Went to "Europe's only air show in 2020" yesterday. Feels like having been to a festival. Was invited to VIP tent that overlooked the whole area and had catering. We went with the whole family and the kids loved it too. Saab had massive presence as they're really trying to get us to buy the Gripen and Globaleye, I now have Gripen and Globaleye caps. Rafale put up a show, they know they ain't gonna get the deal but the pilot decided it wasn't going to be because of any lack of effort on his behalf! I really have to hand it to the Gripen E and Globaleye too, they look like a great team and beautiful planes. It's unfortunate that I don't have the knowledge to be able to say what plane can do what or how the planes rank up against each other. At the end of the day it comes down to signal warfare, radar silhouettes, radiation returns and so on which are all classified astronomically beyond the rank of a simple jäger and try as you might those that know won't say a word, they just smile at you and go "uhum, yeah" with a friendly and compassionate smile that says "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe..."
I live pretty close to Offutt and they put on a pretty good airshow every year. Everything from the Great War up to today, plus some ground exhibits so you can see them up close. It's a lot of fun, and now that you mention it it's been a while since I've been, so once COVID is under wraps I'm gonna have to visit it again.
Rank up against each other as what the government wants more? Probably be something like buy (abstract numbers) 20 of the globaleye and 80 of the gripen e and maybe use the global eye as an airborne command center for a flight or more of fighter aircraft. So the U.S. Navy uses the E-2 Hawkeye (turbo prop early warning that can be launched from the carriers) So it works with carrier based fighters. I don't know how many other countries use one aircraft as a command control or rely on ground based stations/vehicles for that. I'm sure others do. My guess is if Finland doesn't have any airborne early warning (or they do be it's a really old design and a modification not purpose built) the globaleye might be more important.
Yea, the Defense Ministry have a whole website for the 10bn € purchase that is dubbed "HX Fighter Program": https://www.defmin.fi/en/administra...comparison_and_selection_of_fighters#d84ae9c0 The list of candidates is: Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet (United States) Dassault Rafale (France) Eurofighter Typhoon (UK) Lockheed Martin F-35 (United States) Saab Gripen (Sweden) In addition to the fighters listed Saab has offered 2+ Globaleye aircraft with advanced early warning and EW capabilities to enhance the capabilities of their Gripen fighters. Boeing also offered a few Growler EW platforms with the export version of the EW package, it has all the defensive EW capabilities but not the offensive EW capabilities that the Americans won't export so that their enemies won't be able to learn as easily how to counter those. Rafale is dead in the water, their pitch is "we could have military defensive cooperation". It's a pretty plane but if we ever called Paris and said "uh, T-80's are rolling over the border" the response would be "sacrebleu! you nuts! you think we fight Russia?" Typhoon is great for the UK, it has great performance over long distances above ocean but our theater is more like about short distances and using roads as temporary bases. F-35 A has it's own EW capabilities, all aspect stealth, internal missile bays and STOL and very advanced cockpit systems. So, Super Hornet is essentially mostly 'more of the same' but with the enhanced defensive capabilities offered by Growlers. Gripen comes with that AWACS platform and it's EW suite and F-35 A can handle very short runways and it can only be seen with the most powerful ground based radars and even with them it's not necessarily pinpoint accuracy. Finnish Air Forces asked everyone to give their performance listings and then each of the candidates has been brought here for full testing and evaluation where they have been required to prove their performance promises in practice. Which is mostly top secret. All I can do is speculate wildly without any proper knowledge. The non-stealth aircraft can all be seen with the ground based radars from Russia with relative ease but they are also detectable with the fighter based radars. Any EW support will reduce the likelyhood of being detected. So, I don't really know. Both sides have anti-radiation missiles, can fly with radars turned off and will employ EW. Russia certainly has their own AWACS capabilities, our ground based static radars would be taken out rather quickly with saturation attacks. We would probably try to hit Russian installations but can we? Good questions and stuff that I really don't know, I only know that it would suck but we would fight and that it's best to make it certain that it would suck for the other side as well so that we would not need to test it all in practice.
From various reading (and Benjamin the Rogue in our group) though F-35 is a piece of junk. I think it's flying time before maintenance is something like 100 hours less than the F-16 but it's cost for that time is the same or more than F-16. All three airframes are different enough that it might as well have been separate aircraft in the first place thus defeating the purpose of a joint strike fighter (the intention was to use the same base airframe and lower maintenance and logistics). Also the STOVL version has only 2/3 of the amount of fuel of the other two versions.
So, what you're telling me is that the military spent billions of taxpayer dollars to build a plane that looks super high tech but isn't actually much of an improvement in efficiency. Sounds about right.
