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Frankly I'm not as certain that an alternate source of chips could be found for the F-22 avionics. We're talking about fabing chips not building new tooling for a major airframe component, having the same company gear up for another production run, or having another company do it shouldn't cost too much money. And it's definetly be far cheaper than the scenario you mentioned. Frankly even at an $85 million flyaway cost building new raptors is still cheaper. Remember if we replace our existing F-15s with new F-15s they are going to need to be on a near one-to-one basis, that's over 500 fighters, even at $57 million a copy that's a $30 billion dollar order. While the Raptor is effective enough to be bought in smaller numbers than the Eagle, If we go with the pre-cut production run of 270 examples, we get a price tag of about $31 billion.

Just another thought on the costs of replacing F-15s with F/A-22s vs the costs of replacing them with more F-15s. If the extra $10 million is still to much to swallow, consider that the current F-15 fleet could be replaced with about 2/3rds to half the number of F/A-22s. If we replace them with more F-15s it would have to be pretty much a one for one replacement.

While a Fulda gap scenario with Soviet forces pouring into western europe isn't going to happen there's still plenty of threats out there to potential US dominance in a theatre of operations. The fact is that the last four major conflicts we fought were against foes who either had no airforce or thought air power was useless. In the first Gulf War Saddam Husein openly mocked the US reliance on airpower and felt his own planes were more useful sitting buried in hardened aircraft shelters (considering the IrAF's performans in the Iran/Iraq war that may have been true). In Kosovo the Serbian airforce had been sapped by the previous decade of civil war so that the vast majority of their aircraft were grounded (though they were able to fly a few low level bombing missions under the nose of NATO AWACs planes). In Afganistan, well Afganistan just didn't have an airforce besides a handful of grounded Hinds and two (count 'em) Mig-17s. And in the second GUlf War the IrAF had already been mostly destroyed in the first war. Now wingnut fantasies about going to war with France aside, there are plenty of good airforces that could (and more importently would) be capable of opposing the USAF. North Korea. Aparently after the first Gulf War Kim Jong-Il wrote an essay lambasting the Iraqis for failing to contest Coalition Air superiority. THe NKAF isn't the most modern Air Force in the world (though they do have several squadrons of Mig-29s) but combined with the extensive redundancies in their air defence network, it could pose a signifigant challenge to US aircraft. Iran. The IRIAF apears to have been hardened by the Iran/Iraq war rather than weakened. The Iranian aircraft industry is impressive, being capable of producing nearly all the spare parts needed for thier aircraft (including complex F-14 spares). The combination of at least a squadron's worth of F-14 Tomcats, and several squadrons of Mig-29s (some purchased from Russia, others "donated" by the IrAF), along with quite a few older aircraft (F-4s and F-5s mostly) would make them a powerful opponent. Saudi Arabia. While it seems that the house of Saud has at least for the time being quelled a rebellion, the country remains worryingly unstable. It's easy to imagine a coup taking place putting the Saudi kingdom (and the highly advanced RSAF) in the hands of an extreme right wing Islamist, perhaps even Osama Bin Laden himself. Being armed with F-15Cs, downgraded Es and E-3 Sentries the RSAF would surely pose a grave threat to US operations in the gulf should it turn beligerent (the same could be said for many of the other authoritarian regeimes proped up by the US in the gulf). There are other examples are imagineable, war in the Taiwan straits is still a posibility, or if we ever decide to get off our asses and do something about the many atrocities in Africa we'd run in to some decently equiped air forces. But the quality of our potential enimies is almost besides the point. Like I said our F-15s are soon to be unflyable, we can either build new F-15s for $105 million and hope that the threats I just mentioned aren't as bad as I made them out to be, or we can spend an extra $10 million and build Raptors that could take on the worst case scenario and still win.

That's exactly the point I was trying to make to my dad (and in this thread). At this point it wouldn't cost much more to build new Raptors than it would to build new Eagles. We're going to need to build new somethings pretty soon (our Eagles are going to reach the end of thier airframe life in the next few years), why not build the better somethings instead of the worse ones.

