US Air Force: Discussion and News

Hole wrote:And the "less stealthiy" part is pure BS.

Unless of course you are suggesting that Su 57 relies more on RAM than shaping to reduce RCS.

So now they are suggesting that the aerospace industry should be nationalized, after mocking everyone doing just that? They are nothing but bullshitters.

But that wont work... how can already really rich people in America exploit that to get even richer... it just wont work... how will politicians get bribes... and if they don't get bribes how will they know they are making the right decision?

And to make things worse, they are reducing their budget for their newer fighters, since they can't make up their mind as to what would be the way to recover the overwhelming superiority they need to dare going to war. It is a shame they cannot accept or understand that such thing is gone for good

But don't you just love the irony... they are having to revert back to big heavy expensive 4th gen fighters because the light cheap 5th gen fighter is too expensive... wasn't there an American senator in the 70s that said America will never buy a 20 million dollar fighter again (because the F-15 was too expensive in his view at the time). Of course in a way he was eventually right because the F-16 started out cheaper but eventually both the F-15 and F-16 and later F-22 and F-35 cost way more than that....

Su-57 will not perform the same role as that of the F-22. The F-22 was designed primarily for SEAD.

Not really... it really only had AAMs... it was going to fly into a third world country and clean up all the enemy fighter aircraft and other planes and helicopters while cruise missiles took out the major SAM sites and radar and comms centres and HQs. The F-22 got its small diameter bombs and other air to ground munitions as an afterthought... it was replacing the F-15C... not a pound for air to ground...

Su-57 is more of a hunter killer. It will detect stealthy and non stealthy aircraft at BVR and then defeat them in a WVR battle. This explains why Sukhoi has designed the Su 57 to be more manoeuvrable and less stealthy compared to F-22.

Pretty much... the F-22 is a sniper on a hill that would shoot down third world countries airplanes and they wouldn't know it was there. The Su-57 is stealthy enough and carrying enough EW equipment to make it a difficult target for AMRAAM, so it can fly up to where the F-22s are operating and beat them in a knife fight with its manouver and cannon performance...

The F-22 was designed for air superiority, to shoot down enemy planes and keep the airspace safe for F-35´s. And the "less stealthiy" part is pure BS.

The F-35 only came in to the plan when it was realised that they weren't getting 1,500 F-22s.

A bit like the moment they realised that helmet mounted sights and R-73s in MiG-29s make them too deadly in close combat so all of a sudden AMRAAM was properly funded. The ASRAAM programme died on the vine because the British made it... the Americans were making the AMRAAM for HATO for the BVR missile and the Brits were making the ASRAAM for HATO, but as usual the Americans made their own... AIM-9X and screwed the Brits again...

Hilarious really... the Americans got the Belgians and Brits to support the 7.62x51mm cartridge for HATO despite them both preferring different cartridges... and in return the Americans promised to buy FN FAL rifles as their standard infantry rifle. The Germans also promised to buy the rifle but they wanted to produce it in Germany. Well after being invaded by Germany and having all their best gun making factories stripped by the Germans during WWII the Belgians said no... we will make them for you. The Germans bought some FN FALs but ended up making G3s, and of course the Americans screwed them too and just modified the Garand with the M14.

Of course in a way the Belgians had the last laugh because the FN FAL is a much better rifle than the M14.

Unless of course you are suggesting that Su 57 relies more on RAM than shaping to reduce RCS.

There is nothing wrong with the shaping of the Su-57.

GarryB wrote:But that wont work... how can already really rich people in America exploit that to get even richer... it just wont work... how will politicians get bribes... and if they don't get bribes how will they know they are making the right decision?

It may sound funny, but what you say is the purest truth

Thatcher once confessed (when USSR had already been destroyed, of course) that they were not afraid of it militarily but economically, due to central planing and social incentives to the population. After the end of the Cold War, the financial plutocracy has been pretty busy hollowing out the states on a global scale, until there is not much more left to loot. Beyond the grandstanding and fake economic theories of the West there was never anything else than greed.