Well with lockheed martin involved it's par for the course. Seems like everything they are involved in is far far over budget. The Zumwalt destroyer (stealth destroyer) is I think over budget and they went from 29-30 ordered down to 3. The ammo for the gun on that thing is so expensive ammo was never actually made for it. Though I don't think Lockheed is actually to blame for it being over budget. Also it was supposed to succeed the Arleigh Burke class but is being succeeded bu the Arleigh Burkes flight 3. F-35 cost per flying hour hour is crazy high. this is from a 2016 article. image is from 2019
I don't see why it would be a piece of junk. It's just entered service and not in full numbers, hence the operating costs are far from having been optimized. The list compares it to other planes that cannot even perform the same things. F-16 is by far long past it's prime as an airframe, I mean you can install new engines and new electronics and new missiles to it but you can also see it coming. Comparisons to A-10? Sure, I mean, A-10 is a bit like Il-2, it's great against ground targets but only if it's not going to get intercepted by the enemy. In similar vein the Gripen has been primarily marketed as cost effective or the cheapest alternative. And when we're talking about price, there is something people tend to forget. Price? Bicycle is cheaper than a car. Can you commute to 50 miles to work on a bicycle? I mean you could and it might be healthier and save you a ton of money every month on car insurance and gas. But is it better than having a car? Well, for cost it certainly gets you to work and to market and you can probably get the groceries done with the money you've saved. Now, if you've got a family of five or just a pizza weekend and you want that 4-pack of soda, your ice creams and some snacks and you need to haul them with your bike... It's a whole another matter when the ice creams have all melted and it takes a whole hour to visit the market versus 15 minutes. It's not just about what the price is. It's also about what you can afford and what performance you need. Otherwise everyone would be either driving around with bicycles or run-down 1980's Japanese vans, the latter being dirt cheap and can haul half your furniture on one go if need be. Yes, I've seen the campaign to reinstitute a lightweight propeller plane for US ground support duty. The idea was that it was dirt cheap. There's a problem with that, pilots are expensive and you can afford better aircraft that can survive the trip. See, there's a conceptual level problem with an aircraft that is deemed too high attrition by China and Russia. When those guys think it has too high rate of attrition, you just know how bad idea it is. Misinformation campaigns. There's a lot of crap talk focused by some very, very talented professionals aimed at undermining defense budgets and capabilities in the West. Not going to point any fingers but we've got several institutions solely focused on analyzing these misinformation campaigns and cyber attacks and while these campaigns are all about things like "it's rubbish because it costs money to use it" the campaigns themselves and the 'troll factories' are very highly funded and themselves cost a ton of money to operate. And the financing party sees that it's all worth it in a hypothetical future conflict if the opposing side has even 5% less fighters or tanks due to pressure from their misinformation campaigns, that's almost as good as having destroyed a few squadrons of enemy aircraft and a whole tank brigade without firing a shot. One part of this misinformation campaign was to establish that "the F-35's stealth is obsolete, hostile radars can see it thousands of miles away". The source this is coming from is not incredibly credible and is known for a large number of false stories - in fact it could be argued that misinformation is part of the source's job description. Sure, there are methods to detect the stealth planes presence with scatter or refraction radar methods but does that help in any way to actually target missiles or so? If it helps you direct interceptors to that area what good is it when the interceptors themselves can't see anything and the interceptors themselves are visible to the enemy. Considering it's not countered by a single hostile full aspect stealth fighter it is little wonder that it receives so much flak from hostile intelligence agencies - they really hate it. To quote the clickbait headlines "the stealth fighter your rival countries don't want you to have!" They know they have a fighting chance with F-16's, they know they can see them coming and they can engage them and it will at least be a fight, they can shoot them with their fighters and with their SAM systems. What they really fear is seeing this:
I mean, of course, if it costs more than a propeller plane I suppose we could get a whole lot of the good old reliable Bf-109G-6's, instead of 60+ all aspect stealth fighters with EW capability we could go against Russia trying to win them through attrition. Or win China through attrition. See how that goes.
Well all the services want to put external munitions on the f-35 (it can't carry much internally) which defeats the purpose of stealth in the first place. It can't carry enough weapons. I think it underperforms in every aspect than it marketed to (including flying). In a purely stealth aspect (all internal) it can only carry up to 4 munitions. Also the airforce one is the only one with a gun. An apparently inaccurate gun. Since you mentioned STOVL Finland is looking at the B version which does not have a gun (more for ground support) also has 2/3 the fuel of the air Force and marine versions and a completely different engine. It's actually so far overdue for getting into service that the air Force and Navy are already putting out bids for the 6th generation of fighters.
Only A version is exported, I assumed A version can still land on a shorter runway than your ordinary fighter. If not I'm mistaken by that. Even with the munitions exposed it still has lesser radar cross section than every other plane out there except F-22. It can use internals only but also it can carry munitions on external pods. It's definitely a plane that excels when actually operating in a theater with strong hostile presence and where replacements are scarcely available. These things would be advantageous to us, we can't manufacture new planes, we need an interceptor that can hold out for as long without reinforcements as possible. Americans have a multitude of needs for their planes and I agree it doesn't do all the roles excellently. F-35 is a plane that is suited for taking on a strong adversary and is best employed early into such conflict. When facing a low tech adversary or operating with air superiority then of course you'll enjoy cost efficiency just having something whatever like a prop driven cargo plane just dumping ton upon ton of ordnance on enemy. But if you don't have planes that can seize air superiority and nullify the air defenses with minimal casualties you'll never get there against most opponents. Now, it's a whole another matter of what the percentages should be of these planes for various US service branches. The US AF would probably need a lot more of them than some other services etc. but even they would need also other types as well. It's a real complex and difficult puzzle for the US military to anticipate what they will need and when and to make sure it's available. For us it's a lot more simple. If our planes are easy to spot they'll get wiped out within one week. If they're harder to spot they may survive - I don't know? Few weeks?
