Nied

One would think that the biggest threat to your domestic industry would be the Luftwaffe, and properly functioning P-38s would have been useful for that.

You're going to make me wear out my Family Guy firebreathing bug. Hopefully this and the F-15 groundings will help get the F-22 approved for export and drive down prices so we can buy more for us as well. Also can you imagine the RAAF with a combo of Superhornets and Raptors? They'd be one of the most powerful air forces in the Pacific!

Family Guy.

You crazy Canucks! Don't you know that to be a real political discussion you need to apend your opponenet's ideology with the word tard?

Add me to the list of guys who came here via the Valkyrie exchange. Came here looking for more pictures of the the Yamato (then Toycom) YF-19 during the summer of 2000. Lurked on the forums for a few months when they launched at the end of 2000 and finnally got sucked in and joined at the begining of 2001.

Wait. Did this just become a political discussion? One so full of Canadian politness that it wen't over the heads of most of the rest of the comunity and moderating staff based in the States?

Wrong! I'm sure a great deal of this technology was transferable, it gave them years of experience building monoplane fighters!

::facepalm:: Now why didn't I think of that! There's no mention of it over at Fencecheck and I know there are some Raptor pilots over there. That's definetly something to ask Waco since IIRC from my lurking, he's in AK where the rumors say the interception flew from.

I've got good news and bad news: The F-15s have been grounded... Again. Boeing designs new technology to allow bomb drops at Mach 2! Bonus Macross tie in: the active flow control design used is very similar in concept to the Active Aerodynamic Control on the YF-19. I've also heard rumors that some F-22s made their first Bear intercept last week, but I haven't seen anything to confirm it from a reputable srouce.

If anything it was the A-12 itself that did more to frack over Naval aviation than anything else. Read the program summary on globalsecurity.org sometime if you want to make yourself really mad, I'm honestly surprised criminal charges weren't brought against the contractors. The Navy would have been better off going for the A-6F (which was canceled to pay for the A-12) or one of the more robust Bombcat variants (though that would've been a whole other can of worms at the time). The only way Saint Ronnie could have saved naval aviation from that screw up would have been to not order it in the first place (he was still in office when the decision to buy it was made).

Interesting you bring up F-105, since I always felt that the JSF is closer to the A-7 in terms of it's mission profile with a little bit of F-4 thrown in for good measure, mostly meant for various kinds of attack missions, but capable of defending itself in a knife fight if need be and doing a repectable job at CAS if called upon as well. Interestingly enough all the aircraft the F-35 is slated to replace took on the A-7's mission when they went into service.

What sucks is that it's very difficult to see the effect without a telephoto lens, and believe me I was looking for it this year. This photo was taken on Saturday though, when I watched the day before the weather was even more conducive to vapor production (though not for my comfort it was fracking cold that day!)

At this point I have to believe there's someone in the MoD with a really good sense of humour when it comes to naming military equipment. Isn't there a piece of avionics on the Tornado called the TARDIS?

I think Ellison's response is fairly solid proof that the Guardian of Forever story that was leaked isn't the actual story. With the amount of lawyers involved in any Hollywood production I seriously doubt they would have overlooked this before starting principal production. Also in other news Harlan Ellison, though a talented writer, is a crank and an ass.

I think he's referring to the boxy structure just behind the gun. Pilots and maintainers call it "the pizza box" because it's where they store their pizzas. Or it's a stealthy housing for the IFF "Bird slicer" antennas, whichever sounds more plausible.

Everything I've heard is structural fatigue, not engine trouble. I know there have been wories about the tail section for a long time and it's actually led to a some flight restrictions (limited to 7.5Gs as opposed to 9). David, being the F-15 fan that he is, might be able to elaborate.

JASDF grounds thier F-15Js as a precautionary measure.

Yokai!

As requestied by David I've switched the running discussion on military procurment from the Aricraft vs Super thread over here. You could do that but as Noyhoser has pointed out you'd just be trading one kind of mismanagement for another. To use a more recent example (and one that I've used before) the Tomcat community kept the Navy from developing what could have been an excelent strike fighter by insisting that no one hang bombs on thier pretty F-14s. Really the soloution for civilian mismanagement of the military is to elect better civilians, making a government organization less acountable to the poeple is never a way to cure mismanagement. Vote for better congresscritters, or donate money to elected officials and PACs that better represent your views. Otherwise I'm reminded of that old H.L. Mencken quote about people in a democracy getting the government they deserve.

Ah but the only country who owns true "Super" Flankers in any significant number is India, who's such an intractable enemy that they regularly fly exercises with us, and are looking to buy several hundred fighters from us. Everyone else have either an easily overwhelmed handful of Su-30s or a larger number of vanilla Su-27s. China has Su-30s but not many and without nearly as good an avionics fit. Like I said earlier if all you talk about is the scary bogeymen of Flankers and Terrorism and China (oh my!) we're not going to get many F-22s, because well none of them really warrant Raptors. People will just say "well we can just upgrade our F-15s to deal with those easily and fly 'em for a hundred years like a B-52." If on the other hand you point out how we can't just keep flying our current F-15 fleet, and how much new F-15s cost, all of the sudden buying much more useful Raptors for a little more makes more sense.

Recapitalization!! See! Those F-15's flat out need replacing, and we can either replace them with $100 million Strike Eagle variants or we can replace them with $120 million Raptors.

Defencetech has been flogging this article for a while. The funny thing is that it's very shortsighted. While it hasn't been of much use in Iraq it was downright pivotal in the rest of the most recent conflicts we've been in. Hell in Kosovo airpower was easily the deciding factor (with the barest hint of the use of ground forces finally tipping things over).

Boeing 727, now in bus form.

I see your U-2 chase cars and raise you a 727 Bus.