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UK Demands Sourcecode for Strike Fighters
An anonymous reader writes ""The UK has warned America that it will cancel its £12bn order for the Joint Strike Fighter if the US does not hand over full access to the computer software code that controls the jets"
Lord Drayson, minister for defense procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be "switched off" by the Americans without warning."
Well, that's completely reasonable (note the sarcasm). It's insane to believe that we're even trying to withhold the code. I mean, would you buy a tv from a neighbor if they kept the remote? Chances are they'd hit the mute halfway through a Farscape rerun.
linky
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
Gee, give us a few jets and we'll get right on writing Open Source Software for them...
Well after 1776 and 1812, can ya blame America for a little fail-safe? /tongue_in_cheek
America's reticence to hand over the source code has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with embarrassment. Why? The plane's control software in Visual Basic.
Maybe they'll post it on Sourceforge ;)
With all that code, they don't want to buy this plane and then find out that it'll cost them a SIGNIFICANT amount of money later down the road to integrate a new weapons system or sensor onto the aircraft. The US can't 'turn off the software', the software doesn't have a 'Windows Activation'-style system to tell it whether it can run the aircraft or not!
I wonder if India is insisting on the source code for the control software for the new nuclear reactors to be sold under the new nuke deal. If not America could switch off the reactor control at any time and nuke India without even having to launch missiles
**Life is too short to be serious**
More info about the Joint Strike Fighter's navigation software here.
I don't think that the UK has ordered any JSF yet. What they did is pay part of the development costs, in return for the promise of a share of the industrial pie when the plane enters production. Their high level of financial participation was also supposed to buy them some input in the specification and some sharing of classified technologies, but the Americans largely didn't carry out that part of the deal, which has provoked transatlantic tension lately.
The JSF is supposed to equip the RNs future carrier ships around around 2015. However as a response to the US Congress looking at cancelation of plans for a Rolls-Royce engine equiped version of the JSF, the British have hinted that they could very well start developing a naval version of the Eurofighter Typhoon, or even consider the already operationnal naval version of the French Rafale.
Ultimately, this proves one point... you should never trust any group to do the right thing... not the US, not Google, or Microsoft, and it was foolish in this case that the UK trusted a US company (part of the US military industrial complex)... there should have been a demand for this openness in the contract and at the first sign of secrecy the UK should have threatened to stop payment.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
If there was a backdoor in the flight control software, I doubt it would help the UK if we gave them the source code because the backdoor would almost certainly be hidden very well. In fact, the backdoor could be in the compiler in which case they would not find anything in the source code. And they can't recompile the sourcecode with their own compiler because they would have to retest everything.
Nice to see how much confidence we inspire in our closest allies.
Small wonder our enemies don't trust us.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
How do you know? Is it impossible to believe that the US government might want a safety net for modern weapons that deactivates them if they don't receive a signal targeted to the plane's serial number every hour while in flight, with said signal broadcast by satellites with worldwide coverage....GPS perhaps?
I'm a US citizen but not particularly a fan of how our government does business, but if I was in charge of hardware with such potential damage in the wrong hands, I'd insist on some sort of controls like that, even on what stays under US control. What if one of those nutjobs Americans who fought alongside the Taliban instead enlisted and become a pilot, and then flew off course on a mission in the Middle East and handed the plane over to Al Qaeda? Even if it needed special codes to make the weapons work the plane itself would be a pretty dandy weapon flying at Mach 3 into a nuclear aircraft carrier or Saudi oil refinery.
Lockheed's chief scientist, Dr. Gaius Baltar, stated last Friday: "There is absolutely, I repeat, absolutely, no way that the Joint Strike Fighters could be shut down with a software instruction".
Probably because the US has an aggressive R&D program that routinely produces superior combat aircraft systems. In the case of Australia specifically, they also get access (being old steady allies) to really fancy avionics and electronics packages which have no peer in the world of weaponry. The airframes and powerplants are extremely good too.
