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Air superiority To those who are not au fait with arcane Australian military procurement debates – and those that wish to be so – I present to you a rather fascinating discussion of the merits of the F-22 Raptor (a most superior bird) versus the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (which the Australian government has plumped for). And those that do not give a tinker’s cuss about Australian defence procurement (hell, I do not blame you), I have some quite breathtaking footage of an Su-37 being put through its paces.
I believe this footage (also via Catallaxy) is of an Su-37 being exhibited at the Farnborough air show in the late 90s. Would not like to be facing this plane in a dogfight during daylight hours. According to the linked source, the Su-37 is not currently being manufactured for any particular client. Okay, Samizdata military talking heads – discuss!
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Unfortunately, the Raptor is a mind-numbingly expensive and the US only seems keen to consider exporting a bowdelerised(sp?) version.
From the reports by pilots, the F-22 is one of the few aircraft with a better than even chance against the Sukhoi in a dogfight. It can do all of the same maneuvers you’ve seen the Su-37 pull – but more so, since the F-22’s thrust vectoring nozzles run ±20 degrees, versus the 37’s 15 degrees, and is supposedly even more controllable during extreme flight regimes due to the improved software for fly-by-wire.
The F-22 seems like it would be a better choice for Australia, though, due to its much longer range at cruise or above Mach 1. The differences between the US and “export” versions lie mostly in software for the ECM suite.
Hold on.
Congress last year again refused permission to the USAF & Lockmart to even begin to talk about exports of the F-22 to anybody.
If they wanted to exopt even a downgraded vesion of the plane to Australia or the UK or Japan or Israel. There would be a major knock down, drag out fight in Congress in order to get them to change the law that says No F-22 exports- period-.
The US is of course free to take that stance about the F-22. I hope they realise that Australia needs to buy the best fighter in the market. I’d love to see Australia buy a Russian plane simply to stick it to the Americans, who seem to me to rather take our alliance for granted.
The Battle of the Coral Sea was a LONG time ago now, and that debt has been paid with the blood of Australians in many parts of the world.
Anyone know whether Australia gave any thought to the Eurofighter, maybe instead of the F-35. Is the former that much inferior?
Interesting to see on a link that Australia learned the lesson about including a gun during the Vietnam era. In the UK we seem just to have learnt that again after a fiasco over the gun fitting on RAF Eurofighters.
Without numbers is dificult to say but F-35 seems to have too short legs for Australia.
Also planes tend to be what electronics they have. And while a gun can still be useful, technology isnt like in Vietnam where air to air missiles were just starting.
Scott
Australia has already done a pretty good job of ‘sticking it to the Americans’ since they have been buying French helicopters and allowed major parts of their defense industry to be taken over by our French enemies.
Our allies are always telling us that we take them for granted, though the Aussies usually do it less than the Brits or the Germans.
Actually, we are probably soon going to be turning our backs on the rest of the world and concentrating on building up our space assets.
Australia is lucky the Chinese are a longish ways away. Others will have to worry about them.
It appears as though there are one or two too many new jets about to enter production. Surely the US would be better off dropping either the F-35 or F-22 and concentrating on one? I never worked out why back in the 60s/70s the US developed an F-14 and an F-15 at the same time. I can only assume politics sticks its ugly nose in and causes this sort of duplication of effort.
(1) There was a lot more money around for planes back during the cold war.
‘The F-14 Tomcat is a supersonic, twin-engine, variable sweep wing, two-place fighter designed to attack and destroy enemy aircraft at night and in all weather. Avionics require 2 people aboard. USN. Retired.
‘The F-15 Eagle is an all-weather, extremely maneuverable, tactical fighter designed to gain and maintain air superiority in aerial combat. USAF. Single seat fighter. The world’s primary killer in the air.
(2) These puppies had different roles and therefore had different flight envelopes, avionics, mechanics.
…and don’t forget the F18 Hornet for the Navy/Marines.
The F/A-18 fills a variety of roles: air superiority, fighter escort, suppression of enemy air defenses, reconnaissance, forward air control, close and deep air support, and day and night strike missions.’
