I'm sure as a Viper driver that your take on this is around ten thousand times more valuable than mine. I know what little I know because I'm a student and enthusiast of military aviation, but there's only so much you can find in the public domain on the specifics like this, and the public domain of course is rife with fantastically flawed info and BS.Originally Posted by Triggerf16
So if you've got anything more you can share about the F35 or F22, I'd absolutely love to hear it.
JRB, thanks. Here is some info from a few older posts of mine that apply to this discussion:
The common discussion when I left the headquarters was the threat environment could be broadly divided into three levels: permissive, contested, and highly contested. Permissive allowed air operations with very little opposition, and our air assets could operate as desired. Contested meant considerable enemy action to prevent/contest our conduct of air operations. 4th generation aircraft could operate and conduct missions, but they would be resisted by a potentially robust 3rd/4th generation enemy Air Force and IADS. We would have to fight for air superiority and air dominance. A highly contested environment represents a peer/near-peer threat with a large modern Air Force and a robust highly integrated modern IADS with the latest sensors, data links and weapons. 4th generation aircraft cannot survive in this arena, and even 5th gen aircraft are challenged to survive and employ. The goal is to knock back a highly contested environment to a lower level, allowing us to bring more of our legacy resources and capabilities to bear. We do not have enough 5th gen capability to sustain a highly contested battle over time, but if we can knock the enemy back to a contested environment, then we are much better positioned to prevail. Kick in the door, knock back the IADS, defeat them in detail.
The A-10 cannot survive long in even a contested environment. But the hope is we will not have to do CAS in a contested threat arena for long, that we will be able to knock it back to permissive, if only in certain parts of the AO. High-threat CAS is a very difficult task, requiring lot of moving parts to work correctly. The more we can push the threat back, the better we can support the ground commander.
More words later. Gotta run.
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master"
Gents, I’ve gotta say air warfare has changed and continues to change. Trying to fight the last years’ or the last decades CAS is not going to work well. Same with strategic attack, suppression of enemy air defenses, offensive counter air, defensive counter air and more.
The A-10 is really good at CAS in a permissive environment. But that is not what we should plan for. Friendlies on the ground looking up and seeing CAS fighters is not normal, and should not be expected. Modern MANPADS are too good and too widespread, and CAS fighters and FACs that Get into their envelope will get shot. We need to work towards attacking CAS and interdiction targets further than the Pilot eyeball can see them. That means an advanced sensor suite, and datalink. We need weapons that are smart, agile, accurate, variable effects and flexible. Oh and cheap.
Furthermore, the F-35 has a lot more gas and endurance than you think it does. It carries 2.5 times the internal fuel of and F-16. A lot of the go to war payload of and F16/F15E/F18 is carried externally, and down not jettison. So please, when comparing apples to apples, configure them equally. A clean F16 with no external stores turns great, but cannot go to war dressed like a Thunderbird. It goes to war with two wing tanks, four wing missiles, two wing bomb racks with bombs, plus ECM pod, plus Sniper and HTS pods. ALL OF THAT the F35 carries internally. A clean go to war F35 CAN out turn a go to war configured F16. That big motor in the F35 helps a bunch, plus 40 years of aero development.
There is a lot on the F35 I wish I could change, but it is a great war fighting machine. Period. Clubbin baby seals.
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master"
^^^^This is why I love P-F so hard. Where else can you get this stuff?
"The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so."
― Ennius
Nowhere else that I've ever found.
Thank you @Triggerf16, for all of that. Most of the publicly available details about the F35 tries to spin everything as negatively as they can, as to complain about the cost. I should have known better to count the apples myself before comparing them!
As a stupid Army pogue, I've got a fondness for the A10 that largely transcends logic. I should be more self-aware about such things.
One of the big problems with Lego products is you have to test all of the feasible Lego combinations or you get a bad surprise. And the Legos all get tweaked to pass one stupid combination that gets used only 0.15% of the time. It ends up increasing cost and decreasing performance. It is better and less expensive to design multiple aircraft, each with a given mission.
Wasn't the F-14 supposed to be an all services, do all fighter jet originally?
"You win 100% of the fights you avoid. If you're not there when it happens, you don't lose." - William Aprill
"I've owned a guitar for 31 years and that sure hasn't made me a musician, let alone an expert. It's made me a guy who owns a guitar."- BBI
No, that was the F-111 family. The F-14 came about when the naval versions flopped.
Sort of. The Navy wanted a long loiter, long range missile armed, fleet defense fighter to shoot down Soviet bombers before they could get in cruise missile range of a carrier group; the Air Force wanted a high speed penetration bomber for dropping tactical nukes. McNamara forced them to do a joint project with the F-111 supposed to do both jobs. He even overrode the design selected by the services and forced selection of the General Dynamics design. The program hit problems all the way through but especially on the naval variant. Then Grumman, who General Dynamics had subcontracted for assistance with the naval variant, stabbed General Dynamics in the back and proposed their own similar but different design. That was the F-14. Of course the F-14 inherited the flawed engines from the naval F-111 program which gave the F-14 some nasty issues for the first few years of its life....
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