Posted on 10/02/2014 9:40:11 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Eurofighter Typhoon is large, expensive, relatively unmaneuverable, and hard to maintain to get many sorties per week, Pierre Sprey, designer of the F-16, F-15, and defense analyst, told RT.
The German Air Force has uncovered serious manufacturing defects in the fuselage of the Eurofighter Typhoon multirole fighter jet. The jet is not ready for armed conflict, according to the German Defense Ministry which ordered to reduce annual flying hours for each aircraft due to the fuselage possibly becoming unstable.
RT: Defense contractors are reportedly eyeing lucrative contracts now that the military campaign in Iraq and Syria has been launched. Do you expect them to lobby for greater involvement?
Pierre Sprey: They have stunning lobbying power. That has been true for decades and it is increasing. Year by year their lobbies are thriving, they are getting more and more of their own way. There has been essentially little change since the Bush administration into the Obama administration. If anything, they are more powerful under the Obama administration than they were before. And this present attack on ISIL has then ecstatic, they’re euphoric.
RT: What sort of thing could you expect to see next, after seeing the campaign is being launched against IS? Do you expect that increase in anyway?
PS: Inevitably, at least the air portion will increase. The ground portion is still kind of up in the air and will depend a lot on the politics, but beyond a shadow of a doubt this really very puny air campaign that we are running now - surprisingly small, particularly small in terms of actual bomb dropping strikes - will certainly increase. And that is very much in the interest of the military industrial complex and, of course, their congressional advocates.
RT: In your opinion, does this have a big bearing on the American economy? There is a war, so is there a spike on American economy because of the money that is generated from military contracts?
PS: There is a spike for the defense industry. It is pretty hard on the rest of the economy to say the least. The whole idea of the economic spin-off from defense spending has been a phony for decades.
RT: There have been reports of multiple flaws in one of Europe's most advanced warplanes - the Typhoon jet fighter. As one of the designers of some advanced fighter planes - the F-15 and F-16, for example - what can you tell us about that?
PS: [The Eurofighter Typhoon] has never been a very good airplane. It is rather large, very expensive. Of course we build more expensive airplanes to say the least. But it is relatively unmaneuverable, far too complex for its missions, hard to maintain, and very hard to get very many sorties per week out of it because of the complexity. But that is no different than most of the airplanes being built today, and we are doing worse with the F-35.
RT: With regards to the F-22, is it for the situation which it faces now?
PS: The F-22 was a kind of Potemkin village, if you want to call it. They had to send it into combat. It has been so conspicuously absent from combat for the many years that it has been in service that people have noticed. There has been a lot of commentary, and so they finally set up a nice little mission for it, so they could try it out and do a little strike, on what proved to be an empty concrete building. I doubt you will see very much of it in combat. Partly because, of course, it is a $400 million airplane and you hardly want to risk even the accidents that might happen in combat, and partly because the airplane is so complex. It nominally flies about two times a week. So you can’t get very many sorties, you can’t try it out it very often.
Maybe we (British) should keep the tornado till the tarannis is in service. It might not be sexy and modern, but it is a pretty solid, reliable bomb truck from what I can see.
I guess it has to wait for space age warfare.
I know that's what I want in a fighter jet...
Let’s look at some of the hardware developed for THE WAR ON POVERTY.
The M-911 Obamaphone. Useful for ordering pizza.
The F-57 Electronic Benefits Card. You can even use them to tip Strippers.
The DD-69 Obamacare. Get those other people to pay for your fun.
It’s THE NEW ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY!!!
During the late colonial period, major powers had first-line and second-line warships in their navies.
First-line for dealing with other major powers and second-line for dealing with the rest.
For the air support missions of the last 2 decades, Cat-4/5 aircraft are overkill and that surplus capability comes with a large price tag.
What is needed is a bomb sled, with up to date comm/nav electronics, but without the need for fly-by-wire, composite materials, stealth, etc. Lot’s of ordnance, good range, and good dwell time. With that, I wouldn’t worry about an air-to-air refueling capability either.
But every single line in this entire story is pure fabrication, a complete lie. Defense contractors aren't getting "rich" from this current military action by selling airplanes. The USAF hasn't bought a new F-15 in almost 20 years.
RT is nothing more than an organ for the resurgent Russian communists. What garbage.
Umm, I post a range of stuff, including a lot of things I don’t agree with one bit. Like this article.
Spot on.
Sprey as a designer for the F15? Personally, I think that is a flat out lie.
In other words the A-10
You talking the A-10?
Right now I’m dismissive of all information coming from RT as suspected propaganda that’s being used to support Putin’s war efforts in Ukraine and the Baltic states.
A good lesson from WWII.
Something not well known was that Mussolini’s Italy had some of the best fighter aircraft in the world. Faster, more agile, and more heavily armed than its British or American counterparts.
However, they had one flaw. Maintenance. They needed a lot of it, and frequently, even in good conditions. Sent to North Africa, however, they were one of the best aircraft in theater that only rarely left the ground. So the end result was the much more simple to maintain Allied aircraft were all that mattered.
Flying Fiats.
There was rumored to be a missile truck version of the B-1 in the works, the B-1R.
What any modern military really needs is new A-10s with the old airframe and no significant upgrades. It’s a great plane, and it would take too long and cost too much to make the relatively minor changes that would produce marginal improvements.
Not really. More like the A-6.
Fly high above low-end defenses and be able to cruise at ~600 mph. A modern B-52 wouldn’t be bad either.
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