The airframe and powerplant is only modestly important in modern combat aircraft, though the US is very good at this type of design. The real selling point to countries like Australia is that they get more advanced versions of the software, electronics, and sensors -- the parts responsible for lethality and survivability to a very large extent -- which are one of the real strengths of US military R&D. The US will sell stripped down fighter jets to just about anyone, but they are very selective about the avionics as that is where the real capability lies in modern combat aviation. JSF is being sold with some very slick capabilities built-in; not quite F-22 level, but pretty close in many respects. Nobody else is selling anything comparable, and the closest competitor is the Eurofighter.
Australia buys US aircraft because the US is willing to sell it very advanced avionics and electronics for those aircraft. The US has no competitor at the very high-end of the quality/effectiveness market, which for military purposes is pretty important, particularly if you are a non-populous country like Australia that cannot rely on quantity to make up the difference.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan_MiG-29:
Russian fighters are indeed pretty good!Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
When we could have had the vastly superior F-16 or F-15. It's not like we need the naval capabilities of the F-18.
The US is scrapping their Tomcats, maybe we should just pick some of those up on the cheap.
In any event, I think you will find the JSF program participation is more to do with the AUSFTA and related political maneuvering and less to do with any inherent characteristics of the plane.
Read Pynchon.
They don't absolutely need these planes to be V/STOL since they are to be used on their future, full-size carrier which, unlike their existing mini-carriers will be able to operate any kind of naval jet like F/A-18 or Rafale M provided they are fitted with a catapult.
The design of their future carriers is already supposed to be largely shared with that of France's second carrier which is supposed anyway to operate Rafales. So the decision to dump V/STOL would simplify things actually.
Having all the source code, and being able to trust it, is only one facet of what is needed. Unless you can trust the entire tool chain, all the code embodied in silicon, etc., you can not fully trust the system. This brings up an interesting issue. Systems are geting so complex, there is simply not enough time to audit them to build real trust.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
"OK, Kahn. Here it comes....."
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Russian AIRFRAMES are superb. Russian engines are pretty OK, but not as reliable, and much more labor intensive to maintain. Russian avionics are crap. If you don't know how these facts impact an air battle, you don't have an educated opinion on the subject.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Once the agreement for joint American-Japanese development was reached, Washington had a change of heart. It refused to give, to Tokyo, the source code for the fly-by-wire computer program that controls the flight of the F-16.
The following summarized the American hypocrisy in 1985.
1. Washington did not want Tokyo to develop its own, possibly superior, weapons system.
2. Once Tokyo agreed to work with the Americans on the weapons system, Washington wanted to ensure that Tokyo would not have access to critical technologies: e.g. fly-by-wire computer algorithms.
That attitude from the 1985 is alive and well in 2006 -- in the form of the current dispute between Washington and London. Washington seems to want its allies to be permanently dependent on American weapons technology.
What kind of BS is that?
Both London and Tokyo should ignore Washington's hypocritical position and should promptly lock Washington out of English and Japanese fighter-aircraft development. Once Washington sees that both the English and the Japanese can develop fighter aircraft that is actually superior to American jet fighters, then Washington will treat London and Tokyo as allies on equal footing.
Right now, Tokyo is deliberating on the fighter to replace its aging F-4 Phantoms. Hopefully, Tokyo will not succumb to American pressure and will design a 100% all-Japanese interceptor.
Let us not forget the lesson learned in the Falkland Islands incident. Britain demanded unlock codes for missiles that the French sold argentina.. brits disabled argentina's exocet missiles and all that.
_ involvement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War#French
Wrong, Australia was burnt with both the F/A-18 Hornet and F-111.
A Big Deal: Australia's air combat capability:
Countries generally want to be self-sufficient, or at least don't want to be trapped into being dependant on others.
Also important is that instead of the government allowing native defense contractors to take on upgrade projects, we are forced into using (expensive) US ones. So that expense goes into a black-hole, it doesn't stimulate our own economy or develop our own aviation industry.
This is not comparable to desktop software at all.