But don't you just love the irony... they are having to revert back to big heavy expensive 4th gen fighters because the light cheap 5th gen fighter is too expensive... wasn't there an American senator in the 70s that said America will never buy a 20 million dollar fighter again (because the F-15 was too expensive in his view at the time). Of course in a way he was eventually right because the F-16 started out cheaper but eventually both the F-15 and F-16 and later F-22 and F-35 cost way more than that....

Not only is the F-35 expensive (by the size of the latest cost reductions one may be inclined to think they have just tuned down the thievery level in the program quite a bit), it is a retrograde airframe without the capability to carry big ordnance and much less to accelerate it to the speeds needed for the best effect. F-15 is almost 1 M (!) faster and flies much higher. Anybody seeing the E-M chart of a F-35 can understand why the Navy and Marines essentially don't care about restricting the supersonic operation of their planes altogether. "It was never the strongest point of the plane" they say, and I could not agree more. BTW, that below is the chart for the A version, now imagine what the B and C are capable of... sad!

It may sound funny, but what you say is the purest truth Very Happy

Thatcher once confessed (when USSR had already been destroyed, of course) that they were not afraid of it militarily but economically, due to central planing and social incentives to the population. After the end of the Cold War, the financial plutocracy has been pretty busy hollowing out the states on a global scale, until there is not much more left to loot. Beyond the grandstanding and fake economic theories of the West there was never anything else than greed.

Well that is the problem, I don't have any ill will towards the average American, they are just poorly informed, but western consumerism democracy is predatory and relies on slave labour to work, but it is a conundrum because when all your people cost too much per hour to make anything then you move the work overseas to countries where a dollar a day is good money and people will fight to get such jobs to make really cheap shit... the company that runs the sweat shops makes money... the CEOs get their bonuses and their subsidised existence... work will pay for the internet and their cars and their clothes... they really don't have much they need to spend their actual salaries on... even holidays will be first class flights paid for by the business, but the problem is that your own countries dies... there is no work for the middle class and it dies which is ironic because that was a criticism of the Soviet Union... the people in power were the rich but without the actual cash, and everyone else was the poor... but in fact with jobs and homes and health and education paid for they were actually better off than the middle class in the west... lose your job and lose your health insurance...

Not only is the F-35 expensive (by the size of the latest cost reductions one may be inclined to think they have just tuned down the thievery level in the program quite a bit), it is a retrograde airframe without the capability to carry big ordnance and much less to accelerate it to the speeds needed for the best effect. F-15 is almost 1 M (!) faster and flies much higher. Anybody seeing the E-M chart of a F-35 can understand why the Navy and Marines essentially don't care about restricting the supersonic operation of their planes altogether. "It was never the strongest point of the plane" they say, and I could not agree more. BTW, that below is the chart for the A version, now imagine what the B and C are capable of... sad!

The F-15C was always intended to be the fighter, the F-15E replaced the F-111 in the deep strike role while retaining the ability to fight enemy aircraft, the F-16 in the US Air Force was intended to be a bomb truck... an aircraft that spent most of its time hitting ground targets.

I remember early on in the programme when the performance characteristics were revealed a UK aircraft expert described the F-35 as being a stealthy Buccaneer, when what they really need is a stealthy F-16.

Basically the problem is commonality... to get VSTOL performance to replace the Harrier types it needs that big fuselage front for the lift fan... which gives it the wrong shape to be nimble and fast.

To be clear the Buccaneer is a fantastic plane that I actually like... if the UK still had full sized aircraft carriers with F-4s and Buccs the Falklands war would have been much less dicey... with BVR Sparrows the F-4s could have engaged Argentine aircraft without having to manouver to get on their tails for a good chance of a hit... now Sparrows have a fairly low PK but being able to launch Sparrow after Sparrow from 30km away and having the speed and flight range to remain 20-30km away not much would have changed in terms of numbers of aircraft lost, but the Argentines would have lost rather more aircraft and more importantly a lot less ships because their air protection would have been much much better... The Bucc at low altitude on a strike mission with a nuclear bomb under each wing was much faster and much longer ranged than the F-16 and it could also operate from aircraft carriers... what it was not... however... was a fighter plane.

