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There's inefficiencies in redundancies and there are also inefficiencies in having incredibly gigantic organizations with multiple missions, and that's before you factor in that these incredibly giant organizations are the military and will between statute and centuries old traditions be slow to adapt the organization as a whole to the needs of any one part. In this thread we're talking about how the Air Force doesn't take close air support, one of their major missions, with sufficient seriousness. Imagine then how the army, an even bigger and slower organization with even more institutional inertia, would value of of the air force's lesser missions. Much of what is hosed up, slow and stupid about the U.S. military branches ties in to how overwhelmingly huge they are, so consolidation does not seem like a viable solution. Unless of course the problem isn't inefficiency, cost, or mission failure but instead "lol the navys army has helicoptors and the army has an air force lol" in which case, sure, let's spend more money and make our military even stupider to "solve" that. For fucks sake the army put their guys in blue/grey during wartime (in part because so few of their people currently are actually needing to hide) and the navy just put their guys in ocean-colored camouflage (in part because so few of their guys are at actual risk of falling off a boat) - are these organizations you want to make even bigger and dumber, or more removed as a whole from their core missions? Best Friends fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Jan 3, 2015 |
# ? Jan 3, 2015 22:24 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:59 |
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Rand alPaul posted:Also I thought I read about some sort of return to propeller based air support. Yeah, there's kind of a recent shift back to propeller aircraft for drug interdiction and light attack roles. They fly slower and have longer loiter times, they're much cheaper to purchase and have much much lower operating costs. A F-15 costs $30k per flying hour, a F-22 costs $44k per flying hour, a Super Tucano costs $430-500 per flying hour. Unit cost of a F-15K in 2006 was $100 million, a Super Tucano in 2014 is $15 million. Even $15m is an absurd markup because the product is aimed at the military market - there's maybe $1-2m worth of aircraft there tops. Even the US is looking to procure some, which is frankly a much better idea than the F-35 for the kinds of missions we've been doing. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Jan 3, 2015 |
# ? Jan 3, 2015 22:43 |
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Best Friends posted:There's inefficiencies in redundancies and there are also inefficiencies in having incredibly gigantic organizations with multiple missions, and that's before you factor in that these incredibly giant organizations are the military and will between statute and centuries old traditions be slow to adapt the organization as a whole to the needs of any one part. In this thread we're talking about how the Air Force doesn't take close air support, one of their major missions, with sufficient seriousness. Imagine then how the army, an even bigger and slower organization with even more institutional inertia, would value of of the air force's lesser missions. They're all part of the Pentagon already so I'm not sure that the size of the bureaucracy would grow.
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# ? Jan 3, 2015 22:46 |
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The pentagon, in general, is not what makes the army or any other branch stupid. The opposite, maybe. Stepping back into the arguments of this thread, how are we supposed to square the idea that the air force is too big and dumb and unfocused on close air support with the idea that we should roll the air force into the army and that the army will then care about the air force's missions? The air force's lack of focus on close air support - that's not bureaucratic, it's cultural. Suborning missions to organizations that are not culturally aligned to those missions is not going to solve any problems and will create new ones. Best Friends fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jan 3, 2015 |
# ? Jan 3, 2015 22:59 |
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crabcakes66 posted:Then create a specialized division in the army for exactly this purpose instead of an entire branch? The Air Force? Pretty much all countries have the Air Force as its own branch, separate from army aviation and naval aviation.
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# ? Jan 3, 2015 23:12 |
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Paul MaudDib posted:Even the US is looking to procure some, which is frankly a much better idea than the F-35 for the kinds of missions we've been doing.
