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Amused to Death posted:So what are the issues with the F35 besides being an infinite money pit? I think the GBS thread basically said they tried to make it do to many things and now it's severely under armored and too slow for an air superiority fighter and also armed like poo poo especially compared to the A-10 for a close air support role. They're basically right. You cant try to fit two very different requirements into the same airframe because of aerodynamics. There are lots of other problems that hang off of this one, but I think its probably the most fundamental. I should note here I am not a professional at this, but I've studied the field rather a lot in the course of doing a Mech Eng degree. You have a general requirement for a fighter of being fast and manoeuvrable. A CAS aircraft ideally has a long loiter time, can travel relatively slowly and can carry a lot of ordnance. Unfortunately, the aerodynamics of wing sections is such that you cannot have a wing that is efficient at producing lift in both the high and low velocity regimes without producing a lot of drag in the process. I believe I'm right in saying that all wing sections have a "drag bucket" which is an optimum operating speed with a minimum of drag. These buckets only occur at one velocity. And for the minute at least, you can only have one wing section throughout your flight. So what does this mean in the case of the F35? The wing is optimised for high speed flight. It has a high wing loading (Ie, the ratio of lift produced by the wings to the weight of the aircraft is relatively low, probably due to unneeded weight) so it needs to travel fast to generate that lift. A historical example of something like this is the F104 starfighter. It had tiny, tiny wings that were optimised for lift and low drag at supersonic speeds, and it was complete poo poo at low speeds and killed quite a few pilots who werent used to the excessive landing speed. This high wing loading also pretty much means that it'll be great at going fast in a straight line, but not so great at turning. So you have a wing that is only good at high speed. What does this do for a CAS support role? Well, the ideal CAS aircraft can stay in the air while going slowly, and can stay a slow speed for long periods of time with a wing efficient at producing lift at slow velocity. You also want a low wing loading, because that provides additional capacity even when loaded down with munitions. In short, the F35 doesnt do this well. That high-speed optimised wing will require a higher minimum speed to prevent it from falling out of the sky, which means that spotting a target on the ground will be very difficult (because just how much detail do you pick out of a train window at 125mph? Scale that up somewhat). It doesnt carry anything like the payload of the A-10, even leaving aside the devastating power of that gatling gun. It wont have anything like the fuel capacity, it wont have a lengthy loiter time. Some steps have been taken to mitigate these factors - but they ironically compromise the aircraft in other ways. Armour has been added to improve low altitude survivability - but more mass means those already overloaded wings are taxed even more, and the added mass reduces fuel efficiency (even less loiter time, slower, burns more fuel anyway). I've mainly focussed on the wing section here, but there are also (to my relatively untrained eye, at least) some other issues to do with aerodynamics that have been picked up in that graphic like the limited air mass flow to the engines, but also the idea of that lift fan was absolutely loving retarded. In trying to emulate the harrier they really should have just stuck with bleeding air flow from the first couple of compressor stages instead of creating an entirely new fan that just occupies the middle of the aircraft doing gently caress all for 95% of the time.
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Jul 4, 2014 19:07
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The F-22 has managed to catch up to the Gripen in (hull loss) accidents since entering service, with loss of life to boot. Not really sure what's going on there, the fleet sizes are comparable and I imagine the Gripen has ratched up far more flight hours, on presumably older tech (more prone to accidents). And that's one of those dreaded single-engine designs. Granted, I don't recall either plane crashing due to engine malfunctions, so there's that.
Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 19:07
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Dusty Baker 2 posted:
Well, you could take that leftover money and buy the entire US space program, X-15 through Apollo to the Shuttle and the ISS. Hell, getting to the Moon on a 10-year crash course was about $100 Billion for comparison...
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Jul 4, 2014 19:14
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Whats going on there is that we have a culture that has a superiority complex without actual investment in ideas like the product comes before the profit or actual personal involvement on the part of anyone with any decision making capacity. We aren't investing heavily in science and technology yet demand a technological superior fighter to even allies because we want to make money off of it. Anyone who still has any belief that the F35 will be successful is looking at a long term game where pretty much everything about the aircraft is slowly replaced by constant upgrades and package replacements.