The issue is very valid. The question is twofold - Is the US willing to fully share ALL of our military technology with any other country during a period of relative peace (even as strong an ally as the UK), and what price are we willing to pay to keep our most advanced military capabilities to ourselves? Security vs. the budget. A military expert will say that it's stupid to spill all your secrets to ANYONE because mere knowledge of a capability is enough to allow an adversary (or potential adversary) to begin defeating that capability. A budget planner will say that without sharing the technology with partners who will share the program costs, we can't afford to build the hardware so those capabilities would remain purely theoretical (worthless).
Maybe it's better to do the basic research ourselves but not go that final step to building the hardware until we actually need to use it. This seems to happen a lot, holding back expensive upgrades and hardware purchases until a conflict kicks off, then funding/fielding the new stuff immediately as the budget expands when a conflict arises. But the JSF is such a massive project, it may not be possible to back-burner the program as a US-only effort. That means we may have to compromise some very unique capabilities in order to be able to actually field them ourselves. Tough choice.
Can't blame the JSF partners for playing hardball though... The JSF is almost entirely software driven as almost every single system is operated via a touch-screen interface instead of traditional switches, so not having the source code means that when something breaks, fixing it is somewhat more problematic than replacing a defective hardware switch. If you don't have the code, you have a really expensive flying Xbox that could quit working without warning and can't possibly be repaired.
You can't even replace busted hardware without the required software, because the hardware is all operated and tested via software. You can't just flip a switch to test the radar, because the switch is controlled by the computer which (should) report system status and troubleshooting data if it quits working.
A sensible approach would be to distribute an export version of the software, but I'm pretty sure that the original contract did not include parallel-but-equal lines of code development. To duplicate a multi-million-line codebase at this stage in the program would be cost prohibitive. You'd think they would have thought of this before... Like 15 years ago...
absolutely sane thing to ask for
Its a weapon of war, so if your going to use it when it counts, and not just a few flybys at an air show, then your going to be at war. Who knows what state of war that will be, it could be a few sorties to bomb a wedding party or two, or it could be full nuclear MAD, lines of communication could be down, satellites down etc etc...
If you can't update an modify the software when you need it, those planes could be as good as craters in the runway.
You can take an example from the commercial world - I worked for startups which had to put their source code in escrow as part of pilot agreements with Fortune-100 companies.
So I don't think it's unreasonable or even extra-ordinary for the Brits to want the source too. Just prudent.
Always Ada. Invariably Ada. 90-95% of it is in Ada, I'm sure, with only a very, very few well-delineated and tested exceptions. Ada is DoD standard, and they'll hang up on you if you call with a proposal that involves something else.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
I'm sure they'll get around to developing a stealthy aircraft one of these days. And when they do, it'll be able to land on a dirt strip w/gear up not destroy itself.
The F-35 just got downrated in it's stealth capabilities & now countries (UK, Aussies and others) are saying "WTF, why should we buy that when it can't even compete with the Sukhoi Flankers.
Here's the article I read a few days ago It's on the end of page 1 & beginning of page 2 that they explain why exactly the JSF is going to suck.
Actually, everyone and their cousin is worried about the sole engine design for the new F-22 and F-35. The military types think it'd be a disaster if Pratt & Whitney is the only company that sells a suitable engine. GE & Rolls Royce have a joint program to design an alternate turbojet and they're lobbying hard to maintain their funding.
So, I'm sorry to directly contradict you, but the powerplant is absolutely critical. So critical, that the DoD is willing to pump billions into making sure there is a completely separate engine design that can be used. Not to mention that if you read the linked articles above, the F35 got downrated because the airframe design is less stealthy when you're looking up the exhaust.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
if enemy.shot_down
cockpit_announce("Top Gun!");
kill_count += 1;
if kill_count > 5
cockpit_announce("Killing Spree!");
end
end
"The days of fighters swooping around locked in a dog-fight-to-the-death are long gone. Anyone who attempts to engage the US ariforce in that type of combat will survive just long enough to realize just how stupid they really are. "
Isn't it funny that the only people who realize this are Al Quada? Osama is waging a long term war of attrition by making america spend as much money as possible while spending very little on his part (he has publicly said this is his strategy). Osama is waging a long term war like the one he waged in Afghanistan against russia.
