kalvasflam

4 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

You're thinking just about the airframes themselves though.  True that getting them working correctly was no small task, and the B-model was the biggest budget hog there by far. 

I'm not talking about airframes, and mostly not at all about hardware.  The F-35 is insanely software intensive, to a level no other existing aircraft can probably even approach.  The airframe itself is pretty much done, but the computer systems that run the aircraft will be in continual development for probably the entire service life of the aircraft, and those are where the lion's share of export work is done. 

You think it's difficult getting the Air Force, Navy, and Marines to play nicely together?  Try developing a platform with all the proper software and hardware interfaces to work with all the localized weapon and systems variants from the UK, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Spain, and all the other nations buying into the aircraft.  Every country is going to have requirements that it works nicely alongside something they already own, and some have country-specific weapons systems that no one else uses.  You may as well be developing a game console that supports every game for every console in history, as well as every PC- and Mac-exclusive piece of software ever produced.

Laying the foundation for a system that can be developed and exported to that many countries, support all of their unique requirements, and remain secure in the cyber-warfare environment of the coming decades?  There's a quantum leap in development effort right there.

Comparatively speaking, developing the F-22 was a cake walk.

Not saying the budget issues in Congress haven't had a hand in things, because they've absolutely complicated things to an extensive level.  But there are some very good reasons why the F-35 has been in development for so long, and cost so much.

It's called internationalization, yes, I know about it, I have a friend who does that type of work, it's all in the software.  The date has to be in the right format, the code has to say the right thing to other types of code, and on and on... 

I suppose what you're kind of saying is that the F-35 is a really expensive computer that's made to work with international client, or better yet, a device driven by complex software.  Odd, I thought Lockheed's expertise was in building weapon systems, not iPhones.  No wonder they screwed things up so badly.   They were outside the realm of their expertise.  And for all of that software, the F-35 is still less kinetically capable than the -22, or even some of the 4th generation aircraft.  Heh heh, the worst of both worlds, even with all that money.

Shame....

But I suppose the upside is that at least they didn't have to sell to a mass market like China, imagine how much worse the internationalization would have been then, pilots no speak English, and everything has to be converted to Mandarin.  Thank goodness the Taiwanese doesn't want that plane.....

oh... oops....

yes, I'm trying to systematically use all of the emojis available at mwf.

7 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

On the flipside of that issue, why do you think the F-35 has been such a budget debacle?  The extra work involved in producing so many export versions of the F-35 upped both the development cost and complexity by several orders of magnitude, and continues to be a major expense to this day, as every major upgrade has to be customized and filtered down to all the individual countries who operate it.

Keep in mind, in this day of cyber-enabled everything, the concept of national security goes far beyond just the platform level. 

No, the export variants have far less to do with the mess of the F-35, Vifam7 is right about part of the reason that the plane went so far over budget.  The export variants comes down to two versions, the -A and the -B, most of the work would be done on the -A, because by far because that was where most of the export were and where most of the orders came from. 

The biggest problem was that the F-35 was designed to be a jack of all trades, but instead turned into crap for most of those roles, and Lockheed had to practically design three different airplanes.  And if you look across variants, the US was the dominant buyer in every single case, so export was not nearly the issue, because at the end of the day, the F-35 just for the US armed forces would've been enough, everything else would've been gravy.    The problem was that the plane was designed to replace the F-16, the A-10, the F-18, the AV-8B, and who knows what else.  Do you know what those four aforementioned planes have in common?  They are all in the US inventory, only two other countries I think have two of those variants, no other country have three.  

@Slider, I agree with your comments for the most part, except, F-23 variants would never, ever happen, Canada would sooner buy the Eurofighter or something from Japan than start up their own work on an equivalent fighter.   Simply because it would cost far too much money to set up operation with their own factories.   There is just no scale.  The better solution might have been a combination of F-35s and F-18 E/F, the F-35 acts as forward observers and transmit data to the -18s, and then the -18s act as missile trucks for BVR engagements.  But pretty boy hates Boeing because of the Bombardier row, and there will never be any new F-18s from the US as long as he is in charge, so the Canadians are hosed.  Although I think he did say he would look at old second hand F-18s from the Aussies.  Reimportation at its best, may be he could also buy some second hand F-15s or F-16s.  (I don't think he hates Lockheed quite as much as Boeing).

