Quicksand Fans

From CDR Sal's

Once again, he - and Capt. Hendrix nails it right in the X-ring. Strike? Who needs that, Super Bugs with no legs and the e11eventy!!! F-35 variants will rule all...

Yeah
The asswipe who thought killing the Toms and not designing a proper A-6 replacement (or even funding the goddamned A-6F/G) needs fired out of a cannon into Dis's suburbs.

But hey, its all good, its all Littorals (LCS? Fracking spare me, utter piece of shit) and the ChiComs I'm SURE are all rainbows, skittles and unicorns.

With any luck at all I wont live to see a repeat of the Battle of Midway, with our side as the Japanese....

When you try to combine the mpg of a smart car with the off road capability of a truck and the cargo capacity of a minivan but the cornering ability of a Corvette you end up with an ungodly conglomeration of parts that doesn't do anything well.......which is the F-35 in a nutshell. I can't believe that piece of shit is replacing the A-10..... ....Me thinks we're going to either figure out a way to launch F-22's off a carrier or the F-15's and F-18's will be in service a lot longer then planned.
China.......ain't scared. China attempting to harm the US would be like Walmart employees shooting their customers.....seems like a good business plan till nobody's buying your shit and your food supply is cut by 25%.....
Drones.....from my layman's perspective they seem like a hell of a good deal. Cheap, expendable, and they keep the most expensive and hard to replace component on the ground where it can't be damaged.

Replacing the Hog is something blue-sky oxygen types have been trying to do since the aircraft entered service. Something unclean about it offends their sensibilities. Never mind it's far more capable than ANYTHING else at CAS. Maybe the Army will take them over, which would really boot them in the teeth

And drones have uses.
But air/air isn't one of them, outside of bad movies

kham wrote:Replacing the Hog is something blue-sky oxygen types have been trying to do since the aircraft entered service. Something unclean about it offends their sensibilities. Never mind it's far more capable than ANYTHING else at CAS. Maybe the Army will take them over, which would really boot them in the teeth

And drones have uses.
But air/air isn't one of them, outside of bad movies

Anyone remember the "A-16"? You'd think we'd have learned the "one plane to do it all" lesson from the McNamara Follies of the '60s.

kham wrote:But air/air isn't one of them, outside of bad movies

I think we just haven't seen one designed for air/air yet. If you could get it to work I think you'd have a huge tactical advantage from a performance perspective. Imagine a fighter with performance limitations were based on what the airframe could tolerate instead of what a human could tolerate......15G turn? Sure no prob.....

DangerGirl wrote: You'd think we'd have learned the "one plane to do it all" lesson from the McNamara Follies of the '60s.

Remember the F-111?

Mynock wrote:

kham wrote:But air/air isn't one of them, outside of bad movies

I think we just haven't seen one designed for air/air yet. If you could get it to work I think you'd have a huge tactical advantage from a performance perspective. Imagine a fighter with performance limitations were based on what the airframe could tolerate instead of what a human could tolerate......15G turn? Sure no prob.....

You dont need to. Thats what dogfight missiles are for. Or feeding you a slammer from BVR, which with the limited FOV on monitors, you may not spot == boom, crispy fried UAV. AND, not that they havent tried some tests, but the short answer is you cant play astro quest in ACM from a secret base in Nevada a thousand miles away with REAL fighters. You get your ass handed to you.

Duncan Edwards wrote:

DangerGirl wrote: You'd think we'd have learned the "one plane to do it all" lesson from the McNamara Follies of the '60s.

Remember the F-111?

That's exactly the example I was thinking of. The F-111 turned out to be a sublime bomber for the Air Force once the kinks were worked out, but the F-111B was never the plane the Navy wanted or needed. The Air Force's adoption and adaptation of the Navy F-4 and A-7 worked out better, but neither of those planes was an attempt at joint development from the ground up, either. The desire to shoehorn three different services' requirements into the common F-35 airframe was a doomed effort from the start. And now the DoD is, not for the first time, in the position where they've spent too much already to admit they were wrong.