Jump to content

Aircraft Vs Thread 4


Recommended Posts

According to Boeing, they see need for up to 28,000 new planes (commercial both pax and cargo) over the next 20 years. Holy smoke. That's a lot of planes, granted nearly half are going to be replacements, but that's a couple of trillion dollars.

Then, there is the Paris airshow, that starts up next week. It'll be interesting to see if Boeing lands any more 787 orders during that week.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The 787 is selling so well, the current rumor is that UAL may buy A350's simply to get them earlier--the wait list for a 787 now is years.

Wouldn't be surprising, I think the 787 queue now has delivery dates up to 2014; that's about the time that the A350 is going to enter service. The big question now is whether or not Boeing will fall on its face with the delivery schedules.

The next year will be really interesting. Because it could potentially break the bank for Boeing if they screw things up operationally. Far worse than Airbus's A380 debacle

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey that's at the Pima Air and Space Museum. One of these days I'm going to have to make it out there as the have an imaculately restored F9F-8 painted in the colors of my Dad's old squadron when he was in the Navy. Although according to his logbook it's not one he actually flew.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow. That was a better airshow than I expected. In attendance:

Blue Angels

A-10 West Coast Demo Team (with 4 A-10s)

F-15 from the Oregon ANG (why? I have no idea. It did a demo and then they put it on static display)

Super Hornets from VFA-105(2 of them)

E/A-6 from the same ship as the Super Hornets

F-16 from the Happy Hooligans

CF-18 Demonstration Team (2 of them)

Blackhawks from the National Guard

Predator Drone

C-130 from Florida ANG

DC-3 used for skydiving in Fargo

FedEx 727

B-52 flyby from Minot AFB (awesome because I used to see them every day)

F-5 or something similar

Three P-51D

One P-51B

Corsair

Avenger

Various other small aircraft that I can't name

Edited by meh_cd
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your show was a lot better than mine.

I saw, and took pics of:

3x P51

1 P40

1 F-16

1 Harrier

1 Avenger

2 P47's

etc

I was a little upset because they said there was supposed to be an F-14 on static display, but I didnt see it anywhere.

I'll post pics later when i get a little more energy. It was hot and the sun beats the hell out of me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

West Coast team is raffling them, or selling outright for 40 bucks. East Coast team is selling for 3 bucks, or two for 5 bucks--or so I hear. Maybe East Coast is selling casing only, with no shell/penetrator. But 37 bucks for a fake shell is a lot. A real dummy penetrator+casing might be worth that, but not a replica.

Did you win the raffle, or simply pay? Or did they change how they're offering them since I saw them 2 weeks ago?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

West Coast team is raffling them, or selling outright for 40 bucks. East Coast team is selling for 3 bucks, or two for 5 bucks--or so I hear. Maybe East Coast is selling casing only, with no shell/penetrator. But 37 bucks for a fake shell is a lot. A real dummy penetrator+casing might be worth that, but not a replica.

Did you win the raffle, or simply pay? Or did they change how they're offering them since I saw them 2 weeks ago?

I went to the airshow with my father, and he thought it was really cool and dropped the $40. Then he gave it to me. I wouldn't have purchased it myself.

And I work tomorrow so I can't spend Father's Day with him. <_<

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah, so now we know the real reason the USAF tried to get rid of the A-10 - it fires 3,000 rounds a minute at twenty UK pounds per shell! :)

I don't know. Even a full load of ammo (1,350 rounds) only comes in at $54,000 (or 27000 pounds), that seems cheap to me. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know. Even a full load of ammo (1,350 rounds) only comes in at $54,000 (or 27000 pounds), that seems cheap to me. :)

Exactly, compare it to the cost of a Maverick, then think about the cost of a MBT (even then, you probably just need 200 to 300 rounds to kill the MBT). well, you get the idea.

It's frigging cheap. :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The best part is when you knock out the current regime and their MBTs, you also get to sell them new MBTs!

Amen to that; let's see which regime has lots of tanks that are old 70s vintage that can be killed and then resold to the new govt that we put in place.

Moving on from there. The Paris Air Show is open, it looks like Airbus is starting to score big with the A350XWB; the Qatar order was already known before hand, but they managed to land US Air finally. There was some danger of US Air not going with them until recently, but given that EADS backed US Air during the hard times, and that US Air owns an all Airbus fleet, it would've been impressive if Boeing won there. And Emirates is ordering yet more A380, and supposed the decision will be for either 100 787 or 100 A350; something like that. Now that would be impressive.

