ELPHmmm… Don’t know. If you look at the past public consumption briefing of the Program Status of JSF dated Sep 26, 2006 (PDF file) …. on page 42 ( Mission Area Coverage), It shows “Lack of Stand-Off Anti-Ship Weapon” as one real shortfall of JSF ability. This weapon would fill in that blank and there may be JSF Partners that are interested in it as mentioned in the following release:
Kongsberg adds that the adaptation study is being funded Norway and Australia.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2007/02/lockheed-kongsberg-partner-to-bring-nsm-to-jsf/index.php
One of the original links in SLL’s post above.
In any event, it’s a good idea to have this type of stealth carry weapon ability for JSF.
ELPThe U.S. workshare on both systems is about the same. So the buying foreign tack really doesn’t wash.
The reason KC-767 will win for USAF are the following-
-Money- It will meet the requirements in the USAF request and still come in at a lower price for the contract.
-The Northrop Grumman entry KC-30 has an uphill battle.
–It is more capability than the requirement of the USAF request.
…..That by itself won’t save it with the tail (vendor) wagging the customer (dog) move they tried with their PR work a few weeks back, trying to up sell the features. It won’t matter. It is too much plane for the limited amount of money we have to spend. Close to $40 million more per….and over what the USAF request needs.
–The plant in Alabama still has to be built. That with the more features of the KC-30 = the additional cost tripwire that NG won’t be able to get under.
–NG said they would pull out of the bid a few weeks back after their tail wagging the dog statements didn’t work. Now….currently NG does not want to lose favor with the DOD. It has several other dodgy contracts with DOD that are running over cost or are screwed up and are trying to be fixed. USAF/DOD knows it is going to have a heck of a time getting any tanker if only one bidder shows up to the party ( Boeing )…. this is important considering the big tanker fiasco with Boeing-DOD a few years ago. NG will be offered some extra consideration on their other DOD contracts that are having problems if they at least play ball and put in their bid on the KC-X, even though it doesn’t have a prayer.
ELPGreat news. Be excellent for DEAD ( destruction of enemy air defense) too.
Great work finding the article.
ELPGood points.
RCS improvements on legacys… won’t mean much….and on something like the Super Hornet even less as it is negated by one of the band aid fixes to it’s wing. That being the pylons pointing outward. Oh well.
The Buick of stealth JSF is better than no stealth but it is tuned to reduce the effects of X band and very near X band..things like…. weaponeering SAM radars, AAA, and fighter radars. And apparently this depends on the aspect of JSF? JSF is a narrow band stealth setup. Where one can not even make a comparison between the F-22 and JSF. F-22 has better all aspect stealth and a broader range of defense against other bands like L and S to name a few. F-22 is setup to go against the big AWACs, S-300 and other threats. JSF really isn’t. That is fine for us as we will kill off the bigger players, and JSF will roam and be ok running around in X band threat land. Another country with JSF-only,…. depending on what threats they think they will face in 20 plus years… might be a bit more challenging. So really the two can’t be compared in their stealth ability. F-22 has a lot of stealth capability, JSF has to be more careful. Again though, some stealth is better than none. JSF should be pretty good for a lot of users. I know the F-111 being around doesn’t help when shopping for new aircraft,as it has twice the radius. Even then though, important weapons like JDAM and JASSM aren’t even slated for it. ( I’m not a big Popeye AGM-142 fan ). If I was a JSF only user I’d have plenty of MALD decoys on hand, assuming those become available for export. USN has the TALD ( an Israeli origin solution ).
(note, I am not an electronic warfare puke so the electronic warfare things I wrote are gross generalizations)
ELPAlso and some naval experts correct me. We are all different on our crewing of ships. The French are different from the Royal Navy ( arrangement of whatever you guys call divisions on a carrier ) and of course us. We are desperately trying to scale down manpower as much as possible. If you went to the USN and told them you had a dramatic new weapon for their use or instead told them you had an incredible idea on how to save 5% manpower on ships in general and carriers specifically, they would probably be more interested in hearing about your manpower reduction ideas. USN is hurting for cash too just like USAF as a lot of our money is going into Iraq sustainment. I can’t ( and I think you will all agree ) understate the rabid need the flag ranks have to reduce manpower($$$). Which is funny as I don’t see a need for all of the exclusive F-18F squadrons. About half ( give or take ) of the Super Hornet squadrons are two seaters. I would keep a few Fs for Fast FAC like the success in openings days of OIF. Otherwise this looks like a “No RIO left behind act”. In Net Centric Warfare ( NCW ) ops…. more times than not a single seater will do. USN could save manpower ( not only getting rid of most of the RIO aircrew but each RIO being on ship requires X amount of manhours/manpower to support his existance aboard ship and other things like the extra seat maintenance etc etc. I think the need for all those F only squadrons is too expensive on that issue.
Anyway we just have different carrier cultures and I don’t think that will ever change.
ELPThe most important thing in that article is of course the fact of the procurement process. They are dead right about that. One would think there would be some kind of fly-off / competition between various jet makers.
ELPOn shopping list: fighter jets with no stealth
The Aussie papers are a riot to read in how the topic of combat aircraft is reported by the press.
ELPThen Tor-M1 already have done its job. Remember, every airforce in the world spend huge amount of money training low-level flights and terrain following. And believe me, its not becouse they find it funny.
Low level is old news. A whole generation behind in our strike warfare.
ELPThe only tragedy is the poor baby.
Otherwise this hole thing is just another disgusting, celeb with no moral compass dead and gone. Hardly a loss to society. The way the media is going I guess she will be the new patron saint of celeb tramps. Here today, gone tomorrow. If she served one purpose in life, that would be as a warning sign to others of what not to be. Misery accomplished.
