A SU-35 Multi Role would be a good fantasy if it had an F-18E like cockpit/avionics setup. :p

Hi BIO,

Yeah well that was a contrary thing about the 787, engineers expressed doubt and sales force re assured customer that it is an option. Could be interesting to see how much weight is added to firm up gumby for such a job. 787 weight goals just for pax work have barely met targets. Tanker work with this thing could be a real challange. It is designed to be a pax carrier down to the last ounce. I don’t know. However engineers ( some ) did in fact ( at one time ) express doubt….Like I said, we’ll see.

Found some more interesting stuff in a recent AV leak article. The KC-30 vs. KC-767 thing has a lot of fodder for food for thought. Consider Aussieland got their Airbus tanker not just because the Boeing deal kafuffle but because the Airbus can really haul alot of cargo and fuel and still drag some jets.
Italy on the other hand did the KC-767 for some very interesing reasons. Ground pressure/load on runways. Lots of NATO airfields are going to limit what the Airbus inspired tanker can take into and out of those fields. Not to mention other minor things like wing vs. taxi clearance. The KC-767 in Italy’s research proved that it could carry more useable weight into and out of many types of NATO fields where some of these just are not stressed up to the “heavy” capable weights of some of the worlds big commercial airports. The Airbus A330-200 tanker has some serious issues on where certain airfield managers with not so great surfaces, are willing to tollerate without screaming to their boss that the surface life projections of said airfield, just went south after an exercise with KC-30s present.
If we are going to have a tanker, it needs to get into a wide variety of airfields so as to support ( and drop off ) items it carried with it to support a fighter tanker drag. Be funny if we go ahead with the KC30, and some operational wonks in the comming years still want to use outgoing KC-135s on certain parts of an operation, just because of the airfield issue re: weight.
Having just a 777 sized tanker force ( if a sales guy is thinking of that as it has been mentioned in passing in the press with no clarification of being an all in one solution ) is utter lunacy for this vary matter also. I could see some 777s but not exclusively so. Be interesting to see how USAF scores both the Boeing (what ever that is ) and the NG KC-30 entry… Boeing would be dumb if they didn’t submit the KC-767 as it actually flys and has a working boom and other things already figured out, long before the KC-30. ( Aussies at the time of the selection, bought an incomplete untested package…. showing up with an Airbus 330 at an industry show and making it look like a tanker, doesn’t make it one. ) The KC-767 entry if that is to be, needs to compete on things like being able to fit into a 707 hanger with just a little modification of the building to cover the tail,… smaller footprint…. and less stress values on a wider range of runway ratings. KC-30 beats the KC-767 on some nice issues ( as per what the Aussies wanted ) but could get beat up on scoring if the facilities issues are a strong requirement.

That is why we have massive high-speed-authorized ranges in some places with pretty serious electronic threat workups to figure these things out. The playbook we write, doesn’t play fair. Also as any stealth platform pretty much lowers the effective sensor range of these ground threats and consider S300/400 systems are very expensive, not every air defense we beat down, will have enough of these to be anything more than a serious concern when an air operation is in progress. The S300/400 familys have too many things gunning for them, both electronic and kenetic to stay alive very long. I would be more worried about a JSF being at risk to these things as:

-So many users of the JSF = more risk to compromise of it’s ability
-It doesn’t have the speed/contempt of engagement of an F-22.
-Buick of Stealth

Also, i do not believe f22 can carry jdams with flying harness internally. That thing is positioned above the jdam and is rather bulky. No way it can fit into the relatively shallow weapons bay on the raptor.

Bzzzzz! Wrong. But thanks for playing.

http://www.peacehall.com/news/images/2005/12/200512211104army1.jpg

Also consider the SDB in the Raptor would take your standoff range up to 50+ or more miles away. As far as anyone knows at this time, SDB isn’t operationally cleared for the F-22 yet.

