Heatblur F-14 and Forrestal Update

[Phantom88]

Y E S

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10-7-18

[schurem]

Oooh baby yeah! Turkey day is coming, and thanks will be given

[near_blind]

@MBot

Of course to anybody that paid a little attention, this is no suprise

I think the boot was clearly dropping once they announced campaigns, but if I had a shot for every time the community got set on an obvious and common sense thing that never panned out, I’d still be drunk and most probably dead thrice over.

Also things of note

We’re for sure getting lantirn now it seems, as well as Link-4A (fighter-fighter datalink), and lau-138 (which elevates you from the cm of an F-5E to much more comfortable levels (thanks again, Borkland))

You want all of these, happy day

[near_blind]

Cheeky, thats not the stenns

[Texac]

Just by looking at the images, HB is giving me the feeling that their Tomcat module is going to set new records and standards.

[Franze]

@TheAlmightySnark

Eeh, they put CFM-56 engines on it so they’ve got another 20 years of life in them minimum. They could jump on the LEAP-1A(I presume they use the Airbus version and not the 737 CFM) as that is the future of this engine size but why would they? They probably got the DAC version of the CFM so that should help them preserve a significant amount of fuel.

OT but this ignores the fact that the KC-10, which was mostly active duty, are being retired. Why? Well, the USAF wore them down to the bone because of near constant usage from the past 20 years. The KC-135, on the other hand, is mostly in Guard and Reserve. Tanking has been a pretty damn critical piece of our air power puzzle for quite a while and ignoring it by pulling out more duct tape and bailing wire for the existing fleet is one of the most boneheaded moves the USAF has ever done. The KC-135 is an older airframe than the KC-10 and that means it won’t be open to upgrades forever. Further, since non-permissive environments are all the rage, what happens when those KC-135s can’t get gas to the areas that the F-35s operate in? There’s not even any plan to get a stealthy tanker into service, which would be prudent given what the F-35 is intended to do.

In a twist, this probably relates to Heatblur’s F-14 and their new AI A-6E and KA-6D. As I found out recently, the S-3B tanker in DCS sucks… Hard! It can only offload about 8,000lbs of gas before it RTBs, and that is if it spawns fresh. Half that number for just 200nmi from the boat. The F-14s need a lot of gas, and the KA-6D is the one to provide it, with 29,000lbs 490nmi from the boat – that, folks, is true tactical tanking!

Maybe they’ll make it flyable along with the A-6E.

[near_blind]

That S-3 config is also getting on 25 years old, and due for replacement soon. I wouldn’t get worked up about it.

[Franze]

@near_blind

That S-3 config is also getting on 25 years old, and due for replacement soon. I wouldn’t get worked up about it.

Doesn’t change the fact that it will never provide the gas that the KA-6D does.

[near_blind]

Lol, you need to talk to an extremely rancorous former secretary of defense with notoriously poor friend or foe recognition about that

[Franze]

Duck!

By the way, ignore my figures for the KA-6D, it could deliver 16,000lbs, not 29,000.

[Hangar200]

@Sryan

The A-6’s are built to our extremely exacting standards, with laser scanning forming the basis of our core workflow

…think he meant "laser"scanning.

Dr. Evil "a Laser"

[Gunnyhighway]

so Pre-Order in 36 days? Sweet.

[Fridge]

Interesting bit from hoggit: link

akohen: Is the Jester AI UI designed to be VR-friendly ?

Cobra: Yes. Most of the team flies exclusively in VR.

How sick am I gonna get in the back seat with someone else piloting?

[Franze]

@Gunnyhighway

so Pre-Order in 36 days? Sweet.

If you’re going to be optimistic, you gotta do better than that!

Two weeks. Be sure!

[TheAlmightySnark]

@Franze

OT but this ignores the fact that the KC-10, which was mostly active duty, are being retired. Why? Well, the USAF wore them down to the bone because of near constant usage from the past 20 years.

I wanna bet mostly spares, these frames can do much much more then what they go through as a refueler. You can pretty much replace and repair most parts of an airframe ad infinitum if you are the US armed forces. My money is on the fact that the DC-10/MD-10 generation is disappearing at a significant pace and getting the parts becomes a lot more expensive.

