We don't get the F-35 numbers that we want.
We extend the more affordable and proven F-18 line to fill the gap.
As is likely - UCAV-N underperforms the hype and is used as what it really is - a recallable, reusable Tactical TLAM. Something that is useful in only the most permissive and ideal environments. Worse than the classic TLAM - the UCAV-N will be exceptionally fragile in the the EM spectrum it desires to operate in from both a defensive and offensive perspective.
As a result - what do we face the rest of the word with for Fleet Air Defense when the USAF cannot spare its F-22 coverage?
Well - you go to war in 2025 with the F-18E/F - an improved 1970s era strike fighter. Very good if it fights in the vignettes that favor it. In the face of what it might have to actually engage in combat against? Well ....
Let's see what our friends in Australia have come up with in their ponderings.
The Buffalo II?
69 comments:
Time to build Prowler AMDO's proposed HELLCAT II. A carrier based air superiority fighter, without any of the multipurpose degradations of having to be a Joint Compromise Fighter. Let Grumman show that they still are the makers of the world's best fighter aircraft.
Interesting proposal but a few thoughts:
- What is the intent behind the Australian article? Is it to buy more JSF or to not buy any FA-18E/F? I do not think the Aussies are looking to buy the F-22.
- Do these numbers really matter in today's A/A fight? Combat wing loading, thrust-weight are not terribly important in a BVR engagement. I am somewhat curious about the Radar Aperture numbers.
While it may be a challenge to project power ashore against a large number of PAKFA solely from the boat, I do not see that as a likely scenario and even so, the Block II Super Hornets will be able to hold their own. If we can only get the Block III to come along with better motors and avionics....
As a euro, I cannot even propose to buy the Eurofighter Typhoon, since to the best of my knowledge, it has never been considered to make it carrier compatible and besides, it's actually an older design than the Super Hornet.
There was a time when Europe, and then especially France and the UK, could make magnificent planes. So much so that the US Marines bought you know what. That is ALL over now.
No matter how much you decry the dwindling of the US Navy and its naval air arm, it's small beer compared to the demise of Europes counterpart.
building brand new fighter may take 20 years now as proven with F-22
we need to reenlist F-14s from the boneyards if possible
Eurofighter is newer design than F/A-18, and capable fighter in both BVR and unlike Tornado, dogfight
while BVR is all fine and dandy, there is always risk of massive multispectral jamming, political need for visual target recognition and many more reasons not to abandon dogfight as a skill and tactic
AFAIK Australians would gladly buy F-22 if allowed by US, it's long range and supercruise make it ideal for the vast area they need to defend
In the early to mid 1960s the same BVR argument was made - and the results speak for themselves. From technology to ROE - to put all your eggs in the BVR basket is to invite significant risk.
That isn't theory - that is fact. If you cannot excell post-merge, then you are set up to fail.
Looking forward, engagements will only be BVR?
hmmm...Where have I heard that before?
Dude, Viet Nam and the gun-less Phantom which, because of ROE restrictions, was not allowed to use BVR until late in the war and only controlled by the airborne AEW bird. Remember, they had to put a belly gun-pack that made the Phantom an even worse pig to fly?
Oh, by the way, early Sidewinders and Sparrow, aka, the Great White Hope, were never a real Mig killer till very late in the air war.
The Air Force controlled all the AEW bird thus controlling almost all the BVR shots. Our tactics didn't change until after Topgun was established and the Mig Killing improved at that point.
The early Sidewinders and Sparrows didn't fair well in the carrier environment.
Strongly suggest to anyone who doesn't understand the necessity of maintaining air combat maneuvering (dog fighting) in the tactical syllabus to read, "Scream of Eagles", the story of the birth of Top Gun and how the Navy learned to be MiG killers again. Redeye, the Ault report found that the missiles were a) not being used the way they were supposed to and b) were almost never combat-ready when loaded. Having tech reps aboard the carrier and a crash course in maintaining the missles cured the horrible efficiency of the missles prior to the Ault report.
