Who's In Charge Here?!?
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Navy's
£5bn Harrier jet replacement 'unable to land on aircraft carriers'
... the entire JSF programme in jeopardy amid fears it could be axed all together despite billions of pounds spent by the British and American governments and other “partner nations”.
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I use to think that Obama was born in Kenya.
But now I'm thinking it was probably more like France.
No offense intended to its Rightful King.
j_c_
If it's ugly, it's British.
If it's weird, it's French.
If it's ugly AND weird, it's Russian.
Tim
F-35: Jack of all trades and inadequate for all.
We tried this with F-111 program, ended up with a pretty good bomber, but no fighter or carrier capability. CAS, fighter and carrier ops need different aircraft.
F-35 - inadequate range, loiter time or payload if it keeps VSTOL capability.
F-35 loses to F-22 every time in head to head fighter role.
F-35 Single engine and relatively weak airframe make it marginal for carrier use.
Much waste and compromises to do politically correct thing and let Euros participate in its design and construction. Program is way over budget and way behind schedule.
I had a peek at some of the component manufacturing for the aircraft, and was dismayed at the skill level of the factory workers and the quality reject rate of ~ 30%.
Its the Chevy Volt of fighter aircraft, pushed along by government and designed by committees responding to government ideology.
Lt. Col. Gen. Tailgunner dick
Everything The One touches turns to Shit.
If it's a VTOL craft, it doesn't NEED a hook. So what am I missing?
Ole Phat Stu is correct...
Wasp carrier landing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCrZNiuOPY
It is a POS. It was mediocre because we were sharing it with the euros, can't give them any technology.
The F22 is unmatched and I am not sure if that is why the iWon wants to kill it.
Here are a couple of cool thing about the f35
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fm5vfGW5RY
pretty cool at 4:37 but watch the whole thing.
thoR~
Both he F-22 and F-35 cost way too much. To produce and to operate. Maintenance is reaching huge levels for the F-22 because of its stealth features. The F-35 is also going to come in high. The F-22 has no one to fight in any air force we are likely to fly against. That makes it a great piece of technology with no mission. Our current aircraft are less expensive to buy and maintain, and are highly capable.
"The F-22 has no one to fight in any air force we are likely to fly against."
Word on the street is that the Russians have something close, as good or better than the F22. Peace through superior firepower is the mantra and that's what makes the need to kill Russian unlikely. I'd like to keep it that way.
The up n coming generations of UAVs will do some serious whoopin on manned fighters.
The horrible design compromises forced on aircraft designers by the frailty of human occupants will allow show up in a very expensive way in the air battles to come.
Because a UAV requires no windows, space for a meat sack in the front, pressurization system, onboard user control interface, oxygen system, ejection system, heating / cooling systems, etc etc, it can be designed MUCH more efficiently.
For a very small fraction of the cost of F22 / F35 / The Next Best Thing, a country with a smaller GDP will be able to field aircraft that climb faster, turn tighter loiter longer, and carry more armament. It will have a smaller Radar Cross Section, and a much smaller logistical tail.
Economy of scale will kick in and building a fleet of Fighter / ground attack UAVs can be done...IF you don't have a pilot union dedicated on keeping their jobs and fighting the last 5 wars.
Mark, welcome to the barn army. Don't mess with MoSup, or the hootch Rodger keeps in the shed. Some of it is JP5. We got the batches mixed one night.
Casca
Markshere2:
You need to put down the UAV cool-aid for a while and think about the next likely real war against an opponent with an industrial base instead of chasing cave dwelling iron age level bandits around some turd world sh!t hole.
UAVs are entirely dependent upon a data link or links between the aircraft and controller in order to maneuver or engage targets of opportunity. Currently all combat capable (weapons carrying) UAVs are controlled via satellite communication. This is an absolutely HUGE Achilles heel.
Several of our most likely future opponents are developing nuclear weapons. A couple of those same disgusting dirtbag regimes are also working on long range missile technology. It only takes one nuclear detonation in geosynchronous orbit on the opposite side of the planet to take out nearly all the satellites used for strategic, and most tactical, satellite communication in our likely operational area. A nation like China with both space launch and nuclear weapons capability would find it to be a fairly straightforward exercise to render nearly all satellites in orbit permanently non-operational!
Tactical datalinks can be established between UAVs and a high flying aircraft in order to serve as a substitute for a comsat, but those have far less “loiter” time than a satellite in geosynchronous orbit and have a small effective area of operation. A single geosynchronous comsat can cover nearly a third of the earths surface.
In addition to the well known vulnerabilities listed above, several “conventional” direct action possibilies exist that can cripple our satcom or high flying aircraft substitute communication paths. It's amazing the entire Rube Goldberg system works as well as does for as long as it has, but even if advanced fighter replacement UAVs were available now, no additional satcom bandwidth exists to provide data-links for the number of UAVs that would be required for a carrier based “alpha” strike package to name one example.
Until we deploy compact, robust, reliable, un-interceptable quantum physics based communication systems to serve as the link between the controller and UAVs, UAVs will only be an effective weapon against enemies who do not use most 20th & 21st century warfighting capabilities.
Before you start preaching about UAVs again, please put down your copy of Aviation Week and catch up on your reading of IEEE Spectrum!
Respectfully, Armageddon Rex
Still bitter, and clinging to my guns!
"When a fighter lands on an aircraft carrier an arrestor cable catches the hook on the back of the aircraft, preventing it from overshooting and ditching into the sea...."
Damn, all these years I thought it was my moving tailhook that caught the (relatively) stationary wire. Thanks, Rodge, for posting that excerpt to correct my bass ackwards view of the process of landing - and stopping - on an aircraft carrier. --Skyhawker, Doug
