There is a nice (sarcastic) proverb in Greek for this case: “He who has such friends what use does he have for enemies?” :p

I think the quote you are looking for is:

“with friends like brussels, who needs enemas”

Thanks for the link, the youtube video from the references –

Which proves that with a good old F16 you don’t even need to destroy IADS, you can just deplete the opponent’s missile stock, while the F35, if it’s as stealth as they say, will need to spend bazillions of $ of precision weapons to achieve the same result.

Nic

If you go in low you have to go fast. IIRC I think it’s 600+ KTS.

Nic

Interesting so they build a stealth gun pod but instead of a gun they put other things in it instead almost at all times. Interesting idea in that it saves weight of gun for the 98+ percent of time when you wont need it but can add it back for CAS specific missiosn if needed. While at same time allowing pod to carry other things. I wonder if they could say squeeze say three to four sidwinders into that pod?

haha like it’s not draggy enough :applause:

Indeed, good decision.

http://bmpd.livejournal.com/1326305.html

Interesting figures here- life hours increased to 6000.
And these are legacy Fulcrums too, Soviet-era airframes essentially, so that is a surprisingly high increase.

Weirdly higher than the Indian UPG airfame hours- those went from 2000 to 3500 IIRC.

Yes it is indeed pretty strange.

The irregularity of F-135 unit costs, and their annual variance, is illustrated in the table below, compiled by Defense-Aerospace.com from figures released by the DoD Inspector General:

F-35 engine unit costs by annual production lots

[ATTACH=CONFIG]237900[/ATTACH]

Defense-Aerospace.com analysis of DoD Inspector General data

The irregularity of these price variations makes it impossible to predict future prices, and clearly contradicts long-standing promises by industry and Pentagon program management that unit prices would drop steadily as production ramps up.

It is worth noting that, at the present cost of around $30 million, the F-135 engine alone represents over one-third of the cost that the Joint Program Office (JPO) expects for an entire F-35A aircraft in 2019.

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/feature/5/163182/f_35-engine-unit-costs-continue-to-grow.html

Is anything being done to fix the engine cost problem?

Engine cost isn’t really a problem insofar as the F35 cost fanboys love to quote excludes the engine.

Nic

You normaly do not send supersonic long range bombers on someones backyard……It is to aggravate or to irritate and is seen in military language as offensive, yes. They have to be shot down in time if the threat is real.
Its not just that, they interfere with flight space and with normal passager planes, as they run without transponder turned on….like its ******* war or something. That is disrespectful towards human life.

lol