MarcellogoUK is not Eu. What have been achieved at a national level could not have happened at a Eu level. This is not an easy goal anymore. Period. By recurring to a partnership at Industrial level, perhaps on a step by step basis.
Look what happens now with a mandatory 50% share of work for the next generation UCAS. This is not what the Eu industrial project was for. There is no future for the R&D in Eu with that form of Socialist planing. We had Concorde that was a champion only seen through the eyes of centrally planned economy. There are no place for this kind of project anymore at the age of broadside worldwide competition… And certainly not with UCAV that will be procured as a PRODUCT for a variety of reasons. The dynamics does not allow the type of planing inherited from the ages of centrally planned economy.Now what are the real motives for a partnership? Capital, national security interests and secured Industrial know how or capabilities.
At the age of a web based economy, when the most majority of products are sourced cross-countries and (as a related fact) defense posture are projected across the globe, what are the national interest with developing partnership only with co-geo located parker? NONE. It is in fact counterproductive to keep those kind of thinking at the age of mass migration, depleted resources etc…
Think global. Don’t feel hostage to the old world. If your partners in Eu are refracting to such ideas, don’t jeopardize your future.
Look at it with cold eyes today. It is sad that the Eu Union is a failed project. But the Unions of tomorrow are temporary aggregates (this does not includes the social, agricultural or heavy industry projects were close proximity brings obvious synergies.
Korea, Italia, Finland Australia, Canada (a country industry that can only rebound)… England can enjoy today a dominant position to seek alliances. I do not see why you should bargain. And contrary to what recently said the German Chancellor, it’s time for a bit of Brits arrogance!**I added Italy but the scheme is similar for that country
Reverse it , Tomcat : Italy is still one of the few industrial product net exporter countries in the world while UK (& France) is not such from almost the nineties.
MarcellogoNot quite on topic, but not unrelated.
The UK contribution to the counter ISIS effort is detailed here:
Notable how many PWIVs the Typhoons are eating up over Iraq.
How many? 252bombs/6 planes/91 days= less than a bomb each two planes a day.
MarcellogoPlease , do not turn this thread into a bitchfest JUST AN N° TIME.
My own country uses A/V-8+, we are quite satisfied of them and we are discussing to keep them in service even after the F-35B arrive, so not exactly a rustbucket.
IMHO the F-35B despite its obvious and quite heavy performance limitations when compared with the A version is the one with more operative sense: its own STOVL characteristic coupled with supersonic velocity are something unique no other plane can actually replicate.
What someone would take offense or at the opposite think to diminish others for the fact that there is someone in common between a western and an eastern plane?
Look, we have not just exchanged some data, we have practically made two version of the same plane together with Russian and we have get in that way the respective monopoly of the advanced trainer market for the next twenty years as a reward…
MarcellogoLooking forward to the “24 hours fighting the godless imperialists and their Shi’a lapdogs” thread.
For such a thing, i advice you to look at the Guardian or to the Bild instead than to NY times.
MarcellogoOne good thing would be to gave a look at the daily report of centcom to make a comparison between the effort done and the result achieved.
One thing one can note, without wanting to made any comparations with the works of others ones fighting the Good Fight is how not just and not so much the overall numbers of Centcom airstrikes but instead the numbers of targets hitten in each strike have spiked up drammatically in the last few months.
Before of that, the sorties in which almost one bomb or a missile was fired were in a absolute majority of cases just such as written: a complex operation involving several planes between armed and support ones and just a pair of ordnances dropped, in many cases against absolutely secondary targets tenths of miles away from actual frontlines.
Now, things are surely changed more air strikes and above all a way greater number of targets hit in each of them.
This great result is not a consequence of new technologies but just from the fact that both in Iraq that finally also in Syria there are allied land forces on the offensive and a good day to day collaboration with them.
It means not just many more eyes looking for targets than before but, and in the end it is much more important that ISIS can not just squat down, hide themselves in some tunnel, disperse througly in civilian taken houses, reorganize themselves in smaller units, move just in small groups at night and concentrate their own forces only just before an attack like they have done previously but have choose between to show up themselves in the open and fight, so becoming vulnerable to air strikes or just being overran while in hiding.
Said that, coalition forces have in this conflict a original sin that no advanced weapon, no operative methodology or allied help can amend and it is political in nature: given that to their air forces was not given the permission to be based in Iraq, lets alone Syria it means that the great part of their air assets have to travels hours before to just reach operation zone.
In such a time Ruaf but also Syaaf and Iqaf planes are often just returned from their second run.