Lots and lots of money back then.
Hmmm…thanks for your help trainer, but I’m still a bit confused:
F14: designed to attack and destroy enemy aircraft at night and in all weather.
F15: designed to gain and maintain air superiority in aerial combat
Erm, these roles seem awfully similar.
Of course, I’m being a bit facetious here. I understand one was made for the Navy and one for the Airforce, with the F14 being carrier launched (hey, I’ve seen Top Gun). And of course you’re right, there was much more money sloshing about, but when you take into consideration the F18 Hornet and the F16 Falcon there seems to be some degree of duplication of effort here. Were all four of these planes actually needed? It’s a genuine question.
By the way, is having a single seat much different from having a buddy up there with you? A lot is made of whether a plane is 1 or 2 seater, I’ve never fully appreciated the difference.
Tim Newman,
How odd that you select the F-35/F-22 & F-14/F-15 for your argument. Both pairs are radically different in role to each other and are complementary to each other.
McNamara as SecDef decided to develop single types which could be used for multiple roles. The result was the F-111. The A-model was to be a strike bomber for the USAF and the B-model was to be the US Navy fleet interceptor.
The B-model tanked because (amongst other things) “navalisation” of a design is a very difficult job. Grumman had seen this coming and already had the F-14 under development for the inevitable cancellation of the F-111B. Hence the F-14 which was very good at it’s job (especially with the AIM-54 Phoenix missile) and has not really been replaced within the USN
Of course there was inter-service political issues but that didn’t get around the fact that technically carrier-born aircraft are very different birds from land based ones.
F-35/F-22 is essentially the same lo-hi mix as the USAF (and others) have found very useful for many years with the F-16/F-15. Basically you build a very good but relatively cheap fighter and buy that in large numbers* (F-16/F-35) and build an absolute stormer to use as a force multiplier that ensures air supremacy (F-15/F-22) and don’t buy many.
Sweep the skies, then send the second echelon in to carry out the real job with bombing and the strafing and the killing people and breaking things and the pain and the glavin!
Roughly speaking the F-15 unit price** was 4 times that of the F-16 and something similar is likely to be true (possibly even more) so for the for the F-22/F-35 mix.
Maybe you’re right about the superabundance of fighters but the one US bird I can’t figure (and seems really was rather political) is the SuperHornet. If there is an African-American of colour locate in the renewable fuel store it’s that. Traces of it’s design go back to the Northrop F-5!
PS. Am I the only one who thinks the RAF should have replaced the Jag with the Grippen?
*Which creates a virtuous circle for unit prices with export markets.
**A devilishly hard thing to pin down exactly.
By the way, is having a single seat much different from having a buddy up there with you? A lot is made of whether a plane is 1 or 2 seater, I’ve never fully appreciated the difference.
Yes, there is. For strike roles or long-range interception a RIO, “navigator” (how quiant the RAF is!) is very important. Both missions tend to be longer than air superiority/point interception and involve much more electronics. Having somebody run the computers/radar and other gizmos while you can concentrate on flying is very helpful.
Example: The French decided post Bosnia to order more 2 place Rafales for the strike role.
Anyone know whether Australia gave any thought to the Eurofighter, maybe instead of the F-35. Is the former that much inferior?
Probably, and feel free to correct me on this, that Australia wanted a fighter that 1) worked, 2) wasn’t designed with some fundamental flaws that ensure that the French come along and suggest you might prefer the Rafale instead, 3) doesn’t cost more than the F-35 and 4) wasn’t designed by an EU committee.
Of course that might be why the Fleet Air Arm is considering the F-35 as its preferred primary fleet MRCA for the ‘is and ‘ers carriers HMS Victoria Beckham and HMS David Beckham.
And further,
(Sorry for the split comment but people seem to be commenting thick and fast and I wanna get on the six of this one).
During ‘Nam the F-4 Phantom had amongst its flaws in close combat relatively poor visibilty (especially towards the rear). Many Phantom victories were assigned to the back-seater providing an extra pair of eyeballs looking over his shoulder to check six. This is not as much of an issue with modern bubble hoods*.
