Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

Apparently reporters no longer use "fact-checkers".

F-16 "co-designer" my a$$

I guess this falls under the axiom that if you keep repeating the same lie over and over again, people will accept it as the truth.

F-16.net Sponsor

I saw a F-35 documentary with Sprey. This guy is stuck in the 60s or 70s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQB4W8C0rZI

SpudmanWP wrote:

Apparently reporters no longer use "fact-checkers".

F-16 "co-designer" my a$$

I guess this falls under the axiom that if you keep repeating the same lie over and over again, people will accept it as the truth.

If he had gotten his way I am given to understand the F-16 would have basically been a plane without radar that had a pair of heat-seeking missiles on the wingtips and that would be about it? Might be able to carry a few bombs as well.

Without a radar how do you calculate bomb impact points?

Answer: You don't.

bigjku wrote:

SpudmanWP wrote:

Apparently reporters no longer use "fact-checkers".

F-16 "co-designer" my a$$

I guess this falls under the axiom that if you keep repeating the same lie over and over again, people will accept it as the truth.

If he had gotten his way I am given to understand the F-16 would have basically been a plane without radar that had a pair of heat-seeking missiles on the wingtips and that would be about it? Might be able to carry a few bombs as well.

No it was Boyd who wanted to not install a radar. The F-16 as envisioned by the fighter mafia was a 100% pure air to air dogfighter.

Look, the Fighter Mafia basically saved the USAF from a single seat F-14 Tomcat after the F-111 fiasco, which by the way, they predicted would be a fiasco.

Sometimes great minds have wild ideas. Einstein, one of the founders of Quantum Mechanics, stopped believing in Quantum Mechanics in favor of a unified field theory.... Klein Kaluza, came close.

Sometimes its hard for old dogs to learn new tricks. Sometimes its hard for generals to plan for the next war after fighting the last war. Its human nature. Did you know I'm 30 years younger in mind than I really am? People, and its our nature, get stuck at certain defining points in our lives... No need to hate someone for it. You'll all be there too one day. I knew a former F-104 pilot up until a few years ago that swore up and down he could defeat a F-15 in a gun fight. Yeah, he was an old dog, but you'll all lose your youth and 20/20 hindsight vision all too soon as well.

Sprey as part of the fighter mafia is partly responsible for the USAF we have today, and have had for the last 30 years: A-10s, F-15s, F-16s... I think its pitiful that young dogs chronically turn on their elders with such spite. They laid the groundwork to where we are now (stealth aside).

Geniuses typically strike out more than they hit a homerun - but at least they stepped up to the plate unlike a lot of armchair generals.

Again, if Sprey is right about this, hypoxia is the LEAST of all concerns the Raptor drivers face.......

Sprey is partly responsible for the F-15...though most of that falls to Boyd who wanted something much different from what they ended up getting. Boyd stopped the stupidity of building what you describe, a swing-wing interceptor. But he still thought the F-15 was too big, expensive and complicated. What was found out in combat of course was that the F-15, as expensive as it was, was still missing critical ECM equipment that it now had to carry around all the time.

Sprey was a pretty vocal critic of the F-15.

Sprey’s “The Case for More Effective, Less Expensive Weapons Systems.” It arrayed “cheap winners” against “expensive losers.” The cheap winners included the F-16 and the heat-seeking, AIM-9 Sidewinder missile. Foremost among the expensive losers were the F-15 and the radar-guided AIM-7 Sparrow missile. “Not all simple, low cost weapons work, but war-winning weapons are almost always simple,” Sprey said.

Sprey was also outspoken against the M-1 tank going so far as to say the M-60 was a better option for the US.

The guy had a few valuable moments but his reputation was saved largely by the very procedures of cooperative, collective development in the Pentagon that he despises. There is always room for balanced opinions on both ends. But Sprey has for hears simply been applying the same solution to every problem the US military has faced.

The problem is that it is pure conjecture. Sprey has no access, and no experience in the F-22 program. He might as well be claiming it is pixie dust.

What he said ignores the fact that this is showing up in pilots in flight; not ground crew, not production workers, and not industry workers.

What I know of this problem is:

1. It can happen on any jet, no matter how well the crew maintained it. So it is not a simple production error or maintenance error found on one or two jets. It must be something that is common on many jets.

2. It only happens under certain conditions. Since the Air Force (thankfully) is not releasing what the pilots were doing during these events we will never know, but it would be interesting to know what conditions the pilot/jet were in during these events.

3. It seems to be rare.

4. No trace of it happening exists after the plane lands.

How those 4 things get turned into any hypothesis is beyond me and frankly if you were investigating this issue jumping to a conclusion like that would be very reckless.

neurotech wrote:

I saw a F-35 documentary with Sprey. This guy is stuck in the 60s or 70s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQB4W8C0rZI

Yikes. Hasn't he heard of IFF? He still thinks pilots have to be in gun range to make an ID?
What gave him the idea that the F-35 was as unmanuverable as the Thud?

Last edited by SpudmanWP on Jun 23, 2012 - 12:26 AM; edited 2 times in total

sewerrat wrote:

Sprey as part of the fighter mafia is partly responsible for the USAF we have today, and have had for the last 30 years: A-10s, F-15s, F-16s...