So surely the ratio between coalition air strikes and targets engaged have surely sensibly grew in those last times, the one between missions (i.e. planes and drones utilized for a single operation) and airstrikes not so much.
As a paradox it is way more confortable for them to reach Syria from Incirlik air base than Falluja or Ramadi.
Still Syrian missions are still now just a fraction of Iraqi ones, probably because SDF or better said YGP are way less smaller and way less “proactive” force than Iraqi army/PMF and SAA/NDF respectively are.
MarcellogoIt does equate stagnation when small country like Israel can produce better military equipment than defense firms of a large continent like Europe. Countries in Europe can fly as many “ducks” they want to but it does mean nothing without actually production… it’s actually funny because many people seem to think that Europe is strong.
Broccoli, there is not anything like Europe as you describe it: there are a british defense industry a french defense industry, a german defense industry, an italian defense industry, a swedish and even a czech, a polish, a croatian one…
They ofter collaborate one with another for technological and even political reasons but they remain separate and many times even fiercely concorrential one with the other.
For the rest , for what regard my own country, rest howeverassured we are actually working on several very advanced things expecially about radars and electronics.
Some we have made operational and other would surely follow…as soon as there would be the funds (the real problem):(.
MarcellogoWhy are you only criticizing the F-35s time on station, and not taking speed into account? How fast will the A-10 travel at cruise speed? How fast will The F-35 travel?
The B has the best of both worlds with both decent cruise speed, and the ability to sit in a parking lot around the corner.
Well, givien that we will buy it also for Air force as a substitute for the AMX and not just for our Navy, it can be surely so…
MarcellogoBased on what exactly? The entire A-10 deployment was 12 aircraft total. Compare that to the hundreds of other fighters from all the services and other countries too. Plus the times they picked B-1s over A-10s…
And having just 12 availaible against hundreds of fighters, they choose them to go helping rebels in Marea actually assaulted by ISIS and before of that to also support Kurds taking Manbji and even before they transferred them in Turkey they were used around Ramadi…
And no they haven’t send B1-B to Kobane instead of A-10, they send them instead of the hundreds of “teeny weeny Fighteriny carrying guided bombtiny” you cited and they did so precisely because they were the only planes they had then that cound gave them LOITERING TIME at such a distance.
Once Turkey gave them permission to use Incirklik base they don’t use them anymore for directly supporting troops on field.
They just use A-10 for that now.
Exactly like IqAF is doing with its Su-25 and Armed helicopters, while send their own F-16IQ to blow up bridges, logistical and command infrastructures.
So every tool for its proper use ATM. Finally.
MarcellogoWell, I keep on wondering if are we Italians considered Europeans at all…
Because you know, we are just introducing in service one of such an item and a quite capable and innovative one.
+ finally US congress have given us permission to install weapons on our own Predators and Reapers, so the interest definitively exist, just there is not any sense to indigenously replicate capabilities we just have.
For the rest, when we are talking a real UCAV i.e. something that can replicate the performances and the payload of even a light attack jet plane seems there still a LONG way to go on both sides of the atlantic coastline as UCLASS story clearly demonstrate.
MarcellogoIn the case where enemy forces are well camouflaged, you may be right that it would be hard to find targets, even though the F-35 is said to have special capabilities to find concealed targets. In any case if the enemy can’t move because of the F-35s, it can’t attack and defend effectively so you can attack on the ground with more chances of success.
In case where there are not a lot of targets that can be engaged it would make more sense to have more fuel onboard than more weapons. Unfortunately EFTs would ruin the stealth so it is not really possible if the F-35 is to approach sufficiently to find targets. The F-35 doesn’t have much loitering time, that’s a drawback.
I is certainly possible to have some F-35s in stealth mode in front to find targets while others stay further behind to drop their SDBs carried on external stations. The SDB1/2 have a 100km range so it might work to attack targets relatively far behind the FLOT. And it is probably possible to relay targetting data to the artillery.
I think the F-35 would be particularily good at destroying the enemy artillery thanks to its DAS.
Maybe one day they will make smaller bombs than the SDB to increase the internal capacity. The miniaturization of weapon might allow that at some point.
Man, with this last intervention it turn out that you are much more a critics of the F-35 than me.
I was only contesting the idea of sending them around with all their own external hardpoints filled up with SDB instead of just the one that they can carry onboard.
This just because in the actual environment they are operating there just not sufficent targets even for these few ones, let’s figure for a full load.
