Posted on 05/19/2005 6:58:23 PM PDT by iso
I still think the F-4 Phantom is the most fighter-looking fighter of all time. Irrespective of it's outdated performance.
No question - it's a wicked-looking design. However, in air combat, winning and surviving is more important than and infinitely preferable to leaving a good-looking corpse!
Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!
I do! I do! I do!
PickMe! PickMe! PickMe!
LPI = Low Probability of Intercept
WHEW! Had to get that off my chest.
Welcome home, and thank you for your service.
Some of that does happen, especially during the days of fixed price R&D contracting. However the other poster is also correct, the prices quoted in Congress and the media contain both the flyaway (production) cost and a spread out share of the R&D money, although generally not all of it, since some of the R & preliminary D gets done on separate technology development programs. For example, the radar on the F-22 is an evolved version of one done on a pure R&D contract and sized to fit in an F-15 (don't know if it every actually flew in one or just did ground demos, although I should know since I worked for the contractor that built major chunks of it, and it used to set in a cube just a few over from mine. :) )
Training deficiencies can be remedied in a year or two. How long does it take to design, test and build a new fighter. Something like 10 years, maybe 15 although that could probably cut to 5. Even 5 would be too late, you'd have lost the war already.
Bad to the bone!! Wish I had one parked out back.
Heh, reminds me of a conversation I had on a liberal newsgroup with a major league female lib who said that "fighter aircraft are phallic symbols, and that is why men think they are beautiful..." She made refererences to the "Sex Death Object" referring to anything military...
She went on at length about how football games and stock car races are the same thing as the Nazi rallies, for the same reasons...:)
I had a REALLY good laugh at the comparison of planes to penises! Yes, we pay aeronautical engineers huge salaries to design our fighter aircraft so they resemble penises! And, of course, MOST of the engineers are men, so that would make a lot of sense...NOT!
Anyway, she sounded like some liberal who had too many liberal psychology courses in college.
What he probably failed to factor in was the increase in effectiveness of the platform. We will never purchase aircraft in the quantities procured in WWII, but then again, one plane can do the job that it often took hundreds upon hundreds of planes to do. Think of the Schweinfurt raids, or the raids against the bridges in Hanoi. How many planes and men did we lose? Now, we could take those targets out with a minimum number of planes and not lose any. Or look at the 72:1 kill ratio of the F-15 in the hands of Israeli pilots, not to mention what our own men would do.
We routinely pit our planes and pilots against those of other nations, at often prohibitive odds. Just recently, we lost a practice engagement to the Indian Air Force, which many thought was a bad thing. The odds, however were on the order of 20:1, and we were not allowed to use AWACS or AMRAAM missles. So we are still doing okay.
But this will not last forever, and we need to spend the money to keep it that way. We take Air Superiority for granted, but it doesn't just happen. It takes work, training, money and a huge commitment.
LOL, ;) Thanks for yours....
Sorry to be so obvious in asking about LPI, but some people just don't get it. The F-22 is a great bird. She is the
F-15C of the year 2015. And her decendents (like FB-22) will be the F-15 variants we have today.
Now for another test, (and AF_Blue can't play) "Low Probability of Intercept" isn't that a bad thing? I mean the whole idea of radar is to intercept the enemy. ;)
I want one!
Somethings missing from your equation. What about the 'productivity' factor? Sure the Raptor costs a lot more then the F-16 but it does a lot more also. The point was made that one Raptor is the equal of quite a few F-16's. If the per unit cost is higher the overall cost of numbers needed is less. Besides that just how much is the right amount to spend on our safety and security?
"Somethings missing from your equation. What about the 'productivity' factor? Sure the Raptor costs a lot more then the F-16 but it does a lot more also. The point was made that one Raptor is the equal of quite a few F-16's."
Well, there's one thing it DOESN'T do.
One F/A-22 cannot be in, say, Iraq and Guam at the same time.
The Air Force is pricing itself out of existence.
"We will never purchase aircraft in the quantities procured in WWII, but then again, one plane can do the job that it often took hundreds upon hundreds of planes to do."
Let me know when one plane can be in two places at once.
"We routinely pit our planes and pilots against those of other nations, at often prohibitive odds."
We don't pit our planes against those of other nations, routinely or otherwise.
The F/A-22 was originally designed for air superiority. The "F/A" designator is a misnomer at best; it is not designed for attack missions.
But air-to-air combat has become increasingly rare since World War II, and it took a steep decline after Vietnam. You wish to spend a great deal of money to acquire an extremely marginal and little used capability.
"Training deficiencies can be remedied in a year or two."
How?
Their instructors are likewise short of flight experience.
The blind would be leading the blind.
As short as 4 years ago, there were Air National Guard units still flying the F-4G's as Wild Weasel aircraft (anti-radar and SAM). I believe they were finally replaced in that capacity by F-16 variants not too long ago. Wouldn't be surprised to find a few ANG still flying them, or maybe even an aggressor squadron active...
"Doesn't US Military doctrine begin with an assumption we'll have air superiority?"
Yes.
We're the only people who can afford it right now.
Tell that to the Israelis, Egyptians and Syrians. Quite a bit of air to air in the '73 war, and then latter in the Great Bekka Valley Turkey shoot.
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