Bash the F-35 thred.

[Sturgeon]

I'm probably gonna write an F-35 apology post for TFB. I might tear into this article in that.

[Ramlaen]

The thing that really 'triggers' me with articles like that isn't the clickbait, errors or outright dishonesty.

It is the fact that people who don't know any better will believe it and regurgitate it.

[Xlucine]

They should call it F-32 since it's a word-for-word rehash of pierre spey's wank over what the f-16 should be

[Vanagandr]

Quote

With a small, disciplined, vendor-independent fighter-design team led by actual fighter pilots, the U.S. could begin production of a new world-class fighter in large numbers in nine years or less

Sure thing, because pilot=engineer

Quote

Most importantly, unlike the F-22 or the F-35, which are capable of flying only a single sortie (mission) every two or three days, the F-45 will be capable of two to three sorties per day

We haven't built the plane but we know how its maintenance will pan out

Quote

for many months at a time.

SURE THING

Quote

the F-45 Mustang II, our new air-superiority fighter, will cost less than the newest version of the multi-role F-16 Viper.

SURE THING

Quote

The U.S. military seems to have forgotten that the greater part of a fighter’s effectiveness derives from the experience and training of the pilot. More pithily, Colonel John Boyd, far and away the most influential practitioner and theorist of aerial combat, puts it this way: “A real fighter pilot has always had the attitude: They give us sh** to fly, and we win anyhow.”

THEN WHY DOES THE PLANE MATTER

I don't think it's necessary to ask, but the "F-45 Mustang II" doesn't exist any more than the majority of WoT's tier 10 Germans does it?

Does the National Review try to be a real news source? I actually don't know

[Sturgeon]

Quote

With a small, disciplined, vendor-independent fighter-design team led by actual fighter pilots, the U.S. could begin production of a new world-class fighter in large numbers in nine years or less

Oh yeah, that'll go over great with Congress:

"Well, you can have the extremely capable plane that began production eleven years ago, or you can have a single-role day fighter that will enter production nine years from now."

Quote

The U.S. military seems to have forgotten that the greater part of a fighter’s effectiveness derives from the experience and training of the pilot. More pithily, Colonel John Boyd, far and away the most influential practitioner and theorist of aerial combat, puts it this way: “A real fighter pilot has always had the attitude: They give us sh** to fly, and we win anyhow.”

Apparently, good pilots can compensate for having no radar or stealth capabilities.

[Donward]

You know who else had great pilots?

Japan in WW2.

Look at how far that got them with inferior planes.

[Sturgeon]

Yeah, the whole Boyd quote is taken completely out of context.

If there's one lesson to take away from World War II, it's that pilots are fucking valuable and worth protecting.

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

 

Since when is the P-51 mustang considered a lightweight fighter? It was so chunky, they made a lightweight version of it. 

[Toxn]

14 hours ago, Donward said:

The budget hawks at National Review are at it again.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445708/f-35-replacement-f-45-mustang-ii-fighter-simple-lightweight

"When replacing the failed F-35, the U.S. should focus on building large numbers of a reliable, lightweight fighter design."

‘Simplicate and Add Lightness!’ — Designing the F-45 Mustang II

 

A single-engined fighter with a passive-only radar array and no stealth shaping?

 

Can't see that going wrong at all.

 

Edit - this is hilarious:

Quote

Our fighter-design team will adhere to this ancient mantra: “When operating in a world of increasingly powerful digital-signal processing, anti-radiation, lock-on-after-launch missiles, infrared missiles, and high-sensitivity triangulating-microwave receivers, he who fires up his heat-generating, high-powered, low-probability-of-intercept, active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar first, loses!” Our F-45 Mustang II will be a modern-day disciple of Sun Tzu!

God, it's almost like stealth is a thing you need in the modern battlespace in order not to become a snack for a long-range missile with an onboard radar system.

[Toxn]

Didn't Mustang break most of the rules laid out in that article, btw?

[roguetechie]

On 3/13/2017 at 1:06 PM, Sturgeon said:

I'm probably gonna write an F-35 apology post for TFB. I might tear into this article in that.

Jesus Sturgeon,

I just read the article... I want my 6 minutes back.

And then you get to the 14 comments and realize that the majority of Americans, whether pro or anti F35, are dangerously close to functionally illiterate!

Sweet baby Jesus!

That's the real headline here!

[roguetechie]

On 3/14/2017 at 0:18 AM, Toxn said:

Didn't Mustang break most of the rules laid out in that article, btw?

Toxn,

Yes, but it had the Meredith effect so all is forgiven

[Xlucine]

F-35 fires an innuendo:

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/f-35-successfully-conducts-first-asraam-firing/

[Sturgeon]

On 3/14/2017 at 2:18 AM, Toxn said:

Didn't Mustang break most of the rules laid out in that article, btw?

I assume they chose the name "Mustang" because of the story about it being developed in 102 days.

A story which is sort of like the old yarn about NASA's million dollar space pen.

[Donward]

17 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

I assume they chose the name "Mustang" because of the story about it being developed in 102 days.

A story which is sort of like the old yarn about NASA's million dollar space pen.

I have every confidence that if the entire country were mobilized to fight a global war, with the entire populace conscripted to either fight in the war machine or produce weapons for it, and with the unlimited resources and credit of the federal government at hand, the production of a Gen 5 fighter could be shortened from two decades to about a year or so.