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# ? Jan 3, 2015 23:14 |
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Maybe for drug interdiction, but a Super Tucano is incredibly vulnerable to pretty much anything that shoots back. Good luck using an AK to take down an aircraft crusing at 20,000 feet AGL. SEAD is a totally different role and no, this aircraft wouldn't be used for that. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jan 3, 2015 |
# ? Jan 3, 2015 23:20 |
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Paul MaudDib posted:Good luck using an AK to take down an aircraft crusing at 20,000 feet AGL. The benefit of an airframe like the Tucano is the ability to be low and slow. Which is great for spotting coca fields and chasing drug boats, and is less than great in an environment when everyone and his grandma has a ZU-23-2 and a truckload of MANPADs. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jan 3, 2015 |
# ? Jan 3, 2015 23:30 |
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Rent-A-Cop posted:From 20,000' AGL a Reaper does everything the Tucano can do cheaper, and actual strike fighters do it faster and bigger. Strike, interdiction and CAS are different roles. Its faster than an Osprey and all the helicopters that will be hanging around at the same low level providing support to troops. It is a little slower than the A-10.
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# ? Jan 3, 2015 23:55 |
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Maybe for drug interdiction, but a Super Tucano is incredibly vulnerable to pretty much anything that shoots back. One of the major pro's of a turbo-prop is they burn significantly less fuel then a jet. This means significantly less heat then a jet. Also jets have the exhaust pointing out the back of the aircraft making it fairly easy to get an infrared lock from a manpad. The A-29's exhaust is on the upper-left forward of the cockpit. It would be hard to get a lock on the exhaust if you have line of sight. You would have no luck if the exhaust is blocked by the body of the aircraft. True, it can only operate in air supremacy environments but same with the A-10. Rent-A-Cop posted:From 20,000' AGL a Reaper does everything the Tucano can do cheaper, and actual strike fighters do it faster and bigger. Agreed. However the A-29 requires a dirt road and fuel to get into the air. You could have them operate out of a FOB if you needed too. Or land a C-130/C-27 loaded to the gills with ammo and fuel and reload and refuel fairly close to combatants. You know all that silly stuff that the Harrier was supposed to do for the Marines but can't because VTOL is stupid and operating a jet from dirt means that you are going to have FOD damage.
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# ? Jan 3, 2015 23:58 |
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hobbesmaster posted:Strike, interdiction and CAS are different roles. karthun posted:Agreed. However the A-29 requires a dirt road and fuel to get into the air. You could have them operate out of a FOB if you needed too. Or land a C-130/C-27 loaded to the gills with ammo and fuel and reload and refuel fairly close to combatants. You know all that silly stuff that the Harrier was supposed to do for the Marines but can't because VTOL is stupid and operating a jet from dirt means that you are going to have FOD damage.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 00:04 |
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I would love to see literally anyone in this thread substantiate the assertion that the Air Force does not care about or gives insufficient attention to CAS, which as been getting tossed around like it was conventional wisdom. Also, karthun posted:One of the major pro's of a turbo-prop is they burn significantly less fuel then a jet. This means significantly less heat then a jet. Also jets have the exhaust pointing out the back of the aircraft making it fairly easy to get an infrared lock from a manpad. The A-29's exhaust is on the upper-left forward of the cockpit. It would be hard to get a lock on the exhaust if you have line of sight. You would have no luck if the exhaust is blocked by the body of the aircraft.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 03:53 |
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Dead Reckoning posted:I would love to see literally anyone in this thread substantiate the assertion that the Air Force does not care about or gives insufficient attention to CAS, which as been getting tossed around like it was conventional wisdom. That impression comes from articles like this one and Senators saying similar things.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 04:03 |
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Mm yes the Air force needs another airframe with a brand new supply chain,maintenance pipeline for a turboprop we don't need just so people can jerk off to CAS somemore.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 04:09 |
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Greataval posted:Mm yes the Air force needs another airframe with a brand new supply chain,maintenance pipeline for a turboprop we don't need just so people can jerk off to CAS somemore. I'm sure the USAF can ask loving Alaska Airlines to maintain their planes if they can't figure out a PT6A. Or you know, just steal some from the 100s of T-6As they have.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 04:18 |
