ELPYeah well, they had to have a few high AOA things in the dance routine but just another clean config airshow performance that shouldn’t be confused with combat ability. Start hanging stuff on that pig and see if it can keep from getting run into the turf by an EF2000, Rafale, or Big SU. I would say the EF2000 demo looks a bit better.
Arthur needs to listen to this one. The music is awesome.
ELPElp, while you seem to prefer specialization, the trend with our goverment and bureaucracies lies in a common slogan and a common word—“joint”. Joint this, joint that, joint missile, joint fighter and soon joint ships, joint tanks, etc,. That’s why stuff like the JSF is inevitable, and if there is not one around, the Pentagon bureaucracy would invent one.
I am well aware of the buzz word “joint” and how it will be used to advantage to con congress into spending ridiculous amounts of money on this joint pork project. We are being run over by the military industrial complex by it’s endless need for new toys we don’t need. I defined the word “need” here by the desire to do less, not more expeditionary warfare. It will take some big changes but it is possible. Like I said, we can have excellent firepower without JSF. As for someone elses comment that cancelling it would kill the miltary aircraft industry, I doubt it.
ELPjsf is the most advanced fighters in the world,it’s even better than raptor. otherwise, it’s cheaper than raptor,too
That statement is of course based on your extensive knowledge on the subject matter, like the example of the Chinese F-22 photo you posted.
Still no long term use for the JSF, if a private non-government funded partnership wants to take on the project, thats their business. Otherwise quit wasting my tax dollars on weapons systems like the JSF that we don’t need.
ELPplease consider the following….
Initial strike ( taking down a countries air defense system ) ( broad brush example ) ( not all inclusive )
— F-22 ( fairly close to getting fielded, will start A2G development in 2005 ) 2 each BLU-110 penetrator ( JDAM-35 ) OR 6-8 SDB.
—- 1000 miles out, 1000 miles back – Total round trip time ( take off , target, rtb ) ( a little over 2 hours )
—- 2000 miles out, 2000 miles back ( with tanking obviously ) 4.8 hours ( time to tank, organize etc. )
— X-45 ( A-45 ) ( flys, still some things to work out )
UCAV similar load as above 1000-1200 miles out, 1000-1200 miles back. Kinda slow ( .8 -.85 mach ) – Other options include ECM ( EA-45 )
–FB-22 ( years from now if funded.) ( full design not published ) Speed similar to F-22 above, Range closer to 2000 miles unrefueled…. out and 2000 miles back. Retire F-15E, B-1 by 2020-25.
–JASSM and JASSM-ER
–SLAM-ER
-B-2
-Tomahawk
Now look at the range / speed of the F-22 platform. When used properly, it can do many sorties per day because it isn’t spending much time going there and back. We now have to assume that any stupid war we get in that we won’t have a luxery of bases nearby. If nothing else, JSF will spend more time getting there and back and will require more tanking and will not be able to hit as many targets per day. An F-22 suddenly naked to an adverse stealth event will have more survivability than a slower JSF in a similar event. Because of it’s fuel-economy vs. fast cruise speed. The F-22 will sortie rate any other small tac jet right off of the Powerpoint Briefing…. hitting more targets per day.
Lets talk “thining the herd” ( reducing traditional enemy fighting divisions / heavy equipment ) before they even make contact with our troops, and CAS ( supporting the troops directly ). This should only follow after the first phase above, where command and control, enemy airpower and enemy large air defense have been reduced to the amount of being ineffective. Afterward, times than not you are worried only about small SAMs, MANPAD, AAA and trashfire. As I have said many many times, once you get to this phase, a lot of your work can be done with conventional air frames.
-F-16 with CFTs, Convert all F-16s to carry CFT and as needed over time buy a low volume of F-16 Block 60 as needed. The big advantage of the CFT jet here is the following. NOT Carrying the wing tanks would allow you to buse those hardpoints and carry more weapons. Lots of SDB ( quad rack per hardpoint ), Twin bused racks for GBU-32,35,38, and GBU-12, Triple racks for the new JCM ( Joint Common Missile ) ( replaces Hellfire and Maverick ) Longer range and tri-sensor. Of course you would have the ability to do WCMD setups like CBU-105 SFW. Freeing up two extra hardpoints on wings to carry more weps on the F-16, is a good thing.
-F-18SH, same weapons as above including getting SH to the USMC sooner..
USMC would still have some of their old standbys like M77.
-A-10 will be with us for a while, heavily mod’d . I am not a big fan of it but it is useful.