There's a quote in that article that reminds me of something I brought up with my dad when arguing about the F-22 (he's against it). I told him that the airplanes we're flying now are going to need to be repalced real soon (this refering to F-15s), we can either spend money on building more F-15s to replace them, or we can build much better planes; considering that we've already spent billions on the F-22, and that from this point out they'll cost about the same why not build the better plane?

I have to second mikeszekely's comments. I don't think anyone here is accusing you of being greedy, you've done a great service to the comunity, one that I can't thank you enough for, and you want to make sure that that service is recognized and protected. It's just that sometimes your efforts to protect your work hamper our ability to enjoy it. I'm quite happy to hear that you're taking down the script code preventing copying, and I for one pledge (and I'm sure many others will to) to make sure that if I see someone using your stuff without properly crediting you I'll raise as much of a stink about it as I can to try and shame that person into stopping. I just hope this whole thing doesn't sour you on the work you're doing. It'd be a shame if you stopped. P.S. Can we still use the lineart you've found as a basis for color schemes, properly credited of course.

I never advocated piracy, just complained that buying un-cut macross has gotten alot harder lately (each time I thought I had found a store where I could purchase the final boxset that store sold out as I was purchasing it, ironically I ended up buying it from robotech.com). And while it is a reasonable suposition that ADV will begin selling Macross, there's no real evidence that it's actually going to happen. It may be quite a while before someone can go out and buy Macross un-cut.

Why don't you buy it? You know, legally go out and purchase it. That might be harder than you think Duke. The animeigo boxsets are becoming quite scarce since they discontinued them (I was barely able to complete my collection this week).

For the life of me I still can't quite figure our where Fleet of Strongest Women fits into M7's chronology. Max and Millia have their VF-22s, but I could have sworn Millia doesn't get hers unti the last episode, it could take place after the last episode but Battle 7 and and the Fire Valk were destroyed in the last one while they are both intact here. Also Max and Millia's relationship seems to be closer to what it was at the begining of the series (cold and distant) while they seemed to be on thier way to reconciliation by the end of M7.

Well yeah, but the F136 is even further away than the F135. Besides the two engines are supposed to be able to fit seamlessly into the same bay. Frankly I'd love to try and cram two of either JSF engine into the Super Hornet as well (from what I can tell they're only about a foot longer than the F414), 80-100K of thrust ought to make up just about any energy deficiency that plane has.

This isn't supposed to be an FB-22. It's more of an F/A-22B that actually lives up to the /A in it's name (and is cheaper to boot). The fuseleage plug would be the only thing that really adds any weight to the airframe (wieght that is compensated for by the more powerful F135s), the rest is just new avionics. Here's how I'd build a Strike Raptor on the cheap: Take the baseline raptor and rip out it's current data bus and computer systems and replace them with the more modern and upgradeable ones from the F-35 (the added orders and commonality should reduce the purchase and operating costs for both planes), in addition I'd install the F-35's chin widget (I still for the can't find WTF it's called) on the Raptor so it can self designate (again this would be as similar as possible to the one installed into the F-35 for the reasons I outlined above). I'd also replace the F119s in with F135s (or F136s) from the F-35. This would take away the F-22's thrust vectoring, but it's not as if the raptor sudenly becomes a pig with no TVC, and it can be added back in a later spiral (which I beilive is the plan for the F-35 anyway). Using F135s would lower costs again by making it so that almost the entire inventory of the Air force (and much of the Navy and Marine corps) are using the same engine. All this could be done with very minimal changes to the airframe, and even F/A-22As could be upgraded to this standard pretty easily. What I'd really like to do is put a fuselage plug in to stretch the plane by about a foot so that the main weapons bays could carry larger weapons like JSOWs or 2,000 lb JDAMs, right now the weapons bay is about half a foot too short to carry these. Now of course this would make the whole shebang much more expensive, and with the SDB coming into service next year it may be redundant (at least for the price) to do. SO the fuselage stratch is optional (though you should be able to stretch the sidewinder bays enough to fit another AIM-9X in there if you stagger them).

