Heh. I had a college professor who worked on the B-2 program. He told us that the radar deflecting paint is so sensitive to moisture that just the humidity in the atmosphere is enough to blister the paint (and degrade the radar-reflecting properties) while the plane is flying thru the air.
What was the solution: better paint? Of course not. They built huge air-conditioned hangers for the damn things. One in Nebraska, and another in Diego Garcia (in the middle of the Indian Ocean). And they need to repaint the bombers frequently. :smack:
I think the general public views the F-22 and the F-35 as total failures. There are lots of people talking about what a total piece of crap it is, and how it loses to all the other main line fighter aircraft in simulated war games. The saving grace may be, as the military claims, that the classified features of the aircraft are not involved in the simulations and those are real game changers. Plus, it’s just a fugly airplane compared to the newer Russian planes.
Do you know of a better paint that they could have used??
Engineering is all about compromises and trade-offs. If the application requires a certain level of performance (e.g. radar cross-section), it’s very possible that the only solution is to keep the aircraft in an air-conditioned hanger and repaint it every few months. Or, perhaps there are longer-lasting paint available, but they’re even more expensive than the cost of repainting & air-conditioned hangers.
I recall a couple of years ago that the German Air Force was quite successful ‘shooting down’ F-35s in exercises in Alaska.
I wouldn’t call the F-35 a ‘piece of crap’. I’d say that it’s not a great enough advancement in fighter technology to justify its expense.
In a way, it reminds me of the Cessna 172. The 172 doesn’t do anything particularly well, but it does everything well enough. A Cessna 182 is faster, flies higher, carries a greater load, and is more comfortable; but it cost(s) a lot more than a Skyhawk and is more expensive to operate. That’s why they built more 172s than any other airplane, ever. But the F-35 is way more expensive than other fighters, and trying to make it do everything exceptionally well forces compromises in each area and raises the price to astronomic levels. It’s so expensive, I wonder if the various branches of the military will want to put it into harm’s way.
How is that possible? There are no operational F-35 squadrons. Even today, it doesn’t have the necessary software for air combat missions. I have no clue how the F-35 would have been involved in such an exercise a couple years ago, at which point the F-35 probably hadn’t even tested its full flight envelope.
Maybe you’re thinking of the occasional story about an F-22 being “shot down” in a Red Flag-like training exercise with other countries. That happens every once in a while, showing that the F-22 isn’t invincible, just that it can best any fighter like 9 times out of ten.
The newer F16 like those sold to Israel or IAE are actually more advanced than what the US has,the F16 I and F-16 E/F. The production line is open. Buy new planes from there and upgrade with superior avionics as needed.
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hear a lot of totally uninformed people who say something like this and it is easily dismissed for simple ignorance. But you are extremely well informed on aerospace matters, so a higher standard applies: that statement is total and complete BS.
There is no UAV in the works that is anywhere near as capable as an F-35. I’m not talking about just in the next ten years; I’m saying that there is no UAV in any stage of development that is even as capable as a fourth generation fighter or strike aircraft.
I’m dying to know what, specifically, you are thinking of. UCLASS? That program could well be cancelled, and it is more or less a stealthy Predator that can fly off a carrier. Doesn’t even have a radar on it. Both the Air Force and Navy are starting to look at 6th generation fighters, which could be unmanned, but probably won’t be, and in any case won’t likely be fielded for another 20 plus years. I can’t think of a single other program out there that you could even claim pertains to your statement in the least.
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If I would hazard a guess, it means that UAVs offer a cheaper and economical alternative in the type of air support that is actually likely to be needed in the next few years, which is precision strikes against non state actors. And that any nation likely to field forces which can challenge the US even locally, is either already a nuclear power (making conventional warfare moot) or is an ally or economic partner.
And yet, the Israelis decided to buy F-35s because Iran’s air defenses are becoming too great a challenge for fourth generation fighters. Yet, you’re suggesting that the Israelis are wrong to buy F-35s, and that the U.S. should NOT do what the Israelis are doing. Boy, that’s confusing.
Sure, Predators are fine in areas where an enemy literally has no air defenses. But they are useless anywhere else. And I don’t agree that a war against China, North Korea, or perhaps some day Iran would automatically be a nuclear war.
Ref the snippet above, one way to ensure a war with a major power *does *go nuclear is for us to build force structure that’s only good against insurgencies. When our choices are reduced to 1) Special forces & low intensity conflict, 2) Nuke 'em, or 3) Lose the war, well #2 tends to happen after #1 proves insufficient.
It is true that there is no single UAV that can perform all of the functions of the ‘multi-role’ F-35, but there are a number of different UCAV programs, including UCLASS, nEUROn, Taranis, and various Russian and Chinese developments which are being developed to reflect the needs of future air combat operations. It is true that they may not be able to dogfight head to head with a F-35 or other fifth generation fighter, but that isn’t a deficiency; it’s a reflection of the changing nature of air combat, where low observability, loiter time, and overall range are more critical than raw speed, maneuverability, and payload mass. The paradigm of air superiority–where you come in, beat the opponent’s air capability down, move your airbase or carrier group into striking range, and start pounding the hell out of your enemy–is a last century’s strategy and makes about as much sense as going over the top of the trench and charging the enemy. The ability levy ‘precision strikes’ (still somewhat of a misnomer but we can at least be assured of sending a UCAV or ballistically delivered MaRV to a target area with a circular error probable measured in spare meters) remotely and with much less cost than scrambling B-2s out of Diego, and the ability to surveil using long duration loitering UAVs or tactical quick response satellites versus overflights with SR-71 or U2-R represents the future of air combat and air capability. Nobody is going to voluntarily engage in direct air combat with a nearly half-billion dollar aircraft like the Black Sheep Squadron out on patrol knocking down Jap Zeros.
Ok, so you mention UCLASS (most of which offerings are optimized for fleet protection ISR rather than penetrating strike, and will be a close call on whether it gets cancelled or goes forward with a modest number of demonstrator aircraft), nEUROn (which is just a tech demo), and Taranis (which is also a demonstrator that could move into production in 15 years).
So, in a mini-wall of text, primarily on strategy rather than defending your original claim, I take this as an acknowledgement that you were wrong in your statement that UCAVs will surpass F-35 within the next decade. Thanks.
I still have no idea how you get to the idea that UCLASS – for which the Navy requirements state that it should be able to deliver just 1,000 pounds of ordnance in a “lightly contested environment”, and will probably have no inflight refueling capability – is superior to F-35 in anything but endurance and ISR sensors. It’s just nonsense.
If I started telling people that a Minotaur is more capable than a Falcon 9, you’d call me out on it. If I then started posting about responsive launch and whatnot, that would not be a defense of an obviously incorrect statement… whether or not I cared to admit an error.
