A new US fighter?

[JRB]

By all accounts I've seen, the F-22 is outstanding as a Gen 4+ air to air combat fighter. The problem is, as Bio said, there's only so many of them and there will be no more, ever.

The F-35 tried to be the 'do everything' Glock 19 of air superiority and close air support needs, and ended up being a longslide Glock in .357 Sig. What it does well it does outstandingly well but much more expensively than it should. What it doesn't do well is tangle with other fighters. In Beyond Visual Range (BVR) air to air engagements it's almost cheat-code good thanks to its stealth tech, and same for a hit-and-run ground attack mission.
But it is not a dogfighter and it's not even in the same league as the A10 or AH64E in CAS. It has not nearly enough ordnance or loitering time to really be effective in CAS, and it's not nearly as maneuverable as the F22, F15, or F16.

So, there's definitely a modern Gen 5+ need for the air-to-air superiority mission. It'll be interesting to see what comes out!

[Baldanders]

I'm out of my lane but my understanding is the attempt to apply Agile methodologies, which the article hypes, is a lot of what went wrong with the F-35. It works well with non-critical commercial software but hardware is not the same thing. Also the constant production line fiddling is what led say F-100's, even of the same model and block, to be notoriously non-interchangable in parts creating logistics problems in the 1960's rapid development cycles the article mentions. I could be entirely wrong, again not my lane, but I'm skeptical.

ETA: comparative sci-fi reference to Gerrold see Superiority by Arthur C. Clarke:

http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Cl...periority.html

It's been a while since I read that one, thanks. Too true....

Meanwhile, I think the B52 is due for replacement in the 2050s?

[TGS]

Have we already declared the F-22 and the F-35 to be steaming piles?

I don't think that's the case. We are generally designing the next generation of fighter when we are still in the process of fielding the newest one, sometimes even before the newest one is even in production.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

[Hot Sauce]

Meanwhile, I think the B52 is due for replacement in the 2050s?

In the 90s there was quite a few Dale Brown technothrillers that were based around the idea of a team in the USAF using highly improved B-52s for doing a variety of technothrillery shit to a variety of bad guys.

At the time it seemed like the author was just writing what he knows, having been a B-52 crew member in service, rather writing predictions.

Thirty years later, it looks more and more like the B-52 is gonna be the first aircraft the military flies for 100 years. Who would have known.

[JSGlock34]

The War Zone: The U.S. Air Force Has Secretly Flown A Demonstrator For Its Next-Generation Fighter

[Trigger]

By all accounts I've seen, the F-22 is outstanding as a Gen 4+ air to air combat fighter. The problem is, as Bio said, there's only so many of them and there will be no more, ever.

The F-35 tried to be the 'do everything' Glock 19 of air superiority and close air support needs, and ended up being a longslide Glock in .357 Sig. What it does well it does outstandingly well but much more expensively than it should. What it doesn't do well is tangle with other fighters. In Beyond Visual Range (BVR) air to air engagements it's almost cheat-code good thanks to its stealth tech, and same for a hit-and-run ground attack mission.
But it is not a dogfighter and it's not even in the same league as the A10 or AH64E in CAS. It has not nearly enough ordnance or loitering time to really be effective in CAS, and it's not nearly as maneuverable as the F22, F15, or F16.

So, there's definitely a modern Gen 5+ need for the air-to-air superiority mission. It'll be interesting to see what comes out!

JRB, lots of info in your post. Some I agree with, and some I disagree.

Two things about NGAD I can say. Money will be the enemy. We only bought 187-ish Raptors (down from 750) due to money. The costs were so bad upfront, that we cut the buy to save money up front. Now Gen Roper proposes to change acquisition to shift more money up front to save sustainment costs down the road. I doubt that will fly, as the pentagon in the king of kicking the dollar can down the road and hoping to worry about it later. Never seems to work though.

Two, NGAD is 6th Gen. Designed to fight the scenarios of 2030+. Current 5th gen is great against current threats, but will be losing its edge by then. F-22 and F-35 will not be able to ball-walk through adversaries forever. For that we need NGAD and it’s capabilities. And that is why I’m so worried about the money issue. I’m not sure we can afford the proposed costs. Or if we can, there will be far less purchased than what we want/need.

