Posted on 12/22/2007 4:21:30 AM PST by xsrdx
Neither the F-22 nor the F-35 have been deployed for routine combat operations.
No Highway in the Sky - 1951. Perhaps Stewart's best work.
The aircraft that is supposed to replace the F-15 is the F-22. There won't be nearly enough of them. For all intents and purposes, with the exception of the F-16, the fighter branch of the Air Force is effectively hamstrung.
And the F-16 is as old (or nearly as old) as the F-15. What are we replacing that aircraft with?
America's enthrallment with gee-whiz technology and super-expensive manufacturing methods has put us in a pretty bad way. What on earth is our DOD going to do about this mess?
The F-35 is still in a certain amt of development.
With the Drones- it seems that NOTHING would be superior to the eyes of a real live pilot in a plane.
I'd seen stills, but couldn't believe the thing could actually fly like that. Designing an aircraft to fly one-winged would certainly be possible, but one would have to get a lot of torque from control surfaces to compensate. I'm surprised the pilot didn't notice that something was severely unbalanced.
Also, what sort of braking mechanisms do landing cables use? I would think they'd have a drag mechanism to prevent them from ripping out the tailhook.
Reminds me a bit of the early 60s - 'everyone' knew that guns on fighters were obsolete, so they began to build fighters without them. It didn't take much combat before they started trying to retrofit the guns.
Now 'everyone' knows that pilots will be obsolete.
The Germans apparently played around with asymmetrical designs during World War II. There, you had the spin of the props to offset the imbalance, but it apparently turned out to be easier than they thought.
I would expect (though someone may prove me wrong) that in most cases pilots benefit from g-force feedback as well, which is something that cannot be provided accurately in a ground-based control booth. To be sure, there are times when pilots would benefit from having a less-than-realistic amount of g-force feedback (e.g. when the g-force is too big for a human to withstand), and perhaps there may be ways of simulating g-forces on the ground using neurological stimulators or somesuch. Of course, the ability to have pilots survive even the worst crashes imaginable is a major plus.
The F-15K is hardly obsolete. Add the F-22 radar, F-22 engines, composites to lighten it and vectored thrust, and a new construction F-15 could be better than the SU-30 or the Eurofighter. That doesn't make it a replacement for the F-22, but it wouldn't be de facto obsolete, just because the original airframes are long in the tooth.
Good news for defense spending, though!
And my uncle helped design them in St. Louis at McDonnell Douglass (or was it just McDonnell back then?) He was there for a very long time, since the mid 50s I think, until he went to work for Boeing, before the buy-out. He was very proud of the work he did there, especially on the F4 and the F15.
Mark
Mark
They do and can! It just takes a few JATOs and a dozen or so rolls of duct tape!
Mark
Some over run gear at the end of runways is meant simply to slow aircraft going into the overrun. That gear can be as simple as a bunch of chain buried in the ground.
The arresting gear on carriers is much more complex because it must slow the aircraft to a stop in a much shorter distance as the aircraft is adding full power, in case it misses the wires. The cable you see on the flight deck is just the center 100 feet and the rest is connected to a huge set of pulleys dampened by a piston hydraulic engine. It looks like a huge horizontal block and tackle arrangement with the cable running back and forth a bunch of times between two massive pulleys. As the landing aircraft arrives behind the boat for landing, the type of aircraft is called to the arresting gear crew to set the max trap weight for that type of aircraft.
“Poor response. Are you disputing the new car or the price?”
Let’s say you have a ford, it has some structural issues, do you then go out and replace it with a ferrari?
That’s my point - the question posed was not in the proper context.
It’s cheaper to “fix the car” when you are really talking about F-15’s, rather than scrapping them and buying F-22’s.
“We need to give our pilots the best equipment and the best chance of survival. It is time for the F-22.”
We do not need to replace all F-15’s with F-22’s. We have to give the taxpayers a chance to survive as well.
lol....
Well... the tinfoil hat gang says that the anit-grav fighter is operational and can beat anything in the sky. The AF is clearly spending money on black programs. There are way to many Generals around to manage the current programs we know about. In addition, the black budget has gone black . You cannot even find references to it in the CBO documents. Did you hear about the $32 million base in Iraq that was never built but paid for?
“With the Drones- it seems that NOTHING would be superior to the eyes of a real live pilot in a plane.”
With drones we are back to the tight cycle of innovation we used to have back in the late 40’s and 50’s - when we didn’t grouse over losing more than a few test pilots.
We refuse to take the risks necessary to drive aviation innovation quickly, so we have an extended, burdensome, and expensive procurement cycle with manned aircraft.
The F-22 is a fine aircraft, but to compare it to drones is not a valid comparison.
drones do not need to be anywhere near as survivable as a manned aircraft. Tactics can be employed that havent been
seen since the Kamikaze days of WWII
Drones will indeed gradually take many missions away from manned aircraft, and drive missions unique to an unmanned platform - and it will happen sooner than anyone can imagine, all because we dont have to worry about killing pilots in the development phase.
I rather have the Government spend money on F-22 rather than Social programs..... Most of the money should go towards the military anyway...
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