And yes, America is pretty good at playing politics, I know you probably mean Canada, but it's same for us south of the border.

2 hours ago, slide said:

There's talk of Japan's interest in resurrecting the '23...

In my opinion Canada should push to get it, as it completely exceeds Canada's needs for an interceptor... and the Yanks won't [or wouldn't] export Raptor

 

Russian engines are Crude, but effective... the fact that Russia can do what they can is impressive

where they really seem to Lag is miniaturisation... 

The decision to not sell F-22 to anyone was possibly one of the worst decision ever made by the government.  Had they done so, not only would the line have remained open, and as a consequence the cost would've gone done, there would be many more -22s out there today.  At the minimum, Japan and Israel would've gone for that plane.  The national security rationale for not selling it was just plain stupid, only a fool would've expected the F-22 to continue to be dominant forever, and there was no way to have fully secured the information on that plane anyhow.  Just look at what happened to the F-35.   The data was leaked out anyway.   The only way to become less vulnerable was to have the best of what was out there while pushing the envelop on the next best thing (sixth generation)

Oh well, hindsight is 20/20.  The chance of anyone outside of the US resurrecting the F-23 is exactly zero, Boeing and Northrop would never be able to provide the background designs and such.  And the Canadians doesn't even have that much of an aerospace industry to support native builds, the Japanese might, but they may as well start from scratch rather than take a design that's now pushing 30 years old.  No, our only hope for such an equivalent design is China.   

4 hours ago, Sildani said:

Yeah, it’s one of those “if only” designs I’d always wanted to have gone to fruition. 

You mean like the F-23,   Don't worry, China will rescue the design from its undeserved fate... at least partially.  

You have to admit, the J-20 superficially looks a little like the F-23, even though a lot of the details on the J-20 supposedly came from the F-35.  Then there is the J-31 that is slowly going to come on line, given enough time, China will build a strike version of that, and we'll have the equivalent of the FB-22 design.  Then your dreams may start to come true.

The only thing China needs now is a good engine.  Do you think P&W will be able to help there?  Because obviously the stuff from Russia is garbage.  

4 hours ago, slide said:

They didn't, the Russians payed for it, then the Chinese stole it form them! 

Geez, it's not stealing, intellectual property should be shared for the benefit of mankind.   Don't be so selfish, next you'll be telling everyone it's ok to charge a ton of money for life saving drugs, think about the children.   

As far as the EMALs are concerned, we'll see whether China can put something in place or not.  It isn't necessarily easy, same for the stealth aircraft, just because you have the blueprint does not mean you have the capability to build something in the right way.  Even if they have for example the exact formula for the stealth coatings, it's not necessarily easy to put it into production

Yeah well, catapults have some pretty hefty requirements in terms of energy.  But it's possible to do it with conventional carriers, after all, the US has demonstrated this since the 50s.  But I can't wait to see the type 3 class carrier from China once it gets deployed, it'll be the first super carrier type outside of the US, it'll be awesome and nuclear powered.  Once again, all thanks to the miracle of the internet.  I would be curious to see how carrier air wings evolve in the next twenty years.  Somehow I get the feeling that the USN will be upping the number of planes on the carrier as time goes on.  Otherwise, the Nimitz and Ford classes are a waste of time, a carrier built to accommodate a 90 plane air wing ends up with only 60 planes... why bother.

12 hours ago, slide said:

I hope you mean CALCMs [AGM-86C/D]...  as ALCMs [AGM-86B, the nuclear ones] would've made a mission all kinds of special lol.

Also since they lost that 117 in the Balkans it's not only old, but probably compromised tech too...

