Posted on 09/11/2008 6:24:33 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
I’m far from being an authority, but frankly, I think the concept is bad. A fighter needs one kind of design, a bomber needs another, and so does a tactical plane which might be able to land and take off vertically. To package it all into one plane, isn’t that asking for problems?
There’s also the concept of concentration of force. Getting the right firepower to the right place and living to tell about it. High volume can actually cause problems. A bunch of junk clogging up the air fields, wasting fuel, bogging down repairmen, etc. At the end of WWII, MacArthur found thousands of grounded Japanese planes in need of minor repairs.
At the same time, low quality planes getting shot down, demoralizing the pilots. Wasted training on a dead pilot. That’s an ugly path to take for defense. I hope we never have to repeat the massive level of WWII. Sure, we could do it. And sheer numbers can terrify your foes, but I prefer quality myself.
... perhaps you missed the part that I put in bold font. The quoted takeoff weight if for practically 'clean' configuration, not a bomb-laden strike mission with a lot of external stores. Like I said before, this is troubling...
I should look up which version of the F-35 weight they are quoting. I know that they are frantically working on reducing the weight of the F-35B -- the STOVL version. It stands to reason that that plane will be heavier & less of a performer than the "A" (USAF) or "C" (USN, CTOL) versions. The "C" has a broader wing, too, so wing loading numbers would be different.
And the entire US Military is collapsing? In a meltdown? As a Marine from the early 80’s thru the Reagan transition i call BS. My first M-16 looked chrome it was so worn out. I had a WWII steel pot and a WWII .45. My tent was a WWI canvas shelter half. By todays standards, the training was utterly abysmal.
We felt superior to the National Guardsmen next door as they hooked up a BBQ smoker trailer to a Jeep to take along on their 2 week summer camp training.
Don’t kid yourself. These kids today would have handed us our ass. Im proud of em. The Marines stun me with their proficiency today. Todays Marines approach a lethality that Delta would have been proud of in 1979. Todays National Guard is a lean, serious outfit.
Our fighters have incorprated long bitter lessons. They are hardened beyond belief.
He may have *been involved* in design of a plane in the late 60s or early 70s, but he is wildly out of touch to say our armed forces are in collapse.
This is the argument of the maroons who whine that war fighting operations interfere with their training and maintinence schedules.
War zone operations have a leaning effect on a unit that nothing else does. The crap is quickly discarded as a deadly waste of time. The dandies are soon weeded out. A great example of this is the USAAF in WWII. Highly acclaimed leaders often turned out to be duds and were ruthlessly weeded out,, other unknowns rose to colonel in a year or two, and created a USAAF that was truly the terror of the skies. No sir, our services are not in melt down. The Wesley Clarks and Gen Sanchez’s get weeded out,,and the Patraeous’s are rising.
I don't know if they oppose ALL defense spending. But sometimes I think they are advocates of a Soviet-style "Quantity over Quality" force structure. The US public will never accept huge losses, so they are advocating something that will never happen. I think that they keep pushing the rock in that direction, however.
good point,,especially ref the STOVL variant,,
That’s just got to be heavier.
Pierre Sperry was one of John Boyd's "fighter mafia" colleagues and I don't take his criticism lightly (please note his column was published in Jane's Defence Weekly and was just reprinted by CDI). It was Colonel Boyd who stressed the importance for a fighter to have a high thrust to weigh ratio.
Reduced to its basics, Boyd's work hinged on thrust and drag ratios. * * * The E-M Theory, at its simplest, is a method to determine the specific energy rate of an aircraft. * * * In an equation, specific energy rate is denoted by "Ps". The state of any aircraft in any flight regime can be defined with Boyd's simple equation: Ps = [T-D/W]*V or thrust minus draft over weight multiplied by velocity. http://www.jjraymond.com/books/nonfiction/boyd.html
The CDI is full of former officers who think their military gravitas allows them to promote appeasement policies. It's a kind of political 'bait and switch' tactic, Alinsky-like dissimulation. I have no doubt that most of the officers are sincere, but that just means they fall into the 'useful idiot' category.