@Franze

The KC-135, on the other hand, is mostly in Guard and Reserve. Tanking has been a pretty damn critical piece of our air power puzzle for quite a while and ignoring it by pulling out more duct tape and bailing wire for the existing fleet is one of the most boneheaded moves the USAF has ever done. The KC-135 is an older airframe than the KC-10 and that means it won’t be open to upgrades forever.

Sure, it might be an older airframe but is damn near proven to death, any wear and tear problem has long been identified and rectified. Sure, MX heavy but I am sure the engineers got the program for that thing down to a T.
[/quote]

@Franze

Further, since non-permissive environments are all the rage, what happens when those KC-135s can’t get gas to the areas that the F-35s operate in? There’s not even any plan to get a stealthy tanker into service, which would be prudent given what the F-35 is intended to do.

I don’t think there is any plan for this, it also doesn’t make much sense, you’ve got a slow and lumbering fuel carrier that you want to fly through an active threat environment to resupply strikers. At that point you are better of using other options that @Hangar200 knows a whole lot better then I do.

Honestly, basing a replacement tanker on a already old airframe(767) wasn’t the most prudent of options.

[schurem]

building a new airframe from scratch would have yielded a gold plated diamond monster that broke the bank of the biggest economy on earth. they know they can’t restrain themselves from piling on features and nice-to-haves so choosing an older jet is actually the prudent thing to do.

[near_blind]

[Franze]

@TheAlmightySnark

Sure, it might be an older airframe but is damn near proven to death, any wear and tear problem has long been identified and rectified. Sure, MX heavy but I am sure the engineers got the program for that thing down to a T.

It’s actually got a lot of teething problems, not the least of which is the horrid refueler’s station and typically being forced to configure either for probe and drogue or USAF tanking, not both.

@TheAlmightySnark

I don’t think there is any plan for this, it also doesn’t make much sense, you’ve got a slow and lumbering fuel carrier that you want to fly through an active threat environment to resupply strikers. At that point you are better of using other options that @Hangar200 knows a whole lot better then I do.

Honestly, basing a replacement tanker on a already old airframe(767) wasn’t the most prudent of options.

Why wouldn’t it make sense? If you can edge tanker support closer to contested airspace, that makes it much easier to get that support where it needs to be. Once again, that’s just what the F-35 proponents have been going on and on about; if the F-35 isn’t going to do that, then why have it? Unless of course, the plan is to make a F-35 tanker… Somehow.

The KC-46 I think is rather ridiculous, but also a result of the fact that they had that tanker mess more than 10 years ago. That set things back in a big way, and now the KC-46 is going to have a bunch of new tech that doesn’t work right. Not good when you kinda need the capability sometime before 2050. The only shining spot is that Boeing has to pay for overruns and delays, so there’s some incentive for them to get it right and not push things 5 years down the line.

The Navy was even trying to get a refueling capability on the P-8 before the USAF cried foul. A perfect storm of short legged aircraft, minimal tactical tanking, and inter service red tape.

I’m not even sure the PG map has the room to properly simulate this critical tanking issue for the F-14 and KA-6D. It already impacts the bug in the Black Sea. Of course, 90% of the time it won’t even matter for most folks, but in the few scenarios where I’ve played around with it, it’s made a rather interesting conundrum of getting assets in the right place at the right time with the right support. That’s part of why I’d like to see the KA-6D made flyable with the F-14, because one could readily simulate a lot of these scenarios and see how they play out, then make comparisons to how the modern system works. And consider that if we simulate a 2010 timeframe with the bug with no super bugs to refuel from, well… It adds a certain dynamic to scenario design that most folks don’t think about.

[AeroMechanical]

We interrupt this tanking discussion to remind you that the contents of this image will be possible, in-game, in DCS, apparently within a couple of months, thanks to Heatblur.

Scientists estimate we will be approximately 75% further into a hazardous boundary region, which they colloquially describe as a “zone of the dangerous variety.”

[Navynuke99]

@AeroMechanical

Scientists estimate we will be approximately 75% further into a hazardous boundary region, which they colloquially describe as a “zone of the dangerous variety.”

Archer - Zone of Danger?