Forum: Program and politics

Dear Mk82 and spazsinbad,

Thanks for getting back to topic and thanks for the info. US stealth technology has already proven effective in the F-117 and B-2. Only thing is that the 1st generation stealth panel layer could be detected if being directed by radar at less than 5Nm away. Generation 2 stealth panel in F-22 and F-35 should be way better. My opinion in comparing Europeans made vs American made, the US aircrafts have to undergo extreme test under hot/cold extreme weather in the Mojave and North Dakota to make sure they are reliable and durable. European European fighters such as EF2000, they only tested in limited European weather and temperature, whether their parts could withstand other climate, weather and temperature i a question mark for me. Unless they are willing to send test prototype to Arab desert to have them proven. No offense but true and I guess this is why customers prefer US made fighters. Besides, spare parts price and availability, US made still cheaper.

However, I still prefer to have conventional F-35s in additional choices for buyers. F-16, EF2000, Rafale don't think they are that superior than Su-35BM in terms of radar and weapons range. Their radomes house medium size mid-end radar with track range current new radar not so sure, around 60-80Nm track range and search range 100Nm? Just enough for them to track targets at maximum effective range of AIM-120C5/C7? F-14/15 and Flankers family fitted with large high-end radar with track range >143Nm and search range 160-190Nm meaning that they could track targets at long range and fire the AIM-54, AIM-120D and Meteor without AWACs assistance.

Dear Conan,
The articles I read came from military magazines and newspapers back in late 90's. I don't keep them with me. I don't get the info from Google. I'm not against stealth technology but just as safety pre-caution, any air force should not rely on 1 single thing completely and forgo the rest. There are still missions and sorties that your targets are sitting ducks or defenseless but because of their large numbers, you need mobile weapon platforms to carry as many missiles and ordnance as possible to take them down before they could harm your allies, people or cities. If you have only 12 F-35s that could fly at that time, if all of them stealth variant carrying only 4 AIM-120C7s, your enemy sent in 60 cheap inferior Mig-23s and Tu-22 Blinders that charge towards your city at supersonic speed hoping to kill as many civilians as possible. They know it's suicidal to go against your F-35s but they only wanted to kill your people ignoring your missiles and focus on bombing the city. Even if all 48 AMRAAMS hit 100% without a single F-35 loss, can you finish off the remaining 12 with guns? Please note that NATO do not have many SAMs launchers like Russia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc have. Mostly operate short range Shahine, Rapier, Roland, hand-held launchers, etc. Patriots only some of them have? Also, there is protocol where you are not allowed to fire on enemy bogeys until the are near your border or already entered your country. A conventional F-35 could carry full bag of 12 AMRAAMs and with the AESA radar, it could track several targets and launch the AMRAAMs simultaneously with few AMRAAMs left to kill whatever left after the 1st wave.

Dear cywolf32 and JetTest,

Are you military fans like the rest? At least they do post healthy comments and who knows, some of us could end up becoming owner of a country. Psychopath farmboy Hitler with lots of nasty experience when he was young, any1 thought he could become the fuhrer and lead the entire Germany? No. Abraham Lincoln, no one knows he would become the US president. Same goes to several leaders be it good or bad, you can't expect what will happen tomorrow. Also, if nobody allowed to question the F-35, do you think Lockheed could get the feedback? If there is no competitor such as Boeing/Northrop to come up with F-32 for sale, do you think Lockheed will be kind enough to lower the selling price? Less variant and choices of fighters to look at, buy, etc, won't you feel bored? Back then, there are A-10/F-14/15/16/18 that come up in few years time, reading mags are fun. Even air combat sims. Today, everything is almost dead, buy magazine, there's only F-22 and F-35. PAK-FA, J-10/12 from the East, aircraft development is almost quiet as it's dead.

F-16.net Sponsor

'jayraptor' did you have a hand in this?

U.S. approves use of chase flights, telemetry to test Lockheed's F-35A By Kim Eun-jung 2012/08/29

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/20 ... 00315.HTML

"SEOUL, Aug. 29 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. government has approved South Korea's request to perform chase flights and use a wireless data transfer system to test Lockheed Martin's F-35A, one of three fighter jets bidding for a multi-billion dollar project, a senior Seoul official said Wednesday.

American aerospace giant Lockheed is competing with fellow U.S. firm Boeing and Europe-based multinational defense group EADS to win the state-funded fighter jet deal worth upward of 8.3 trillion won (US$7.3 billion). South Korea plans to purchase 60 fighter jets by 2021 to replace the Air Force's aging fleet."