I have never heard of a good argument (other than weight, cost, complexity and sticking twice as many people in the line of fire) for a single seater but I would opine that even if the pilot/backseater are as attuned to each other as Olympic ice-dance champions then having two people aboard is an encumbrance in the split-second world of dogfighting.
*Like those on the P-51D, late model Spitfires, Hawker Tempest, F-86…
Julian,
The Typhoon just wasn’t/isn’t ready for the fighter competitions.
Because it was/is “going to be made multi-role”.
Would you sign the dotted line for anything important without a fundamental feature on a promise rather than a demonstration?
This delay (due to all the reasons you stated) is the reason it didn’t even have a look-in with the Ozzies, the Singaporeans or the South Koreans… Possibly even the Greeks.
Oh, that and BAE didn’t have a 60 million slush fund for these potential customers…
Its a shame because the Tiffy has (almost) won me around. It’s a great WVR fighter. And with some of the planned upgrades (which should have been included from the get-go) such as AESA radar, thrust-vectoring and the killer Meteor missile*) it would be a blinding fighter at any range. Obviously, designing it from the start as a truly multi-role plane would have been like point one. Duh!
*AMRAMM – SHAMRAAM.
This is the kind of thing that always comes to mind when I see rhetoric about Russia having sunk to the level of a mere fossil-fuel-based power like the Middle Eastern oil states.
Where is the Middle Eastern oil state that could manufacture something like the Su-37?
How odd that you select the F-35/F-22 & F-14/F-15 for your argument.
It’s not odd, because I clearly have no idea what I’m talking about and was simply asking a question in the hope that somebody would set me straight. As you have done. Thanks!
LOL!
I was going to stick my oar in on this one but I do not see what I could possibly add to what Nick M has already said other than… yeah, that about sums it all up.
Nick, (or anybody else with an opinion)
It looked to me like the X-32 is a plane with a gigantic future and the LM X/F-35 is starting out as a nearly fully developed platform.
From looking at substantive features of construction and flight, it looks like the XF-35 is a super developed member of the previous generation while the Boeing X-32 is a primitive vision of the next generation, both in technology and manufacturing design.
Yes they had problem assembling the wing of the prototype. But what highly scalable (and I think it is) production method does one-offs very well. Take any part in your car and try to make just one of them. And yet in quantity, they are incredibly optimized. I think this would have been the case with the Boeing as well. Which, when you think about the market niche, is exactly what you want.
I also think that the Boeing flight technology, particularly the VTOL part has loads of room to be developed. The LM with its Mack truck driveshaft technology seems to be almost completely developed except for software improvements. And that bulkhead! Producing that scales about as well as … ?
I don’t know, are my intuitions the result of some clever marketing or is there some truth to them?
And to whoever made the (joking?) comment about the Aussies buying Russian, I think that if they can settle concerns about the parts/replacements supply in time of war, either with domestic redundancy or whatever, that they would owe it to their tax payers to take a hard look. It’s possible there would be enough bang for the buck to justify dealing with other (ie joint ops) problems.
Taylor, NickM – I too thought the full quid F-22 was unavailable for foreign purchase, however this comment makes for interesting reading, as does the research paper he links to.
There is more to deciding which how many varieties of fighters to build, how fast, and how many, than just evaluating the planes and the costs.
And some of those constraints give you a better force while others give you a weaker force.
A major nation has to decide how many development teams will stay alive. If you bought all F16s for the last three decades you would have had an excellent force, with a plane that was very good but not absolutely superior in every scrap. Your cost would have been low. Your maintenance would have been low.
And the next time you wanted a fighter only one team and company would exist to design and build it.
Do you want only one team capable in the newest composites, engines, and avionics? It is a lot cheaper.
Of course there is also endless interference from Congress trying to keep bases and plants alive in political districts. So established programs grind on and new ones get parceled out across the nation. And you end up with immense maintenance costs for multiple platforms.
Congress, and company lobbists, as digusting as they often seem, are not the only players. Military officers and defense department civilians, near retirement, often have their careers tied to one major program or another. And their post retirement prospects of consulting positions, executive jobs, and board memberships can depend on how useful they are perceived by private industry.
