[General Battuta]

it won't, it's a cluster****

[headdie]

Too many hands and conflicting interests in its development to become a great plane but hopefully will be usable

[Thaeris]

Delightfully off-topic, but that's the nature of our forums...

I'm going to postulate that the next major fighter to enter service in the US (after the F-35, which despite lengthy delays was also designed on a rush/design-on-the-fly mentality) will be the Navy's "F/A-XX," which ought to fill a heavy air superiority/tactical fighter role (like the Super Tomcat). Ideally, this will prove to be a true replacement for the F-14, do what the A-12 (Avenger II, not the mach 3 interceptor-turned-fighter) should have done, and given to the Air Force, will do what the F-22 could not: replace the F-15, and not just the air superiority fighter variant. The Air Force would do well to adopt a fighter besides the F-16 that can do everything, and be designed to do everything in the first place.

...You can argue that about the F-22, but the strike role is most definately an afterthought for the Raptor.

[Nuke]

i dont see no point in building planes for wars that dont exist. our biggest threats right now are those who can do more with less (guerrilla warfare/terrorism). expensive planes do little to fight those. its just an international penis measuring contest that we've won several times over. were better off pumping the money into intelligence and associated tech.

[Thaeris]

Oh damn, that's so true.

[jr2]

@Battuta's comment:  I should have said "didn't"; they didn't want the F-22 canned.  Yeah I knew they were done producing them.  I wonder if Boeing's version would have been better... [insert suspicions of corporate contributions affecting craft selection here]

Like the DC-X from McDonnell Douglas  -- oh, let's use our pet lockheed x-33 project instead ~ so they ditch the dc-x and instead get stuck with nothing but a computer simulation (which was all they had to begin with) and which ends up getting canned anyways.  Makes sense.

Go look on youtube for dc-x test flight   

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/simages/dcxpic.html

This is an historic picture: the birth of DC/X. This is the West Wing of the White House, with Vice President Dan Quayle, then Chairman of the National Space Council; Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham; rocket scientist Max Hunter; and me, presenting Quayle with the arguments for an experimental rocket.



    After considerable skepticism generated by NASA officials who assured him that Single Stage to Orbit rockets could not work, and in any event it would be impossible to control the DC/X at low speeds, the ship was built and flown. Quayle extracted the money from the Strategic Defense Initiative Office budget, so none of it came out of NASA.
DC/X had several historic flights at White Sands Proving Grounds under USAF sponsorship. It was "piloted" by Pete Conrad (who stayed on the ground and controlled the ship through a Macintosh computer interfaced to the main system controls.) It had a number of successful flights under Air Force control, and demonstrated that it was capable of fully controlled flight at low speeds.

NASA eventually took over the ship. On the first NASA controlled flight a NASA technician failed to connect the hydraulic lines to the landing gear, and after a successful flight the ship did a "wheels up" landing, fell over on its side, and burned. It was never replaced.

NASA has always seen Single Stage to Orbit craft as a threat to Shuttle, the enormous Shuttle budget, and NASA control over manned space.

[LordPomposity]

@Battuta's comment:  I should have said "didn't"; they didn't want the F-22 canned.  Yeah I knew they were done producing them.  I wonder if Boeing's version would have been better... [insert suspicions of corporate contributions affecting craft selection here]

As I recall, the YF-23 outerperformed the YF-22 in all areas except dogfight maneuverability. I suspect that air cowboy fantasies played a role in craft selection.

[Thaeris]

I've heard it had a lot to do with where major politicians and generals lived, actually...



I'd argue that the '23 also had a developable airframe as well - the '22, once designed, was done in the aircraft evolution scale (without significant changes to the airframe). That also wasn't Boeing, that was McDonnell Douglas and Northrop Grumman. Boeing actually was a joint partner with Lockheed Martin in the F-22 project.

[jr2]

Hmm.  Well, Boeing now owns McDonnell IIRC.  Interesting.

[Thaeris]

I do indeed hate Boeing, but it is interesting...

If the company merger (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, etc.) isn't just a merger, if you will, and there's a buy-out (like Boeing and McDonnell Douglas)... well, it explains itself. BUT, as you can see, the whole US aerospace industry is just like the automotive industry: super corporations (birthed usually via merging) own everything, and are bloated and stagnated by their own size and comparative lack of competition. Boeing hasn't been building fighter planes for DECADES, yet they managed to swallow up some of the finest manufacturers of combat aircraft the US has ever seen (This also includes North American Aviation Company). I like to pin them as the penultimate of corporate evil in the aerospace sector, but I'm not sure that's completely fair.

[NGTM-1R]

The project is already done. The last F-22 was produced last year, and there will be no more orders as far as I know.

The more the Eagle force ages, the more likely we are to see either more F-22s or a derivative of their airframe. Either that or we'll end up with something like Dale Brown's Cheetah; a super-15 based on the NASA testbeds.

It's not like the F-22 had the production line demolished, just placed in storage.

[headdie]

The project is already done. The last F-22 was produced last year, and there will be no more orders as far as I know.