I guess the whole idea of missilies, fighter jets etc have become moot hasn't it. The next bomb that explodes in the US will not come from a missile or a fighter jet. It will simply be in the trunk of a car or planted in the basement of an important building.
evil is as evil does
People are also worried that these planes won't be able to win against 'new' planes. The Ruskies have been sitting on the designs for the SU37 and SU47 because they haven't been able to find anyone to buy it from them.
The next Gen of Sukhoi fighters are going to be every bit as mean as anything the West turns out, and they'll probably have better flight characteristics too.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Houses burn all the time, lots of houses burned down in my city, two in my neighborhood alone.
If I lived in a country in which no house had ever burned down since it's founding then I would not buy fire insurance.
So tell me, who is going to be attacking Australia? Who is going to attack them from the air so that the aussies break out their new shiny fighter jets and smite them. The kiwis? the philipinas? the south koreans? the balinese? The fighting fijians?
evil is as evil does
I've got a brother-in-law who works with the F-18's and there's absolutely no end to the 'critical failures' that they're seeing. Given the technical 'superiority' of these JSF's, I'm expecting they'll barely get out of the maintainance hangers.
To be fair, after a lot of overhauls and modifications the F1-11 actually turned out to be a good plane, the F-18 on the other hand...
Oh, please. I was an engineer who worked mostly on F15s, but I still have enough expertise to call bullshit. You have it completely backwards. The F-111 was a maintence mess and it became obselete reasonably quickly given the changing dynamic.. by the time they finally got their acts together, it was on its way out the door... but the F18? Are you crazy? It's one of the very few examples of major acquisition programs that went off relatively cleanly. The first 18Es delivered met all the specs, on schedule, and on budget. It has a reputation, in the navy, as being the most dependable plane they have. I've heard it quoted that the Hornet has 3x the mean-time-to-failure of any other aircraft they have. The plane was designed to replace the 14 Tomcat and has, as far as I know, exceeded all expectations. It's better, stronger, cheaper to operate, and is less failure prone.
I don't know who your "brother in law" is, but all planes have problems. All planes need to be fixed. They are not simple. They get old, and things go bad. It happens. Considering the F18 anything but a resounding success, however, is incredibly ill-informed.
I can't even see a tactical purpose for the JSF in this sun charred, massively open country.
You can't? How about the fact that the F18E is one the best anti-ship attack aircraft in the world? Do I need to explain to you the tactical advantage of Australia having that capability? How about the fact that it's far superior air-to-air compared with any of the cold-war era relic airplanes that every rogue nation on that side of the globe has? Even China.
From the article you link to:
... and Argentina did (after all) use Exocets to sink British ships. I don't necessarily blame them - we were at war with them, and killing them just as happily! But it caused a *lot* of anti-French feeling in the UK at the time.
As France had recently sold Super Entendard aircraft and Exocet missiles to Argentina, when war broke out there was still a French team in Argentina helping to fit out the Exocets and aircraft for Argintinean use. The French team continued to assist the Argentines throughout the war, in spite of the NATO embargo and official French government policy. [2]
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
The F-35 was designed from inception as an exportable combat aircraft. It is the replacement for the F16/F18, does not have all the features and capabilities of the F-22, and is intended to be "strippable". On the other hand, it is a lot cheaper than the F-22. It can properly be placed somewhere in between Cold War era combat jets (F14/F15/F16/F18) and the current state-of-the-art (F22).
As for the Russians, they can produce good airframes and decent powerplants, but they lack sophistication in the high-end electronics/software/sensors that pretty much make or break a combat aircraft today. The Russians are not producing anything better than western Europe these days, and are slipping further behind because they cannot afford to spend the kind of money required to keep up. A Sukhoi Flanker would be dead right around the time it even knew it was being engaged. The only comparable jet to the F-35 is the Eurofighter platform, though the capability mix is different.