I've never wondered how Russia/China came up with the skins for Su-57, J-20 and J-31 all within a super-short span of eachother...

ok, sure, if we want to get specific, CALCMs, not ALCMs, most people wouldn't even know what the acronym stand for.   

Yeah well, the Serbs were more than happy to sell the wreckage of the F-117 immediately, but honestly, they should've bombed the heck out of the wreckage.  Use B-1s to do saturation bombing, and then coated over with thermabaric.b

As for the Chinese, I doubt they would want to pay money to the Serbs for the stealth coating... too cheap, easier just to get it legitimately by hacking servers from Lockheed.  It was probably unsecured anyway, so, it was treated like the open internet.  

6 hours ago, sketchley said:

As you know, Japan doesn't have an army - it has a self defence force.  So calling the "Helicopter-Destroyer" anything but a Destroyer (a ship for self defence) will make both the citizens and the neighbours angry.

But they're not the only ones.  The Russian carriers are called "heavy aviation-carrying cruisers"; to be able to transit the Turkish Straights.  And those even have a ski-jump built in!!

The funny thing about carriers today, only the US and French actually use catapults I think.  Everyone else uses ski jumps, although I think  the next Chinese carrier will use a catapult, although they're probably skipping steam, and straight to EMAL, easy enough to get the designs for it through the open internet, and when the secured servers has the password as either 123456 or password.  

True, the B-2s are forward deployed at Anderson, and the only hull loss also occurred there.  But it doesn't matter.  The B-2 had to add the ninja missions of the F-117 because, well, they chopped up the -117s since it was "old technology."  However the B-2 has to live somewhere since there is no SAC any more.   The nice thing of course is that there is much longer range on the B-2, and the ability to carry more ordinance.  But unfortunately, the B-2s have never been used to their full potential, which was to penetrate Soviet air space.   Let's face it, most of the B-2 missions up until now could've been done by the B-1s or ALCMs.

There was nothing special about those missions.  

6 hours ago, Vifam7 said:

The USAF has lately not been shy of using expensive assets. Afterall, they used B-1s for close air support.

If they're actually going  to buy 100+ (maybe up to 200) B-21s, there will likely be enough assets to go around. Against an enemy that might have modern SAM systems, the B-21 will probably be the best asset to use for deep strike roles. However, if they don't buy enough B-21s, that could result in a huge capability gap.

yep, a 100, a nice round number, let's hope they don't end up with 21 units.  But if you think about it, the B-2s now are used in tactical actions on the first day anyhow.  In fact, it would be fair to say that the B-2 has more or less replaced the F-117, with the biggest difference being that the aircraft aren't forward deployed like the -117s were.

I think the B-1s do get fairly forward deployed, right?

Then the B-21 is probably also going to have the nuclear strike role too.  After all, that's the original purpose of the B-2, I believe it is still considered a part of the triad along with the B-52s, although I don't think the B-1s are nuclear capable any more under START.

meh, now we're talking a question of business and how the government wants to spend its money.   This is why the aerospace industry is so screwed up.  The Pentagon wanted cheap and good, and Lockheed apparently knew how to play the game better than anybody else, so they won.  And in reality, the Pentagon go neither cheap nor good.  They got barely middle of the road in terms of capabilities and expensive.  Imagine if the Pentagon went out to Boeing, NGC, and LM, then said there were five programs, USAF air superiority fighter, USAF tactical bomber, USN long range strike, USN air superiority, and something for the marines.  My guess is there might have been more up front costs, but you would've ended up with best in class on multiple single role weapon systems.   But now we're getting way beyond the merits of the plane.

