GIVEN CURRENT WARS, F-35s ARE BETTER CHOICE THAN MORE F-22As

"Typhoon502" wrote in message
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On Jun 11, 6:51 am, "Roger Conroy"
wrote:
"Tiger" wrote in message

...





Raymond O'Hara wrote:
"Ian B MacLure" wrote in message
...

"Raymond O'Hara" wrote in
:

we are in two wars now{which we are losing} and you're worried about an
imaginary war against an imaginary opponent.
russia is not a credible threat. and it is decades away from being one.

Losing? Lose to whom? Current events don't seem be anywere close. As for
Russia? They have in the last year expanded their military activity.
They
are flying Bears again, opposed our missile defence plans, and Nato
expansions. Decades may be a bit much.

Russia is not the only possible future technologically advanced enemy -
don't take your eyes of China, or a possible Arab alliance.- Hide quoted
text -

Not to mention Venezuela...

we don't need F-22s to fight venezuela.

"Jim Wilkins" wrote in message
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On Jun 10, 8:14 pm, Ian B MacLure wrote:
Who with?

Right now the "who" and "with" are unknown.
Rest assured however that at some point there will be both
"who" and "with".

IBM

Look at world conditions in 1930 and see if you could have predicted
the next war.


many did predict it.
and its not 1930

"Raymond O'Hara" wrote in message
...

"Jim Wilkins" wrote in message
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On Jun 10, 8:14 pm, Ian B MacLure wrote:
Who with?

Right now the "who" and "with" are unknown.
Rest assured however that at some point there will be both
"who" and "with".

IBM

Look at world conditions in 1930 and see if you could have predicted
the next war.


many did predict it.
and its not 1930


So if you are incapable of understanding historical analogy, then answer
this:
Who is going to be at war with whom in 2022, and what types of weapons
systems will be used?

I'd advocate an F-22C with:
more powerful, more efficient engines (40,000+ lbs trust each)
IRST, plus the other things that were cut out of the 1980s ATF spec as
the YF-22 was finalized..
improved stealth
larger weapons bay that can hold 8-10 AMRAAMs

Upgrade current F-22A models with as much of the tech that goes into
F-22C as possible.


F-35 is no replacement for F-22
Just like F-16 was no replacement for F-15C, F-15E.



On Jun 10, 1:16 pm, Mike wrote:
Inside the Air Force
Next-gen bomber must be adequately funded
YOUNG: GIVEN CURRENT WARS, F-35s ARE BETTER CHOICE THAN MORE F-22As
Date: June 6, 2008
Allowing the Air Force to buy more F-22As in exchange for fewer F-35
Lightning IIs does not make sense given the nature of the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, Pentagon acquisition chief John Young told reporters
this week. Any decision on buying more F-22As at the expense of F-35s
would have to be based on operational requirements that the service
identifies, Young said during a June 5 briefing. He will leave this
decision up to the Air Force. “The Air Force has taken some looks at
that and been uncomfortable with cutting some more Joint Strike
Fighters, so that’s coupled [to] a force-structure decision,” Young
said. The “Joint Strike Fighter is totally coupled to the requirements
and force-structure decision. It’s not a law of just buy fewer and see
if everything works out.” Both aircraft have unique capabilities that
are best suited for specific missions, he said. However, when looking
at the current conflict environment, Young said that the F-35 is
probably the better-suited airplane, pointing to the F-35’s ground-
attack capability and datalinks as advantages in the current wars.
“JSF is incredibly capable, half the price of the F-22 . . . I would
agree that any decision to buy more F-22s at the expense of JSF is not
a good choice for the taxpayer,” Young said. “F-22 is still working to
add the air-to-ground capability after the fact and at some
significant cost,” he said. Still, Young warned that future
requirements may change, especially with a new administration taking
power next year. Alluding to the Air Force’s next-generation bomber,
the acquisition czar also repeated comments he made earlier this week
claiming that he would not approve any program he determines is not
likely to stay on-budget and on-time. This week, Young told lawmakers
that he does not believe the Air Force will be able to field the
bomber by 2018 because of funding issues. “I’ve said it before and
I’ll say it again, the 2018 was a nice planning date in the
[Quadrennial Defense Review], it is not a mandatory date . . . the
degree to which the Air Force is willing to fund [the bomber] will
determine the date that [it] will be available,” Young said. Early
cost estimates for the bomber were “significantly less” than
comparable programs, especially given how quickly the service wanted
to field the plane, he said. He is now waiting for the results of a
Defense Science Board review into the costs and schedule for the
program before he will sign off on the program. “I do not want to be
part of another marquee failed program,” he said, adding that he hopes
to use their review in budget decisions about the bomber by 2009. Also
at this week’s briefing, Young told reporters that the C-5 Reliability
Enhancement and Re-engining Program could be challenged by the fact
that many parts for the 40-year-old airlifter are becoming obsolete,
and the service could face a supplier gap. “We are discovering that we
may have some suppliers who want to get out of that business space,”
Young said. “I may have some obsolete parts. [But] I have no authority
to go buy a life-of-type buy for that program” because of a current
law. He noted that, without being able to lock in current parts in a
multiyear deal, he will be forced to find new parts that will have to
be re-qualified and retested, causing the costs to rise by tens of
millions of dollars. “So the law will force me to let those parts go
obsolete, and then I’ll have to go spend $10 [million], $20 [million],
$40 million to re-qualify and test the new parts and I can’t do it,”
he said. In an effort to reign in costs, the C-5 RERP program has been
slashed to 48 aircraft from 108, allowing the Pentagon to save $9.8
billion from the program which was re-certified earlier this spring
after breaching the Nunn-McCurdy statute that caps per-unit cost
growth in military programs. The Pentagon recently ordered the Air
Force to infuse another $1.8 billion into the program which DOD
expects to cost $7.7 billion through 2015. The C-5 RERP is meant to
make the airlifters 75 percent more mission capable than current C-5s.

