Oh look, X is awash with a story about the F-35 again.
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Apple and Oranges. The F-35 is a failure, and a corrupt, bloated program that is designed to enrich the military industrial complex. In the end it will get shelved and replaced with a cheap UAV.
That and our tax dollars pay for that failure. Should have just kept making F22s instead of funding two separate next gen fighter programs.
The F-22 can't even drop a bomb on a moving target. It's an extremely limited aircraft.
And I personally have no idea why people are so obsessed with it and why they think it's some kind of wunderwaffen.
The F-22 has a lot of major problems. It served as a good learning platform for what the F-35 became. Improvements in the design of the fuselage, the LO coatings, the avionics, and a lot of that can't simply be "upgraded" into the F-22. I mean, the LO coatings alone - the F-35 uses a different type of LO coating and allows the vast majority of panels to be accessed without any LO maintenance. The F-22 requires very costly LO removal/repainting with most maintenance, which means the aircraft have to be held down for typically about three days just for one panel. What this means is in the F-22 world, they're basically flying around with a ton of Code-2 writeups until they can hold the aircraft down for a week. If you look at a good picture of the F-22, it looks like it's covered with 'digicam', because of the constant patch jobs needed on the LO.
The PTMS/IPP package of the F-35 is an entire generational leap beyond what the F-22 uses, and you have to build the aircraft around that.
Dogfighting has already been an incredibly rare thing for decades, and it's seen as being nonexistent in the future. Silly lies about the Vietnam airwar theater don't change that. And if you consider that, then it becomes a question of things like 'do we really need thrust vectoring'? 'Do we really need to extremely expensive engines'?
Even for people who complain about the cost, the F-22 would never have been affordable. It has needed enormous numbers of upgrades over the years owing in part to its limited mission profile, and the extremely dated avionics package it flew with. The engines are one of the most expensive parts of an aircraft, and, well, you're paying for two for every F-22.
One of the big reasons the "muh F-35 can't turn" shit is because unlike any other aircraft, the F-35 was basically shipped while it was still in development. The physical structure and design were laid down, populated with 'rudimentary' avionics, and sent off to begin live flying and training while the avionics were further developed. Stories like 'can't turn' were because the F-35 had immense control law limitations put on it until block 3F.
Previous aircraft were fully completed when they shipped, which meant your systems were 10+ years obsolete by the time the pilots got their hands on them.
That's what we have bombers for, bro. Also drones. A fighter should be specialized in destroying other aircraft to gain air superiority over an area; trying to make it a jack of all trades is a mistake.
Seriously, the mission profile of the F18 Super Hornet is about perfect. An Air Superiority fighter which can launch from carriers and has a long operational range.
Fighters gain Air Superiority in a combat zone. Air-to-ground attack aircraft kill shit.
The A-10 is less expensive per hour of flight time than an attack helicopter. So use those. Send Reaper Drones (or whatever) as required.
The F-35 does everything but the maintenance costs are just stupendous when you cost them out per hour of air time.
I mean, you know it's called the F/A-18, right?
That's kind of my point with the "muh multirole" mockery. People unironically say gay shit like 'The F-35 sucks multirole means it's a master of nothing! Why can't it be more like the F/A-18/F-15/F-16???' which are all multirole aircraft.
Even the goddamn motherfucking F-14 ended up having bombs strapped to it.
I am not even arguing. My favorite aircraft of all time is the F1-11, which was absolutely multi-role and started its life as a nuke delivery concept.
That said, it is a slider. On one side is "Fighter" and on the other side are ... other roles. The more the design compromises the fighter role, the better the aircraft gets at other things and the worse it is as a fighter.
It turns out that designs can get some ground attack capability and still be a great air superiority fighter; which can have tactical uses. It is great value. However I strongly feel that to excel in other roles dramatically compromises the air superiority capability.
None the less, my point is that supersonic air superiority fighters take the most amount of maintenance dollars per hour of flight time. It is cool to be able to drop two bombs half the world away in 20 hours (or whatever) but these days we send a cruse missile or a drone.
Not only that we now have the option of spreading total capability over two or three aircraft in an operation. One aircraft can be a spotter for a drone that can shoot missiles from over the horizon. New options are opening up with this kind of tactics.
Admit it guy, we both think sticking VTOL to a F-35 is a boondoggle. Scope creep is bullshit.
So your argument is 'muh multirole'.
