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Question of the Day: If you were buying a TV today, which brand would you choose?
The F-35 thread
- Thread starter snoopdoggydog
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Pegging
Honorary Master
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Doesn't really matter too much, when there is a war to sort out it will change quickly.
If they keep stats on how many aircraft fail their pre-flight checks meaning they have to get a different aircraft, that would be interesting to see.
Dave
Honorary Master
It's peacetime in an area where they likely aren't expecting to be attacked by hordes of planes or ships so would be flying with the bare minimum required. Carrying extra ordnance unnecessarily costs money.
In wartime the plane would be loaded to what Lockheed wittily call "Beast mode".
Dave
Honorary Master
Those pilots will all die very bravely in the first hour of any war against a peer enemy.
Dave
Honorary Master
It's a lot worse since smarter manpads and systems like the S400 and S500 were built.
It's really a dinosaur that is vulnerable even against second and third rate military AD systems these days.
Wut
Executive Member
Satellites and Seacom lines? That's cute if you think that they are crucial for decent modern militaries.
Dave
Honorary Master
That might help the newer planes but the A10 will be like a bus chugging along just waiting for Ivan or Fu Manchu to pop up with something like a SA-29 and give him some bad news up his exhaust pipe.
Mine isn't an isolated opinion either.
Can the A-10 Warthog Defeat Its Toughest Enemy?
The United States Air Force is fighting insurgencies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria—but in recent years, the Air Force has had to contend with two uprisings much closer to home in Washington, DC. One was the storm of criticism it received over the controversial and expensive F-35...
nationalinterest.org
Is the A-10 Vulnerable to the Kind of Attack that Downed Russian Jet?
The downing of a Russian Su-25 over the weekend highlights the dangers facing the beloved A-10 Warthog in Syria and Afghanistan.
www.military.com
Blu82
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No aircraft can operate safely in that environment so operating in it will be regulated to cheapest aircraft that have the highest chance of surviving it. Deploying a JDAM from altitude does not count as close air support. I should note that as MANPADs evolved the means of defeating them.
Dave
Honorary Master
Except the F15 or F35 can operate above manpad ceiling, the F35 obviously also has its stealth abilities to make radar acquisition more difficult.
It's a lot easier to shoot down a 400mph plane at 1000m than a 800mph plane at >10,000m
I remember reading somewhere that in the last two decades 80% of CAS was carried out by aircraft other than the A10.
Tongs of Destiny
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There's really no one that can touch the US armed forces with numbers, training, technology etc. And before you say China & Russia, they don't even come close to the numbers the US has. With any start of a war the B2 bombers will go first, they'll decimate all their SAM and radar sites, then the air force goes in and wipes out any airborne threats. After that it's up to either the Navy (depending on position of their aircraft carriers) or the air force again in destroying key command buildings. Finally once most of the threats have been neutralized they'll send in the Marines + Army to clean up the ground.
China has an up and coming modern air force, but it can't hold a candle to the US.
Russia as well (they might have a couple of hypersonic low level missiles) but they're not ready and you must be joking to think that the US doesn't have something better or can eliminate them. Hell the US has 1,000 F-16's, 300 F-35's, 450 F-15's, 200 F-22's (which can take on 3-1 F-15's and win) 1000 F-18's, 2000 UH-60 helicopters, and about 200 heavy bombers etc available. And those are just ACTIVE.. that excludes stored aircraft. The numbers are mind boggling!
This is why you can't compete:
Military budgets: (and the US has been like this since WW2) in fact you could add up every country under the US and they'd be about the same! lol
US : 738bn
China : 193bn
India : 64bn
Russia : 60bn
UK : 61bn
This is why it is pointless to have an armed force when the US is here. It's like throwing a hamster into a cage with a lion and thinking the hamster can win...
China has an up and coming modern air force, but it can't hold a candle to the US.
Russia as well (they might have a couple of hypersonic low level missiles) but they're not ready and you must be joking to think that the US doesn't have something better or can eliminate them. Hell the US has 1,000 F-16's, 300 F-35's, 450 F-15's, 200 F-22's (which can take on 3-1 F-15's and win) 1000 F-18's, 2000 UH-60 helicopters, and about 200 heavy bombers etc available. And those are just ACTIVE.. that excludes stored aircraft. The numbers are mind boggling!