Ideally I'd like to see two seat FB-22s flying side by side with intact F-22As. But that's not going to happen. With the kind of bugetary environment we're looking at I'm trying to think of ways to make F/A-22s as cheap as possible, and that means changing it as little as possible. Frankly I may have gone too far with the modifications I suggested, the fuselage stretch might be too much, with the SDB about to come online the Raptors current bay might be suffecient. Hell if things are still too expensive I'd say put non thrust vectoring F135s or F136s in there to lower costs even more (saving 3-D TV for a later spiral of course).

The thing about the F-22 could be a blessing in disguise. As ewelien pointed out the F/A-22's avionics architechure is hopelessly outdated, and it as currently built it definetly wont live up to the /A in it's designation. The thing of it is that the Air Force still needs a new strike fighter and with a few tweaks the F-22 could easily be it (and be quite a bit cheaper than any other option). Streach the fuselage by a foot to make room for a bigger weapons bay, slap the JSF's chin gizmo on the nose along with it's databus architechure and you have a a brand new strike fighter for the price of a few minor avionics upgrades and structural modifications. On the subject of naming aircraft carriers: I think it's horrible that we don't have an aircraft carrier named after Franklin Roosevelt. The man is responsible for ending the great deperssion and winning WWII, and he doesn't get a supercarrier named after him? George Bush gets a carrier named after him but one of the greatest preisdents of the 20th century doesn't, that's just wrong.

Just got back from visiting family during Christmas and I came back with my own copy of of the Osprey book on Iranian Tomcats. I haven't been going through sequentially like David has, I've just been jumping around. Here's a few of my thoughts: If they had made the F-14 AMRAAM capable back in the '90s the Pheonix would have been withdrawn from serice years ago. As far as i can tell the Iranians used the Pheonix as a big heavy and very expensive AMRAAM. An AMRAAM armed tomcat would have been able to go into combat armed with six missiles rather than the two Pheonix's like the Iranians were using. If the Iranians are ever sucessful in integrating the R-77 "amraamski" with their planes they'll be really tough opponents. I'm even more impressed with the Iranian aviation industry. To be able to keep as big of a hangar queen like the tomcat flying for all those years through a grueling war with no steady supply of spare parts is simply increadable. THe book is dubious on the likely hood of integrating Russian components into the F-14 but if any one is capable of doing it it's the Iranians. I still find some of the claims in the book a little hard to beilieve. Alot of the quotes from the Pilots sound a little boastful, as though they had something to prove. Of course they did have something to prove, both their own countrymen and the rest of the world press doubted they were even flying their planes let alone doing as well as they were. Nonetheless they sound like they were overcompensating so I taking the book with a (very small) grain of salt.

I'm having trouble finding the news story I read last year, however if you look at Globalsecurity's entry on the Striker you'll see mention down at the bottom about planned anti RPG armor still being in development as of 2003 (when sttrikers were deployed to Iraq). The news article I read had the Strikers that deployed to Iraq being fited with a sort of cage that would detonate an RPG warhead before it struck the actual skin of the vehicle. It wan't nearly as effective as the actual armor they were supposed to have but it was better than the nothing they were sent there with.

It's not quite the same. For one the Strikers sent into Iraq, like much of the equipment sent there, were sent without most of their armor (because "you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up"). The Striker is vulnerable right now beacuse it's being sent out without critical components, namely armor. It would be like arguing that the SuperHornet isn't as good as the Tomcat because it didn't have engines installed in it.

The JSF is suppposed to have the ability to self designate for LGBs along with a full FLIR. There's a gizmo on the chin of all versions that is suppoed to have superior capabilies to the Sniper XR pods on the F-16E. I took a picture of it on the JSF mockup they had at the Andrews Air show this year, never got around to posting it though. I saw a set of specifications for it somewhere but for the life of me I can't remember where it was.