How is this any different than looking at the tapes after it lands (as they do now)?

It is a face saving exercise for the South Koreans because a fuss was made about an assumption made at beginning about simulators that was questioned by others. See my claim on the first page of this thread and go here - 2nd entry on this page:

http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopi ... t-120.html

Jay, the USG does not develop aircraft with any thought of making magazines and video games more interesting, and airframes do not decide what aircraft to develop. They respond to USG requests for proposals for specified systems and requirements, that is what drives the direction of engineering and development of new aircraft. Boeing does not own the X32, the USG owns that design as it was developed on a USG contract. It is not up to Boeing to decide to complete any further development. Boeing was in a fair competition and could not successfully deliver a winning proposal within the constraints of the competition, get over it. There will be no F32, stealth, conventional (as you call it), US, foreign or otherwise. What about that do you not understand? You can dream about "what if" all you want but stop posting your dreams as if they were realistic proposals. And an aside, LM, as well as all participating suppliers, are continually working to reduce cost for the entire F35 program.

Korea eventually needs stealth fighters anyway and there is no other choice available. What else, stick to F-35 purchase. They'll need them to strike vital/strategic targets deep behind enemy lines anyway.

JetTest,
Since developing aircrafts alone is costly nowadays especially when there are less buyers today compared to back then. You wanted to sell F/A-18E/F, you need to pass through the filters from US Congress strict restrictions. Next, the smaller countries are mostly on tight budget and would consider and think twice even thrice before buying. Even if they wanted to buy, it'll be in small numbers and end up could not cover up the R&D cost.

Less honest country that could barely afford might end up last minute cancellation like Mikoyan/Gurevich selling Mig-29SMT to Algeria case. The purchase was cancelled when almost delivery forcing Russian Air Force to swallow the purchase at highly discounted price. Selling military is not easy nowadays. Arms embargo/sanctions/restriction kills manufacturers business. Example, Iraq's invasion on Kuwait, even Russia and China imposed arms embargo on Iraq, preventing any military sales. Saddam was broke in terms of cash but not in exchange of crude fuel. Sukhoi, Mikoyan, Vympel, Mil etc would not mind selling their products in exchange of fuel aka black gold.

Unless Korea willing to allocate the budget to fund the Boeing's X-32 conversion to F-32 project, otherwise, Boeing will not develop the F-32 and sell to Korea.

jayraptor wrote:

The articles I read came from military magazines and newspapers back in late 90's. I don't keep them with me. I don't get the info from Google. I'm not against stealth technology but just as safety pre-caution, any air force should not rely on 1 single thing completely and forgo the rest. There are still missions and sorties that your targets are sitting ducks or defenseless but because of their large numbers, you need mobile weapon platforms to carry as many missiles and ordnance as possible to take them down before they could harm your allies, people or cities. If you have only 12 F-35s that could fly at that time, if all of them stealth variant carrying only 4 AIM-120C7s, your enemy sent in 60 cheap inferior Mig-23s and Tu-22 Blinders that charge towards your city at supersonic speed hoping to kill as many civilians as possible. They know it's suicidal to go against your F-35s but they only wanted to kill your people ignoring your missiles and focus on bombing the city. Even if all 48 AMRAAMS hit 100% without a single F-35 loss, can you finish off the remaining 12 with guns? Please note that NATO do not have many SAMs launchers like Russia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc have. Mostly operate short range Shahine, Rapier, Roland, hand-held launchers, etc. Patriots only some of them have? Also, there is protocol where you are not allowed to fire on enemy bogeys until the are near your border or already entered your country. A conventional F-35 could carry full bag of 12 AMRAAMs and with the AESA radar, it could track several targets and launch the AMRAAMs simultaneously with few AMRAAMs left to kill whatever left after the 1st wave.

I think this is a misconception that needs to be dealt with. It is a pretty silly theory that anyone is going to toss away several squadrons of fighters in an effort to scatter some bombs across the landscape with obsolete fighters? To bomb effectively with a few platforms you need precision weapons or you need nuclear bombs. If we eliminate the second option that generally means we need a fairly modern platform to really do a great deal of damage.

More than that on a practical level who has whole squadrons of fighters they can just afford to throw away? Who has pilots lining up to be sacrificed in huge numbers? How does this help the other side win the actual war?