"<span>No matter how much you decry the dwindling of the US Navy and its naval air arm, it's small beer compared to the demise of Europes counterpart."</span>
I'd much rather have a Rafale, Eurofighter, or (especially) Gripen than a Super Hornet. Hell, the Rafale is even CATOBAR capable.
I was very much for the Gripen for the Polish Air Force, it is ideally suited for defesive role vs Russia, road-as-runways capable and easy to maintain... F-16 got the contract for political reasons to seal US - Polish alliance more, but I am not sure it was best choice quality-wise...
Before that happens, could on some LCDR, wanting an MSM in his record, to decide they can save money by reducing the ACM training, since no one can threaten us...and to turn over all the simulators to some corporation run by retired ADMs (heck, plans may be in the works right now!), and we'll "contract" for time in the digitally induced cockpits, subject to availablity, travel funds (They'd surely be moved to Duluth).
Just rewind, edit out "ASW" for the surface community and replace with "ACM/AAW" for the air community, and you can save a lot of time generating those new ppts....and I'm all about "reuse" and efficiency, I am...
Believe me, I'm all for having the material advantage. I'm a Marine and history buff who is well aware of what happened to the VMF at Midway. But who will be able to afford enough of these Flankers to challenge us? We can't afford to build new birds, and we have the largest economy in the world. Even if the Russians/Chinese/Indians can afford to build substantial numbers of these aircraft, will they reach their potential given constraints on pilot training and experience in their air forces, not to mention tanker and AEW limitations?
I am more concerned about the Navy sinking money into the F-35B/C's than the inadequacies of the SH. If I were king, I'd bow out of the JSF program, and invest my share of the development monies into the NGAD aircraft and accelerate its development. Make the NGAD just stealthy enough to pop off a few BVR missiles before it can be detected, leverage technology gained from the current F-18/22/35 programs, make it maintainable in the maritime environment, and give it a secondary attack capability - but optimize it for air superiority. Oh, and did I mention 600+nm combat radius?
Yea, I'm a dreamer.
E40K,
The F-14's are dead! There support systems are dead! The electronics are 1960s tech and not viable in todays modern combat relm. Hell, they still used large reel to reel tapes to load the software on the AWG-9 computers. Quick reference here, the AWG-9 radar system use 8 boxes to build the fire control computer that would guide just the AIM-7, to use the AIM-54 via APS-145 datalink required 10 boxes; on the flip side to use the APG-65/73 required 1 box for the fire control computer to guide either the AIM-7 or the AIM-120.
That is cause both the Sidewinder and the Sparrow were both designed from the get go to be large B-36, B-52 size bomber killers. They were not designed to keep up with a wiley manuerving fighter sized target. Go and read Sidewinder :Creative Missile Development at China Lake. It talks about about the early development of the AIM-9 along, with the hassles that Hughes was having with the AIM-4, and Marietta was having with the Sparrow I.
SAP, when the maintainers had the birds tweaked per the spec, and the pilots understood the specific speed/Gs in a turn that the seekers could handle, missile kills went up. Almost all the kills at the end of the war were by Sidewinders...and solely because the missiles were good when hung on the wing and the pilot understood the engagement parameters.
I think if you kill the F-35B and concentrate on the Charlie, you'll get a decent A-7 replacement.
It would be pretty interesting to see what could be made of a carrier fighter, designed from the keel up as a carrier fighter, from the F-135 engine and the F-35s avionics...
I am not discounting that. All I was trying to say is that the early missiles when they first arrived to the services in thier conventional forms (yes, virginia they looked at even sticking a kiloton nuke on a 'winder) were designed to shred into bomber formations. The idea with the sidewinder was that it would get strapped to some day fighter like of an FJ/F-86 or a F11F. Heck for S&G's they even thought about trying to test launching a 'winder from a reinforced wing rack on a O-2A spotter plane. All you needed was the wiring, and a trigger device. Remember to use BVR you sacrifice weight for a large and heavy radar package and all the plumbing that comes from routing both the coolant and the electronics to/fro.
As to the AIM-4, AIM-7, and even the AIR systems; most of them were babied from the factory to planes and flown in the most basic of manuvers to the range. They were experienced in actual combat manuvering.
