Nied

To be a little more direct here I wouldn't mistake HG's reluctance to get into a legal morass over the now resolved rights over Macross as reluctance to make new material. The Macross part of Robotech is so foundational to the story (it's literally the inciting incident)! that it's tough to work around it if the rights issue isn't firm (think how they chucked theMacross cast into a space hole in Shadow Chronicles). They've obviously got a passionate (if maybe not talented) creative team over there so I wouldn't be surprised if HG decides to do something with the property.

Keep in mind that from a legal perspective if you think you have the rights to a property it's a good idea to maximally protect that claim through legal means, but at the same time from a business perspective it's a really bad idea to try and make new works based on that claim because you still might lose. It's hard to attract investors to fund a project that might get stuck in legal hell.

I don't know, this looks about as close to a win-win as you can get. HG gets to make new Robotech material featuring Rick, Lisa, Minmay etc. (while giving BW a piece of the action) and BW gets to distribute Macross Plus, 7, Zero etc in the rest of the world (while giving HG a piece of the action). And they both get lots of money if that Robotech movie gets made. The only loser here is our wallets.

Hell yeah man, this kicks ass.

Even better pictures. Bill Sweatman is having multiple orgasms about this even though all the stuff he keeps saying about it turns out to be untrue (It's got a lamda wing clearly it's extremely stealthy! No wait it turns out it's just a straight backed delta that's not stealthy at all. We know the Russians have sold the Chinese 117S engines, it will supercruise for sure! Well maybe we don't know that but it would be really cool if that were true right? Besides WS-10s might let it supercruise anyway! And on and on). I've already seen this pointed out elsewhere but I noticed it as soon as I saw it: it looks like nothing more than a stealthified Mig 1.44. You're right it is pretty ugly, in fact it might just be the ugliest aircraft built in the last decade (and before anyone mentions it the X-32 was build in the 90s so it doesn't count).

Seems like P&W's big mistake was not designing their crate to conform to the Navy's standard then. If they do that there wont be a problem. Considering that the Navy was able to get an engine just as big on their carriers for thirty years (and one made by Pratt too) they shouldn't have too big of a problem making a new crate that will fit.

Oh for crying out loud! The F135 is almost the same size as a TF-30 (it's 20" shorter and 2" wider) and the Navy had no problems delivering it to carriers for years. I think the key graf here is that the problem occurs when the engine is packed in it's shipping container. Re-design the container and you should have no problem.

That one's been around for a while. The problem with that scheme is A) keeping the aircraft sheathed in plasma as it flies at 500 knots, and B) while you might be invisible to radar you'd be glowing like a light bulb at just about every other wavelength, including IR and visible("the radar see's nothing but what's that huge X-ray source coming at us at mach 1?"). Re: F-22 edges, my understanding is that they're made out of different materials/painted with different coatings than the rest of the plane. The reason why hasn't been explained but I have to think it has something to do with further reducing the RCS (remember most of the radar re-emission would be from the edges of the plane).

Yikes! Looks like we lost a third Raptor, hope they find the pilot OK.

Retracting Head Ter Ter is right, the F-22 has a datalink that can share a limited amount of information with other F-22s but nothing else. It doesn't have a working Link 16 terminal, so it can't pass or receive information with any allied forces like AWACS or troops on the ground, it's completely cut off from the network. It was feared that a Link 16 transmission could give away an F-22 so it was left out entirely. Later on when the omission became more glaring it was planned to integrate a receive terminal only so that it could at least get information from other assets on the network however software integration issues and technological progression ended up killing that idea. The current plan is to replace the Link 16 standard entirely with something called MADL (Multifunction Advanced Data Link). MADL is being designed from the ground up to be capable of Low Probability of Intercept modes so that it can be used in stealth platforms. The F-35 will have a MADL terminal built in when it reaches operation, and the plan was to have the F-22 flying with it before that. However the same software integration issues that have repeatedly plagued the F-22 cropped up again and MADL integration has repeatedly blown past it's cost projections and schedule, now there is real doubt that the Raptor will ever get MADL.

The costs for the F-22 did drop once it exited LRIP, but that's not it's problem. The problem as I've been saying is it's tied to an outdated computer system that makes it incredibly difficult and expensive to integrate new weapons or sensors. That's why it still can't retarget JDAMs on the fly, that's why they still haven't integrated AIM-9Xs, and it's why they still haven't gotten a proper datalink set up. It may be an excellent air superiority platform, but how true will that be in 20 years when it's still struggling to integrate missiles built after 1995? You could rip out the computer and try and integrate one based on the F-35's as Lockheed has proposed, but it would utterly annihilate your cost saving argument (Lockheed won't even disclosed a price tag for the project, only that it's "significant").

I swear to god I think someone at the DEW line is reading this board, because this is the second post in a week covering something discussed about the F-22 here. This time the efforts Lockheed is taking to ease a potential Raptor production re-start.

You've also got both the F/A-18 HARV and F-15 ACTIVE in that shot as well. Throw in a Blackbird and you've got one heck of a NASA all star gallery there.