-Netcentric Apache ( already happening ) highly useful. JCM should give it some more standoff ability.
So far I don’t see a problem. I can do a lot of things without spending the huge amount of $$$ on JSF. Period. That money not spent on JSF can be used to reorganize our aireal hitting power to something that makes more transformaional sense over the long haul. AND do it with less airframes.
Most of the other considerations of course are political. ( getting out of the continuous expeditionary warfare business, not doing nation-building nonsense, and removing all troops from foreign lands. No FMS. ) If, we need to go to war, ( as opposed to doing stupid nation-building exercises ) we can still kick down a door and cause severve, crippling pain. My view is that the military industrial complex loves JSF just to perpetuate more weapons and better yet more FMS ( foeign military sales ) of which I am against.
ELPSofar I know the plane has been pretty automatic in landing on carriers. One secret… The carrier has a GPS system that allows the JSF to fly into the grid and hoover fully automatic and land very accurate without any action form the pilot. Even with wind effects and carrier doing very dangerous movings. Compare that to any other plane…
Including UCAV. Which for our needs ( USN ) SH and A45 UCAV will be good enough.
ELP“The weight problem is a concern but problems like this occur in the early stages of complex programs,” a spokeswoman told PA.
Amen to that statement.
You guys are ridiculous. YellowSun I’m glad you seem to be the expect on how to produce an aircraft since as you say there is no possible way to knock off that much weight.
I’m sick and tired of people already assuming the F-35 is a “dead duck” as an airplane and project because of some delays and weight problems. Name an aircraft project that hasn’t had it’s fair share of problems………
The mighty Flanker? Nope, not quite.
The F-16? Hardly.
The Harrier? You’ve got to be kidding me.
The F-4? This one wasn’t perfect either.
Ja, I always thought you were much smarter than that….a nail in the coffin?? Please…….the thing hasn’t even been built as a PRE-production aircraft, much less an operational production model….
I’ve got to start ignoring you nay-sayers because you clearly are jumping the gun way too quickly, and don’t have any idea of what a project of this size really entails.
Srbin,
As usual your comments don’t surprise me. I guess the JSF partners should get Flankers….I’m sure that would be your idea as a good replacement….Do you realize how big this project is? Of course it’s going to be expensive. USAF, USMC, USN, RA, FAA are only the BEGINNING users. The are a TON of other prospective operators wanting the plane.
The comments I’m seeing in this thread make me so mad I can’t even see straight.
I am against the JSF because it flys in the face of real transformation / force shaping. The second part of that which I don’t like is that it assumes we will be on some endless crusade of expeditionary warfare, which I have a big problem with.
ELPlets just hope it doesn’t end like Commanche, this would heavily screw up US Aircraft Industry,
This industry has already been goofed up before. No big deal. Better to end this pig than work on it.
it would mean that many other countries would have to turn to Europeans, Chinese and mainly Russians for new generation aircraft and US wouldn’t have anything to offer beyond F-18 and F-16.
Hope springs eternal anyway. This would be a good thing. The U.S. not doing any more ( for starters ) shooter FMS ( foeign military sales ) would be great in the long run.
I’d rather see the F-22 get cancelled than the F-35.
Maybe you would. I wouldn’t. First, the F-22 won’t be canceled, it actually flys. Two: Except for carrier ability and the 2000lb class PGM. JSF offers nothing I want that I can’t do better with the F-22 vis a v taking down another countries ability to wage war.
Remember F-35 is the most expensive aircraft project ever, over 200bn.
Yup. Funny how some say cancelling the F-22 saves money, yet we should sink $240 billion into JSF which we really don’t need.
…..
ELPSounds nice but as mentioned already, politics. In the case of how the U.S. does FMS ( foeign military sales ) the annoying thing isn’t always unit cost ( which can be a red herring ) but who and how it is paid for with 2 or 3 different colors of money, and then the cheap 0 interest loans where it applies and the “offsets”. I don’t care if an F-16 costs 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 million. What I care about is how all the money is laundered back and forth to give it the apprearance of a conventional sales deal, where you have a vendor and a buyer. Which just doesn’t seem to be the case.
ELPRe engining is more than just hanging the motor. For any of the new big motors like the super powerful ones that hang on a 777, you would have to rebuild the wing.
The reengine job for the C-5 involves “de-tuning” the engine. Reason it is extra money to rebuild the whole wing to take an extremely powerful motor.
They are getting some more power, but what is more important is the new reliability / low maintenance of the new generation of engines.