While I understand why the F-35 was developed, it is kind of an ugly and unremarkable jet. It is still very capable, particularly with the smashing avionics/software the US can put in the thing, but was never designed to be the "ultimate" anything. Of course, the F16 has a similar history but turned out to be an extremely successful combat aircraft.
My guess is, that isn't the marketing line Lockheed Martin, Boeing and BAE Systems are going for right now.
These big deals are as much to do with employment as they are, defence.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
The F18's here are having to have total center barrel replacements - mostly because we've used them for roles where the US uses F16/15's. Good case of using the wrong tool for the job.
The F18's precision bombing ability has only been a recent addition in -our- fleet. Perhaps you guys got some better stuff first up.
The F18 has insufficient range, speed or strike power to make it ideally practical here in AUSTRALIA. A little different no doubt in the US.
The F18 isn't really suited for independent action across our gulf to areas such as Indonesia, even more so now with our "opponents" having purchased the Sukhoi's
The JSF, with about 2000km (vs F111's 6000km) range falls a bit short too. We're a big and SPARSELY populated country here and we don't have the budget to realistically put a nice squadron of JSF's at every bay.
Basically, Australia is trading its independence ability in and leaning more on the US to support us in the military role.
Mostly, I'd say it's more a case perhaps of politics causing poor choices, than the planes themselves being implicitly bad.
Feel free to browse over - http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-FAQ-2005.html
"I'm not saying they would invade, but two countries that come to mind with the potential to attack are Singapore and Indonesia."
Are you an aussie? Let me presume for a while that you are.
You are paying taxes, if it's like most other european countries you are paying hefty taxes. So is it worth paying all these taxes to get new fighter planes just on the off, off, off, off, off chance that singapore will attack you in a manner which will neccesitate the use of fighter planes to defend yourself?
In the US we spend money on the military because we wage war every election or so. We love war, we engage in it constantly, and as a result lots of people hate us and want to kill us. Australia is not like that as far as I can see. Sure howard has his nose up GWs butt like blair does but that's more of an exception then a rule.
evil is as evil does
I wouldn't be so quick to say the russians are not producing good product, one example is the slotback radar in the Mig 29 - it is easily as good as anything built in recent times by any other country. (I'm an ex ELINT weenie so I can speak with some knowledge on the subject)
The Russians are as good as anyone else. This whole stealth thing is rendered fairly useless by using multiple ground receivers in ones radar system anyway.
I do not disagree with this in general; the demise of many things have been prematurely anticipated. However, most of those things *did* eventually meet their demise, albeit not on the timelines of the prognosticators. The analog to this is armor. The US is field-testing several weapon systems now that will obsolete all types of mobile armor for the foreseeable future -- the operating parameters are such that no normal molecular material of any type can withstand the weapons as a matter of physics. Armor/anti-armor has been an arms race for a very long time, but it looks like it will be settled shortly. The US military research is dealing with the situation by switching strategies: rather than carrying armor that is worthless anyway, develop active defenses that can intercept incoming weapons so that you do not get touched. And so it goes on.
The reality for combat aircraft is that beyond-visual-range (BVR) weapon systems have become so advanced and so effective today that dogfighting really is largely dead when using these systems. Note that the US has very advanced BVR capability, most other countries are still seriously limited in this regard and so would be dogfighting quite a bit in their conflicts. The US saw the future as it developed the first effective BVR guided missile systems, but the platforms at the time could in no way deliver the future that they were seeing. Several decades later that future is actually here as originally envisioned, as the lethality and effectiveness have incrementally improved. Slow evolutionary steps.
Speed, range, situational awareness, and seeing the other guy before he sees you are crucial capabilities. The F-35 primarily exploits US capabilities in the last two categories for its advantage, which provides a huge amount of bang for the buck in modern warfare. Systems like the F-22 have a remarkable array of really excellent capabilities, but it costs a lot of money to produce a combat aircraft that is that good in so many dimensions that may be effectively preempted by other capabilities in practice.
