F-35 Super Fight Plane

[Tiberius]

 

Sorry, but this swift shifting of the goal posts just isn't going to fly.

 

You wrote, in your OP, that:

 

 

You're saying that we can do away with fighter jets right now because they're already obsolete.

 

Pick an argument and defend it.

 

No, not right now, obviously there is a development and procurement phase

 

Lol, a hen weighs 3 or 4 ponds I guess...

 

I don't have a dog (plane? drone?) in this fight, but I'm interested in the topic of how the military is currently using drones,

1. http://www.fas.org/i...ct/uas_2009.pdf (signed in 2009 by the Secretary of the Air Force and by the USAF Chief of Staff)

 

2. http://www.flightglo...70120000000taAj (about how the

And no less than Admiral Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs, took this positionre

3. http://www.theglobea...

 

Thanks! Pretty cool and interesting articles

[TakeYouToTasker]

No, not right now, obviously there is a development and procurement phase

So you're channeling MDP, and are basing your argument on the development of future technologies with no actual time-lines, and without knowing the feasibility of this future-tech?

 

Good grief.

[DC Tom]

Yes, F--35 is typical jack of all trades master of none piece of equipment. But how do you get drones are less flexible? I see them as way more flexible in many ways. Not following you there

 

Simple. Aircraft put a man in the loop closer to the point of action, rendering increased response time, because people will always be more flexible and intelligent than machines...

 

...I mean, in general. Clearly not you.

[sherpa]

First, the F-35 is a tremendously capable airplane. Not the perfect air to air machine like the F-22, but an extremely capable air to air and more capable air to ground platform. Hopefully, it will be a successful replacement to the F-16/F-18 family.

 

Regarding the question of drones, there are some extremely problematic issues when you consider using one in a dynamic air to air or air to ground engagement. As of now, there is no effective way to communicate in real time at the speed necessary in such an engagement, and as has been pointed out the uplink security is a very big issue.

Speed is not an issue. You can build them to fly just as fast. The "G" thing isn't a really tough issue, because the biggest part of the G requirement is placed on the missile or whatever other offensive component is placed on the delivery platform.

 

But....A very strong case can be made for using them if these very serious limitations are elliminated or reduced, since so much money is spent on each manned aircraft in strictly non mission realities of adequate life support, and search and rescue capability. Even existing manned aircraft, the F-22 for example have been grounded because of serious O2 problems.

 

Has the last fighter pilot been born already? For the US, maybe.

Edited August 27, 2013 by sherpa

[Nanker]

This is so funny.

[DC Tom]

First, the F-35 is a tremendously capable airplane. Not the perfect air to air machine like the F-22, but an extremely capable air to air and more capable air to ground platform. Hopefully, it will be a successful replacement to the F-16/F-18 family.

 

Regarding the question of drones, there are some extremely problematic issues when you consider using one in a dynamic air to air or air to ground engagement. As of now, there is no effective way to communicate in real time at the speed necessary in such an engagement, and as has been pointed out the uplink security is a very big issue.

Speed is not an issue. You can build them to fly just as fast. The "G" thing isn't a really tough issue, because the biggest part of the G requirement is placed on the missile or whatever other offensive component is placed on the delivery platform.

 

But....A very strong case can be made for using them if these very serious limitations are elliminated or reduced, since so much money is spent on each manned aircraft in strictly non mission realities of adequate life support, and search and rescue capability. Even existing manned aircraft, the F-22 for example have been grounded because of serious O2 problems.

 

Has the last fighter pilot been born already? For the US, maybe.

 

Or it will be tremendously capable, if it ever actually works. And when it does, it'll hardly be cost-effective.

 

And even if it does work..."one size fits all" weapons systems have a history of being poorly fit to most of the missions they're required to perform.

[sherpa]

Or it will be tremendously capable, if it ever actually works. And when it does, it'll hardly be cost-effective.

 

And even if it does work..."one size fits all" weapons systems have a history of being poorly fit to most of the missions they're required to perform.