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Jul 4, 2014 19:16
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Pimpmust posted:The F-22 has managed to catch up to the Gripen in (hull loss) accidents since entering service, with loss of life to boot. Not really sure what's going on there, the fleet sizes are comparable and I imagine the Gripen has ratched up far more flight hours, on presumably older tech (more prone to accidents). And that's one of those dreaded single-engine designs. Granted, I don't recall either plane crashing due to engine malfunctions, so there's that. Remember that Norway bought F35 instead of Gripen because "it was cheaper". Got some good laughs out of that I think Jon Stewart even had a segment
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Jul 4, 2014 20:03
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DarkCrawler posted:That's a nice graph. Do you mind if I spread it around on some other sites? Go for it. I'll PM you when I make a better version of it, too. dilbertschalter posted:This would be an excellent entry in a "misleading infographics" competition. The total cost estimate is stretched over fifty years, while most of the numbers given in the image are over shorter timescales. Granted it's still an enormous waste of money, but that doesn't make the comparisons any less specious. The numbers given were provided by UNESCO, and most of those ten-year goals were to start a process. Some of them, like the school building and landmine removal, are dollar figures needed to finish those goals completely. I didn't really mean for it to be misleading but you've got a solid point on that and I'll need to revise the figures for the final version of it. Peel posted:It's also hard to read since it has a black-on-dark text format. I have my brightness turned up stupidly-high. I'll pick better colors for the final. 
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Jul 4, 2014 20:10
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Makes the French look good for Visnu's sake. The complete fuckery of the F35 again makes me wonder why the Russians could design and build the Flanker and Fulcrum for relative peanuts.
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Jul 4, 2014 20:18
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Because the redeeming feature of both Russia and the Soviet Union is that, sometimes, fuckwits got shot.
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Jul 4, 2014 20:23
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The hilarious part is that they keep pushing this pile as an A-10 replacement, a role that it is obviously poorly suited for, as opposed to shilling out the relatively tiny amount of money needed to upgrade the A-10 fleet to relatively more modern tech so it can load better radar and mount semi-modern weapons packages to make it even better at the close air support role that it already dominates.
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Jul 4, 2014 20:35
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The Air Force has always hated the A-10, at least the powerful members of the fighter mafia. They want shiny and go fast, style over substance, not a single-use, straight wing aircraft that dominates in its role.
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Jul 4, 2014 20:56
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Isn't the A-10 going to be one of the things lost in the defence cuts iirc?
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Jul 4, 2014 21:01
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Mightypeon posted:Because the redeeming feature of both Russia and the Soviet Union is that, sometimes, fuckwits got shot. Eh also, the Soviet Union simply had less resources to work with so they had to build comparable fighters with far tighter budgets. It isn't really talked about how much of an massive economic advantage the West always had, the Soviets were basically challenging the West hopping on leg for 45+ years.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:09
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SkySteak posted:Isn't the A-10 going to be one of the things lost in the defence cuts iirc? The A-10 is a frequent target of AF defense cuts because they know that if they cut the A-10 the army will whine to congress and congress will earmark additional money specifically for the A-10. This time though it seems like they're serious.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:09
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Ardennes posted:Eh also, the Soviet Union simply had less resources to work with so they had to build comparable fighters with far tighter budgets. It isn't really talked about how much of an massive economic advantage the West always had, the Soviets were basically challenging the West hopping on leg for 45+ years. Yep, I found it surprising how far they got with it.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:13
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The A-10 is really cool as a death machine but is there any purpose for it anymore? It was designed to chew up waves of Soviet tanks and I don't see what it does nowadays that a drone or helicopter can't do. It's like when Reagan pulled the Iowa out of mothballs. Why? It's a neato but antiquated weapons system.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:13
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Popular Thug Drink posted:The A-10 is really cool as a death machine but is there any purpose for it anymore? It was designed to chew up waves of Soviet tanks and I don't see what it does nowadays that a drone or helicopter can't do. If you're going to put it that way, the A-10 is a faster helicopter with a much longer loiter time. Both attack helicopters and CAS aircraft are designed for anti armor, but they are also perfectly capable against soft targets. The real threat to both helicopters and the A-10 and the like are increasingly more sophisticated IR SAMs which are proliferating throughout the middle east.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:16
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Popular Thug Drink posted:The A-10 is really cool as a death machine but is there any purpose for it anymore? It was designed to chew up waves of Soviet tanks and I don't see what it does nowadays that a drone or helicopter can't do. Isn't coming in to bomb some people to support ground troops in Afghanistan like the main thing the air force has been doing the last 10 years?