So I might get a dozen through in your scenario. Great news on day 1. But what about day 2? What about day 10? The whole point of an Air Force with manned aircraft is that it can come back again the same day and the next day and the day after that. Even going beyond that no one operates like that anymore really. The Russians don't have legions of old fighters to throw at anyone that are in flying condition. They are actively shrinking the air force to focus on more capable models that they won't throw away by the dozen to make some glory run like you envision. The Chinese are doing largely the same thing. No one sees any point in keeping around useless aircraft anymore.

What sort of effects would this have on your force to see it gutted like that? Is anyone going to fly aggressively on day 2?

On a more operational level how are you going to marshal 5 squadrons of fighters for such an operation without attracting notice? Particularly against the US or NATO that will have AWACS and a huge number of other assets watching your airspace and ground operations and communications? Putting together that kind of package takes time. Who is to say you don't get bushwacked by a half-dozen Raptors as you try to get the whole force airborne and aligned for your thunder run? What stops the other side from putting more than a dozen fighters in the air when they see you doing this?

More than that within a couple of years you could carry 6 AMRAAMs internally on the F-35. You could hang pylons on the thing and carry at least 10-12 AMRAAM's if you really felt it was necessary (it won't be for most missions). You are really creating a false problem honestly.

jayraptor wrote:

Dear Conan,
The articles I read came from military magazines and newspapers back in late 90's. I don't keep them with me. I don't get the info from Google. I'm not against stealth technology but just as safety pre-caution, any air force should not rely on 1 single thing completely and forgo the rest. There are still missions and sorties that your targets are sitting ducks or defenseless but because of their large numbers, you need mobile weapon platforms to carry as many missiles and ordnance as possible to take them down before they could harm your allies, people or cities. If you have only 12 F-35s that could fly at that time, if all of them stealth variant carrying only 4 AIM-120C7s, your enemy sent in 60 cheap inferior Mig-23s and Tu-22 Blinders that charge towards your city at supersonic speed hoping to kill as many civilians as possible. They know it's suicidal to go against your F-35s but they only wanted to kill your people ignoring your missiles and focus on bombing the city. Even if all 48 AMRAAMS hit 100% without a single F-35 loss, can you finish off the remaining 12 with guns? Please note that NATO do not have many SAMs launchers like Russia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc have. Mostly operate short range Shahine, Rapier, Roland, hand-held launchers, etc. Patriots only some of them have? Also, there is protocol where you are not allowed to fire on enemy bogeys until the are near your border or already entered your country. A conventional F-35 could carry full bag of 12 AMRAAMs and with the AESA radar, it could track several targets and launch the AMRAAMs simultaneously with few AMRAAMs left to kill whatever left after the 1st wave

Thank you for making this forum far stupider.

So some country is able to mass 60 operational MiG-23's and TU-22's but "our" country can only mass 12 F-35's?

Which country is this? Even Israel has announced an intention to purchase 20 F-35's and in a time of extreme emergency they'd all be scrambled for defence of a country...

Furthermore your ridiculous scenario doesn't allow for the external weapons carriage capability of the F-35, which could if necessary carry 12x AMRAAM in total, plus a pair of external AIM-9x or ASRAAM for 14 missiles in total.

The F-35 is unlikely to need it's full low observable capability to successfully engage 40 year old MiGs...

How do the numbers look there for such a ridiculous idea?

Jay, what do you not understand about this? Korea cannot decide to fund Boeing to complete the F32 even if they wanted to. The USG owns the data and has complete authority. If the USG does not want it done, it will not be done regardless of anyone else wanting to fund it and buy it. It is dead. Based on your mindless rumblings you clearly have no idea what so ever about what is involved in an aircraft development project or international military sales, much less operational use. Come back in several years, after you finish high school, college, and get a few years experience in the real world.

JetTest wrote:

Jay, what do you not understand about this? Korea cannot decide to fund Boeing to complete the F32 even if they wanted to. The USG owns the data and has complete authority. If the USG does not want it done, it will not be done regardless of anyone else wanting to fund it and buy it. It is dead. Based on your mindless rumblings you clearly have no idea what so ever about what is involved in an aircraft development project or international military sales, much less operational use. Come back in several years, after you finish high school, college, and get a few years experience in the real world.

