Nied

Which Lockheed/Boeing? There were two as I said, one with General Dynamics and one with Northrup. The main difference was the nose of the Northrup version was much broader and almost triangular, while the GD version was more F-22-like. Neither would have been any great shakes against an F-14 since air-to-air wasn't supposed to be their specialty. They only had enough performance to take over the F-14's fleet defense mission, and to ward off anything that tried to get in the way of completing their strike mission. A good indication of what the A/F-X was intended for is the fact that even the two Lockheed/Boeing/X designs only had the afterburners as an option.

Actually I was going to ask which AF/X were you looking at because there were several. Lockheed alone had four different proposals depending with different partners, two were with Boeing (with Northrup or General Dynamics being the third partner) were based off of Lockheed's original NATF proposal, and were thus very similar. While the third Lockheed offered alone and was a heavily upgraded F-117 with a bubble canopy, new wings and tail and possibly afterburning engines, and the fourth offered with Rockwell was a big pointed triangle with flip out swing wings. McDonnell Douglas got back together with General Dynamics to offer a simplified A-12, while also offering a new design with Vought. There were also several other proposals from various other team ups. The point is the AF/X was a bit of a "blue sky" program where the Navy after the death of the ATA and NATF went out to various manufacturers with some very vague requirements and got back some pretty far ranging proposals. The requirements were weighted heavily towards strike though and so were most of the proposals. The best air-to-air performers were only going to be roughly equal to an F-14, while the rest tried to be just good enough to make a defender think twice about engaging them. given that I doubt any of the AF/X contenders would have been able to do much better than a draw with an F-14.

I'd actually agree with this sentiment, there has been a move in US military circles over the past several decades to favor quality over quantity. I think in part as a response to the Soviet Union's clear quantitative advantage. That's part of why I've become a bigger supporter of the F-35 program, because it starts to break that paradigm. It may not stack up quite as well as other 5th generation designs in some areas, but the shear numbers of highly adaptable network enabled fighters we plan on deploying will easily overwhelm any potential foe we could face in the next few years. Russia is already hinting it may have to cut back on it's PAK-FA order, India just keeps getting closer to us by the year, and I already covered China's air force. Barring something truly bizarre like Japan or the EU suddenly becoming beligerent, we'll be able to roll over anyone with a wave of over a thousand "good enough" F-35s, the same way thousands of "good enough" Shermans rolled over Tigers and Panthers in WWII.

Oh man don't even get me started on debt to GDP ratios, you think Japan's looks bad look at the US's after WWII. Then look at 1)How long it took to bring that ratio down, 2)the tax rates we used to bring it down (especially top marginal rates) and 3) what else the government spent money on at the same time. I could write a whole post about this but it'd waaaaaay off topic. I think those worried about weakening US power need to think of it in relative terms. By 2020 our nearest closest peer in terms of airpower China, will have about 300-400 Su-27/J-11s of various types, 500-600 J-10s, and maybe another 500 or so retiring and entirely obsolete types like J-7s, and J-8s. They might also have a handful of J-XXs just entering service although to what extent (and of what capabilities) is unkown. In a conflict they'd be facing off against a US Air Force with more than 200 F-15Es, 180 upgraded F-15C/Ds, 180 F-22s, and some 400-500 F-16s remaining in service (likely upgraded as well), all backed up by nearly 1000 F-35s. So the USAF will come close to matching the PLAAF with it's legacy fleet alone, and outnumbers it close to 2-1 once you throw in the F-35 fleet. That's a huge edge over our most equivalent competitor both qualitatively and quantitatively, and I haven't even thrown in the Navy's air wing yet (or that of any allied air forces that would likely be drawn into the conflict). With other nations the advantage only grows larger.

That's just the point though, we've already spent a ton of money on the Raptor and we can't go back in time and get it back. We can however keep the money we were going to spend now that we know the F-22 isn't ideal for what we want to do. I wouldn't worry too much about it though, we still have a large fleet of the most advanced fighter in the world (larger than the whole air forces of many nations), and it will soon be backed up by an order of magnitude larger fleet of fighters that are in many ways more advanced.

Two problems: A) Fighter production doesn't work that way, if you want to loosen construction tolerances you have to change the jigs, use less precise milling instruments, etc. which kills both your rationale and your cost savings. B) The airframe itself just isn't a big factor in the cost of the Raptor, making up maybe 30% of it at most. So even if you cut 15% off of the airframe manufacturing costs you've still only shaved 4.5% off the total cost of your Celeron-Raptor. The big driver of the Raptors cost is it's avionics systems, and as we've already covered because of the way they were designed they simply do not lend themselves to being monkeyed around without spending a lot of money. That leaves the engines, you could replace the F119s with the latest F110 or F100 versions but then you'd lose supercruise and a degree of maneuverability without TVC. You could potentially cut engine costs in half for 11% savings overall, but you'd end up with essentially an F-35 with crappier avionics and less payload (and still more expensive). The fact of the matter is barring a hot war with Russia or China, there's nothing we need more Raptors for that couldn't be done better by the 1.5-2 F-35s we could buy for the same price.