That being said, the US spends too damn much for what we get. It is not the programs but the mix. There is little chance of improvement as long as we plan to be able to fight in any conditions, anywhere in the world, against any force.
Nor does it do much good to bring allies into development. Then your procurement and politcal problems just spread across both congressional districts AND national boundraries.
A major nation has to decide how many development teams will stay alive.
That’s a good point. My friend at BAE once explained to me that if a country skips a generation in developing a warplane they are out of the game for good.
It’s a big mistake to conflate aerobatic performance with combat effectiveness. The big Russian bird can dance very prettily. The F22 is almost a stealth fighter in terms of its radar signature and has an electronics suite one generation ahead. In a fight the Sukhoi would get blown away – in all likelihood from well beyond visual range. Hell – a Lancaster bomber of WWII vintage if kitted out with the right electronics / radar package would be able to take the Sukhoi down from afar. Platforms are not systems.
Su-27 “Would not like to be facing this plane in a dogfight during daylight hours”
Ah, a dogfight. Happening presumaly because the pilots have forgotten the 50+ mile range missiles they have strapped under their wings, yes?
It is funny really. People, aeronautical expert type people, have been saying that since the 1960’s. “Dogfighting is a thing of the past! Who needs a gun when you have missiles with a
10,20,30, 50+ mile range!”And then a real shooting war happens in which nothing every quite follows the flow chart of ‘how it is supposed to happen’ and suddenly everyone is scrambling to relearn how to dogfight and strapping on a cannon pod if their kites does not have a gun built in.
Missiles do not always hit. Missiles can be jammed or spoofed. When you get a sky full of opposing aircraft, you will often get ‘leakers’ through any stand-off missile screen.
On the other hand a 30mm cannon aimed with an eyeball works at point blank range and is bloodily hard to spoof. There is a reason that the airforce with more combat experience than any other (Israel) still teaches its pilots how to dogfight.
Guns and high manoeuvrability. Don’t leave home without it.
Alustralia should divert the cost of one F- 22 / F-35 and spend the money and buying and restoring the last remaining Vulcan.
The Vulcan could then be used on special ‘hearts & minds’ missions i.e. flying slowly over enemy to scare the living daylights out of them (and, of course, making an impression on young boys at air shows).
Perry,
I share your feelings about guns on fighters. They offer flexibility. They also offer cost-effectiveness – is it really worth dropping a JDAM to take out a Toyota pick-up with 8 Taliban in it when a strafing run would also do the trick?
Of course you’re right about the need to maintain a dog-fight capability but I’ll just add one thing.
Dog-fighting is more fun! I’ve played a number of sims and I always end up back with Strike Fighters and MiG Alley because sims of more modern jets are full of arcane avionics. I binned the Falcon 4 (I think it was 4) that I’d torrented the minute I saw it had 57(?) radar modes. If I want to “fly” a fighter I’ll fly a fighter but I’m not going to an evening class to learn how!
Nobody wants to learn about an APG-66’s sweep angles in different modes. They want to Kick the tyres and light the fires!
And the point is… An air force general staff is generally made up of (former) fighter pilots. Fighter pilots became fighter pilots to fly fighter planes and show off to the ladies – not to fly a missile base aboard a 737. Therefore they are always going to want something flash. When somebody develops a UAV that can rule the skies there will be hell to pay!
Mid,
I think you’ve got the X-32/X-35 thing a little confused. The X-35 may have looked more conventional but that don’t mean anything. Except of course the Lightning II looks like a baby Raptor and everyone seems to like that look whereas the Boeing was hideous. Looks are important for a fighter plane. D’ya think that many congressmen look into G-holdings and instantaneous turn rates, high AOA handling and transonic acceleration figures?
The X-35 was partly chosen because the STOVL system was deemed more sophisticated than the system on the X-32. That “Mack driveshaft” is state of the art.
As far as the Ozzies buying Russkie is concerned. It’s not inconceivable. They could get re-supply from India. India is such a large customer for Sukhoi that they basically drew up the rough design for the Su-34 and were the launch customer with heavy manufacturing involvement. I’m sure that if the Sovs cut up rough then the Ozzies could get parts from the lads at Bangalore.