Anyone remember the Northrop F-20 Tigershark? Aerodynamically it was an good jet, but the wrong jet for the wrong role, and politics killed it. . The F-20 was not funded by DoD, although they were basically the sole sales agency through FMS, and even with the famous Chuck Yeager endorsing the jet, didn't save it. This contrasts with the that F-5 was DoD supported, and funded specifically as an export fighter.

The F-16 became a successful jet because it evolved into a strike fighter. The Northrop YF-17 was a better design than the F-20, but it wasn't selected by the USAF and and neither jet become a production fighter on the basis of export requirements, even though it would have been great export fighter.

Of course, the YF-17 became the F/A-18 with Navy support, but the F/A-18 was not an internal Northrop/McDonald-Douglas project by any means.

Conan wrote:

Thank you for making this forum far stupider.

So some country is able to mass 60 operational MiG-23's and TU-22's but "our" country can only mass 12 F-35's?

Which country is this? Even Israel has announced an intention to purchase 20 F-35's and in a time of extreme emergency they'd all be scrambled for defence of a country...

Furthermore your ridiculous scenario doesn't allow for the external weapons carriage capability of the F-35, which could if necessary carry 12x AMRAAM in total, plus a pair of external AIM-9x or ASRAAM for 14 missiles in total.

The F-35 is unlikely to need it's full low observable capability to successfully engage 40 year old MiGs...

How do the numbers look there for such a ridiculous idea?

Did I mention US in the first place? It could be 1 of US allies in the example. Even if it is the US, does it mean that the US could always outnumber their enemies in another country? Aren't the US special forces were outnumbered by Somalian rebels in Mogadishu? Also in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were incidents where enemies outnumbered US troops? So what are you're saying is totally ignorant.

JetTest,
Everyone knows that Boeing could not proceed to convert X-32 to F-32 alone to sell. Boeing/Northrop, several other contractors and Congress would have to give the greenlight.

Hi Neurotech,
The F-20 is designed to replace F-5E as cheap affordable fighter that would compete with BAe Hawk, Alphajet, AMX, etc in light fighter category. It is meant for poorer customers that could not afford proper fighter like F-16. It was cancelled because someone with authority thought it's a waste of time coming up with cheap sub-standard fighter especially made in the US. Some less reliable sources even said the EU competitors objected the F-20 as it could hamper their sales.

jayraptor wrote:

Did I mention US in the first place? It could be 1 of US allies in the example. Even if it is the US, does it mean that the US could always outnumber their enemies in another country? Aren't the US special forces were outnumbered by Somalian rebels in Mogadishu? Also in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were incidents where enemies outnumbered US troops? So what are you're saying is totally ignorant.

Please show where I mentioned the USA in any of my recent comments, I did however mention Israel.

However, if you would like to refer to another of your "late 90's magazines" and please show us one single instance of the USAF being "outnumbered" in TACAIR over the last 60 years in ANY operational environment, I'm all ears...

jayraptor wrote:

Hi Neurotech,
The F-20 is designed to replace F-5E as cheap affordable fighter that would compete with BAe Hawk, Alphajet, AMX, etc in light fighter category. It is meant for poorer customers that could not afford proper fighter like F-16. It was cancelled because someone with authority thought it's a waste of time coming up with cheap sub-standard fighter especially made in the US. Some less reliable sources even said the EU competitors objected the F-20 as it could hamper their sales.

Do you really want to place the F-20 in comparison with the Hawk, Alphajet, and AMX? Go ahead, I dare you. You obviously haven't read anything about the F-20, why it was developed, what its competition was, or why it was cancelled.

"Someone in authority"?

jayraptor wrote:

Generation 2 stealth panel in F-22 and F-35 should be way better.

The F-22 and F-35 don't have stealth panels bolted/painted on. Their shape combined with their skins, are what result in their reduced RCS. You'd have to build them out of something else, to build a "conventional" model.

Quote:

However, I still prefer to have conventional F-35s in additional choices for buyers.

What buyer would choose a conventional F-35 over a stealthy F-35?

Quote:

.

Quote:

jayraptor

However, I still prefer to have conventional F-35s in additional choices for buyers.

What buyer would choose a conventional F-35 over a stealthy F-35?

Your not thinking far enough out of the box wrightwing. You have to get waaaayyyy out of the box to get there. Perhaps you could just buy F-35s, run down to the hardware store and return with some Led based paint. A few hours and some used paint rollers later presto -- conventional F-35s!!!

Forum: Program and politics

Korea threatens to disqualify F-35