and then there’s the biggest advantage any UCAV has over manned fighters: cost. the F-22 cost $60 billion to develop, $150 million to build. the F-35 is going towards $400 billion to develop, $150 million to build. a UCAV on the other hand can be developed for less than $1 billion, built for less than $50 million, but it’ll match or beat the usefulness of any manned aircraft. combine them with other elements to make up for their flaws, like a lack of radar, and you get high performance at a much lower cost. and above all, that is the reason the UCAV will be superior to the F-35, cost versus performance

A UCAV that matches the exact performance and capabilities of a manned fighter would cost perhaps 5% less to develop and build. Any potential savings are realized by removing the weight of the cockpit, canopy, ejection seat and other life-support gear w/c totals around 5% of the total aircaft weight. On the other hand, you need even more complex and redundant systems since there is no pilot and these cost more.

Remember, in fairness, we want to compare apples vs. apples so its not fair to compare say a Predator vs. a F-16 even though both can drop bombs or fire missiles. If you built a UCAV with the exact capabilities and performance of a F-16, you’ve basicallybuilt a F-16 drone.. cost would be approximately the same.. no big savings really in terms of development and manufacture.

What do you know about the PAK-FA shape (no really, what?)? Have you been doing wind-tunnel testing with it? What is your secondary education in? Are you an aviation engineer? Have you work for an aviation engineering department that worked on stealth aircraft at any company?

It looks nothing like a Flanker to me, bar the placement of the engines.

I see all of the edge alignment, profiling, etc – that belongs in a stealthy airframe. The details are impossible to talk about.

Yeah, you’d know better than even a single aviation engineer.. :rolleyes:
…..not…

So says the self-proclaimed stealth expert LOL
Typical reaction of someone with no substance to support his argument. LOL

Thats quite surprising, I thought the US would have kept the aircraft flying for DACT purposes at least, stuck it in a museum somewhere or still kept it in one capacity or another.

It couldn’t be helped. the Japanese ha to be 100% sure the Foxbat wasn’t being used to smuggle drugs into the country..:D

OT

Hurricane vs Spitfire, I remember watching discovery Wings where they said Hurricane because of the materials used for its construction was easier to maintain and could survive more hits.

Gripen Modern Day Hurricane ! ?

Hurricane had more kills during the Battle of Brittain though so it was the better fighter at that point .

If the UK shold dump the F-35 (which seems to be the consensus here now), what will it do to the entire F-35 project?

The Super Hornet has always seemed to be a more “finished” product to me.

Maybe it is “only” 4.5 instead of a 5th gen, but if it can still do the trick for another 10-15-20 years, a t a lower price, then it ought to be seriously consideret 9together with the rafale.

If the SH is 80-85% (say) of the F-35 functionality, but available NOW, then will the other 15-20% even matter, spececially if it is just “engineering dreams” and not based in required capabilities?

I have also read about the fact that the carriers are only ready when the F-35 is ready. However, those plans seem a bit thin on the ground as i cannot see contingencies in any of it, but only “hope for the best”.

I could be horrible wrong, in which case I humbly will slit my wrists.

maybe we should go here instead:

I think the Navy has a much better appreciation of the relative capabilities of the F-18SH vs the F-35C.
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2010/05/24/fighter-gap-could-shrink-after-wars/

The Navy has expanded the capabilities of the Super Hornet to about “4.2-ish” generation capability, Manazir said, which is the limit of how much it can be upgraded. While some 5th generation low observable features are built into the Super Hornet, the fact that its weapons hang-off the wings, it cannot internally store weapons, means it has upper limits of stealthiness.

“The F-35Cs sensor fusion, data fusion and the stealth characteristics… allow it to get in there on day one of an anti-access denial kind of a fight,” Manazir said.

Thankfully the reduction is only in the rate of procurement for the next few years. The buys are planned to be made up in later years.

My sentiments too. Also, priorities have a habit of changing in the face of new security realities in which case more production would be warranted in the future. 🙂

Exactly – spiral development.

Spiral would probably have resulted in an even longer and costlier development and testing effort. Trying to achieve the level of integration to achieve sensor fusion using legacy components would entail an almost endless cycle of integrating old with the new and going thru the whole effort again every time a new component becomes available. You might seem to be mking progress but at the end of the day you have something that really doesn’t deliver as envisioned.

I wonder how long it will be before someone does away with the radar homer and puts a good IR sensor onto of a long range SAM.

Use long wave radar to get an approximate location for the stealth to get the missile close enough for the seeker to take over.

Best way to counter stealth is to not try to beat it at its own game.

Assuming of course that IR stealth measures have not been incorporated. There is also the matter of active IR countermeasures to consider, DIRCM in particular.