This is why you can't compete:
Military budgets: (and the US has been like this since WW2) in fact you could add up every country under the US and they'd be about the same! lol
US : 738bn
China : 193bn
India : 64bn
Russia : 60bn
UK : 61bn
This is why it is pointless to have an armed force when the US is here. It's like throwing a hamster into a cage with a lion and thinking the hamster can win...
Wut
Executive Member
Laughs in Taliban
Tongs of Destiny
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lol, but that's not a war.. that's a political tiff taff run by politicians..
in a proper war commanded by Generals etc as in WW2 or WW3 so to speak, you have no chance.
in a proper war commanded by Generals etc as in WW2 or WW3 so to speak, you have no chance.
Wut
Executive Member
Stop watching movies. They may have the best toys, but they are too technology-focused which in a way is their Achilles heel. There is a reason all modern militaries are showing weapons tests lately is to either prove that they have the ability to knock out the US military's satellites on which most of their C&C is based (as well as their pinpoint accuracy for missile/drone strikes) or to prove they can take out a carrier group with hypersonic missiles. To get the same accuracy without satellite options would require troops on the ground to laser target things which will be extremely difficult when fighting against a well-armed enemy.
Stealth tech in its current form is nice and all, but remember the F-117 was far stealthier than an F-22 and the F-35, yet the poorly funded Serbian army managed to take out one and got a strike on a second with very basic SAM technology.
The US with all their might has never actually won a war outright after WW2 which they only managed to do because of their allies (Thanks Russia). Every actual war they have been in has resulted in withdrawal without achieving their objectives. Korea, Vietnam, The War on Terror, etc.
Gordon_R
Honorary Master
BBC report and video link:
Video appears to show UK F-35 fighter crash after take-off
Dramatic footage of what appears to be a jet crashing off the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth was posted on Twitter.
www.bbc.com
Giggles in VietCong and NVA.
Dave
Honorary Master
I'm pretty sure it was nowhere near as stealthy as the 22 or 35 but the shoot down was partially due to bad US habits iirc, they almost always flew down the same route entering the area so the Serbs sent multiple units to that area. They also knew almost to the minute the time the 117's would be overhead as they had people observing takeoffs from the Italian base the 117s were using.
They got a radar lock as the 117 opened its bomb bay and then bracketed the area with multiple SAMs. One exploded close enough to damage the 117 enough to make the pilot lose control.
Tongs of Destiny
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umm no Norrad I think you''ve been watching too many movies like James Bonds Moonraker lol.
you cannot "knock out" the satellites that are used for GPS navigation. Those satellites are sitting in a 20,000km high orbit and have multiple "spare" satellites. No missile or technology on earth can knock them out. No military satellites which are vital are in a low earth orbit, none, nada, zero.
Big difference between a proxy / political money making war and a war of survival.
Remember that "stealth" doesn't mean completely invisible, they still have to evade enemy radar, but their RCS is a million times smaller so harder to track.
you cannot "knock out" the satellites that are used for GPS navigation. Those satellites are sitting in a 20,000km high orbit and have multiple "spare" satellites. No missile or technology on earth can knock them out. No military satellites which are vital are in a low earth orbit, none, nada, zero.
Big difference between a proxy / political money making war and a war of survival.
Remember that "stealth" doesn't mean completely invisible, they still have to evade enemy radar, but their RCS is a million times smaller so harder to track.
Wut
Executive Member
Cute that you think GPS is so safe
They don't even need to shoot them down. Comprehensive GPS blocking technology is already available. Why do you think Russian and Chinese fighter jets have independent navigation systems that use inertia along with magnetic field monitoring? (a lot like homing pigeons). You simply cannot rely on GPS.
U.S. military doubles down on GPS despite vulnerabilities
U.S. military doubles down on GPS despite vulnerabilities
spacenews.com
I worked in drone tech for a while and attended a few symposiums in Israel. I can try to find a few pictures of me at one of them and with signal blocking devices that could create full communication deadzones (No wifi, cellular, GPS or HF radio transmissions) over a large area, but were small enough to be carried by consumer quadcopters.