The problem is that HATO countries are going to find that this ever increasingly expensive aircraft is not really a fight plane like the ones they are used to...

In fact fit a nice big AESA radar to a Tu-22M3 and design it to carry AAMs in its rotary launchers and cover its belly in tiny weapon bays designed to hold individual 9M100 and R-77M and R-77PDM missiles and you might spend the same to buy it, and it certainly wont be stealthy but with an AESA that big and that many missiles you probably wont care... and it will be much faster so for interceptions it will be much better.

If you look on YouTube there are videos by Candian patriots showing first Tu-160s and then MiG-31s violating Canadian airspace... they are deluded to think the Russians want to take control of their North West Passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic... what they are right about is the total inability of F-35s to have any chance of intercepting these targets. They go back to delusion of course when their solution is an Avro Arrow flying at mach 3.5...

https://sputniknews.com/military/202007141079880897-seven-crashes-in-sixty-days-where-when-and-why-have-americas-fighter-jets-been-crashing/

No Vann to post this and explain about quality control and other factors...

Surprise surprise!

The USAF is thinking about replacing the F-15E not with F-35 but with more F-15EX

https://www.airforcemag.com/f-15ex-could-replace-strike-eagle-fleet-in-addition-to-older-c-d-models-usaf-says/

That could expand the series to more than 400 units... so much for Russians being backwards and buying 4G planes in the age of 5G...

After the fall of the SU the western bankers (the real PTB) were well on their way to exploiting their latest, and biggest for many generations colony, Russia, when along came, out of the blue, a new leader, Putin, intent on stopping it. I think I can say without contradiction that Putin changed the destiny of the world, slowly but surely in ways that are only now becoming clear.

But when you listen to the spin of the west he is Hitler and Stalin all rolled in to one... which I find bloody hilarious because the west and its treatment of Germany after WWI created Hitler and made WWII necessary.... in many ways Putin is a good Stalin.... he turned Russia around at a time when it was effectively undersiege and losing land and place and he turned it around by being sensible and clever. No need for the Gulags like the US resorted to in Guantanimo and sites throughout Europe I might add... just good motivation and sensible decisions in favour of Russia and Russians instead of the cowards way out of accepting bribes or pressure to do your own people wrong.

I too am a fan of the Buccaneer, a Tiger tank of an aircraft in its engineering.

I can operate from an aircraft carrier and at low level it was faster and with a much greater range than the F-16 with two nuclear bombs... it would have been enormously valuable in the Falklands war... they could have been used to attack the airfields on the islands instead of using the Vulcans... which was highly risky...

Having Buccs and Phantoms and proper AEW aircraft they probably would not have lost anywhere near as many ships...

Hence the all things to all men F-35 that has been a stonking success (to them). The only problems are functional, which are again a success because they are more money making opportunities, that the operators have to work their way around.

They decided that it would be cheap because it would replace everything and everyone would use it so with everyone sharing the same spare parts pool and you only use what you need you can save an enormous amount of money on logistics and training.... but it would only work of there was no other choice, so all other programmes had to die and the one type had to replace as many other platforms as possible so that it will be bought in the greatest numbers possible...

An underlying problem is that when they sell their design they inflate the numbers because the more planes you make the cheaper it is per plane so if you need 1,500 F-22s then they get much cheaper than if you make less than 200. So they promise a cheap plane but demand you buy way more than you need... and what happens is that the prices go up so people cut their orders which in turn makes the prices go up even further in a viscous cycle... made worse because they were never going to make 3,500 F-35s in the first place...

Mind you, new tactics are being evolved that do make it the wonder plane

It is a wonder plane... wonder why we bought it and wonder why it costs so much...