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Jul 4, 2014 21:19
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Popular Thug Drink posted:The A-10 is really cool as a death machine but is there any purpose for it anymore? It was designed to chew up waves of Soviet tanks and I don't see what it does nowadays that a drone or helicopter can't do. Simply put, plenty of countries America would like to bomb still have tanks.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:22
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Orange Devil posted:Isn't coming in to bomb some people to support ground troops in Afghanistan like the main thing the air force has been doing the last 10 years? Yeah, but you don't need the Tank Killer Deluxe 9000 to drop bombs on clusters of rocks with light infantry behind them. Ardennes posted:Simply put, plenty of countries America would like to bomb still have tanks. We have plenty of ways to get rid of tanks that aren't a plane designed for the specific purpose of killing lots of tanks. It's like dropping your kids off at school in a Ferarri.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:25
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SkySteak posted:Isn't the A-10 going to be one of the things lost in the defence cuts iirc? Last I knew, the Senate had essentially given the AF an ultimatum that they couldn't cut the A-10. Edit : It was the House Armed Services Committee, and it was further stipulated in the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2014 that the AF couldn't spend any money on retiring the A-10. Orange Devil posted:Isn't coming in to bomb some people to support ground troops in Afghanistan like the main thing the air force has been doing the last 10 years? Exactly. There hasn't been a shiny go-fast fighter-on-fighter conflict since what, Vietnam? Close air support, however, has been a day-to-day necessity throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, and nothing else we've got can do the A-10's job anywhere near as well. Popular Thug Drink posted:Yeah, but you don't need the Tank Killer Deluxe 9000 to drop bombs on clusters of rocks with light infantry behind them. You are highly overstating how focused the A-10 is on killing tanks. It's good at it, yes, but that is far from all it can do. Honestly, it's far from what it's been primarily tasked to do over the entire lifetime of the airframe. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 21:25
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Liquid Communism posted:Exactly. There hasn't been a shiny go-fast fighter-on-fighter conflict since what, Vietnam? Close air support, however, has been a day-to-day necessity throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, and nothing else we've got can do the A-10's job anywhere near as well. 80% of all CAS missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have been precision munitions dropped from other planes. These weapons did not exist when the A-10 was designed. Liquid Communism posted:You are highly overstating how focused the A-10 is on killing tanks. It's good at it, yes, but that is far from all it can do. Honestly, it's far from what it's been primarily tasked to do over the entire lifetime of the airframe. No, you are misinterpreting my words. The primary design goal of the A-10 is to kill tanks. It is notably designed around a huge cannon that is optimized to kill tanks. It can also drop bombs, like most of the warplanes in the military. It's not any better at dropping a laser guided munition than any other plane. The reason the A-10 flies so slow is because when you had to actually loiter and drop dumb bombs back in the 70's, you wanted a slow, tough plane. We have since invented better bombs that eliminate this requirement. The A-10's mission has been replaced by more advanced and cheaper weapons systems, and it is a legacy plane that needs to be dropped but hasn't because it has unmeasurably high cool factor. e: The B-52 is also another legacy plane but its mission - to fly long distances with a shitload of ordnance - is not only still useful but the B-52 excels at this job. The A-10 isn't particularly best at anything we currently have a use for. boner confessor fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 21:30
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Popular Thug Drink posted:The A-10 is really cool as a death machine but is there any purpose for it anymore? It was designed to chew up waves of Soviet tanks and I don't see what it does nowadays that a drone or helicopter can't do. The A-10 has been phenomenal in Afghanistan. Something that can cruise at low speeds, in tight terrain and drop all manner of death on command is highly valued. Like the Soviet Hinds and Frogfoots before them, the A-10 is a ground soldiers best friend in such terrain.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:33
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Yes, and as pretty much everyone else in the government except the AF fighter mafia has argued, all the other solutions proposed are more expensive to run and less reliable.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:34
