F-15SA for Saudi Arabia
Posted on 07/18/2018 10:20:24 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
F-15SA for Saudi Arabia
A fantastic choice, and still undefeated in Air to Air and that is realistically unlikely to change unless we sell someone an F-22.
Pining for the A10. That’s what’s going on. Not a bad strategy though. Better would be another production run of a few hundred A10 Thunderbolt Warthogs along with all the scary things it delivers. Might I add at the lowest cost per flight hour.
I've heard that the F-22 was a dream fighter. But it was costly. The virtue of the F15 is they are cheap (comparatively) and not quite so versatile as F-22 or F-35 but you can fly swarms of them if need be and if you have the pilots. That would be a huge change in tactics moving forward though. And a move by the USAF that appears to cast a lack of confidence in F-35 could panic the other services and foreign partners that have become invested in F-35. Be interesting to see what the USAF does with this.
I had never heard that we originally planned to build 750 F-22s.
I’m sure the Chinese will end up creating the F-22 knock-off.
Is the plan to use the stealthy aircraft as forward spotters which forward targeting information to the missile trucks?
Ahh, the F15: two monstrous engines strapped to a tube with wings! My favorite.
I don’t know. The F-35 was designed to do everything so whatever they plan to use the F-15 for (if they do) would lessen the role of the F-35. So yea, F-35 could be used for things that are less risky, less direct. Advanced surveillance or acting as a high altitude tactical comms link, that sort of thing. And let the more expendable craft do the dirty work. Perhaps.
0-100+ in air to air combat but the design is 50 years old.
50 years before the F-15, we were flying SPAD’s
Future is a cloud of air to air drones that you don’t have to worry about a pilot.
I was thinking about that just the other day. For some reason I pulled up the Wikipedia page on the C-5 Galaxy. In 1969, we were building an aircraft whose cargo bay was large enough to accommodate the entire first flight of the Wright brothers only 66 years before.
That is part of the plan. The other part has to do with swatting away the swarms of drones that China will send on oneway suicide missions. We need something that can see down and find those threats and eliminate them before they get in amongst the sheep.
However, more F-22s would be even better.
Smart. Boeing recognizes that 99.9999% of all engagements are not utilizing stealth, won’t utilize stealth, and that stealth is dead since Boeing, itself, is developing tracking systems that stealth cannot defeat.
“Is the plan to use the stealthy aircraft as forward spotters which forward targeting information to the missile trucks?”
X-47B. No need for manned aircraft to loiter, recon, or drop bombs.
“However, more F-22s would be even better. “
Individually, sure. As a cost prohibitive plan, no.
Quantity is a quality all its own.
Buying 2-4 times as many semi-stealth F-15s is far better than buying F-22s. The same electronics can be put into both.
Does the F-15X have 3D thrust vectoring nozzles?
Is this a plan for new airframes, or new avionics in existing (nearly worn-out) airframes?
Pilot gets shot down? No biggie. Log into the next drone and take off.
In military terms Speed is King. 50 F15’s come in doing Mach 2.5+, quite a few will get through to get the job done.
I can’t say these can do that but it’s a good goal to shoot for. Stealth cost’s way too much.
I’d rather rely on good old jet engines than easily hacked and stolen electronic wizardry. Jet engines are still the weak point with all our rivals. Let’s use it to the max.
Warfare is constantly changing. Every military goes to war ready and equipped to win the last war and, for the most part, unaware how the environment of war has changed. While, as Stalin said, “quantity has its own quality,” we need to be aware that what we are spending huge amounts of treasure on, what may, in the end, be useless.
I think that ISIS’ recent use of drone swarms to kill disproportionate numbers of allied soldiers should be a clarion warning that the ground rules of war may be changing. Even if individual drones cost, say $15,000 each, that is tiny compared with the cost of recruitment, training, equipping, sustaining in the field, and then caring for and pensioning human soldiers. I can see a future where drones of many sizes and types are released on the battlefield where most are too small to easily detect and kill. It used to be when you had “air superiority” your troops and assets behind the “lines” were safe. But air superiority when the attacking drones range in size from a surfboard to a hummingbird is meaningless.
http://liteye.com/air-superiority-under-2000-feet-lessons-from-waging-drone-warfare-against-isil/
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