Ditch the B-1s and B-2s for the B-21s

[Jaywalker]

About guns on modern planes: in the novel Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross, the remnants of an Elvish civilization in a parallel world invade the UK to escape Lovecraftian horrors that conquer their world. They are basically a modern armored force except with magical horses and dragons as air support. Magic wands as infantry weapons and bigger weapons to parallel our kind of armored forces. However, they are still outgunned by our tech. One point is that the two UK Typhoons on alert for air defense (stand down to 2 due to the end of the Cold War) engage the dragons but their missiles don't work as they won't lock in as having no profile in the system. Guns take them down. So we might need guns for unknown, alien attackers. The Elves are defeated when they capture a British supernatural spy agent who uses his cell phone for a drone/Hellfire on the king of the Elves. Their new Queen has assimilated modern society a bit and surrenders.

Stephanie has it right on the Royal Navy, they are less than a shadow of the past. Except for a few nuclear subs - they have nothing much.

The plane that deployed a gun from a bay = https://www.f-106deltadart.com/weapons_20mm_cannon.htm

Love the Six.I never had anything to do with them but they were gorgeous and had fantastic range, I recall.

Still, the 25mm in the F-35 wing root looks useful.

Here's a report from a guy who likes the F-35 a lot - he flies them "now" and flew the F-16 in the past so he has a good perspective on the differences. https://theaviationist.com/2016/03/0...-hand-account/

I understand the Typhoon is categorized as a Generation 4.5 (vice Gen 5 for the F-22 and F-35), due to the lack of stealthy capabilities. Still, if we can't get more F-22 aircraft beyond the 120/180 and they can't reconfigure the F-35 to do it, the Typhoon wouldn't be a bad option.

[Ed L]

I understand the Typhoon is categorized as a Generation 4.5 (vice Gen 5 for the F-22 and F-35), due to the lack of stealthy capabilities. Still, if we can't get more F-22 aircraft beyond the 120/180 and they can't reconfigure the F-35 to do it, the Typhoon wouldn't be a bad option.

I agree. I would love to see them joining the US Air Force.

But the problem is the way bureaucracy works, it would take forever to come to a decision to adopt the planes and build the planes in the US. Then it would take a long years to work out the engineering changes and technology transfers; then a competition to see which US company would time to set up the assembly line and years to test the planes before we could put them into full production. We would be looking at a minimum of a decade.

An example of this is in the early 1980s the US was going to produce a European designed short ranged surface to air missile called the Rolland II. By the time we got re-engineering a missile that already worked it cost $1.8 billion dollars and we had only bought a small number of them and never introduced them. If we spent the $1.8 billion buying the missiles and launchers directly we could probably have equipped our Army with a fair portion of the missiles and launchers that we needed.

Any major system that we are buying has to be made in the US for security reasons (in case the foreign producer is invaded or suffers some type of political or economic turmoil that cuts off our supply. Also for economic reasons to provide jobs in America.

[Jaywalker]

I remember the Roland II. Just imagine the hours that went into converting drawings from meters to feet and inches.

[Stephanie B]

I understand the Typhoon is categorized as a Generation 4.5 (vice Gen 5 for the F-22 and F-35), due to the lack of stealthy capabilities. Still, if we can't get more F-22 aircraft beyond the 120/180 and they can't reconfigure the F-35 to do it, the Typhoon wouldn't be a bad option.

The F-18 is still in production. Between Navy and foreign orders, Boeing may make over 100 more and they're looking at increasing the throughput to three a month. The F-15's still in production, too.

[Drang]

In the end, everything I see coming from the pilots flying the F-35 in service, and in exercises like Red Flag, says "this is the airplane I'd want to go to war in". I'd imagine that they know what they're talking about.

Can you comment on reports that all the "F-35s are over-priced worthless hunks o' junk" reports are Russian dezinformatsiya?

[Jaywalker]

The F-18 is still in production. Between Navy and foreign orders, Boeing may make over 100 more and they're looking at increasing the throughput to three a month. The F-15's still in production, too.

You're not wrong - that may well happen. Both are top Fourth Generation fighters, as is the F-16. To be competitive in the Western Alliance, though, I think it would need some very expensive upgrades - stealthiness for the large radar cross section, engines for super cruise, integrated sensor suite, and some more. Also, the F-18 used to suffer with range issues, don't know if they worked that out. Can't condemn it for being 1960s tech when the B-52 is 1940s tech. It's not like we've avoided paying more for a less capable product in the past.

[Ed L]

The F-18 is still in production. Between Navy and foreign orders, Boeing may make over 100 more and they're looking at increasing the throughput to three a month. The F-15's still in production, too.

There is an advanced version of the F-15 called the F-15SE (Silent Eagle) that incorporates some stealth features and carries 4 AIM-120 air to air missiles internally so it lowers its radar profile. It also features more advanced electronics and more capable radar. It can fly faster than an F-35 and out accelerate and outmaneuver an F-35.

http://www.airforce-technology.com/p...-silent-eagle/

There is a point in the future where the Air Force is considering retiring older F-15s and replacing them with F-16s, which are not as capable is some aspects as the F-15: https://www.military.com/daily-news/...mid-2020s.html. The F-15 Silent Eagle would be a better alternative as it is a more capable plane and a proven platform. It is a shame that we don't buy a few hundred of them to handle the shortfall--since the F-22 assembly line is closed and the machinery and workers scattered around so more F-22s is not an option. I would see the money cut from the total number of F-35s to pay for them.

[Stephanie B]

To be competitive in the Western Alliance, though, I think it would need some very expensive upgrades - stealthiness for the large radar cross section, engines for super cruise, integrated sensor suite, and some more.