The question of the thread isn’t very complete. Consider that the F-22 will have a whole network centric team of various platforms supporting. Also SEAD/DEAD is much improved as NCW made it more integrated to the whole team. The big ru-tech SAMs are dangerous. However they are SAMs and can be oversaturated by any number of solutions working in the greater team. SAMs haven’t stopped us from beating down an air defense system in the past. And none of todays air defense tech will stop us from doing so in the future. Today’s air defense systems are seriously mismatched/limited in how they can respond vs a U.S. first few nights of a war beatdown.

I disagree. Not to downplay the importance of the advanced avionics of some of the fast movers, the vanilla A-10A has the Pave Penny pod, so GFAC can lase targets for the A-10A to drop LGBs on. The Mk 1 eyeball has its uses, and it is more effective when mounted in an A-10A than a fast mover. The A-10A has a lower wing loading, which is more suitable for the hot/high conditions in Afghanistan. The A-10A is also much more resistant to ground fire. When the cloud cover is low, the A-10 will be better able to fly and manuver below it, and drop LGB. LBG can’t see through clouds. The A-10 needs to be updated, but it has the ideal airframe for CAS.

-Large portions of CAS today are done successfully…… and without an A-10 and from dropping a PGM from very high altitude.
-Pave Penny doesn’t do much for todays type of work. It isn’t especially versatile. All it is, is a laser spot tracker that can provide some info to the HUD. Useful but not a huge avionics dominating piece of equipment.
-Mk 1 eyeball has more in common with most of the frats we suffer. So really, more CAS is successful where the eyeball is not the sole target i.d. in voice to voice only target conversations. Find a frat and more times than not it was the eyeball only as the prime helper for decsions …that got the situation bad. ( F-16s vs Canadians in Afgahnistan, A-10 vs Canadians in Afghanistan, A-10 vs. British in OIF, A-10 vs USMC in OIF, A-10 vs. British in Desert Storm and a few other close calls. ).
-Your hot and high theory doesn’t prove itself out in Afghanistan where engine performance limits what it can carry.
-“A-10 much more resistant to ground fire”. That is all it can do when it uses it’s weapons, is go into envelopes where ground fire of variety exist as it has no choice. Hence the shot up A-10 airframes we buried in the Desert in Desert Storm. The P.E. package coming up will help some but not eliminate that threat as the jet can only take x amount of weight, so high. A teen fighter with PGMs doesn’t need to engage, MANPADS, small SAMs, AAA, trashfire. “I can touch you but you can’t touch me”. Except when a teen has to role in and use guns after expending PGMs. And even then that happens fairly quick. In Desert Shield, Marines with nothing better to do did some spotting tests from the ground. By the time they even got a glimps of an F-18 in mock attacks, it’s declared weapon release/gun attack had happened already. They spend less time in the engagement zone.
-When cloud cover is really low, it doesn’t matter. A fixed wing with JDAMs can ( and has ) supported GFACs with JDAM in these situations to success.
-Today: “Ideal CAS platform” is a reach. It is highly useful for CAS. The only “ideal” airframe for CAS is the one you aren’t waiting for when you call in the support.

source:
http://www.pats-world.com/gulfwar/abdr-197.htm

Makes sense. Lots of flying to be done standing up new units. I would be complaining too if my flying time was delayed because an airframe is off doing a stupid airshow demo.

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I wonder what would happen if everyone in the UK gave just £1. Not £1 a week or even just £1 a month………..just £1.

How many million people live in the UK????????

I bet the money raised from that would help the Armed Forces out for a while. Mind you, I’d happily give them £5, £10, £20 even!!!!!!!!!

I was just wondering 🙂

Sounds good but some REMF back in headquarters somewhere would probably use the money to buy office furnature, rebuild a new wing to the O’Club, or buy something nice to have for Horseguards. :dev2:

SIMPLE, I EXPECT THE UK FORCES TO HOLD THE GROUND (WHICH THE YANKS DIDN’T), KILL THE ENEMY AND WIN !!!!