The more the Eagle force ages, the more likely we are to see either more F-22s or a derivative of their airframe. Either that or we'll end up with something like Dale Brown's Cheetah; a super-15 based on the NASA testbeds.

It's not like the F-22 had the production line demolished, just placed in storage.

probably not, it would be more economical to develop the next iteration F-15 than dust off and build more 22s, higher number of 15 mean that the cost of development is spread out over more units By the time the 15s come up for replacement the electronics package on the 22 will need updating and some engineer will want flaws X, Y and Z fixing before they will certify the design ready to resume production so it will take at least as long, do U/AH-1 on the 15, the base design is sufficient just update the materials and electronics and you will have something that is good for another 15+ years.  As stated before current conflicts are West vs comparatively low tech opponents so good tactics are more valuable than bleeding edge tech anyway.  The F-35 is there if the Americans need a low observability strike plane and I am sure it wont take much to produce a domestic version using the latest of everything they can find to make it better than the export version.

[Nuke]

the export version is always a stripped down version of the domestic model. the us isn't just gonna give away their best ****.

[Dilmah G]

I've been a big critic of the Raptor, but I've heard some sources say that criticisms are overblown, that the F-16 (for example) had enormous teething problems yet turned out to be an incredibly prolific and popular fighter.

At the same time, the F-16 had things to shoot at (soviets), export customers, and a production run that hadn't already ended. 

I agree, yes, we are for all intents and purposes, non-uniformed amateurs on this forum, but the bolded sentence is what I believe to be the real key here.

These things are natural when introducing a new aircraft, **** goes wrong and we fix it, but in this day and age, ****-going-wrong is getting harder and harder to justify.

Now, with my uninformed armchair economist hat on (correction is welcome): the US is losing its ability to go toe-to-toe with countries such as China and projects like the F-22 are great in theory because they push along the USAF's hi-low fighter mix idea quite well. But in practice, and as time goes on, I can't see the perceived practicality of it to outweigh the massive costs incurred for very much longer. The US armed forces are all on the downswing and the longer that they kid themselves they can sustain parading like it's the mid-70s and 80s, the deeper into the gutter they're going to run themselves.

While I don't see their armed forces going the way of Britain's (which you should all take a look at, and perhaps weep at too ), well at least, for now, the F-22's cost is becoming bloody hard to justify when there's no immediate commies to shoot at. Unless of course I'm wrong in my assessment of how seriously the USAF takes China.

The project is already done. The last F-22 was produced last year, and there will be no more orders as far as I know.

The more the Eagle force ages, the more likely we are to see either more F-22s or a derivative of their airframe. Either that or we'll end up with something like Dale Brown's Cheetah; a super-15 based on the NASA testbeds.

It's not like the F-22 had the production line demolished, just placed in storage.

My money's on this. Also because I <3 Dale Brown.

[Nuke]

i dont think china is going to piss away their new found economic prosperity on fighting wars with the country that gives it most of its income. unless of course we dont pay our bills and they plan on cashing in.

[Dilmah G]

Exactly.

The only reason someone would start a war these days is to get re-elected, and they don't even have that problem in China.

[NGTM-1R]

The only reason someone would start a war these days is to get re-elected, and they don't even have that problem in China.

They do have to worry about not getting shot or lynched, though. How much is a subject of debate.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

i dont see no point in building planes for wars that dont exist. our biggest threats right now are those who can do more with less (guerrilla warfare/terrorism). expensive planes do little to fight those. its just an international penis measuring contest that we've won several times over. were better off pumping the money into intelligence and associated tech.

Hm. Intelligence I might agree with, but I disagree with you in saying that these kinds of projects are necessary. The reason we haven't had a hot war with a country or coalition of countries that might challenge us is because of this stuff. We've won the war before it even starts, and we've left all of the other developed nations in the dust, desperately trying to play catch-up, especially China. It doesn't matter how many personnel they have, with outdated, rusting hardware, a couple of our CVBGs could wipe them off the map. The same could be said for just about anyone else, too. The Soviets tried to play this game with us, and they lost. Hard.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the threat of a true World War 3 is overblown because the world economy is so co-dependent. Maybe we don't need these projects and our isolated location would be enough to protect us from invasion. Maybe the world's free trade lanes would be fine without our CVBG's prowling around loaded to the gunwales with ordinance.

But I sure as hell wouldn't want to actually test that.

Oh, also, about the Cheetah:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_STOL/MTD

From all accounts, its performance was mind-blowing.

This wouldn't be a bad airframe to build off of, either:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-31

[Thaeris]

HOLY ****!



Is that an F-15 with the OUTER WING PYLONS attached? If so, I've never seen that configuration used in flight with ordnance before... that's crazy!

*Edit...

No, temporary optical illusion. But, it's not every day you see an F-15B with a MER full of CBU's, at least...

[TwentyPercentCooler]

It looks like that was a pre-production model, so it was probably a big time tech demonstrator. I believe that MD-D always had a ground attack variant in mind, even though it would be a while before the USAF actually expressed interest in one.