BTW, here is an interesting look at how screwed up the “analysis” was by some.

In order for all that low price hype to mean anything, big numbers had to be made. But this couldn’t happen because the gross over-optimism of development progress which did not pan out.

Great analysis from the NACC. Most of LRIP should have been done by now and look at all those jets! Now, only a lower number of mistake-jets.

Well the APG-81 is bringing additional radar modes, enhanced Electronic Protection (ECM / ECCM) and improved transmit/receive modules into the APG-77 program Eric. We know this is occurring, so clearly the APG-81 has something going for it, given the oft-touted capability of the extant APG-77?

As to the APG-79, the APG-81 is of a newer design, has a larger array with a reportedly greater T/R module count and has greater processing power supporting it.

I’m sure the APG-79 is capable (it’s praises are sung so often it would seem difficult to believe it isn’t capable) but which is “better” I imagine is a question that only a very few people in the world can probably answer at present and I expect they are located only within NAVAIR…

It is doubtful that the 79 and 81 are different enough to matter much. And, the 81 will have a bad time of it simply because it is married to a completely defective airframe.

Given the need for second tier strike fighters, the alleged value argument for the F-35 is running short.

I am old enough to appreciate that properly-placed apostrophe!

It is indeed a personal and qualitative judgement – and total number of posts is not a useful parameter (as your own low number illustrates).

Ah, but the problem lies in determining what truly constitutes “highly sensitive matters” – I’ve all too often watched the organs of state security going to into rage over ‘leaks’ of information that in practice was already circulating outside of the classified world. One man’s secret is another man’s common knowledge. If the ‘spooks’ cannot tell what is truly sensitive what hope have we poor forum members have of making a realistic assessment?

What in the name of all that is holy is a ‘Rhino’? This sort of jargon makes reading this forum hard work for a poor college mole. I have long given up trying to work out what a ‘Tonka’ is, let alone many of the other Fabulous Creatures who receive regular mention. Do engineers and pilots really talk like this nowadays? I’ve yet to meet anyone from industry who tells me he works in a Rhino factory or a pilot who claims to be a Tonka driver.

But these days of semi-retirement I seem to spend more time talking to the black raven “perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door” than to many of my industry and service contacts, so perhaps I’m just getting beyond my sell-by date.

Or as someone once said, “You tell me you have something better than Star Wars and Gone With the Wind, but your record is Ishtar and Howard the Duck. An answer of, ‘sorry it’s classified’, isn’t good enough for the sale.”

A-5 is cool as a piece of history, but China now has their own kind of JDAM-like, PGMs, and of course also LGBs.

A two-seat big SU with a laser pod slung underneath as a fast-FAC talking to ground forward air controllers and doing hand-offs to incoming tactical support aircraft would be the way to go.

I could see the A-5 doing well if your definition of CAS included tac-nukes. :diablo:

It will probably end up that way. Multiple-mode seeker systems are definitely the way of things in future years, but you IMHO are making the same mistake as Swerve made on the IR heater thread and automatically assume that one side is remaining static whilst the threat advances.

They don’t and if you think the HOJ capability hasn’t improved since it was introduced on the -B model AMRAAM then I would suggest you are being just a tad myopic…

Well, hopefully I am wrong. As you may know, silent attack with the AN/ALR-94, on the F-22 and lesser (not so bad) systems on Block II Super Hornet and the F-35 are the way AMRAAM shots will be cued for launch when the target emits.

http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-9268-start-0.html

HOBS/helmet cued dog-fight missiles, newer BVR AMRAAMS, on the Block II of the Super for example are good things. Yet look at how the U.S. Navy went out and got the LM composite IRST/centerline drop tank order.

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2007/q3/070702a_nr.html

These will be sensor-fused to the Super Block II. I think when you team all that up with an optical terminal seeker on an AMRAAM body, you just upped the self-defense ability of the aircraft significantly. It still won’t be able to run much but it may be able to give out more hurt.

Have a good new year AD– Eric

The Meteor is not of any threat to the USAF/USN , Looking for the future they really need the JDRADM rather then a dedicated AIm-120 Successor. The AIM-120D and beyond will still remain viable and competitive missiles for many many years to come.

Re: AMRAAM–If the target in question, doesn’t jam it out. Or in the coming years, have just enough L.O. to make the PK of a radar missile, not all that good or useless.

There is an old saying, that quantity has a quality of its own. I’m sure that if the odds are 4 F-35s to 2 T-50s the F-35s will make out ok.

How?

The Pak/FA still has a lot of testing to go through. And so does the F-35. Also, the big killing stick you are depending on is the AMRAAM, which in combat vs. targets with poor capability has a PK of around 50 percent. If the Pak/FA works, it doesn’t have to be super-stealthy. It has to be stealthy enough to lower the PK of the AMRAAM down to that of a Vietnam era Sparrow or worse.

Then you get into HOBS/heater range. Do you think that the F-35 will have more raw performance than the PAK/FA? If so; how?

With the F-35B at severe risk of not seeing full-rate production. How can the F-35 as a family of aircraft be “affordable” to meet your “quantity has a quality all its own claim”?

With 40 cents of every dollar in the U.S. federal budget borrowed money, how many F-35s do you feel the Navy and the USAF will be able to field by 2020, 2025, 2030?

The F-35 is currently a troubled program. How can it be put back on the rails to gain affordability?

Do you understand the concept of the procurement death spiral?

Do you know that profitability and affordability claims in the F-35 program were dependent on all the JSF partner nations kicking in for their 700 some aircraft? Where are they? This revenue has to appear sooner and not in 2035 for industry to continue with the program.

How many manufacturing shops in the global supply chain will be seriously affected by the F-35B at risk of going away? These people have to report to their stakeholders to show something resembling a business plan.

This is bigger than just listening to an LM press release and going to bed happy or depending on the glue-sniffing brigade to bring more hope to the conversation.

Tha A-10 is an impressive bomb truck, built around the most impressive gun ever built, with high manouverability, impressive low level flying, long loiter times, carrying heaps of ammunition.

How on earth is that f-35 ever going to be able to replace that?

Even if stealth will be thrown over board the F-35 just doesn’t seem to match the requirements

The same way a 4th gen or a B-52 does it up high with sub-4-meter CEP PGMs called in by a JTAC (ground forward air controller).

Once large area SAMs and enemy aircraft are killed off, it becomes an event of “I can touch you but you can’t touch me” in near any weather.

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/1998/news_release_980423n.htm

Also fast jets like F-15, F-16, B-1 etc (today that would be a B-1 with lots of PGMs and a SNIPER pod)… get there a lot faster than a A-10 ever will. Time is life.

But today yes the A-10 is useful when it goes down low and guns something vs. hill-billy gunfire.

Going down low against real threats though doesn’t mean much for surviving. The A-10 is down low and slow because traditionally that is all it could do. Which makes you wonder why they put the PE package on the aircraft which does the same thing as other aircraft with E/O pods, JDAM and Paveway. Although not with the altitude and payload because they never upgraded to the new engines.

The A-10 is a great aircraft. Just don’t over-hype it.