He hated the F-15 and did not like what made the F-16 a success, ie being multi-mode.

I have no problem giving credit where credit is due, but the matter remains that what the USAF is today, a force of multi-mode and 5th gen assets (read gold-plated) is the OPPOSITE of what he wanted and pushed for. The fact is that the LWF, as he envisioned, was a failure in that the USAF quickly abandoned the idea and went multi-mode.

count_to_10 wrote:

What gave him the idea that the F-35 was as unmanuverable as the Thud?

Maybe he was reading some APA handouts?

SpudmanWP wrote:

count_to_10 wrote:

What gave him the idea that the F-35 was as unmanuverable as the Thud?

Maybe he was reading some APA handouts?

He seemed rather fixated on wing loading.

Unfortunately, Spudman is right. We don't have too many reporters any more, just hack writers like this one, who duplicate what one source (in this case, Sprey's 'consultant' partner and employer, who just thinks he's the greatest thing, wouldn't you know!) deigns to tell them. There's no question of fact checking, because there hasn't been any fact gathering in the first place.

Seems to me, that in his increasingly typical and partially-informed fashion, Sprey saw the word, 'isocyanate' somewhere on the Raptor's list of ingredients, Googled 'cyanide' and discovered that, yes indeed, it is a toxic substance that duplicates many of the effects of hypoxia*. Fatally, given the right dose. Then he made three or four leaps of logic, linking exotic airframe coatings (blame of which would of course condemn the whole purpose of the aircraft), unique flight conditions (Mach 1.6, again almost unique to the F-22), and some weird feature of the plane's environmental system that allows a pilot wearing a sealed mask in a protected cockpit exposure to external chemicals in a supersonic aircraft..

..all of which is distantly possible, I must suppose, but hardly likely. My two big holes to add (as someone who is a medical expert): Cyanide is lethal, and it's effects might resemble hypoxia. It works by inhibiting cellular metabolism, so in effect one's cells are prevented from using available oxygen to generate energy (remember ATP and mitochondria from high school bio?). But it's not that rare, nor hard to detect. Nor are cyanides that short-lived in the body. In order to have toxic effect, the molecule has to remain in cells for some period, and would be detectable in blood and tissue for some time after exposure, or even death. Any standard autopsy should raise suspicions. Second point is, there are many sources of cyanides in the world, such as almonds, peach pits, gangrenous tissue, and the combustion of hydrocarbons. That last one is something, as I understand, that does actually occur somewhere inside an F-22, in many flight regimes. As has been pointed out, the F-22's O2 generating system taps bleed air from the engines' fan or compressor. Maybe the air is really contaminated somehow. Maybe with cyanide, or carbon monoxide, more likely. But I doubt very much that implicating the classified (and therefore indefensible) stealth materials is anything beyond pretty fanciful speculation.

Hey, maybe the pilots are all getting super-fast leukemia from the hydrazine in the APU. Did Lockheed borrow that bit off the shelf from the Viper? Was the APU in Sprey's half of the F-16's design?

-N

SpudmanWP
From the numerous books and publications I have read about the early history of the YF-16, in typical fashion, the USAF loaded it up with systems increasing its weight and making it multi-role so it would not compete with the F-15 for funding and in the air-to-air role. Nothing else. You cannot blame Sprey from being upset about it! or if he is called a designer by the reporter (Believe me, I know what a designer is or does). Remember, the USAF never wanted this small, lightweight, simple, long-range air combat plane, preferring a bloated f-15 design (not the F-15 they got).
I cannot understand why you would call the YF-16 a failure as it is obvious what a fantastic prototype it was. Obviously, the other side of the coin is that by becoming a multi-role fighter, GD turned it into a sales success.

Quote:

He hated the F-15 and did not like what made the F-16 a success, ie being multi-mode.

I have no problem giving credit where credit is due, but the matter remains that what the USAF is today, a force of multi-mode and 5th gen assets (read gold-plated) is the OPPOSITE of what he wanted and pushed for. The fact is that the LWF, as he envisioned, was a failure in that the USAF quickly abandoned the idea and went multi-mode.

izardofwoz wrote:

My two big holes to add (as someone who is a medical expert): Cyanide is lethal, and it's effects might resemble hypoxia. It works by inhibiting cellular metabolism, so in effect one's cells are prevented from using available oxygen to generate energy (remember ATP and mitochondria from high school bio?). But it's not that rare, nor hard to detect. Nor are cyanides that short-lived in the body.

Cyanide is not necessarily lethal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide_po ... _antidotes

If it was a chemical toxicity from diisocyanates, they would have found out from the lab work by now. In cyanide poisoning cases, use of 100% oxygen is recommended and would help the acute symptoms. F-22 pilots have emergency oxygen available and presumably use it after experiencing a physiological incident, but it doesn't seem to clear the symptoms.

The USAF was right in not wanting the LWF. It was a low-priced solution in search of a problem.

The problem was that the "problem" did not exist. History has borne out what the USAF was asking for, a low variety of multi-role fighters instead of many specialized ones, was the correct choice.

SpudmanWP can you please elaborate as I have not been aware of that angle before.

Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

F-16 co-designer blames stealth 'skin' for F-22 problems