Forum: F-35 versus XYZ

I did my best to debate this sensibly but I failed to pierce the powerful circle of illogic that surrounds jayraptor.
The dialog reminds me of this conversation:

Come back here and fight.
Your arms off!
No it isn't.
What's that then?
...Just a flesh wound.
You're a loony.
Oh - running away aye! Come back here and take what's coming too you!.....

F-16.net Sponsor

Just sitting back with a bag of popcorn and enjoying this nonsense entirely. I don't think even Hollywood gets the facts this distorted, and that's saying alot.

archeman wrote:

I did my best to debate this sensibly but I failed to pierce the powerful circle of illogic that surrounds jayraptor.
The dialog reminds me of this conversation:

Come back here and fight.
Your arms off!
No it isn't.
What's that then?
...Just a flesh wound.
You're a loony.
Oh - running away aye! Come back here and take what's coming too you!.....

Now you've done it!

http://youtu.be/ugSvcCa3AWE

fisk

The very first thing that came to mind after J's last post (NSFW)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_mDTLphIVY

JetTest wrote:

Bottom line, Boeing/Northrup could not deliver a competion winning design within the constraints of the competition. They lost, it's done and gone, get over it.

Bottom line, there is no aerospace company called Northrup. Northrop was NEVER involved with the X-32. In fact, it was involved with the Lockheed Martin team and the X-35.

Really getting tired of all the trolling going on F-16.net right now.

-Check

Check, I was trying to use his term in hopes that it might help get through to him. His unwavering belief in what he sees in movies and video games, in the face of attempts at education by people here with real-world experience and documented evidence to the contrary, like yourself and others, is amazing. He is determined, if nothing else. It was mildly entertaining for a while, but it is "infecting" too many threads here at this point.

checksixx wrote:

JetTest wrote:

Bottom line, Boeing/Northrup could not deliver a competion winning design within the constraints of the competition. They lost, it's done and gone, get over it.

Bottom line, there is no aerospace company called Northrup. Northrop was NEVER involved with the X-32. In fact, it was involved with the Lockheed Martin team and the X-35.

Really getting tired of all the trolling going on F-16.net right now.

-Check

Just report. Mods here don't suffer fools well. One of this week's special people (Warwolf) has already been banned.... also I noticed JeffB is a goner too. Laughing

JetTest wrote:

Can anybody make any sense of this gibberish?

YES- He is talking in much broader terms than most on this site can understand. Not school-girl nit picking - not smart one liners. Maybe he could word it better but maybe English is not his native Language or maybe English is not his best ability. One thing for sure is he can think in a much broader unbiased way than most on this site.

The US Fighter Industry could easily be destroyed. It can happen easily - Bill Gates recently taking his scientists and Billions to China to try to come up with a solution to the CO2 problem. "Better safer Nuclear Power". He obviously is fed up with the US system and all the Political crap etc. Go somewhere where you get respect and a chance.

The same can happen to the US military aircraft industry if you let vested interests and only one interest have a go. Others will walk - politics does not drive them or nationalistic ideals - they just love their job - their industry. He is talking about how a one Fighter program that nobody else has much say in except a few Bureacrats and Politicans in the USA is not good. It could destroy the US's Military Fighter Aircraft industry even if it is excellent.

He is pointing out the simple fact that excellent Engineers will go elsewhere with there skills. He understands competition and diversity is the key and all must be given a real chance. He understands all Western customers for a new fighter have virtually no choice. The F35 or nothing in a 5th Gen. He gives credit where credit is due.

He will accepts the Yak affiliation gave LM an advantage in the VTOL version despite obviously being a pro US person. True despite the crap put up by a few on here - they are saying in effect LM was stupid to pay Yak $400 million from memory. They had not perfected it yet but they had at least solved solved lots of problems in the Supersonic VTOL area. The similarity in Airframe layout says it all.

I notice "spastic" [is that the spelling] came up with a cheap shot about the Yak that crashed. He is correct in my mind - the F35 could be the beginning of the end maybe?

Top people today can go to Japan, Israel,China, India or Russia. If they are good enough those countries will find the money. I doubt Europe will in the future ever want to sign up to something like the F35 program again - probably not even my own Country Australia. Other nations don't like to be told what they must have! Just like Britain lost most of there best people to the USA 30 years ago because there industry did not build what people wanted.

e.g. The car industry - The Japanese revolutionized it and sent most British companies broke. Germany held on but the USA almost lost a major part of theirs. Complacency and a blind attitude that assumes you are more invincible than others. Up until WW2 Britain was definitely the best - WW2 proved that - [Germany also] - it took the USA years to match anything they built in the fighter area. Good Bombers but not in the fighter area. The Mustang with a British engine the first! But Britain had the Mosquito. The Russians built the best First Jets until the uS copy in the form of the Sabre. Debatable in reality because we neevr saw SSabres or Super Sabers up against the Mig17. Odds are the Mig17 would have killed it.