But the die is already cast, the USN is going to be all about having F-35 scouting things out to provide targeting data to F-18s, which are basically missile trucks.  One better hope that entire chain is robust, because the F-35 needs to tank at some point, the E-2s are fairly vulnerable to potential stealth fighter, and the F-18s have large RCS.  So, we'll see what happens.  As Bill Paxton would say: "tip of the spear, crack of my ass"

I think the difference here is that the F-117 had a dedicated role and were built in low quantities, 50 something units altogether.  The F-35 is a multi role fighter that will see production in excess of 2,000 units and be slotted into a bunch of different roles.  So, it's the envisioned role that matters, F-35 is supposed to be a fighter bomber designed to conduct a variety of different mission.  The F-117 was designed as a tactical penetration bomber.   Not meant to act as a dog fighter, or a bomb truck, or any of those missions.  I figured it could probably be really good at SEAD, but somewhat limited given that it carried only two weapons, although I suppose if it was still around, it could've been used to carry more than two SBDs.   After all, nobody wanted to buy thousands of F-117s each carrying two bombs or four AAMs, you can imagine the cry of consternation if that had happened.

Ah, here we get into the definition of combat radius.  

It is really a question of what load is being carried, right?  I think we could probably use some better definition here, the F-15E does indeed have the same combat radius as the F-35, but the devil is in the details.  Is this combat radius a reference to while the F-15 is loaded with 22K lbs of ordinance and full fuel load or something else?  Because the F-35 combat radius is similar only when loaded with internal air to air configuration.

It doesn't say anything about what the interdiction mission load out is with just a 670 nm of combat radius.  Whether that is an internal load of ~6K lbs, or the full max load out of 18K lb s, it isn't really stated.  I noticed also that Lockheed is a little vague in their other literature.  And it would make a big difference if this was beast mode vs the I carry just two JDAM internally mode.  

Just pure curiosity.   But I think you'd see the obvious difference.  I suppose we'll never know until the F-35 goes into a well defended air space that actually stretches its capabilities and have demands to kill multiple targets.  The Israeli experience with Syria doesn't count that much given how close the actual targets are.  But in truth, such flights would never operate alone, it would be a part of a package.  The only real question is whether those packages are optimal with just F-35s or could they have done it with a combo of 4th and 5th generation aircraft.

12 hours ago, AN/ALQ128 said:

The beast mode is just a concept that illustrates the fact that, if there is no tactical need for stealth, the F-35 can carry a ton of ordinance.

Odd though, no one has mentioned what the range would be for the beast mode F-35.   Cause all of a sudden, it's carrying about an extra 10K lbs.  Would be hilarious if the F-35s neutralized the anti-air threat, loaded up for beast mode, and then found out that the plane just can't get there.  

Yes, yes, I know about tankers, and F-18s and jointness and all of that.  Doesn't it seem like after a while, all of the F-35 defenders are just making excuses for this plane.

1 hour ago, David Hingtgen said:

I'm curious what the combat radius is, for F-35 vs A-6, both carrying 18K loads.  

And considering the Marines used both, I wonder what max payload for a still-VSTOL-capable F-35B is. 

If you believe Wikipedia, the combat range of the A-6 with max payload is 878 nm.  The F-35A with internal load only is 760 nm, so I would have to guess it would be  lower if it carried a full load out which would compromise stealth.  

The funny thing is that the proponents of the F-35 has alternatively said that the plane is needed because its stealth characteristics would enable it to survive modern air defenses, and access regions that were defended by modern day SAMs.  Then, they tout the fact that to compensate for the lack of ordinance, the F-35 has so called beast mode that sacrifices its stealth characteristics so that once the area's defenses are fully suppressed, the F-35 can roll in with max bomb load to blast the ever loving crap out of the ground targets.

So, this makes beast mode sounds great, but why would you even need an F-35 with beast mode in that case.  Why not just have  F-35 in SEAD role only, and then followed it up with two dozen F-15Es or F-18E/F which carries either comparable or more ordinance into the defended area.  Both types would be cheaper, although in the case if the F-18 E/F, you'd have to argue that they don't have legs.  And both would make a fantastic missile truck, without ever worrying about compromising stealth, because, hey, they aren't stealthy.  The USN really needs to bring back something like the A-6, something that can carry a load, have legs, and don't have to be necessarily stealthy.

