Nied

My point wasn't just hangars, the Air Force has been getting along just fine moving aircraft much bigger than the A330 about an airfield. The added size even has the benefit of taking a lot of pressure off of those bigger planes on cargo missions. You don't exactly need a strategic airlifter to move 100 pallets of frozen hamburger patties to Ramstein do you? Then why'd pilot's nickname it "The Dump Truck?"

From the Air Force Hangars I've been in they could accommodate that pretty easily (and why not they're designed to accommodate things like the C-17, C-5 and the various 747 derivatives floating about the AF). I do find it funny to hear this argument from you though, since I can remember a certain purple haired moderator telling me that existing hangar sizes shouldn't be a consideration in another contentious aircraft competition (the better looking plane lost there too!)

Lockheed already mocked it up. And it doesn't look as bad as you might think.

Technically Boeing offered Size B and Airbus offered Size C. If Boeing was winning on size they would be offering a KC-757 or some freighter derivative of the 737-900. Honestly I always thought the argument that the KC-45 was too big for our current hangars to be rather stupid, we seem to have no trouble finding hangars for our similarly sized KC-10s, often at the same base. It is too bad that the KC-45 lost this time, it carried more fuel and cargo and most importantly it was far better looking than the "Dump truck."

Depending on the mission profile (loiter time etc) it's pretty comparable in range (610nm vs 685 for an F15 and 1200nm max vs 1061nm max for the F-15). Unfortunately we don't have numbers on the F-35 for ferry range. Thrust to weight is difficult to determine since the max thrust for both the F135 and F136 are classified. With the numbers thrown around (anywhere from 40,000 to 50,000 lbs quoted for either engine) that nets us a TW ratio between 1.03 (closer to the F-16 I'll grant you) to 1.3 (identical to a -229 powered F-15) at half internal fuel (the only fair way to compare things since the F-35 carries almost as much fuel internally as an F-15 with two drop tanks).

Why? An F-35 is as fast as an F-15 (at least one carrying ordinance), it carries a similar payload in an air superiority mission, but it has the advantage of stealth, a sensor fit that's light years ahead of even the Raptor's, and networking capabilities that have the potential to revolutionize air combat. How is that not an upgrade?

Add a pair of drop tanks under the wings to the already considerable internal fuel capacity and I'm willing to bet an F-35 could keep up with an A-10 in the loitering department, and still have room left over for a sizable weapons load. I have to reiterate that even the A-10 isn't doing much in the way of down in the weeds work. If you really need to get a better look at the target(s) pulling up a zoomed in view from the multiple EO/IR sensors in your helmet mounted display, or datalinked video from the troops on the ground would work just as well if not better while not exposing the aircraft to ground fire.

We're talking decades before the F-35 is supposed to replace the A-10. Also my understanding is that the newer electrically pumped lasers Raytheon is working on are much smaller and more efficient compared to the chemically pumped lasers on the ABL. The plan is to get a laser package small enough to fit into the lift fan bay of an F-35B airframe and have it powered by the drive shaft off the engine. If it does end up working that way an F-35 could still carry weapons in it's internal bays and under the wings (though if the solid state laser works as advertised they might be superfluous).

You also have to remember that the A-10 is one of the last aircraft the F-35 is slated to replace. By the time Warthog squadrons start transitioning to the F-35 it will have all sorts of wiz-bang additions that will make it a much more effective CAS plane, like better datalinks with the troops on the ground, better missiles like the JAGM carried internally and externally (if it's doing CAS work it's very likely air superiority has been achieved and the big SAM threats have been neutralized), and maybe even high powered lasers. It's the same thing with the F-35s slated for F-15 squadrons, by the time it starts taking over air superiority missions it will have a more powerful engine, six or even eight missiles cleared for internal carriage, and much longer reach in the form of the JDRAAM (the possible laser weapons would be extremely useful in an air superiority mission as well).

Not even the A-10 goes low and slow anymore, especially since the A-10C upgrade. About the only capability the F-35 loses versus the A-10 is the ability to dip down and plink targets from 10,000ft with 30mm cannon fire, and it makes up for that with better network and sensor integration.

Unfortunately I don't think there's a sane one to be found. God dammit I was saving that exact joke for the right moment!