When Finland bought F/A-18's from USA they were the top-of-the-line planes back then (and they are very, very good even today). Now, fighter-aircraft have a system which transmits data between the plane and the ground and integrates the plane in to the greater whole, and the Hornet is no exception. One of the first things we did was to rip the US-designed system out, and replaced it with a Finnish design, for the sole reason that the US system was just plain inferior.
Europe and their Eurofighter Typhoon? Like it or not, that is a VERY capable aircraft. F-22 might be a bit better, but F-22 also costs a lot more. And according to the only pilot that has actually flown both, they are neck and neck. He does say that F-22 has supercruise, but The Typhoon has it as well.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
In the 1960's pressure from the US caused the cancellation of the british TSR-2 programme. The government cancelled the TSR-2 and ordered F-111's.. which were then cancelled a few years down the line. A total fiasco.
Similarly, all the plans and prototypes for the TSR-2 were destroyed.
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
Not so neck and neck.
f ighter_aircraft#DERA_study
Here is the quote by the only pilot who has flown both.
In March 2005, United States Air Force Chief of Staff General John P. Jumper, then the only person to have flown both the Typhoon and the Raptor, talked to Air Force Print News about these two aircraft. He said that "the Eurofighter is both agile and sophisticated, but is still difficult to compare to the F/A-22 Raptor. They are different kinds of airplanes to start with; it's like asking us to compare a NASCAR car with a Formula 1 car. They are both exciting in different ways, but they are designed for different levels of performance".
Gen. John P. Jumper, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff, flew the Raptor faster than Mach 1.7 without afterburners on January 13, 2005. The absence of variable intake ramps may make speeds greater than Mach 2.0 unreachable, but there is no evidence to prove this. Such ramps would be used to prevent engine "flame-out", which is caused when too much air extinguishes the engine's "pilot light", but the intake itself may be designed to prevent such flame-outs. Former Lockheed Raptor chief test pilot Paul Metz says the Raptor has a fixed inlet. Paul Metz has also stated that the F-22 has a top speed greater than 1600 mph (Mach 2.42) and its climb rate is faster than the F-15 Eagle. This is due to the fact that the F-22 is one of the few western aircraft with a thrust to weight ratio significantly greater than 1:1. The true top speed of the F-22 is largely unknown, as engine power is only one factor. The ability of the airframe to withstand the stress and heat from friction is a key factor, especially in an aircraft using as many polymers as the F-22. However, while some aircraft are faster on paper, the internal carriage of its standard combat load allows the aircraft to reach comparatively higher performance with a heavy load than other modern aircraft due to its lack of drag from external stores.
Not "neck and neck" but different aircraft for different roles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_2000s_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurofighter_Typhoon
In March 2003, during a combat training flight, 1 F-22A went against 5 F-15C Eagles. During the exercise, the F-22A shot down all F-15's without being damaged
In addition, the F-22 has a superior radar to the Typhoon in the Raytheon and Northrop Grumman AN/APG-77 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar
Typhoon's powerplants - 2× Eurojet EJ200 afterburning turbofans, 60 kN dry, 90 kN with afterburner (13,500 lbf / 20,200 lbf) each
Raptor's powerplants - 2× Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 turbofans, >35,000 lb (160 kN) each
Raptor's warload - It is estimated that internal bays can carry about 20,000 lb (10,000 kg) worth of bombs, and/or missiles. Four external hardpoints can be fitted to carry weapons or fuel tanks, each with a capacity of 5,000 lb (2,000 kg), albeit at the expense of stealth. Maximum gross takeoff weight: 80,000 lb (37,000 kg)
Typhoon's warload, all external, four BVRAAMs and two IR AAMs. Maximum gross takeoff weight: 21,000 kg (46,300 lb), "austere air-to-ground".
In early 2006, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Hecker, commander of the 27th Fighter Squadron (FS) at Langley commented to Jane's Defence Weekly (18th jan. 2006) that: "We killed 33 F-15Cs and didn't suffer a single loss," he said. "They didn't see us at all." after an exercise with 8 F-22's in Nevada in Nov. 2005. In that exercise, a group of 4 F-22s assaulted a simulated air-defence network of SA-10 and SA-12s, they opened a hole in the network so that B-2, B-52 and B-1s could come in, then another group of 4 F-22s engaged F-15Cs and defeated them 33 to 0.