"Roger Conroy" wrote in message
...

"Raymond O'Hara" wrote in message
...

"Jim Wilkins" wrote in message
...
On Jun 10, 8:14 pm, Ian B MacLure wrote:
Who with?

Right now the "who" and "with" are unknown.
Rest assured however that at some point there will be both
"who" and "with".

IBM

Look at world conditions in 1930 and see if you could have predicted
the next war.


many did predict it.
and its not 1930


So if you are incapable of understanding historical analogy, then answer
this:
Who is going to be at war with whom in 2022, and what types of weapons
systems will be used?


and you want to spend billions on pure fantasy speculation?
who has anything anywhere near as good as what wer have?
who is building up anything.
its not the 1930s
its not the cold war.
so stop fighting WWII andWWIII, they aren't going to happen as you imagine.

On Jun 11, 11:34*am, "Roger Conroy"
wrote:
Who is going to be at war with whom in 2022, and what types of weapons
systems will be used

Napoleon was unknown in 1790.
In 1910 England and Germany were each other's best trading partners.
Germany was the model democracy in 1930.
In 1940 the Air Corps had prepared to defend our coastlines. WTF is a
Guadal Canal?
Who expected the Korean War in early 1950, or Vietnam in 1960?
Argentina taking on England??? Are you dreaming?
There was no chance of war with Iraq in 1990 or 2000.

Whatever comes will be the war we are least prepared for so they have
a better prospect of winning.

On Jun 11, 4:07 am, "Paul J. Adam" wrote:

The F-16 and A-10 are good examples, both initially hailed by the
Lightweight Fighter Mafia as everything a combat aircraft should be
(though the ideal aircraft, according to the LWF, seems to have been the
A6M Zero...) and both being "ruined" by the addition of the useless,
wasteful electronics that let them do more than excel at range-shooting
on bright sunny days (and both subsequently demonstrating remarkable
effectiveness and longevity...)

Don't forget the ultimate example of this sort of thing: the A-4
Skyhawk. Heinemann's fanatical devotion to weight saving meant that
you had an excellent air frame capable of holding its own in a
dogfight (as Aggressor pilots proved on numerous occasions). And in
the hands of a determined pilot, well, ask the RN how effective it can
be as an attack aircraft. Unfortunately, it really took until the A4D2
(aka the A4B after the great renaming) to get an airplane that was
functional in more conditions than daylight only- with guided weapons,
adequate navigation systems, etc. The A4D2N (aka A4C), with all sorts
of fancy-pants radars and ECM's and so on was even more useful, and
not surprisingly, 4x as many A4C's were made as A4-nils. Heinemann was
a fantastic designer and I really admire his discipline about weight,
but I think he might have gone a bit too far with mission weight from
time to time.

