And the Poles invested in F-16's.

/snicker

As a Marine who works in Aviation Maintenance, this doesn't really surprise me.

Keep an eye on our military aviation over the next 30-50 years. I think it is going to be very interesting. Some factors to keep in mind:
- Fleet Life Expectancy; a supersonic aircraft is under incredible stresses during flight, especially during ACM. As an airframe gets older, it becomes more and more expensive to keep it in the air, reference maintenance hours per flight hour.
- UAVs keep getting bigger and more capable, plus they keep trained pilots out of harm's way, so that super expensive education isn't risked.
- Weapons systems continue to get more and more complex and capable, thus decreasing the amount of pilot input during the actual delivery of ordnance, be it air-to-air or air-to-ground.
- No credible enemies with credible air forces on the horizon.

We'll always need the Marine on the ground with weapon in hand, and the same is true for owning the sky over the battlefield, but I suspect that we'll continue to trend towards UAVs, and I think we can expect the number of squadrons for every aircraft in the national inventory to continue to fall. This will be over the very long term of course, but with no one out there to really challenge us, I think this is a logical conclusion. Expect much mewing and crying to accompany this process, but as always, it's about the dollars.

As Marines, this will really bother us, because the primary reasons we have an air component is to either:
a. get Marines to the fight, or
b. provide CAS once they are in the fight.
I don't know about you, but if I was in the thick of it and need some CAS, I'd definitely want a pair of human eyes strapped to that bomb that was going to be dropped in a few seconds. I'd have to think that a pilot's SA (Situational Awareness) is greatly decreased when flying a UAV.

Keep an eye on this...

surfactant

Fisrt they design a combat plane by committee, then they name it after a big slow gigantic Russian submarine.

Brilliant.

Maybe they should just rename it the "Camel" and let the French modify it into Europe's first amphibious helicopter.

Have we ordered any of these abominations?

We need the next generation.

Was it this site that posted that the Chicoms and the Paks are selling modified F-16s?

We cannot allow them to become equal, much less beat us.

Mike M:
The unofficial truth: Typhoon is named after the WW2 British fighter (we didn't tell the Germans this - Brit joke.)

The French are not members of the Eurofighter consortium.

Though if you want to be picky there is a French link via EADS, which is in turn the result of the merger-and-float in 2000 of the Lagardère Group (i.e. Aerospatiale ) and DaimlerChrysler aerospace businesses. No practical significance, though.

The JSF will be the last manned fighter we (the US) buys, at least if the current pipeline is maintained.

Let's just hope they keep the A-10 around to keep you Jarheads happy. *grin*

I'm w/ Sandy P.

The Chinese are busily acquiring the Su-27 and further improved versions (Su-30?), along with new SAMs, destroyers, etc.

Given, as Rumsfeld said, you fight the war with the army (and air force) you've got, the question is, what kinds of forces will we have, in the event the balloon goes up over Taiwan?

As important, we've already had a "building holiday"---during the 1990s, we purchased relatively few new systems. Having reaped the peace dividend, it's time to go back to sowing....

I think we need the F-22 for many reasons, foremost among them homeland defense.

My understanding is that if we'd wanted to shoot down one of the planes on 9/11, we would have been unable to, because our F-16s couldn't intercept the planes in time. Because the F-22 has supercruise, it gives us the ability to more quickly intercept aircraft over the homeland.

Yes, it's true that they say that generals — in this case, armchair generals — are always ready to fight the last war. But I, for one, am all for doing whatever we can to ensure that another 9/11 is not merely unlikely, but actually impossible.

Jeff:

But, unless the F-22s are all deployed Stateside, and scattered across the country, the nation is likely to remain vulnerable to hijacked aircraft-turned-kamikazes.

Think about it: with the removal of the airborne alert aircraft over NYC and DC, any interceptor would have to get airborne first. If we consider where F-15s are based, and assume (not unreasonably) that F-22s will be based at similar locations, that means it'll still take a while for F-22s to get from, say, Langley AFB to Washington DC.