In the early 90s the RAF actually studied the MiG-29. The reason they ruled it out was it’s poor build quality which meant poor reliability and therefore poor operational availability – too much time in the shop. So Sukhois flying in Western airforces are not as inconceivable as some might think. Build quality may still be an issue but the big Sukhois are probably now very different from their forebears. Example: the Su-34 cabin has a proper toilet and a microwave oven! That’s very different from Sov era standards of crew comfort*. These comforts are partly mandated by the new Sukhois’s excellent range and endurance, another major change from previous generations and one likely to interest the Ozzies in particular.
BTW the F-35 lift-fan is based on a Yakovlev design that LM bought. See Yak-141 Freestyle for more details.
If there is a tragic victim in a recent US fly-off then I’d go for the Nothrop-Grumman F-23 Black Widow II. The Raptor looks like a pimped F-15 whereas this looks like it dropped through a time-vortex into 1989.
Nick,
I like this forum. It makes me think more clearly. Everything you point out is what I already thought, so it must be my perspective of the product and market place, meta-context? 🙂 which is the problem.
My thinking on those two birds is that the x-35 is essentially fully developed and refined design except for software. That mack driveshaft is state of the art. I think the whole bird is state of the art and would be a difficult design to improve on.
Sexy looking fighters is an unfortunate stipulation of our procurement methods. I don’t know what we can do about that. They tried hard when competing these two (32 & 35) but I still think sexy and familiar won. In fact I think the 35 was ‘sexy’ because it was familiar and evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The 32 is about as sexy as a pelican. And it was loaded with unfamiliar design and construction concepts.
Perhaps the 32 isn’t the type of rock solid tech you want to be your top of the line air sup fighter yet, but it sure seems to me it has the potential to go through a great many derivations and be flying in some form for a very long time.
I guess my instinctive perception is that the 32 is a rather awkward collection of really cool ideas that have a lot of potential, and the 35 is a rather polished and (by aerospace standards) known and predictable fully developed platform. With this thinking it is reasonable to say that the 32 should not have been given the go, but should still be worked on and brought up again next time around. I just hope the results of that project show up in near future production aircraft.
Am I wrong about how refined vs how speculative the two designs are? My opinions are intuitive, not based on much in the way of technical knowledge, but rather the attitudes and philosophies of the respective design teams when they were interviewed.
Also, it really says something about world politics and allignment, that we can be seriously discussing Australia procuring Russian technology as being feasible because of India’s market position.
PS: Yak-141, afterburner in hover. How cool would that be to watch? But perhaps ceramic landing areas would be a good idea.
There is a word that has not been mentioned in this thread, and it relates to the question of what the likely mission of any aircraft bought by the Australian airforce would be. That word is of course “Indonesia”. Australian relations with Indonesia can at times be problematic, and at times Australian polticians appear to prostrate themselves in front of Indonesia in the name of good relations. There is a subtext to this which is not generally mentioned, which is that the Australians are prostrating themselves while holding a big stick. If relations with Indonesia were to deteriorate to the point at which a war occurred, Australia’s present air force would gain air superiority in about 20 minutes, and after that the F-111s would be free to bomb strategic targets pretty much at will. (This is why Australia still has the F-111s). Australia’s air force (with its F/A-18s) also provides air support for Australia’s ground troops wherever they might be deployed (it has done so in recent years in East Timor and Iraq, amongst other places).
As long as this military imbalance between Indonesia and Australia persists, no such war is likely, and this is ultimately why it is important that it does persist. The thing I wonder about is whether the F-35 is suitable of the long range bombing mission of the present F-111. If it is not, another choice is necessary.
Looks are important for a fighter plane.
Indeed. IMO, parrallel twin tailplanes should be compulsory. There was a reason why the four best looking planes ever were the F-14, F-15, Mig-29 and SU-27.
BTW Nick M, can you recommend a decent flight game which involves a lot of flying, dogfighting, and shooting stuff up and not too much playing with radars?
