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Enthusiast Joined: Jan 28, 2005 Posts: 20

OK, so I might have been a little quick to jump on the whole Triffid paranoia thing and it seems that the trusty RAF have already got it covered!!

http://aeroflt.users.netlink.co.uk/pics ... 20(lh).jpg

We are safe (at least from the walking plants, I suppose these nuclear candles you speak of are just as much of a threat)

Laughing

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Newbie Joined: Apr 05, 2006 Posts: 11 Status: Offline

I note the news that Reidso seems to be playing nice (or nicer, which is something anyway.) Smile

Quote:

http://www.f-16.net/news_article1733.html

April 5, 2006 (by Jeff Hollenbeck) - According to published sources, British Defense Secretary John Reid has indicated that Great Britain and the United States should be to work out an agreement on the transfer of certain classified information about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The issue of technology transfer has been a source of recent controversy and has lead to discussions in Great Britain about possibly cancelling participation in the JSF project. If the United States fails to waive the rules, software upgrades would have to be carried out in the U.S. with the round trip adding signifigantly to the overall cost of any upgrades.

Britain is still investigating possible alternatives to the JSF in the event that the U.S. fails to waive the offending rules such as a navalized version of the Eurofighter Typhoon.

"alternatives to the JSF" is such an obvious bluff Reidso which isn't fooling anyone. The only mystery is why you think anyone will not see through this Confused

- so be nice and maybe the Americans will let us play with their software. Cool

Newbie Joined: Apr 05, 2006 Posts: 11 Status: Offline

elp wrote:

Look at the atrit rate of one engine jet users and the F-22 will pay for itself on that alone over the life of the program. Laughing

After day one of nuclear war, all nuked, crash-landed or ejected-from F-22s are just money down the drain, whereas a surviving F-35 STOVL counts as an investment.

Look at the cost performance AFTER nuclear war has started. Budgeting for a peace-time-only air force is daft.

OK Gulf War 1 & 2 were not 100% peace as such and the coalition air forces were usefully taking military action, but in the scale of warfare these days, such skirmish wars against lesser powers amount to little more than armed policing of rogue states.

Top guns as near-peace-time armed police are great - and the more diplomatic our air force policing is the better - but it would be handy as well to have an air force some of which is still there 24 hours after a nuclear war (a REAL war) kicks off (God forbid).

I should of course point out that as a potential diplomat-for-a-fighter-jet, there can be none theoretically superior to the JSF in STOVL configuration - because of the other possible application of the aircraft for the International Rescue role - see my post in another thread here.

So, they are going to be able to redeploy an entire fleet of JSF's away from bases in 3 minutes??

The horror of Nuclear war is that it will be completely unexpected when it actually kicks off (in full blown global conflict) and goes nuclear. You will get a 3 minute warning thats it.

24 hours after a nuclear war kicks off, everybody is dead, dying or inpoverished. Simple as that.

Grandeurs that a wonder aircraft will defend us all in time of a Nuclear conflict are nothing short of loonacy. The Harrier was NOT designed for forward deployment during Nuclear war but during conventional war!

Most air forces recognise the fact that in a conventional war, the first target will be runways meaning many fighter fleets will never get off the ground. The Swedish and possibly the Swiss are the main two air forces to fully realise this and their aircraft/infrastructure reflects it. The Harrier allows operations from forward bases for CAS work or from main bases with damaged/destroyed runways! Nothing more, nothing less. They aren't the only aircraft specifically designed for this, the Jaguar was aswell along with a long list of STOL combat aircraft.

So for the sake of it, yes the F-35 survived the Nuclear blast and the heat+radiation. Unless they are using some wonder shielding no one knows about it won't survive the EMP blast which travels out much further than the shock wave.

Then again, does anyone have some string that I can tie to him and move around like a puppet? I am seriously thinking a Section 8 may be needed.

Newbie Joined: Apr 05, 2006 Posts: 11 Status: Offline

boff180 wrote:

Weight issues, internal carriage of british weapons.etc sounds like you haven't been keeping up to date with the progress of the program???

True enough - I haven’t popped in to manage the Joint Strike Fighter production or version modification programmes - I’m simply here to insist that British patriots must be enthusiastic partners in the JSF programme.

I’ve looked at the JSF prototype and the design concepts - I’ve seen enough for a decision at the political level - the JSF STOVL is a winner. Go for it.

boff180 wrote:

And with the current yield of the latest nuclear weapons it would only take about 10 detonations to wipe out pretty much all of mainland uk, so whats the point as your aircraft will be caught on the ground anyway?