This is flat out un-true, and is again an example of trying to force facts into a pre-made narrative whether they fit or not. The F-4 was chosen as the USAF's next fighter-bomber by Robert McNamara because it was also being flown by the Navy and McNamara was keen on the services flying the same aircraft. It's performance (or lack therof) in Vietnam had more to do with poor training in the air-to air role and the poor quality of the missiles available at the time than any deficiencies of the F-4 as a fighter. This is borne out by the fact that the F-4 was the backbone of the Air Force, Navy and Marines until at least the mid 70s. Much like the F-104 it was (and still is) the backbone of many allied air forces and is one of the most successful fighters ever made with over 5000 examples built. This is a flat out lie. The F-111 was designed as a bomber for the Air Force and a fleet defense interceptor for the Navy. It was never intended to be used as an air superiority fighter by any service and never was used as such. But hey you got a dig at liberals (which since McNamara was a Republican working in a Democratic administration almost works)! This is just dishonest instead of a lie. Boyd wanted to replace the F-15 with the LWF program. While the Eagle was very much his baby he came to believe that large technologically sophisticated fighter was useless in a modern war, mainly based on the experience in Vietnam. The F-16 was intended to be a "pure" fighter with a (very) secondary light bombing role to be built cheaply in huge numbers. It wasn't even supposed to have a radar for chrisakes! (Boyd was incensed when the the range finder in his specs was replaced by the APG-66). DoD eventually split the difference between these two visions, and the high-lo mix was born. The F-16 took over the fighter-bomber role of the F-4 and it's spent the overwhelming amount of its service life lugging around at least a pair of huge fuel tanks and some kind of air-to-ground ordinance in it's primary role as a ground attack plane. It's electronics are it's achille's heel. They're complex and run software in an arcane proprietary language that makes it nigh impossible to fit some of the newest weapons or sensors. We're left with an aircraft that's stuck carrying weapons systems from over a decade ago with little hope of fitting new weapons to a sizable chunk of the fleet. Replacing the computer systems (say with the more advanced ones from the F-35) would cost nearly as much as a whole new Raptor (or several F-35s). Also the Raptor has never served in a combat mission so it has no kills (exercises are not kills). The F-35, while not as stealthy as an F-22, is still designed to be stealthy from all aspects, though like all VLO aircraft it's optimized for the front quarter. It's computer system is several times more advanced than the Raptor's, it carries a far more advanced sensor suite than the Raptor, and it's "limited" internal weapons capacity matches that of the F-16 (it gets closer the the much larger F-15E carrying external stores). The Russians have no experience producing a VLO aircraft, they have never built an operational AESA radar, and they have yet to produce a full supercruise capable engine (which is why the T-50 flew with uprated versions of the SU-27's engines and doesn't look to get newer ones for 15 years). All this makes it likely the T-50's production will be protracted and expensive, almost ensuring that Russia will not be able to buy the full 150 they plan on. It will also make it nearly impossible for a a country without a very large GDP to afford any more than a token force of PAK-FAs. And yet the Russians are only planning on building 150 PAK-FA less than our planned purchase of 187 Raptors, and as I mentioned above they're unlikely to even afford that many. If we're facing Russia or China, every one dies in nuclear hellfire long before we'll be able to care about who's wunder-plane could win in a fight. Also China's 2,000 aircraft (not fighters) Air Force still mainly utilizes Vietnam era technology. That should be George W. Bush. It was his administration who made the decision to cap Raptor production, not Obama's.

LOL! This is about the level of thought I expect from American Thinker. Let's unpack this a little. I'm reminded of this comic. Wait so an aircraft proved technically deficient for a role that it was not originally designed for so a new aircraft was instead produced that could fulfill that role? That's a perfect example of a high-lo mix! Or trying to force data into a pre-conceived frame whether it fits or not, I can't remember which. So as a superior aircraft came into service, the plane it replaced was increasingly pressed into second line duties. That's not high-lo it's waste-not want-not. Again as a more technologically advanced aircraft came into service, the planes it replaced were pressed into second line duties. I notice the author doesn't claim that the use of old F-51 Mustangs in the ground attack role as an example of a high-lo mix. This wasn't an oversight it was the result of the strategic doctrine the US assumed at the time, which was geared toward fighting a massive nuclear war with the Soviet Union. That lead us to build planes designed to lob nuclear weapons at Russia or to stop the Soviet Planes from lobbing weapons at us. There wasn't a high-lo mix so much as a defensive-offensive mix. I'd also point out that the F-104 ended up forming the backbone of several allied air forces. Contd..

Also on the subject of photoshoped paint jobs: Take a look at the latest concept art of the KC-767 from Boeing to see what you get when even a professional from a multi-billion dollar company tries to photoshop a new paint scheme (and in this case a few bits of equipment as well) on to an existing picture of an aircraft. Very attractive scheme though.

And all of the Advanced Su-27 prototypes (Su-30, Su-35, Su-37) were all given rather elaborate (and sometimes impractical) camo schemes.

No no, they edited out the original guy sitting in the cockpit (who wasn't wearing a shirt at all), and superimposed a very accurate 3-D render of the guy in the purple shirt.

