Man your posts are awesome!
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Eagle Strong. Eagle crush enemies, sees them driven before it, hears the lamentations of their women.
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I think the words “Combined” and “F-22” have some relevance in the topic… 
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As do “F-16” and “OPFOR”. 
also “target”
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F-15 equipped with TALON HATE is supposed to allow the Eagle and Raptor to work together and bridge the numbers gap. From all that has been released, it seems to be a succesful match. Shame to nix it without the proper stop gap in place.
Yeah, but does it do slow CAS?! THINK NOT! We need moar A-10!
OK I am going to show my ignorance again. And sorry if this was answered above. The F-15 is still being built either for or by other countries like Korea. Why not swap out old spars and wings with new?
Probably because the 5th-gen mafia (now that we’re naming lobbying clubs anyways) thinks, rightly or not, that those airframes will not be viable in peer conflicts in the long run
You will never hear anyone from Boeing, Lockheed or any of the other defense industries undersell their opponent’s capabilities. Just watching the very best of the videos that were provided by RT of the recent strikes in Syria show that western Air Forces are way more advanced than perhaps the sales forces at our defense industries would lead you to believe. And that was the best of the strike videos we saw released by RT…can you imagine what some of the worst were like?
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One of the things we discovered is that this ‘magic guidance’ system, the SVP-24, is not nearly as advanced (or accurate) as the Russian would dearly love everyone to believe it is.
Is it better than traditional CCIP bombing systems? I would imagine so, but it still resulted in a lot of ordnance ending up in places it really shouldn’t have if the post-strike news clips of bombed-out civilian population areas in Syria are any indication. Of course, the Russians could have meant to bomb those hospitals and apartment buildings, but we’ll never get that out of them. The American way (attaching a guidance kit to each and every bomb) may be more costly, but our chances of putting 1000kg of RDX in the wrong place is statistically lower. I’ll take that every time. I have no desire to return to the WW2 days of carpet bombing everything in sight.
Personally, I want our military equipment to be so overwhelmingly dominant over our potential adversaries’ that they realize that to challenge us on the battlefield is to court death. I like that we are so competent at the use of lethal force, because it means that in the event we have to do so, we’re reasonably sure we’ll win.
Right now, North Korea is attempting to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and successfully mate it to a IRBM or ICBM. These people are nuts. They will use this as blackmail to keep their nation alive. I want the capability to remove any obstacle they attempt to place in front of us. If that means retiring a beloved fighter aircraft and spending money on something that does the job better, let’s do it.
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Exactly. Russia has GLOSNASS, Laser, and TV guided smart bombs, they’re choosing not to use them. Dumb bombs designed in WWII are much cheaper and Russia simply doesn’t care about collateral damage. The pointy end of their expedition to Syria is designed to prop up a regime against a foe that has no effective air defense, and maybe sell some jets while they’re at it. I will not say the same of the Su-35, Sa-20, and SA-17s, which are very scary
On the other half of the world you have China, which has spent the last decade and a half building the air force Russia sees in its dreams every night. J-10s, J-11s, JH-8s, Su-30MKKs & J-16s, all armed with smart weapons, Israeli Python derivatives and a missile that is trying suspiciously hard to be an AMRAAM (and not entirely failing), back with a wall of Russian and domestic S-300s.
Finally, there are simply a lot of Gen 4 fighters in the world.
MiG-29 Operators
Su-27 Operators
Su-30 Operators
And that’s just the Russian stuff.
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Do we know of any cases where the Russians purchased F-16’s or other U.S. fighters from states we sold them to like we did with the Moldovan MIG-29s and Belarusian Su-27’s?
Common sense says that they are doing Aggressor training but I just have not heard much about it.
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I always like to point out that it isn’t enough to have good equipment - I really think it is the integration of all the components (AWACS, land/sea systems, satellite data, communications) that makes us many orders above others in terms of capability. And the amount of training we do is phenomenal. It is this belief in the unbelievable professionalism of our military that leads me to believe that if our guys took F-4s and A-6s into battle tomorrow, they’d still clean up against any military in the world. Obviously, I think they should go with the best we can offer them, but I also don’t give blind allegiance to the defense industry that combines fear with profit motive as the best course for either our war fighters or the country as a whole. The politics of the business of war are obviously highly contentious, so perhaps it is best to discuss it in the vacuum of just technology and capability rather than adding in the variables of cost and motivation. If we look at it like that - then F-35s for everyone, and a JDAM on every terrorist donkey across the globe.
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You’re correct, but the rub there is that standards, training, preparedness all fluctuate over time. Just because a certain operator is lax in training now doesn’t mean they’ll be lax in training later. You don’t plan around the concept of “Yeah, they’ve got gen 4, but they kinda suck…”. You plan around what their equipment can do, and assume the operator knows how to use it to its fullest. If they don’t or can’t, well that’s a bonus.
Possibly. Probably. I’d argue send our fighting men and women to a dangerous situation with weapons that are less capable, when we have weapons that are more capable and available, just because it was easier seems like a good way to rapidly lose their confidence.
Ouch. I’m just trying to make a living too, dude. 
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You make an excellent point. I think we should get the best deal for our money. There have been some procurements that have made no financial sense. Right now, we’ve gotten a lot of miles out of our current fleet of aircraft. I still think the Silent Eagle was a wasted opportunity.
It made sense when we were still building F-22s and the F-35 was the aircraft of the futuuuure of 2012
The closer the F-35 gets to completion, the more I’m convinced that it was the right choice. but man that appropriations process is going to be a case study for decades to come on how not to do things.
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I bloody hope we learn something from it… I am happy that they are giving all the countries that participate something to build but dammit if it isn’t a tricky process. Boeing had the same problem on a slightly smaller scale with the 787. Airbus seems to be doing alright but then again Airbus always has been manufacturing around the EU(still smaller then the 787 scale, that’s world wide, insane).
Anyway, @smokinhole was talking about replacing spars and wings, it’s just not that simple unfortunately, with jetfighters many of these components are designed to be bonded for life, so there is no reasonable way to remove the spar and leave the rest of structure intact, or have a jig you can rest it in. Imagine the jet just sagging in the middle because it said bye bye when you removed a bit of the spar. Or the skin going all stress-ripple on you when you remove certain stringers for replacement. It would be a logistical nightmare.
Either go the F-16 way and manufacture doublers and other fancy components to strengthen the airframe, or buy a few new ones.
Our motto: Aircraft maintenance - It’s never as simple as it looks!
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Sure…but that is the easy argument to make, and the one that is also easiest to abuse by those seeking money for their projects. An impartial judge should always be the arbiter of those decisions. I seem to recall a recent procurement political football involving the M1 Abrams production facility…the congressmen from the district where they were building them wanted to force them down the military’s throat and the Generals in charge said they didn’t need them (Odierno maybe?). If the Marine’s want A-10s over them but Senators X and Y want F-35s doing CAS, guess who gets the short end of that argument?
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Liking every post because they all contribute to the discussion and I like this discussion
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It’s a neat discussion because you have fiscal conservatives, pro military liberals (yes…we exist!), DoD types, and the guys at the pointy end of the spear with actual time doing pointy spear stuff, and any number of countries all participating. We do have a very wide ranging user group here at Mudspike!