As far as I know, the F-35 can't supercruise. It also seems that stealth is extremely expensive and high-maintenance. The B-2s have been, essentially, stuck at Whitman AFB because of the maintenance needed. The Chinese have reportedly stopped production of their stealth fighter because of issues surrounding the durability of the stealth coating as well as engine issues.

I'm not sure what stealth is worth. If you turn a radar on, then everybody knows where you are, as well.

[gtae07]

Can you comment on reports that all the "F-35s are over-priced worthless hunks o' junk" reports are Russian dezinformatsiya?

I'll let the pilots speak for themselves:

“There is nothing that I have seen from maneuvering an F-35 in a tactical environment that leads me to assume that there is any other airplane I would rather be in. I feel completely comfortable and confident in taking that airplane into any combat environment,” Lt. Col. Matt Hayden, 56th Fighter Wing, Chief of Safety, Luke AFB, Arizona

"Another more specific highlight would be the first time I fought F-16s. It was impressive to see just how uneven that fight is, in favor of the F-35.” 'Dolby' Hanche, Norwegian AF

"I can tell you that it is by far the best platform I've ever flown in my entire life, and at that you would have to take me on my word."

"In terms of lethality and survivability, the aircraft is absolutely head and shoulders above our legacy fleet of fighters currently fielded. This is an absolutely formidable airplane, and one our adversaries should fear."

"You never knew I was there. You literally would never know I'm there. I flew the F-35 against other fourth-generation platforms and we killed them and they never even saw us."

Brig. General Scott Pleus

"When asked about my first flight in the F-35, I compared it to flying a Hornet (F/A-18), but with a turbo charged engine. I now can quote a USMC F/A-18 Weapons School Graduate after his first flight in the F-35: 'It was like flying a Hornet with four engines!' "

"In the F-35 I can generate a wormhole in the airspace and lead everyone through it. There isn’t another platform around that can do that." UK Tornado Pilot

"I've seen guys in F-18s turn directly in front of me and show me their tails cause they have no idea I’m there."

"Everything they see becomes the F-35 out there," said Flatley. "Every radar hit, every communication is about the stealth jet. They want to illuminate or eliminate a threat they can’t handle."

"People are so hellbent on shooting down the stealth fighter that they invariably make mistakes that I can exploit."

"I think people that say it doesn't have the range are someone that probably looks at a single-engine aircraft and think so it's just an F-16. It ain't an F-16.

I fly on a regular basis two training stories worth of training that I would do in an F-15C model with two external tanks on it. So I would go up go out and do one offensive push where we do basically one offensive strike into the area and out and hey I'm bingo I've got to go home on fuel with the F-15C.

In the F-35 I'll go out and do two of those without any problem and one of the things that we found out in the exercise up in Wisconsin, was after we were done firing our weapons after we were done getting everybody into and out of the combat area, if we wanted to go on to keep fighting at that point they would ask us to stick around because of all the sensors we could provide and the data link we could provide to help the 4th gen aircraft who still had missiles on board. We still had fuel and the sensors to be able to provide that information form.

So it's got legs, it's got really long legs." Lt. Col. Scott “Cap” Gunn USAF

There is an advanced version of the F-15 called the F-15SE (Silent Eagle) that incorporates some stealth features and carries 4 AIM-120 air to air missiles internally so it lowers its radar profile. It also features more advanced electronics and more capable radar. It can fly faster than an F-35 and out accelerate and outmaneuver an F-35.

No, there isn't an advanced version. There's a paper proposal for one. Boeing made a fancy mockup and test-flew a CFT with a missile bay on a standard F-15. That's as far as it went.

This notional version would have a bigger radar, maybe. Perhaps with a neat software trick or two that hadn't yet made it into the APG-81. But you'd still be missing all the stuff that really makes the F-35 what it is--the DAS, the ASQ-239, the integrated jamming, and the sensor fusion that ties it all together. And you'd still be flying a tarted-up old airframe that would stand out like a beacon by comparison, and would actually cost more. And the real kicker is, everyone who's looked at it, chose something else. The only time you ever see it mentioned even semi-seriously is in the context of countries not allowed to buy the F-35.

If it were that easy to dress-up old designs and make them stealthy, everyone would have already done it. But it isn't that easy to do. Sure, you see some RCS reduction tricks on aircraft like F-18E, Rafale, and Typhoon, but those only go so far when you're still dragging external stores into the fight. At best, they buy you a few miles closer to a target--hopefully close enough that you can shoot him first. It's not like what you see on an F-22, for example, where you still struggle to gain a radar lock within visual range. That takes designing it in from day one, because it's not just about adding fancy coatings. It has to be "baked in" to every aspect of the aircraft, down to the production methods you use to get the required tolerances. That's what the US has been spending billions and billions of dollars on all these years. If it was that easy to do--and that easy to defeat with basement-inventor-level electronics or random old cobbled-together Soviet tech--then sustaining that effort from the B-2 program through the F-35 would have been a conspiracy dwarfing the already-outlandish one pushed by moon landing hoaxers. You wouldn't see China and Russia trying to play catch-up, and Japan and India and South Korea trying to roll their own too, if all it took was putting makeup on existing airplanes. You wouldn't see everyone who has a choice between the F-35 and something else choosing the F-35.

Yeah, it would be great to magically have a couple hundred more F-22s. But for every one of them you buy, you could roughly 3 F-35, and you would likely have them all in service before the first new F-22 rolled off the line. I think everyone from Mattis on down is looking at the numbers and seeing that it's a no-brainer.

[TGS]

You wouldn't see China and Russia trying to play catch-up, and Japan and India and South Korea trying to roll their own too, if all it took was putting makeup on existing airplanes.

How does it compare to Russian and Chinese 5th Gen fighters? Let's expand that and say the F-22 and F-35, vs the J-20 and SU-57.