Please refer to the comic.
This is the point of the comic. "Should" be? Really? According to who? You don't think it's super fucking weird that every single defense company on the planet, no matter the country, hasn't built dedicated single-role fighters in 30 years?
That doesn't clue you in that maybe this 'muh multirole' is clownish antiquated nonsense that spun out of the goofy days of air combat in the 1960s and the Century Fighters, when we had a new aircraft rolling off the production line every four years, that did only exactly one thing, and they all ended up in landfills?
We haven't formally built an "interceptor" aircraft in eons. How come nobody is complaining that that role is 'missing'? It's because technology moved on, and the 'interceptor' role became worthless.
And once its has that superiority, its worthless. It's not like the enemy will just have a new swarm of fighters appear out of nowhere. What are they going to do then? Fly around and look scary? Strafe targets with their 20mm?
You were literally just complaining about tax money being spent, and you're now advocating for multiple expensive aircraft, that all do something different, even though they could be combined into one. And every aircraft means a whole new supply chain, maintenance teams, and pilots.
You can cry about multirole or you can cry about expense, but you don't get to do both.
Because ground to air missiles are the only interceptors we need?
And that's when you tuck them away in their hangers and save on all the maintenance costs needed after flying missions. Once air superiority is achieved, why use an expensive to maintain jet to run missions a comparatively cheap attack helicopter can handle?
https://fighterjetsworld.com/air/maintenance-operating-costs-per-flight-hour-of-militarys-fighter-jets/11995/
And don't forget that we already have tons of advanced bombers flying, so why does the new fighter need to be able to drop bombs?
These flight hour things are pretty meaningless.
An E-4 doesn't actually cost that much money 'per hour' to fly. It doesn't land and you figuratively swipe a credit card to fix all the shit wrong with it that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Flight hour costs are a function of how new the airframe is, how ubiquitous, any upgrades its received, etc. There's only 4 E-4s. It's the same reason the B-2 is so expensive "to fly". It actually isn't, you just paid for more up-front.
These flying-hour cost graphs could literally just be interpreted to mean "we need to fly the shit out of these aircraft to get costs down". It doesn't actually save you money to do so, but if you flew the entire F-35 fleet on very gentle missions doing simple laps around the airfield for hours upon hours, it'd technically make it "cheaper" to operate.
That's not how it works. Aircraft hate being grounded, and pilots need to constantly fly. If they don't, you end up with something like Iraq's air force, which on paper was very good, but they never flew their planes so none of their pilots had any skill, and they all just got butchered.
You've been pumped so full of bullshit it's coming out your mouth.
And you base that on what?
EDIT: lmao that's what I thought.
This entire comment section is literally the meme. A bunch of know-nothings who can only cite video games and "articles" for everything they think they know.
Lockheed Martin isnt going to see this bro.
No matter what you think of the F-35, comparing a ban on civilians owning a weapon to defunding a government weapons program is dishonest.
Even people who want the US government to stop funding the F-35 probably don't want a ban on it being sold to other countries.
You can go out and buy a gun and use it yourself if you want to become an expert on it. Despite this, journalists publish rivers are idiotic lies about even the simple AR-15.
The F-35 can't be bought. You either work for Lockheed or the DOD and that's the only way you're going to know anything about it.
So all your average normie knows about it comes exclusively from "journalists"... The same journalists who are too retarded to know how an AR15 works and lie about it even if they actually do.
For about a decade, it was extremely popular and very good money to spread ragebait about the F-35. And that's all they did was spread bullshit. And who could possibly ever call them out on it when there's zero chance of anyone not on the program of finding out otherwise?
So when it comes to the F-35 and "omg it sucks", literally all of it is filtered through the mouths of retards, and it gets believed by other retards. And those retards think that everybody else they talk to also couldn't possibly know anything so they all get comfortable lying to each other about it.
u/theaustrianpainter just wrote "The F-35 is a failure". I asked what he bases that on. I didn't get a response, nor do I expect I ever will, because he will be forced to admit that he actually believes journalists. Because there's literally no other way he could possibly know anything. Dude probably delivers porta-potties to festivals or some shit, but has really strong opinions about what might as well be alien technology to the masses.
In other words, the people who will tell you that CNN lies will be the first in line to link you to a CNN article backing up their criticism of the F-35.
Ok, fine. Journalists are trash.
So what do you base your opinion on? What Lockheed says? What the DOD says? Personal experience flying or maintaining one?
