U.S. bomber losses were atrocious in WW2 right up until we were able to escort them with long-range fighters like the P-51 and P-47.Originally Posted by RevolverRob
Today we don't have sufficient numbers of aircraft to wage an air war of attrition with a peer enemy.
I disagree with that statement and I'll let it go at that.the necessity of air-to-air capabilities is the fevered dream of a madman.
Last edited by Robinson; 02-16-2018 at 03:55 PM.
That's true, the losses of B-52s in VietNam were significant if we had fought a longer air war over the North. However, Nixon's raid were just to convince the North to let us get out of town with a pseudo-honorable program of withdrawal. They agreed.
We haven't fought a competent anti-aircraft system in many years. Given the number of bombers we have - loss of two on a raid and you are out of usable force in 25 raids.
At the bargain price of roughly $478 for every man, woman, and child in the United States.
Taking a break from social media.
Exactly right. One solution might be to combat code or combat ready more of the F-22s we have. I believe only 120 are combat coded out of round 180 F-22s that we have (at least one or two of the original F-22s were lost or made unrecoverable by accidents and some are test beds).
This worries me, considering how long it took to get the F-35 sort of working and how far behind it is and how it did not live up to its advertised capabilities. I believe the govt lowered some of the performance requirements so that the plane could meet them.
Last edited by Ed L; 02-17-2018 at 01:29 AM.
I disagree with this statement as well. Many potential adversaries, like Iran, have combat aircraft like versions with air-to-air capabilities.
I'm not saying leave planes defenseless for air-to-air, but the necessity of air-to-air capabilities is the fevered dream of a madman.
One pet peeve of mine (and I am not saying Rob is doing it) is people who treat future weapons and new unique unproven weapons, or weapons that can perform in theoretic ways as if they are in existence and capable of meeting all of the theoretic claims.
The Israelis have been going up against increasingly competent ADA systems and notably just lost their first F16 to ADA in a raid in Syria.
Couple of semi-related issues...
The USAF Air Staff at the Pentagon worries excessively about the mix of missions, manning, arming, life-cycle and never expect to get it all right - just close enough to be flexible for various contingencies. I would imagine one argument against the air-to-air cannon, especially the revolving cannon, is the big hole in the nose that would compromise radar stealth. I understand that could be fixed at a cost, but at the expense of some other mission requirements. I do recall one gun at one time that was housed in an internal bay that could be rotated out when needed - I think on that the issue than was drag, in that pre-stealth era.
Aircraft don't always work right, right out the box, and have to be expensively fixed. The early A-10 aircraft cannon were limited to one-second bursts as the gun propellant gas caused the engines to stall, right there at low altitude. I actually issued the contract fix for that, the A-10 Gun Gas Diverter contract. Check, next problem, please, and there were some more. The F-35 will eventually work well, albeit expensively, and with capabilities not every service that buys them will need.
The bureaucracy takes a big hit for delays and costs, but some of that is engineering, configuration control (ensuring we can re-create successes and avoid previous errors), ensuring repair back shops have the equipment and trained workers to repair at the appropriate level.
Using a gun air-to-air, IMO, means somebody screwed up big time, as it wouldn't be my first, second, or third choice action. I doubt that tactics have changed much, but when we're under radar control, even in a big fur ball of a cloud of friends and enemies all over one engagement, the preferred indicator was "Once you take your first defensive action, disengage and let the AWACS (or other) vector another waiting aircraft (pair) into an attack." If not a fur ball but on an attack profile and are jumped, in order to engage effectively we'd have to dump bombs and fuel, resulting in a soft mission kill success for the aggressor. The gun comes in real handy if the RoE requires visual inspection before long range engagement with radar missiles (as over North Viet Nam); so, useful, but not critical. Air Staff is still putting guns on aircraft so I suspect they believe it's useful. Personally, if I had a choice between a gun and two Sidewinder missiles, I'd take the fire-and-forget missiles.
