grover posted:

The Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy center at Dulles loving KICKS rear end, btw.

Mobius1B7R posted:

Is it easy to get to there from the actual airport? I was thinking of actually taking advantage of my flight benefits and taking a day trip up there to see it.

Mobius1B7R posted:

Is it easy to get to there from the actual airport? I was thinking of actually taking advantage of my flight benefits and taking a day trip up there to see it.

grover posted:

A little of both. F-15E Strike Eagles are still in production, so we know what they cost- pretty much what a Eurofighter, F-35, F-22 or any other capable modern fighter costs. Modern fighter aircraft are simply extremely expensive. Stealth is a lot of the cost difference between the F-15 and F-22; the precision and techniques necessary to reduce the RCS are much more expensive than simple sheet metal and rivets. But the survivability stealth brings gives an exponential return on investment vs old technology. The F-15SE Silent Eagle is more expensive than a normal F-15, and really isn't very stealthy at all. Vectored thrust and the new RADAR add costs, too.

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/dae/articles/communiques/FighterCostFinalJuly06.pdf



Not to get all D&D on the Sustainable Defense Task Force report, but it was "bipartisan" as it was sponsored by Ron Paul and Barney Frank, both of whom want to make HUGE defense spending cuts, cuts most of the rest of congress are rational enough to know are asinine. So it's no wonder they're recommending deep cuts. I have to wonder why they want to cancel the F-35 and replace it with less capable aircraft that cost more money? Unless they want to go back and buy P-51 Mustangs at about $1M a pop. Cheap! Rather worthless as fighters on the modern battlefield, but we can afford a whole slew of them!

Godholio posted:

But if I had the cash I'd totally pay $1M for a P-51.

jandrese posted:

Was that $1M 1945 dollars though?

FYI: $1,000,000.00 in 1945 had the same buying power as $12,131,966.29 in 2010[1].

[1] http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm

grover posted:

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/dae/articles/communiques/FighterCostFinalJuly06.pdf

Not to get all D&D on the Sustainable Defense Task Force report, but it was "bipartisan" as it was sponsored by Ron Paul and Barney Frank, both of whom want to make HUGE defense spending cuts, cuts most of the rest of congress are rational enough to know are asinine. So it's no wonder they're recommending deep cuts.

Nebakenezzer posted:

Yeah, I posted it just because I found it interesting that congressional types took to the same ideas the thread did. I think you are overreacting a bit to report's findings, though. I know your feelings about the F-35, but it's not like one of the bullet points was "ELIMINATE THE NAVY." They want to cut a trillion dollars out of the defense budget not because they hate freedom but because the USA's largest expenditure is defense, and you guys spend 50% more on defense now then in 1986. And that's a date after Regan's big military spending increase, and the opponent was the USSR and the Warsaw pact. So if you are interested in reducing government spending in any way, the logical place to start is defense.

Godholio posted:

Absolute dollars is a pretty lovely way to compare spending now vs decades ago. I'm not sure if you're doing that, or including the cost incurred by two active wars.

Godholio posted:

Absolute dollars is a pretty lovely way to compare spending now vs decades ago. I'm not sure if you're doing that, or including the cost incurred by two active wars.

jandrese posted:

That's less than a quarter of the cost of a Predator drone!

quote:

the Predator RQ-1 is made in San Diego, California, by General Atomics, with a unit price tag of $ 4.5 million.

grover posted:

Using absolute dollars, or even inflation-adjusted dollars can be misleading; % of GDP is much more meaningful as it reflects that our nation is far wealthier now than in years past. By % GDP, Obama is spending more on defense than Clinton, yet less than virtually any other time since before the Korean war, and doing so while actively fighting two wars.

jandrese posted:

$1 million is a bit less than a quarter of $4.5 million last time I checked.

grover posted:

Using absolute dollars, or even inflation-adjusted dollars can be misleading; % of GDP is much more meaningful as it reflects that our nation is far wealthier now than in years past. By % GDP, Obama is spending more on defense than Clinton, yet less than virtually any other time since before the Korean war, and doing so while actively fighting two wars.