It's a problem. Neither F/A-18 E/F nor F-35C are air superiority machines. They are strike aircraft with a useful air-to-air capability.
I'll concede that a case can be made for fighting the outer air battle with long-range SAMs like SM-6. But accelerating NGAD would be a smart move. Given the technological advances of the last decade, I suspect we could get F-22 LO and performance (provided we didn't trade it off) in a carrier-capable package.
It's a problem. Neither F/A-18 E/F nor F-35C are air superiority machines. They are strike aircraft with a useful air-to-air capability.
I'll concede that a case can be made for fighting the outer air battle with long-range SAMs like SM-6. But accelerating NGAD would be a smart move. Given the technological advances of the last decade, I suspect we could get F-22 LO and performance (provided we didn't trade it off) in a carrier-capable package.
Redeye, the Ault report found that the missiles were a) not being used the way they were supposed to and b) were almost never combat-ready when loaded.
I remember Frank Ault from when I was a kid...To this day, mom -who can't remember much- still recalls she disliked the guy. Guess he was a pretty coarse individual. I mostly remember that he scared me.
Anyway, didn't know then that he had survived this ...aboard this ship... before getting his wings.
Which may go to explain his "battleminded" bent.
I will opine that his was a personality that would never fare well in today's navy....but then again...It sure looks like the today's USN is not particularly interested in cultivating those who may be particularly "battleminded"....
What would be a combat loss ratio of F-14 to Super Hornet?
In Vietnam, some of the most dangerous NV pilots have flown MiG-17s!
If it's old it doesnt mean necesarrily it kills less.
Think Lee-Enfield marksmen hunting the Soviets in AFG in 1980s
Plus avionics boxes are made to be replaced with newer ones, yes?
It will take 20 years to scratch-build new fighter, I am afraid.
No more 100 days form idea to prototype of Mustang...
But on a carrier you want 2 engines and the single from the F35 is huge, maybe too big to stuff 2 in the fighter or making your fighter bigger than you want - and IIRC those engines are not meant to supercruise - which you'll want talking about the long range needed in the Pacific.
So we would be back to a single engine Navy fighter or twin smaller engines? People (much) smarter than me can answer that - though supposedly people (much) smarter than me got us where we are today.
The other thing you need to factor in as well is man hours per flight hour. The F-14 was starting to reach the almost 75 ground maintenance hours per 1 flight hour. That was just basic maintenance and up keep. Lets not include the time and hours wasted chasing gremlins in the systems or gripes introduced by aircrew.
I am not doubting that old doesn't always mean it doesn't work. However, your comparing apples to oranges. The MiG-17 and MiG-19 were at thier basics still 1945 jet technology, while the F-14 and F-15 are 1970 tech. Also they were designed for two different missions. The MiG-17/19 were daylight fighters and the F-14/15 are all weather interceptors. Two different roles and missions.
Finally, I can tell you from personal experience that avionics can be upgrade, but the big question is how much of the older system are you going to retain to maintain functionality and save yourself $$$ since you will need to pay for a complete factory/depot level upgrade to install a complete new system.
Scott,
The Grumman that was created by Leroy Grumman doesn't exist and it start to cease to exsist in the mid-1960's when the board started to forget some of Leroy's personal motatives on how to design an aircraft. The biggest one was design for a proven engine not an experimental (like what happened with the F-14 and the TF30 fiasco). Tween the money pits that the LEM's, F-14, and the E-2/C-2 (the C-2 was dangerous and unsafe to fly early on till some folks look at it and found a flaw in the tail structure on one they found upside down in the Phil Sea) became; Grumman started to bleed money by the end of the 1970's like a pig stuck by a bowie knife. On top of that they weren't building new jets by the time Lehman came into power but reworking older jets to new standards. So most of the A-6E's were A-6A/B/C's that were reworked to E standards.