Finally, a comment on bomber losses over North Viet Nam in Operation Linebacker II. Yes, there were losses, but even at the time we B-52 crews knew who the enemy was - it was USAF Strategic Air Command staff in Omaha. They required identical approaches to the target at identical altitudes and identical speeds and identical post target turns into a strong headwind, lengthening the vulnerable time. As North Viet Nam saw similarities they increasingly lined up more SAMs under that route, ignoring day time fighters for the juicier night-time bomber targets. We were tempted to storm Offutt AFB with pitchforks and torches to repay them for hugely avoidable losses. So, yes, bombers took losses, but with luck those SAC staff descendants of General Custer won't be in charge the next time.
Last edited by Jaywalker; 02-17-2018 at 01:24 PM.
You're reading the number wrong. It was the B-2.1 and someone just dropped the decimal point
Yes, it really should have been the B-3 (and the F-35 should have been the F-24 or F-25). But someone wanted to be cute and say "see, it's 21 for 21st century".
Aw, not this crap again.
The test you're referring to--a handling qualities test under scripted conditions--was made out on the interwebz to be the penultimate no-holds-barred fight between the two airplanes. It was nothing like that at all. Specifically, the point of the test was to evaluate flight control laws and responsiveness at high-AOA conditions. The F-16 "opponent" simply served as a visual reference for the test pilot to key off of.
Now, bear in mind that different airplanes "like" to fight differently, based on the advantages of each specific airframe. Expecting airframe A to beat airframe B, when flying with tactics suited for airframe B, is kind of dumb--but that's exactly what this test setup would have done. And in fact, that's what they did, continuing maneuvers even past the point where a pilot trying to win instead of gather test data would break off and try something else. Everyone involved knew that trying to power through a turn at high AOA was going to be a losing tactic, but they did it anyway to gather the flight test data and see if there was anything else they could learn along the way.
A much more realistic test--the no-holds-barred one referenced above--would be to put two pilots of equal skill/experience in the cockpits, in operational airplanes (not bare-bones test aircraft), cleared to the full flight envelope, up against each other. Let the F-16 guy fight to the F-16's strengths, and let the F-35 guy fight to the F-35's strengths. That would be a much more interesting comparison, though the real operational significance is probably still limited. Other things--you know, that boring stuff like tactics, range, sensors, comms, payload, training, detectability, etc.--are a whole lot more important to actual combat effectiveness than just sustained g's.
Too many people see "item A is being replaced by item B" and take that to mean that item B does the same job as item A, the same way item A was designed to do it, only better. The F-16 was designed as a dogfighter par excellence, so obviously any replacement needs to beat the F-16 in dogfighting by the same margin the F-16 beat its predecessor. The A-10 was designed to shoot tanks with a big gun at point-blank range with a fixed gunsight, so obviously anything replacing it should be designed to do the same thing, only with a bigger gun. It's like the old apocryphal quote supposedly from Henry Ford: "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said 'a better horse'"--I think people expected the F-35 to be a souped-up, armored-up F-16 with a 40mm gun. What they got was an airplane designed to do the jobs those airplanes have actually been doing for the past ~30 years, but with a better chance of bringing the pilots home in one piece.
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.
Concurrency is a calculated tradeoff. You incur the cost of having to go back and fix things on early production, but it gains you other advantages.The problems were that the F-35 was put into production before development was completed
For one, it helps get airframes into the hands of users earlier, which is a good thing because (speaking as someone who's been on the inside of an aircraft development program or three) you can do all the testing you want and be as sure as you possibly can that you've tested it--and as soon as your customers get hold of it, they will find new and interesting ways to break it.
For another, you're able to start bringing the production costs down earlier and you don't run into the problem that would come with building a handful of prototypes, then not building anything for years until your testing is "done". With that approach, you basically start at square one when it comes to actually building the airplanes, instead of being fairly used to building them and just needing to roll in some changes.
Perhaps so, but at least it does result in flying airframes. Better that, than three specialized replacement airplanes that don't get built.
"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." - R. A. Heinlein
"Minimal aid" is about all you're going to get out of the Royal Navy these days.
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If we have to march off into the next world, let us walk there on the bodies of our enemies.
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
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