Far better to have better airport screening, more secure cockpit doors, more in-flight marshals, and, as a last-ditch, armed pilots, than to pin our hopes on being able to intercept an airliner....

My personal feeling on the UAV trend is that it'll work out about as well as the M-16 "upgrade" did for ground forces.

Pilots in jets can think and adapt a hell of a lot better in the air than they can sitting in front of a computer screen. UAV's have their place, such as recon and pop-the-weasel stealth missions, but replacing combat pilots is just silly.

It could come back to bite us, considering the military tradition of replacing proven weapon systems with the "new hotness", only to run back to the old stuff in storage when it hits the fan. See: A-10, M-14, etc, etc.

"Because the F-22 has supercruise, it gives us the ability to more quickly intercept aircraft over the homeland."

The F-22 doesn't fly faster than our current aircraft in absolute terms. It just doesn't need to kick in the afterburners to break the sound barrier. If its running flat out, like on an interception, it probably won't be moving faster than a typical F15/16.

Last I checked, supercruise just gives it better range, speed, and stealth characteristics when not afterburning.

Manned aircraft will disappear from frontline combat in the next fifteen years, if not sooner. Tactical lasers shoot down things that are smaller, faster, and hardier than any conceivable combat aircraft. Drones (you can call them UCAVs if you want to sound hep) will last a little longer, if only because they can turn harder, but lasers will eventually drive them away as well. Combat flight isn't over yet, but the writing is on the wall.

(The issue with the M16 was that it was designed for an atomic war in Western Europe, and suddenly it was being used in Southeast Asia. This problem extended to the entirety of the US Armed Forces in that time period.)

erp,
No we didn't order any of these things, although I can only speak for the Navy/Marine Corps team.

The Navy is currently fielding the F/A-18 E/F, and we are still waiting on the JSF. Ya know, first time I saw the E/F up close, I was astonished at how much bigger it is than it's older brothers (A/B, C/D). Damn thing is almost the size, just a guess, of an F-14.

As for anyone getting the jump on us, you have to keep in mind that when it comes to owning the air, ACM is practically useless. There is much less practical need for it than there used to be due to continually upgraded weapons systems. If a pig could fly and could handle the avionics and ordance loads required for today's weapons systems, then it would absolutely kick ass, tracking and firing on 15, 20, maybe even 25 air targets similtaneously from a longer standoff distance than our opponents have, possibly, with AWACS support, even from over the horizon. Point is, if the weps/avionics suite is next gen, the platform is almost a moot point.
Take the F-14. IIRC, it was originally designed as an air-to-air platform, but was such a pig in the air, that they made it strictly air-to-ground for a while, until the Phoenix system came out for it. You wanna have some laughs? Sit in on an ACM training mission debrief where 18s fought 14s. Trust me, you could fry an egg on the foreheads of the 14 drivers, because when it comes to dogfighting, the 14 sucks...BUT, it can carry a helluva lot more Schlitz than the 18, and can, at least it used to be able to, fire from a lot further away.

Doug,
You couldn't be more right. I still, to this day, have absolutely no idea why we (the Corps) never grabbed the A-10. Beautiful acft, hauls a shitload of hate and discontent, low tech, easy to fix, great pilot protection. Screw the Harrier, only reason it works is because the Brits HAD to MAKE it work, and we followed their lead on fixes. Besides, the Harrier's envelope is absurdly constraining. The 'Hog is a dream acft for CAS, and if we are smart we will continue to keep them around and make more. What was the kill-to-loss ratio for them during Gulf I..?

surfactant

Even though I work for LockheedMarting, I still don't totally understand why the F-22 is necessary with the F-35 (JSF) now in production? What is the benefit of the F-22 over the F-35? Anyone know?

(Also, Lockheed is planning on building/shipping F-35s for the next 25 years, so I don't expect manned fighters to disappear anytime soon.)