Air superiority is a means to an end. After establishing it, then what?
The payoff comes when the less glamorous aircraft start their missions in support of the infantry and armor: for the Americans, that would be the A-10, the AC-130, and the AH-64. Low and slow, not terribly agile, but loaded. Considering the neighborhood in which the RAAF operates, this mission is really the critical part. Other than the F/A-18, the Aussies look to be a little light in this department.
Yes, the flyboys just love their go-fast toys, but in the end, it’s the Tommies, Diggers, and Grunts who seal the deal. The Air Force and the Navy only exist to get them to the right place and keep them there.
And with the Typhoon 27mm Mauser they removed the cannon in order to save money by removing gun support costs, ammunition stocks, training costs etc. Then they compromised that decision by saying that because removal of the cannon would affect the aircraft’s flight characteristics, requiring modification of the aircraft’s flight software the Typhoon should be fitted with the cannon but that it would not be used or supported, arguing that this would save money by reducing the requirement for ground equipment, removing training costs and avoiding the “fatigue effects of firing the cannon” (not nice, new and shiny any more). In the third change of plan last October the RAF finally got around to making the cannon operational at last.
Designed by a committee indeed …
Aircraft cannon are pretty robust things. When the Royal Marines went into Iraq in 2003 the .50 calibre heavy machine guns that went with them were originally on the wings of WWII Spitfires. I kid you not. You could even tell by the configuration of the firing mechanism whether it was from a left or right wing. Nevertheless, when those old things started pumping out .50 cal rounds everyone in front of it got their heads down. Or blown off.
I’ve not heard an argument made that the Typhoon should be fitted with a cannon in order for Royal Marines fighting on a shoestring budget in 2067 to make use of it on the ground, but the way our armed forces are headed I’m sure somebody’ll think of it before too long.
Tim, in Desert Storm in 1991 they issued WW2 type Bren guns as the section LMG because they were known to function with minimal maintenance under desert conditions which the dreadful L86 certainly couldn’t be relied upon to do.
Tim, in Desert Storm in 1991 they issued WW2 type Bren guns as the section LMG because they were known to function with minimal maintenance under desert conditions which the dreadful L86 certainly couldn’t be relied upon to do.
Posted by Julian Taylor
New and shiney is not always better. How many times has the Pentagon tried to get rid of the A-10 “Warthog”? Yet, it turns out to still be the best ground attack/tank busting platform flying.
I read a report detailing the cost effectiveness of various weapon systems, and the A-10 was at the top, Bang per Buck wise.
Read up on John Boyd for an education about how the abortion known as the F-111 came to be. The man was a bit of a loonie, but he knew whats what about F/A aircraft. The development of the F16/15 were due in large part to his work, in spite of the powers that be.
Cheers
Tim,
I just did! It’s called MiG Alley. It’s from ’98 (eek!) so it might be a bit tricky to get hold of. It’s Korean war based and the gfx aren’t great by modern standards but it’s got a pretty good flight model (I learned to play it partly from a downloaded pdf of the F-86E pilots manual).
The slightly more recent Strike Fighters is also worth checking out.
I’m a big fan of MA because most proper flight sims are either WWII (and prop fighters are buggers because of the torque and have you seen the price of flight-sim rudder pedals and no, I don’t like twist sticks) or F-16 and more modern and then it’s all about learning the agonising details of the avionics. I would also suggest that sims like Falcon are just no fun to fly because the FBW makes stalls an spins almost impossible. Obviously, this is a very good thing in the real world but in sim world it’s nowhere near as much fun as keeping a Lockheed Shooting Star in a high G turn just short of stalling.
And then there is the enormous satisfaction of getting on the bastard’s six and rattling the buggeration out of him with your 6 50s. Which beats the hell out of (correctly) selecting mode 17 (AA) and firing off an AMRAAM.
Also, Mig Alley is enormous fun in free-flight mode (especially with an F-80 – handles beautifully) because there are some deep valleys to try and take as fast as possible.
