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F-35 - Another News Article - NO politics Please !


Tiger331

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Harrier was developed from an 'off the drawing board' proof of concept. Stanley Hooker was working on the Pegasus when Sidney Camm called and said, 'we've built the airframe, where's that engine?' . The F-16, good as it is, was a money saving exercise. F-14, F-15, F-18* Raptor, Tornado, Typhoon, Rafale, A-10, Flanker family, MiG 29 and 31 all have 2.

*A major reason the USN took the YF-17 over the YF-16 was the fact it had 2 engines, which was considered desirable for over water operations.

Which is the best combination?

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I am not sure anyone is saying that single engined aircraft are polar bear droppings.

I think a few are saying over the sea or over enermy territory they would rather have two engines.

If the RN had got the VTOL aircraft they wanted it would have been the HS1154, it had two engines.

Some of us just prefer a little somthing in reserve.

Nigel

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The problem is that features of the "we'd rather" kind will almost always result in increases in size, complexity and cost. The F-35 is built to US requirements which will include Key Performance Requirements (KPRs) for reliability, availability and maintainability. You can bet the farm that the USN was focused very closely on these aspects in particular due to the nature of carrier operations. If the single-engined F-35 proposal had not looked capable of meeting those requirements, it would never have made it past the Preliminary or Critical Design Review stages.

If people are concerned about the cost of the programme as it stands, imaging the additional cost of an extra engine for every airframe, plus all those spares, plus the extra fuel needed to feed 2 engines...and then there's the extra size of the airframe to consider to carry all the extra weight. Every aircraft design is a compromise but It's funny that people bemoan the cost of the programme but the solution must meet the KPRs for the programme...and it seems the F-35 is doing precisely that.

To address some of Bentwaters' comments, most of the aircraft identified in the list at post #251 are at least 40-year-old designs. Engine technology was nowhere near as good as it is today, and I'm pretty sure the Flanker, Foxhound and Fulcrum don't have FADEC anywhere close to what we have in the West (if they have it at all). The F-14, F/A-18 etc needed 2 engines to get the required levels of performance and reliability levied at that time based on what technology could deliver. The F-35 can deliver its required levels of reliability and performance using a single engine...if it couldn't, the USN wouldn't accept the aircraft as the operational impact is simply to great.

Edited by mhaselden
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So much of the criticism surrounding this program is based on falsehoods and misinformation, which completely obscures the reality of the program and the real areas of issues. Its disheartening to see.

I think this highlights an interesting difficulty with managing these classified projects. You don't want the enemy finding out too much, so what better way to mislead them than by encouraging a load of uninformed gossip. On the other hand, that same uninformed gossip leaves your own electorate equally misled. The correct defence decision will then invariably look wrong to most of us onlookers. The convenient political decision (heavily influenced by what is trending in the gossip machine) is reversed often enough to show how arbitrary and therefore almost certainly wrong such decisions often are. Only those defence people "in the know" can tell us whether we have got it right, and they all signed the Official Secrets Act.

I guess the real art of the game is to find a fairy tale which both misleads the enemy and impresses our chatterati.

Cue more of our somewhat uninformed but interesting nonetheless gossip...

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If the RN had got the VTOL aircraft they wanted it would have been the HS1154, it had two engines.

Well, it's what they thought they wanted, or thought they might have a snowball's chance of extracting from an unwilling government, fifty years ago in the light of the technology then prevailing. The world, not least engine technology, has moved on a little since then - as post 247 shows.

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If you are referring to Pierre Sprey, he had nothing to do with designing either aircraft. The man has never designed an aircraft in his life. He was a defence analyst hired by MacNamara back in the 60s.

The man gets bad press from being proved conclusively wrong about every weapons system he has spent his career slaging in the press. F-15, M1 and the Bradley IFV to name a few. The JSF is only the latest thing Sprey has been called a fool over.

And the guy who designed it and the A-10 gets a bad press because he dislikes the F-35. I do find that remarkable. You can't deny the guy must know something about aircraft after all.

Edited by rustywelder
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If you are referring to Pierre Sprey, he had nothing to do with designing either aircraft. The man has never designed an aircraft in his life. He was a defence analyst hired by MacNamara back in the 60s.

