Slashdot Mirror
Boeing Touts Fighter Jet To Rival F-35 — At Half the Price
An anonymous reader sends this news from the CBC:
"In a dogfight of defense contractors, the hunter can quickly become the hunted. It's happening now to the F-35. The world's largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, is trying to convince wavering U.S. allies — including Canada — to stick with its high-tech, high-priced and unproven F-35 stealth fighter. But the F-35 is way behind schedule, way over budget and, now, it's grounded by a mysterious crack in a turbine fan. After years of technical problems, it's a tempting target for Lockheed Martin's rivals. It's no surprise, then, that the No. 2 defense contractor, Boeing, smells blood... The Super Hornet, it says, is a proven fighter while the F-35 is just a concept — and an expensive one at that. ... The Super Hornet currently sells for about $55 million U.S. apiece; the Pentagon expects the F-35 to cost twice as much — about $110 million."
If you bothered to RTFA, you'd see that 500 superhornets are in active service right now. The "Superhornet" isn't really that new and it has issues such as it is still too-short ranged although an improvement over the original F-18, and it suffers from the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none capability profile. However, it is real, it is proven, and it can likely receive some halfway decent upgrades without costing anywhere near as much as the F-35.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
"Batteries not included."
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
From a Canadian perspective the big advantages of going with the Super Hornet is backwards compatibility (even more-so than the lower price).
- The Super Hornet is compatible with the current RCAF in-air refuelling technology
- The Super Hornet technology is an upgrade to what we already have - our techs are compatible / familiar with it
- The Super Hornet does not require longer runways for landing - our remote arctic runways are compatible
- The Super Hornet has landing gear better suited for icy runways - our weather is compatible
It's not as stealthy but we are a defensive military.
- The Super Hornet is also half the price.
The Harper Government has a hard-on for the F35 and the Canadian public really has no idea WHY.
Half the price for the piece of paper with the specs on it. But like the dreamliner, Boeing will deliver late, overbudget, and with serious issues forcing it to be grounded. Cos that's how it works. The more you pay, the less you get.
Really? The F/A-18 E/F acquisition program was an unparalleled success. The aircraft emerged from Engineering and Manufacturing Development meeting all of its performance requirements on cost, on schedule and 400 pounds under weight. All of this was verified in Operational Verification testing, the final exam, passing with flying colors receiving the highest possible endorsement.
Ezekiel 23:20
For what it's worth, the Super Hornet shares very little with the original Hornet. It's only called the Super Hornet because it was easier to sell it as an "upgrade" instead of a new aircraft.
I read the internet for the articles.
The F-35 outperforms the superhornet even if the SH is slicked off, lubed up, and going down-hill with another SH pushing it
Not if it doesn't fly...
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Not to bitch at you personally, but it's a pet hate of mine seeing the tired old "These things are useless nowadays" arguments.
People were saying the same thing years ago about the Sea Harrier here in the UK, then the Falklands happened.
The point is, just because we're fighting low tech opponents hiding in mountains right now, doesn't mean we wont be fighting a completely different type of war tomorrow.
These sorts of military purposes are made not because of what's going on right at the time of development, but as a piece in the larger military puzzle that'll be expected to have a life of 20 - 30 years. A lot can happen in that time - in the last 30 years cold war style dog fighting was still a very real prospect, and manned jets were essential to missions in The Falklands, Yugoslavia, and Iraq.
Whilst we're at a point where drones could replace some functionality, the Slashdot mindset that drones can replace every manned air function is false. This wont always be the case, but right now maintaining a manned air to air presence is smart unless you want to risk being caught with your pants down.
Put simply, it doesn't really matter what type of wars we're in right now or have been for the last 10 years, the question is, can we absolutely guarantee that there will be no use for manned aircraft in the next 30 years? Is it 100% guaranteed that there wont be say, a small skirmish over disputed islands between China and it's neighbours? Can we absolutely guarantee that Russia wont attack an Eastern European state that is more strategic to the West than Georgia was requiring some intervention? The answer is no, absolutely not, we most certainly cannot guarantee these things, and whilst that remains true, these new planes serve a purpose - getting rid of them, even if they only act as a deterrent and they never actually have to be used, would only make such scenarios more likely.
