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Does that make the F-35 the comedy option? Cuz it's dark humor at best. Here's how I understand the fixed wing ASW thing. If you have a pretty noisy missile boat coming into range, fixed-wing has the range and speed you need to intercept, nail down and kill it before it launches. That's if you couldn't vector a sub onto it for whatever reason a long time prior. You'd know it was coming and roughly where it was from SOSUS, because of course you're escorting a convoy across the North Atlantic as that's the Navy version of Fulda Gap fantasy. MAD and sonobouys are (I guess) good enough because the boat sounds like a cement truck and it's probably got masts up for targeting which you can find with radar, if the stupid thing doesn't have to surface to fire anyway. Once the Soviet boats with espionage-supplied quieting come online in the mid-80s or so, SOSUS effectiveness drops considerably so this all goes out the window. Then the USSR falls and we have no near-peer adversaries with nuke subs anyway. Diesel boats have a completely different attack profile that helicopters are much more effective at countering. Still, any subhunter plane is going to be roomy, have good endurance, good visibility, good sensor suites, surface strike ability etc, all of which is going to make it a good patrol plane. That's why USN flew them for like ten years after they'd ripped all the ASW stuff out. I'm not sure if you were referring to the P-3 / P-8 stuff, but subhunting is sexier than general maritime patrol to Congress funders and there's definite need for modern shore-based fixed-wing patrol even if the ASW capabilities are mostly nominal. Snowdens Secret fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 09:02
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bewbies posted:I normally wouldn't reply to this but can someone explain to me what the hell this even means
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Jan 25, 2014 10:11
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Snowdens Secret posted:I'm not sure if you were referring to the P-3 / P-8 stuff, but subhunting is sexier than general maritime patrol to Congress funders and there's definite need for modern shore-based fixed-wing patrol even if the ASW capabilities are mostly nominal. One thing that's seriously unsexy and why you'd want your navy and coast guard to have fixed wing assets is Search And Rescue ops. Back when the cruise liner Estonia sank in the nineties, the Finnish coast guard had no fixed wing assets at all, which led to an awful lot of people dying since the helicopters had to do both parts of Search and Rescue by themselves, and what with limited fuel and range issues that helicopters have, that doesn't work out well.
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Jan 25, 2014 10:25
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iyaayas01 posted:
I'm curious about how ejecting from that was supposed to work.
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Jan 25, 2014 12:13
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Flux Wildly posted:I'm curious about how ejecting from that was supposed to work. Comedy option: Back seat ejects first, takes out the radar dish thingy allowing the pilot to eject safely.
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Jan 25, 2014 12:26
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Flux Wildly posted:I'm curious about how ejecting from that was supposed to work. It transforms first so that the dish is out of the way, haven't you watched Macross?
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Jan 25, 2014 12:27
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Ever see an episode of Star Trek where they detach the saucer section?
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Jan 25, 2014 12:27
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Snowdens Secret posted:Ever see an episode of Star Trek where they detach the saucer section? Trap sprung.
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Jan 25, 2014 13:14
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Koesj posted:Because if we're going down the second road, I'd rather stick with factual or mildly interpretative posting about AIRPOWER/Cold War things myself, since I'd run the risk of pulling all kinds of scorn on me for voting a social democratic party in power 2 years ago. Which then promptly bought the F35 destining the Netherlands for a 2 squadron air force, while gutting the other branches.  See! it's on topic. I lean center left on most things as well
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Jan 25, 2014 14:20
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AlexanderCA posted:Which then promptly bought the F35 destining the Netherlands for a 2 squadron air force, while gutting the other branches. As it was ever going to be any different. At least we (probably) haven't got a prince taking bribes from Lockheed this time.
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Jan 25, 2014 14:45
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A couple of days old, but Dassault has been pitching the Rafale to Canada in a pretty aggressive way as a vastly less expensive alternative to the F-35: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/dassault-aviation-ramps-up-cf-18-replacement-pitch-1.2507029 There are also rumblings that elements of the new single-class surface combatant for the RCN will also be based on some of the newer frigates in French service as well, particularly the high use of automation to reduce crew size. Our new oilers are a German design, too. Fearless fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 14:48
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Fearless posted:There are also rumblings that elements of the new single-class surface combatant for the RCN will also be based on some of the newer frigates in French service as well, particularly the high use of automation to reduce crew size. Our new oilers are a German design, too. Not surprising. As a cost saving measure in the 90s, the Liberals closed the naval architecture office, so Canada lost the ability to design new naval vessels.
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Jan 25, 2014 15:56
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Nebakenezzer posted:Not surprising. As a cost saving measure in the 90s, the Liberals closed the naval architecture office, so Canada lost the ability to design new naval vessels. That and the restrictions on American arms exports has forced the RCN to look elsewhere for its needs. The recent FELEX program was affected by that I think.
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Jan 25, 2014 16:36
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iyaayas01 posted:hahahahaha...you seriously can't make this poo poo up. The only good news from this article is that despite the problems, the Marines have flowed about 1200 flights without crashing a single F-35 yet. That's gotta be a marine aviation record! grover fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 16:50
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: "Your jet is overly vulnerable to enemy fire.
