You never know until there is a war.
I was quite puckered going into Iraq. We had no idea if our “wonder weapons” would work as advertised.
Sounds like Boeing and Lockheed Martin are engaged in a PR war, for gobs of taxpayer money.
The F-35 from what I have read needs on average 8 hours maintenance for every hour in the air, it’s that fragile. So I would imagine the F-47 is not any better. They are trying to get these planes to do way more than they should.
ANY article that says the F22 was a mistake is to be taken with a grain of salt.
Andrew Latham: Andrew Latham is a professor of International Relations at Macalester College specializing in the politics of international conflict and security. He teaches courses on international security, Chinese foreign policy, war and peace in the Middle East, Regional Security in the Indo-Pacific Region, and the World Wars.
Sounds like a John Bolton to me.
A manned aircraft allows a man to eyeball the outside of a cockpit and to view various screens and then make weapons deployment decisions.
If information collected by drones under remote control can be reliably relayed back to a command center, then equivalent military results can be obtained without paying to develop and procure the F-47.
5% of GDP for the military needs to be doubled
Accepting the argument that 185 planes is too few and we need to build at least 400-500: where will we find the pilots to fly them? The logistics to support them?
Obama & Biden really hollowed-out America’s military. I fear that if we built 500, half would sit on the ground most of the time, for lack of pilots to fly them, technicians to maintain them, and weapons for them to deliver.
There is mainly the problem of communication between drones and a command center.
There can be sensor drones of various types: visual, infrared, passive signal sensing, active radar detecting.
Each might be accompanied by an assistant drone flying fairly close.
The sensor drone and assistant drones might communicate optically.
An assistant drone would typically drag a tethered transmitter that would communicate to the command center as needed. An assistant drone might use AI to minimize transmission needs.
Additional assistant drones might fly (from programed time to programed time) within transmission distance to assure reliable communication with the command center is possible.
Insomuch as possible and sensible, all the drones for a mission would be of similar shape and construction.
There might be five sensor drones and fifty assistant drones sent out for a mission. A few weapons launch drones would typically be sent out as well.
Note that under this system there would be lots of drones that would need to be shot down and not just one manned aircraft.
If the warplane uses commercial aircraft engines and F-35 avionics, the military could build empty airframes at modest cost each.
“the F-47 will serve as the “quarterback,” capable of coordinating swarms of up to 1,000 AI-enabled Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs)”
“The F-47’s propulsion system is expected to be an adaptive-cycle engine. Both GE and Pratt & Whitney are currently developing adaptive-cycle engines, the XA102 and XA103”
“each [F-47] is expected to cost as much as $325 million”
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/heres-everything-we-know-about-the-f-47-program-hk
To maintain economic dominance against peer competitors like China, the U.S. needs a fleet of 0 F-47s.
We can send missiles a thousand miles.
A missile might eject transmitters every couple of miles of flight. Only the transmitters nearest to the target would be highly susceptible to jamming. These near target transmitters might carry generators to generate really strong (radio and optical) signals.
We can send a simple mother stealth drone a thousand miles and she can drop her baby drones in the target area in time coordination with the missile.
“1,000 AI-enabled Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs)”
The Taiwanese could buy F-35s and store them securely.
Money would flow into the US Treasury.
Build airframes with large fuel tanks for long range that can use two F-35 engines and F-35 avionics and have a cockpit like that of an F-35.
When needed strip an F-35, take an engine out of another, put all in an F-47 airframe, fuel up, have the pilot climb up, and fly off.
-The U.S. Air Force’s plan to buy “at least 185” F-47 sixth-generation fighters is “dangerously delusional” and inadequate for a future war. -
“at least 185”
You have to set the smallest number of units we will buy to spread the cost of development and tooling to build the jets. That is how the cost of each fighter is set.
If the F-47 turns out to be great, we can build as many more we need and cost per unit will (should) be lower.
Obama really screwed up the F-22 program by not only stop ordering more units but having the tooling destroyed so that it was impossible for anyone from ordering more in the future.
Where would our fighters be engaging with China, aaaall the way across the Pacific? And don’t say Taiwan, we’re not fighting that war.
In a war with China over Taiwan (a war which I believe will never be fought), how many F-47s will be lost per day, and how fast can they be replaced?