Slashdot Mirror

No, that is untrue.. The F-35 price has been driven down to $89M each, putting it in the same range as MUCH MUCH less capable aircraft such as the F-18, Eurofighter, and F-15s. In combat exercises, the F-35 has suffered 0 losses to 8 F-15 losses.

Similar results are obtained against the venerable F-16, itself a first-rate 4th generation fighter, and the EuroFighter. One F-16 pilot put it like so: "We went to our simulated airfield out in the far part of the airspace. As the two ship from the northern half of the airspace we turned hot, drove for about 30 seconds and we were dead, just like that. We never even saw (the F-35A).”"

That is not a fluke, and it is not because advances are being given to the F-35s: just the opposite in fact. The overall kill ratio of the F-35 in Red Flag exercises against all 4th gen opponents stands at 15 to 1.

This anti-F35 FUD needs to stop. Yes, the F-35 program has had problems. Yes, it was initially overpriced. But if you will recall the early days of the F-16, when it was known as the "Lawn Dart", it too suffered many early technology issues that left pilots dead and aircraft lost, yet the F-16 turned into one of the premier light fighters of the 80's and 90's.

The F-35 is in a similar place. Prices are being driven down to about where a high end 4th generation aircraft cost, and the plane is simply playing a different game than its 4th generation equivalents due to advances in stealth, in sensor integration, in situational awareness for pilots, and more.

So please stop the F-35 FUD. It's flawed, but so is every complex aircraft ever made.

Not saying it's recommended, or particularly safe.

https://theaviationist.com/201...

Yeah, compressor stall was completely incorrect, I was thinking of inlet unstarts which in at least one case had catastrophic (and fatal) results. I can see no reason why a ramjet couldn't suffer from unstarts.

The F14 would be a good example.

On the other hand, it's successor the F15 managed to land with only one wing.

(But yeah, overall, fighter jets tend to be optimized for maneuverability, which tend not to emphasis stability.)

Or a missing wing!

Actually, the UK did ask the US for support but didn't get any beyond a few words.

Were those words, "You can pick it up here?"

CIA files reveal how US helped Britain retake the Falklands

America shared satellite and signals intelligence, plus Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and Stinger hand-held missiles — though this was denied at the time.

. . . .One of the first things the US offered was fuel for the British Task Force and aircraft at the mid-Atlantic staging post of Ascension Island, which Britain leased to America.

“The underground fuel tanks were empty when the Task Force turned up in mid-April 1982,” recalls Major General Julian Thompson, then commanding the main Royal Marines assault force. The leading assault ship, HMS Fearless, did not have enough fuel to dock when it arrived off Ascension. The Americans diverted a supertanker to fill up the Navy’s tanks.

USS Iwo Jima would have been loaned to the Royal Navy if the British had lost one of their capital ships during the Falklands War

Iwo Jima would have functioned well as a replacement for Invincible as it is a similar size and function and would have filled the gap.

I'm amazed someone claiming they follow this news carefully isn't aware of the countless infringements. They're relatively regular and, well documented:

http://www.ibtimes.com/despite...

https://theaviationist.com/201...

http://www.baltictimes.com/rus...

http://www.upi.com/Business_Ne...

http://sputniknews.com/europe/...

http://www.thenews.pl/1/10/Art...

http://uawire.org/news/media-r...

The fact is that Russia is a hostile nation, it's invaded Ukraine, and it's invaded Georgia, it can't pretend it's an innocent bystander that's merely hard done by as you're implying it is.

Russian aircraft are allowed to fly over this airspace if they obtain permission. However when a military aircraft, many of which are armed, enters foreign airspace unannounced, and typically with transponders off as is the case in most these incursions, then that can only be seen as a provocative act.

Russia isn't the only nation that does this, the US does it too in Asia, but two wrongs don't make a right. You're arguing that no harm may come of a Russian aircraft entering sovereign airspace of other nations, in your view, does that remain true even when they actually launch weapons as in Ukraine and Georgia? Given that they have done this, do you seriously still think it's a sensible argument to suggest that armed Russian aircraft entering airspace unannounced should always be considered benign?

