US for the magazine system, the design of the stripper clips, the design of the stripper clip feed in the receiver, the safety, the extractor, and the extractor collar. As I recall Mauser didn't actually sue, but the US government realized it was deep into infringement territory and pre-emptively contacted Mauser to negotiate as settlement. This was resolved in 1905 and the royalties were on both rifles and stripper clips, with the royalties capping at $200,000. This was paid out in a handful of installments that finished up within a couple of years. A few years later there was a separate issue when the US developed the .30-06 cartridge. DWM (of which Mauser was a subsidiary by that time) had filed a patent in the US for the spitzer type bullet and believed that .30-06 was essentially a knock-off of 7mm and 8mm Mauser rounds. DWM approached in 1907 asking for a similar settlement but the Ordinance Department's lawyers thought their case much weaker than the earlier Mauser issue, so they negotiated for a few years and finally a lawsuit was filed in 1914 a few months before WW1 started when those negotiations fell apart. This kicked around the courts for a few years until the US got into the war, at which point the government simply seized the patents as enemy assets. Since the gov't now owned the patents the case was thrown out of court. A few years later, after the war finished, DWM filed suit again alleging this time that the seizure of their patents had been unconstitutional. This was actually a pretty strong case and the courts ruled in favor of DWM and awarded them $300,000 in damages. The government appealed, the case dragged on, until the appeal was eventually rejected in the late 20s. The US was ordered to pay, with interest, on the original damage award. After a decade's worth of interest it came out to a touch over $410,000.
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Jan 23, 2014 00:49
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Cyrano4747 posted:A few years later there was a separate issue when the US developed the .30-06 cartridge. DWM (of which Mauser was a subsidiary by that time) had filed a patent in the US for the spitzer type bullet and believed that .30-06 was essentially a knock-off of 7mm and 8mm Mauser rounds. DWM approached in 1907 asking for a similar settlement but the Ordinance Department's lawyers thought their case much weaker than the earlier Mauser issue, so they negotiated for a few years and finally a lawsuit was filed in 1914 a few months before WW1 started when those negotiations fell apart. This kicked around the courts for a few years until the US got into the war, at which point the government simply seized the patents as enemy assets. Since the gov't now owned the patents the case was thrown out of court. A few years later, after the war finished, DWM filed suit again alleging this time that the seizure of their patents had been unconstitutional. This was actually a pretty strong case and the courts ruled in favor of DWM and awarded them $300,000 in damages. The government appealed, the case dragged on, until the appeal was eventually rejected in the late 20s. The US was ordered to pay, with interest, on the original damage award. After a decade's worth of interest it came out to a touch over $410,000. Just yesterday, I happened to be looking something up in Bulletin de la Société Chimique de France and was surprised to note that they had kept publishing right through world war 2. Admittedly, most of the relevant volumes had library accession dates of 1946/1947. However, the 1942 volume instead had a notice on the first page that it had been distributed in the public interest by the Alien Property Custodian. It also had a notice that articles were not to be referred to by title or abstract in propaganda or the popular press, but could be quoted in technical publications.
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Jan 23, 2014 03:34
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There's another World War One story except it involves livestock. On their way across the South Pacific in the autumn of 1914, Graf von Spee's cruisers stopped over at Easter Island, which because this was 1914 hadn't heard of the war's outbreak yet. The Graf bought a bunch of meat on the hoof from a British rancher, and paid with a German government money order. The rancher went to South America to collect on it and the Germans honored the payment, despite not only the rancher being British but Spee having been killed off the Falklands by the time the rancher got to South America.
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Jan 24, 2014 04:21
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Back to the Cold War, the soviets had a frankly ridiculous number of paratroopers, and consequently it seems ridiculous that they could have had the airlift to actually drop a significant proportion of them and their equipment, given that they were supposed to be riding around in BMDs and such. So, how were they supposed to get enough planes to actually drop seven divisions of paratroopers or however many they had? Did they have enough to drop even one?
