Well the USN is considering buying additional Super Hornets because JSF will not be available in numbers for a long time yet and no offence but they know just a bit more about what they are doing than you my friend!

was i talking about the USN? no, no i wasn’t

their situation is SLIGHTLY different than the UK’s

the USN has TEN active supercarriers with an ELEVENTH coming online next year and has need for planes NOW

also they currently operate the type so buying a few more now won’t jeopardize their ability to switch to the F-35 later, unlike the RN

the CVFs won’t be ready till 2014 assuming no delays (haha)

And no proven is not malarkey, proven means proven and that equals to a machine that does what it is built to do, the JSF has still to do that.

proven by itself isn’t bad, but when you run out of convincing arguments and are reduced to ‘proven’, it’s time to give it up

By your admission you said that F35B has made the sacrifice of fuel and payload so as to give it the STOVL ability and now you state it carries as much as the F22, but that is the land based and conventional carrier based models.

yup, sometimes i do lose track of the train of thought :diablo:

anyways, F-35B has 14000 lbs of fuel, which is as much as the CTOL SuperHornet

I have posted facts and everyone else has not had to correct my posts because they are factual.

you mean facts like “well the way things are going the JSF might jsut about start rolling of the production line in 30years.”? :rolleyes:

facts like not thinking the F-35B will be able to carry any strike weapons internally?

well the way things are going the JSF might jsut about start rolling of the production line in 30years.

it’s rolling off the production line TODAY

The point of them being operational now is that the Rafale is a proven design.

by that argument we should still be flying sopwith camels because they were ‘proven’

the ‘proven’ argument is a bunch of malarkey from those who know their product will soon be obsolescent

so the JSF is going to carry all these extra fuel tanks internally

yes, in case you haven’t noticed, the F-35 carries an absolutely ginormous amount of fuel internally, more than an F-15C and as much as an F-22

and take up the room of the ordanance, so what are you going to attack your enemy with???? oh also what about storm shadow, where are you going to mount this??

the JASSM will be carried internally

As for STOVL, it is a novelty, like TVC on some other fighters, its nice to have but not at the expense of range and weapons load as is the case here.

that’s a decision for each country to make

however, if they decide they do prefer conventional cat-and-trap, they can always go with the ‘proven’ (haha) superhornet or F-35C

The JSF’s future is up in the air(pardon the pun)

hardly, the US has no realistic alternative but to see it through and order 1000+ of them

though the Rafale is operational right now

ie it is older and more obsolescent

production of the CVFs have hardly begun, what is the advantage of being operational now?

in present day and will be operational for at least 30years

operational for 30 years? lol, the F-35 will STILL BE IN PRODUCTION in 30 years

besides the French will more than likely put their machines through 2 major upgrades.

they need 2 major upgrades to even approach the sensor capabilities of the base F-35 (no AESA, no DAS, etc)

plus being the mainstay of US forces, you can expect continual upgrades for at least 50 years

The Rafale has a higher weapons payload than the B version of JSF that is to be flown from the carriers

um yeah, that is the sacrifice you make for STOVL

you can make the same argument in favor of ANY conventional carrier plane, like say the SuperHornet or even the F-35C

and as for stealth as soon as you bolt on bombs, missiles, fuel tanks, stealth is right out the window anyway

good thing the F-35B carries bombs, missiles and fuel tanks internally

The final value of the second sale is not yet determined, AFAIK – again, it refers to “a possible Foreign Military Sale” & says “The total value, if all options are exercised, could be as high as $1.5 billion”. As with the first sale, the price in the US DSCA statement is the maximum possible, not necessarily what will be paid.

Now, what was that about “case closed”?

let me quote from the Israeli F-35 sale notice (http://www.dsca.mil/PressReleases/36-b/2008/Israel_08-83.pdf):

The total value, if all options are exercised, could be as high as $15.2 billion

sound familiar?

Sens was saying the F-35 was too expensive, because wow! just look at the Israel deal, $203 million/plane!

yet if we look at a plane that is universally acknowledged to be cheap, it has practically the SAME price when part of a similarly structured deal

the take-home point is that the F-35 is not significantly more expensive than other 4th gen fighters (and is in fact cheaper than many)

so all this whining about how expensive the F-35 is, is just BS

Didn’t you notice something in that quote? “over ten years“.

yes, it means they aren’t signing 1 contract, but several smaller contracts that are spread out over time

as it said,

Additional cases will be established later this year for weapons acquisition and sustainment of the aircraft.

clearly these are ACQUISITION costs because they certainly aren’t OPERATING anything in 2007

pilot training doesn’t begin till 2009, and the first 4 aren’t to be delivered till 2010

