hopsalotThis is the same cost/benefit analysis that has to be done when calculating Concurrency costs.
For every F-35 that is delayed is a 4th gen that has to stay in the air longer, require more support while it’s there, and takes more of them to get the job done.
Yes, and all F-35s are going to be upgraded somewhere down the road anyway. It is always cheaper to delay the production ramp just one more year… but doing so results in a less capable force. At this point the F-35’s production ramp is synced up with the development schedule. They need to ramp production.
hopsalot30 km detection range by IRST vs >200 km targeting range by APG-81, i think F-35 will be fine
It is much more complex than that… a fighter can’t simply “detect” something and then immediately loose a missile at it. This isn’t a video game where the Sukhoi’s IRST detects the F-35 and a little box appears on a screen that says “F-35 detected 30km out, facing away from you….)
In reality all the pilot would get initially would be an indication that the IRST had detected something on that line of bearing and a rough indication of relative altitude. That would be out of the range of the IRST’s laser rangefinder and so the pilot wouldn’t know the target’s range, speed, or heading. It certainly wouldn’t know what type of aircraft it had detected. (UAV, cruise missile, F-22, F-35, something else?)
Figuring out what the pilot is actually looking at, deciding what to do about it, and then taking action all takes time. (and if this process only begins -after- an F-35 has already fired a missile and has turned away then the Sukhoi is facing an essentially impossible challenge)
This concept is captured succinctly in Boyd’s OODA loop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop
hopsalotConsider a 4 v 4 where if two aircraft on either side get destroyed without that side being able to fire back, the remaining two retreat. F-35’s fly with 3 up front running passively (3 shooters), and one hanging back to paint targets with radar.
With a 40% single shot kill probability, the probability of 3 F-35s with 4 missiles each killing 2 of the 4 enemy is 98.04%. I like those odds. Chance of killing 3 enemies is 91.65% and all 4 is 77.47%.
If they are firing from just outside 20 miles, then the enemy has about 30 seconds, the faster they are flying the less time they have.
Yes, and it is important to remember the psychological aspect of things. The enemy wouldn’t know how many F-35s they were facing, how they were loaded, nor even how many missiles had been fired at them. (zero chance they are going to maintain an accurate count on 10+ missiles being fired at them, while doing things like trying to stay alive)
So basically they are flying out toward something, and suddenly missiles start going active… most of them are destroyed in the initial volley. What does the remaining 1-2 planes do? Press on against an unseen threat of unknown type, numbers, etc?
hopsalotIt’s very easy to become a billionaire. All you need is a couple of hundred million invested in New York property & 40 years. Job done.
Trump inherited a large fortune, & according to some estimates of his current wealth (he refuses to make it public) he’d be a lot richer if he’d invested it all in tracker funds instead of managing it himself.
I don’t know if you have noticed this but… there are a lot of real idiots in the US press that will say anything they think will make Trump look bad.
Trump is clearly something of a buffoon in many senses, but the idea that he just kind of bungled through life and ended up a multi-billionare with a world famous brand, a successful game-show host, and yes… president. Not a chance.
hopsalotI may be the first civilian to have experienced super-cruise.
I hate to rain on your parade but…
[ATTACH=CONFIG]251433[/ATTACH]
:rolleyes:
hopsalotSo to summarize, no, to anyone with a functioning brain, Russia is not a dwarf economy, nor a dwarf military power/military industry.
Thank you for polluting the thread with a worthless argument with a child.
I never said they were a dwarf economy. I just pointed out that if Russia were a NATO member it would be NATO’s 7th largest economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
If you treat the EU as a single economy it is roughly the same size as the US… roughly 15 times the size of Russia.
Or still another way of looking at it… If Russia was a US state, its economy would rank 4th, behind California, Texas, and New York. (ahead of Florida)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states_and_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
So here is the thing. Nobody here is saying Russia isn’t a relatively big economy. Or that it doesn’t have a big military. Or doesn’t have thousands of nuclear weapons, etc.
The point is that in economic terms Russia is nothing special. It has big oil, gas, and mineral reserves that provide it a lot of hard currency, but that is essentially the only thing it provides the broader world economy and the only way the Russian economy can raise the money necessary to afford to import the things it can’t produce at home. (high-tech and finished good of most types)
There isn’t going to be another Cold War because the idea of Russia competing at something near parity with either the US or the US/NATO/EU is just nuts.