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hobbesmaster posted:That impression comes from articles like this one that article posted:And the idea that the A-10 is not survivable is laughable, given the aircraft’s original task of killing Soviet tanks; the Warthogs would have faced a plethora of Warsaw Pact anti-aircraft gun and missile systems in performing its role. ...w-what? Yeah, the A-10 is marginally more survivable than a mud hen if it takes a hit from some AAA, but they were expected to die in droves if the Soviets ever decided to take a road trip through the Fulda Gap (iirc loss projections were that there would be no functioning A-10s left after two weeks). A-10s weren't even able to operate at low altitude near Iraqi Republican Guard units during Desert Storm. How anyone can claim that A-10s are super duper survivable in a world where things like Tugnuska/Pantsir/S-300/S-400 exist is just baffling to me. I never thought the day would come when I'd sit down and go, "you know, Grover actually wasn't all that bad", but it's here. It's happening. What have I become? soMenbdoy help mee
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 04:34 |
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IIRC the thing with A-10s was that they are comparibly cheap, and comparably quickly manufactured, and thus easier to replace. I do not know how much training time an A-10 pilot needs, but I would assume that flying a CAS-Fighter effecivly takes less training time then flying a high tech multirole fighter, meaning that A-10 pilots are also more replacable. Things that do their job well and are replacable have a lot of things going for them in massive warfare.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 04:43 |
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Mightypeon posted:IIRC the thing with A-10s was that they are comparibly cheap, and comparably quickly manufactured, and thus easier to replace. I do not know how much training time an A-10 pilot needs, but I would assume that flying a CAS-Fighter effecivly takes less training time then flying a high tech multirole fighter, meaning that A-10 pilots are also more replacable. Uh, precision flying at low altitude is hard and takes years of training.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 04:53 |
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Panzeh posted:The marines should have been disbanded in 1948 and instead infantry brigades should have been kept light enough to go, so we didn't need to make a parallel military structure. also the rest of the Military Industrial Congressional Complex, for peace on Earth
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 04:57 |
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Mightypeon posted:I do not know how much training time an A-10 pilot needs, but I would assume that flying a CAS-Fighter effecivly takes less training time then flying a high tech multirole fighter, meaning that A-10 pilots are also more replacable. The F-35 is a piece of overpriced shlocky garbage but this is just the dumbest thing I think I've ever read in one of these MIC threads holy poo poo.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 05:11 |
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Just buy 'em a copy of DCS A-10!
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 05:29 |
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Mr. Showtime posted:...w-what? Yeah, the A-10 is marginally more survivable than a mud hen if it takes a hit from some AAA, but they were expected to die in droves if the Soviets ever decided to take a road trip through the Fulda Gap (iirc loss projections were that there would be no functioning A-10s left after two weeks). This is probably the single biggest thing most of the A-10s fan don't understand, even just a little bit. In GW1, once we started losing some to Strela-10s, they weren't even allowed low enough to use the gun anymore. Afghanistan and dudes with AKs does not qualify a competent opponent, and as much love as basically everyone on loving Earth has for the A-10, its not more valuable an asset then the hundreds of F-16s or such likely to get cut in their place, simply because those F-16s can actually do other things when the time comes.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 05:38 |