Finally, it looks like Boeing might be in trouble, according to JP Morgan, they think Boeing is four months behind schedule on the 787.

Edited by kalvasflam
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The best part is when you knock out the current regime and their MBTs, you also get to sell them new MBTs!

If you're refering to Iraq, Eastern Europe already offloaded most or all of their old Warsaw Pact era armor to Irag some time ago. About the only U.S. armor they got is whatever the Iraqi engineers salvage from their pre-Iran-Iraq War stock.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wouldn't be surprising, I think the 787 queue now has delivery dates up to 2014; that's about the time that the A350 is going to enter service. The big question now is whether or not Boeing will fall on its face with the delivery schedules.

The next year will be really interesting. Because it could potentially break the bank for Boeing if they screw things up operationally. Far worse than Airbus's A380 debacle

Nope Airbus and their worker unions had screwed up so bad in the past, Boening would be hard pressed to think of doing anything to top those mistakes short of intentional self-sabotage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And Boeing always has massive military contracts to fall back on--Airbus doesn't. There were rumors a few years ago (after the Sonic Cruiser and 747-500/600 never being launched) that Boeing would actually leave commercial aviation and focus purely on military stuff.

Boeing just got the new CSAR contract for frigging Chinooks! If that isn't the worst decision ever for "which aircraft should we give the contract to" I don't know what is. People gripe about Airbus subsidies, but Boeing gets just as many in the form of "questionable" awarding of govt contracts.

I mean, if the contract up for grab is described as "we need something to replace the Blackhawk--it's too slow, big, and vulnerable by modern standards"---how the **** can Chinooks be anything but pure govt pork to Boeing? Also note that the Chinook is being expected to replace the Blackhawk on semi-covert ops where speed and stealth are critical. The Chinook is like a flying beacon. Most people were expecting the new HH-92 or US101 to be picked. Wow, going from a 1970's design to a 1950's design. That's like replacing an F-15C with an F-4F ICE. It may have upgrades, but the airframe itself is a generation older.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And Boeing always has massive military contracts to fall back on--Airbus doesn't. There were rumors a few years ago (after the Sonic Cruiser and 747-500/600 never being launched) that Boeing would actually leave commercial aviation and focus purely on military stuff.

Boeing just got the new CSAR contract for frigging Chinooks! If that isn't the worst decision ever for "which aircraft should we give the contract to" I don't know what is. People gripe about Airbus subsidies, but Boeing gets just as many in the form of "questionable" awarding of govt contracts.

Airbus can actually fall back a little on EADS, and not to mention the French and German governments who don't want massive unemployment, so no matter how badly things might look, they'll never go away. But realistically, that would never happen, unless A380s fall out of the sky left and right, people will stay with Airbus, they don't have a choice.

In terms of Boeing, the next year will tell how good or bad things will be. There are concerns that the 787 is going to be delayed because of Vought, and then there is always the possibility that they run out of fastners. The order battle is kind of interesting to see, Airbus may have held back their announcments, but so far, they've had a couple of good ones, including US Air.

Now, the military side of the house really needs to be cleaned up... the CSAR contract must be a joke for someone. Then there is FCS, if you read Business Week at all, that is another nightmare in the making. I actually hope they do better there, because quite simply put, the Lockheed designs are too recycled, and Lockheed needs the competition.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Boeing just got the new CSAR contract for frigging Chinooks! If that isn't the worst decision ever for "which aircraft should we give the contract to" I don't know what is. People gripe about Airbus subsidies, but Boeing gets just as many in the form of "questionable" awarding of govt contracts.

I mean, if the contract up for grab is described as "we need something to replace the Blackhawk--it's too slow, big, and vulnerable by modern standards"---how the **** can Chinooks be anything but pure govt pork to Boeing? Also note that the Chinook is being expected to replace the Blackhawk on semi-covert ops where speed and stealth are critical. The Chinook is like a flying beacon. Most people were expecting the new HH-92 or US101 to be picked. Wow, going from a 1970's design to a 1950's design. That's like replacing an F-15C with an F-4F ICE. It may have upgrades, but the airframe itself is a generation older.