ELPHard to say, but most likely yes. The F-15A-D will be downsized some and Guard units like Otis for example might be reorg’d.
ELPGood question. I could think of a few answers. Of all 3 of the bombers, the B-52 always has the highest mission up times. More important though is that it has less of a logistical footprint. When it goes to places like RAF Fairford, it is very deployment friendly and you don’t have to take a bunch of stuff with you. Where as a B-1 you have to take a lot of stuff with you as far as spares and extra support equipment. When it was designed I sometimes wonder if the designers had a clue about how you would deploy a B-1. I guess a “deployment” to them was part of the then SAC dispersal plan in higher defcons where a wing was split up and went to a different airfield in the states. While the B-52 is big, there just isn’t a lot of stuff you have to do to turn the jet. You inspect a lot of things and service some things and it takes some time but it isn’t rocket science. Maintenance on a B-1 on the other hand has a lot of systems that can be real bitchy. Part of that being that the jet was never R&D’d and tested enough and look where we are now…
The hot setup not too long ago was to put lots of stress on replacing the flight controls, cockpit avionics and some other avionics and the defensive avionics to make the B-1 more mission up time friendly. This would have pushed the B-1 up to the level of where maybe it would get decent mission up times without consuming lots of spares, and just plain manhours. Yet all we hear now about the B-1 is more stuff on weapons kit. I can’t put enough stress on how replacing the cockpit avionics and the whole flight control system would improve mission uptimes. What I read a few years back was that we should have been on Block F by now on the B-1 instead of E. The “savings” from that original downsizing of the B-1 would be farmed back into Block E and Block F.Oh well. They would have “more” B-1s if the would just take what they have and do those improvements I mentioned. A smaller group of jets with 90% mission uptimes is cheaper and just as much force as a larger total force with 70% mission uptimes. OEF had the mission up times for the B-1 in the 90% +/- region. Easy to do when you put a bunch of spares for so few airframes used flying out of Diego. :rolleyes:
ELPA few things. I will watch with amazement if the B-1 can make it to 2020-5. When it was built ( in a sloppy manner in the mid 80s ) I don’t think they had that in mind. I would prefer FB-22s ( almost the same range ) to replace ( F-15E and B-1 ) That would include the possibility of a UCAV like FB-22. And they wouldn’t be a money pit to operate per year when they aren’t being used. To run a B-1 wing just sucks $$$$ per year even when there isn’t combat ops. Funny how FB-22 has more range and survivability than a B-1 but FB-22 was criticized for range and B-1 was praised. Yes I understand the payload difference but the ability to do a strike 2000 or more miles out with not much tanking, do it quicker, more survivable, cheaper to operate / logistically support… well a small number of FB-22s would sortie rate ( per day ) the B-1 right off of the PowerPoint briefing. Gee thats odd. A B-1 will make a nice radar reflector more and more as time goes on. 2020-5 will fast approach.
To bad we are… just this year, going to sink 1 Billion into the C-130J and want to spend $240 plus billion on JSF over time. What a waste.
ELPHi Crobato ! My comments and the way things should be ( not necessarly will be unfortunately ) in blue…
But the thing about the F-22 is that it isn’t exportable.
Good. I am not interested in exports….
If the price isn’t too high, then the technology is too sensitive. Stick to the F-22, kills the JSF, and the Typhoon, Rafale and the Sukhois is guaranteed to rule the exports.
Well I don’t really care about exporting anything And if Typhoon, Rafale, Sukhois make a sale, more power to them. I am not interested in any more “Big” jet sales that end up being proped up with corporate welfare / tax dollars big time.
And you simply cannot use the F-22 on a carrier. You need to go back to the drawing board to redraw and restress the airframe.
Well the USN goofed themselves on that didn’t they? Their ability to put a jet in the fleet after the last few failures represents the old saying: “They couldn’t poor p!ss out of a boot if you wrote the directions on the bottom”. All is not lost though. Killing JSF means that A45 UCAV will get fielded sooner. Also, we don’t need to be doing so much expeditionary warfare anyway, so I don’t see having a Super Hornet / A45 setup as something too terrible. If you are going to lets say use a NK scenario, Just with the Navy you have converted Ohio class that will be carring lots of Tomahawk. From the air: decoys, JASSM and JASSM-ER. SLAM-ER, etc. That is a lot of strike power if used well. More. SH pukes will tell you that 5 Super Hornets can hit the same amount of targets that took a whole squadron to do in Desert Storm. That is not bad.Yup the USN would lose some A2A ability but it’s strike ability isn’t horrible and if it is a big job it will be a joint operation anyway.
