Well I think everyone is working more on how they designed the F-35 (and continue to) the initial and improvements are done digitally (also to fix airframe issues/airflow/ stuff) digitally without having to fly it, make an airframe change to see how the fix does and so on. I think that is really what they were testing and streamlining. I think most companies are going that route. Digitally designing planes. Probably reduces costs. And time to get a plane started.
of course they are, and as the tech gets more advanced it becomes less and less of an issue to do so, but they still don't have a good way to simulate working space within the plane. It's easy to say 'we can improve airflow if we do this' but it's more difficult to realize that doing that places the hardware necessary to fix the pieces together in places nearly impossible (or sometimes just outright impossible) to reach.
And placing weapons. Because the f-35 can carry very little in it's internal bay. I don't think it's the amount of space limiting it. I think it's how the doors and other stuff are done. Does this mean game designers can go into contract for plane design for the military/airlines? I mean it's pretty much what star citizen is doing (and running into. Finding out once they start putting stuff inside ships need to become bigger or redesigned)
Interestingly when Finland wanted to replace the Mig-21 and Draken in 1990 already back then Gripen was a contender against the F-18, the F-16 and the Dassault Mirage 2000. There is an interesting aspect about the F-18C/D winning the bid and I think quite clearly and now as it is being replaced the Gripen is going at it again after previously having lost to the plane it now seeks to replace. As far as the F-18C/D and Gripen models go the F-18 has demonstrated superior performance to it in terms of radar range and other aspects, generally being better at detecting the Gripen and better able to shoot them down. This is more history than politics imho but I apologize if it's bad. The Viggen when it was developed in the late 60's was one of the most advanced aicraft in Sweden. This however proved to be problematic politically for Sweden - Sweden is still a small country and they know they don't share a border with potential aggressor. During and after Viggen's development there was fierce fighting over the costs of the Viggen program and the portion of budget that ended up being used for it as well as the cost of operating modern fighters. When Gripen was commissioned it wasn't a slamdunk affair - there was strong political resistance to even developing a fighter rather than just buying one from others and saving on the R&D costs, according to many politicians also they should buy some cheap fighter. Gripen got through but not as a fighter aiming to be the best in the world - instead it was designed from the start to be one of the cheapest planes to fly in the world and to have a cheap unit cost as well. It's design goal was not "to have technological edge and raw performance to dominate the opposition in the air". Instead it was to be an affordable to fly plane for a country that doesn't imagine itself actually fighting any wars and a plane that could be exported as the budget option. This doesn't mean it sucks - it just means that it was inferior to the F-18C/D back in the 1990's, in the 2000's and probably still is. It costs possibly the least to fly and has a great range and all but it's also in a perpetual state of "not quite finished yet" since 1980's. There is a cost saving attached to just going with the 1980's frame and just throwing in new systems and all and it would cost a lot more to develop a new airframe with all the latest lessons in aviation technology - nevermind one with even a partial aspect stealth. It is still a fourth generation fighter that is simply being upgraded, just like the F-18C/D which continues to be upgraded with new blocks and the Super Hornet frame upgrade.
Well I'd personally rather carry 6 AIM-120 or 6 Meteor missiles with full stealth aspect that is enhanced with wide band jamming and other ECM. And 6 missiles isn't ridiculously low amount either. If missile count and flight cost per missile was the most important thing in modern air war then you'd see 747's and 737's brimming with scores of missiles under their wings and hull launchers, nevermind tossing hundreds of flares with one press of a button. With the F-35A you can also try arming a few pairs with missiles also in the external pylons while also having some pairs in the air with just the internal ones and see if the enemy will go after the ones with more missiles and if doing so - assuming they now even see them - be able to down them. With a plane that shines like a beacon when lit with radar you can't even dream of such flexibility. And you're not as likely to even return home after going against a stealth fighter. That's something the bean counters just don't get. Losing planes while not even seeing the enemy is quite expensive. You can talk all you want about closing in and dogfighting them with your cannon and using your eyes but you're forgetting that you needed to get there first. And where are they anyway? Kinda hard to close in on someone you can't see.
It's only 4 missiles internally (realistically despite them saying 6). It has the internal space for 6 but due to I think the doors it can only carry 4 (or 2 missiles and 2 bombs). It needs some kind of design change (minor I think) to actually carry and use 6. 10 hardpoints total (4 internal 6 external) Though it's also an issue of the size of the missiles. the AMRAAM currently used is a fairly good size missile. They are developing new missiles that are smaller (thus the F-35 should be able to carry more). The Peregrine missile is half the size of the AIM-120. It might be able to carry 8 missiles than. And by the military people only being able to carry 4 missiles (6 for the F-22) is seen as a problem.