CH-47 has been known to outrun Apaches, so it's not that slow. CH-47 is very capable of operating at high altitude, which is where the USAF was thinking of using them (A-Stan) for CSAR and Spec Ops. The Chinook is a known quantity; the 160th has been using it for years in special operations and very successfully in Afghanistan. The CH-47 also has a instructor pilots and ground crews to get the program off the ground quickly as well as having the supply train in place. Other aircraft in the running did not have these attributes. New aircraft programs are not always about getting a new gizmo, sometimes they are about getting the job done in the quickest way possible to support the trips on the ground... in other words the Chinook could accomplish the mission in the quickest most cost efficient way.

Edited by Coota0
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Northrop always makes good designs IMHO, but always get passed over. Washington just doesn't like Northrop for some reason.

B-2....

:D

But unfortunately, it's not a bad plane, but just poorly managed, and of course, if they actually bought 200 planes, the cost might have been better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That 20 plane order is about all Northrop's gotten in the past 20 years. The F-20 is probably the best example of "perfect plane but still didn't get the order". F-20 vs F-16ADF. The Tigershark wins, no contest. YF-23 vs YF-22 is heavily debatable, but F-16ADF vs F-20 isn't even close. I think the F-20 blew it away in every category but top speed. But its sheer "get up and go" capability actually allowed it to out-intercept the F-15! Raw speed doesn't matter in time-critical intercepts if you need 10 minutes on the ground to run up the engines and avionics.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now, the military side of the house really needs to be cleaned up... the CSAR contract must be a joke for someone. Then there is FCS, if you read Business Week at all, that is another nightmare in the making. I actually hope they do better there, because quite simply put, the Lockheed designs are too recycled, and Lockheed needs the competition.

No question the clean up needs to happened in the military side of the house, the CSAR is one of the few programs that haven't (yet) got utterly mutilated like so many other past and present.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

PC brigade ban pin-ups on RAF jets - in case they offend women and Muslims

In killer heels and little else, they have a definite deadly charm.

But the risque images of women that have decorated warplanes since the First World War have been scrubbed out.

The Ministry of Defence has decreed they could offend the RAF's female personnel.

Officials admitted they had no record of any complaints from the 5,400 women in the RAF.

But commanders are erring firmly on the side of caution and "nose art", as it is known, has been consigned to the history books.

Harrier jump jet bombers currently launching daily airstrikes against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan have been scrubbed clean to comply with the orders.

Critics said the MoD should be focusing on more important issues - such as the quality and quantity of equipment available to British forces sent off to war.

Nose art first appeared on warplanes during the First World War and enjoyed a golden age during the Second World War when thousands of American fighters and bombers were decorated with pictures of glamorous women.

Military commanders tolerated the practice as a morale booster.

Famous examples include the Memphis Belle, a U.S. Army Air Force B-17 bomber that was the subject of a 1990 Hollywood movie.

Many RAF units picked up the practice from the Americans.

During the Second World War it was common to see images of movie stars including Rita Hayworth and Jane Russell on British bombers heading for Germany.

Nose art enjoyed another surge in popularity during the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars, when risque images appeared on many British warplanes.

The decision to ban the images followed a visit by glamour models to southern Afghanistan before Christmas. During the trip they signed paintings of themselves on RAF aircraft.

Commanders decided the images were sexist and insisted there was no place for them in the modern armed forces.

There was also concern that they could cause offence in a muslim country where until 2001 all women were forced to wear the head-to-toe burkha in public.

Glamour model Lucy Pinder, 23, who visited the RAF detachment at Kandahar last November and signed a painting of herself on a Harrier jet, said such images were only "harmless fun".

"It's very flattering and it's nice that they get to do something that takes their minds off things for a while," she said from her home in Winchester, Hampshire.

Conservative MP Phillip Davies said: "Has the MoD really got nothing better to worry about at a time when there are serious concerns over equipment and resources available to our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan?"

An RAF spokesman defended the decision to remove images which he said "cut across" the service's culture of equal opportunities.

"If you have women flying aircraft and working on them as engineers then these kinds of pictures are inappropriate," he said.

"That's why it's crossed the line and that's why they have been removed."

IPB Image

IPB Image

IPB Image

IPB Image

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello, I know this a macross forum, but may be there are some aircraft fans here can answer my questions. :)

How does the E-3 Hawkeye radar works, and why does it shaped like a dish?

If I put a lot of structures around the radar, would it some how interfering with the radar beam?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...