It sounds like you're making an awful lot of excuses for Russia over things that simply cannot be excused. The idea that Russian pilots can't navigate a 5km gap making incursion into Finnish or Estonian airspace with armed warplanes with transponders off acceptable is utterly laughable, and pointing out that you can't pass through the English channel without infringing British or French airspace is relevant why? you also can't pass over Moscow without infringing Russian airspace, so what? The fact that the channel is joint sovereign British/French air space is entirely meaningless other than to distract from the fact Russia is a persistent and aggressive violator of sovereign airspace.

There is genuinely no issue with Russian aircraft sticking to international airspace, avoiding civilian airline routes, or announcing routes and flying with transponders on. There's not even any problem with it passing through sovereign airspace of other nations with permission. But that's not what's happening is it? Russia is violating sovereign airspace proper with armed aircraft, flying transponders off, and flying in civilian flight paths unannounced and outside the control and hence potential awareness of air traffic control. It's doing this in the context having recently used such subversive tactics of pretending to be not Russian military to annex sovereign territory of another nation.

You can shoot down a Predator pretty easily as well.

This kind of aircraft would typically only be deployed once air superiority was assured.

Most of the places where the USA would deploy a slow-flying solar powered drone, would probably have very limited resources.

I corrected my comment about "distributed over the entire country" two minutes after I first posted.

The fact that 750 missiles were used to bring down 15 aircraft is interesting, but it doesn't change my conclusions. 15 planes is still 15 planes, and the missile system was a couple generations old at the time. See guestapoo's post (above) about how the missile systems were operated to avoid detection. If true, it's a knock on the B-52 that the north vietnamese hit a single B-52. A newer missile system could have made a world of difference.

B-52s did a fair amount of carpet bombing in Afghanistan not too long ago. The airforce definitely still practes carpet bombing, so it's not a bygone tactic that has been totally replaced by standoff weapons. (Yes, JDAMs aren't quite dumb bombs, but they sure aren't standoff weapons either.)

I agree that standoff weapons with a long enough range would help the B-52 stay out of harms way, but the US already has plenty of systems that can shoot standoff weapons: specially modified subs, regular subs, surface ships, other aircraft, and ground vehicles. Of those options, the B-52 is one of the least stealthy; China, Russia, etc. would sure see them coming.

I still don't see a good use for a B-52 against a modern military.

Some innacuraties

You see to be contributing a few yourself.

No Mig-29 has ever locked a Turkish plane in the region. The Russians have none there.

That's not true, it happened just last month, as shown below. Also, planes are mobile, they can come and go.

It has happened again.a Turkish Air Force F-16 was locked on by an “unidentified” Mig-29 .

As already reported, on Oct. 3 and 4 October the Turkish airspace was violated by Russian Air Force Su-30SM and Su-24 aircraft in the Hatay region.

During the first incident, the Russian Su-30SM (initially referred to as a Mig-29 by the Turkish military) maintained a radar lock on one or both the F-16s for a full 5 minutes and 40 seconds before the aircraft departed the Turkish airspace. As explained, this was a rather unusual incident: violations occur every now and then, but usually aircraft involved in the interception do not lock on the “target” in order to prevent dangerous situations.

Well it happened again on Oct. 5 and, to make the whole story more mysterious, it looks like the aircraft was identified as a Mig-29 from an unidentified nation/air force.

According to the Turkish General Staff, the Mig-29 locked on at least one of 8 TuAF F-16s performing CAP (Combat Air Patrol) on the border with Syria. What is more, the lock on lasted 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

------

Small strays at the bad side of a border are common and are not worthy of an incident.

If you refer to that quote above, Russian aircraft have previously sent many minutes in Turkish airspace, and put a radar lock on Turkish aircraft while in Turkish airspace. The Russians haven't merely had "minor straying" into Turkish airspace, but highly provocative and lengthy ones. The Russians are playing a dangerous game.