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Jan 24, 2014 04:35
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Mortabis posted:Back to the Cold War, the soviets had a frankly ridiculous number of paratroopers, and consequently it seems ridiculous that they could have had the airlift to actually drop a significant proportion of them and their equipment, given that they were supposed to be riding around in BMDs and such. I imagine it's sort of like the old joke about how the Americal Division used to do air assaults during Vietnam. One Huey making 16 trips.
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Jan 24, 2014 04:59
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Mortabis posted:Back to the Cold War, the soviets had a frankly ridiculous number of paratroopers, and consequently it seems ridiculous that they could have had the airlift to actually drop a significant proportion of them and their equipment, given that they were supposed to be riding around in BMDs and such. It is quicker to replace equipment during a war than specifically trained soldiers.
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Jan 24, 2014 05:09
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When did the Soviets retire the AN-2? Didn't they make a massive amount of them?
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Jan 24, 2014 05:17
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Xerxes17 posted:It is quicker to replace equipment during a war than specifically trained soldiers. But we're talking about big transport planes/helos here, the ones that could actually have carried those BMDs  I think they'd have pretty much spent themselves after dropping a couple of regiments, no way that all those divisions get put into play by 'Aeroflot'. When used they also would have had to make big strategic choices with regards to timing and placement: Get them in with the first big offensive air wave(s)? Keep 'em around as a strategic reserve? Central Front, Denmark, Bosporus, Northern Norway, maybe even Sweden? Or you could just throw them in the mixer as light mechanized forces. The Front's Airmobile troops were supposed to be the spoilers in the Operational Maneuver Group concept anyway IIRC, and I don't think those were part of the regular Airborne Divisions, making the latter somewhat superfluous to standard doctrine.
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Jan 24, 2014 05:22
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Considering what I've read about Soviet readiness in general I'm also willing to believe that the supposed equipment of the VDV troops just never existed at all in large part except on paper.
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Jan 24, 2014 05:45
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Politically reliable, well trained light infantry who can deploy rapidly are also pretty useful for dealing with internal enemies. Just sayin'.
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Jan 24, 2014 06:14
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Mortabis posted:Considering what I've read about Soviet readiness in general I'm also willing to believe that the supposed equipment of the VDV troops just never existed at all in large part except on paper. I have no doubt that the stuff was there, or at least somewhere in a warehouse only to be trotted out once a year for a parade or something. Production was never a problem, actually getting it in their hands and training with it though...
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Jan 24, 2014 06:23
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Koesj posted:But we're talking about big transport planes/helos here, the ones that could actually have carried those BMDs Didn't USSR keep a regiment of paratroopers in Kalinigrad? I remember hearing one of my officers, during my conscription in Swedish military, saying that Sweden only had like a 20-30 min warning before an air assault coming that way.
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Jan 24, 2014 11:44
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Cardiac posted:I remember hearing one of my officers, during my conscription in Swedish military, saying that Sweden only had like a 20-30 min warning before an air assault coming that way. I suppose this could be true if Swedish Intelligence were Hellen Keller levels of bad at their jobs.
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Jan 24, 2014 12:05
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Dead Reckoning posted:I suppose this could be true if Swedish Intelligence were Hellen Keller levels of bad at their jobs. So basically the CIA, then.
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Jan 24, 2014 12:50
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iyaayas01 posted:So basically the CIA, then. That depends. They seemed to be pretty good drug smugglers.
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Jan 24, 2014 13:11
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Akion posted:That depends. They seemed to be pretty good drug smugglers.  And I was more referencing the fact that the one agency charged with strategic I&W told Truman that the Chinese wouldn't send troops to North Korea less than a month before 200,000 Chinese troops came across the Yalu, told Kennedy that it was "unlikely" the Soviets would put missiles in Cuba a month before they did exactly that, didn't notice India going nuclear, said in Aug of 1978 that "Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation," failed to predict the fall of the Soviet Union, and completely missed 9/11.