Also, isn't the F-35B designed to replace the AV-8Bs?   I think the marines are supposed to get some F-35Cs too, right?

I agree, if it wants to have an RCS like the old A-6.  But you know the funny thing is, it doesn't have quite the legs like the A-6.  I suppose the advantage is that it can go much faster.  

The F-22 did have high costs, which would have come down with more production units I think.  But we won't know for sure.  The only real truth is that the Pentagon were staffed with fools who thought Lockheed Martin could be trusted with not going over budget.  It's reasons like this why there is such a thing as firmed fixed pricing, and why companies like ULA gets their butt handed to them by Space X.  

21 minutes ago, AN/ALQ128 said:

The US alone is ordering 1763 of the A variant. Barring any sudden order cancellations by customers, it'll probably be the most numerous 5th gen aircraft for decades.

That is true, and I think so far the deliveries are somewhere in the 300 units range.  But planning to buy vs actual buys are two different things, do you recall how many B-2s the service was originally slated to buy, how about F-22,  I do recall at one point the USAF was also planning to buy 750 at the very start of the program, then it got cut over and over again until we ended up with 180+ units.  

I do think that you're right, under any circumstances, the F-35 will be the numerous 5th generation aircraft.  Mainly because of all of the other countries committed to the program, that is unless the Chinese decide to mass produce their versions in any number.  But we'll see how many units the USAF actually buys. 

One other fun statistic, the F-35 carries 180 rounds of 25 mm ammo, compared to the 500+ rounds of 20 mm ammo carried by an F-16.  I would guess the F-35 won't be doing much of a gun run, and don't get me started on that vs 1100+ rounds of 30 mm the A-10 can carry.  Sure, we can say that the F-35 don't need no stinking guns for close air support, because it can tote JDAMs and other munitions in its place, just to note, the internal stores on the F-35 is about 5700 lbs, sure it can install external hard points, and get up to about the same load as an F-16.  But then, the plane won't be so stealthy with those external stores sticking out.

By the way, for those that think my only goal is to slam the F-35, it isn't.  I think sadly, the problem with the F-35 is that it is set up for the wrong missions, or rather, the USAF has decided it needed to buy so many units to make it economical that it was forced to shoehorn the plane into a multitude of missions it wasn't really designed for.  Going back again to the multirole vs single role argument.

There is an argument to be made about multi-role and single role type aircraft.  The best versions of so called multi-role aircraft in my opinion started out with a single role, and then expanded, I'm of course talking about the F-15.  One could argue all of the other 4th generation fighters and bombers were single role aircraft to start with.   The F-16 is a light attack, same for the F-18, and the F-14 was an all around interceptor specific to the Navy.  The extensions on the F-16 and the F-18 mainly ended up in foreign markets (super hornets notwithstanding) where the need became multi-role.  After all, the operators of the F-16 and F-18 had dual roles for both types.  The F-22 was also a single role aircraft.   And I don't think I would be too far off to suggest that had the production continued, they could've evolved a version of the -22 to a Strike Raptor.  

The F-35 was a disaster of a multi-role aircraft, one could in fact argue that if the services went with just three separate designs, they would've been better off.  The A variants would have been the light attack replacement for the F-16s.  The B variant would have been a  close support type for the Marines, and the C variant would've been dedicated attack variant for the Navy.  The F-35 became primarily an air force aircraft (owing to the economics involved) and the marine variant came off as a little brother, while the navy version became an unwanted stepchild.  The only reason the -C has longer legs and better structural frames is because of the need to land the plane on a carrier.

It's a bit sad that the US naval aviation has been reduced to such a sad state, in the days of the Soviet Union, each carrier air wing had 90 plus aircraft, now they barely field 60.  There is no more long range attack (A-6), no dedicated sub hunters (S-3), no dedicated interceptors per se (F-14), only two specific airframes that are dedicated to multiple roles, F-18 for tanker, EW, light attack, interceptor, none of which are performed especially well compared to their single role counterparts.  Then there is the F-35 for (I guess light attack) whatever role that it gets slotted for.  Hopefully, with the 6th generation and the advent of UCAS, the USN will get back to more of its roots on the carriers.