The US aircraft industry and Space Program etc. was built to a large degree on people who walked from Britain and Germany etc. I will not go into specifics but in hindsight it is becoming obvious the US Gov would have been better if they gave the amount they have put into the F35 program to TWO genuinely competing companies. They probably could have ended up with two very good aircraft for the same development costs. Competition. Even the USSR understood that - competing Design Bureaus and to this day they keep many. The companies that often build the aircraft are different companies. Competition. They know you must have real competition.

In USSR days the Design Bureau that failed to come up with good cost effective designs often was disbanded. Competition. No Directors pay - no Chief Design Engineers pay if your Bureau failed. Mig Design Bureau prospered because they came up with the goods for about 40 years. In trouble now?

Sure the Prototypes can have problems but things happen, one small "blunder" can see the better design fail on the day at the prototype stage. [So we get more cheap shots about a fire from some school girl.] Shite if every Prototype that had a problem or crashed or badly landed was wiped we would have missed some of the best. Things happen. One aircraft and one engine now for 30years at least and nobody had a real chance but LM. I bet it is never done again that way.

I don't come on this site much but it often disgusts me. "Ban me" also.
It is obvious to me what he is talking about if you read it all. Not pick bits that suit. He is wishful thinking in some ways but also thinking to the future. Don't make this mistake again. What is going to happen to all the great Engineers in other companies that are now locked out in 5-10 years?

I have a feeling he does not need to panic. Just as Germany should have wiped out the RAAF in the Battle of Britain they did not. Although aware of it they failed to make use of Radar and allow for it. They had vastly superior numbers of virtually equal fighters etc. and good pilots. One thing saved Britain - there Radar. The same thing that can easily make the F35's main strength useless. An effective cost effective means of detection. Maybe it exists? Who knows? That will be kept secret. Within 10 years my guess.

Please allow me to have fun with parts of this one, guys

rkap wrote:

Up until WW2 Britain was definitely the best - WW2 proved that - [Germany also] - it took the USA years to match anything they built in the fighter area. Good Bombers but not in the fighter area. The Mustang with a British engine the first! But Britain had the Mosquito. The Russians built the best First Jets until the uS copy in the form of the Sabre. Debatable in reality because we neevr saw SSabres or Super Sabers up against the Mig17. Odds are the Mig17 would have killed it.

Okay, lets look this one over really quickly. The USA wasn't good in fighters? Remind me again who built the P-51? last time I checked, it was North American Aviation. Claiming that the Mustang isn't an American aircraft would be like claiming the C-130 is a British aircraft because it uses Rolls Royce Engines. American Fighter aircraft, and later Soviets from the other direction, were the only aircraft I recall hearing about that were able to travel any meaningful distance away from their bases, so I think many would disagree with your characterization on that one.

Hmmm, the Sabre as a copy of a Russian aircraft, pray tell, which one? Would that be the MiG-15 that first flew several months after the F-86, or even over a full year after the FJ Fury from which the Sabre was derived? As for the Sabre never encountering the MiG-17, tell that to the Taiwanese pilots who racked up something like a 31-0 Kill to death ratio in 1958. Once again, the facts seem to tell a different story than the one you are selling here...

rkap wrote:

The US aircraft industry and Space Program etc. was built to a large degree on people who walked from Britain and Germany etc.

Hate to say it, but the British and Soviets that you have been holding on a pedestal did just the same thing in the ends, and all 3 have had more than their fair share of domestic pioneers in this field. It is a bit juvenile to claim that the USA's aviation industry is solely based on expatriates from other nations

rkap wrote:

Competition. Even the USSR understood that - competing Design Bureaus and to this day they keep many. The companies that often build the aircraft are different companies. Competition. They know you must have real competition. In USSR days the Design Bureau that failed to come up with good cost effective designs often was disbanded. Competition. No Directors pay - no Chief Design Engineers pay if your Bureau failed. Mig Design Bureau prospered because they came up with the goods for about 40 years. In trouble now?