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Jan 24, 2014 16:52
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Cardiac posted:Didn't USSR keep a regiment of paratroopers in Kalinigrad? I don't know about VDV, but there was (and probably still is) a naval infantry brigade stationed in Baltiysk. Swedish military planning usually assumed that very highly qualified assets would be used, and in many wargames one of the first things that happened was usually that the naval infantry brigade appeared on Gotland while the 76th VDV division out of Pskov landed near Arlanda (the Stockholm international airport). That said, the real problem area was the far south. Sweden was actually east of the iron curtain in Germany, and even a slow ship can make it from the Polish or East German coasts to Sweden in a few hours at most. Even in the 80's one of the main imagined threats was a huge D-day amphibious landing. That imagined invasion fleet is the main reason for the existence of the Viggen and the Swedish anti-ship missile program.
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Jan 24, 2014 17:39
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Well, to be fair everyone was surprised by 1989-91. gently caress, the history community is still scratching its collective head and trying to explain what the gently caress. I mean, the fact that it not only happened but that it was relatively peacefull-ish is a pretty big mindfuck all around. Hell, in Germany it hinged on a botched press conference and a couple boarder guards deciding not to shoot people.
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Jan 24, 2014 17:44
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Cyrano4747 posted:Well, to be fair everyone was surprised by 1989-91. gently caress, the history community is still scratching its collective head and trying to explain what the gently caress. I mean, the fact that it not only happened but that it was relatively peacefull-ish is a pretty big mindfuck all around. Wasn't it just a peaceful resolution to the Dictator's Paradox?
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Jan 24, 2014 19:14
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My favorite part of that is how all the western leftists must have felt after being confronted with the fact that living under a communist government loving sucks and anyone who has actually done so wants no part of it. Like, how did the Red Army Faction people feel when the East Germans willfully chose to give up marxism? I suppose they probably just went into denial like with every other aspect of reality.
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Jan 24, 2014 19:18
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Mortabis posted:My favorite part of that is how all the western leftists must have felt after being confronted with the fact that living under a communist government loving sucks and anyone who has actually done so wants no part of it. Like, how did the Red Army Faction people feel when the East Germans willfully chose to give up marxism? They went to D&D.
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Jan 24, 2014 19:23
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Mortabis posted:My favorite part of that is how all the western leftists must have felt after being confronted with the fact that living under a communist government loving sucks and anyone who has actually done so wants no part of it. Like, how did the Red Army Faction people feel when the East Germans willfully chose to give up marxism? How old are you? quote:I suppose they probably just went into denial like with every other aspect of reality. 
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Jan 24, 2014 19:31
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Mortabis posted:
If you were to print out all the excuse making about how oh, no, that was some form of adulterated/imperfect Marxism/socialism/communism, etc that fly around D&D, you could paper the Earth.
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Jan 24, 2014 19:43
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AlternateAccount posted:If you were to print out all the excuse making about how oh, no, that was some form of adulterated/imperfect Marxism/socialism/communism, etc that fly around D&D, you could paper the Earth. Which form of socialism is that? The version where all the means of production are in hands of the state, or US-style 'socialism' where moochers get all kinds of unearned benefits like unemployment protection and filthy universal healthcare? Because if we're going down the second road, I'd rather stick with factual or mildly interpretative posting about AIRPOWER/Cold War things myself, since I'd run the risk of pulling all kinds of scorn on me for voting a social democratic party in power 2 years ago.
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Jan 24, 2014 19:48
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I miss airplane chat  SO! I brought this up in the Aeronautical Insanity thread after they turned again to how much the F-35 program is...not going well: I asked whether, given the apparent success of the F-15 pure air superiority -> F-15E strike fighter and F-16 cheap pure day fighter -> F-16 cheap bomb truck conversions, it would have been better, at least from the US perspective, to focus entirely on the F-22 airframe and retrofit advanced air-to-ground improvements on it later. Would this be a bad idea?