Sounds cute. Cue: “Rule Britannia!” also to go along with that. Pretty hard for the troops to deliver though when the hacks in the MOD and politicians give more aid and comfort to the enemy than they do to the troops by cutting a fine military…. that didn’t need to be cut. The world didn’t become much safer with the end of the cold war, just a different threat matrix, no longer kept down with the old bipolar red vs. west setup.
Add to that, you aren’t going to defeat a fourth generation threat ( stateless terrorism ) with a second generation traditional military. Note the big “no win” in the latest Lebanon unpleasantness where the countries infastructure was ruined but the threat didn’t go away.The only thing that stopped that was a cease fire. A second generation military didn’t do it. ( Where Israel used to have third generation thinking/leadership in their military ). They are in regression. Where using airpower the way it was used there, didn’t help acheive any goals. Dumb.
Iraq. We are winning plenty of battles there. However we can’t gauge a victory based on the times when the enemy is dumb enough to engage us on a force on force level. Iraq is still unsecure all this time, and a second generation solution as what we are doing there now, isn’t making the place “winable”. Where there you would have to define victory. Ask 3 different politicos and you can get 3 different answers. Yeah, we won’t “lose” as long as we are there. But there isn’t a way to define a victory there. Saying victory is a secure Iraq sounds nice. Making that happen is another. As a minimum experts have said you would need 500,000 boots on the ground to contain that mess. Doesn’t help when we went in there with NO useable occupation plan.
Contractors for logistical services and security at the insane level this war is outsourced do well at declaring victory though, everytime a new DOD contract is signed. Victory for the war profiteers happens all the time. God help them if the war stops.
I don’t see us “losing” Afganistan in a conventional sense. Problem is, a conventional sense of victory can’t exist. Going to sign a peace treaty ending hostility? With whom? Tribal cultures like this never pay much attention to a conventional government in the traditional sense anyway. Parts of Vietnam were like this too. Tribal cultures there didn’t like the south or the north. However when you go into a village and start killing enough people, eventually that villiage will comply.
Afghanistan: Keeping the hillbillys from getting too much of an edge is easy. Hillbillys get together for a meeting. Precision muntion drops on hillbilly gathering = Dead hillbillys. Maybe even a clever leader goes down in the strike. Rinse and repeat. On the flipside, there aren’t enough, ( there never will be ) troops there to occupy every location. So as long as we are there, the puppet government we have installed ( mayor of Kabul by any other name ), will always be safe, and a few other locales, but thats about it.
Troop movement. If the hillbillys declare a movement order, all they have to do is gather the AKs some ammo, RPGs etc and move on down the trail using a pickup, motorcycle, animal, foot, whatever. Now look at what it takes for us to move a battalion of men 250 miles or so. A big difference. Now with Pakistan caving in with a peace treaty with one location of hostile Pakistan. Enemy troops will be able to move freely within 20 miles or less of our troops along the border. Pakistan won’t be there to help in the places where we really, ( desperately… as they have done some good work )…. need them. Great.
The mission there is useless dirt. There isn’t one thing there worth using our blood and treasure on. It isn’t making the U.S. any safer either. The reason for this dumb campaign was 911.
911 happened because of:
-Poor control of foreigners on our soil
-Poor visa control
-Garbage airline security. ( I feel a whole lot safer now when I see the moron TSA under the Department of Homeboy Security, using focused search methods on an 80 year old grandma. Last time I checked, peoples of Middle East origin did the job. So not any more secure in that department.
-Having U.S. troops on a variety of foreign soil they have no business being on.

Our concept of what it takes to make us more secure against a terroist attack is a joke. We are letting a 4th generation warfare invasion by any other name go on along our south border. Port security is a joke too. Enough examples?

Afghanistan was ( for those with short memory out there ) sold to us as a response to 911 and to make the U.S. safer. Sorry. Ain’t seeing it. Show me.

All the locals in Afghanistan have to do is wait for the foreigners on their soil to get tired of the effort and eventually leave. Like all those before them. The British,… the Soviets. Most of them have no concept of punching a clock or using a day planner to check progress of a project. They just have to wait. And eventually this fools errand to send Class A second generation warfare militarys into a location on that map that is nothing but useless dirt, will end.