I'm sure the budget hawks  at NRO who are bitching and whining about having to pay for new highways, airports and power plants would be delighted at that sort of mobilization of federal power.

Edit: Although NRO is the same bunch of pointy-headed think tank remoras who were pissed that Trump wants to bring back domestic manufacturing capability to the US.

[roguetechie]

Pointy headed...

We have spitzer jackass projectiles premade and ready in the event of all out war for national survival and no one told me?

WTF... Dick move bro... Dick move

[Collimatrix]

Here is an interesting discussion at F-16.net about the "J-turn," which is a maneuver the F-35 can apparently perform at low airspeeds and high angle of attack.  Supplementary discussion of the maneuver is here.

 

The way this works is that if the F-35 is flying relatively slowly with its nose high, a combination of the aerodynamic design of the F-35 and its flight control computer programming gives extreme yaw rates.  And I do mean extreme; one of the pilots quotes a rate of 28 degrees per second, which is 40% faster than an F-16A in dogfight configuration can turn at corner velocity:

 

(This chart is an E-M diagram.  This article explains what these charts mean very well.)

[Sturgeon]

On 3/14/2017 at 2:10 AM, Toxn said:

A single-engined fighter with a passive-only radar array and no stealth shaping?

 

Can't see that going wrong at all.

 

Edit - this is hilarious:

God, it's almost like stealth is a thing you need in the modern battlespace in order not to become a snack for a long-range missile with an onboard radar system.

 

Bele's like brought be back to this jewel. The thing I like most about this passive-only radar fighter is that it's "designed" to be survivable in one scenario (two fighters trying to track each other)... Which a fighter with a proper radar can also do by, you know, putting its radar into passive only mode.

 

But does having a passive only radar give you any advantages? Hmmm, let me think. No. It makes you a snack for things that have radars that you can't intercept, like AWACS and ground radars and R-33s and shit.

[Toxn]

1 hour ago, Sturgeon said:

 

Bele's like brought be back to this jewel. The thing I like most about this passive-only radar fighter is that it's "designed" to be survivable in one scenario (two fighters trying to track each other)... Which a fighter with a proper radar can also do by, you know, putting its radar into passive only mode.

 

But does having a passive only radar give you any advantages? Hmmm, let me think. No. It makes you a snack for things that have radars that you can't intercept, like AWACS and ground radars and R-33s and shit.

I can almost see passive radar on a big stealth boat capable of communicating with AWACS or a radar drone or something. But a small maneuver fighter with no stealth and no radar? That's the worst of all worlds right there.

[Sturgeon]

We call those "target drones".

[Toxn]

38 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

We call those "target drones".

Related: http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2011-05-28

[roguetechie]

17 hours ago, Sturgeon said:

 

Bele's like brought be back to this jewel. The thing I like most about this passive-only radar fighter is that it's "designed" to be survivable in one scenario (two fighters trying to track each other)... Which a fighter with a proper radar can also do by, you know, putting its radar into passive only mode.

 

But does having a passive only radar give you any advantages? Hmmm, let me think. No. It makes you a snack for things that have radars that you can't intercept, like AWACS and ground radars and R-33s and shit.

 

It's almost like LPI/LPD radars were developed specifically so we didn't have to make the compromise we made when designing the "stealth fighter" before f-22 & f-35...

 

I hate being an F-35 skeptic for this reason!

 

Automatically being painted with the "tardlet letter" of the F-35 skeptic sucks, especially since I completely agree with everyone else that most F-35 haters should be painted with as a visible warning that stupid things like logic will have no power over them.

[Sturgeon]

What I always say is that I hate F-35 skeptics because they aren't doing their job properly. We're in a position where we need to fire the janitor because he won't clean anything and smokes meth in the girls' bathroom, and people are yelling at us like we think janitors in general are bad.

[roguetechie]

The one thing that scares me more than anything about the F-35 is the seemingly abysmal sortie generation!

 

Even if you're packing bays with nothing but SDB-II's and generating a 98% one bomb one splashed target percentage, there's still just not that many SDB's that fit in weapons bays when we could be looking at each plane going up once every other day.

 

I'm fully willing to admit I'm wrong if I've been mislead WRT how often we can expect to get each bird in the air etc, but if things are truly as bad as they sound in this area... That's a huge problem!

 

Especially for many of our allies who just plain aren't going to be able to afford significant numbers of F-35's even after cutting everything else they can to the bone and beyond!

[Toxn]

7 hours ago, Sturgeon said:

What I always say is that I hate F-35 skeptics because they aren't doing their job properly. We're in a position where we need to fire the janitor because he won't clean anything and smokes meth in the girls' bathroom, and people are yelling at us like we think janitors in general are bad.

As a complete outsider on this whole debacle (and, more than that, someone whose nation might not be unhappy to see the entire project fail - as we're not likely to be included in its benefits), the most damning thing I can think of about F-35 is that it represents something like a CR-42 for the modern era - a perfected example of a dead paradigm. It might just be the best manned strike fighter/STOVL aircraft ever produced, at a time when both of these concepts will be shown to be obsolete.

 

My take was, and still is, that the next great air war will be won by a combination of drones, awacs and stealthy missile boats (think a B2 equivalent with a bay full of long-range AAMs). Under this paradigm the need for a small, exquisite fighter which balances stealth, manoeuvre and range characteristics is gone.