I was just reading their announcement of the F-35 maturing so that the A and C models would be able to take in 6 missiles. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/b...ts-f-35-carry-six-missiles-instead-four-79781 Even then I don't see what the issue is. It can be flown with maximum stealth loadout or a loadout that has less stealth. Even when flown with some external missiles it's still going to have significantly superior stealth to almost every other plane. Simply we are discussing a comparison here of planes that have zero stealth against a plane that has full aspect stealth and internal bays as an option. To insist that this feature and ability is somehow a weakness makes no sense. You're still able to fire at 6 enemy fighters with one fighter or 12 with two fighters and potentially return undetected. How often do you even run into such situations where you'd need to shoot down an entire squadron with 3 fighters? And if put in such a situation, is it economically terribly inefficient if you need to use 3 instead of 2 fighters that cost ~180M a pop to shoot down 18 fighters that cost 140-160M a pop. Also I stumbled into some more news pieces - the Finnish Patria company that currently is contracted with the maintenance of our fighters and other important military contracts bought the Norwegian company that services the Norway's F-35 fleet, gaining the Finnish company organic experience in maintenance of the F-35. The Finnish Air Forces staff seem to all want the F-35, the former commander was attacked for favoring the F-35. On his defense he said that none of the other planes will be good options for the long term future of air war with the kinds of changes that are taking place. Sure, people talk about the cost of flying hour for a full aspect stealth fighter but the anti-air systems themselves keep on developing as well as the aerial weapons themselves. It's a game of technological advantages, how far away can you see and how far away will you be seen? Can you trick the enemy or are you being tricked? There are some very good reasons why it has been so fiercely attacked. The Americans face a situation where they have a great fighter but their own politics is they greatest threat to their own success - just like in Sweden the political demand for "cheap instead of best" resulted in them losing the competitive advantages that they had. They still have some very advanced features and tricks but these are all on the backburner and secondary in priority to cost reductions - being cheap. The former commander of Finnish Air Forces called the Swedish Gripen as "a plane for the flight club" - great for Sweden for maintaining a "flight club" but not suited for countries that need a competent high performance fighter wing to use against an advanced adversary. A Swedish officer once said "the Gripen has a black belt in killing Sukhois" - but he offered no explanation for when two strategic bombers with their escorts were able to unopposedly make simulated attack runs against Stockholm - bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons - catching the Swedes their pants down. Not very convincing argument for the supposed "black belt".
I knew about the ship USS Kidd (the third one) but I didn't know they occasionally fly the Jolly Roger. A few other ships do as well. I think some in the royal navy do (or did). https://www.businessinsider.com/us-...tQxZCyuy5ZmPe6muvIzezHdlL0K9cVsKdNQ2wVStPyv9g
Germans are buying interim till their joint fighter program is available (with Spain and France) But they want f-18s due to some NATO requirement. Along with mostly Typhoons. Oh. Its's because the eurofighter typhoon is currently not certified to carry the B61 bombs that are stored in Europe. The f-18 is (because American) and so is the f-35. And the f-35 was a potential replacement for Germany's tornadoes (which are certified) but as Germany has their own 5th generation (or 6th) aircraft program going I doubt they are going to buy the 35
So many design issues. There's something that causes pipes on the F-35A to become damaged. These pipes are supposed to reduce the chance of explosion from fuel vapors in case of a lightning strike. So if there is inclement weather with lightning or even a chance of lightning F-35A's are grounded.
Well if the F-35 isn't ready enough yet guess how long it'll take to get the whatever Germany is looking for next to be up and running without massive glitches? There is no fifth generation program in Europe, Typhoon is the fourth generation and has itself been still having issues. Tempest doesn't even exist but as a conceptual image: It's a lot like Germany just not giving a damn for the next couple of decades - being satisfied with just having a Flight Club and maybe one day having an actual high performance air force if it becomes fashionable again.