WE ARE LOUDLY AND ANGRILY politely and thoughtfully AGREEING! At least for the most part. I'm not going to argue that re-starting production of the Raptor is a good idea at the moment, because I can't make that case. I do think that it has certain capabilities that despite it's glaring deficiencies would be good to have in reserve should the need arise in the future, but I'm under no illusion that it would be cost free (we've both cited the RAND report). You're absolutely right about the "brain drain" issue, however considering the manner in which the tooling will be preserved, I wouldn't be surprised if in the event of an unexpected threat presenting itself that justifies re-starting production that the line would be set up in a more rational manner (likely at the facilities you mentioned). I'm also not worried about the avionics, most of the parts used are either readily available or easily modified from civilian or military sources (the processors used in the computer are just several networked PowerPCs which are nigh ubiquitous in various integrated computers, and after a bit more research David is right that the databus is an offshoot of Firewire). I think the place you are going to have problems is the stuff I mentioned above, finding a new source for bulkhead 336 after Tuscaloosa Bulkheads has gone out of business, or a new source of main gear struts after Consolidated Struts and Oleos switched to making toasters. In the end this is all academic since it's unlikely a threat will emerge to justify the expense of a re-start, but it is fun to ponder.

I'm actually not at all worried about the major sub assembly manufacturers (unwieldy and poorly thought out as they may be). The tooling for them is exactly what's being saved as the production line is shut down, and in the event of some kind of crash re-start would likely be re-constituted in a more rationalized manner. It's the much smaller manufacturers that produce the parts for those sub-assemblies where you'll run into problems. I don't see much problem with taking the warehoused tooling from the Center Fuselage production facility in Ft Worth and setting it back up next to the final assembly line in Marietta, but you might have trouble after the facility that made bulkhead 336 in Tuscaloosa went out of business three years ago. The flip side of this is that those sub-sub-assemblies are much simpler and thus are easier to re-source, the problem is the money required to get production of those parts re-started. If my memory serves me correctly that was the source of most of the cost of restarting production when RAND studied this problem last year.

Neat video of operations on board the Kuznetsov. It's been theorized that this same filming session produced crazy cobra bolter David posted a while back. More interesting to me is the sorry state of repair of both the Kuznetsov and his airwing, It's a good thing he's in dry dock now for a re-fit. I've also heard they'll be replacing the Su-33 with Mig-29Ks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tKOw3xjiLs&hd=1 Indeed the Air Force has quietly started it's Future Air Dominance Fighter program to replace both the F-22 and F-15E, it's still in the earliest of stages at the moment but IOC is projected to be 2025. I've already posted several pictures of the Navy's F/A-XX concept to replace the Super Hornet and I wouldn't be surprised if the two programs get folded into each other in the future as there's a significant amount of overlap in the requirements. Hell we could even bring the UK and France in to replace the Typhoon and Rafale. I think you might be overstating this a tad, they've already dealt with similar issues during the production of the Raptor without much issue (the Air Force was able to switch the CIP over to a COTS design for instance), and there are other ways around these kind of roadblocks as well. (I read a story the other day about a company that bought up a large amount of E-2 landing gear struts when the DoD was drawing down its spares inventory during the '90s, they're now the prime contractor for that part on all new build E-2Ds while Northrup-Grumman spools production back up).

I hadn't heard that myself but I wouldn't be surprised. I think the bigger issue with the Raptor's avionics is that all of it's software is written in some proprietary language that Lockheed came up with back in the early '90s, it makes for a huge bottleneck for the plane. Any new hardware that could be integrated has to be thoroughly tested to ensure it will actually run with the wonky software Lockheed wrote, and it's expensive and time consuming to write new software for it (there's only so many people who know the software language so there's only so many people you can throw at the problem, and anyone who does can charge a premium for their services for the same reason). That's why they're having so much trouble integrating new weapons with the F-22, they have no trouble getting it to physically carry the ordinance but getting the computer system to interface with it properly has been a big headache (same with JHMCS integration or a proper data link). That's the big thing the F-35 has going for it, it's all open architecture written in C++ so there's millions of devs out there who can write software for it as long as they have the proper security clearances. And before anyone suggests just putting the F-35's computer into the F-22, they actually looked at that last year as part of a proposal to sell it to Japan: it would have added over $100 million to the flyaway cost. I haven't seen much about the JASDF wanting to buy Raptors since.