Chris Manteuffel

"Raymond O'Hara" wrote in message
...


Not to mention Venezuela...

we don't need F-22s to fight venezuela.



Unless they buy a **** load of su-27's and S-400's with all
that oil money the US is supplying them.

With production running at 3 million barrels per day they
have an income of around $170 billion per annum which is
double what they had last year.

That could buy Chavez a lot of shiny new toys that go bang.

Keith

Paul J. Adam wrote:
In message , Tiger
writes

William Black wrote:



In other words."Why pay 2008 Corvette money to do a job your old 1988
F150 could do?" I'm sure there plenty of stuff in the boneyard that
fits the bill. A-10's, A6's, A-4's, Phantoms, A-7's. Old stuff, but to
drop bombs in zones with no Mig threats they work. I think the A-1 may
be pushing the concept a bit, but I hear you.....


Fine until the Bad Guys hit it with a 1960s-vintage SA-7 or similar,
which is cheap and widely proliferated and very effective against such
aircraft (as evidenced by the withdrawal of the A-1 from Vietnam by the
end).

The cost vs. benifit seems out of wack. You want a $100 milion plane
designed for chasing Migs to drop bombs on Bad guy X. Rather than a $20
million A6 or A10 designed for that purpose 30 years ago? Both in theory
can get hit by the golden BB.Based on combat so far Choppers are a more
likely target for your SA-7. Lower flying, slow. Our losses in rotor
wing craft far excedes any fixed wing losses. Also even recently retired
planes are equiped with flares & chaff to counter missle threats.




By the time you've added the IRCM capability to survive MANPADS,
included the navigation and comms gear needed to hit *that* building to
support the troops, and bolted on the sensors that let you operate at
night as well as by day... your solution is no longer quick, cheap and
simple.


It's the old problem of the Blitzfighter: it's an appealing notion to
fill the skies with cheap, simple aircraft armed with a simple but
deadly gun and unburdened by complex electronic boondoggles, but the
reality falls over when many are blotted from the sky by SAMs, others
can't be reached on a swamped VHF voicenet, those that can get to where
they're needed get into long conversations about "I see the street, I
think, and some red smoke, you want me to hit the red smoke?... okay,
across the street and three houses north of the red smoke... I show two
red smokes now... was that you calling 'Check! Check! Check!'?"

All the pricey toys of Saddam's Air defence got few kills. The f-16 may
old enough to drink,but I could take a few down to Venezeula turn
Hugo's shinny new toys into toast in a day.


The F-16 and A-10 are good examples, both initially hailed by the
Lightweight Fighter Mafia as everything a combat aircraft should be
(though the ideal aircraft, according to the LWF, seems to have been the
A6M Zero...) and both being "ruined" by the addition of the useless,
wasteful electronics that let them do more than excel at range-shooting
on bright sunny days (and both subsequently demonstrating remarkable
effectiveness and longevity...)

A-10's are lightwieght?

As for the Zero. It's strengths play to a difference in design
philosophy. It was to be used offensively & swiftly like a Katana sword.
It's armor was it's speed & climb. We on the other hand take the suit
of armor approach to planes. Thus we build stuff like the Hellcat or
P47. The LWF program also helped close the quantity gap over our foes.
The f-14 & f-15 had quality, but a $30 million a pop not numbers.

"Raymond O'Hara" wrote in message
...




and you want to spend billions on pure fantasy speculation?

Thats what defense planning amounts to

who has anything anywhere near as good as what wer have?

Russia and increasingly China

who is building up anything.

Russia, China, India , Iran

its not the 1930s

No its the 21st century where increasing numbers of industrialized
nations are chasing decreasing natural resources. The prospect
of nation deciding it needs to go to war to secure its oil supply
has happened before - see Pearl Harbor

Then there's the continuing radicalisation in the Muslim world
and rising Russian nationalism.

its not the cold war.
so stop fighting WWII andWWIII, they aren't going to happen as you
imagine.

Or as you do. What planners are expected to do is work on
the basis of capabilities not intentions. Todays ally can become
an enemy overnight. See Iran as an example.

Keith