swerve-

The alternatives to the Isreali help really are too minor and/or too costly to be realistic. Think of the four powerhouses and what the alternatives that you named may as well not take place because you are still outgunned by such a wide margin.

Its not uniform from plane to plane. But we get the point you are largely trying to muster. The problem is that we’re talking a tvc-enabled plane that can fly in a line that is not necessarily relevant to where it points it nose. Flight is also in three dimensions. It is not necessarily in your best interest to fly level or in a straight line if you want to remain hidden. The swerving course I spoke of earlier is more like a roller coaster ride in all three dimensions and it depends on tighter throttle control than was possible before the so-called 4.5 generation aircraft. The name “raptor” really suits the way the plane is handled. Like I said before, if it just had to fly straight lines and drop the rod of god from above they wouldn’t require so much experience out the pilots.

The thing about sustaining flight in the stratosphere with the F-22 is that you don’t need to fly straight and level. You can fly a swerving course with the nose pitched up, banking back and forth to sustain lift. The entire aircraft is a lifting surface. If the beast was simply going to fly straight lines and drop the rod of god from above they wouldn’t require so much experience out the pilots.

Back in the years just prior to the first desert storm the brass were largely unfamiliar with the capability of office powerpoint, spreadsheets and databases. The air force used the tools, but the bosses didn’t realize the raw power of the tools. An enlisted man asked why they didn’t dump all the different information from the various office programs into a single system. All it took was an okay, one programmer, and a couple weeks; they had a crude working tool that allowed them to reinvent their situation awareness at that point in time.

It is something of a mystery why they don’t try to squeeze more uses out of their solid state parts. The first television guided bombs came about because some civilian engineers asked their military buddies “why don’t you…” and they began to ask themselves “is that possible?” Actually, most of the best innovation in weaponry have came from the civilian world.

The air force and navy both have all this technology built around the term “imaging infrared” which is now to the point where an AI makes awfully good educated guesses based on outward appearances to be rather broad assumptions. With the wide aspect of today’s sensors they no longer are confined to an aimpoint near the pip. I am willing to bet that they could teamwork the sensors already built into their existing gcu/electronic eyes – mavericks, sidewinders, have nap, aaq-26, asq-228, etc. – with some AI and today’s computer chips into some very powerful ground and air scanning tools. Situation awareness is about the best defense the pilot has left that offers him control in an emergency. They might have always wanted those tools but somebody up until this point in time just hasn’t asked the right person the right question or permission.

I’m surprised they never developed a big eye IR-homing missile that could dump it’s information to the IRST to double it’s effort. That could be like carrying two. But even now, with the existing Sidewinders it would add some serious situation awareness. If you had four external that would be that many more eyes looking out there for threats.

Hey, I am only doing aircraft design for a living, but why care about it …

I probably should have restrained my comment in that last post. On first glance I thought the response was coming from Sens. I was reacting to the language of your post and what you said was offensive to say the least. While having more than one position for your landing gear isn’t a great solution, a podded cargo area is a great solution.

In all of the operations which depended on airlift the limiting factor of moving equipment had everything to do with tarmac space. The runways could have sustained much more activity than the tarmac space realistically allowed them to offload the materials. By using a pod that can be released you are dropping off a container that can be offloaded at the convenience of the ground commander. Add mobility for the pod on the ground for that pod – a set of wheels and a tow hitch – and you make it that much more effective.

The problem is the solution comes from a pragmatist that bridges the limitations of both the air and ground assets whereas this is an air force program that only deems improvements on their side of the equation as worthwhile. Anything that actually makes the military force better as a whole be damned.

Maybe, but what makes you think they can do that? They might be able to launch attacks at the same time every day, by broadcasting the time & hoping that local commanders obeyed the broadcast instructions, but that would only make them much easier to deal with. I doubt they have the comms or command structure to co-ordinate attacks at a time which varied from day to day.

I’d be more worried about them coordinating feints with innocent civilian actors than real attacks.

JFC Fuller-

There is only so much bandwidth in the system and its divied up according to priority. This has been a limitation since the beginning.

Exact inventories are sensitive. You will never gather accurate public figures.