[trailrunner]

The F-22 was, and still is, a great fighter. But while we developed and built it, we learned a lot about stealth, and how to make a digital airplane. For stealth, we already knew how to employ it and what its capabilities could be, but with the F-22 we learned about how to (or not to) design a reliable and maintainable stealth aircraft. The highly computerized aspects of the plane also contributed to a lot of the reliability problems, but they also demonstrated the tremendous potential for future systems based on modern computers. I am not a cost analyst, but some of my colleagues did the cost studies in the early 2000s. No matter what the numbers said, I thought it was a shame to stop production at 183 aircraft (but nobody asked my opinion).

The F-35 will be a capable system. Many of the lessons learned from the F-22 were corrected in the F-35. Whether or not a joint aircraft makes sense is debatable, but it was probably a requirement to sell it to Congress. Sure, it has had problems, but the complexity of the system is staggering. And sure, it's expensive, but when it has to have every bell and whistle, it's going to drive up the cost. That's the was DoD rolls.

[RevolverRob]

I know we've beaten the F35 horse to death. But my understanding is it was never intended to be a plane meant for fighting peer to near-peer aircraft. It was intended to function in CAS, and fighter/bomber roles employing stealth to give it a performance edge over similar craft and simultaneously make it more successful in its missions of direct action on targets necessary for securing and maintaining the airspace.

It's my understanding that the envisioned goal of the F35 program was to replace the A10, F16, and the F/A18 across all branches. And as far as supplanting the F16/F18 goes it seems to be doing quite well. Supplanting the A10 seems more difficult due to cost issues and ability to loiter to provide CAS. And since it wasn't really meant to be an air-to-air superiority plane - I don't think it's fair to suggest it has been unsuccessful in that role.

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So at this point with ~1/4 of the originally proposed number of F22s in service and the F15 and F16 getting long in the teeth - it makes sense to be thinking about our next air-to-air fighter.

I really hope that what we do here is stick to the plan. Build a plane for eliminating other planes first. And provide air-to-surface capabilities second. Has the lesson been learned about tying to cram everything into a single platform?

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Personally, I'd kind of like to see a modular system. The kind of thing where the central fuselage, instrumentation, fuel, and power units are the same and we adapt the plane for different roles through the application of different wings, tails, noses, and sensor systems. At this point our computers are smart enough that we can even pre-program and refine engine tunes to increase efficiency, but decrease performance to turn what can with the right wings and sensors be an air-to-air plane into a CAS aircraft with the ability to loiter in the battle space carrying enough ordnance to make anyone on P-F weep with joy.

It will still require pilots to be trained in their particular aircraft designation, but it would simplify maintenance and produce cost-share across multiple platforms.

Of course it makes sense so...it'll never happen.

[Hambo]

By all accounts I've seen, the F-22 is outstanding as a Gen 4+ air to air combat fighter. The problem is, as Bio said, there's only so many of them and there will be no more, ever.

Here's a recent article on F-22 squadrons where they're based.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidax.../#7ce2ee7c54fa

[hufnagel]

@RevolverRob The problem with the Lego Plane idea is, we don't know what we don't know in terms of costs to make the blocks be able to fit together. You start screwing with things like wings and frame lengths and can easily mess up needed mounting points/reinforcements in the primary structures, muck up center of gravity, and let's not even forget when PFC Numb Nuts loads the wrong software into the flight computer and it thinks it's Bomber Bob instead of Fighter Frank. While i'm loathe to support our "disposable" culture right now, I think the lessons of the F-35 need to be looked at hard, in that flexibility is nice but modularity can be a killer.

I see this rapid development/low flight time aircraft as the military's version of the disposable appliance. Make it faster, cheaper, and gimme the newest wiz-bang toy as soon as possible. If by purely budgetary numbers it works out, then I guess great. I just hope someone thinks ahead of time about the disposal aspect of it. Do we start selling our prior iterations to our "friends" to recoup some of that expense? Will a full blown aircraft recycling program be put into place? If not I see aircraft graveyards popping up all over the place.