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hobbesmaster posted:That impression comes from articles like this one and Senators saying similar things. Here's the basic facts: the current Chief of Staff of the Air Force is a former A-10 pilot. He has as much reason to be fond of the plane as anyone, but he still thinks its worth considering if its time has come. A poo poo-ton of Air Force acquisitions programs in the last ten years have been either new CAS weapons (SDB, Viper Strike, Griffin, AC-130J, Dragon Spear, Reaper, Laser JDAM) or upgrades to existing platforms in order to better support operations in Afghanistan. The systems the A-10 was designed to defeat (ZSU-23-4, SA-7) are outdated by even former Warsaw Pact client state standards. The A-10 was unable to operate at low altitude in Kosovo due to enemy air defenses, and the A-10C upgrade the author mentions included wiring the plane for JDAMs, which should tell you what the Air Force thinks the most likely use of them in the future is. The one valid point the author makes is that A-10s are very good at CAS because it is the only mission they train for. There isn't any reason the AF can't maintain CAS-focused squadrons in the future. John McCain thinks the A-10 is the finest CAS platform in the history of mankind and it just so happens that a lot of them are based at Davis Monthan, in the State he represents in Congress. Quelle surprise. Note that he doesn't actually cite any unique capabilities, just says that some troops he talked to said they liked them. Even if it's true that grunts like the A-10 the most, they also like dip tobacco, pornography, and energy drinks, none of which are important acquisition priorities despite the infantry's fondness for them.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 05:39 |
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Dead Reckoning posted:I would love to see literally anyone in this thread substantiate the assertion that the Air Force does not care about or gives insufficient attention to CAS, which as been getting tossed around like it was conventional wisdom. You are right about the dual exhaust and I can't find anything about the lower IR signature other then Wikipedia, and Embrair's and SNC's marketing information. Take it or leave it. Dead Reckoning posted:That first article is a mess of unsupported accusations and uncited claims. If the author is going to claim that the Air Force is hostile towards the A-10 or the CAS mission, you'd think he could source at least one quote from a senior AF leader in the last thirty years to that effect. Agreed.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 06:00 |
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hobbesmaster posted:I'm sure the USAF can ask loving Alaska Airlines to maintain their planes if they can't figure out a PT6A. That's not what he's talking about. It's not about figuring how to maintain it, it's about spending the money to develop TOs, tools, and trained maintainers, also money to develop our depot back-end, also money to build up a stockpile of spare parts. That poo poo isn't cheap and we have a finite amount of money. Also our T-6s are completely contractor maintained. So if you want to procure yet another weapons system that we refuse to develop a blue-suit mx capacity for and instead just pay out the rear end for contractors to maintain in a combat zone, then knock yourself out...but speaking as someone with knowledge of how that's been working out, it's pretty loving inefficient over the long run. No matter how you slice it adding additional weapons systems to the fleet costs more than just the cost of the physical iron. Dead Reckoning posted:That first article is a mess of unsupported accusations and uncited claims. If the author is going to claim that the Air Force is hostile towards the A-10 or the CAS mission, you'd think he could source at least one quote from a senior AF leader in the last thirty years to that effect. Also if we're going to get into doctrinal discussion I'll just toss out the oldie but goodie that all of the rest of the USAF's missions don't matter if we don't have air There are reasons to bitch about the F-35 as an acquisitions program, particularly in some of the details of how it has been executed (stuff that is well above the heads of 95% of the posters in this thread because it's arcane acquisitions minutiae that no one seriously cares about). There are reasons to academically bitch about the F-35 as a concept, although that train has obviously left the station in reality (lol -B model STOVL). But this "A-10 vs F-35" debate is loving retarded and completely misses the point of how things are in the real world.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 10:31 |
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karthun posted:The F-16 and F/A-18 are perfect examples of cheap and design-by-committee. Unlike the F-35 however it was made very clear that these planes would not be everything to everybody. It was very clear that these aircraft were going to be the low of the high/low mix. No one in the Bush nor Obama administration was willing to stand up and make that clear. But you could write entire papers on the of post-cold war civil-military relationship So they chose two.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 11:39 |
