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Enthusiast Joined: Dec 27, 2006 Posts: 29 Status: Offline

there are times when we might have to dog fight and would you want a F-16 going up against a Su-37. i dont think so. maybe if it was just a ground war like Iraq but not with a war against russia or china.

Elite 1K Joined: May 10, 2005 Posts: 1090 Status: Offline

mug wrote:

You would think that F-16 sales would soar at a time like this. With the AWACS and data link system that F-16's has, wouldn't you think that flying a stealth fighter in passive mode transmitting location data back to a fleet of 16's or 15's to shoot them over the horizon be more effective than buying a fleet of high priced jets?

Buy these sweet jets, put a few out front as a recon scenario and have the rest shoot them down from a distance.

My personal best case scenario.... unmanned stealth recon A/C with a passive radar and the ability to send other friendly A/C the bad guys' location data. The ability to shoot another A/C while using target data from an unseen A/C in the area and a minimal threat to a cheaper, proven fleet seems productive.

I love the JSF. I've worked on it, sat in it and watched the first flight, but is it the best thing right now with an ailing debt and an aging fleet at this time? I say buy some, but the F-16 has proved itself. Why mess with a good thing.

Any arguments over this? I'd welcome them.

No argument, but why on earth would anybody want to go to war with anything less than the best we can get solely due to money? We can offord the 22....LOTS of 22s in fact, so why not give the people on the pointy end the best platform they can get? It seems to me that scripming on weapons systems when your potential adversaries are not doing the same thing is a good way to get waxed. The F-16 "proved" itself against MiG-23s and 29s, but technology advances, and it seems backwards to purposely deny yourself the most advanced systems for any reason. There isn't any way of knowing if 183 raptors would be more effective than 380 or 500, but I'm going to bet that the higher number would be the way to go. As it stands, F-15Cs aren't being built any more, and F-22s are.

One word "Progression"

If we stuck with the mentality of "Why do we need a new front line Fighter when we can keep updating the current one ?"

We'd still be flying F-86s.

Mike Valdez
Been There - Done That

Take a look at history, the B-18 was the airframe of choice for the Congress and the Army Air Corps. The B-17 was overpriced, over-complex and difficult to produce. How many B-18's saw or were effective in combat? When the manure hits the fan you have to have the best tools available to cream the opposition.

As Churchill said "The great defense against the air menace is to attack the enemy's aircraft as near as possible to their point of departure."

Great post, host. Now we're debating.. and I appreciate your personal perspective.

I'd agree and have posted similar tunes in the short time here already on the current need to re-examine new factors and think outside the box. And the post-cold-war, mid-90s JSF dream machine, bringing happily ever after wealth and security until 2045, etc etc. was unfortunately very locked in a box origin, I'm afraid.

I'm not going to make statements on precise technical aspects of things, as it's not my field, but agree one could study such a 'hypothetical' realistically and I personally don't think it's too late to reconsider.

I'd vote for more F-22 at expense of USAF F-35A (as long as F-22 is truly cost-effective and reliable which is classified of course). But I'd admit if I were wrong on F-35 too, later on. (Just as RAAF was probably wrong on wanting RA-5C vigilante over the F-111)?

But I'd think a tailless, F-16XL type, vectoring, AESA with the best off-the-shelf avionics/radar/engine, etc, could indeed match %95 of the F-35 and deter any Su-30 to boot. Besides it would look pretty badass! Smile

But even an updated XL with the tail-on, or Block 60/IN variant, F-15SG type Eagle could be valid, modern 'complement' to fewer than preferred F-35 orders in future scenario. IMO.

Heck, could one imagine a tailless, delta-winged, F-111 w/ 2-D LON vectoring, LO inlet, (V)4, composite material/body and 2x GE-132 ? World class interceptor, or strike bomber at perhaps %25 of JSF development costs?

Lastly, DoD def can't be skimping on the 'deployed' A-A weapons part of equation, as is seemingly secondary to the sexy platforms.