It’s clear from the context that A$6 bn includes all costs (including infrastructure, operating costs, etc) in a ten year period

no it’s clear from the context that it means exactly what it says: “acquisition and all support costs as well as personnel” (personnel refers to training costs in case you were confused)

notice that it does NOT say “operating costs” anywhere in there

if the $6 billion included all operating costs, they would have said ‘all operating costs’

but they did not say it because that’s not what it is

i’ll make this simple for you: find one official source that says the $6 billion includes fuel

you won’t find it

Even the USAF is in need to buy the support train of its shiny new fighter

which is going to be true for any program

let us examine the Australian SuperHornet deal

http://www.abc.net.au/news/opinion/items/200703/s1864837.htm

24 for $6 billion AUD = $4.2 billion USD = $175 mill/plane

the Israeli deal:
75 for $15.2 billion = $203 mill/plane

so in worst case, the F-35 is 16% more than the supercheap superhornet

(remeber Boeing offered the SH to the USN for $50 mill a pop if they agreed to a multiyear deal)

is the F-35 16% better than the SH? easily

and remember the SH is from a very mature product line that won’t get any cheaper while the Israeli F-35s are being pushed forward as soon as possible, so later planes should cost less

we don’t know that the 2 packages are exactly comparable, but it should give some idea of how overall program costs work

I havent been follwong Chinese development so i cant comment whether Stealth is important or not. But For Sukhoi has said Stealth is one of criteria among so many for there 5th generation fighter.

so there you have, Sukhoi believes stealth is important

unlike you who keep claiming it is already obsolete

if it was already obsolete, why bother incorporating it?

They are testing EW systems.

again, the EW systems of the US are DIFFERENT than those of Russia, so testing it against flankers tells you nothing

Russian have clearly seen F-22. and can accurately predict where its RCS will lie.

if it’s so easy to predict from pictures, then why is radar signature still so so classified?

something tells me pictures don’t tell the whole story . . .

just like they preidicted so many other things.

like how they predicted the F-14 was a Mach 3 super plane?

next 20 years? It is next 5 years.

then there should be an abundance of sources on this magical nano

i’m still waiting for 1 . . .

Stealth is good against 1970s radars.

it is

it is also good against 2008 radars

Sukhoi believes in it.

funny, their promo videos for the Su-35 show it firing missiles, not guns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpgMH92jieg

I can see the difference. F-22 is much costly project with same one role as single role of F-117. F-117 was not even produced in greater quantites nor was computing and manufacturing technology that advanced in F-117 time. It was much more difficult project to execute.

exactly, disproving your point that stealth hasn’t advanced in 40 years, which is obviously false

So it works against one kind of system does not mean it can work against some one else systems. Just looks at high tech manufacturers of semiconductors from Japan/Korea/Germany. there is difference.

the laws of physics don’t change

it doesn’t depend on a particular implementation (as your beloved EW does)

there is a reason x-band was chosen for radar that tracks aerial targets: it works the best

F-35/F-22 stealth ‘defeats’ x-band radar, period

to get around it, you have to switch to different wavelengths which don’t work as well and have significant limitations or you have to use multiple transmitters/receivers, which again has its own difficulties

F-35 needs all the fuel because of its weight and stronger engine.

it weighs less and has less thrust than a flanker, so again, wtf are you talking about

Without Stealth there is nothing special about F-35 that any other 4th generaton fighter cannot upgraded.

but it does have stealth, and no matter how much you massage it, no flanker will ever have it

Flanker can be upgraded with airlaunched Klubir/Brahmos and Strike mission will still be cheaper than overall cost of maintaining and buying F-35.

again assuming they ever get close enough to launch

but wait! didn’t you just say all missiles will be obsolete!?!

if missiles are obsolete and it has to drop bombs directly over the target, what then?

So does the cost of building F-35. It is still way more than legacy fighters.

wrong again

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=65945a64-3c5f-46a1-96f6-ced8e3b4972d

a deal that would see the price of each aircraft ordered set at around $50 million US

Stealth make the project alot more expensive to beging with and increases multiply with production cuts.

how much of the F-35 budget was devoted to stealth? do tell . . .

Provided those limited quantities of weopons can saturate Ship defences and have kinetic energy to do so. There is reason for going towards hypersonics.

i’m really not sure what you’re whining about, the F-22 and F-35 can carry as many weapons as any other 4th gen plane. If the US develops a hypersonic missile, they could carry that. That is a separate issue and is not a limitation of either the F-22 or the F-35

JSF consumes more fuel as it is heavy for single engine fighter. 4th generation fighters are cheaper to procure and can carry longer range weopons so no need for the same mission profile.

JSF consumes less fuel than dual engines fighters, like say the flanker for instance

we’ve already shown that 4th gen are NOT cheaper to procure

and what in the world is your thing about older planes being able to carry longer range munitions than newer planes?

it makes no sense and is flat out wrong, the F-22 and F-35 could be adapted to carry anything an older plane could