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Axetrain posted:I don't get it. Why are other countries buying this garbage despite there being actual decent planes out there they can get for much less. I understand we are going to pay for it because the MIC run Megaton, but why are countries trying to turn themselves into US 2.0. It's even more depressing watching America poo poo itself into oblivion because everyone else should know better by virtue of our example For a lot of the smaller countries they were part of the F16/F18 buy. Taking the small size of those air forces, they will have entire generations of pilots who where trained on US aircraft in the US. There's also the political side, buying US aircraft also buys American support in other areas. Back in the 70s there was a big discussion on buying the expensive American F16s or cheaper French Mirage F1s in the Netherlands. Ultimately the labour secdef chose the F16 in accordance with air force preference against the will of the party. Ultimately hat decision turned out to be have been correct with the F16 being much more succesful than the F1. Now the air force seems to regard the current process as another risk to be stuck with an aircraft they perceeve as inferior (Gripen) regardless of wether the F35 will actually live up to it's hype. It doesn't help that fighter procurement is hosed in general and there are good arguments to be made against each one. The F35 is overpriced, undertested and hobbled by marine corps feature creep. The F22 is a expensive hangar queen that isn't being built, let alone exported. The GripenNG is touted as a cheap/mature alternative but in fact exists only as a single "representative" demonstrator aircraft and has a tiny install base. The Eurofighter is a hugely expensive Multinational clusterfuck without direction, completely fractured development and mediocre ground attack. The rafale comes with proprietary lovely french support, and a tiny install base. The F15SE and F18SE appear to be complete vaporware. That's not getting into the clusterfuck that is nonwestern aircraft. Also all prices you see online are near meaningless, trying to compare aircraft prices is akin to reading tea leaves due to the backroom nature of the actual contracts and all the different cost categories being quoted. They're all expensive and hosed in their own special way really. AlexanderCA fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 21:35
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Popular Thug Drink posted:It can also drop bombs, like most of the warplanes in the military. It's not any better at dropping a laser guided munition than any other plane. Is the army getting rid of their helicopters?
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Jul 4, 2014 21:36
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Where is my giant duck-hunt-dog-laughing-when-you-miss gif? I need it, badly.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:37
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Liquid Communism posted:Yes, and as pretty much everyone else in the government except the AF fighter mafia has argued, all the other solutions proposed are more expensive to run and less reliable. IIRC The guy cutting the A10 is a A10 pilot. hobbesmaster posted:Is the army getting rid of their helicopters? To be fair, army aviation has as much to do with interservice dickwaving rivalry as with actual requirements. Attack helicopters have their own issues. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_attack_on_Karbala AlexanderCA fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 21:39
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AlexanderCA posted:The F15SE and F18SE appear to be complete vaporware. The F-15, F-16 and F-18 are all currently in active production.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:39
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Liquid Communism posted:Yes, and as pretty much everyone else in the government except the AF fighter mafia has argued, all the other solutions proposed are more expensive to run and less reliable. How is using weapon systems we already have like the Predator and Apache more expensive and less reliable? Are you trying to say that by being anti A-10 I'm implicitly pro F-35? I really don't see any pragmatic purpose to keeping them around anymore. Like I said earlier, it seems that all of the support for the plane comes about because it is a really cool thing to kill people. F-15Es can hold lots of smart munitions, Apaches can loiter and work well in tight terrain, and drones are useful when you're in dangerous airspace. The A-10 doesn't do anything special or unique except make a lot of cool noise and be really tough looking. e: It's nice that we're all just assuming the military budget will never drop and that cost savings is ignoreable. boner confessor fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 21:41
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AlexanderCA posted:The Eurofighter is a hugely expensive Multinational clusterfuck without direction, completely fractured development and mediocre ground attack. The Rafale and Eurofighter sound like the best of the worst at this point, non-western aside. If you were coming in to buy them now from the outside it sounds like most of the poo poo costs have been paid by someone else.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:43
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hobbesmaster posted:The F-15, F-16 and F-18 are all currently in active production. Yeah those are the best deal for small western aligned nations IMO, US infrastructure and support base to fall back on while not dealing with the development clusterfuck. Though you might lose upgrade capability over the next decades because every cranny on the airframes has already been stuffed with additional equipment. Though the Silent Eagle and Silent Hornet versions I was refering to are specific "stealth" adaptations that boeing is hawking around but not finding buyers for to pay for development.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:51
