The C has a lot of proving to do so far with a mid 140 approach speed showing on the chart, and weight yet to be figured out. Still a “weight” and see. If the whole program works I doubt the A will be cancelled as it is the large portion of the order. Cancel that and the USAF won’t pick up the other two. Including the fact of boom refuelling with the A. If the USAF doesn’t order their 1700 or more, everyone is screwed on price blow out.

The B engines have to fly consistently on something other than a test stand. The dog and pony show with the non-mission demonstrators was just that. B and C have to deliver some proof. Although using the U.S. Navy standard for Opevals ( anything is possible if you are willing to lower your expectations ), maybe the C doesn’t have much risk at all. 😉 A problem on one variant is a problem for everyone.

F-16 is quite a story. Consider that in the late 70s it went to Scotland and beat everyone in a NATO tactical bomb comp and consider A-7s and F-111s were considered to be accurate with day bombing. F-16 beat them in scoring. A very good dumb bombing system. Good man-machine interface ( although Hornet people will tell you their cockpit layout is better ). Consider also at the time, the F-16 was dumped a lot early on because of things like the new tech engines and other mechanical nastys. Another important thing is that the acceleration and G loading of the aircraft could get a lot of pilots into trouble…. Some nasty accidents that didn’t have anything to do with hardware failure. The limited radar ability and no BVR ability in the early models was so as not to be a threat to F-15 procurement. I.E. what if the USAF could get by without spending money on expensive air to air only F-15s? Considering the F-16 was basic and could do some air to air AND air to ground, and was cheap to operate…that was a threat to the USAF procurement plans. The fatigue issues later,… well you get what you pay for and… you did want the low price didn’t you? The biggest problem I think of for the F-16 in a old Warsaw Pact environ was not it’s lack of BVR, but that it didn’t have an internal jammer built in. Given the variety of known ground threats and Vietnam not too far in the distant past, IMO this should have been internal stock on the jet. Not some pod to hang. Nothing flashy but something that could give it a little ECM defense.

Frightening is’nt it, how many times has this happened before it makes you wonder.

Well until now anyway. Control always used to be real good. What makes this important: Years ago nuke events were accidents where the weapon was authorized to be where it was. Dropping a wrench on a liquid fuelled missile. Palermo, Savannah, Greenland, Burning up a nuke loaded B-47 in England and some others I have missed. This is a whole different kettle of fish. In this case the whole chain of control of inventory, storage and management, movement authorization, broke down completely. This is the stuff before, we that have seen it would laugh in at movies because they never showed control of the weapons properly. (that silly movie Broken Arrow etc etc)

Seems any good of the old days of the long disbanded SAC is truly dead. I am sure there will be a raft of reports on this for a long time. One of them should show that the quality of downsizing, resourcing and training have broken the system. Been around the old days of SAC and have seen the system… Myself and others from that era would tell you that the methods in place would not have allowed this to happen back in the day. Something has changed significantly. IMO that is a lapse of standards, methods, training, and resources for this mission.

The color codes are actually going to be incorporated into the .kmz file at some point. Suffice it to say, pink is SA-5, red is SA-2 (and HQ-2 as well in some cases), green is SA-6, and light blue is SA-3. I did have to reuse a few colors in places, SA-10/20 are red as well, but as their rings are obviously much larger it’s not a problem as far as clarity is concerned. Blue circles are always EW sites, like 64N6 radars. SA-4s are white, SA-12s are dark red, Patriots are red, and HAWKs are yellow. Might change the last one as borders are yellow and can’t be altered, and there aren’t so many HAWKs in the database as I just started adding them in Iran and now Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Be cool if you color coded them by frequency band.

With USMC running up hours quickly on its old Hornet fleet. I wonder if the USN would pass some long to the Marnies and replace them with more Super Hornets? Of course I don’t think the Navy would be happy with the idea!

Funny you say that when you consider that the USMC is firming up it’s ECM roadmap to where they want kinetic fire support and ECM support all in one command decision maker process on the net for both land and air EW ops, i.e. a USMC command post is plotting a way to do counter battery fire and the decision makers decide on the fly to kill it traditionally or take away/ subvert the comms of the target of interest ( this is how they want to use the latests EA-6 upgrade (ICAPIII) (AV week, 3 Sep 07, page 60)

So my thinking is that since EA-18G is just a very slightly modified ICAP III ability, …extra funding pushed to Marine Air for a Squadron of F-18F block II with that wonderful new back seat attack gear and enough ATFLIRs, and a Squadron of EA-18G as part of a Wing, one wing for east coast and one wing for the west cost, would IMO be a sound investment. No interruption in other USMC air roadmap funding/planning i.e. JSF-B etc. I just don’t see USMC getting out of the EWO mission ( also remember the idea for a EA-35 was dropped cold). They need the lower band jamming and other com subversion things that the Growler can do.

“ZAP ZAP” the person you quoted is correct , take out the Stealth , Integrated Avionics , and most other 5th gen. features and the F-35 is nothing much more then a flanker or fulcrum .

Also to the person who you quote saying the SH is better i would love to ask him in which aspect ? Drag ? Speed? Cruise speed? Signature? Stealth? Avionics? Radar? Survivability? Lethality? A2g? A2a?

Hi Bio, …. I was thinking the more pedestrian practical stuff, ability to pull a dodgy engine back to idle over water and still have another engine running. Slower approach speed. Besides, F-35C won’t go alone, it will need the F-18G for really risky IADS. I don’t think it is an either or though. Given the crazy money situation and all do you think there will be more SH buys to fill out the deck?

Damn. Seen nukes and a bunch of procedure stuff. Could never imagine this happening. Wow. That would be a fun investigation board to be on. 😮

Wonder if it is possible for Minot to have scored high on it’s last nuclear surety inspection?:eek:

Nothing wrong with trainer aircraft/pretend fighters, however if future threats develop where you have to face Hugo-like SU-30s, the whole task force will be dead meat. The on board flying club won’t be able to deal with that threat.