You've typed out a lot of words conveying opinions but so far I haven't seen an ounce of credentials as for why anyone should give a shit about them.
Why do I have to provide credentials? Credentials for what?
If you actually pay attention, notice I haven't actually said anything about the F-35 specifically. Or at least, only extremely little. A comment about the fuel capacity of the F-35B and some remarks on the maintainability of the LO coating.
I haven't gushed about the capabilities of MADL or the time-to-climb performance, the post-Block 3F unrestrained roll rate, its safety record etc. A remark that the IPP system is very complex and superior to the F-22's APU.
I could, but I don't actually need to. Nor does it matter, all that does matter is that we both know you do not know anything, yet, you will certainly still hold opinions on it.
Opinions that could not have possibly ever come from any source except by way of repeating what a journalist told you to think. Like some kind of... NPC.
Ok, you're just a retard.
You might even actually know what you're talking about -- but you're still a fucking retard.
Are there times that the US makes shit for the military that truly IS an overpriced piece of shit? Yes, just at the York for example.
However with it's aircraft, not really as much for one simple reason: look at any engagement after WW2 of how quickly the US takes Air Superiority.
The problem the US has is that it's opponents LIE about it's capabilities while the US has the resources to MEET those lies just look at the F-15, thanks to Soviet lies about the Migs capabilities, the US had 50 YEARS of uncontested air dominance.
And now we come to the modern problem best shown by the F22, it's shit is so advanced that other nations DON'T want to fight it and that's 20 years old. It's why subversion of the flesh controlling the equipment has been the focus since they can't compete otherwise. The F35 is the most exported military aircraft the US produces that they can't keep up with orders, something normies also ignore believing propaganda designed to make the US weaken themselves than the DOGE approach of cutting contracts for overpriced shit like a toilet seat costing a grand so they can instead buy more ammunition.
Hah. I love that little piece of military history. They were so freaked out they created an aerial wunderwaffen only to have a defector give them one and they went "wait, that's it?"
The thing is, understanding the 'why' of military technology requires a broad knowledge of a lot of other capabilities in military technology, almost all of which is outside the scope of any normie's experience, but christ, even Elon fucking Musk was shitting on the F-35 last November and said we should replace it with drones.
You'd think the guy whose ventures involve a lot of electronic communications would understand the biggest problem with using drones in a hostile threat airspace, namely, electronic warfare (or even anti-satellite kinetic warfare) taking out the drone command signals. AI technology isn't advanced enough to operate in the power, size, and performance limits of a small drone, and a drone that just executes pre-existing commands is called a 'cruise missile' and we already have those.
The SATCOM link on the MQ-9 is incredibly fragile. Do you remember those videos of the Russian jets fucking around with them? Every time the jet flew over the radome, they dropped video link for a few seconds. The fighters were over the radome for a fraction of a second and even that was enough to completely blank the signal out and it needed to reacquire.
It's incredibly frustrating watching something that is truly obscure knowledge be commented on by every single dump-truck-driving redneck with an opinion, when one actually has that expertise and knowledge firsthand.
Also, if you wanted to make a drone with the capabilities of an F-35, it'd just be an F-35 with a pile of incredibly expensive hardware strapped into the cockpit that would lose link every time it inverted, it'd cost more than the F-35 does now, and it would lose every single aerial engagement because it would have a ridiculous signal delay between something happening, the pilot seeing it in his ground control station, the pilot responding, and the aircraft accepting that response. The speed of light is fast, but we can't even play video games in Europe without lag being a make-or-break factor in your performance.
PS: And to nip this one in the bud, the limiting factor of g-forces on aircraft is usually the weapons, not the squishy man in the cockpit. A drone fighter wouldn't be able to pull more gs than a normal fighter. For one, high-g maneuvers means you're dumping all your airspeed. That's what the feeling g-forces is, all that momentum basically being 'wasted'. And second, if we magically could "actually" build aircraft to higher g-tolerances, but for some reason we do not, we already would do so to avoid the very real damage high-g maneuvers already cause to aircraft. A human can survive a 10-g turn, but the aircraft cannot, so why would a drone? When the pilot over-gs the aircraft, he'll land back at the airfield completely healthy. It's the aircraft that's now all bent and fucked up.