I agree with ewilien, what the point of making these arguments if they're just going to be ignored next time. If a clean F-35 has a useless existence then a dirty Viper or Baby Hornet is even worse. Take a look at the loadout that those two carried into pretty much every conflict since the Balkans: a pair each of AMRAAMs, Sidewinders, Droptanks, and roughly 2,000 lb PGMs (either Paveway, JDAM or sometimes HARMs), they're obviously not very stealthy and good luck getting supersonic let alone to Mach 1.5 in that configuration. The F-35 on the other hand can carry almost the exact same load (minus the sidewinders, and as David pointed out the B model has recently been restricted to 1,000 lb JDAMs or Paveways) only everything is internal so not only is it stealthy, it goes into war clean and thus is able to reach it's top speed under real conditions. The only thing that couldn't be carried internally is the HARM, but the F-35 is stealthy enough to get close enough to drop a JSOW instead. The F-35 can rreach it's maximum speed carrying almost the same warload as the F-16, the F-16 can reach it's maximum speed carrying a pair of sidewinders. As to maneuverability as Ewilien pointed out we've been over this. The F-35 has superior T:W ratio and superior wing loading you do the math.

I seem to remember something like this coming up several years back over the depiction of the F-22 in sims. Lockheed sued several companies it even ended up in court, I do beilieve that the judge threw out the case ruling that the game manufacturers were making depictions of government property which are free to all. This sounds like more of a harrasment suit, if it weren't for the fact that Maddox was releasing these fighters for free I bet UBI soft would have challenged the aircraft manufacturers and won very quickly, but since there's no money involved...

The Phoenix is great at what it's designed for, blowing huge high altitude bombers out of the sky before they can launch thier cruise missiles at the fleet. But against a modern threat like an exocet armed Mig-21 skimming low over the ocean I'd rather take a Rhino with an AESA radar and 8 AMRAAMS hanging from the wings. THe Super Hornet is signifgantly more advanced than the Tomcat, it's far more maneuverable (how many times have you seen a Tomcat pull a Cobra seconds after take off?), it has better sensors (the APG-79 radar in the Hornet is second only to the Raptor's APG-77 on which it is based), and yes it's easier to maintain (I've said it before and I'll say it again: a plane sitting in the hangar getting an overhaul is useless).

I forgott to add that, while ICBMs with conventional warheads are certainly possible, they wouldn't be useful as anything more than terror weapons ala the V2 or the Scuds Iraq used in the first Gulf War. ICBMs are accurate enough to (barely) hit a target the size of a city but not specific targets within that city.

Space based weapons are in fact illegal, they've been banned by a UN treaty which the US is a signatory. ICBMs don't apply since they are not based in space, they simply travel through it on thier way to their target. Frankly space based weaponry is a bad idea since while it would allow us to attack anyone we wanted the same could be said of any of our enemies that happened to have such a system (I find the idea that no one but the US is capable of developing such weapons downright laughable).

My prediction: The FB-22 as proposed will not come to pass. I think that the air force will go for a compromise route with more of a "Strike Raptor" concept. A standard F/A-22 with a fuselage plug to acomodate an enlarged weapons bay, the F-35's chin sensor, and maybe two seats. That way they get to keep the most of the Raptors Air superiority aspects while still having a pretty good strike plane.

The FB-22 is supposed to have the same avionics, forward fuselage and engines as the F/A-22 (though it may get F135/6s instead). I imagine that much of the center fuselage could be re-used too. While the FB-22 doesn't have a flying prototype yet that really doesn't make a great deal of difference, prototypes are easy, getting them to a production line is hard.

While the idea of F-23s serving along side F-22s is intriguing to say the least I don't see how it's going to happen. Frankly any FB-23 is going to have to porve that it's a) signifigantly stealthier b) signifigantly faster and c) cheaper than a FB-22. While the YF-23 was arguably faster and stealthier than the YF-22 (though how much is a matter of conjecture), it shouldn't have nearly as much of an advantage over the proposed FB-22. One of the big reasons the F-22 wasn't as stealthy as the YF-23 was because it had those big four poster tails instead of the YF-23s V tail design, this led to a much bigger side RCS, they also contributed a good amount of drag. The FB-22 doesn't have tails, and thus it wouldn't have the RCS or drag deficiencies of it's parent. That just leaves cost, I've gone over the F-23's problems with cost of ownership compared to the F-22 before (short version the an F-23 would be more of an expensive headache to keep flying than the F-22), that and it's also an all new fighter program, with all the teething costs that involves (not that a FB-22 would be a sinch , but it certainly could be sold that way). Combine all that with the fact that the FB-22 helps re-inforce the F/A-22 program and you've got a recipe for a failure. Not that I don't think that an FB-23 might be better though.