The man gets bad press from being proved conclusively wrong about every weapons system he has spent his career slaging in the press. F-15, M1 and the Bradley IFV to name a few. The JSF is only the latest thing Sprey has been called a fool over.

That explains a lot!

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Well, the F-16 is still in production (for foreign customers) after three decades, so that alone would suggest a successful design.

If the current Iraqi order are the last new build F-16s then it will have been in continuous production for 44 years.

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I think that Sprey must be given a lot of credit for one thing in particular: he has managed to convince the Internet world that he's done so much more that he's actually ever done in his whole life. Considering the number of times he's been interviewed I'd say he's also making more money today than he ever did as a low level analyst at Grumman first (where he worked on market analysis) and at DoD later...

Now as already said the man has never designed anything ! He's only been part of a team that is credited with the development of a number of ideas from which the F-16 story started. The fact that the F-16 is probably the most succesful fighter of the last 30 years would at least give some credit to the man, however we should not forget that the F-16 we know today is very different from the fighter that Sprey and the others wanted.

Sprey has said plenty of times in his many interviews that he believes that the perfect fighter is a light weight design with high manuverability and limited or even no electronics, a fighter capable of winning a dogfight with guns and IR missiles. Every other bit of equipment is in opinion useless. Now 40 years after the LWF idea came out we can say that while putting manouverability back in the priorities was not a bad idea (and was a lesson from the Vietnam war), the idea of a force of light and cheap aircrafts with no electronics is not only wrong but totally risible as such a fleet would be easily slaughtered by opponents flying superior machines in the same way as actually happened over the skies of the Middle East during these 40 years. There's IMHO little point to discuss all the many others claims by this person as they've all been debunked before.

The mention of Sprey and his internet success brings us to the F-16 and the view of this aircraft as a cheap counterpart to the F-15. It's undeniable that the LWF program that led to the F-16 was looking at cheaper aircrafts and certainly the USAF adopted the F-16 as part of a hi-low mix where this type covered the low part. We should not forget however that the F-16 was introduced to perform a different mission compared to the Eagle, while the latter was to provide air superiority the Falcon was a "tactical fighter", a type capable of dropping bombs as well as carrying missiles. The success of the F-16 has been in this mission and while the type has indeed been used to fight other aircrafts and has shot down a few, it's alwyas been the job of other types to clear the skies of opponents. Part (a large part) of the success of the F-16 is also due to the large number of updates incorporated into the original design that have totally transformed this aircraft from a lightweight day fighter-bomber into an a sophisticated all weather machine capable of using pretty much every type of guided weapon.

The use of a single engine rather than 2 on the F-16 clearly made it a cheaper aircraft but in return limited certain performances. Not that this mattered as in the end the design did the job very well. It should also be said that while a number of F-16s have been lost for engine problems (particularly in the early days when the F100 experienced some teething problems), the use of a single engine does not seem to have affected the performance of this type in combat.

Edited by Giorgio N
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I just read in local news that USA consider making a F16 V variant, to operate to 2045.

The F-16V is a proposal born from a Taiwanese request for an updated variant capable of dealing with the most advanced threats. A prototype has been flown and at the moment it's mainly aimed at the export market but the USAF is said to be interested in updating a number of their aircrafts along similar lines. It's not meant as a possible alternative to the F-35 at all, just as a way to keep the many F-16s around the world as capable as possible.

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From Lockheed Martin's website:

The Lockheed Martin F-16V configuration provides relevant combat capabilities in a scalable and affordable package. The core of the F-16V configuration is an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, a modern commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)-based avionics subsystem, a large-format, high-resolution display; and a high-volume, high-speed data bus. Operational capabilities are enhanced through:

  • A Link-16 Theater Data Link
  • The Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod
  • Advanced Weapons
  • Precision GPS navigation and
  • Auto Ground Collision Avoidance System
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But does it NEED to be a dogfighter when it has a sensor package that can detect threat beyond visual range and armaments that can deal with those threats at the same distance?

Are we expecting it to fight the Battle of Britain or to deal with a modern-day aerial battlefield?