 

Flight testing is going well, from what I've seen. The first Navy version has landed at sea both day and night.

 

Regarding multi purpose air frames, as I recall the last one attempted was the F-111, and that failure was in the very early 60's.

 

We are far more capable now, given advances on materials and software.

 

But, back to the subject of rpv's, the Joint Strike Fighter may well be the last manned fighter.

Wouldn't surprise me at all.

[Joe Miner]

How about details which support the bolded. Had you done any research whatsoever its unlikely you'd post anything so stupid. Hell, if you had seen Top Gun you'd likely realize how dumb you sound.

 

You expect him to be able to watch the whole movie in which Cruise and Kilmer go shirtless?

 

He's asleep and sticky before that scene ends.

[Tiberius]

Simple. Aircraft put a man in the loop closer to the point of action, rendering increased response time, because people will always be more flexible and intelligent than machines...

 

...I mean, in general. Clearly not you.

 

You don't understand what you are talking about. People will still be piloting the drones not machines, you doof. You are so wrong here about the whole concept and capability of drones its funny. If the pilot isn't in danger of being killed it simply gives you more flexibility. But you know more than Admiral Mullen, so I mean who's to argue with you, lol

[Jauronimo]

You don't understand what you are talking about. People will still be piloting the drones not machines, you doof. You are so wrong here about the whole concept and capability of drones its funny. If the pilot isn't in danger of being killed it simply gives you more flexibility. But you know more than Admiral Mullen, so I mean who's to argue with you, lol

If theres a pilot then its not really a drone now is it? Or don't you know what pilot means?

[Azalin]

People will still be piloting the drones not machines, you doof.

and as everyone knows, there is absolutely no difference between piloting the joint strike fighter and piloting a drone. such a shame so few are as gifted intellectually as you.

[KD in CA]

If theres a pilot then its not really a drone now is it? Or don't you know what pilot means?

 

Ironically, he sounds like PPP's version of a drone. Clearly someone has hacked into his head and filled it with cream cheese.

[Azalin]

Clearly someone has hacked into his head and filled it with cream cheese.

and what has cream cheese ever done to you to deserve such slander?

[DC Tom]

You don't understand what you are talking about. People will still be piloting the drones not machines, you doof. You are so wrong here about the whole concept and capability of drones its funny. If the pilot isn't in danger of being killed it simply gives you more flexibility. But you know more than Admiral Mullen, so I mean who's to argue with you, lol

 

Ever heard of SA and the OODA loop? What happens to those when you put the pilot half a world away in front of a video game?

[Jauronimo]

Ever heard of SA and the OODA loop? What happens to those when you put the pilot half a world away in front of a video game?

Profit?

[John Adams]

Getting crowded under the troll's bridge.

[DC Tom]

Flight testing is going well, from what I've seen. The first Navy version has landed at sea both day and night.

 

Regarding multi purpose air frames, as I recall the last one attempted was the F-111, and that failure was in the very early 60's.

 

We are far more capable now, given advances on materials and software.

 

If flight testing were going that well, the program wouldn't be seven years behind.

 

And it's the nature of any engineered device or platform that you have to make a series of design trade-offs based on required capabilities. For single-purpose aircraft, designed to do one job and do it well, those trade-offs are easy: the F-15 was optimized to be fast, powerful, and put a big-ass radar in the air. The A-10 designers made very specific tradeoffs - high-aspect wing, low speed, high-bypass turbofans for long loiter time, high survivability - to create the best CAS aircraft ever (the A-10 gets my vote for "most beautiful plane ever", simply because Fairchild-Republic was completely uncompromising in designing a plane to the mission requirements at the expense of anything else). The F-14 was designed to do one thing: dominate the outer air battle for a CVBG.