ELPThe only tragedy is the poor baby.
Otherwise this hole thing is just another disgusting, celeb with no moral compass dead and gone. Hardly a loss to society. The way the media is going I guess she will be the new patron saint of celeb tramps. Here today, gone tomorrow. If she served one purpose in life, that would be as a warning sign to others of what not to be. Misery accomplished.
ELPHuge change since the old days. In the old days if the target was covered by clouds too much…. LGBs wouldn’t do. And that left only radar bombing by the likes of an A-6 with dumb iron. Or TLAM ($$$). Not every target needs to be killed by a gold plated bullet. Radar bombing like that means you are going to get engaged by SAMs and AAA. LGB bombing meant being engaged by similar threats. I’ll take todays strike carrier wing of Hornets with the Super Hornet included. We have now passed from the sorties per target era to the targets per sortie era. Any fixed target in range of a carrier dies in near any weather. That wasn’t always a given in the old days where you had a gigadollar TLAM or the above mentioned LGB or radar bombing solution. Super Hornet pukes have said that 4-5 jets with cheap JDAMs can take out more targets on a sortie than a Hornet Squadron in Desert Storm era, and do it with less risk to air crew.
Yes we have smaller wings. But also a carrier can be buffed up with an extra squadron or two to fit the carriers tasking. And CAGs and other navy carrier types have already been quoted that this PGM era has made the carrier more powerful with less airframes.
We have also gained staying power of our big carriers on station. As we are using less fuel per strike sortie/killed target, and less volume of munitions used per killed target…. That means more storage space on board. A big aircraft carrier can do two weeks of continued air ops before it needs to pull back to replenish. Smaller carriers don’t have the kind of staying power we need for big ops.
It will even get more scary when the CV version of JSF comes on line. 20,000 pounds of gas on a clean config single engine jet.
Something the STOVL JSF users also have to consider is that this aircraft will carry 14,000lbs of gas internally. Clean config, low drag. Again for certain missions with internal only carry, I doubt the 450 mile radius published for STOVL with internal config is accurate. If anything it is conservative. Look at the relationship of Knots Indicated Airspeed ( KIAS ), True Airspeed (TAS) and groundspeed while cruising at 45k ft. And yes enough for reserves and the vertical landing. Also for the UK the wonderful new dual use LGB/GPS/INS Paveway 4 (500lb class) 2 internal should be assumed. Not a bad weapon for a lot of things. The only downside for STOVL JSF for some: because of the weight saving event, it can only carry 1000lb class internal PGMs. Not bad but this means no 2000lb penetrator for internal carry if ever that was a need for the RN. Otherwise it isn’t such a bad aircraft and should do well.
ELPHm. Back then it was a question of airframe procurement I think. And the CJ was a stopgap anyway, since originally the F-117 had been planned to take over the DEAD mission. But the days of the classic HARM-shooter are over anyway. Today you have a sensor (can be on any airframe) which gets you geo-locations, those are fwd’d via datalink to a shooter (can again be anything) and you attack the whole radar site/vehicle with PGMs instead of just the antenna with a AGM-88.
Great point about bringing up the netcentric warfare stuff. Absolutely. HARM will probably still be around. Block 6 with GPS assisted/INS geolocating of the original source signal still has some uses I think, but good point about really not needed a dedicated HARM shooter. My vote would go to getting our F-15E units having the athorization and training to hang it.
ELPGoogle JDRADM.
Yup. What he said.
ELPMy thoughts are that the USAF is short of cash. Big time. B-52 was supposed to do Stand Off Jamming ( SOJ ) but that program was killed and then is being reset up again at a lower funding level and who knows what capability it will have when ever it is fielded. USAF is short 20-30 billion in the FY’08 budget. And most of that is for things to keep it running on a day to day basis. It would be cool if we had several programs in the dark that the public doesn’t know about. But with Iraq costing $319 million a day, give or take, I find it hard to believe. Everything now is going into F-22 and JSF and maybe the tanker bid if that doesn’t go bad. I just don’t know. I don’t think USAF would be too interested in F-18G because it can’t do SOJ and is only an escort jammer. Nice for escorting legacy tech F-18s but not very useful for us in that mission except as mentioned below. F-22 is now cleared for dropping the 1000lb JDAM GBU-32. So even a EA-6 is hardly useful for it getting the mission done for first nights of the war door kickdown. Right now,today, F-15E is our only SDB rated aircraft. So I would think EA-6/F-18G would be useful for helping that mission in a high stress environ. USAFs only HARM shooter, the F-16, needs lots of refueling. Be nice to see our F-15Es set up for HARM shooting. They have the software menus in the aircraft for HARM, but HARM is not part of our F-15Es training schedule. The other thing coming down the pike is MALD. A cute turbo-jet decoy similar in some ways ( mission set anyway ) to the USNs TALD ( an Israeli inspired decoy ). A wave of MALDs when they are fielded will be highly useful to excite enemy air defenses and learn where the threats are.
ELP777 by itself would be dumb, expensive and too much plane.
Here is some reading on the USAF requirements.
http://www.fbo.gov/spg/USAF/AFMC/ASC/FA8625-07-R-6470/Attachments.html
http://www.fbo.gov/EPSData/USAF/Synopses/905/FA8625-07-R-6470/SectionJAttachment1R2_1KC-XSRD-20070125.doc (can’t stand web authors that publish word docs)
http://www.fbo.gov/EPSData/USAF/Synopses/905/FA8625-07-R-6470/FinalRFP29Jan07.pdf
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