The likes of Chinese pilots in their new stealth aircraft would love nothing more than a turkey shoot of pathetic drones with their lack of situational intelligence and awareness, their high latency and so forth in a combat situation in 20 years time.
Regarding your question about avoiding missiles, shoulder launched SAMs tend to have pretty limited altitude, and even more expensive systems don't necessarily seem particularly effective. Remember that Israel flew some older F15s/F16s right through some brand spanking new Russian bought Syrian SAM batteries to blow up their nuclear program and out again without incident.
It's about insuring against the unknowns over the next decades until drone technology is genuinely mature enough to completely and utterly replace it. That's what it's about.
since when is the government concerned with the price of anything?
We have a Conservative government, they need to spend money, put us back in debt (we had a balanced budget for 8 years until the right wingers got into power with their cut taxes and increase spending policy) so they can cut the things they don't like such as science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The "austere locations" crap that the Marines keep talking about is just that: crap.
What's actually going on is that, in addition to the eleven supercarriers that the U.S. Navy uses, they also have another nine "amphibious assault ships", which would be called a small aircraft carrier if they were in any other navy. (The newest design, the America-class, doesn't even have a well deck for launching boats; it's just a smaller aircraft carrier.) These carriers can't field catapault-launched aircraft like the F/A-18; they're more like the UK's carriers in that they only field helicopters and VTOL aircraft. Right now that means the Harrier, but the Harrier is a clunky old piece of shit and BAE ain't making new ones anymore, so once those wear out it's either F-35 or helicopters only.
I have often have doubts whether these fighter planes really have any use nowadays. Especially dogfighting seems to be a bit outdated in times of cheap shoulder launched surface to air missiles.
Dog fighting outdated? Not so fast!
Those who don't know history, are bound to repeat it.
The art of the dog fight has been dismissed as unnecessary before. Military planners who thought they knew, dismissed the need for dog fighting by saying "Hey, we have missiles and radar, nobody is going to dog fight anymore!" Poof! We got the F4 Phantom, which was a great interceptor with a really powerful radar, but a less than ideal platform for dog fighting. You could quickly get your opponent in range, but you had better kill him with the first missile shot because if you got into a turning fight with most of the opposition, you where going to loose in the bulky F4. We adjusted tactics and used the F4 high speed to swoop in, shoot a missile and bug out at Mac 2 before getting shot at. Didn't always work that well, but it helped keep the kill ratio up. We struggled with that oversight for decades until the F-16 came along and fixed the problem and allowed us to dog fight again.
History teaches that Air superiority requires both advanced missile technology AND superior dog fighting capacity. Stealth is a great feature, but it is only going to really help if you can shoot the opponent before he can see you. Once you are in visual range, you had better have the best sustained turn rate and a gun or you will loose (which is where the F4 failed).
You may not need flocks of F-35s, but having some is a good idea. Having flocks of F-18's is not a bad idea, as it's a fine dog fighter too. I vote we buy a mix of about 1 F35 to 4-5 F18's myself. But don't.. Please don't dismiss the importance of dog fighting to air power.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The MQ-9's a pretty awesome piece of hardware for what it does, but it's no replacement for an F-16 in contested airspace.
... and an F-16 is no replacement for a reaper when it comes to long duration reconnaissance, or operating in areas were the loss or capture of a pilot is politically unacceptable. They are different planes for different missions.
What would be cool is to see what we could do if we set out to build a real air superiority fighter drone. We could have each defense contractor build a squadron, and send them out over the desert on a real shoot out with live ordnance. The winner gets the contract. The contest could be filmed and made into a reality TV show to mitigate the procurement cost.