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Mightypeon posted:IIRC the thing with A-10s was that they are comparibly cheap, and comparably quickly manufactured, and thus easier to replace. I do not know how much training time an A-10 pilot needs, but I would assume that flying a CAS-Fighter effecivly takes less training time then flying a high tech multirole fighter, meaning that A-10 pilots are also more replacable. Cheap planes are simple planes. Simple planes are not simple to use, because all the complexity of flight has to be handled by the pilots directly, instead of being handled by the avionics. On a modern fighter plane, the pilot does not control directly the ailerons, elevons, canards, rudders, spoilers, spoilerons, stabilators, decelerons, air brakes, and whatever other moving surface there might be. That's all handled by the flight computer. Pilot merely tells the plane to pitch up or roll left and the computer will handle all the moving parts accordingly. The A-10 isn't fly-by-wire, though. It's the difference between playing QWOP and playing a normal game. QWOP was a game that was cheap and simple to program, so obviously it's easier to train someone to play QWOP proficiently than it is to train someone to play the latest Modern Warfare, right? Modern Warfare is so much more expensive to develop, and it has so many more features... (I'd really like to see QWOP's take on the "Pay respect" scene.) For all its flaws, the F-35 will be a simpler, easier plane to fly than the A-10. That's not in question. blowfish posted:So they chose two. One for the Air Force, and one for the Navy. Navy planes have much stronger physical requirements because they need to take off and land from aircraft carriers. Although carriers are mightily impressive to see, and the largest military ships, they're still tiny compared to an air base on the ground. The aircraft doesn't have enough runway to accelerate to take off speed "normally", so instead it's accelerate to that speed by a catapult. The entire plane is yanked by its front landing gear and flinged out of the ship. An F-16 landing gear wouldn't resist. When landing, the deck is too short to let you lower softly and progressively, so you're basically crashing on the deck in a controlled manner, slamming the plane on the ship like a brute. Then you catch the arresting wire, and the plane is decelerated brutally by the tailhook. The structural strength required to make a plane that can handle such punishment means more weight, and less internal room. So it's natural that Air Forces don't like to use a Navy plane directly. So you get different planes altogether, or different variants of the same plane. The F-35A and F-35C are different beasts. Cat Mattress fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Jan 4, 2015 |
# ? Jan 4, 2015 11:49 |
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Screw the Super Tucano, such a dainty little aircraft is not suitable for needs. Time to bring back the A-1 Skyraider
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 12:07 |
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Cat Mattress posted:Cheap planes are simple planes. Simple planes are not simple to use, because all the complexity of flight has to be handled by the pilots directly, instead of being handled by the avionics. On a modern fighter plane, the pilot does not control directly the ailerons, elevons, canards, rudders, spoilers, spoilerons, stabilators, decelerons, air brakes, and whatever other moving surface there might be. That's all handled by the flight computer. Pilot merely tells the plane to pitch up or roll left and the computer will handle all the moving parts accordingly. The A-10 isn't fly-by-wire, though. Thanks, that why I wrote "I dont know but". I come from an Artilery background, I served on a PZH2000, and actually had a Feldwebel who first served on a Soviet system, then in the M109GA3 and then on the PZH2000. As far as he was concerned, PZH2000 was easier on the back then the M109GA3 because you didnt have to manually load the artillery rounds, intellectually it was seen as more challenging because a PZH2000 could compute/do things that, in earlier systems, lay with what used to be CnC or firetargetting (stuff usually at the platoon or company level), and we were supposed to utilize this. It was different for us because we had to operate on the assumption that "everything that can go wrong will go wrong", while the PZH2000 does a lot of stuff automatically, or with a robot assisting you, we still trained as if some "l33t super hackers" hacked into everything and nothing is working as intended. Do F-35 pilots actually train on the assumption that all of their high tech gizmos work all the time? Or do they simply not fly off in the first place if something is not working? I would expect that an F-35 pilot is very much trained to fly without a flight computer, wether he can do it or not is another question.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 14:19 |
I'm pretty sure that modern fighter jets are fundamentally unflyable without computer assistance.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 14:25 |
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Mightypeon posted:Do F-35 pilots actually train on the assumption that all of their high tech gizmos work all the time? Or do they simply not fly off in the first place if something is not working? I would expect that an F-35 pilot is very much trained to fly without a flight computer, wether he can do it or not is another question. Many modern jets (most likely including the F-35) will literally fall out of the sky without computers. Cat Mattress posted:One for the Air Force, and one for the Navy. I meant two from works, cheap, has all features Ironically, the F-35C has much bigger wings than the F-35A. Is that because it is heavy enough to not work at all with F-35A wings or will that make it more maneuverable etc.?