Again we are paying the prices for a lost generation that started in 1989 and the wrong lessons learned from Desert Storm and the Balkans. The problem was there were plenty of "John the Baptist" types in the O-5 to O-8 range but were considered dinosaurs by the up and comers at the senior O-3 to O-4 range. If you get a chance just grab some of the Proceedings and even Tailhooks from about 1992 on. There were people screaming for the need of a long range fleet defender, a long range strike bird, and the need to preserve organic ASW/AEW/Tanking onboard the carrier. Some of that was traded away in chips to stay at the table, all under the idea of jointness. Yet, when push has come to shove there has been a few places where now those trades are costing us preformance capabilities and flexibilty with our carrier air power.
Observing the inexorable decline has been painful...
Good article here.
<span>The Navy has unbalanced the carrier air group's support and force-protection capabilities in favor of decks jammed with strike aircraft, essentially duplicating the Air Force's role. If naval aviation is to survive, it must be able to perform unique missions with forces based entirely at sea.</span>
<span></span>
<span>There were people screaming for the need of a long range fleet defender, a long range strike bird, and the need to preserve organic ASW/AEW/Tanking onboard the carrier.</span>
<span></span>
<span>Wonder what the esteemed Mr Rowe is doing these days?</span>
We suck.
Check out Section 4 here...
Also the appendices.
but we need something to defend the fleet with until - or worse, if at all - any new gen dedicated fighter appears...
note how Russians despite much worse odds managed to retain Flanker production and design capacity by exports and even low numbers but stable orders from own air force...
You could find a bunch of people that were happier with a single engine F-8 than a twin engine F-4....
Look at thier business model. They are willing to sell you the full package deal or for just a little bit more they are willing to sell you the shell manufactured in thier plants with your avioincs or for a whole bunch more they will sell you the rights to produce your own version in your own plants and you can add whatever you want to it with avioncs and weapons capabilities, just continue to pay us every so many years a license fee for the rights to produce it in your factories by your workers. I would also suggest to look at how many different variants they are producing from the basic SU-27 frame.
You have the SU-27M and SU-30MK variants, The SU-35 "Super" Flanker variant, The SU-33 carrier variant, you have the SU-34 Fullback theater bomber variant. That is five base line aircraft that one can throw just about any avionics package they want in there and get tested to carry "thier" weapons.
The licensing thing is what has kept the Gripen, Rafale, Typhoon, and even the latest versions of the F-15/16 from being sold successfully. For a while there was a hold up when Korea was looking for a replacement of its F-4D's and the fly off was tween a F-15E and the Dassault Rafale. Boeing was willing to give limited license rights up (basically the shells would be made in St. Louis but all the avioncs would be installed in Korea) where as Dassault operated like Apple (no one but Dassault builds thier planes).
Look at thier business model. They are willing to sell you the full package deal or for just a little bit more they are willing to sell you the shell manufactured in thier plants with your avioincs or for a whole bunch more they will sell you the rights to produce your own version in your own plants and you can add whatever you want to it with avioncs and weapons capabilities, just continue to pay us every so many years a license fee for the rights to produce it in your factories by your workers. I would also suggest to look at how many different variants they are producing from the basic SU-27 frame.
You have the SU-27M and SU-30MK variants, The SU-35 "Super" Flanker variant, The SU-33 carrier variant, you have the SU-34 Fullback theater bomber variant. That is five base line aircraft that one can throw just about any avionics package they want in there and get tested to carry "thier" weapons.
The licensing thing is what has kept the Gripen, Rafale, Typhoon, and even the latest versions of the F-15/16 from being sold successfully. For a while there was a hold up when Korea was looking for a replacement of its F-4D's and the fly off was tween a F-15E and the Dassault Rafale. Boeing was willing to give limited license rights up (basically the shells would be made in St. Louis but all the avioncs would be installed in Korea) where as Dassault operated like Apple (no one but Dassault builds thier planes).
Look at thier business model. They are willing to sell you the full package deal or for just a little bit more they are willing to sell you the shell manufactured in thier plants with your avioincs or for a whole bunch more they will sell you the rights to produce your own version in your own plants and you can add whatever you want to it with avioncs and weapons capabilities, just continue to pay us every so many years a license fee for the rights to produce it in your factories by your workers. I would also suggest to look at how many different variants they are producing from the basic SU-27 frame.