A USN Globaleye just crashed in Virginia. Crew was able to bailout and survive. What’s with all the crashes this past few months. Seems like one going down every couple weeks.
Yea, people who do stuff also experience the inevitable situation when things go wrong. Even when everything is handled perfectly your luck will only last so long before something chaotic happens. On the other hand it's also possible to invite trouble. I was just watching this documentary on Finnish nuclear plant engineers. The Finns were sent to Russia to learn about running a nuclear plant. One of the Finnish engineers recalled with horror: "The Finski engineer cannot read the instruments right. You've got to read them angled. This way you get more power and get the perks for exceeding your quota!" Guys literally teaching other nuke engineers on how to properly operate a nuclear power plant. No bullshit, I'll edit in the link too even though the viewing time has elapsed but just so that it ain't me making up bs. https://areena.yle.fi/1-1243957
I think there is a surveillance drone called the globaleye. Not sure on that. (not globaleye) Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk. I did see a hawk eye had crashed. The f-35A is the airforce conventional and I don't think it has any short takeoff or landing. Unless they are deploying a drogue chute on it. Unless google is lying to me that version needs an 8,000 feet long runway (a little over 2,400 meters) but that may be what they (whatever group who decides operating standards) want not what it can actually operate from. I think the royal navy (UK) is getting the F-35 B which has the STOVL for their ski jump aircraft carriers. South Korea, Singapore and Italy are all getting A and B versions. The Israeli's are getting their own version (f-35I) The Gripen in contrast only needs 800 meters to takeoff and land. So if they are choosing between the gripen and the 35A and the main consideration is take off length the 35 is not it (also I'm not sure if it can even land on rough (not paved) landing strips. The 35B can because it is meant for that.)
You sound like my wife. In that I should know better and being right about it too. :edit: Being compared to the only person I can stand being in the same room with for 15 years is meant to be taken as a compliment.
F-35 is built to handle carrier operations so it's going to be among the toughest aircraft in terms of landing gears etc. Now sand tolerance is a whole different thing but we don't use sand runways anyway. Instead many of the straight sections of our road network serve a dual function as wartime landing strips / temporal bases. The only way to make sure would require you to bomb every slightly wider straight section of road in the country and it's actually quite easy to repair runways and roads - it's mostly about filling in the holes really. The A version is the only one being exported to non-partner countries. Then again to even be offered the A model is in itself not a small thing. As I am looking at the runway requirements, indeed it says that the A requires 2.5km. That's a lot of runway but it also says "for safe operation". Operating against uh, say, The Russian Air Forces is not very safe either and if you're limited to 2.5km strips they can limit their strikes to any roads that are 2+ km long. That's a lot less road sections than say 1km. Exponentially less. Meaning Gripen would require exponentially more bombs to crater all the runways. Also I suppose that with Gripen we could actually get domestic manufacturing. Meaning we could replace our losses and have an easier time repairing the aircraft. There's no telling if something like Rafale or F-35 would face shortage of spares and N/A for replacements due to political pressure of supporting a country fighting against Russia. So, I previously thought it was a no-brainer that we'd pick the F-35 but now I am not so sure after all. With the Gripen the Globaleye is a little problematic because we'd only get two of them. That's not a lot. Lose two and they're gone. Sure, they've got some great capabilities but I mean, if the other side just says "we're sending 60 interceptors against that one aircraft, kill it" - yea. Whereas with Super Hornet there was no upper limit to the amount of Growlers we could get. In fact every four plane pack/flock could have one Growler and three Super Hornets. That's a whole different level of force protection.
yeah. the A can't handle carrier operations. The C (navy one) has entirely different landing gear (as well as almost another 2.5 meters in wingspan so it can land at a lower speed). But logistics is the biggest problem. I think even with the ones the U.S has their are parts shortages. I think because none of the airframes are interchangeable. At least the major parts are not. The A/B landing gear might be the same and might be good enough to handle the kind of landings/takeoffs used on ski-jump carriers. Not CATOBAR (the catapult launched the U.S. uses). The globaleye systems actually seem supbar (i mean the radar range), 450 kilometers. That might be enough for what is needed. Maybe I'm just jaded because the Hawk Eye and the E-3 sentry (what the U.S. air force uses) have a radar range of 640 kilometers. Huh. supposedly the radar in use on the latest version of the Hawk Eye can detect fighter sized stealth aircraft. I think against other fighters they would be stealthed but against larger radar (ground or airborne early warning, the stealth fighters may not be stealth)