The Turks are clearly looking for war with Russia for whatever reason.

You seem to have it mostly backwards there. The Russians are trying to intimidate the Turks as they have been trying to do with some other countries, such as nuclear threats against Denmark.

Or their political leaders do not realise Russia is not Armenia and they are going to react.

I think it is the Russians that are mistaking Turkey for a country that won't react, and they are testing NATO resolve. Will Obama's America back them? Who knows?

Until now, if you watch the images of Russian planes in Syria, you see they fly with old air-air missiles (R-27s) which show they didn't really expect anyone would be dumb enough to start a fight with them.

The Russians probably though nobody would push back to their provocations.

The R-27 is still in front line service, and new variants continue to be developed. Your comment seems to be nonsense.

I hope NATO will stay out of this. If they start a WW3, I desert. I won't fight or even pay taxes for islamists.

If Russia attacks Turkey then Turkey is well within its rights to seek NATO assistance. Turkey would be expected to assist if another NATO country, say France, were to request assistance.

Europe has a growing number of Islamists within its borders.

That really depends: (If the enemy still has an air defense system of any sort) the A-10 is completely and totally useless, because they're death traps if they might encounter a missile of any kind.

Like this one did, taking a hit and still flying 120 miles home? http://www.mlive.com/news/kala...

Or this one? http://www.womensmemorial.org/...

Or, best of all, these A-10s that were able to neutralize the threat with tactics and flares: http://theaviationist.com/2015...

The A-10 is loved because it fights despite the threat environment. When the F-35 shows it can do that, perhaps there will be a comparison.

Which is good, because given how much smaller an economy Russia has than the US, France, Britain, Germany et. al. meaning there's no way it can both maintain a 5th gen fighter programme, and still manage to afford to keep up the maintenance to the same degree the West does, it'll have far less in the first place.

Once you factor in lower numbers, poorer stealth, general cheaper lower quality design, and higher maintenance requirements the PAK-FA isn't the great money efficient super-fighter many suggest. If it ever sees combat against the West there wont be enough of them flying to make much of an impact. Mostly it's only going to be useful in theatres like Georgia and Ukraine where it's got the backing of overwhelming force and is up against old Russian kit that might be able to detect and shoot down say, a Mig 29, but not a PAK-FA.

You have to remember that Russia is great at propaganda, much of what we know about the PAK-FA is overhyped. The F-35 didn't suffer it's first engine fire until about 100+ were produced and had logged thousands of flying hours. The PAK-FA was burning after only 5 had been produced:

http://www.janes.com/article/4...

That's assuming the whole programme even remains financially viable in the first place:

http://theaviationist.com/2015...

Reduced order numbers already leaves the programme precariously close to cancellation. Another downturn in the Russian economy through sanctions or oil prices mean the programme will be dead and buried.

and how little "nearly collided" means.

At least in the case of SAS flight SAS SK681 from Copenhagen, it missed a Russian IL-20 by 90 meters. http://theaviationist.com/2014...

Will gather intelligence to the best of it's ability.

Why is this so shocking?

Here you go
http://theaviationist.com/2014...

Actually this is not correct. The Russians developed the Mig-31 Foxhound specifically to counter both our long range bombers and our high-speed reconnaissance aircraft such as the SR-71. Satellites are predictable (as their orbits are easily able to be calculated) so having the "surprise" capability of an SR-71 flight is not the same as having satellite coverage. Same reason we have the AF X-37B among other things that have not yet come out of the black. But as for nothing being able to touch the SR-71 (and don't get me wrong - it was decades ahead of its time and to this day is still an amazing aircraft):

Links: http://theaviationist.com/2013... and http://gizmodo.com/theres-no-t...

Quote: "These deficiencies were settled when a more advanced MiG-25 development, the MiG-31, entered in service in the 1980s: the Foxhound was armed with a missile very similar to the US AIM-54 Phoenix, the R-33 (AA-9 Amos as reported by NATO designation). This weapon was ideal not only for shooting down the American bombers, but also to intercept and destroy fast reconnaissance aircraft, such as the SR-71.