I’ll take that statement more seriously if you can quote either a explosive yield in megaton equivalent of TNT or a crater diameter for the explosions which enemy ICBMs could be raining down on us if WW3 kicks off - and provide a link please to a published source article.

Certainly, back in the bad old days of the cold war, the sides needed thousands of nukes to be sure of wiping the other side out.

In any case, higher yields just strengthen the arguments in favour of dispersing your fighters - not putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak.

If and when nuclear yields go up - it just means that you need to space your fighters out that bit more - easy enough in the large land area of the USA, Canada and Australia.

British STOVL fighters could be spread out AND further protected if necessary by keeping them inside underground shelters when not flying.

boff180 wrote:

Quote:

Buy Raptor instead of JSF, says Labor
Patrick Walters, National security editor

April 06, 2006

LABOR wants the Government to review its plan to buy up to 100 joint strike
fighters, arguing instead for the purchase of F/A-22 Raptor stealth
fighters.[...]

As for the Australian report, well if McClelland is frustrated at not being able to get his hands on some JSFs sooner, the answer could be for Australia to join in with the JSF production effort.

We should invite Australian engineering expertise to join up with American and British engineering expertise and then we’ll iron out the remaining issues all the sooner and together we’ll all get this next-generation fighter deployed as soon as possible.

No doubt there is a policing role for ultimate peace-time fighters such as Raptors or Eurofighters as well, but not at the expense of slowing up the JSF programme.

Newbie Joined: Apr 05, 2006 Posts: 11 Status: Offline

boff180 wrote:

So, they are going to be able to redeploy an entire fleet of JSF's away from bases in 3 minutes??

I'll read the rest of your post later, at my leisure, but my immediate response to this first line, is that, obviously dispersed STOVL fighters should live dispersed - and shouldn't be deployed in fixed bases with a concentration of fighters EVER.

I'm sorry guys, but the idea of all the top guns sitting in one tea room waiting for the off isn't the future. You are best deployed out in the country with your own STOVL fighter, your own improvised run-way with your own fuel supply, technicians etc. and maybe mobile servicing which comes to you - and you might be at a different location from one day or week to the other.

One jet-fighter, one pilot, one temporary base. Each to their own.

You wouldn't ever put a whole fleet of fighters together in the same place. Bases no more. Got it?

Don't worry, when the fighter jocks are off-duty, you can all get together for a beer etc. It's just the jet-fighters which don't deploy in the one place at the same time.

Now I guess they aren't doing that every day with the Harriers because they aren't expecting a nuclear war any time soon - but that's the way to do it.

Newbie Joined: Apr 05, 2006 Posts: 11 Status: Offline

checksixx wrote:

PeterDow, I think its safe to say that if there were a nuclear war, all the EMP would most likely fry everything anyway. What are a couple of JSF's going to do to an enemy like that anyways??

-Check

With distance from the nuclear explosion your EMP effect will diminish with the square of the distance. Twice as far away means one quarter of the EMP effect.

So the further dispersed STOVL fighters will have the better chance of shielding measures to protect electronics from EMP actually working.

Whether from blast or EMP, if you are stuck on or close to an air-base, you are dead or fried.

JSFs aren’t the first response to a nuclear attack - a nuclear counter-strike is the only credible response. The JSFs come in to play AFTER the world has been well and truly nuked - post-apocalypse so to speak.

But the guys who have a strategy for fighting on after Armageddon, are the guys who are least likely to flinch in a cold-war stand off.

OK there is no cold war now - and there shouldn't be so long as we have politicians of the calibre of Condi Rice about - but she won’t live for ever and we can’t depend on someone as good as Condi always being around to head off the possibility of cold war.

Since we've got on to the subject of military strategy.

The big surface aircraft carriers we have just now - though still useful for policing smaller rogue states - look incredibly vulnerable to nuclear missile attack.

Remembering how quickly the Japanese carrier fleet got wiped out at Midway in WW2 and what with the advances in satellite surveillance and missile guidance, making surface carriers even more of an easy target, I’d have to recommend against surface carrier technology as the way to go for ultimate warfare.

There is however, the theoretical possibility of submarine aircraft carriers which could offer better chances of avoiding a nuclear attack at sea.

I propose that one role for submarine aircraft carriers would be to keep a low profile until after day one of nuclear war, when they could surface and their fighters could take to the air to investigate whether there was anything left of the world to fight over.

Of course submarine aircraft carriers could also perform the policing of rogue states function as well once enough of the submarine aircraft carriers were phased in as the old surface carriers were phased out.

Enthusiast Joined: Jan 28, 2005 Posts: 20

Re. Nuclear Detonation

The following web page provides information on the likely effects of a nuclear detonation (air burst) and the local geographical damage as a result.