1 hour ago, F-ZeroOne said:

Okay, sorry, as usual its sometimes difficult to detect the intent of a comment in text (and I've seen so many "F-35 can't dogfight a Sopwith Camel, which is the only aircraft in the world that can strafe properly!" threads it just set off a twitch). They did build quite a few P-38s, but then the loss rate of P-38s (and most other World War aircraft) was also significantly higher - as one historian put it, its not often recognised these days just how much of a risk World War II wartime leaders took when they undertook long flights in aircraft of the era (and leaving aside the degree of training required - pilots were a bottleneck then in some cases just as they are now). And those numbers were achieved under wartime conditions and utilising a significant proportion of the available production capacity; compare the numbers of aircraft fielded by what would become the Allied nations in peacetime. Of course, and again its a different era, such a production ramp-up would be much more difficult just due to the increased complexity of modern fighters, but thats how the argument goes - they need that sophistication to give them the qualitative edge (I'm aware of the arguments either way, thats just how its usually presented).

Also, and to use another historians argument, the P-38 was the F-35 of its day (as were the Spitfire, Me109, and P-51) - expensive, cutting edge machines on the verge of what was technologically possible and designed to be on a par or better than the rest of the worlds designs.  And like the F-35, there were people who didn't always appreciate their value. After all, the RAF nearly fought the Battle of Britain with Boulton Paul Defiants...

I would agree with David to a large extent.  While the F-35 is a good aircraft for the most part, and it would've been an awesome F-16 replacement, and just as good an F-18 replacement, it just got stuck with too many roles.   Not to say that the F-35 isn't a capable aircraft, but Lockheed really bilked the USAF and the government for a ton of money.  I think if nothing else, the advocates of the F-35 and certainly Robert Gates should shoulder the blame for the travails suffered by this program, and they should be castigated for not continuing the F-22 line, because the learning on that line would've continued to carry over and reduce the cost of new aircraft, and certainly, I think one could've made a case for something like the equivalent of a Strike Eagle in the F-22 package.   At the point of termination, the F-22 was a proven design, while the F-35 for its superficial similarities was still a new design.

I wonder what lessons might be learned from programs like the P-8 which was both effective and within budget.  Sadly, it isn't the manufacturer that is the difference considering how screwed up the KC-46 program is.  And of course, still no AWACS replacement.

5 minutes ago, F-ZeroOne said:

Its not exactly a fair comparison, is it? The P-38 weighed 12,800lbs empty, topped out at 414mph and detected targets with something called an eyeball. The F-35 weighs 29,000lb empty, tops out at Mach 1.6 and detects targets with a range of different sensors and can (in theory) shoot down a target from over 70km away. To kill Yamamoto, the P-38 had to physically fly to where he was, carrying all the fuel itself, and get close enough to actually see the aircraft he was in. How much easier would the P-38s job have been if it could have refueled from a tanker, and fire a missile at the target from a distance? How much more of a "pure" dogfighter would the P-38 have been if it had had a single engine and didn't carry all that fuel, like a Spitfire? How long would a P-38 last in a modern, SAM-populated, radar-directed world?

The two are different aircraft from two widely separated periods of time and technological advancement and - a point often forgotten in this sort of comparison - different design goals. The F-35 was not designed as a Tomcat replacement - politics and economics have arguably "forced" it into that role. If the US wished to do so, it could design a "true" Tomcat replacement, if its willing to spend the time and money to do so. And for better or worse, modern combat aircraft don't exist in an "isolated" support environment anymore - Yamamoto saw his death coming, but he might not even have known he was under attack at all from an AWACs directed shot...  