MBDA unveils new clipped wing Meteor for the F-35. This is the biggest deal for the UK, I'd love to see if Lockheed could combine this with their recent work to carry six AMRAAMs internally. Just imagine Fleet Air Arm Lightning IIs with four Meteors and two ASRAAMs all internal. Throw in F136s for power and back it up with E-2Ds or AEW V-22s and the Royal Navy would have the most potent carrier air wing outside of the US. Uxi I don't think your idea would be very workable. Stealth isn't some box you can just chose to not install, it's built into the airframe through shaping, precision construction and structural materials. You could probably save a small amount of money by omitting some of the coatings, but the rest would require changing how you build the aircraft in the first place. Any savings would likely be eaten up by the re-designs required and you'd be ditching most of the tooling in the process. Besides the real expense of the Raptor lies in it's engines (which make up a good quarter of it's price IIRC) and it's dead end avionics system. Replacing either of those would also require a re-design that would negate any potential savings before the first "budget" Raptor got off the ground.

Some background for David's pic. And yeah pictures like that are exceedingly rare. The last time I can remember seeing anything like this was during the post 9/11 airline groundings, and those weren't all one carrier.

This is the first I've heard about any problems in a hover. The only thing that comes close are the fact that LM has been very deliberate in it's STOVL tests (working in stages to test each phase of the transition from wing-borne to jet-borne flight) and low mission capable rates because of the higher complexity of the B model. In fact the last news on the STOVL tests had them making four vertical landings in the course of a week at the beginning of the month.

Aint competition grand? Pratt says they topped 50,000 lbs on the F135. For reference at half fuel 50,000lbs would give an F-35A the thrust to weight ratio of a clean F-15C.

No the F-136 is meant to be installed in all F-35 versions, A, B, and C. Although the higher thrust would be particularly useful for STOVL operations, which is part of why the UK is so interested in keeping the F136 alive seeing as the F-35B is the sole fixed wing component of their carrier air wing.

Imagine how hot the F-35 will be once they put that in.

'Even when loaded internally with two 2,000lb GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munitions and two AIM-120 AMRAAMs, Griffith says the sheer power of the Pratt & Whitney F135 is evident. “The engine has a lot of thrust. It’s been fun to outrun the F-16 (chase aircraft). They can’t keep up. If we go to full military power the F-16 has to go to afterburner to keep up.”'

Modifying a YF-23 model into an F-23A based on the drawings on the previous page might make for an interesting project. Though I imagine you'd have to do a lot of sanding on the engine nacelles to get them to the right size. It might be easier to chop that section off and re-build it from scratch.

Yup those are the pictures I saw. My understanding of the shock cones was that they were both radar blockers as Knight26 said, and that they helped disrupt the boundary layer air going into the intakes. Sort of a primitive version of the F-35's DSI inlets. Also note how much slimmer the rear fuselage gets without the extra space for thrust reversers, much more aesthetically pleasing than the YF-23's squared off fat ass. All in all you're talking about basically a whole new fuselage for a notional F-23A while retaining the YF-23's wings with minor changes (almost a complete reversal from the YF-22 which had it's wings replaced with completely new one's but minor changes to the fuselage). It's certainly more attractive than it's Naval cousin.

Yeah the engine nacelles on the YF-23 were designed to be big enough to house the thrust reversers originally called for in the ATF specs. Since that got deleted in the final requirement the production model's would have been slimmer. I also found out recently that the intakes would have been re-designed as well, the production model would have featured F-104/Mirage like shock cones. I'll see if I can dig up the diagram I found.

I imagine when Antonov submits a serious proposal (on time) the USAF might consider it. As it was all they did was photoshop a pair of GEnX engines onto an An-70 and then claim they were going to attach a refueling boom to the cargo door! And then they couldn't even get their shoddy proposal delivered on time. For comparison's sake both Boeing and Airbus delivered their proposals at least several hours early (I think Airbus' was delivered a full day ahead) and had multiple couriers taking redundant copies of the proposal through several different travel methods just to be sure they would make it on time. Related. Still not a fan of the way the 7fatty7 looks.

Badass.

Let's just face facts: The F-22A is simply one of the most photogenic aircraft ever built. I've taken photos of it at four different air shows since I got my new Nikon and the only way I get a bad shot is if I do something to screw it up (bad focus, out of frame, etc).

Dammit David I was about to post the same thing! And yeah looks like an engine out, from the video it was during the worst possible time too: the low speed pass. Fellow Canadians apparently trying to show Alanis Morrisette the actual definition of irony by playing "Stayin Alive."