And when the sensor package goes belly up and/or it runs out of missiles? What happens when 2 F-35s with 8 BVR missiles between them are confronted by (say) 15 enemy pilots with a distinctly bad attitude? It is one of the oldest axioms in military circles that even the most carefully laid plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy. Reliance on beyond visual range combat and lack of a plan B could be just as lethal as a Sidewinder up the tailpipe. If you are not prepared to equip and train pilots for ALL the eventualities they are likely to face in combat then you might as well sign their death warrants.

Allan

Allan

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And when the sensor package goes belly up and/or it runs out of missiles? What happens when 2 F-35s with 8 BVR missiles between them are confronted by (say) 15 enemy pilots with a distinctly bad attitude? It is one of the oldest axioms in military circles that even the most carefully laid plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy. Reliance on beyond visual range combat and lack of a plan B could be just as lethal as a Sidewinder up the tailpipe. If you are not prepared to equip and train pilots for ALL the eventualities they are likely to face in combat then you might as well sign their death warrants.

Allan

Allan

And what happens to 2 Typhoons or any other super-maneuverable type in a 2 vs. 15 situation? The 2 lob a few missiles and then retreat as there's no way 2 fighters of any type will accept a fight in such condition.

The advantage of the F-35 is that thanks to the sensors fusion the pilots will be more likely to know about the 15 enemies and will not get caught by surprise.

Come on, that plans may have to be changed is fair enough, but let's be realistic... What if the enemy has some psychic energy weapon then? Oh no, we have to keep this into account, drop the F-35 and develop some new plan...

Last but not least, for the next few years the numbers are not really in favor of many enemies, at least for the USAF. It's much more likely that 2 Su-27 may find 15 F-35 engaging them...

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And when the sensor package goes belly up and/or it runs out of missiles? What happens when 2 F-35s with 8 BVR missiles between them are confronted by (say) 15 enemy pilots with a distinctly bad attitude? It is one of the oldest axioms in military circles that even the most carefully laid plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy. Reliance on beyond visual range combat and lack of a plan B could be just as lethal as a Sidewinder up the tailpipe. If you are not prepared to equip and train pilots for ALL the eventualities they are likely to face in combat then you might as well sign their death warrants.

Allan

Allan

Then they do what any sensible pilot would do and run the hell away! If your sensor package fails or you can't deploy ordenance, thats the end of the mission, go home, get it repaired or get another aircraft.

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And when the sensor package goes belly up and/or it runs out of missiles? What happens when 2 F-35s with 8 BVR missiles between them are confronted by (say) 15 enemy pilots with a distinctly bad attitude? It is one of the oldest axioms in military circles that even the most carefully laid plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy. Reliance on beyond visual range combat and lack of a plan B could be just as lethal as a Sidewinder up the tailpipe. If you are not prepared to equip and train pilots for ALL the eventualities they are likely to face in combat then you might as well sign their death warrants.

As others have noted, losing a sensor package on any aircraft is a mission fail. If an F-15 loses its radar, then it will return to base. If we're talking about a 2-ship CAP, then typically both will return as a single aircraft on a CAP is impractical (CAPs are usually racetrack orbits and require at least one aircraft with weapons and radar pointing towards the enemy).

Mission role and weapons load are also important. I think it highly unlikely that we'd use just 2xF-35s as defensive CAPs while carrying all ordnance internally (ie in "stealth mode"). A far more likely scenario is that F-35s could be operating alongside F-22s, F-15s and Typhoons, with the stealth assets looking for undetected shooting opportunities while the non-stealth assets present a "don't mess with us, we're here" message to the adversary. Even if we had just F-35s providing a CAP, it's likely there'd be a mix of missile fits depending on threat and mission role. If we're talking about F-35s being used for penetration missions to attack ground-based targets, any interception by 15 enemy fighters is going to get ugly, as it would for any other ground attack platform.

We can come up with any number of scenarios where 2xF-35s won't cut it, the problem you cite being just one of them...but, then again, 2x(Pick Any Fighter) would also likely do badly in that scenario. Bear in mind that if the threat is assessed that 15 enemy fighters will try to swamp a smaller number of Allied aircraft, you can guarantee that the force mix and size of the package will change. We don't go to war risking defeat. Having 2xF-35s operating on their own is an extremely unlikely scenario. Far more likely is that they'll be part of a much larger force package, as described in the preceding paragraph.

Edited by mhaselden
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