So much for you understanding science. We already have drones that survive 30, 40, even 50g's. They go by names like Sidewinder, Sparrow and Meteor. It's retarded jet jockeys that want man-in-the-loop ASF, when autonomous anti-air drones are just a RFP away. It is not a limitation of engineering, but of willingness to build something that does it.
Before you start making claims about how electronics cannot withstand 50g's, Spinlaunch already has electronics that survive 10,000g's. It's a solved engineering problem.
Which is why fighters are designed to limit g-load to 9g's. You have, as usual, reversed cause and effect.
Hey look, it's exactly the kind of person I was talking about: pseudo-intellectuals who don't know fuck-all but like to pretend they do.
Those "drones" you're talking about are single-use, extremely low-mass, and are powered by a fucking solid-fuel rocket and batteries. Coincidentally they're also unsophisticated, short-ranged, single-purpose designs.
Hey baby-rapist, would you like to explain to us why we don't just fire AIM-9s into combat from hundreds of miles away and let them fly themselves to the AOR to engage targets? Is that another riddle that you've solved, "hey why do you carry these on board this really big aircraft to bring them closer to battle"?
So you're alleging the problems of drone warfare have been solved? Since when, the AIM-7 days? Because an AIM-7 is, in your eyes, a 'drone'? Pack it up boys, Cato The Nobody pointed out we've had "drone warfare" since Vietnam!
You know what they also don't have? Wings that provide lift. These missiles have no use for wings. Aircraft do. Would you like to offer your brilliant engineering insights on how the concept of 'lift' is antiquated? Do you even know why we use wings?
aS uSuAl
You don't know the first fucking thing you're talking about. What is the maximum g-load of an F-15E with GBU-31s loaded, and why is it under the standard structural limitation of 9gs? You don't think they thought "hey it'd be nice to maintain the full envelope of performance even with weapons loaded"?
You think they just didn't have the 'willingness' to design a bomb that doesn't physically tear itself off the BRU rack?
Yeah sure, they just didn't have the "willingness". Nobody thought that maybe when your interdictor is g-limited from the fuel and weapons on board, that that could make the aircraft more vulnerable, and they should design it to withstand 50gs.
Good thing you're here to tell them to just design aircraft better. Shucks I guess all those rivets that I've personally seen popped out after an over-g were just because someone somewhere didn't want to design it better.
Which defense company do you work for, again?
This is how we can tell you're low iq, because you're already coping and seething this hard. Faggot.
They don't have the range. They're also heatseekers, VS the aim 174/260 missiles (as the latest and greatest) which are going to basically do just that.
Which are still required to fly on a host aircraft into combat, because they need something to get them into their limited range, and they need something to tell them where and what to shoot.
Damn almost like you need something with significantly more endurance than a missile, which means it'll need a turbojet engine instead of a rocket motor.
And that thing needs to have stuff like a radar system much larger and more powerful than in a little tiny missile, so it can see many hundreds of miles away, instead of just squinting through a straw at nearby targets.
And that thing needs to have constant power instead of operating off of a single-use battery that can only power the on-board systems for a few minutes since radar systems are immensely power-hungry, so it'll need a big generator and power management system.
And that thing should also have a lot of other doodads to help coordinate attacks with others around it, like datalink systems. And just in case, we'll need to be able to communicate and issue controls to that platform so it can change missions, or fly elsewhere.
And there's no point in making this a disposable system so let's make it able to fly back and land on a runway.
Wow all of this adds up and sounds like it's really heavy, we'll need to add wings to provide lift, and space for fuel for the engine, and then we'll need to build a really big structure to carry all of this.
Boy all that added mass and the aerodynamic requirement for that thing called "lift" really did a number on its ability to pull high-g maneuvers, because when this platform tries a high-g turn, the wings act like a giant fucking airbrake, sapping all your energy, speed, and control.
...
Congratulations you just invented the fighter aircraft. Welcome to the world of sub-10gs.
I'm sure you know better though.
Daisy chain drones through data link, and launch missiles from non stealthy missile trucks 200 miles away.
Done.
Weird how you don't need an f35 for that.
This is an unbelievably retarded idea that you clearly have not actually considered all the problems with. You're the soyjak in the meme.
This is "guy who builds houses thinks he can design weapons platforms" logic. Which is easy to do when you don't actually have to come up with ideas that work at all.
Drones with data link? What drones? How did they get there? What are they powered by? How are they designed? And literally how the fuck do you stop that all from being fried the second an electronic attack aircraft arrives in the area?