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Why hasn't this abomination been chopped yet? Why are my elected leaders still so hell-bent on continuing this absolute farce that is the You'll just know that for us they'll pretend the project will just carry on as planned and in a few months time the first example will be brought home and hailed as the cutting edge of all that's amazing and awesome about aviation and people at work will be talking about it and I'll be in a quiet corner somewhere having an aneurism or cutting my wrists and aaaaaaargh It's like watching a train crash is slow motion 
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Jul 4, 2014 21:51
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Tsuru posted:Why hasn't this abomination been chopped yet? Why are my elected leaders still so hell-bent on continuing this absolute farce that is the Aren't F35 parts made in 40 something states? No congressman wants to be the guy who took jobs from their state.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:53
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Ethiser posted:Aren't F35 parts made in 40 something states? No congressman wants to be the guy who took jobs from their state.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:57
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Popular Thug Drink posted:How is using weapon systems we already have like the Predator and Apache more expensive and less reliable? Are you trying to say that by being anti A-10 I'm implicitly pro F-35? I'm not saying that -you- are, but that's the rationale they keep using to try and sell it to Congress. Hagel keeps harping on about retiring the A-10 fleet now to fund the F-35A, and tries to sell it based on covering the gap with drones and F-16's until the F-35A gets operational somewhere in the 2020's at best. The Apache doesn't have the kind of loiter time the A-10 does, and is drastically more vulnerable to man-portable AA fire at low altitudes and low velocities. Same overarching role, very different applications.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:58
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Tsuru posted:Last I heard final assembly for Dutch F35s will be done by Alenia, which is part of Finmecchanica. It isn't often I loudly utter the word "gently caress" while reading the internet, but the moment I found this out was such a time. As far as the F35 goes, it was just the perfect icing on the cake, I guess.... Have fun: http://www.defensie.nl/documenten/rapporten/2014/06/27/nlr-rapport-over-corrosie-nh90 Relatedly, I read a lot of bitching about the F35 online "why won't we buy european, support our own industry!" then the next day "why did we buy this Euro NH90 POS!?" All procurement is hosed.
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Jul 4, 2014 22:03
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Ethiser posted:Aren't F35 parts made in 40 something states? No congressman wants to be the guy who took jobs from their state. A lot of that isn't "F-35 parts" it's "aircraft parts" so assuming we procure something else it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Someone in England was defending the F-35 by pointing out it used Martin-Baker ejection seats... Conveniently ignoring the fact that all western fighters have at least one of those.
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Jul 4, 2014 22:04
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Liquid Communism posted:I'm not saying that -you- are, but that's the rationale they keep using to try and sell it to Congress. Hagel keeps harping on about retiring the A-10 fleet now to fund the F-35A, and tries to sell it based on covering the gap with drones and F-16's until the F-35A gets operational somewhere in the 2020's at best. The A-10's primary problem at this point is that it is also incredibly vulnerable to MANPADS/AAA/practically anything designed after 1980 to shoot down airplanes. Arguably even more so than the Apache given that it is a much easier target for modern RADAR guided SAMs. It isn't fast, it isn't stealthy, and it isn't particularly durable (which isn't exactly unusual when it comes to aircraft). Note that this hasn't affected its ability to shoot dudes with rifles and RPGs in completely permissive airspace, which is why it continues to be in service. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 22:15
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AlexanderCA posted:Have fun: Ah, Helikopter 14! The helicopter that took so long to be actually delivered to the Swedish armed forces that we bought Blackhawks (also) and got them delivered and operational before all the NH90s. quote:2001 tecknar Sverige kontrakt med NHI avseende 18 stycken NH90 TTH Translation: Ordered 18 choppers in 2001. First heli delivered in late 2007. Should all have been delivered by 2009. They could only *start* being put into service by 2011. By january 2014 there were *five* delivered helicopters in service. All 18 are to be delivered by 2019 and all in service by 2020.    In comparison, it took them 2 years to deliver all 15 Blackhawks (2011-2013). Swedish military response: 
Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 22:22
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NH90 stands for Nato Helicopter for the 1990's Fucken lol
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Jul 4, 2014 22:24
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