Nied

Yes but the SH still noses out the F-15K/SG in avionics. Also this is a lease arrangement, I get the impression that much like their lease of the F-4 before they got the F-111 the RAAF has every intention of giving the Rhinos back to the US once their lease is up and using the F-35 exclusively. They really wouldn't be able to do that with the various super Eagle variants out there.

I wanted to wait until I got home from work to watch this, and when I did I couldn't get the video to work. My first thought upon reading your description, and then later reading the description on ABC's site is that this sounds like something from Carlo Kopp, who's been going on about the RAAF buying Raptors or even stranger upgrading RAAF F-111s into some kind of super Wankvark (with F-119 engines and AMRAAMs and SDBs!) for years. His stuff about marauding Indian Backfires is just priceless. Honestly F/A-18Fs should work extremely well for the RAAF, the ones you guys are leasing are the top of the line Block 2 models with AESA radars and JHMCS. Their sensor fit alone should allow them to deal with any of the Flankers in the region except maybe India's MKIs (but honestly Kopp's rantings aside why would Australia go to war with India?) They'll certainly be more capable against a big Su than an F-111.

I should clarify: I find the specific threats Apollo Leader mentioned to be rather less than convincing, and if one were to use them as an argument for further purchases of, say, strategic bombers I would think they are likely to fall on their face. His larger argument concerning future threats and the development cycles of weapons systems is dead on though. The end of the Cold War marks the first time a major power hasn't simply packed up it's military and gone home after a major conflict. Both the Bush I and Clinton admins had a real tightrope act of bringing down military force levels without "crashing" the military. Given the military's performance during the past few conflicts I'd say they were largely successful. That's not to say they didn't make some major errors, but compared to past military drawdowns after major conflicts (for example both World Wars) they did a decent job.

The problem is that those are outright awful arguments for increased defense spending. Russia while increasingly bellicose is still nowhere near having the capabilities of the old Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War (which itself was vastly overestimated at the time), China has almost no ability to project power beyond it's borders, and hasn't shown much of an interest in attaining it, South Korea is close to having the capability to steamroll the Norks on their own, and fighting Islamic terrorism with a conventional military is akin to fighting a cockroach infestation with a shotgun (it's real satisfying on the rare occasion you get one, but it's also not very effective and does a ton of unnecessary damage). The argument the AF and much of the military should be making is one of recapitalization. We have a bunch of equipment that is wearing out and needs to be replaced, we can replace it with newly built versions of what we already have, or for not much more we can replace it with something much more capable, either way though it's gotta be replaced.

Damn beat me to it. Even without the A-bomb Germany (hell the entire Axis) was pretty much screwed as soon as it declared war on both the US and USSR. Thier combined (or even individual) economic superiority meant that as soon as war was declared they could easily grind Germany into the dust through sheer numbers no matter how many wunder-weapons they built.

The problem is that, like I mentioned above, the AF actively resisted converting the B-1 and B-2 for the conventional role. If all they were going to do was nuclear penetration, a token force of 21 bombers was more than adequate once the cold war ended (and I would argue it still is). Converting the B-2 to the conventional role changes that equation but at the time the Air Force generals kept going up to congress to tell them how that was a really bad idea, despite the fact that the opposite was true. Why? Because well they were SAC and SAC doesn't do that piddling tactical stuff (and Tomcats pilots don't hang bombs on their pretty fighters). Most of which are sitting in the boneyard. According to the Air Force Fact file there are currently 522 active F-15A/B/C/Ds and 217 F-15Es. Because unless we're going to start electing DoD employees they'd be spending the taxpayers' money without any say from the taxpayers themselves. I'm pretty sure we fought a war somewhere in our past to avoid that. My favored mix would be 500-600 F-22A/Bs to replace the F-15C and F-117 fleet, 900 F-35Cs to replace the F-16 and F-15E fleet, with 1000 or so legacy designs (Golden Eagle A-10C, Block 60+ F-16s) backing them up. Oh and a boatload of UCAVs.

You probably know better than I, but it was my understanding that the Air Force resisted the effort to adapt both the B-1 and the B-2 to the conventional role, and thus inadvertently made them more attractive targets for cuts. Neither got adapted for that mission until the end of the '90s. It's basically the same thing that killed the F-14: For years the Tomcat community resisted efforts to hang bombs on their beautiful fighters, and when the cold war ended they found themselves with very little justification for keeping their aircraft (especially when it was revealed that the "Backfire swarm of DOOOOOM!!!" threat was actually overblown in the first place). Given that defense is far and away the largest chunk of discretionary spending every year that's understandable. It's more productive to cut a few fighters from a $19 billion fighter program than it is to shave off a some money from an $5 billion social program whether you want to pay for expanding that social program or make sure the top 1% of earners are in the lowest tax bracket. The problem is that like I said, cutting production numbers by 20% doesn't actually result in savings of 20%, and the DoD needs to get better at explaining that.