...the americans don't want anybody to discover that they've used chunks of GPL code
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
As for the Russians, they can produce good airframes and decent powerplants, but they lack sophistication in the high-end electronics/software/sensors that pretty much make or break a combat aircraft today.
What worries most analysts is not so much the capability of Russia to produce an F-35 killer but rather what will happen if China/Russia/India combine to produce a joint stealth fighter project. The resulting machine could conceivably be better than the F-35 and capable of making up it's shortcomings vs. the F-22 by being cheaper to make and easyer to mass manufacture. The idea being that if you can't beat the F-22 technologically use the 'T-34 effect' to swamp forces using the F-22. Now Russia perhaps does not have the economic muscle to mass manufacture a stealth design in a big way but India and especially China do.
The only comparable jet to the F-35 is the Eurofighter platform, though the capability mix is different.
Purely in terms of electronics the Eurofighter is probably better than the F-35. The Trance 3 aircraft with all the frills including thrust-vectoring will be even better than the current Typhoons which lack a large portion of the Eurofighters potential feature set. Another thing is that he Eurofighter can supercruise which the F-35 AFAIK can't. The F-35 does have stealth and it is frequently clamied the Typhoon has none, which, according to one US source is due to an European ability to understand but inablitiy to implement Stealth technology. The first part is a half truth, the Typhoon has low observability features, which will probably lower its radar signature considerably but of course never quite as low as those of the F-22 especially. Also keep in mind that the F-35's stealth is compromized by an inability to carry weapons internally unlike the F-22. As for the European inabilty to produce Stealth designs, I find that claim to be funny. I would evaluate the Typhoon as being better the F-35 but not as good as the F-22.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
UK follows US like a dog follows its master since so long than they just deserve it. Perhaps one day they will realize that US is only playing its own game and uses others countries when needed.
Look at what happens with India, US is ready to give up Nuclear know hows to counterbalance China increasing power. Very good move indeed to avoid Nuke proliferation! And in few years they will screw Indians as well when they will realize they are also a very fast growing economic threat...
Well, yes:
"One advantage of having flown the Eurofighter, General Jumper said, is that it allows him to get first-hand knowledge of technology U.S. allies use and to see how America's handiwork stacks up. He said he believes the two aircraft are running neck-and-neck, but America must always be vigilant to ensure it stays on the cutting edge of aviation technology."
So he clearly disputes your claim of "they are not neck and neck". What you are doing is that you are looking at some paper-specs. He has actually flown both. Have you flown either of them? No? Then what makes you the expert on this field?
I don't see any indication of "F-22 is better than Typhoon" in that quite. I see him saying that they are two different planes with different design-goals, so comparing them is difficult.
Two F-15's tried to ambush Typhoon during joint exercises. The Typhoon outmanouvered them both and shot them down. Of course, it wasn't 5:1 engagement, but it was an engagement where the F-15's started from behind the Typhoon, and the Typhoon-pilot didn't even know that they were planning to ambush him.
Of course you can find individual mareas where F-22 is better than the Typhoon, and vice versa. Typhoon has superior man-machine interface and the AA-missile being developed for it is clearly superior (faster, longer range, more agile) to the AMRAAM that is used in the F-22.
What is this, a pissing-match? I quoted a pilot that has flown both. And he said that they are "neck and neck" (of course there are differences, since they have different design-goals). Then some Random slashdotter pulls some specs and claims "no, he's wrong. Just look at the specs!". While F-22 is usually placed before the Typhoon in AA-effectiveness, it should also be noted that F-22 costs over twice as much as the Typhoon does (F-22: $152M, Typhoon: $74M)
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
The economy has limped along over the last 6 years. IYR, When bush first came into office, they made some quick adjustments to how unemployment, and the economy is calculated. They said that it was a "truer" measure of the economic health. It was not. It was designed to make things look better than what it is. And BTW, there are pockets that do well, as in every econs (during a depression, forclosure experts boom relative to normal time). Housing is a good one that was doing good due to the very low interest. Most of the other segments that are not real estate or federal spending related related, have limped along. And with the high federal and trade deficits it is hard to believe that we will make it back to where we were say during the 80's, let alone what we had in the 90's.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
>As for the Russians, they can produce good airframes and decent powerplants, but they lack sophistication
Just for the record, the F-35 is essentially a licence produced version of the russian Yakovlev Yak-141 fighter plane!