You have the SU-27M and SU-30MK variants, The SU-35 "Super" Flanker variant, The SU-33 carrier variant, you have the SU-34 Fullback theater bomber variant. That is five base line aircraft that one can throw just about any avionics package they want in there and get tested to carry "thier" weapons.
The licensing thing is what has kept the Gripen, Rafale, Typhoon, and even the latest versions of the F-15/16 from being sold successfully. For a while there was a hold up when Korea was looking for a replacement of its F-4D's and the fly off was tween a F-15E and the Dassault Rafale. Boeing was willing to give limited license rights up (basically the shells would be made in St. Louis but all the avioncs would be installed in Korea) where as Dassault operated like Apple (no one but Dassault builds thier planes).
Look at thier business model. They are willing to sell you the full package deal or for just a little bit more they are willing to sell you the shell manufactured in thier plants with your avioincs or for a whole bunch more they will sell you the rights to produce your own version in your own plants and you can add whatever you want to it with avioncs and weapons capabilities, just continue to pay us every so many years a license fee for the rights to produce it in your factories by your workers. I would also suggest to look at how many different variants they are producing from the basic SU-27 frame.
You have the SU-27M and SU-30MK variants, The SU-35 "Super" Flanker variant, The SU-33 carrier variant, you have the SU-34 Fullback theater bomber variant. That is five base line aircraft that one can throw just about any avionics package they want in there and get tested to carry "thier" weapons.
The licensing thing is what has kept the Gripen, Rafale, Typhoon, and even the latest versions of the F-15/16 from being sold successfully. For a while there was a hold up when Korea was looking for a replacement of its F-4D's and the fly off was tween a F-15E and the Dassault Rafale. Boeing was willing to give limited license rights up (basically the shells would be made in St. Louis but all the avioncs would be installed in Korea) where as Dassault operated like Apple (no one but Dassault builds thier planes).
Look at thier business model. They are willing to sell you the full package deal or for just a little bit more they are willing to sell you the shell manufactured in thier plants with your avioincs or for a whole bunch more they will sell you the rights to produce your own version in your own plants and you can add whatever you want to it with avioncs and weapons capabilities, just continue to pay us every so many years a license fee for the rights to produce it in your factories by your workers. I would also suggest to look at how many different variants they are producing from the basic SU-27 frame.
You have the SU-27M and SU-30MK variants, The SU-35 "Super" Flanker variant, The SU-33 carrier variant, you have the SU-34 Fullback theater bomber variant. That is five base line aircraft that one can throw just about any avionics package they want in there and get tested to carry "thier" weapons.
The licensing thing is what has kept the Gripen, Rafale, Typhoon, and even the latest versions of the F-15/16 from being sold successfully. For a while there was a hold up when Korea was looking for a replacement of its F-4D's and the fly off was tween a F-15E and the Dassault Rafale. Boeing was willing to give limited license rights up (basically the shells would be made in St. Louis but all the avioncs would be installed in Korea) where as Dassault operated like Apple (no one but Dassault builds thier planes).
And you could find a bunch of people that screamed the F35 was unacceptable because it was a single and was a water dart if the motor puked. IIRC, Lex posted a year or so ago an engine failure on his Hornet and he had to bring it home to the carrier on one engine. Were that to happen with him on a single, we might not have his great prose today - well worth the cost of a second engine me thinks ;)
Rafale, CATOBAR? Surprises me. But neither the Eurofighter nor the Gripen, right?
Treat all the boxes as a "black box" , then design one little box that takes the same inputs and puts out the same outputs in the same situation, That would take one genius programmer and a very underutilized Dell laptop (equivilent), plus a whole lot of a to d convertor boxes whose biggest parts would be the input jacks.
Yea the Rafale was designed to replace the F-8E(FN)'s in French Aeronavale service along with replacing the Mirage 2000 and Mirage F.1's the French Air Force. So they have three versions the Rafale C is the Navy's version with a tailhook and a catapult launch bar, and the A and B are the land Variants. If my memory serves me right the B is thier twin seat nuclear bomber version.