I designed guns in a notebook when I was a kid. Literally none of the guns would ever be operable, didn't make any sense, and weren't designed with any semblance of understanding of the engineering involved with designing a real gun.
"My one sentence explanation to design the future of air war" is your version of my notebook, but you're presumably an adult, which...
Lmao no. Cato is a literally broken retard and he's wrong.
A missile does not and cannot serve the same purpose as an airplane. Missiles are inherently short lived things. Wings give planes maneuverability and efficiency. You cannot make a missile that flies around an AO for 6 hours before deciding what to strike, because it needs a ton of energy to keep moving in the air, and has to stay fast for fuel efficiency. Wings enable you to stay aloft at lower speeds with less power. They are also a structural vulnerability at higher speeds because of g loading, compared to missiles that are just tubes, but that is in no way a "solved problem". You cannot SOLVE pressure from existing, or the requirements of wings to be thin and wide, thus structurally weaker than a cylinder, to provide lift and be efficient.
Nothing that retard said is correct, and responding with hostility to a deranged nuisance faggot doesn't make PBTS wrong.
Comment Reported for: Rule 3 - Harassment
This is not sufficient enough of an insult to be a rule violation
And that crybaby faggot is still throwing reports around because I reply to a comment in the same chain as him.
For context, I BTFO'd whiny anti-christian anti-american catothecuckold so hard that he spammed so many reports that this absentee mod decided he needed a special rule disallowing me from replying to him, just to clear up his report queue.
Because cato is too much of a little bitch to hit the block button. Despite being part of the brigade that constantly cries about mods not letting him sperg out without limits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZALA_Lancet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade
So you are stuck on the propulsion? LOL.
Every one of the missiles I mentioned has wings, and anything moving through an airstream has can create lift by increasing its drag. Just look at the crossrange on a Falcon 9 booster or Soyuz capsule.
Guess what, that is exactly what Russia and Ukraine are doing, with the Saker Scout and equivalents.
Why the hell are you taking GBU-31's on a CAP mission? If your g-loads matter then it's because you are doing Air Superiority missions. G-load doesn't matter for CAS and SEAD.
The planes are designed with the pilot in mind. The munitions are designed with the plane in mind. You change the platform by removing the pilot, then you change the requirements. If the munition has to stay attached during a 30 g maneuver, then the munition will be designed for such. I'd say this isn't rocket science, but it actually is in this case, so I understand why smoothbrains like you can't figure it out.
The real reason that fighting aircraft are not designed for 30 g maneuvers is because even that won't save the aircraft from the 60g AIM-9X launched within 10nm. This is why single use loitering munition drones are being used, since defense doesn't work, so you might as well make them cheaper and more replaceable.
I do invite you to do combat missions in an aircraft over Ukraine for which ever side you prefer, the sooner and the more missions the better.
Literally what the fuck are you talking about? You're trying to make a point that a 'fighter drone' can be immensely maneuverable and high-speed and when I point out all the limitations you come back with what are ostensibly just RC planes that are outlandishly slow and unmaneuverable.
Notice that all the 'drones' you linked, when they needed them to have long-range, all went with wings and high-endurance engines... not solid rocket motors and fins that spend most of their time gliding to the target, like a missile does.
The Army doesn't even consider the Switchblade to be a drone, and the Shahed has more in common with a cruise missile.
I can't help it that you smoked so much pot that you can't remember what you typed even two hours ago.
You claimed that missiles and drones are some how different because one uses a rocket motor, and the other uses anything but a rocket motor, which is an insane argument.
You claimed that aircraft cannot go over 9g which is flatearther level retarded. I gave examples of machines that can go over 9g.
The hilarious thing is you are stuck, not fighting the last war, but fighting the Korean War. If you are having to pull max g's against any sort of short range air to air missile, then you have already fucked up and lost, and the defenses against BVR missiles don't require max g's.
Counterpoint, the f35 is in a weird spot with how combat is evolving. We're looking for longer kill chains with longer range missiles (which means missile trucks), vs dedicated fighter/bombers which are still vulnerable in contested airspace.
The f35 being multirole isn't the problem, the problem is multirole close in fighters are the weak point, they can't carry bigger weapons (especially without hypersonics, which are going to be more and more important as time goes on), and a lot of the 'stealth' weapons we have are just low obs, not truly stealthy, which means they can get shot down by advanced tech.