true. but there are 2 or 3 6th generation programs going. I guess it makes sense that if they did a 5th generation now by the time it was ready, The U.S., Russia and China would probably all have or nearly 6th gen flying. Germany is in a joint 6th gen program with France and Spain. So they are planning on jumping from 4th gen to 6th gen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Combat_Air_System Russia is developing one (6th gen) on their own. The UK, Sweden and Italy are developing a 6th Gen fighter which they have apparently invited Japan and India into the project. In east Asia China, Taiwan and Japan are all developing 6th gen fighters on their own. And of course the U.S. has two different programs going. Realistically none of these aircraft will be deployment ready till 2035 at the earliest. Probably most won't even start flying till 2028 maybe 2025. this is interesting and seems the US navy and air force are working jointly to a point. In March 2015, the Navy revealed they were working with the Air Force to potentially release joint analysis of alternatives (AoA) in 2016 for their next-generation fighters; they are allowed to take a joint AoA, then define a service solution that would be good for each service. The Navy is focusing on replacing the capabilities of the fighter with a wide range of options for the Super Hornet, as well as the EA-18G Growler. The AoA will run parallel to several other design and technology efforts including engine technology, airframe molds, broadband and IR stealth, and new ways to dominate the electromagnetic spectrum. Part of the Navy's calculus will be based on how the F-35C performs as a critical forward sensor node for the carrier air wing. How the fifth-generation F-35C integrates with the rest of the air wing to give greater capabilities than what the platform itself can do may lend itself to the sixth-generation F/A-XX.[46] The Navy aircraft is to have greatly increased speed and range compared to the Super Hornet.[47] And it seems the navy might not be so focused on stealth in their 6th gen aircraft at the cost of speed and payload. Which is a detractor of the F-35 (thought the speed is due to having only one engine and that you can blame on the marines). Even with stealth speed is still important (I'm guessing for support reasons or when time is critical like intercepting where stealth isn't as important)
The F-35 engine is more powerful on military thrust than the F-18's twin engines on full afterburner. High speeds are not wanted because they will increase maintenance costs for stealth aircraft. The F-35 does have a superior coating iirc. that doesn't get damaged as easily but even then there's a real desire to avoid damaging it without good reason more than is needed. Also that MiG-41 is one of the reasons why we need a cutting edge fighter ourselves. Russia is able to field introductory low scale production models in quantities that resemble the strength of our entire air force. They also have the Su-57 'Pak-Fa'. Russians procude annually as many fighters as is the entire strength of our air force. Thus you can see how horrendous it would be if they also had the technological edge with superior stealth fighters. I can well see how the US next fighter would be a larger one - stealth physically works even better for larger aircraft. Combined with room for advanced high power EW equipment and sufficient physical proportions to better mask IR as well from several angles and so, having all the range you'll want - it's a real no brainer AND then there's the nimble F-35 to go with it. Lots of people are going to be very, very envious. I can also see that not a lot of countries are very interested in the actual capabilities and the catch up that potential rivals such as Russian Federation are playing. Russia is constantly working towards rolling out new modern equipment to replace it's old ones. It's also a big country and even limited prototype batches tend to rival in size the air forces of entire countries. In a couple decades they could very well be militarily in a position where they could steamroll a few opponents with their most advanced equipment while those adversaries are too focused on "post-warfare era", cost savings and a whole lot of wishful thinking - nevermind prejudice towards actual rivaling countries and military threats.
The air force wants a larger "fighter" (more like a small bomber) for more E/W stuff, range, payload, and probably power generation as they want to put a bunch of lasers on it (mostly low and mid power ones. low for target marking and such and mid for missile defense. a few high power for use against planes). I don't know what size that means to compare it to. It's kinda funny to me that so many other countries are using a carrier fighter for their air force. It's not that the F-18 is bad in anyway. It's just did they have no better options? Carrier fighters aren't exactly known for their range due to size limitations. But maybe that's why they went with it. Most countries are no where near the sheer size of the U.S.
Carrier fighters are very rugged and can take a beating, at least the American ones. So many European countries etc. are not seeing even the faintest chance of having to actually fight a war - being surrounded by countries that you sort of belong to same federation with. It's different on the edges where we feel neither the warmth of the federation or the solidarity of it's members - all we can feel are the chilling gusts from Siberia. And that's where our people are from anyway ourselves. Come to think of it, we're in many ways much more like our Siberian cousins than those west Europeans we're supposedly teamed up with. The F-18 has been and is a great fighter, no doubt about that. Even the C/D models still probably would kick Gripen's and many others' butts by it's own right - but Russia is itself rolling out increasingly sophisticated EW and stealth equipped fighters and interceptors, nevermind their radars and SAM systems. China is no different in this regard. To stay on top of the game requires some serious effort and that effort ain't cheap.
I wonder if it is because they (any country that uses the F-18) wanted a true multirole aircraft that was equally good at air combat and ground strike missions. F-18 was designed from the beginning to do both. While they may have had a choice of an F-16 it was designed as a light air superiority fighter first (but somehow excels in the ground strike role?) And the F-15 was designed as a pure air superiority aircraft. Only in it's latest version (E) did it even gain a ground strike capability.