The original Yak-41 supersonic VTOL fighter interceptor plane had two prototypes that broke all world records for VTOL jet aircraft in 1988 with Mach 1.8 speed, but the demise of USSR stopped its funding for series production for small aircraft carrier ship use. In circa 1992-1994 the plane was redesigned by Yakovlev bureau as Yak-43 to feature land-based fighter-bomber functionality and dihedral sides for almost stealth level low radar-observability to compete in a state tender for the next-gen russian military aircraft. This is its outline of the Yak-43:
http://www.aviation.ru/Yak/Yak-43.jpg
It was disqualified for higher costs compared to traditional runway-based derivants of the Sukhoi-27 family and so only a static prototype mock was made of the Yak-43.
In 1995-1996 the Lockhead company purchased for several hundred million dollars of cash the blueprints, parts and technology of the Yak-41/43, including the revolutionary swivel afterburner turbojet engine.
They reworked the plane somewhat (replaced the vertical lift-only turbojets with a huge cardan-driven lifting fan), added more stealth and started to call it the USAF X-35 prototype. It won in comparison against the fat Boeing X-32 Mantaray plane and became designated as the F-35, but it is still essentially the russian plane. Credit is due where it is due.
Look at a map for God's sake. Do you notice a large archipelago just over a narrow strait? A nation with 10 times the population of Australia that has invaded neighbours several times in my memory. They could ship troops over by the million without a strong air and naval capacity to stop them. If Muslim fundamentalists came into power it could get very hostile overnight, considering our PM has sent out trops into Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention putting tropps in East Timor when it seceded from Indonesia (that was the right thing to do, though it pissed off the Indonesians).
No, they are part of North America.
The United States of America has America in it's name. Canada doesn't, Mexico doesn't, Brazil doesn't, Argentina doesn't. TTBOMK, no other country has "America" in it.
Mexico has a definite claim to be aggrivated when "we" simply call ourselves the "United States". But, guess what?
We got there first. "We" were the United States for 34 years before Mexico was. So, in the spirit of "first come, first served": stuff it, Mexico. As a gesture of friendship, though: how about we rename That State which bears a part of your name?
MMmm that depends where you live I guess.
I am from Mexico and America is and always have been a continent, no, we do not feel aggrivated when you call youserlves the "United States", as it just describes a property of your country.
Sadly, I have to tell you that the problem with your country is that it does not have a name, see, the name United States of America comes from as you said being one of the first countries formed by "uniting states" and it was made in America (the continent).
The North Amercia and South America split was just made up by the USA, in a kind of elitist way but, again North and South are just properties (in the north emisphere and south emisphere.
So you are right, America is a name, it is a name of the continent, that is why (living in the UK) I usually refer to people from the USA as darn... as that as "people from the usa", usually I would call them "gringos" but a lot of people do not understand.
Of course it all ends in how your government wants you to know, as, you will swear that North America and South America are two different continents because you saw it in your basic school but then again who do you thing is in control of that?.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Why not just return the missiles? Saves on postage and packing, and has a very low rate of vendor complaints afterwards. ;-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
We are at peace with the Brits; We have always been at peace with the Brits. =)
http://outcampaign.org/
.... like most other european countries you are paying hefty taxes
Dude, that's Austria
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
So, basically, you're suggesting the Gentoo Strike Fighter or GSF. If I read at least part of your intentions correctly, you imply that every foreign buyer should essentially:
emerge fighter-software
on every piece of imported equipment.
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."