In a war against China, for example, I'd rather have a ton of AIM 174s/hypersonic missiles on missile trucks with a few f35s than a ton of f35s with sidewinders and amraams and few missile trucks.
Also the f35b sucks balls and never needed to get made.
I'd rather have just kept making/updating f22s in the fighter role for airspace control, and skipped the 35 as a fighter/bomber and just made a more dedicated ground attack aircraft with some a2a ability, if we're hellbent on spending money.
Well the F-35 isn't replacing literally every fighter aircraft. That's why they're keeping on with things like the F-15EX. The F-35 is in a bit of a 'weird spot', because it's fitting in to a slot that's current occupied by F-16s, and F-16s have also been in a 'weird spot'. F-16s aren't great. They can do a lot, but they get flexed on hard by the F-15E in most capacities. Which is why I think it's funny when people go 'MUH MULTIROLE' when the main reason the F-16 is still around is specifically because it's a swiss army knife of an aircraft.
TBH I have no idea what you mean. In military terms "stealth" doesn't exist. It's literally all LO. Though you are right, except for only a couple weapons they're all as stealthy as bricks which ruin the profile when put on external racks.
Probably true. The lift fan required so much volume taken out of the fuel tank that its range (which is incredibly impressive on the A and C) is ridiculously short. It is super cool though.
Like a non-stealth ground attack aircraft?
Those weapons platforms are going obsolete. Against a modern peer, helicopters are too vulnerable. In Ukraine, Russia is terrified of losing their helicopters so they just lob unguided rockets from 15 miles away and hope they land. Platforms like the A-10 or SU-25 are utterly useless, they're downed by pretty much anything that wants them dead.
I can't comment on the AIM-174. But the entire point of stealth is to basically 'shrink' the effective range of radar systems. Every stealth aircraft can obviously be seen with radar if its gets close enough, the point is that an overlapping air defense network suddenly has lots of holes in it when you effectively reduce the range the S-400 can see from 200 to 100, and it requires the enemy to over-commit air defense assets to fill in the gap.
The biggest problem with the AIM-54 is that the little tiny radar dish in it couldn't see anything (this is a problem on all radar-guided missiles) so the F-14 had to paint the target to steer it in the correct direction. The enemy knew the entire time they were being attacked, and could take action. The AIM-54 was old as fuck, though, before modern battery tech, so I'm sure the 174 is not nearly as blatant, but my point is that weapons systems like the -174, I'm going to bet, are designed to give non-stealth aircraft a fighting chance that stealth aircraft are less vulnerable to... so the Air Force/Navy won't really care if it doesn't fit inside an F-35 because it doesn't need to.
I have literally no idea what this meme or the reposting of it is trying to convey. Someone who lives exclusively in their own head is reposting shit about other people who live in their own head.
What's weird to me is how self defeating the meme is. The news report on the left is massively inaccurate to an obvious comical extent while the report on the right has absolutely nothing actually inaccurate with it.
So like what is the intended message "if you like the f35 defunding you are the same as those who lie about the ar15 to get it banned?". What about the f35 being prohibitively expensive and unnecessary is a lie?
On the off chance this post doesn't attract people with very strong opinions on esoteric defense technology you have zero chance of understanding without actually either working for Lockheed or being in the Air Force, allow me to trigger the normies with truths you don't like to hear:
The A-10 is shit and always has been. The gun was designed specifically to take out T-55 tanks, the most common tank in the USSR's arsenal when the specs were laid down. A decade later, by the time the A-10 was fully combat operational, the T-55s had been replaced by significantly up-armored T-62 and T-64s, which halved the range the A-10 needed for the gun to stand an equivalent chance of effectivity that it was projected to against the T-55. Due to the USSR's similar advances in SPAAG and SAM technology, and the A-10s total lack of effective countermeasures, its entire tank-busting role was reduced to simply firing off AGM-65s from 12 miles away and running away. This exact same mission is similarly accomplished with an AH-64 Apache, an MQ-1, and later the MQ-9, all armed with Hellfire missiles that performed better than the AGM-65s ever did.
There's a reason nobody thought it was a useful aircraft until it was used to simply shoot mud huts containing illiterate retards who didn't possess even one single air defense weapon. Which is like saying that the Hi-Point C9 is a fantastic handgun when your only targets are coma patients.