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 14:30 |
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blowfish posted:
Large lift areas make it easier to land and take off at low speeds, generally.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 15:21 |
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mlmp08 posted:Large lift areas make it easier to land and take off at low speeds, generally. It's worth noting that bigger wings != more maneuverable (by whatever metrics) in all flight regimes, both because the increased weight can place limits on the number of Gs the aircraft can safely pull and because aircraft fly thanks to voodoo magic, which means wing loading doesn't actually dictate everything about sustained/instantaneous turn rate etc.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 15:59 |
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Mr. Showtime posted:It's worth noting that bigger wings != more maneuverable (by whatever metrics) in all flight regimes, both because the increased weight can place limits on the number of Gs the aircraft can safely pull and because aircraft fly thanks to voodoo magic, which means wing loading doesn't actually dictate everything about sustained/instantaneous turn rate etc. OK. Is this just a random note, or do you think that's what I was trying to say?
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 16:04 |
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mlmp08 posted:OK. Is this just a random note, or do you think that's what I was trying to say? It's just there because a lot of people think that bigger wings = lower wing loading = more maneuverable, no matter what -- I know you know better than that, haha, and I know it's not what you were trying to say. e: think of it like bear spray to help ward off Sprey before he inevitably comes out of the woodwork and that video gets posted
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 16:18 |
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Mr. Showtime posted:It's just there because a lot of people think that bigger wings = lower wing loading = more maneuverable, no matter what -- I know you know better than that, haha, and I know it's not what you were trying to say. Make the A-10 carrier capable :iamafag:
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 16:53 |
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iyaayas01 posted:That's not what he's talking about. It's not about figuring how to maintain it, it's about spending the money to develop TOs, tools, and trained maintainers, also money to develop our depot back-end, also money to build up a stockpile of spare parts. That poo poo isn't cheap and we have a finite amount of money. Are the USAF's other PT6A/B/C powered aircraft also contractor maintained? Its a very common engine and already used in a lot of US military aircraft.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 16:58 |
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hobbesmaster posted:Its a very common engine and already used in a lot of US military aircraft. Is it, though? T-6s were already addressed, and aside from military craft made from the King Air, I'm not sure what else they are in, US military-wise. The T-6 fleet is a lot larger than the King Air fleet.
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 17:27 |
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Disinterested posted:I'm pretty sure that modern fighter jets are fundamentally unflyable without computer assistance. The Gripen is normally aerodynamically unstable and unflyable without the fly-by-wire computer system (like most fighters since the F-16), but as a safety measure at least the prototypes (and possibly some production version as well, not sure) had a backup flight mode which set the canards to a fixed angle that made the entire thing stable again with the stick and pedals mapped directly to the control surfaces, albeit with heavy flight envelope constraints. So at least in theory, in case the flight control system failed you could at least theoretically land the aircraft without computer assistance. That's just the flight control system though, there's a bunch of other computers (such as one controlling the engine for example) that the aircraft won't fly without. It depends on what you mean by "computer assistance". TheFluff fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Jan 4, 2015 |
# ? Jan 4, 2015 18:08 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:59 |
TheFluff posted:The Gripen is normally aerodynamically unstable and unflyable without the fly-by-wire computer system (like most fighters since the F-16), but as a safety measure at least the prototypes (and possibly some production version as well, not sure) had a backup flight mode which set the canards to a fixed angle that made the entire thing stable again with the stick and pedals mapped directly to the control surfaces, albeit with heavy flight envelope constraints. So at least in theory, in case the flight control system failed you could at least theoretically land the aircraft without computer assistance. Yeah. I guess at this point trying to claim what you're going to do when the 'machines are gonna fail' is a fairly inapplicable argument to most of modern warfare that doesn't involve an infantryman and his rifle. And even then...
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# ? Jan 4, 2015 18:23 |