Elite 2K Joined: Jan 14, 2004 Posts: 2616 Status: Offline

Newer and more technologically advanced will always win over the Generals...well, unless you're trying to develop a replacement for the B-52. It's outlived the B-58, XB-70, the B-1A, and now serves alongside 2 aircraft which are both kicking 25 in the keester. No immediate plans to retire the H model fleet either.

In the fighter world, the turn towards new technology happens more frequently...up until this point. The "Teen Series" is getting old. I've seen first hand, in my previous job, how using an airplane for jobs that it wasn't designed to do was affecting our Viper fleet. You may call this overuse of Viper airframes "F-4 Syndrome".

There's going to come a day very soon when it will all have to change. The Raptor and the Lightning are both coming in at the right time to do this job.

TC, I hear ya, but... Under the given fighter scenario you give, the USAF has not yet begun to see true "Over use of the airframe". The USAF was sold a 600+ and 2,000+ F-35 scenario (to replace legacy with similar numbers); with trial balloons floated to fund them, flown well.

With delays, and a conservative, hypothetical 400x F-35 total force (for argument sake) by 2028-30, one could hate to see over-use?

And it's a little scary that only now, USAF is seemingly in a panic mode, telling congress... 'yeah we know we've spent $90 billion, in combined R&D... but now we're really asking for an extra $10 bil/yr spending money to really buy them, in urgency'. Well?? Interesting show-down looming to say the least.

I just say there was/is some poor calculations on the AF end of things too, as it's always ez to blame congress/DoD.

asiatrails wrote:

the B-18 was the airframe of choice for the Congress and the Army Air Corps. The B-17 was overpriced, over-complex and difficult to produce.

Interesting pointing that out. Congress was in the process of canceling the B-17 program, when a Russian pilot Valery Chkalov flew (unannounced) from Moscow to Pearson Air Field near Seattle, Wa.! That got some people thinking, what if the ANT-25 had been a bomber? That is what saved the B-17 program.
REF:
http://www.historylink.org/essays/outpu ... le_id=7208

There is more than enough blame for Congress and the inconsistent funding of these programs. There was no reason for the F-22A not to become operational in the mid to late 1990's. Congress and the DoD ordered Lockeed and its sub-contractors back in 1990 to re-structure the program to take an additional ten years to develop and a production run at the maximum of half of what was previously planned! That is a receipy for cost over-runs.

Adrian

Elite 2K Joined: Oct 20, 2005 Posts: 2097 Status: Offline

Before anybody will further reply to this doubtful topic (Posted: Mar 21, 2008 - 07:36 PM), please note the following change in the original post:

mug wrote:

none

(Last edited by mug on Mar 23, 2008 - 05:42 AM; edited 1 time in total)

Please let me tell you: At least in my eyes, anybody who will launch a new forum topic on F-16.net should think about that right before posting. And he/she should stay to this topic after posting. After I joined www.f-16.net, in the past we had enough topics which ended somewhere in "Nirvana" because the original poster never reacted to the helpful posts from other users.

Sorry! In this special case it´s unknown to me, why mug retreated afterwards from his topic. But please let me tell you: I´m totally tired to reply to such "one-night stand" topics! We on F-16.net are a very good community. And we should not waste our knowledge to any mayfly!

J.J. wrote:

And we should not waste our knowledge to any mayfly!

Isn’t that comment bordering the “Jumped up Twit" category”?

F-16.net Editor Joined: Sep 23, 2003 Posts: 2848

New people could help themselves a lot by using the GD search function.

Elite 2K Joined: Jan 14, 2004 Posts: 2616 Status: Offline

elp wrote:

using the GD search function.

...and he doesn't mean "General Dynamics" folks! Laughing

Elite 2K Joined: Oct 20, 2005 Posts: 2097 Status: Offline

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Forum: F-35 Lightning II

Why the JSF/F22?