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Jan 24, 2014 20:04
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Report got released about the F-35 today, tl;dr is the program is still hosed. Shockingly, the biggest issue is with software, with the Marines' first combat capable software distro not going to be ready until over a year after their planned IOC date next year. And that would be the already bastardized/downgraded Block 2B they went with in an effort to speed up the IOC date. Unnecessarily killing people through flying underdeveloped aircraft too early is kind of Marine Aviation's thing. Also, in stating the obvious news, LockMart apparently grossly overstated the amount of jobs the F-35 was going to create. Finally, there's this bit: quote:It said there is also little margin for any weight growth, and the airplane's increased use of electrical systems makes it vulnerable to lightning and missile strikes. Hahahahaha...you seriously can't make this poo poo up.  : "Your jet is overly vulnerable to enemy fire. : "Good thing we just won't get shot!  "That rates right up there with "DAS will render maneuvering irrelevant." e: Davin Valkri posted:I miss airplane chat Like I said over there, the F-22 already has most of the air to ground capability that's necessary for its mission as a night 0 door kicker. Retrofitting on bomb truck capability to that platform would be stupid because even with the total planned number of 381 they were going to be precious resources that needed to be husbanded carefully for conventional deterrence and high end use, not have hours flown off of them dropping JDAMs over Bumfuckistan. The solution you're looking for would've been to buy enough F-22s to be our high end "break glass in case of China" force and get new build bomb trucks along the lines of Block 60 F-16s or Super Bugs or something. Maybe buy some F-15SEs to provide a program as an affordable LO-ish option for our allies who want something more than upgraded F-16s. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 20:06
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The thing that pisses me off most about the F-35 budgeting is the way that when we cut orders, the supposed price of each plane goes up. Like, yes, the fixed cost isn't getting spread out over as many units but that cost is already sunk, isn't it? Haven't we paid all that money to LockMart already? In which case, it appears to me that the smart move would be to not buy any F-35s for the Air Force, or at least only buy a couple squadrons of them. Also, the idea that military programs "create jobs" is just so incredibly offensive. They don't create any jobs at all, or at least to the extent that they do it's not useful economic activity. The people who are working on those planes would be doing something else that's more productive otherwise. If that kind of creating jobs were actually a good thing we would just pay everyone to dig holes and fill them up again eight hours a day five days a week.
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Jan 24, 2014 20:12
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iyaayas01 posted:Hahahahaha...you seriously can't make this poo poo up. poo poo, the military's been spouting lines like that since time immemorial. The next generation of heavy bombers is going to fly so high, so fast, and have so many guns on it that escorts will be completely unneeded even during daylight attacks! With our new precision bomb sights we can practically put a bomb in a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet with little collateral damage!*world war 2 happens*
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Jan 24, 2014 20:13
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iyaayas01 posted:[ It kinda also sounds like the "missiles make guns obsolete" thing from sixty years ago or so. I wonder if there's a similar thought process going on for "stealth makes *X* obsolete"? And, yeah, I guess that would be a better air doctrine. F-15s and F-16s are cool too. If I might ask, the AI thread mentioned that the F-35 was supposed to be the cheaper, lighter, exportable counterpart to the F-22. Obviously that hasn't been the case, but if we were going for a sort of F-4 / F-5 thing for the new century, how should the F-35 program have been run from day one? Davin Valkri fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 20:16
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Soon warfare will be an elaborate episode of "Robot Wars" with some Real Steel in there for fun. Giant robots punching the poo poo out of each other. Also some lasers.
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Jan 24, 2014 20:27
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Some combat developer in China reads todays report, begins writing a concept for a new weapon system that involves rubbing ones head with a balloon and then touching the F-35.
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Jan 24, 2014 20:28
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Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if the entire F-35 program is a joint legacy Cold-War KGB program to cripple the West's airpower. LockMart is secretly run by long term Troskyite Soviet sleeper agents still loyal to the Comintern dream.