: "Good thing we just won't get shot! 
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grover posted:And the reduced observable and sensor fusion technologies makes it far less likely to get hit in the first place. I'd say this is up for debate.
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Jan 25, 2014 16:57
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Koesj posted:I'd say this is up for debate.
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Jan 25, 2014 17:01
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grover posted:If it's even a shadow of what's promised This is not what we should be basing the future of our airpower around.
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Jan 25, 2014 17:24
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Cyrano4747 posted:The RCP-USA is a very real thing. You're probably just not traveling in the right circles to run into them. I don't mean that as any kind of insult - they generally are targeting their activism these days at poor minorities. Last I saw their paper was printed in both Spanish and English by default - one language on each side of the page. You see them occasionally handing out their newspapers on college campuses, although that's not super-common as they're kind of broke. I have no idea what their total N. American membership is, but it's certainly not a totally negligible write-off like 50. I met a bunch of them through a friend who got caught up with them back during the Bush years, when they were pretty active in the protest scene near his campus. Hm, when you put it like that, maybe I did meet one. He was definitely a Marxist, anyway. I first realized how this guy (who we will call Phil) was an actual communist when I noticed he had a shirt on that said "Revolution is no tea party." I thought it was a joke (referencing the Boston Tea Party) but when I mentioned it to Phil he said "No, it's a Mao quote. I see what you mean, though. Very America-centric, but I can see why you would say that." Phil's cubicle was the opposite of mine, so I got to know him a bit. He was a History PhD candidate specializing in Central and South America - particularly Guatemala. We got along alright, simply because I realized early on his worldview was so different than mine that I couldn't really have a conversation with depth with him without somehow saying 'all your beliefs are flawed.' I would occasionally ask him what he thought of this or that, since, of course, even if you disagree you can't really argue about personal opinion. Later after I graduated I just bumped into him in the local campus bar. I had just finished doing an intro economics course, and had for once a substantive question about communism to ask him. Marxists have a class-based view of economics, as when Marxism was being formed, economics used classes as a basic structure of understanding. Around 1900, economics went through a basic shift, as classes were replaced by producers and consumers. (This makes sense, if you consider these generic terms could mean anything from individuals to large firms, so it was a useful innovation still used today.) Anyway, my question to him was "I understand Marxism uses an economic model over a century old. If you were to update this model to the current one, do you think Marxism would change a fair bit?" His answer was "you can have whatever econ model you want, it still wouldn't change the objective truth of Marxist ideology." So, yeah. I think I went on to say "Y'know, if communism was a reaction to capitalism and industrialization, instead of political agitation, you should focus on making technological innovations that would render or current forms of capitalism obsolete. Once you have self-assembling nanobots or some such, Capitalism as we know it is as dead as the Pharaohs." He did not appreciate this line of reasoning
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Jan 25, 2014 17:45
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Koesj posted:When somehow LWF hit the jackpot in producing a good and a great plane at the same time, having the Navy and the Marines adopt the former as a workhorse looks to me as having been a wise decision. The LWF program was not run like previous acquisition programs, which is probably why the result was good planes at good prices. I suspect this is why later acquisition programs were not run like the LWF program.
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Jan 25, 2014 17:56
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Smiling Jack posted:This is not what we should be basing the future of our airpower around. grover fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 18:01
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grover posted:When aircraft take multiple years to develop, that's exactly how it works. F-35 right now in the middle of a planned progression with plausible performance expectations. The marines just didn't want to wait that long to play with their shiny new toy. And can you blame them, when their old toy keeps randomly killing people who play with it? No, when you have two contractors who write their own proposals that's how it works.
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Jan 25, 2014 18:40
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This thread inspired me to read more about this F-35 thing. It is a miracle that we have an airforce at all. Nebakenezzer posted:He did not appreciate this line of reasoning This also made my day.
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Jan 25, 2014 18:47
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grover posted:Well, it's pretty clear the present alpha builts don't represent much of a combat advantage, just because they're not yet mature and full of bugs. The production version 2 years from now, however? If it's even a shadow of what's promised, it's going to be an order of magnitude improvement in situational awareness. In what context? A future F-35 against what F-16, Rafale, or Typhoon variant exactly? Who'd operate the plane and against whom potentially? Might I imagine a future where you chose a tyool 2014 fresh off the factory floor 'legacy' plane, going into the 2030s upgraded to the hilt and supported by various other assets, instead of a F-35 which has not kept up with developments and was relieved of supporting assets just to pay the cost of operating them in sufficient numbers? These might be relevant questions if I'm not the USAF (or even if I am) and have contracted the aerospace version of Herpes™. Yes that's a bit snarky but it all has yet to pan out for the F-35 is what I'm saying.
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Jan 25, 2014 19:15
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Since we were just discussing Maoists, some of you might get a kick out of this thing which popped up in the gamers.txt thread.