Mig Alley also has ground attack missions. Rocketing trains is fun and for my sins I also enjoy strafing Chinese troops. You see the buggers scatter and (perversely) hear them scream! Like I said, for my sins.
MiG Alley doesn’t exactly work with XP. I’m not sure if it just doesn’t work at all or if it’s just iffy.
I suggest you try eBay – either game will cost bugger-all. If that fails get in touch with me. We both post frequently so that shouldn’t be difficult.
Jesus Nick, you’re a nerd! 😀
Nick M,
Thanks very much for all that, I should be able to find Mig Alley on the P2P hubs, not that I would ever download it of course because that’s illegal….no, I’ll just verify its existence. That’s all.
James,
I might be a nerd but my closing speed on your six is 150 knots and at Angels 10 my Sabre will match your MiG-15 in any stunt you wish to pull. You’ll get one shot (tops) with your 37mil cannon before I rattle you to hell with my 50 cals (please note that the cheek mounting of the Sabre’s 50s put extra heavy metal around the cockpit – neat.
Yeah, I’m a nerd. I’m a total geek but godammit I love it. I’ve got a picture somewhere of an F-86 and a MiG-15 from the Steven F Udvar-Hazy Annex of the Smithsonian. Why d’ya think I took the missus on honeymoon to DC as well as Key West?
I wanted to pay homage to the Enola Gay.
I had to shift to my Pentax, because my digicam was out of juice. It was awesome. I even saw my old friend the Enterprise.
It doesn’t happen every day.
Having said all that, I can still fly a Sabre to the stall all the way down from 50k to the deck chasing a MiG. All simulated of course. In reality I’m a 33 year old computer engineer who lives in South Manchester.
I may dress like a supporting cast member of M*A*S*H but that don’t mean a thing except that combat pants, a Hawaiin shirt and a suitable leather jacket will never go out of fashion.
The F-22 was originally an air superiority fighter only. No ground attack capability whatsoever. It also cost the earth.
Then some bright spark thought they’d better make it an “F/A”-22, that is, a ground attack aircraft as well as a fighter. Internally, its bombload was trivial.
Except… that now being able to carry even a few teeny weeny bombs is actually effective, as such bombs now hit the targets 90% of the time or more, within a metre of the aimpoint. So what was a stupid propaganda exercise turns out to be quite reasonable.
As for the F-35, the cost now exceeds that of the F-22 (pardon, the F/A-22). And the performance of the F-35 has gone down, while the performance of the F/A-22 has gone up, so now their air to ground payloads are comparable.
The F-35 has more development potential, but is an inferior aircraft in terms of performance, though is likely to be easier to maintain.
The F-111 is a great aircraft, but its servicability is awful. On exercises, it’s sometimes been really good, but we’re talking about an aircraft that spends 100 hours in the hanger for every hour in the air, of you’re lucky.
There’s a lot more to aircraft procurement than just performance figures too: ease of manitenance, availability of parts, serviceability, all count. It’s unlikely Australia will ever be in a high intensity conflict without US support, but UK support is more problematic. If we get US aircraft, and we need a spare left handed flunge sprocket, we just ask the USAF. If we get UK aircraft, we may have to wait till the UK government re-starts the production line again, unless we can raid RAF stocks.
So sometimes we end up having to buy overpriced, under-performing US crap. Because for us, it’s a better buy.
Not to mention, Australia never was all that dependent on the US for small arms. However, the current rifle is licensed from a company presently subject to a ban on any sales to the US, because said company sold sniper rifles to Iran in the last 2-3 years.
It’s nice to see the clowns in DC slapped around for taking good friends for granted, if they noticed. At least Tennessee didn’t elect the Senate candidate who thought that Oz was going to be an emerging nuclear threat a la North Korea. (Although, if I had Australia’s uranium and brainpower and neighbors, I’d be thinking about it too! Can’t trust them kiwis!)
Nick M:
“When somebody develops a UAV that can rule the skies there will be hell to pay!”
I have always noticed with glee (as a former ground pounder) that the officers of USAF UAV units, when seen on TV, still wear flight suits, shades and colored scarves.
It will be hard to wrench their, uhm, machismo symbols away from them.