Also, I just wanted to point out that F-16s are STILL rolling off the factory floor. So just because you see 'F-16' doesn't mean you are talking about a 20 year old fighter. They have been continually upgraded and modified over the years.

there are 2 things here...

UCAVs are better at duration for the monitoring and disposal of air to ground targets (CIA kills using predators) as well as being superior dogfighting machines for air to air (where situational awareness isn't as important as out-turning, out-accelerating, out-lasting, and a superior weapons load.

manned aircraft look to be better at CAS as well as redundancy for EMP or other interference that drops our remote links to the UCAVs

It looks to my very armchair eyes that we need mass quantities of F-22 and JSF to keep the world (i.e. China) in line and to enable a strong and graceful transition to a mostly UCAV air force, rather than stretching our current gen of planes even more than they already have been. plus buy more BUFFs and A-10s

but then I've never believed that you can have too much defence spending, too many divisions, too much materiel, or too much of an advantage on the other guy.

In all reality, smug superior glances aside, the Eurofighter will no doubt turn out to be a fine multirole combat aircraft once the teething problems have been worked out. France's Rafale is a similar and also excellent aircraft. Both designs are probably at least as capable as our current crop of fighter bombers if not more so. I, for one, think the JSF and F-22 will return absolute air supremacy to our flying machines, but at what cost? I'm not sure its worth it. Our current crop of F-15/16 and 18's are more than able to hold their own against any likely threats. What potential enemy has enough Su-37s and a properly trained infrastructure to take us on?

If someone in the arms industry were smart, they'd buy cheap, superior Russian airframes and fit them with Western avionics and engines for a killer price/performance combination.

amy,
short answer to your question: politics, as I'm sure that many commenters here far smarter than I will attest.

Since we Marines are 'expeditionary' in nature, we need the STOVL (Short Take Off, yada, yada) capability via the JSF to run Ops out of EAFs (Expeditionary Airfields - see our current Harrier). The airforce doesn't need this, at least not yet. If it wasn't for this need, we'd probably be flying the F-22 also, but it would be an F/A variant. It's a hellacious platform from what I understand, although I've never gotten up close and personal to one.

Also, probably at some point in near future, the Raptor will need to be able to cross oceans to get to the fight, thus supercruise.

Another thing concerning the JSF: a short anecdote. I did the maiden cruise of the Truman a few years back with VMFA-312, The Fighting Checkerboards. Our Skipper was on the Cat and was getting his final checks from the ground maintainers just prior to coming under tension. One of the final checks is when one of the Navy deck handlers holds up what is essentially an odometer in a big yellow metal box, with a crank on one side to flip the numbers on the front. He gets what the pilot has already provided the tower with is the acfts weight through radio communication. The maintainer flips through the numbers until they match what he has been told by the tower, then holds it up for the pilot to say yea or nay to, and adjusts it according to the hands signals given by the pilot. Well, there was a bit of confusion and they shot him off the pointy end at a terminal speed that wasn't quite what he needed. Imagine everyone's surprise when, upon leaving the deck, the acft actually disappeared BELOW the deck. Just like that, it sank below our sight line and was gone. After about 3-5 seconds, it reappears out in front, literally wiggling as it clawed and scratched it's way up for altitude. Skipper comes back to Maintenance and he's a little red-faced about it. One thing he says to me has stuck ever since: "AIN'T NO WAY I WOULD EVER FLY A SINGLE ENGINED ACFT OF AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER." From what I understand, the Navy/Marine Corps variant of the JSF is just that: single engined. To top it off, it's a Rolls-Royce engine, the same company that made the engine for the Harrier, the entire fleet of which the Corps has had to ground, for months at a time, due to serious engine problems. Problems which have killed many Marines, both US and Royal(UK)...well Royal Navy fliers anyway. If I'm wrong on any of the above concerning the Rolls engine procurement for the JSF, please correct me.