 

And not conicidentally, when those platforms matured, they found that multi-role capabilities could more easily be retrofitted. The F-15 Strike Eagle was derived from the F-15C far more easily than it would have been designed into the platform from the outset. The F-14D "Bombcat" was very effective in Afghanistan after the Navy retrofitted bombing capability to it. The A-10 was never going to be true multi-role...but it still had additional capabilities "bolted on" to take it from a daylight CAS plane to an effective all-weather strike aircraft. The key point being that none of those (or a long list of others I could come up with) were designed with any multi-role capabilities in mind - they were designed to excel in a specifically narrow mission profile, but in being fundamentally excellent had a large amount of derivative and evolutionary value built in to the basic design.

 

Contrast that to the story of the F-22, which has been a "failure" in no small part because of the dumbass idea to make an air superiority fighter into a multirole fighter before it even got to OPEVAL, creating a whole host of new problems on top of the problems they hadn't even identified yet, adding ten years (and many billions of dollars) of development to the program, and ultimately driving per-unit cost to the point where they couldn't afford it. Same thing happened to the RAH-66, too. Same thing is happening to the F-35 - protracted development drives up per-unit cost, which drives down the total acquisition (the planned JSF acquisition dropped from about 4000 originally to less than 2000 now). And the reason that's happening to the F-35 is because of decisions such as making an airframe with the air superiority capability of an F-16 that also has to satisfy the CAS requirements of an A-10 and the VTOL and loiter capabilities of an AV-8B. AND they want it STEATHY (sure, a stealthy lift fan. That'll happen. ) That's the equivalent of building a car comfortably seat a family of six and tow a boat, get good MPG in city driving, yet compete at Daytona. Not going to happen. The F-35 is a horrible mashup of design tradeoffs.

 

Honestly, the DoD would have been much better off buying Boeing's JSF entry for the CAS and VTOL requirements...but the Pentagon wanted one-airframe-does-everything based on the false economy of "multirole is cheaper," which it isn't (and the Navy was never going to go for Boeing's design, not with that massive, unstealthy chin intake). If the DoD had bought both aircraft, they'd have more capable aircraft at less expense, and probably already have them operational.

 

But, back to the subject of rpv's, the Joint Strike Fighter may well be the last manned fighter.

Wouldn't surprise me at all.

 

There'll still be a need for manned aircraft for quite some time - the JSF won't be last. There will always be a need to have a man in the loop close to the pointy end of the spear.

 

It might be the last one that's a primary platform, though. At least numerically. It's far more likely that combat doctrine will evolve to require mixed strike packages of RPVs and drones supplemented by manned aircraft (and I've got $5 that says the first "mixed" doctrine in that sense will be defense suppression).

[....lybob]

Ever heard of SA and the OODA loop? What happens to those when you put the pilot half a world away in front of a video game?

Actually what our Military wants is AI strong enough so they can set mission parameters and then let the drone go- it might takes 10 years to get there or 30 years but if there is a roadblock it will probably be on the political/legal side not the technological side

 

The other scenario I've seen is a maned plane controlling a swarm of drones - some propose using laser light to communicate with the drones to limit hacking

 

On drone flying speed- the Avenger has a top speed of 460 mph, the X-47b has a top speed of around 700mph and the proposed X-47c will be supersonic

 

The F35 has lots of bugs and cost overruns but that characterizes every military aircraft program that I can remember - the complaint that the F35 can do a lot of missions but none of them particularly well might be more relevant but really the U.S. hasn't fought a first world power since WW2 so the fact that the F35 probably can't win a fight with a F16 , F22 and maybe some of the latest Migs doesn't seem to matter much as the will likely be used against third world countries

[Luka]

 

 

This thread needed some pictures. Also, the A-10 is absolutely one of the coolest things ever created by anyone.

[Tiberius]

If theres a pilot then its not really a drone now is it? Or don't you know what pilot means?

 

Do you know how a drone even operates? There's a remote pilot. I mean come on, you don't know anything about these new weapons? I figured people at least had some idea of how they worked and what they were capable of but I guess not...

 

Getting crowded under the troll's bridge.

 

Troll's make drive by statements and insults, and that's pretty much it, right?