GB,
I wish it could be that easy. Again to use the F-14 example it saw the first and large scale use of the basic intergrated chip so there was a computer section that did just processing of where the aircraft was in x,y,z space, there was a computer that looked at the target to figure out where it was in x,y,z space, there was a computer to do the figuring on whether the aircraft/weapon was with in paramters to launch; in the F-18A-D and the APG-65/73 that was all shrunk to about three cirucit boards in the computer module due to something called large scale intergration. Now with the latest and greatest radar that is supposed to be F-22 and F-35 it is supposed to be all with in 1-2 IC's due to VLSI or very large scale intergration.
On top of that again avionics weigh a bunch. The only thing that weighs more then avionics is aircrew surivial gear (oxygen, ejection, aircrew air con and heat). So if you sacrifice a couple hundred pounds of weight due to shrinking of the boxes or elmination of boxes you need to make that weight some place else. Otherwise the center of gravity of the aircraft is off. So you either need to replace it with something just as heavy or put weights into the jet.
<p>The Super is the jet you want your son or daughter to fly because it is incredibly safe and anyone around that program will tell you so. You can even have one engine out or at idle and trap it. The Super is the jet you want your son or daughter to fly........in peacetime.
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</p><p>A look at the performance chart gives you a snap-shot of where we are at.
</p><p>
</p><p>http://ericpalmer.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/superfvseverythingelse.jpg
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</p><p>Note where the Super and F-35 are at. We do not want to be on that part of a chart. Also remember that the PAK-FA doesn't have to be super-stealthy. It only has to be stealthy enough to lower the PK of our single point of failure, the AMRAAM which only has a 50 percent PK againsts poor targets in combat. Re-living the PK of the Vietnam-era Sparrow is possible.
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</p><p>
</p><p>
</p><p>Send a carrier near Chicom waters in the coming years as a use of force and/or a political card? It is getting more risky.
</p><p>
</p><p>Today's carrier air wing is incredible because EVERY fighter can carry a JDAM. We can hit more targets per day in near any weather with today's carrier air wing than we could years ago with bigger air wings that had a majority of dumb bomb jets and only a few precision guided munitions jets. Imagine what the failed Kennedy cruise in '83 off of Lebanon would have been like had we had JDAM. It would have been an incredible success and—oh btw with JDAM you can contempt of engage trashfire, AAA, MANPADS, SA-8, SA-9, you know, all those Syrian threats on that cruise. I can touch you but you can't touch me. And with a sub 4-meter CEP weapon—that I can even set for airburst if I want.
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</p><p>Yet, things didn't work out like we thought after the Cold War. In the 1990s we thought every future threat would be vs. a country with a few broken down MiG-29s or 1<sup>st</sup> gen Su-27. “Tooot !!!! Tooooot ! Super Power comin' through!!! Out of the way!” I guess funding the Chicoms via Walmart has consequences. Ooops.
Continued in part 2</p>
Part 2...
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<p>2010 and onward in the Pacific Rim is THE threat. Period. Dot. Some in D.C., better start thinking of what made WWII possible. That is, air power. Air power FIRST and then you can go ahead and do what ever contingency you want. The people that think we have this all wrapped up are people that are un-informed. You know... people like Gates, and his sycophants General Schwartz and the empty-suit of a Sec AF are just a few examples.
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</p><p>Fix? Cancel the F-35. Remember the base version of the F-35 IS the F-35B STOVL because the other two variants A and C had to build around those requirements. Stop it. Kill it. Move on. Next the USN needs to buy (as a start) a squadron of wide-bodied air-refueling tankers. The USAF with its broken procurement system ain't going to deliver on this one. Next, we need at least one squadron on the carrier deck that is fleet air defense in the color of the old F-14 er but also a bombcat. FA-XX may be Super Hornet sized but with more guts. The Navy has to figure that one out. And, once the FA-XX does its job, the Super (ever useful) can still do a lot of work. Remember, it isn't just numbers with an FA-XX. It is also contempt of engagement. The enemy would have to actually stop it. For example 2 FA-XX every 2 hours around the clock dropping off 8 small diameter bombs some place. That is the potential of 8-16 targets taken out on 2 sorties. And there are a lot of targets that will go away when hit by an SDB. Even each carrying two small JDAMs is a pointy finger repeatedly hitting into the enemy's chest; every two hours +/- . And well the enemy has to stop them from doing that AND try and find a carrier. Still, not all that easy.