Can't really say for sure. We only got the pure air to air package first for the F-18C/D but really, most of the really important things that weigh heavily for the final choices are strictly classified information. We're talking about things like a specific scenario against a top rated enemy fighter such as "this and this aircraft supported by this and this ground system and facing this many MiG-31's and Su-27's, then there is this and that jamming and this and that radars are on or off, these planes engage BVR missiles, how does this all play out?" And frankly if you're able to say how those situations play out you're not going to be discussing it with us. I try to actually avoid those topics with the people that know them because it is annoying to them and they just look at you with the most sympathetic and pitiful smile you can imagine and go "uhuh, hmm - yes, hmm" in a way of not answering and not saying anything at all. Oh, they do have a pretty good idea of how a specific radar spots a specific target and under what circumstances, at what point you're going to get a radar warning or not and by which distance and by what vector you can still have a chance of evading missile and so. It's a lot of planning and a lot of scenario building to assess which fighter to choose for a given country - or in the case of the US what features and at what cost should a new fighter have, where it is better to have one frame and logistical efficiency of shared parts versus dedicated platforms. Such as if almost any plane can be made into a good bomber then doesn't it make sense to make all your planes also perform really well in air combat? That would mean you wouldn't have bombers being escorted by fighters but you'd send in fighters to take out ground targets that would also neutralize any aerial threats by 'escorting themselves'. Then have one regular sized fighter of this type and one 'heavy fighter' that is slightly less agile but has higher payload, range and better stealth and EW. And then have the two work in tandem. Sounds like a pretty damn efficient thing.
yeah. That joint services design thing to bring down costs with a shared airframe? It doesn't exist in reality (not just the F-35). So the air force and navy are going to do joint on the aspects and good ideas part. But the actual aircraft and airframe will be separate.
It's like a loop that closes on itself. You start with like we went to Winter War with - a handful of ad hoc biplanes sourced from here and there, so few in numbers and lacking in spare parts that there was practically no common logistics benefit. Something broke you fixed it. This largely carried on to the end of WW2, German engineer would look at a Finnish G-6's engine that had been shot and say "alles aus" but the Finnish engineer maintaining the plane said "no, we'll fix it" (have to). Indeed, no swap in replacements, you take it apart what you must and fix it until it works and get it back together. Then at some point if you have all planes of same type and enough of them you can simply reduce a damaged plane at some point into spares for others while you also have a store of spare parts to begin with. Having just one type means all the parts fit all the planes, logistical efficiency. Then at some point when you have the three largest air forces in the world 'under the same roof' and one needs carrier planes, one needs strike craft, one needs air superiority and nuclear strike capability... Yea, just looking at being suited for carriers is a tremendous cost increase and has many structural implications. And just having the plane designed for that kind of work won't allow it to actually operate on carriers - the only aircraft allowed to land on USN carriers are ones maintained by the USN to their own standards. They're not going to risk it by allowing a plane that is not maintained like that to potentially clear the deck if you will. In Finland we actually can use the arrest wires on temporary land bases to allow landing on unsuspectfully short strips of road. F-18 also has the power to take off very rapidly provided it's not fully loaded with the heaviest ordnance available on each pylon, meaning you can have it on 'scramble outfit' that allows it to take off really fast, on short runway and climb with equal swiftness. Oh and that also means reduced payload - less missiles - but really, it's not all about just having the maximal number of missiles on your pylons. So yea, I can totally see how at some point you end up losing the logistical benefits and how operating four of the world's most powerful militaries and all poses some unique diverging requirements towards the aircraft types.
The one that drove up costs was the Marine version because they wanted a single engine and VTOL. Both the Air Force and Navy wanted two engines (I think the main reason is safety. You loose an engine you still have 1.) So developing one airframe for 2 different airforces (two countries) or an air force and navy probably wouldn't be that bad. Provided they want similar stuff. But throwing in the marines who wanted a completely different mission profile (mostly close air support to replace Harriers). So while a decent aircraft and probably great for other countries it's far short of what the various U.S. services wanted. If a country is only going to get one version the logistics and such works. The actual commonality of the 3 airframes is only 20-25% and almost all of that is in the cockpit. It might as well have been 3 separate aircraft from the beginning. The problem most americans (who know anything about it) isn't it's capabilities but the cost of the whole program. You couldn't take a wing from any of the variants and put it on a different one. I know the B has a slightly different engine. I think the engine is different for each version of the F-35. So it didn't really meet any of the goals of the program. Not that any of the versions are bad aircraft by themselves. Just that a joint airframe produced something a bit subpar to what it could have if done separately.