This statement was dramatically confirmed in Paul Crickmore’s book Lockheed Blackbird: Beyond The Secret Missions.

In this book one of the first Foxhound pilots, Captain Mikhail Myagkiy, who had been scrambled with its MiG-31 several times to intercept the US super-fast spy plane, explains how he was able to lock on a Blackbird on Jan. 31, 1986:

“The scheme for intercepting the SR-71 was computed down to the last second, and the MiGs had to launch exactly 16 minutes after the initial alert. () They alerted us for an intercept at 11.00. They sounded the alarm with a shrill bell and then confirmed it with a loudspeaker. The appearance of an SR-71 was always accompanied by nervousness. Everyone began to talk in frenzied voices, to scurry about, and react to the situation with excessive emotion.” Myagkiy and its Weapons System Officer (WSO) were able to achieve a SR-71 lock on at 52,000 feet and at a distance of 120 Km from the target. The Foxhound climbed at 65,676 feet where the crew had the Blackbird in sight and according to Myagkiy: “Had the spy plane violated Soviet airspace, a live missile launch would have been carried out. There was no practically chance the aircraft could avoid an R-33 missile.”

After this interception Blackbirds reportedly began to fly their reconnaissance missions from outside the borders of the Soviet Union.

But the MiG-31s intercepted the SR-71 at least another time. On Sept. 3, 2012 an article written by Rakesh Krishman Simha for Indrus.in explains how the Foxhound was able to stop Blackbirds spy missions over Soviet Union on Jun. 3, 1986. That day, no less than six MiG-31s “intercepted” an SR-71 over the Barents Sea by performing a coordinated interception that subjected the Blackbird to a possible all angle air-to-air missiles attack. Apparently, after this interception, no SR-71 flew a reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union and few years later the Blackbird was retired to be replaced with the satellites. Even if claiming that the MiG-31 was one of the causes of the SR-71 retirement is a bit far fetched, it is safe to say that towards the end of the career of the legendary spyplane, Russians proved to have developed tactics that could put the Blackbird at risk."

I would be surprised if they actually had a single airframe in combat ready status even only 10 years after the seizure.

We know at least one of them was in use in 2012.
I think it unlikely it was the only one.

Exactly. Russia never even denied involvement. Putin's statement was bluntly "it happened in Ukrainian airspace, hence it's Ukraine's responsibility", while Lavrov ham-handedly contested Ukraine's calling it a terrorist attack. They're all too aware there's far too much incriminating evidence out there to sweep under the rug, hence they're going into damage control. And for all the finesse they used to make the US look like irresponsible warmongers in the Syrian chemical weapons debacle, they're acting laughably clumsy now that they're at the receiving end.

My guess is that the Russians gave their people/proxies in eastern Ukraine enough training to shoot something down, but not to clearly ascertain what they were shooting at. An SA-11 radar system is not as easy to operate as the microwave oven in your kitchen; it takes a lot of training for people to use these things effectively, and it probably wasn't a high priority for the local commanders, as their marching orders were: "covertly create as much provocation and chaos as possible in Eastern Ukraine so that Russia gets the best possible bargaining position once the peace negotiations start". They basically got what they deserved; something like this was just waiting to happen. I would feel wryly satisfied to see the higher-ups in Russia caught utterly by surprise, except that the tragic death of so many innocent people takes all the joy out of it.

F-18E/F will likely outperform it [F-35] as an air superiority fighter, as will Eurofighter. All of these are cheaper and proven to work.

The F-35 isn't intended as a air-superiority fighter, the F-22 is. From: http://theaviationist.com/2014...

But now, the F-22 must be upgraded through a costly service life extension plan and modernization program because, “If I do not keep that F-22 fleet viable, the F-35 fleet frankly will be irrelevant. The F-35 is not built as an air superiority platform. It needs the F-22,” says [Chief of U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command Gen. Michael] Hostage to Air Force Times.