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</p><p>I hope the Navy stops wasting money on stupid stuff like the LCS, JSF, EFV and so on. As Major “King” Kong from Dr. Strangelove would say (He is the patron-saint of all B-52 crews)- “It's time to get on the hump. We got some flyin' to do.”
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Also to add on to your though. You either need to go completly digital or completely analog. There is a major loss of data swapping back and forth tween the two. It gets even worst as you increase the number of converters in the line. Think of it like a photo copy of something, the more copies of the copy you make the harder it gets to understand and read the data. Same idea.
Final thing with regards to avionics is Moore's Law doesn't exactly work in the governmental field. Cause we are just now recieving in the governmental side electronics and computers that Boeing, Lockheed, Airbus have been installing into thier aircraft about a decade ago.
I'll add that UCAS/UCLASS will probably perform - but it will do what it was designed to do, not what the hordes of UAV-pushers who lack hands-on experience with large unmanned aircraft are trying to sell.
It'll be find for high-risk strike (like SEAD) and recon missions. ACM or CAS? Don't make me laugh. The software gets a hell of a lot more complex, as do the bandwidth requirements.
You wouldn't want the F135. The desire of the bosses in the USMC to go vertical has resulted in this engine being lumbered with a whole bunch of dead weight. It weighs some (wet) 6,444 lbs, for crisesakes! Then there is all that additional structure needed just to carry around all that dead weight, even worse if carrier suitablity loads have to be rolled into the mix. Steering well clear of this engine till it loses a fair bit of weight would be a good idea.
Hence the need for the all new design FIGHTER. Not fighter-bomber, not attack plane that can go air to air if it has to, but a fighter. I would like to see Grumman, with more success than anyone at carrier fighters, make yet another Cat. Eric Browne one said that if you look at what the plane accomplished, not just it's performance specs, an argument could be made for the F6F Hellcat being the greatest fighter of all time. I hope, and believe they can do it again. Grumman is supposed to have a project going, that is using a lot of engineers, that they are not talking about. I fear it is a UACV, but maybe it's the Hellcat II.
Not at $201.00 a copy I'm not.
That was a very interesting article and thanks for the link. What does Lex think about all of this?
Quite honestly, it seems the Phib is scooping the old Capt....F-35 COD problems here first, now this...
Hey ... the Front Porch has great post ideas!
Quick question - I know that the F-15 Eagle still is known as one of the best fighters in the world. I know they are still being built.
If we need a true strike fighter, and I'm messing with you all here, isn't the F-15 about the same size as the F-14? And yes, I know the wings don't fold, yet.
I've never heard this, but was the Eagle ever a Navy candidate? I can't believe it wasn't discussed.
And I've got to believe the newest built fighters are still some of the best in the world. Love to have someone respond.
While I agree with you on ACM (at least for now...bandwidth is the biggest limitation) AF Predators and Reapers perform CAS on a regular basis using a satellite uplink for communication/control.
Yes, back in the '70s when the -15 and -14 were coming on line, both were considered by the opposite service. Neither was considered acceptable, because in both cases the mission sets were too disparate (both were air supriority fighters/interceptors, yes, but both had considerably different mission profiles.) Additionally, and perhaps more significant to this discussion, the F-15 was found to be quite unsuitable for operation aboard a carrier for a variety of reasons (just like the F-14 would've had a serious performance hit operating solely from land, having been designed for carrier operations.)
Thanks. Purchasing regs and computer development speed have been mismatched for 30 years, at least. Solution: Change the regs, for computers. Just because it's been stupid for too long doesn't you shouldn't fix it asap, standby...mark. NOW.