Now, you instead are affirming that they:
– Lack loitering time despite having a fuel fraction superior to the most fighters actually in service
-they would need to detach someone of their own forward to locate targets for the other ,so maybe you would end up emploing two planes for finding just a target or even none that way and why another F-35 anyway? Why not to use Reapers and Predator instead?
In the actual case IS and other insurgent forces are not just camouflaged: they are extremely dispersed, hidden into tunnel, mixed with local population, depredating them and international aids to feed themselves and to pay their own wages and requising their own cars and trucks to move along.
They regroup themselves or pop out just at the last minutes before engage their own objectives otherwise they stay under cover and do just the minumum effort necessary to control the territories they have seized.
Result is that ever after a pair of years of coalition efforts and several months of russian’s they are actually still able to mount on offensives and regain territory as they are just now doing in Norther Aleppo at the expense of Turkish vetted rebels, despite intervention of US planes.
A-10 and their own guns it seems the most as the multirole fighters carrying guided bombs seem to have lost some favors along the road just recently…
MarcellogoNot if the F-35 can jettison external stores to regain its stealth capabilities mid-flight. If so, then the decision to carry external ordnance is not a question of risk to the aircraft, but of risk to the mission.
Well, if the operating procedure would be the one you descrive the concealed AD systems can get a success just by turning their radars on for a minute and get back into cover you know and giving that in every case the carrying pilons would stay the stealth would be compromised the same.
For the rest also not stealth planes doesn’t carry anymore their full ordnance capability because they doesn’t need anymore to compensate the inaccuracy of their own targeting systems with delivering several ordnance to the same target.
Even Russian planes operating in Syria, although starting from way closer bases, using often unguided weapons and having much more potential targets available refrain from that: something anyone can just notice looking at their own videos.
MarcellogoHi Hotshot and thank for reply.
Of the two alternatives I forwarded you replied just to the second, so I presume the first one we can take it as granted: as soon as even a potential AD system is present they wouldn’t put any consistent external load on a stealth plane.
About the second you made it a problem of discovering and identifing existing targets, something that is not an issue even now with existing systems while instead the problem lie on a deliberate tactics, well oiled and combat proven, to pourposely negate anything that can be considered like such.
Also in Kosovo 1998 Serbian army reacted hiding all heavy ecquipment in the woods and keeping just light troops in the cities as garrison.
It worked for a certain time also there but it was when was used by M.E. non state actors that such tactics showed all their effectiveness as in those cases also targeting logistical chain and civil infrastructures (i.e. bridges and roads not people) turned out to be largely ineffective against them.
So, no one deny the ability of F-35 or other planes to autonomously discover and engage targets (something even a decades old Su-24 can do): it is just that there would not be any target rich environment there or anywhere as soon as there wouldn’t be an army moving on terrain and forcing them to pop out from hiding and fight.
Also in this case, I would still consider more convenient to carry on more fuel and less weaponry instead of carrying an overload of them without having targets available.
MarcellogoInteresting set of changes.
I am puzzled by the cowlings however. They seem metallic in nature and not so much of an addition to be honest. If that is what they were meant to be, why not have them on all this time?
It’s probably because they are the newest addiction and so they have still to evaluate them fully and maybe even modify, so like the above cited panel beside lateral radars they have still not covered them with RAM painting.
MarcellogoYou’re part of the crew too don’t forget, ‘Mercurius Cantabrigiensis’, hahaha!
What? I’m not Mercurius and I’m not from Cantabringean sea.
But if you want a contribution from me, here is it.
IMHO the maximum number of SDB that the F-35 can potentially carry would be of not any practical importance.
In case of even a potential (i.e. hidden) AD threat like in Kosovo 1998 they wouldn’t carry any such items outside the bomb bay.
In the case of an enemy like the IS now or even Hezb in 2006 that instead hide, disperse and bury itself into tunnels problem would be or better ACTUALLY IS to found a viable target whatsoever, eight in a row would be more difficult than winning the federal lottery.
MarcellogoYou’re part of the crew too don’t forget, ‘Mercurius Cantabrigiensis’, hahaha!
What? I’m not Mercurius and I’m not from Cantabringean sea.
But if you want a contribution from me, here is it.
IMHO the maximum number of SDB that the F-35 can potentially carry would be of not any practical importance.
In case of even a potential (i.e. hidden) AD threat like in Kosovo 1998 they wouldn’t carry anything outside the bomb bay.
In the case of an enemy like the IS now or even Hezb in 2006 that instead hide, disperse and bury itself into tunnels problem would be or better ACTUALLY IS to found a viable target whatsoever, eight in a row would be more difficult than winning the federal lottery.
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