In addition, from Wikipedia:

F-22 ... designed primarily as an air superiority fighter, but has additional capabilities including ground attack, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence roles.

F-35 ... designed to perform ground attack, reconnaissance, and air defense missions with stealth capability. ... The design goals call for the F-35 to be the premier strike aircraft through 2040 and to be second only to the F-22 Raptor in air superiority.

I just wonder how this plays out with a screen failure and no transparent windshield?

An unusual set of circumstances but airplane accidents almost always are ...

1. Sharm-el-sheik isn't really the center of protests (certainly not when I was there). I'm going to have to doubt your assertion "it's common there now".
2. Helicopters have this unique feature of being able to hover in the air and move in all directions at very low speeds. Landing airplanes don't have that luxury.
3. I'm pretty sure the instruments in a military chopper are a lot more capable to deal with loss of visual capabilities than civilian aircraft. Infra-red vision may well have been available to the pilots and, if I'm not mistaken, would not be bothered by the green lasers.
4. Article concerning the incident: http://theaviationist.com/2013... - No information as to whether this type of flying went on for months every night.
5. Again, like I said: most flying is done on instruments anyway. That it is usually possible to work around or even not really a problem at all, doesn't mean that it is okay to do it. Does a lased plane with broken instruments need to crash before something is done about the lasing? I think being proactive is a better idea than waiting for the calf to drown.

> But the F35 is more or less combat ready in its basic form

As long as you don't try to land it in cloudy weather.

          http://www.alternet.org/fail-4...

Or on an aircraft carrier:

        http://theaviationist.com/2012...

Or landing on the $1500/each tires twice in a row:

      http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Oh, and if the landing gear fails and the pilot has to eject, they can't safely eject over water. (See the first article.)

If we needed to build supersonic "launch-only" aircraft, we could have done so _much_ more cheaply.

Here's a map of the pings:
http://theaviationist.com/wp-c...

I can see how a constant stream of telemetry might be cost-prohibitive, but what about a squirt of data consisting of -
  - Flight Number
- Lat / Long
- Airspeed
- Groundspeed
- Altitude
- Compass heeding ...sent every five minutes? At least that would give a 'last known' location.

Congratulations - You've just described ADS-B [1] - however its MUCH more often than every 5 minutes - and more airliners already have it. In fact, look at the tracking info from flightradar24.com for the flight in question [2] - then it disappeared... Having yet another bit of tech to combat this is stupid.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... - Bonus: How it works - http://www.airservicesaustrali...
[2] http://theaviationist.com/wp-c...

The video can be seen here or here

Step directly to 2mn20 to see the exercice and hear the pilot's struggling to breathe under sustained heavy G's.

Endemic Corruption - How your American tax dollars are spent by Israel.

Fascinating. And you know this how?

You're assuming that those jets were not ones the Israelis purchased? Do you have any grounds for that?

Were these jet engines stolen at an American Air Force base due to "endemic corruption," or the activity of simple thieves?
HAFB THIEVES CANNOT SET THE VALUE OF 3 STOLEN JET ENGINES, SAYS JUDGE

Do you have equal concerns about Venezuela and Iran? Or just the Jewish state?

Do you think Israel is less corrupt, as corrupt, or more corrupt than Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian Authority, all of whom receive large amounts of US aid?

Speaking of endemic:
Rising Anti-Semitism on the Left
The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews
The Full-Blown Return of Anti-Semitism in Europe

http://theaviationist.com/2012/01/20/neuron-roll-out/ the europeans disagree with you

But the CIA RQ-170 Sentinel downed by Iranians case is still developing and it doesn't look too good that CIA guys havent' bee too smart lately.

http://theaviationist.com/category/captured-stealth-drone/

“Three U.S. and four Israeli drones captured in Iran to be put on display soon”: Tehran Times says. “Downed” RQ-170 saga continues"