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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
942 posts |
Apr-30-16, 11:02 PM (EDT) |
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"F-22 Raptor: The Re-Raptoring"
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From the latest issue of Air Force Magazine, about the latest defense authorization bill:The House Armed Services Committee’s tactical air and land forces panel’s version of the Fiscal 2017 defense authorization bill calls on the Air Force to assess the cost of resuming F-22 production. The mark language, released Tuesday, directs the Secretary of the Air Force to study the cost of procuring another 194 F-22s to meet the 381 aircraft the Air Force originally said it required and report the findings to the congressional defense committees no later than Jan. 1, 2017. Now that's very interesting, isn't it? More thoughts here at The Diplomat from Robert Farley. Money quote: Its outstanding quality notwithstanding, the F-22 is an old airframe, and a redesigned “F-22B” capable of integrating the latest in electronics and avionics would incur a substantial up-front cost. While focusing on the F-22 at the expense of the F-35 sounds appealing, restarting the line would draw resources away from other Air Force priorities and would do nothing whatsoever to solve the fighter problems faced by the Navy or the Marine Corps. I think this has to be considered Congress aiming a shot across the Pentagon's bow with regard to the F-35; an implicit threat that they're very seriously considering killing the program in its entirety and simply ordering a big whack of F-22s to replace it, even though the F-22 really can't do the jobs the F-35 is (nominally) supposed to be capable of doing. But if the F-35 can't do them either, well, we might as well have more of the best fighter in the world instead. Of the numerous problems here... man, where to begin. While this might be great for the Air Force and merely "meh" for the Army, it sort of leaves the Navy and the Marines in a bit of a spot. The Navy can maybe stick with the Super Hornet... if Boeing's promises are accurate. Which is key. The latest upgrade package from Boeing reduces the aircraft’s radar signature by an order of magnitude, rendering the F/A-18 a “low-observable” aircraft according to Boeing. Other upgrades in the program should keep the Super Hornet viable for the next 10 to 15 years for all roles except deep-penetration strikes into heavily defended airspace. But, again, this depends a little on how much you trust Boeing. The Marines may have to live without jump-jet capability for a while. If any part of the F-35 program continues to get funding, actual concentrated development of the Marines’ STOVL version of the F-35 might be the best bang for the excessive bucks. And it would be excessive bucks. We're talking about ungodly amounts of money either way, whether we continue to throw cash at the F-35 until it becomes workable, or if we restart the F-22 line. The best way to square that circle might be to produce an export version of the F-22, which could recoup a fair amount of the costs of a line restart. That's not just a little bit illegal at the moment, something that could be changed at-will by a SecDef or President; it's super major crazy illegal, as a result of a twenty-year-old law. Congress would need to act. The problem with changing that, however, is the fact that the entire reason we're not willing to sell the F-22 abroad the first place is, to be blunt about it, Israel. Israel has a long and proud history of buying stuff from us and then passing the technology on to Russia and China in exchange for goodies. But politically speaking, you cannot say out loud "We're gonna sell this stuff to Japan, and Australia, and South Korea, but not to Israel." Well, I can say that. But I'm not a Senator. Bit of a digression. The point is, we might be headed for a sea change in the long-fucked-up world of high-end fighter procurement. To an extent, the question is a bit academic; we're not really gonna be fighting a peer competitor anytime soon. (Or at least I hope not.) But to an extent it isn't; the F-22 has already been called on to replace the now-retired F-117 in strike roles (which is another thing the F-35 was supposed to do it has failed at) and a line restart might include the possibility of dedicated F-22 variants as sort of a side-step around needing to develop whole new airframes. Or we might not. Hard to say. The military-industrial complex is an inscrutable beast. -Merc Keep Rat |
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Verbena
Charter Member
1107 posts |
May-01-16, 12:28 PM (EDT) |
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2. "RE: F-22 Raptor: The Re-Raptoring"
In response to message #0
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Well! I confess to not being any kind of expert on the subject, but I do find it interesting, and I've known a couple military aircraft mechanics in my time. Really, this is the story of the F-35, not the F-22, and a sad and pathetic story it is. They really thought it'd be everything to everybody, and there's some high end Air Force people with a hell of a lot of egg on their faces, throwing good money after bad for the sake of pride. I'm encouraged by Congress telling the military to get their heads out of their asses, though the F-22 won't solve the whole problem, true. I'm still a proponent of the Right Plane For The Right Job camp, where we could have the F-22 for stand-off missile capability (isn't that more a function of the missile, after all? Does it really matter which jet fires it if it's outside enemy airspace? The F-22 has air superiority so it can defend itself) and maybe a modern reimagining of the A-10 for the air support role. Trying to roll those two completely disparate elements into one has been like watching a train wreck. I can't look away, just wince in pain. ------ Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her |
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
942 posts |
May-01-16, 02:12 PM (EDT) |
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4. "RE: F-22 Raptor: The Re-Raptoring"
In response to message #2