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Jan 24, 2014 20:31
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priznat posted:Soon warfare will be an elaborate episode of "Robot Wars" with some Real Steel in there for fun.  Source
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Jan 24, 2014 20:32
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Davin Valkri posted:If I might ask, the AI thread mentioned that the F-35 was supposed to be the cheaper, lighter, exportable counterpart to the F-22. Obviously that hasn't been the case, but if we were going for a sort of F-4 / F-5 thing for the new century, how should the F-35 program have been run from day one? Not having the -B model. Actually not having the -A or -C models, either, just one F-35, be it Navy or AF, whatever. (But not the -B model.) also maybe learning some lessons from, oh I don't know, the TFX/F-111. That sure was an excellent long-range, high-endurance carrier-based interceptor and high-speed low-level ground attack aircraft all in one combined low-cost platform. Psion fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 20:36
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Mortabis posted:The thing that pisses me off most about the F-35 budgeting is the way that when we cut orders, the supposed price of each plane goes up. Like, yes, the fixed cost isn't getting spread out over as many units but that cost is already sunk, isn't it? Haven't we paid all that money to LockMart already? There needs to be a fourth addition to Twain's three kinds of lies: how much a piece of military equipment costs. The reason the "price" of the plane goes up is because of how the particular price you're talking about is budgeted. It's not like just because we cut orders now we have to write LockMart a check for $120M instead of $100M to get the keys and take it off the lot, it's the per unit cost of the entire program over the life of the aircraft, which by definition must be a really big number divided by the number of aircraft. That's the only way to get close to an honest accounting for the total cost of a program, if we just did the "kick the tires and take the keys" cost defense contractors would make out like bandits even worse than they do already. Related, having the AF not buy any would be disastrous at this point, which is why it will never happen. We (the USAF) are on the hook to buy 1,763. Not only is that more than any other buyer, it is more than every single other buyer COMBINED (including the USN and USMC). If we reduce our buy (much less cancel it completely) the per unit cost will skyrocket to the point the entire program would self destruct. Mortabis posted:Also, the idea that military programs "create jobs" is just so incredibly offensive. They don't create any jobs at all, or at least to the extent that they do it's not useful economic activity. The people who are working on those planes would be doing something else that's more productive otherwise. If that kind of creating jobs were actually a good thing we would just pay everyone to dig holes and fill them up again eight hours a day five days a week. Yeah but that something else is in a different Congressional district. Davin Valkri posted:I wonder if there's a similar thought process going on for "stealth makes *X* obsolete"? The F-35 program in a nutshell: stealth and DAS make maneuvering performance irrelevant. Regarding how the F-35 program should've been run, like I said above, it never should've been a thing. Not only did they try and make a jack of all trades aircraft from the start (which has historically always been disastrous...good multi-role fighters typically don't start out as such), and not only did they try to make it work for multiple countries, but they tried to make it have CTOL, CATOBAR, AND STOVL versions. There was no way this program was not going to result in a clusterfuck of epic proportions. So I guess if you go all the way back to the beginning the three disparate programs that were combined to make the JSF should've remained separate. Of course, this would never have happened because after the A-12 hilariously self destructed and NATF turned out to be vaporware Naval Aviation was up poo poo creek with no money, and the Marines were never going to get a stand alone STOVL fighter, much less a stealthy supersonic one (while the idea of killing off the herpes of aerospace once and for all is an appealing one, there was no way the Marines weren't going to get their way on that one.) So basically the program was doomed from the instant the USMC's CALF and the remains of the USN's ATA and NATF programs got combined with the USAF's MRF to create JAST. fake edit: basically what Psion said. Smiling Jack posted:Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if the entire F-35 program is a joint legacy Cold-War KGB program to cripple the West's airpower. LockMart is secretly run by long term Troskyite Soviet sleeper agents still loyal to the Comintern dream. There's a joke someone (I think Bill Sweetman) made about how the STOVL fad in Western Europe in the middle to late Cold War was just a massive Soviet plot to cripple NATO air forces, it was the only explanation that made sense. Cyrano4747 posted:poo poo, the military's been spouting lines like that since time immemorial. THE BOMBER WILL ALWAYS GET THROUGH!!!* * with 20%+ attrition iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 20:53
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iyaayas01 posted:There needs to be a fourth addition to Twain's three kinds of lies: how much a piece of military equipment costs. The reason the "price" of the plane goes up is because of how the particular price you're talking about is budgeted. It's not like just because we cut orders now we have to write LockMart a check for $120M instead of $100M to get the keys and take it off the lot, it's the per unit cost of the entire program over the life of the aircraft, which by definition must be a really big number divided by the number of aircraft. That's the only way to get close to an honest accounting for the total cost of a program, if we just did the "kick the tires and take the keys" cost defense contractors would make out like bandits even worse than they do already. Let me explain what I'm saying slightly differently. We have already spent the development costs, so while the per-unit cost would skyrocket, the actual money we're paying would not, right? So if we consigned ourselves to ostensibly billion dollar fighters in the F-35 buy, while replacing our old F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s with more of the same, that would actually save money, right? And would new-build F-15s/F-16s/F-18Es/in a perfect world F-22s actually be better planes than the F-35?