The USAF is thinking about replacing the F-15E not with F-35 but with more F-15EX

A no brainer... the F-35 has nothing like the range or capacity to do the job

In the 1980s there were plans to develop a ground attack version of the F-16.... it was called F-16XL and actually looked like a rather cool design... just an F-16 with its horizontal tail removed and the main wing replaced with a large delta wing. The wings and belly could be covered in weapon pylons for all sorts of ordinance.

They also came up with a less clever idea which was the A-16 which they thought could replace the A-10.... it didn't get a big gun and armour but was going to basically use Mavericks from stand off range. It was a terrible failure, which is what it was... but I think the F-16XL was rather interesting...

GarryB wrote:A no brainer... the F-35 has nothing like the range or capacity to do the job

Well, I agree it makes sense, since they don't have any other platform that has the size and capability for attack role, but it still it is cringe worthy that they do it:

- 15 years after having inducted the successor of F-15 (!)
- After having ridiculed Russia for doing the same they are shamelessly copying now.

I would add, that Russia did this on the right order, that is, first develop 4++ to test 5G technologies and afterwards deploy the PAK-FA, while US did it the other way around, first deploy 5G at astronomic costs, then realize it was wrong all along, then come back to 4G... if I was the responsible behind a disaster like this I would rather look for a whole in the ground and disappear into it...

In the 1980s there were plans to develop a ground attack version of the F-16.... it was called F-16XL and actually looked like a rather cool design... just an F-16 with its horizontal tail removed and the main wing replaced with a large delta wing. The wings and belly could be covered in weapon pylons for all sorts of ordinance.

The F-16 had wings as small as possible, increasing them was an easy way of giving both payload capability and fuel for better performance as attack plane... which brings up the question of why does US insist in using a small airframe for the roles that demand a big one...

JohninMK wrote:Another take on the same subject. Quite a good analysis.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/35312/lets-talk-about-the-air-force-potentially-replacing-the-f-15e-with-the-f-15ex

It is remarkable that they are substituting F-15C (which has simply astonishing wing loads and TWR) with the EX (an updated E), which is substantially heavier and less manoeuvrable, essentially making it an inferior match for Su-35S. See the perceived difference by the pilots between those planes:

Elon Musk Beats Jeff Bezos To U.S. Air Force Contract As Billionaire Space Race Blasts Off

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddawkins/2020/08/10/elon-musk-beats-jeff-bezos-to-us-air-force-contract-as-billionaire-space-race-blasts-off/#5858d9de7ad0

I've been saying this for quite sometime that SpaceX’s Starlink Project, which seeks to create satellite internet access unfettered by ground installation limitations, is actually financed by the United States military. This will greatly enhance US battlefield communication. The Pentagon has already roped in SpaceX for preliminary tests under a US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) programme called ‘Global Lightning’ where SpaceX'x Starlink has sought to be integrated into the US military’s emerging next-generation sensor—shooter networks.

B-1B/2s r making the news again: 
https://www.ng.ru/news/687783.html?print=Y

https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2317704/us-demonstrates-airpower-in-indo-pacific-region-with-simultaneous-bomber-missio/

Former CIA officer charged with providing secrets to China

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-08-17/former-cia-officer-accused-of-spying-for-china

When they will see the real bills of those small satelittes and how often they need to change them, it will become another multi billion dollars failed project.

People are already stressing about 5G and doesn't want it, thousands of satelittes burning our heads from the skies will be worse.

Fiber cables is the best solution for the Internet.

B-52s over Ukraine:
https://www.rbc.ru/politics/04/09/2020/5f5251959a7947999b389db8

Will Roper says a NGAD demonstrator has already flown:

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/09/usaf-jet/168479/

Whatever this demonstrator actually is, this is just another nail in the coffin of current US 5th generation of fighters, one of their biggest flops in decades on the way to being rather a half generation by the way its planes are ageing, and an admission that the competition by Russia and China is not so pathetic as they claim

Will it matter if they won't be affordable in large #s to match the PLAAF & VKS?

We couldn't afford as many F-22s as the AF originally wanted, what makes u think that these 6th gen. fighters will fare better?

Russia & China will still have many other fighters/UCAVs & AD systems to deal with them.