I'd be remiss if I didn't link to this report on troubles and potentially significant delays in the F-35 program. This comes from two people who have rather large axes to grind against the F-35 (Bill Sweetman who fears it will destroy the European combat aircraft industry, and Winslow Wheeler who's never forgiven the Air Force for ruining his beloved F-16 by putting a radar in it), so take it with a grain of salt. The flip side to that is that (as Sweetman crowed in his post) both Bloomberg and NYT have also picked up the story. On the other other hand this brief was supposed to have happened yesterday and yet there's been no news of an earth shaking delay and jump in costs.

An F-16 theoretically could carry more ordinance under it's wings than an F-35 carries internally, but only if it's planning on dropping it at the end of the runway. On an average mission an F-16 carries 2-4 500-2,000lb bombs, 2-3 AMRAAMs, 1-2 Sidewinders, 2-3 bags of gas, 0-1 Jamming pods, and generally some kind of targeting pod (HTS, Sniper, Litening, etc.). The F-35 has the gas, jammer, and TGP built in, and carries the bombs and AMRAAMs internally while ditching the sidewinders on the theory that stealth and vastly improved situational awareness will obviate the need for them. You're also right, once you start hanging ordinance on the outside of the plane the amount it can carry is pretty staggering.

There's a potential answer to your question of institutional memory and regenerating capability Noyhauser. I could see how that could work out for both sides if they start soon, the Aeronavale gets the UK to essentially pay for part of their deck and air crew, and FAA personnel get to retain (or rather re-acquire) CATOBAR deck handling and flying capabilities.

A nice post hitting on something Noyhauser and I have been harping on for a while now. I'd be interested to hear an actual dollar amount attached to the "significant initial investment" estimate. I wouldn't be surprised if it amounted to a few squadrons worth of F-35s.

Call me a cheerleader all you want, you can't tell me this doesn't look awesome!

Well I never said it was fool proof, just really good. Besides compare your Dessert Storm engagement to some of the ones from Allied force where most of the time fighters were slinging AMRAAMs from long ranges, in awful weather at night.

That actually hasn't been true since the 70s. There's been a real revolution in IFF for BVR, in addition to long range optical systems like the Tomcat's TCS or the Rafale's OSF there's a rather shadowy world of what's called Non Cooperative Target Recognition. How it works is still classified but systems have been rumored to do anything from count the fan blades on engine faces, to picking up on the resonance of the various comms antennae on an aircraft. Regardless of how it works quite a few modern fighters have sprouted IFF antennae farms on their noses. I think the bigger reason we see so much WVR combat is that the closing speeds of most fights are so damn fast. Just about every VF can reach Mach 3 and quite a few are able to get up to Mach 4 or 5. Given those kinds of speeds, you're not going to get off more than a handful of shots before things close to WVR and it turns into a furball. Most of Mr March's examples of BVR combat seem to bear this out. A few long range shots followed very quickly by a merge and devolution into a close range knife fight.

The SA will be similar to the SG but definitely not the same. The SG has quite a bit of Israeli avionics in it, which the SA for obvious reasons will not have.

I think you might be overestimating the difficulties just a little here. The Aéronavale has already spent a good deal of time cross decking with the US Navy while the Charles De Gaulle was in refit, they made a conscious decision to move away from the old bridle catapults with the introduction of the Rafale and the CDG for precisely that reason. The only big problem is that the QE will be equipped with EMALs catapults vs the steam cats currently used by the Navy and Aéronavale but by the time the FAA has them in service those two will as well, and I don't know how much of a difference they would make from an operational training perspective in the first place. The bigger question for me is what this means for the US Marines, as this leaves them as the only firm buyer of the F-35B. There are several nations who currently operate Harriers off small deck carriers that could be potential buyers (Italy, Spain, Thailand and India), a few that have seriously considered (re)joining the carrier game (Japan, Australia, Korea), and even a few who think the short/austere field performance of the STOVL version could come in handy (Israel). None of those are the firms orders the UK had though, and getting them on board at this point might be tough now that the unit price just shot up because of the lower production numbers. All of this is further complicated because the SDSR is disappointingly vague on what exactly the UK is actually going to do. Are they buying all F-35Cs all around? Or is the C model only for the FAA while the RAF get's Bs. Or is the RAF getting out of the STOVL game all together and going for A model Lightnings? It's all damned confusing.

Meh, I've been saying the F-35C was the best looking version since it's first flight a couple of months ago. The others just don't have the right proportions (F-35A's wings are too small, F-35B has a hump back).

CF-01 finally gets a paint job. It already looked good flying around in primer, and with full coatings it looks fantastic! Can't wait to see it flying again in this paint scheme.

Looks can be deceiving. The Navy didn't want, and Lockheed/Boeing/GD didn't design in much performance above the F-14's, if any at all. Remember the A/FX was supposed to do the job of the A-6 first and the F-14 second (and with a big watering down of the F-14's job description at that).