"<span>And I've got to believe the newest built fighters are still some of the best in the world. Love to have someone respond."</span>
Depends on what you want to do. The Block 60 F-16s (which the USAF isn't buying any of, by the way...but the UAE sure is) and the F-15K Slam Eagle for the ROK (not to mention the F-15SE concept, assuming it was ever developed to fruition) are very capable fighters for their designed mission. Of course, they don't have stealth, but depending on your mission stealth may not be essential, and both of those aircraft are a damned sight cheaper than the (not so) stealthy JSF.
More correctly, you need to shift the CG back to where it was before the modification. The calculation isn't difficult, just tedious. Lotta moment arms to check. I would think a newly minted aeronautical engineer could do it. I seem to remember there are a lot of them sitting around waiting for flight school seats in July or so. Or make it a class project for a class of 'em at a government school. That way you could get multiple checks on the solution. Maybe you could have the AFA do the work and the USNA check it. Get the moment arm calculations right you could have the modified plane lighter and more stable. Maybe.
Check the date of publication. The APA paper and the matters/issues it addresses precede the F-35 COD issue by some degree.
Though, the latter was not unexpected given the size and weight of the F135 engine; taking up around 3 times the volume of a F414-GE-400 (bare, let alone on its trolley) and weighing in at (wet) - drum roll plus cymbals - 6,444 lbs. Who could have thunk this?
Well for a while before ADC was decomissioned they were looking at the F-14 to replaced the F-106. There was thoughts of using its long range radar combined with SAGE to patrol the northern reaches and stand of from the US Coastline in places like Maine or Alaska. Then using the AIM-54 to rip into Soviet bombers as they came over the poles. They had even thought of modifying the tunnel pylons to provide conformal tanks for additional gas, but ADC was started to be downgraded and the costs assoicated with the F-14 wasn't there for the USAF. At least according to Paul Gilchrist's book on the history of the plane. I use to have a picture of a mock up someplace when Grumman was trying to sell it to the USAF.
wasnt there exercise with Rafales operating from Nimitz class while Hornets took off from Charles De Gaulle?
BTW, gotta love old Crusaders still in service by 1990s...
Yes, USN Naval Aviation and the Aeronavale have exercised together quite a bit, which makes sense since France is the only NATO level ally that operates CATOBAR carriers.
<span>Not at $201.00 a copy I'm not.</span>
Just to clarify, thats for the book about Sidewinders above, and not the actual Ault Report that I linked from the NHC...
http://www.amazon.com/Scream-Eagles-Dramatic-Account-Fighter/dp/0743497244/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291822031&sr=8-1
Paper back for about 6 bucks...well worth the investment. It's not the full Ault report but it talks a lot about what caused the report to be done, what was in it, how the aviators developed the information and most importantly how Top Gun got shoved down the throat of Naval Aviation.
Mea Culpa, I should have been more specific. I hit reply to the Sidewinder post, and it went to the bottom, my apologies, I can see where error was inevitable, there.
What I meant was the F-15 Eagle for carrier duty. Even though I'm just funnin' here and it will never happen. But I've got to believe it's a better pure fighter than the F-18 Super Hornet.
We're not going to get what we want out of the JSF in either performance or numbers. The Navy is going to be flying Rhinos for a long time and needs to work on some of its glaring weaknesses.
Fuel and legs. Not enough and short. Conformal fuel tanks are a must.
Speed. The Rhino is slow. So slow, and can't fly high. The Rhino needs engines that will allow it to perform like an F-15C, which will make it an air superiority machine. It also won't hurt in the strike role to be able to go in high and fast and get out of there the same way.
This appears to be a Navy trend. Put all the money in the avionics and accept poor basic airframe performance.
The Rhino does have some nice avionics. That and slow speed performance. Rhinos have beaten Raptors in 1v1 BFM, so as always the man is more important than the machine. That means flight hours for training. Cut flight hours and you needen't bother with new airplanes. Guys who suck lose, and guys who don't train suck. Simulators are poor or partial training at best.
Sooo. When JSF fails to live up to expectations and we get half as many of them as we need, hopefully someone will have long ago figured out that we need to fund flight hours to have decent aircrews, give the Rhino longer legs and lots more speed and altitude performance and we'll be good.
It'll never happen.
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