They're already using the single seat Raptor as a quasi AWACS in exercises already. It was actually used as part of the justification for canceling the E-10. It's biggest disadvantages currently are: 1) the lack of Link 16 uplink capability (the Raptor only has a Link 16 receive terminal), and 2) The pilot has his hands full both directing other aircraft and flying his/her own plane. The second seat in my fantasy Raptor takes part of the second issue, and a stealthy Link 16 uplink terminal is slated for one of the later development spirals. Adding in the planned cheek AESA antennas (also currently in the spiral pipe) would also improve the Raptor's capability as a AWACs. The Raptor has a lot of unrealized potential as a deep penetrating strike fighter, and while the FB-22 definitely helps realize that potential it also eliminates most of it's air to air capabilities. While these Raptors would primarily be doing deep strike "kick down the door" type missions, the changes are minimal enough that they could easily swing into an air superiority mission should the first 381 Raptors prove insufficient (as you said quantity has a quality all it's own). In my scenario the F-22Bs would be controlling X-45/X-47 style UCAVs acting as wingmen for a single Raptor, instead of of numerous relatively unstealthy UCAVs like the Reaper/Predator. To be fair it's not the US military that's being bone headed, it's congress. The B-2 was meant to be purchased in much higher numbers than it actually was (although in the defense of congress the B-2 was meant solely for a penetrating nuclear strike mission that had all but vanished after the end of the cold war, and it wasn't until much later that it was adapted to the conventional bombing role), and as Appollo Leader pointed out we originally intended to buy 750 Raptors as one-for-one replacements of the F-15 fleet. I think the problem has been the military's failure to educate congress, and more importantly the public who votes for it, on the fact that cutting the number of units purchased of a certain item does little to drive down the costs of that program.

I'd say go for the 381 that the Air Force wants for the A model and then start work on a two seat B model with a missionized rear cockpit for UCAV controll and more emphasis on the A-2-G mission (add an EOTS sensor from the F-35, and the bulged weapons bay doors from the FB-22 proposal). A couple hundred of those as a F-15E replacement would be nice.

Good. Cutting the number of Raptors was one of a long string of things Rumsfeld did to weaken the US military, I'm happy to see the Air Force working to get this turned around. You know something is wrong when you hire people to do a study to try and discredit a program and they come back and tell you the exact oposite of what you wanted to hear.

I didn't realize you were a Yankees fan Duke. No wonder you and I butted heads so often in the early days of MW.

And my 1,000th post (on this incarnation of MW) comes in the Aircraft vs Super Thread. How fitting.

I have numerous pictures of me standing in front of a wide variety of military aircraft. The problem is it's difficult to see me because I'm the one taking the picture. This one of my dad in front of one of the types of planes he flew in the Navy (in this case a T-2 Buckeye) will have to serve as a stand in. Just imagine this guy 30 years younger and with more hair and you've got me anyway.

I love those kinds of pictures where every type of weapon an aircraft can carry is laid out in front of it. As far as I'm concerned there really haven't been nearly enough lately. Can you imagine a pic like that of a Super Hornet or F-15E?

Actually I've been meaning to ask if you had any plans of putting some high res-scans of the TIAS M+ color schemes up on M3. I have some old scans of those schemes lying around on my hard drive but they're pretty low resolution and whoever scanned them cranked up the JPEG compression pretty high. Translations of the descriptions of those squadrons would just be icing on that cake.

The amount of sweep change they get is pretty impressive, especially for an otherwise rigid structure. It's interesting they paid more attention to lowering the RCS of thier first prototype than the second. You'd think it would be the other way around.

Yes but that was to make Boeing happy, I think they got too happy and now the AF feels the need to scare them again. I'm actually willing to put a lot stock into their fuel efficiency reasoning. The Air Force more than any other US based organization is putting a lot of forethought into the ramifications of Peak Oil (as well they should since they use more petroleum than any of the other military branches). I imagine that despite having the same engines as a 747-400 the VC-25 probably still has worse fuel efficiency (no winglets, old wing design, probably more weight than normal). An A380 while probably pretty efficient still likely burns about as much gas per hour as as a 747-400 and is bigger than any head of state will ever need. If the Air Force is really looking at buying a more fuel efficient VC-25/E-4 replacement then my guess of what they would pick in order of thier likely hood would be 747-8 -> 787 -> A350 -> A380.

An Airbus Air Force One? It's a news grabber but I doubt it's very likely. If anything this is a contract that Boeing, with it's focus on eficiency in the 787 and the 747-8, is well positioned to pick up.

As a follow up this article sheds more light on the subject. There are privacy blinds, but they are still see through for reasons more mundane than terrorism. Though still, they showed the whole thing off with champaign, strawberries and rose petals, if that doesn't scream "have sex on our airplane!" I don't know what does, yet they tell us not too. It's madness I tell you!

I gotta make this obligatory every time we get off topic like this: David, you hang out on ARC a lot. Can you tell me is the Academy 1/32 scale F-16 kit better than the Tamiya 1/32 scale F-16 kit? Also Super Hornet Flaps: Up? Or Down?

If like me you have a Linksys router that might be the issue. I've had some trouble with certain sites either loading extremely slowly or not at all recently and every time re-starting the router (unplug the power count to ten plug back in) has cleared up the problem. Longer term I think I might switch to Tomato firmware to see if that fixes things permanently.

I didn't realize that from the pictures. Well that kind of shuts down the thoughts of joining the mile high club, unless your an exhibitionist. They might have made it semi private for security reasons. Mixing a liquid bomb together in an airliner bathroom like in the scare last year is just about nigh impossible, but I could see how having a private stateroom on a much longer trans-pacific flight might just push things just over the edge to possible.

Ah an Ad-hominem. That's certainly much better than, you know, stupid things like facts and evidence!

Concession acepted.

Nice red herring. You made the claim I'm not gonna do your research for you. I'll be perfectly willing to accept your concession if you can't back up your claims. Yeah and those shipyards were torn down, and rebulding them costs what? Oh yeah money, money the city doesn't have right now being in debt and all.