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>Really, this is the story of the F-35, not the F-22, and a sad and >pathetic story it is. They really thought it'd be everything to >everybody, and there's some high end Air Force people with a hell of a >lot of egg on their faces, throwing good money after bad for the sake >of pride. Well, to a certain extent (a very limited certain extent) this isn't the Air Force's fault. At the time the fifth-generation airframes were being developed, and this is going back a few decades now, Congress looked at the costs associated with modern airplane development, and that made even them blanch a little. They said "okay. You guys get TWO new airframes. Two." One of those was always going to be a strategic air superiority fighter, because the Air Force was then and to a large degree still is run by fighter jocks. That meant they only had one more airframe with which to do everything. That's not as crazy as it sounds, because it isn't like the fourth-generation fighters were going anywhere. But it did mean they had to try and make a dedicated multiplatform fighter. Not insane; it's been done before. The Joint Strike Fighter Program initially began as the merger of a whole bunch of disparate programs under one umbrella. The basic idea was sound; develop an airframe with a certain degree of modularity that can function in many different roles. It doesn't have to be F-22 good at all of them, as long as it is pretty good at all of them. There were, theoretically, enormous cost savings to be realized. This is the point where the F-35 goes off the rails, because this is where the colossal design and execution fuckups begin. But that's a whole other story. >I'm still a proponent of the Right Plane For The Right Job camp, where >we could have the F-22 for stand-off missile capability (isn't that >more a function of the missile, after all? Does it really matter which >jet fires it if it's outside enemy airspace? The F-22 has air >superiority so it can defend itself) and maybe a modern reimagining of >the A-10 for the air support role. The A-10 style gunship is probably completely obsolete against anything remotely resembling conventional armed forces. "Close air support" in the classic A-1/A-10 "roll in on my smoke" mode is simply not viable anymore given the proliferation and capabilities of tactical SAMs. The only reason the A-10 still has relevance is because we've been fighting counterinsurgencies against guys in caves with AK's for whom a technical represents heavy armor. The A-10 is amazing against those guys. The future of CAS is drone-delivered missiles, not gunships. Barring something that massively changes the equation for what happens when a SAM with 1980s technology in it locks onto a big, slow, non-stealthy target. -Merc Keep Rat |
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
942 posts |
May-02-16, 10:36 AM (EDT) |
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7. "RE: F-22 Raptor: The Re-Raptoring"
In response to message #6
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>The future of combat aircraft is (probably) drones and/or >missiles. But try telling the fighter jocks that. Hell, that future is to a large degree already here. That cannon on the F-22? Useless. It can fire for precisely four seconds before running dry, and the F-22 isn't a dogfighter because it doesn't need to be one. The F-22 is only a little bit better in a dogfight than the high-end fourth-gen fighters; an experienced hand in, say, a Typhoon can take one. But leaving aside the fact that no fighter can be good at everything, the exercises where this has happened have involved the F-22s being not allowed to engage until the big'ol targets they saw coming from forever away were right on top of them. In the hypothetical case of an F-22b design, I would seriously advocate ditching the cannon entirely. But people really think a fighter needs a gun, so... -Merc Keep Rat |
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Nova Floresca
Member since Sep-13-13
567 posts |
May-02-16, 11:21 AM (EDT) |
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8. "RE: F-22 Raptor: The Re-Raptoring"
In response to message #7
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>In the hypothetical case of an F-22b design, I would seriously >advocate ditching the cannon entirely. But people really think a >fighter needs a gun, so... Well, bear in mind, the last time we said "guns are redundant, just get rid of them", it came back to bite the USAF over Vietnam, and if there's one thing the military is good at, it's "once bitten, twice shy"- I fully expect the only reason they would remove the gun from a fighter at this point is to replace it with a bigger, better gun. On the upside, the whole system (M61 gun + ammo) weighs less than 200kg on a 29-ton airframe, so it's not like it's a massive drag on performance. "This is probably a stupid question, but . . ." |
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
942 posts |
May-27-16, 10:02 AM (EDT) |
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9. "Additional F-35 Thoughts"
In response to message #0
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LAST EDITED ON May-27-16 AT 10:33 AM (EDT) An interesting Q&A with an expert on the issues here.Jargon-heavy and possibly off-putting if you aren't already a plane nerd but informative and interesting. A sunnier take on the F-35 than we're used to, but still with a realistic look at the very real limitations of the airframe. The TLDR takeaway is that whatever its limitations, the F-35 might still be the best available (which is different from "best") solution to the problem of how to survivably operate strike craft in environments defended by ever-better SAMs. Depressing if true. -Merc Keep Rat |
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McFortner
Charter Member
561 posts |
May-28-16, 01:19 AM (EDT) |
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11. "RE: Additional F-35 Thoughts"
In response to message #10
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The only problem with remotely piloted aircraft is the chance of somebody taking over the signal and hijacking the aircraft. While it hasn't happened yet, it's only a matter of time before that happens either through a computer network or brute force through an extremely powerful transmitter on the control frequency. You just can't beat having the man flying the craft in the craft for security. Safety? Well, if you wanted to be safe and secure flying a plane, you shouldn't have picked a career in the military. (and before the shit storm starts, I'm a USAF Desert Storm vet.) Michael C. Fortner "Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill". There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload". |
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Eyrie Productions,
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