Once again you mis-characterize things here. The 40 years of relative dominance that MiG enjoyed had scarce little to do with their complete technological ascendancy over their competitors (if you can call them that). By the time the aircraft that would ultimately become the MiG-29 was tendered, who was left who could actually compete against MiG. Aside from Sukhoi (who had the T-10 on their plate at the time) no one was left who had been building fighters within the past decade plus. This is what many fear will happen with the current F-22/F-35 duopoly at Lockheed. These are perishable skills, and in many ways they perished in the USSR outside of Mig and Sukhoi. Perhaps aside from Petlyakov, which design bureux were disbanded in the post WWII years because they could not come up with "good, cost effective designs"?

rkap wrote:

I have a feeling he does not need to panic. Just as Germany should have wiped out the RAAF in the Battle of Britain they did not. Although aware of it they failed to make use of Radar and allow for it. They had vastly superior numbers of virtually equal fighters etc. and good pilots. One thing saved Britain - there Radar. The same thing that can easily make the F35's main strength useless. An effective cost effective means of detection. Maybe it exists? Who knows? That will be kept secret. Within 10 years my guess.

This argument comes up all the time, and all I have to say is this: How does this change the necessity of purchasing the F-35? A 4th generation aircraft is going to be just as susceptible to these magical Anti-F-35 measures, will have inferior sensors, and probably inferior range, acceleration, etc. Systems exist that cal already marginalize the EF-2000, Rafale, Super Hornet, F-16E, and F-15E, so why purchase a platform that is easily negated now, let alone in the future. At least with the F-35 you have stealth against existing and most future systems, and against nations who may not be able to afford this mooted anti-stealth system

HaveVoid Very Happy

To put it in simple strategy / tactical terms,

If you keep investing in 4th gen aircraft that are vulnerable to the current countermeasures such as the most modern radar, SAM's, etc, they'd probably be shot down first and any advantage that we as the US and it's allies would be for nothing should / when war time comes.
If you look at any special forces, they use every technique, technology, tactic that gives them a stealth advantage over their enemies.
So why waste money on technology that won't work as well and won't help us have a greater probability of winning?

The major difference between our special forces stealthiness and our flyboys is that the F-35 needs technology to accomplish the same task. Yes it'll cost more, but having first strike, first kill, and the ability to slip in / out of enemy radar fields is a price that cannot be measured.

Just having the ability to open up enemy airspace for our bombing / ground strike / CAS forces is something you can't measure.
The amount of lives on our side that we can save when it comes time to fight, that's something you can't put a $ tag to.
Do you want our troops to die knowing that you didn't fund / support a next generation F-35 that could've made the difference in battle by opening up enemy airspace and destroying enemy air support / ground support?

History has proven that controlling the skies has the highest probability of winning the war.
The fact that we were able to defeat Saddam Hussein so quickly was because of technology and air superiority in the early moments of the war.
I'd rather our forces have every unfair advantage when it comes to war, if that means thousands of F-35's, so be it.

Cause if there are 3 major hot spots that I can think of in the upcoming 50 years, it's Iran, North Korea, and China.
China being the one we'd have to worry about the most.
They may not have the most advanced fighters, but the home field advantage since the war is most likely to take place in / around China along with it's numerous aircraft in their fleet is something to be very afraid of.

As far as the X-32 was concerned, the fact that they were planning on re-designing the entire body of the plane and that the X-32 demonstrator was not the model they planned on selling to the people was a huge reason why they lost.

That and the fact that they had to take off parts of the aircraft just for the STOVL model to demonstrate it's capabilities was kind of what killed it.

The X-35B at the end of the competition, was able to take off, go super sonic, and come back and land in VTOL mode. All without having to take parts off the aircraft.

That I think was what sealed the deal in the final analysis.

The Boeing team made too many bad choices at the end along with wanting to ask for more time / money to redesign the entire body at the end after they got their demonstrator model flying was a bad choice IMO.

It's like asking for a do-over in any turn based board game. There are no do overs when it comes to something this important, either come up with a solid workable good design before you even form the first metal joints of the skeleton of your aircraft, or don't bother crying for one more time afterwards. I don't think the US government wants to keep the development cycle going as a endless series of do-overs because one side saw that the other side had a better idea and wants to crank out a new idea along with more cash to win the competition, it'd be a endless spiral of back / forth IMO.

At least the Lockheed Martin guys did there redesign phase long before they cranked out a demonstrator unit.

Not to mention that the F-35 isn't the only game in town. There are already a number of drone competitions, and it isn't like only one company is involved in F-35 production.