Yep, the A10 and it's gun look and sound really badass (as does the prototype tank they built with that same gun) but is only really useful against soft targets in areas we already have full air superiority in. And for targets like that, probably way cheaper to just send a helicopter or drone.
Literally what happened.
The Army wanted the USAF to keep the A-10 because it's pretty useful for them (mostly because it's faster and longer-ranged than an Apache), but the USAF correctly said "you have the AH-64 for a reason".
And it's extremely expensive to keep the A-10 around for something that we don't even do anymore, seeing as how the 'strafe mud huts' wars have ended.
Once the MQ-9 hit the scene, the A-10 did basically nothing in Afghanistan. The entire CAS role was replaced by MQ-9s, which were much better at it, because they could see everything, all the time, with more endurance on station, and deliver weapons much more accurate and useful for the purpose than the A-10 could. It also made it much safer for the guys on the ground, because the MQ-9 can fire its weapons off-boresight, which means it can land Hellfires behind itself, just like the Apache could. If you're getting fucked up, the A-10 has to circle around, the TACP has to vector it in, it can't see shit so it may shoot you so it needs visual aids to find the target, and it has to circle around, do a BDA, and reengage. It's very time-consuming when seconds matter. The MQ-9 just watches the entire time and can let one off the rail at its leisure.
The problem with the MQ-9 is it's 100% worthless in an electronic warfare environment, and if it comes down to popping satellites, the entire fleet is grounded.
Yep, and there was even a time when the Super Tucano was being discussed as a potential A10 replacement, but it looks like it couldn't compete with Apaches and Reapers.
I actually liked the Super Tucano. Good looking aircraft.
It would've been interesting to have at the very beginning of OIF/OEF, but by the time it would've been spun up for service, the DOD already anticipated the missions there ending.
So there was no point in investing money and pilots into a platform that was only useful in a single environment. The military always looks to fighting 'the next war', and understandably, nobody sees the Super Tucano taking on the Chinese.
I love how the comic is specifically calling out the behavior that everybody in this comment tree immediately engaged with. People who do shit like drive trucks explaining how to design the next generation of weapons.
Question: who here has ever even touched an F-35? Raise your hand.
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I know nothing about the topic or the aircraft, but I can say you act like a preening faggot who is more interested in proving how smart he is, which makes you the biggest loser even if you are right.
Imagine being proud of being a stereotype.
What stereotype? I admitted to knowing nothing and made no attempt to even speak on the topic because I know I know nothing about such a complex topic.
All I've said in this thread is you are acting like a faggot about it regardless of being right.
Or maybe it's borne out of the same contempt I had when the 'BLUE ROOFS! SPACE LASERS!' Lahaina conspiracy was popular.
Everybody was listening to a literal fucking real estate agent who invented and spread that nonsense, and nobody, not one, was interested in finding someone who had real experience and credentials in something like photonics. Anyone who said anything was screamed at and called a faggot by exactly people like you.
But the real estate agent told you what you wanted to hear, not what was true, and being lied to was more comfortable.
Remember when Mike Lindell got humiliated and taken for a ride, having his money stolen, because he didn't understand anything about cybersecurity? Or CodeMonkeyZ spreading technobabble schizo nonsense that everyone believed?
You're out of your mind if you think this isn't a real problem with the right. In fact, it's almost entirely the reason the left was able to attain so much institutional power.
That's the stereotype. You literally just pulled the 40 Year Old Virgin "You're throwing a lot of words at me I don't understand, so I'mma take them as disrespect".
And you are helping how? Acting like a hostile asshole to the point where people completely shut you out from being a useful source of information?
The Left was able to attain power through salesmanship and manipulation. Convincing people of things regardless of truth by appealing to them and what they want to hear. And once they had enough power they could then simply bully and shout people down with "common consensus" and social pressures.
The Left spent decades building up that foundational power to act like they do, thinking you can just skip that and go right to "Everyone is stupid but me and if you disagree you are hilariously dumb" like they can shows a comical disconnect with reality.
You've committed the common mistake of faggotry, by assuming that because people don't like you and won't instantly dance to your tune, they must hate the information and idea itself.
Oh, finally found the post with your amazing credentials.
You touched one. Wow! So impressive! That totally absolves your belligerent assholery, O wise master.
Now, now, he is a proven technomancer, all he need is a touch and machine speaks to him. Now since that is all that is required. The machine spirit told me that he is is full of shit, all the aircraft's don't like him, haha
I have