Then what about the close support for your Army and Marines?
You expect the F/A-22 to do the mud mover jobs which our present F-16s, F-18s and A-10s do?No. In the case of the USMC, congressional pork will mean that the USMC would get SH eventually. F models would do well in USMC hands. As for USAF the goal should be to make F-16s last another 20 plus years if not more. Buying some F-16 Block 60 ( for Guard and Reserve ) would do good. Making all F-16s CFT capable would be better. No drop tanks, quad rack for SDB, Twin Rack for 500. 1000lb class JDAM / GBU-12 means a lot can be hit. And don’t forget WCMD CBU-105 ( SFW “skeets” ), Joint Common Missile ( JCM )( replaces Hellfire and Maverick ) tri-sensor and has range that keeps it out of small SAM, MANPAD, AAA, trashfire. The most dangerous person on the battlefield is a USAF G-FAC ( “G” for “ground” ) calling in all this death. Other services G-FACS are catching up, but the USAF G-FAC is the G-FAC of choice. For CAS the guy on the ground doesn’t care what airframe the support comes from , just as long as it arrives. Also for CAS I find the netcentric Apache when used well, far more useful than A-10. For thining the herd before our ground troops even make contact all kinds of airframes can have at it with PGMs. One of those airframes would also be A-45 UCAV
You’re back to the same thing, getting one peg to fit them on different holes. It does not matter if the peg is the JSF or the F-22, you need a peg to work from. Once everyone is trying to make that one peg fit on their different hole, you’re going to have requirement after requirement and the whole thing will get more complex, get heavier and ballon in price. If you are thinking about cost savings in volume production, guess again, as the F-16 didn’t go down in prices either. As a matter of fact, the F-16 went from the simple fighter it originally is in its Block 15 configuration, to the complex mini monster in its Block 60 form as requirements and requirements piled on.
Well, I am looking toward a future that has less, not more expeditionary warfare. A lot less. As for the F-16, F-18, They currently exist, fly, and with modern PGMs are “good enough”. That is a lot less expensive than puking out lots of $$$ for JSF.
The point is, if you don’t have the JSF, the US will inevitably invent one, no matter what. The F-22 will always be a niche plane and the best way to keep the F-22 costs low is to keep it as an air dominance fighter simple without any of the bomber stuff.
I disagree. I find the following mix very useful key players and JSF isn’t even on the list:
F-16 CFT including BK 60
F-18 SH
F-22
FB-22
Apache
A-45 UCAVF-15E, and B-1 going out over time and FB-22 filling that mission.FB-22 in moderate numbers will be a killing force far more useful / survivable than… dare I say… B-1.
A-10 will be around for a while but it will go away.
I don’t see enough advantage of keeping USMC Harriers around.
As for the F-22 in the air to ground role, consider this. It is superior to JSF in many, many ways. That being, we aren’t going to have very many expeditionary airfields to do things with since in todays environment, many countries would say “no”. And it will be a long time, if ever that you see us doing any more large expeditionary warfare after what has happened with Iraq and the way the American public feels about that. Anyway, back to the F-22. It can carry up to 2 GBU-32,( 1000lb ), GBU-35 ( 1000lb BLU-110-Penetrator ) GBU-38 ( 500lb ) all JDAMs take your pick. The BLU-110 is interesting and shouldn’t be under-rated. It has the ability to deal out the same killing force that a JASSM or Tomahawk could. That isn’t too shabby. More- The SDB. There are many things you can’t kill with an SDB, however there are many things you can kill with an SDB. This said, The jet with super cruise can get there and back 1000 miles out pretty quick. A little less stress with tanker support. When doing something like an Allied Force 1999 scenario or North Korea, You could put out a lot of sorties with the F-22 per day, It comes back to base, Hot pit refuels and rearms, pilots are swaped out etc. Inside of a few days many strategic targets are going to be hit and using very few airframes. Fact is, that the F-22 does this kind of work with a complete contempt of A2A threats that would make the sortie rates of the JSF look silly, assuming you could find a base close enough for JSF, JSF “there and back” ( it is slower ) is a longer period of time… and the fact that the pilot spends less time in the cockpit ( fatigue ) and has a better safety margin with threats using an F-22. This idea that the F-22 is near useless in executing A2G sorties is missing the mark. If anything, it is the JSF that shows far more limits in this environ. Once ( IF ) a war shifts to supporting the troops, that can be done with conventional style airframes. Later adding a moderate number of FB-22 and the force mix, just looks better and better. And as for strategic strike, I haven’t even mentioned the power of the B-2,( JASSM, JDAM, SDB, GBU-37 etc), B-52, ( JASSM, JDAM ) B-1 bla.. bla… bla…
I am looking toward a future that has less expeditionary warfare. That also includes a game plan that doesn’t see China as some big threat that has to be sabre rattled against ( outside the scope of this post ). It also involves a future that means few if any foreign arms sales. The future I am talking about still leaves us the ability to kick down a door if needed but doesn’t mean we have to be omni-present everywhere in the world, which has gotten us into the trouble we are in today. It is also a future where we still have a killing air ability and not spending so much tax dollars on facilities management of bases outside the U.S. I see… no bases outside the U.S. as being the ultimate hot setup, and if there is a war, it better be well within our direct interest before we even think about being involved… if ever.