[quote="HaveVoid"]Please allow me to have fun with parts of this one, guys

I think you had better take off your Hollywood glasses.
The P51 - yes it was great finally in 1943, re-engined etc. The first great Fighter the US built in that period.
Probably not as great as the Mosquito also in service in 1943.
The Brits had the Hurricane and Spitfire in production in 1936. Not the range but great fighters. The Germans dreaded the Mosquito more than anything later in the War.

I was referring to the F100 being a part copy - not the F86 - it was different to the Mig15. In Korea it is generally accepted the Mig15 outperformed the F86 overall as an airframe. It was the Gun sight that made the difference on the F86. Since all Russian squadron records were released it appears in the eyes of all honest analysts the Russians held there own. Things like a certain US Ace claiming 4 Russian Migs on days no Russians were in the air shows just how bad US reports were. The advantage was not 10-1 as the US claimed unchallenged for years. Some who have looked at all the data say it was under 2-1 overall. Hard to get facts out of North Korea. [Don't believe your US media or Hollywood]
The Mig17 was a great plane. You come back with a 30-1 over some of the first J5 copies from China flown by inexperienced Chinese pilots in an inexperienced Airforce.

Vietnam - The US admits it was losing 9-1 in Vietnam against mainly Mig17's given to them by Russia in the early stages - the Vietnamese do not claim that themselves being typically modest Asians. They had about 36 Mig17's to start with given to them by the Russians. They also had some Mig15's and I can't remember but maybe a few Mig19's. Total Airforce about 75. Yet the US Airforce admits going down 9-1 at the start.

The US had thousands of F100's and many in Vietnam. The Mig17 equivalent in US terms. If it was so good why didn't they send them out against the MIg17's once they found there later aircraft relying on missiles were getting shot out of the sky? Instead they went home and re-thought there tactics and came back with an even later plane the Phantom and better tactics.
The F100 was in many ways an effort to copy the strong points of the Mig15 and give it similar performance to the Mig15 in terms of agility and ceiling and climb rate etc. Mainly the swept wing design. The Mig17 was only an improved Mig15 - very similar overall - fixed all the faults in the Mig15. Also the F100 had lots of trouble and did not enter service until 1954 against better advise. Not much else they could do though I suppose with thousands of Mig17's being produced. There is still much debate as to how good a plane or not it was. The attrition rate was very high.
Who did build the best planes for that period? Also we have never seen the Mig23 up against its similar generation equivalent - The Phantom. The Mig21 in good hands was overall its match. The Mig23 is always knocked for going down to mainly F15's. Hardly a fair comparison. Also the much maligned Mig25 in service in the early 1970's could not be touched by anything until the F15 arrived in numbers in the late 1970's. Lucky for Israel the Russians refused to supply Egypt with Mig25's. Who cares if its engine only lasted 800 hours before it had to go back to the factory and be rebuilt. It was cheap anyway. They could replace one in about 90minutes. Did the fact the Mosquito used plywood that resulted in a shorter airframe life make it inferior?

OK- The F35.
The ideal in my mind today is an Aircraft that has advanced electronic systems - excellent radar - super agility - excellent acceleration - high top speed so it can run or launch missiles from altitude at speed - good range and endurance - high payload - room to adapt and update and "Stealth". The F22.
OK - Expensive. If you can't have it all for cost and maintenance reasons what should you sacrifice. Performance and payload etc. for Stealth?
To me that is what the F35 is, it does not have super agility, hard to put a new bigger radar in etc., vulnerable to fire and small weapons if you are forced to go in low, limited payload, slow top speed without afterburner, can't run, moderate ceiling, acceleration???, agility???, [I still do not know after reading all the more tech types on here - I suspect it is only mediocre in that area also] reasonable range, limited stealth from many angles, hot exhaust and rear end, tremendous systems but most other aircraft will have them available by the time it ever gets into service - at least 5/7 years before we see an active squadron ready for action probably. You name it - compromises everywhere for what? Some stealth - not VLO like the Raptor.
Generally mediocre overall except for its systems and part stealthy aspects. Other 4++ I bet will match those systems within the next 10 years just as it arrives in Volume.
One good breakthrough in the area of stealth detection and what strengths will it have if detected. Virtually none from what I can see. OK if it had been available in say 2010 as originally envisaged. Add 10 years to that and many of them disappear.

Most every aircraft is vulnerable to small weapons fire if you go in low with the exception of the A-10

Nope, even the A-10 is...it just is better then most.

Forum: F-35 versus XYZ

Making the X-32 fly-worthy