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/nuke ... burst.html

As an example, the Castle series of tests performed by the United States at Bikini Atoll in 1954 included the largest ever device exploded by the US in atmospheric testing. The 'Bravo' shot, with a yield of 15 MT used the 'Shrimp' dry-fuel device which was detonated 7 feet from the ground. The resulting crater was 6510 feet in diameter and 250 feet deep.

After the detonation, which significantly exceeded predicted yield (due to a laboratory error at Los Alamos Shocked

), the radiation levels resulted in a temporary exclusion zone of 570,000 square miles being set up around the test site.

The fallout spread over a large area as shown by the attached image. While in reality tactical devices are likely to be much lower in yield, the illustration can be super imposed over an area of a particular airbase or location to gain an idea of what the effect would be if such a device (or combination of smaller devices) where to be detonated.

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

PeterDow wrote:

elp wrote:

Look at the atrit rate of one engine jet users and the F-22 will pay for itself on that alone over the life of the program. Laughing

After day one of nuclear war, all nuked, crash-landed or ejected-from F-22s are just money down the drain, whereas a surviving F-35 STOVL counts as an investment.

Look at the cost performance AFTER nuclear war has started. Budgeting for a peace-time-only air force is daft.

OK Gulf War 1 & 2 were not 100% peace as such and the coalition air forces were usefully taking military action, but in the scale of warfare these days, such skirmish wars against lesser powers amount to little more than armed policing of rogue states.

Top guns as near-peace-time armed police are great - and the more diplomatic our air force policing is the better - but it would be handy as well to have an air force some of which is still there 24 hours after a nuclear war (a REAL war) kicks off (God forbid).

I should of course point out that as a potential diplomat-for-a-fighter-jet, there can be none theoretically superior to the JSF in STOVL configuration - because of the other possible application of the aircraft for the International Rescue role - see my post in another thread here.

I'll pass. Cancel the J$F now so I can have my USAF back to normal. Rolling Eyes

Newbie Joined: Apr 05, 2006 Posts: 11 Status: Offline

PeterDow wrote:

boff180 wrote:

Quote:

Buy Raptor instead of JSF, says Labor
Patrick Walters, National security editor

April 06, 2006

LABOR wants the Government to review its plan to buy up to 100 joint strike
fighters, arguing instead for the purchase of F/A-22 Raptor stealth
fighters.[...]

As for the Australian report, well if McClelland is frustrated at not being able to get his hands on some JSFs sooner, the answer could be for Australia to join in with the JSF production effort.

We should invite Australian engineering expertise to join up with American and British engineering expertise and then we’ll iron out the remaining issues all the sooner and together we’ll all get this next-generation fighter deployed as soon as possible.

No doubt there is a policing role for ultimate peace-time fighters such as Raptors or Eurofighters as well, but not at the expense of slowing up the JSF programme.

Er guys, does this -

Quote:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice witnesses the signing of the Joint Strike Fighter Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Australia in the Treaty Room of the U.S. State Department in Washington, December 12, 2006.

Joint Press Availability With U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Australian Secretary of Defense Brendan Nelson

mean that I've won that particular argument? Smile

Not that I am gloating or anything because I was arguing for calling the JSF "Thunderbird" but it seems that "Lightning II" has been chosen. Sad

Oh well, you can't win them all. Very Happy

Newbie Joined: Aug 29, 2006 Posts: 11 Status: Offline

I cant help but notice that a certain level of sensationalism has developed in this particular thread!

Submarine Carriers and Nuclear Attacks!! Somebody has been playing too much Ace Combat!!! Holy Cow! there seems to be a total loss of feasible reality in here, the chances of nuclear was are small enough and should some pesky Iranian or North Korean Eeegit Rear his ugly head they have little in terms of military threat to any coalition force, in fact one swift nuclear blow in retaliation to their political centres would render them useless infact the commanders in various places of these countries would then simply seek to gain power in the resulting vaccum and civil war would break out! Also I doubt that the UK would be the first target, there are significantly bigger fish to fry than ourselves!

"British STOVL fighters could be spread out AND further protected if necessary by keeping them inside underground shelters when not flying."

Great if you have a billion gillion £ but we don't! there's also logistical and man power elements and god knows what else! You're looking at runways and god knows what else too as the f-35B is a STOVL not a V/STOL aircraft. Tactically there is some reasonin your argument but you forget we wont be able to afford bombs and fuel and pilots for them!!!

I'm for the f-35 i think it will make a fantastic addition to the UK arsenal but your reasons for justification border on extreme and in places sheer fantasy and it doesnt need that kind of weight to the argument.

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