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Jan 25, 2014 19:36
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Koesj posted:In what context? A future F-35 against what F-16, Rafale, or Typhoon variant exactly? Who'd operate the plane and against whom potentially? Might I imagine a future where you chose a tyool 2014 fresh off the factory floor 'legacy' plane, going into the 2030s upgraded to the hilt and supported by various other assets, instead of a F-35 which has not kept up with developments and was relieved of supporting assets just to pay the cost of operating them in sufficient numbers? These might be relevant questions if I'm not the USAF (or even if I am) and have contracted the aerospace version of Herpes™. I wish we had a window into China and Russia's aircraft procurement programs; given the speed at which the J-20 was rushed and utter lack of funding available for PAK-FA, I have to wonder if those programs are hosed up so bad they make F-35 managers look competent. grover fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 20:07
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grover posted:Any western nation is going to be continually upgrading their aircraft. Citation needed.
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Jan 25, 2014 20:13
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grover posted:I wish we had a window into China and Russia's aircraft procurement programs; given the speed at which the J-20 was rushed and utter lack of funding available for PAK-FA, I have to wonder if those programs are hosed up so bad they make F-35 managers look competent. I sometimes wish somebody with knowledge could do a Cyranopost on how the Soviet and later Russian aircraft development and procurement works and, more succinctly, doesn't.
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Jan 25, 2014 21:35
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Sjurygg posted:I sometimes wish somebody with knowledge could do a Cyranopost on how the Soviet and later Russian aircraft development and procurement works and, more succinctly, doesn't. Check the Automotive Insantity thread. Don't have a direct link to the posts handy at the moment.
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Jan 25, 2014 21:38
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They're here. To me though, nothing in that list stands out as particularly egregious compared to other countries' programs. VVV maybe they've upgraded to bakelite with '2011', which is supposed to fly any day now Koesj fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 22:02
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Probably turns out the J-20 is mostly made of melamine.
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Jan 25, 2014 22:17
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I want someone to run down a distributor for Russian Air Force cockpit fans. You all want one too, admit it.
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Jan 25, 2014 22:55
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Psion posted:I want someone to run down a distributor for Russian Air Force cockpit fans. You all want one too, admit it. There's rubber bladed fans aplenty on eBay, and at least one vintage soviet one on Etsy.
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Jan 25, 2014 23:54
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Koesj posted:Citation needed. Well as you can see the F-22 Raptor
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Jan 26, 2014 00:42
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I'm going through some of my dad's old army stuff and came across this cool thing. Lots of stuff in here.  
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Jan 26, 2014 03:33
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grover posted:I wish we had a window into China and Russia's aircraft procurement programs; given the speed at which the J-20 was rushed and utter lack of funding available for PAK-FA, I have to wonder if those programs are hosed up so bad they make F-35 managers look competent. Whoever can stuff the most money into Putin's pocket wins.
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Jan 26, 2014 05:29
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I don't know much beyond all the big names in Russian aviation got rolled into one giant state owned company a few years back. How much that changed how business is actually done, I have no idea. Generally though, I am very skeptical of such schemes and the supposed 'efficiency' they promise. Speaking of, sorry if it has been asked before but how does the PAK-FA stack up to other high performance fighters?
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Jan 26, 2014 05:49
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ProfessorCurly posted:I don't know much beyond all the big names in Russian aviation got rolled into one giant state owned company a few years back. How much that changed how business is actually done, I have no idea. Generally though, I am very skeptical of such schemes and the supposed 'efficiency' they promise. Way too early to tell. A SU-35 with a body kit makes it a competent 4+th generation heavy. But we won't know anything much about it's stealth or electronics, which is what you are supposed to be paying for in a 5th generation fighter.
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Jan 26, 2014 05:59
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ProfessorCurly posted:Speaking of, sorry if it has been asked before but how does the PAK-FA stack up to other high performance fighters? It looks pretty awesome, therefore I'm sure it's great. What, you judge by other criteria or something? 
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Jan 26, 2014 07:36
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Psion posted:It looks pretty awesome, therefore I'm sure it's great. Pretty much how I judge fighters too, so hoping Canada does decide to go for the Rafale because it looks pretty cool imo.  (click for mongo) YOU CAN'T PARK THAT HERE
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Jan 26, 2014 07:56
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ProfessorCurly posted:Speaking of, sorry if it has been asked before but how does the PAK-FA stack up to other high performance fighters? It's got some very interesting design features, but honestly past that point we know very little else other then it seems a lot like a Su-27 with better RCS shaping and other modernization. It'll be interesting to see how the cost situation works out since I'm pretty sure it's avionics are a lot more complex then anything they built previously. The thing has 4 radars in it IIRC, the nose AESA supplemented by 2 wing mounted L-Band AESA and one in the tail (is that still a thing?), along with a full IRST module. Another point of interest is apparently India is realizing how hosed up their budget is, which makes their contributions to the program less guaranteed. Also, I'm not sure they ever actually produced its engines yet. It has a lot of potential though, the Su-27 was and is a drat good airplane.
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