SyHopeful posted:

And the fact that it's lower by GDP makes exactly what difference? Do you think military spending should always be proportional to GDP?

SyHopeful posted:

And the fact that it's lower by GDP makes exactly what difference? Do you think military spending should always be proportional to GDP?

ApathyGifted posted:

Of course I don't have an argument as to why you should plot is as percent of tax revenue instead of GDP. Probably because we run in a deficit so often that the percentages of other poo poo + military would be greater than 100. So you could probably go by absolute government expenditures, I suppose.

Dwight Eisenhower posted:

Putting a stake in the ground regarding decisions about defense spending, and then saying "Not to get all D&D but" is intellectually dishonest. This thread should stick to posting pictures of neat aircraft and cool aircraft facts and etc.

If you wanna get on a soapbox about defense budgets from any position, there are other subforums for that kind of discussion. In those subforums, the inevitable contention such discussions bring will not be derailing a thread focused on entirely different subject matter.

Dwight Eisenhower posted:

If you wanna get on a soapbox about defense budgets from any position, there are other subforums for that kind of discussion. In those subforums, the inevitable contention such discussions bring will not be derailing a thread focused on entirely different subject matter.

Sterndotstern posted:

2ndclasscitizen posted:

It's certainly a thing of beauty, but my first thought was:

Sterndotstern posted:

Sometimes the "flying" part of flying boat was discarded, as the Italians built with little regard to airworthyness:

Sterndotstern posted:

Aside: speaking of Hughes, he certainly had an eye for aesthetics:

H-1 Racer, an almost unbelievably pretty airplane.

azflyboy posted:

As for the "leased" engine? Hughes never paid Pratt and Whitney for the engine, nor did he bother returning it to the US government, and to this day it's still fitted to the H-1, which has been on display in the Smithsonian since 1975.

ursa_minor posted:

My dad was good friends with this airplane's builder and pilot. Sadly he crashed it in a state park after an engine failure, and in an effort to miss - i poo poo you not - a family of campers, he stalled it out at the last minute, rolled it in and was killed. The airplane burned to the ground.

82Daion posted:

Eh?

Unless you're talking about the replica that was built much, much later and which crashed in Yellowstone...

ApathyGifted posted:

It's just a better gauge on how much we're spending than absolute dollars is all. If I told you that I paid 7,000 a month in rent, you'd think I don't know poo poo about budgeting my money. But if I then turned around and said I make 3 million a year, you might go so far as to think I'm a miser when I could afford a much better apartment than that.

Of course I don't have an argument as to why you should plot is as percent of tax revenue instead of GDP. Probably because we run in a deficit so often that the percentages of other poo poo + military would be greater than 100. So you could probably go by absolute government expenditures, I suppose.

SyHopeful posted:

I just found it intellectually dishonest that Grover seemed to be asserting that the military hasn't been getting loved lately when according to his own graph we're spending more than ever since WW2, independent of GDP.

Anyway, not going to derail this thread. Somebody do a writeup about the NK-12.

Minto Took posted:

grover, did you go posting in LF?

grover posted:

I see your high performance air races, and raise you an X-29:

quote:

See, LF would probably have actually made it funny.

Minto Took posted:

I always thought the X-29 was cool as hell. Would the airframe have any military value?

FullMetalJacket posted:

grover, you're wrong.

forward swept wing designs have better higher angle of attack behavior then straight or rearward swept wings, and also are more maneuverable. There are drawbacks although, like increased flight loads and needing a computer to help the pilot fly the drat thing in the first place but you can say the same of all modern fighters.

grover posted:

Well, now that the derail has devolved into namecalling, sounds like the perfect segue into massive soviet turboprops! They were first built in, what, 1947? And are STILL the post powerful turboprop ever built? Over twice as powerful as the MV-22 Osprey's engines and about 3x more powerful than C-130's.



That said, there are more powerful gas turbines than this, and the F-35's engine does, technically couple power power into the liftfan shaft than the NK-12 is capable of outputting, but the F-35B's P&W F-135 isn't considered a turboprop.