The comparison was obviously made in jest.  But you know, quantity has a quality all on its own, so said a crazed Georgian once.  I think they built quite a few P-38, I wonder if they'll get up to a fraction of that number with the F-35.  And in response to your comment about the F-35 killing targets BVR.  That is true, as long as they can reach the target.  Yes, you're of course correct, in combat these days, everything is chained together, the US showed that years ago.  This is the real reason no one wants to play against the USAF or the USN, there are just too many assets that has the ability to amplify what even a weaker aircraft could do.

10 minutes ago, F-ZeroOne said:

Now I think of it, the P-38 itself had its fair share of development issues - and it wasn't a stellar performer in Europe; it just happened that its particular characteristics proved to be incredibly well matched to the operating environment of the Pacific theatre.

The P-38's claim to fame is really that it killed Yamamoto.  It's a nice looking plane, and did a great job in the Pacific, but if it's one thing that particular plane is known for, it is whacking Isoroku.   You know what the funny thing is?  The P-38 had better combat range than the F-35.  Imagine that.  

You know, I don't mind the copy and paste machine that they have, but consider this, even that in and of itself is very inconsistent.

In the three years since 2199, they built 5 Andros, and about a dozen DNs.  Also, a number of Gamilas ships I'm assuming, and presumably refitted some of the older Earth vessels.  Ok, I can buy that.   Then from the time when 2202 started to the time at battle of Saturn, they have churned out or are in the process of churning out, more than a dozen Andromeda class, a few hundred dreadnoughts, and that doesn't even include the various patrol cruisers and such.  I'm sorry, but WTF?  It's like the time slip is a plot slip too, able to speed up production at will.. or I suppose, to slow it down.

The same applies to Gatlantis.  The only way they have managed to get this far one would assume is because they have something similar.  How else do you explain from episode 1, with one Calaklum to the million plus that we saw in episode 7?  It's just utterly crazy.  If they had such a capability, why not just overwhelm the humans from day one.  I am assuming Gatlantis also have some weird form of time slip, probably encompassing all those trapped planets.  (It is ridiculous actually).

Oh, and speaking of ridiculous, just how powerful is the WMG on Desslar's new ship, because that Gatlantis fleet with all those Calaklums he eliminated came from episode 7, and if I remember right, no Calaklums were actually destroyed (thank you pacifist Kodai, too bad nobody else cared) by Yamato.  So, even if you assume half the number of Calaklums died from having parts stripped or fell out of formation or whatever.  That's still a ridiculous number of ships, and Soto managed to kill them all in one shot.  I have to tell you, that puts Desslar's ship heads and shoulders above all of those Andromedas.  The Ultimate WTF.

As for Teresa, I can say that when she finally does show up, it'll be a case of lazy writing.

I have to say, it is utter stupidity that the USAF is not buying additional F-15s.  Because the damned things are still decent missile trucks and still deadly against most gen 4 fighters.  The fact of the matter is, they need an air superiority fighter, if they can't buy the F-22, then just go buy the thing from the line that is still open.   

As for the F-35, well, the thing is it would depend on the production line being open as long as the F-16 line was/is open and having literally thousands of those roll out.  The plane itself has a lot to be desired, short legs for one.  The USAF isn't so badly off since the unit is designed to replace F-16s.  But the USN is screwed, the range is slightly better than the F-18 E/F but nowhere near what was lost when the Navy retired its last A-6.  So, it isn't the best strike aircraft in the world until they get the Stingrays up and  running, and hope they can double the range of the -Cs.

4 hours ago, F-ZeroOne said:

Boeing have been shopping round a "Silent Eagle" concept for a while now. No-ones bit. As awesome as the Tomcat was, its not coming back [1], anymore than the RAF will be getting modernised TSR2s.

[1] Except, possibly as a "Tomcat II" which would be a clean-sheet design that just inherited the name, like the Lightning II.

Given how well the F-35 has worked out, not sure likening the concept of Lightning II to a Tomcat II would necessarily be a good idea.  Also, Hasn't the Israelis looked at the Silent Eagle as a potential option.  Overall, this current state of affairs can be blamed on Gates and his action that shut down the F-22 line.  Yes, I feel that blame needs to go where it is deserved.