The laser post was interesting. Wouldn't that be a micro version of the Missle Defense Shield?

surfactant

Lasers are great anti-aircradt weapons, so long as the weather is cooperating. Fog, rain, and especially dust storms and snow will ruin a laser AAA unit's day. As for why we need the F-22 & F-35 when the current crop of jets are the best available? These things won't fly forever, nor will they always be top of the heap. Japan made this mistake by hanging on to the A6M "Zero" for too long in WWII. As for drones, besides the situational awareness issue (And SA doesn't matter in ACM? What have you been smoking?), what happens if your telemetry link gets jammed? What happens if the other side manages to hack it?

I hear this company - "Cyberdyne Systems" or somesuch - has this cool new AI chip that can fly a UAV as well as or better than a human. I also hear they're working on some sort of kick-butt missle-defense shield technology or similar for the U.S. Military.

I just want to reiterate my original point.

If we keep the edge in weps and avionics, it doesn't matter how fast, how cool, how snazzy the enemy platform is, or ours for that matter. It makes not a bit of difference if it can complete a barrel roll in under two seconds. The days of ACM as we knew it during The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot are long gone, and ending soon as well are the days of Mav, MotherGoose and TopGun.

I tell you what, you fly your squadron of hyper-sonic, mach 1.6+, racing stripe accented, nitrous blower havin', super fighters that have an effective air-to-air range weps system of 35 miles, and I'll fly my Stealth Boeing 737 with a weps suite that has an effective range of 150 miles, with a few F-14s flying high CAP over me and an AWACS and one Prowler. You can turn-n-burn, yank-n-bank and punch all the holes in the sky you wish. Even if one or two out a squadron of 12 get through the veritable wall of Fox-2s I put up, which is a helluva feat by itself considering the 14s weps systems & the jamming capability of the Prowler, I will have utterly destroyed your entire air force long before you even make a dent in mine. And your price tag will be ASTRONOMICAL.

Will we still need aircraft capable of hi-octane ACM? Debatable. Probably, even if only to have for any 'just in case we need speed' situations. But produced only in small numbers, they will be prohibitively expensive, both to produce, and to risk in romantic, Red Barron-esque, ACM situations.

Much as I hate to say it, because dammit, I LIKED TopGun, technology is almost totally negating this aspect of warfare. Why do you think we employ our tactical acft the way we do now? Too expensive to risk. When was the last time ANY US pilot had to engage a hostile in the short hairs? Decades ago. Vietnam, which was the tail end of aerial combat eye to eye with your 20 mike-mike.

Do you know how much 20mm rounds weigh? The F-A-18, with a full nose of them, at the sustained rate goes through them faster than your can gasp "Holy S*#t..." It's simply not sustainable.

It's a damn shame, but that's the way it's going. As long as we maintain superiority in those two areas, weps and avi, any US pilot could fly a wet paper bag and kill the enemy in wholesale fashion.

surfactant

surfactant:

Couple of problems w/ your scenario:

1. What is the availability of your F-14s? IIRC, their down-time is a sight to behold. Suggesting that, in order to keep your 3-4 F-14s flying topcover, you may have had to purchase a lot more just to have that many available.

2. Once upon a time in the Dark Ages, both the Air Force and the Navy concluded that air-to-air missiles were going to make ACM obsolete. So, F-4s were purchased without guns, b/c Sidewinders and Sparrows would solve the problem.

Except, of course, they didn't. As we found out in the skies over Vietnam.

Does this mean that larger, more expensive aircraft will necessarily be the answer? Of course not---but neither am I prepared to accept the latest gee-whiz tech solution as obviously correct, either.

The production of this thing has got to be a riot. The engines, cockpit section and vertical stabilizer are made in the UK, the center section in Germany, the left wing and aft fuselage in Italy, and the right wing in Spain. Final assembly in UK and Germany.