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Jan 24, 2014 21:00
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Mortabis posted:Let me explain what I'm saying slightly differently. We have already spent the development costs, so while the per-unit cost would skyrocket, the actual money we're paying would not, right? Ok, I see what you're saying now. It all depends on how you want to look at it. The actual money we're spending doesn't go up directly, no, but looking at it that way isn't accurate over the long term because when you cut the buy you are getting less iron for the same amount of money as far as sunk costs like development are concerned. So the per unit cost goes up, now instead of getting 10 aircraft for a billion dollars spent over the life of the program, you only get 8. This kind of long term accounting matters when we're discussing a program that is slated to spend a trillion (with a t) and a half dollars over the course of half a century. e: But you can't just add more aircraft to a buy in a vacuum because budgets are finite, just because it will "save" money over the life of the program (in the sense that sunk costs will be spread out over more units) to buy another 500 aircraft doesn't mean that we can actually do that, since the money "saved" will be vastly outweighed by the fact that it costs $150M a pop (fuzzy numbers) just to get the aircraft off the lot in flyaway cost. That's nothing other than what went into producing that individual hunk of composite and metal. When it was only supposed to cost $60M a pop, legislatures are less than keen to spend over more than double the originally quoted price for each aircraft, regardless of the per unit cost over the life of the program. That's why you have what's called the procurement death spiral, flyaway cost goes up, units bought go down, per unit lifespan cost goes up, causing even fewer units to get bought, and so on until the program gets canceled. As for what would/wouldn't be better... F-22s? Absolutely. It is not funny how far of everything else the Raptor is. It is also not funny how not true that statement is for the F-35, despite how much LockMart (and Bob Gates) wishes it was. Those two aircraft are not in the same league, period. Legacy fighters? From a LO signature perspective no (although the gap would narrow with "LO-optimized" legacy designs like the F-15SE or Boeing's "stealthy" Super Hornet concept), from a kinematic performance/payload perspective, more or less yes, from an avionics perspective, yes. The difference isn't whether they're "better" it's that you can get (made up numbers to illustrate the point) 90% of the capability for 50% of the price. This is especially true since the whole LO thing with the F-35 is massively overblown. If we're exporting it, it can't be that good, and we have F-22s/B-2s/TLAMs to kick in the door, not F-35s (or at least we should've had enough Raptors until airpower guru Bob Gates cut the buy). And like I said before, I honestly don't understand why NATO/Australia/Japan/South Korea think they need LO fighters, other than wanting to have shiny toys. If you're talking about a Singapore I could maybe understand, since they don't have super strong historical ties with the US, but that group of countries I just mentioned all have extremely strong defense relationships with us going back at least 60+ years, the likelihood of them needing to stand on their own against a near-peer without fighting alongside the US is effectively zero. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 21:12
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iyaayas01 posted:This is especially true since the whole LO thing with the F-35 is massively overblown. If we're exporting it, it can't be that good, ... Have there been any hard figures as to its actual "stealthiness"? Like a comparison saying it is 93% less visible than a Super Hornet, but 33% more visible than the F-22. People keep saying, "it's stealthy" but that giant engine nozzle leads me to believe the opposite.
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Jan 24, 2014 21:35
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