Even if we took only the US economy, by itself roughly 15x the Russian economy, and completely ignored NATO/EU/Japan/S.Korea, Australia, etc, (all Cold War allies) there would still be no chance. That would be like saying that the Slovak Republic (roughly 1/15th of Russia’s economy) was going to become a strategic rival to Russia.
hopsalotIt does though- as far as military aviation is concerned, and this entire forum is about. I am sure you can find other forums to talk about Russian natural resource exports, but you are being beyond daft here. On KGB level.
You can spam “oil exports” all you want, it does not change the fact that Russia has a vast chain of military (and some civilian too) aviation production facilities, and large scale capacity for production and export.
The same is true in other military fields, and as a result Russia punches considerably above its economic weight in terms of military products and standing forces.Get back to us when the US does not need to rely on Russia to put anyone in space. “Herr derrp just oil and gas”.
Yes, Russia has put a lot of resources into its military. Of that there is no question.
That Russia’s economy is based on the export of oil and gas is an objective fact.
…and yes, I get that it is a source of great pride for Russians that they still launch people into space. (should I make a list of the technologies in which Russia is not self sufficient? :rolleyes: )
The US chose to discontinue space shuttle flights without an immediate replacement as a cost saving measure. Development continues on new generation manned space flight systems that will end US reliance on Russian launchers. All of that is really irrelevant though because in general economic terms manned spaceflight doesn’t even register. Far more important are the advances US companies (SpaceX in particular) are making toward reducing the cost of accessing space.
hopsalotOnly 2 years of delay… Few millions of redesign… Retest…Nothing else than routine for the F 35 program.
The big delay was years ago, the program has been running more or less on time and on budget since then. (and lets face it, delays are more or less par for the course in aerospace projects. Even the Gripen NG is running well behind its original schedule, as is the PAK FA, etc.)
Nobody disputes that the program has had issues, but such is the level of scrutiny that it draws that every little glitch is blown out of proportion by clueless critics in the media. We have seen that happen over and over again already and I expect this to be the same thing.
hopsalotAnd I couldn’t care less, I am not Russian nor Polish. I just see the situation as it is.
Doesn’t everybody?
hopsalotwelp, iran is a sovereign state too and have every right to build nukes and intercontinental ballistic missiles on their own turf
Google “UN.”
hopsalotSo it is up to you to decide what Russia views as a threat ?
I am happy to form my own opinion, yes. Russia claims the missile defense site is a threat to its ICBMs, which as has been demonstrated in this very thread it is not.
No amount of ranting can change that.
Russia views it as a threat whether you like it or not. So if Poland shows intent to break every intl law or treaty and is going to eventually have the entire US military in its country then maybe Russia should move the border to create some extra buffer space before the US military shows up.
Again, there is no treaty or international law restricting Poland’s right to do what it wants within its borders, including hosting US troops if it chooses to do so.
Naturally you resort to threatening to invade Poland, again, if Poland seeks to defend itself from Russia. (and in a post or two you will be arguing that Russia is no threat… :eagerness: )
hopsalotThis is simply untrue. Countries are bound by treaties , that do in fact, limit what they can do “on their own territory”
If Poland wants to abide by international law , then it has to leave Nato if it wants to set up certain military installations on the Russian border. So yes. It can do what it wants, but then it has to forego defacto US military access to “its own territory”
In fact, Russia probably would be ok with any kind of weaponry or missiles in Poland and near Russia, provided that it left Nato.
There is no treaty restricting Poland’s right to establish any kind of military facility it likes on its own territory, whether a member of NATO or not.
hopsalotCalm down, I am not issuing any threats, I am just outlining the situation. I am sure you know it is so.
Calm down?
It is Russia and its media that take to hyperventilating over imaginary threats. Witness the ballistic missile defense silliness…
hopsalotYou are not wrong about me, but we were not alive when the third reich killed millions of Jews in the camps. Should we turn a blind eye to it?
Who said anything about WWII/Nazis/the Holocaust? History has a lot of dark chapters, but I am not interested in going off on a tangent about WWII.
I just can’t stand hypocrisy.
In a pragmatically realistic view, yes Poland has the right to choose who it aligns with and to install any type of instalation it sees fit inside its territory.
However, given previous precedents it should be willing to accept the consequences of such a choice. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.
…and so here we go again. You claim they have the right to do what they want in their territory, then issue veiled threats.
Remind me who can’t stand hypocrisy.
hopsalotIt seems it does.
Glad we can agree on that.
You really seem to want to change the subject to anything else. I am not interested in a discussion about Turkey/Cyprus, or events that happened before most of the people posting here were even alive, etc etc. None of those do anything to change the basics principals.
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