I'm amazed that they get into the air at all.

surfactant,
Yes, the F-35 is a single-engine aircraft. And I believe you are correct about having the same basis as the Harrier, but I am reasonably certain that they started with the harrier design and completely rebuilt it for the F-35. (Not that it means the F-35 won't have some horrible maintanance problems - you should see the people who build these things! hahahahahaha)

The JSF has a much different engine design than the Harrier IIRC. This is why it has the forward ducted fan instead of the more awkward forward thrust vectoring layout of the Harrier.

The idea that we can magically go to missiles is crap. We did that once and ended up putting the 20mm back on the Phantom. While we can engage out of visual range, wartime experience says that it is incredibly stupid. The need to visually acquire and verify a target means that it is not as simple as launching a pheonix from 25 miles out. You can't just build a big missile sled and do the same job. You end up with "Oops was that an airliner/my wingman?"

Have to weigh in on some of these topics: All this talk of shooting down an airliner, first you would have to have planes fueled, loaded with missiles and turning at the end of a runway to have any chance to launch and intercept. Then what? Would it have been better to splash an airliner all over Manhattan or the Crystal City complex? How many dead then? Protect the Captital yes but just shoot it down, got to make some tough decisions. The JSF will be a good platform but do Marines need a stealth jet? I think they (the bad guys) know we are coming or are there already. You don't need stealth for a CAS mission, you need a plane with range and that can carry a s***load of ordnance ~ something like the old A-6 but with new avionics and engines. Marines do need a plane that can land and takeoff the Amphibs so maybe a mix would be better. By the way the AirForce wants to buy some of the STOVL JSFs, hard to get into the fight when your top tier plane (F-22) needs a pristine runway and facilities. Finally the JSF engine is a Pratt & Whitney and is nothing like the Rolls engine in the Harrier.

As I understand it (and I've been out of the loop awhile), we could have theoretically ripped out all the F-15 avionics/weapons systems and given them something comparable to what the F-22 will have. However, the resulting "Super-Eagle" would not only have lower performance than the Raptor, it would also have no stealth capability.

The F-22's stealth capability (paticularly in the front aspect) will be a major contributor to it's superiority over opposing fighters in the air-to-air mission. If the other guy can't even see you before you've fired your missile, guess who wins?

As for the F-35, my friends who are sill "in the loop" are very excited about it, but they say they'd still rather have the F-22 for the air-to-air mission.

Manned aircraft will disappear from frontline combat in the next fifteen years, if not sooner. Tactical lasers shoot down things that are smaller, faster, and hardier than any conceivable combat aircraft. Drones (you can call them UCAVs if you want to sound hep) will last a little longer, if only because they can turn harder, but lasers will eventually drive them away as well. Combat flight isn't over yet, but the writing is on the wall.

Yeah, lasers are gonna be very sweet... if the targeting system hooked up to it can get the beam to connect to the target. That's iffy, and the power consumption of laser systems basically means that they're either going to be ground-based, or mounted in something the size of a 747.

Stealth tech allows an aircraft to get closer without being detected, and there are real advantages in having a human riding along to make the final 'go/no go' decision. For those reasons, I don't think manned combat aircraft are going to go away entirely. Their role will change, yes, but they'll still be around in some form or another, even if the UCAVs are doing the really dangerous stuff.

ps: concur the A-10 is pretty much made to USMC specs, why in hell don't you guys grab 'em? Heaven knows the USAF doesn't want 'em on account of not having enough bells & whistles.

pps: re the "missiles can do it all, everything else is obsolete"- we've heard this before. It didn't work out that way. 'nuff said.

"ACM is practically useless." (cackle) Man, there are some people to whom history is utterly pointless.

in re the Chinese: don't forget their J-10.

in re A-10: the 'C' variant is now in flight test.

The plane we really need to replace is the B-52. It boggles the mind why nobody's figured out a way to load lots and lots of bombs into a 747, for example.

I read that in the after-action reports from the first Gulf War, B-52 attacks were rated the most demoralizing event by Iraqi prisoners. Sooner or later, the B-52 will be gone, and we'll miss having that capability.