ELPAnd how do you know that? 🙂
Anyhow, I agree that the F-15s do have a lot of life left in them, and are still vastly superior to anything that any other country can field. Unfortunately, the F-22 program is taking away money from the F-15 PAR and F-16 upgrades.
The F-22 isn’t taking away money from anything. It is a plan for the future. The Es have life in them. The Cs are shot. So much so you now have A’s with less hours on them. They are becoming more expensive to maintain. Even if we bought new F-15s, it would be a waste. It is a good but old design. We do air domination not parity. We are planning for the next 20-30 years. An F-15 doesn’t have much place in that plan. At the same time, the USAF is downsizing again. Thanks to things like modern PGMs, you need less air frames to take out targets. The F-22 is part of that smaller air force. You save money by killing the JSF ( $ 240 plus billion ). Of course if we didn’t have the C-130J forced down our throat, that would be over $1 billion right there. That would pay for the cockpit upgrade to the current C-130 fleet and help out getting the C-5 ( B models ) back on their feet with new engines and avionics ( A models could be retired and you would have some Bs with great mission up times )
Furthermore in the downsizing we could get rid of all the E model F-15s and downsize the B-1 force ( B-1s would get the avionics and flight control upgrade so they would have really good mission up times instead of so-so ) And within the next 10 or so years get FB-22 going and A-45 fielded. A lot of your “cost” is at the support end, facilities, and manpower end. A smaller USAF with more powerful flying systems is the way to go to “save” money yet keep a lot of teeth. The F-16 could become an almost exclusive Reserve / Guard asset, including a small buy of Block 60 jets. Some of what I have described is real and some of it isn’t in the plan ( unfortunately ) But, when you downsize the USAF and still keep teeth in it, you take those manpower numbers you had and pass those numbers back into the DOD so to speak so that other services can increase their manpower ( if needed ) without going over the congressional cap on DOD manpower. Also the savings, that was spent on upkeep of that manpower, facilities, support structure can now be farmed back into DOD to other services if needed or as a cut of annual budget. A useful cut that could be done over the next few years is to take any shooter / fighter wing that is currently overseas ( Misawa, Okinawa, Korea, Germany, England etc….and deactivate it. Right there. Done. This would help the USAF not hurt it in the long run because bloat could be substituted for powerful combat wings that have undeniable force. Well, Congress would have to grow a pair for that to happen, but it would be a good thing in the long run. What is funny when bringing up “savings” is all the ridiculous domestic government spending… Congress should terminate farm programs such as the Foreign Agricultural Service, the Rural Housing Service, the Agricultural Marketing Service, and the Rural Business Cooperative Service saving at least $24 billion each year. Many programs of the Department of Transportation should be privatized, such as Amtrak, which will cost $900 million in FY2004, and the $6 billion budgeted for Air Traffic Control; many others should be terminated. The $80 billion in corporate welfare in the FY2004 budget should be cut along with the $23 billion in pork-barrel earmarks that found their way in this year Omnibus bill. And there are a bunch of other things like that that suck up tax dollars yet provide little or nothing.
ELPYahh if it did, it would really make stealth kind of useless in ways that US and other countries don’t want it to be useless, this would make a extremely big turning point in military aviation.
Hard to say. Depends. Especially with a wall of decoys like AMD-141 TALD and ITALD and a number of other decoys. Combine that with JASSM and Tomahawk which can now loiter and be fed a target later and it will have it’s work cut out for it. The 400 SAM is not a magic bullet, just a very good SAM system and a big threat.
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