I guess they’re just desperate to have some semblance of ‘mass production’ to help keep the cost down.
Regardless of the problems, we need revive some of Cap Weinberger’s dedication to research and development, especially in air power. Air is fast becoming more important to any victory. Maybe McCain will see the need for that when he sits in the oval office. [I hope.]
I agree that there’s a ‘shock jock’ element to this report. While I’m skeptical of a ‘do all’ for planes, the writer is exagerrating.
God bless you for serving in the armed forces of the USA!
Just looked-up the F-35 weight specs on www.fas.org. This info might be a little ‘dated’, but the weights quoted are MUCH lower than the ones Pierre Spey is citing.
Empty weight for the F-35 (A or B) is given as (approx) 22,500-lb. I gotta believe the ‘B’ is heavier than that, but that’s their number. Add-in an internal fuel load of 15,000-lb & you have a takeoff weight of 37,500-lbs. Carrying a load of AIM-120D’s & AIM-9X’s I think that max takeoff weight would be right around 40,000-lbs (less than the engine thrust rating.)
The empty weight for the F-35C (carrier version) was given as 24,000-lb. Internal fuel load is 16,000-lb. As I said before, the ‘C’ has a broader wing to allow lower landing speeds & this is where some of the extra fuel is stored. The wing may make the ‘C’ the better dogfighter of the 3 versions.
With the exception of the vectoring nozzle on the F-35B STOVL variant, the F-35 does not have thrust vectoring. And even the F-35B's thrust vectoring is limited to STOVL modes, not regular air-to-air combat maneuvering.
Only the F-22 has thrust vectoring, and that is only in pitch. The Russian Suhkoi Su-30 has two dimensional thrust vectoring in the pitch and yaw planes.
Length 51.5 ft
Height 14.2 ft
Wingspan 35 ft
Wing area 460 sq ft
Horizontal tail span 23 ft
Weight empty 29,300 lb
Maximum weight 70,000 lb class
Internal fuel 18,000 + lbs
Speed Mach 1.6 (~1,200 mph)
Range ~1.200 n. mi
Combat radius 610 n. mi
Power plant One P&W F135 or GE F136
Engine thrust 40,000 lb (with after burner)
With a branch in Mother Russia. From their own website:
CDI is part of the World Security Institute, whose divisions include the Center for Defense Information, International Media, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Azimuth Media and International Programs with offices in Brussels, Cairo and Moscow, and projects in China.
Thanks for that correction. I actually checked the Lockheed-Martin website first, but didn’t find what I was looking for.
I went for the www.fas.org numbers with a little trepidation. They ‘looked’ like design spec numbers rather than ‘real’ numbers.
This means that Pierre Spey’s numbers are ballpark, at least.
Yep. We were driving around in WWII jeeps, the 16's I was issued had to be babied by armorers, the .45 was older than I was, and I HATED that steel pot.
The best weapon I was ever issued was the M40, and that was VN era tweaked by USMC armorers.
Semper Fi, bro.
L
F-111 was only dual mission. Of course the naval fleet defense version was dropped pretty early on. The F-111 is still flying, 40 years later, in Australian service. They not only bought some new ones of their own (C models), they've bought 4 old USAF versions (A models), and brought those to pretty much the same configuration as the original Aussie version, which of course has been greatly updated.
They also have 14 F-111Gs, which were originally produced as FB-111s for SAC.
Well said. Modern and future fighter planes are more like very fast flying destroyers than dogfighters.
Whomever that may be; he should sit down with the warfighters, mechanics, support, logistics, ground pounders etc, and ask them what they need; What they feel is the better platform. I mean, can one airframe do three jobs, and do them well? I personally don't think so.
But I would go to the lower ranks from all services (Full bird and down) and disciplines, and get their take. And then go back and talk to the generals.
ping for later
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