The story is totally screwed up as far as the space battles and logic goes.

A good story is something like MSG the Origin, the first few episodes where there was very few variants of mobile suits.  2199 was pretty consistent in terms of the mechanics if you think about it, Gamilas had a huge fleet which was built partly during Desslar's conquests.  The Earth fleet was pretty pathetic.   Then came 2202, and my rant.

2202 literally screwed the pooch with successive episodes, newly introduced warships are pretty quickly stormtrooperized for no discernable reason.  The Medalusa class was the most powerful ship until episode 1 which several were shown in battle.  Then came the mighty Calaklum, which was so awesome that it survived the WMG by Andromeda, and the pathetic shock cannons from Andromeda did nothing to that ship.  (Sure, go ahead and tell me the WMG missed that ship and managed to hit everything else).  By episode 7, there were millions of them, quite literally, which made the story utterly ridiculous.  Why did we need them, because whiny Kodai had to justify the use of his pathetic WMG.  Things are on a pretty even keel for a little while, because, hey, five Andromedas and some dozen dreadnoughts aren't that bad. 

I can even excuse the missile ships of idiocy in the Telezart portion of the arc.  But then came the mighty battle of Saturn.  In the original series, the Calaklums were not that numerous, led by a single Medalusa and supplemented by a lot of Kukulkans, then there was the Gatlantis carrier fleet.  In terms of fleet organization, it almost made sense, that formation seemed a lot like the dreaded third or fifth fleet in WWII.  But in 2202, what did Gatlantis bring to the party?  Nothing but Calaklums, there were so many of them, it was insane.  Oh, let's throw in a few sacrificial Nazca class ships so the Gatlantis fleet won't look too one dimensional.  It's like a battle fleet consisting of nothing but New Jersey class battleships.  But it's ok, at leas the human forces made sense, they had those new light cruisers and patrol cruisers, led by a single dreadnought and supplemented by a bunch of refitted Kongos armed with WMG.  But then, to even things out, Earth spammed dreadnoughts.

Oh, and remember when the mighty Calaklums just laughed off the Andromeda's WMG, and the shock canons couldn't even scratch the paint on those ships?  Now, they were blasted to pieces with grim regularity by the dreadnought's shock cannons, that as far as I can tell were the same type as Andromedas.  But don't worry, by episode 19, we'll up the number of specials, Andromedas by the dozens at least.  New Andromeda class with more guns, Gamilas Andromedas, Andromedas with dreadnoughts attached.  Oh, but for old time sake, we'll bring back some old Gamilas ships, and look, was that a Medalusa that was getting its ass kicked by some measly pieces of trash that was Gamilas cruisers?  How the mighty has fallen. 

But lest we forget the important thing, by episode 17, WMGs were used with such regularity, it was essentially equivalent of atomic bombs being used like conventional artillery.  If Starsha would've had the audacity to show up and lecture anyone, she would've been bitchslapped and then laughed out of town for her naivete. 

Times like this, I'm reminded of what Syndrome in the Incredibles said:   *Everyone* can be super! And when everyone's super...   ...*no one* will be.

Yamato 2202 took the lovely notion of space battles as presented in 2199, took a crap on it, and then proceeded to kick the logic out of the situation, and slathered on the needless model kit variations to sell, then for good measure pissed on the entire concept and expect everyone to fall in love because, who doesn't like useless trash (Michael Bay Transformers) mashing into each other.

end rant. 

Yes, for all that, I'll still watch the rest of 2202, I like a good train wreck.

I'm sure before long, there will be variations aplenty.  Let's see, I think the dreadnoughts will already have three color variations, for the Andromedas, I see  ten types now, don't we just love nice color schemes,  then there are all of those options beyond that.  Plenty of choices.

Everyone will get some type of love.  Ginga has a model kit, and that's before it gets released on the silver screen.