The light conditions are different (the previously mentioned shadows on the landing gear), and if it were taken on the same day the plane hasn't traveled far enough down the runway for the light to have changed that dramatically. The only cloud formations I see are the smoke from the smokestack that's obscured by the treeline in the background, and those are different (it looks like it was more windy for the second flight) once I get home I can try to line up the two in photoshop. As for the odds of the weather being the same, according to weather underground, conditions in Khabarovsk (home of the airfield in question) were nearly identical on both days (clear and f$&@ing cold). If anything the existence of a high-er res photo with meticulous details makes it less likely that it's a shop not more, those little details are extremely tough to make look right, and getting the highlights and shadows to appear right on things like panel lines, vents and test equipment is a project that would take years, not a month. You'd be at the point where it would be easier and quicker to photoshop out the original unpainted PAK-FA and then superimpose a render of a high fidelity 3-D model of a painted T-50.

In that case I gotta pull out my old buddy Occam and his razor. Which is more likely: That someone took a picture of the first flight of one of the most hotly anticipated aircraft in the last decade, and then sat on it for nearly a month while they meticulously painted a complex camo pattern, and did such a good job of it that no trace of the original colors show, and then finally went in and edited the EXIF data so that even photo geeks like me would be fooled? Or it's actually a picture of the painted T-50 taken on the date listed in the EXIF data that's been run through a few too many crappy filters in Photoshop Elements?

I can see why people could think the painted picture was shopped, it's very similar to this one from the PAK-Fa's first flight, but like I said the EXIF data for each picture is different (you can look at it yourself by saving the picture and right clicking it and looking at it's properties). The unpainted picture was taken on January 29th by a Canon EOS-1D with a 100mm focal length and a exposure time of 1/1250sec. It looks like whoever took it did some tweaking after the fact in Adobe Photoshop CS3. The painted picture on the other hand was taken on February 12th by a Canon EOS 450D with a 55mm focal length and a 1/800sec shutter time, whoever it was that took this picture used Photoshop Elements 2 to tweak it. You can edit some of the EXIF data right in windows (things like the camera used and the date) while other parts (F-stop, shutter speed, focal length) need special software. Photoshop doesn't even allow you to edit any of the EXIF data. You'll also note the that the shadows in the two pictures are different, the big one that stands out to me is that the right main gear is completely cast in shadow in the painted pic, while it's getting hit with quite a bit of sun in the picture from the first flight. It becomes really obvious when you super-impose the two images on top of each other. As you can see the T-50 is flying at slightly different angles in each picture so that most of the parts don't line up exactly. If you move things around a little so that the runway lines up it looks like the first flight (unpainted) photo was taken at a slightly different point in the takeoff run, also the different focal lengths of each shot cause the background elements to become mis-matched.

No we haven't. From the Exif data it actually appears to be quite real.

I should add that it's only because of the confluence of post-colonialism and Cold War gamesmanship that India has any ties with Russia at all. They're a multi-ethnic secular democracy with a common law legal tradition, I have a hard time coming up with a better archetype for "natural ally of the US" than that. Only the fluke of the timing of their independence kept them from becoming an ally sooner.

India is maintaining ties with Russia more out of inertia than anything else, and even so maintaining ties with a mildly antagonistic country is a far stretch from armed conflict. India simply isn't going to risk the loss of a large chunk of it's air force over a conflict with the US (remember that airplanes need spare parts and support from the manufacturer to keep flying), not to mention the absolute devastation it would do to their economy. Yes we maintain ties with their antagonistic neighbor, but we have maintained long and fruitful relationships with with two conflicting countries before. No one thinks we are going to war with Greece or Turkey over their longstanding conflict, ditto with South Korea or Japan, if anything our relationships with those countries makes conflicts between them (and us) less likely.

The 187 number includes strategic reserves for just that situation, and the Russians will have to deal with the same issues (newer aircraft generally have to deal with teething issues that lower MC rates). But again this whole argument is moot since any direct conflict between the US and Russia would go Nuclear very quickly, turning both fleets into so much air pollution. Oh please. Three out of five of the next major purchases for their air force are for going to the US (P-8, C-130J, and C-17) while another one has two US built designs competing for it (F/A-18F, and F-16I for the MMCA competition), there's even rumors the Indians want to buy F-35Bs or F-35Cs for their carriers. In addition to the Cope India exercises the IAF is now a regular participant in Red Flag. India was close to Russia 25 years ago but they've moved quite a bit of distance since then.

Mr Kopp is convinced that all that would be required to make the F-22 a carrier capable fighter would be bigger landing gear struts and welding some small fins to the nose gear doors. That should give you an idea of how believable the rest of his analysis is. The Russians aren't likely to be able to field more than 150 PAK-FAs, meaning in a stand up fight the Raptor would have a quantitative advantage to go along with it's qualitative one (that's ignoring the fact that any direct conflict between Russia and the US would quickly devolve to a Nuclear exchange that would make the use of either aircraft moot). India probably will end up buying the full planed amount of two seat PAK-FAs but those aircraft are more likely to end up fighting along side the Raptor or JSF than against them (India is an ally that grows ever closer to the US as time goes on).

I doubt the G forces involved would be any worse than the ones the pilot would experience while ejecting.