And this is why the RAF has retired the Harrier and is also buying F-35s (albeit a paltry 24 of them) – they only really care about air superiority. Despite the fact they have no one whatsoever to dogfight but plenty of troops to support.
If they care about air superiority, why not buy Eurofighters? I bet it handles that role as well as the F-35. What is going to be a tregedy is if these actually do end up in serious combat and they find out they made as big a mistake as not putting guns on the F-4.
Oh, this lets them say they have ground-support planes. But they don’t like actually supporting troops with planes or they’d have a hundred Harriers operational instead of the 3 F-35s out of 24 they are going to wind up with.
Cause they’re building big-deck carriers, and the Eurofighter isn’t a carrier plane
That would be the Fleet Air Arm and not the Royal Air Force, yes? Or just trying to ease logistics and maintenance?
Again, folks need to understand that the eurofighter is not a stealth aircraft. It loses any modern engagement.
Currently the only fighter it would theoretically lose to on that count would be the F-22. No one else has any operational stealth fighters.
First, things other than stealth fighters can shoot at non stealth fighters. Indeed, everything can shoot at non stealth fighters.
If the enemy force doesn’t have stealth fighters, then great, the f35 destroys them. If they do? Then it’s an even fight. And that’s the situation you need to consider.
I mean, the reality is, we already have non stealth fighters. Bunches of them. They’re the old aircraft being replaced.
It’d be absurd to replace them with more outdated aircraft. Because what happens when summertime deploys stealth fighters? You gonna just replace all the aircraft again, or cede control of the air? Because both those choices are terrible.
In case you didn’t notice, stealth aircraft can be shot down as well. It isn’t a panacea, ask the Serbs. Things have always been able to shoot at aircraft. Your assertion was that the Eurofighter loses any modern engagement, which is pure bullshit. It can outperform just about any aircraft out there.
It really doesn’t matter if the F-35 has stealth or not, can or can’t beat not-yet-existing Russian planes it will never fight against anyway, can fly in the rain or not, does or does not kill ejecting pilots or poison them slowly through the air supply, or even if it could carry a dozen GAU-8 gatling avenger cannons all at once. It’s too expensive by a factor of 10 and once you’ve bought the damn things they don’t stay functional for long enough to maintain a squadron without ridiculous replacement numbers. It’s just a big old failure which should have been jettisoned even before the first overruns because the original numbers were no good.
We’ve already talked about this point. The Serbs shot down one stealth aircraft, when normal mission planning practices were screwed up and an aircraft was flown on the same route as was previously used, allowing the Serbs to know ahead of time where it was going to be. And it was also extremely early stealth technology compared to what is used in aircraft like the f22 and f35.
It’s silly to think that it constitutes some argument against stealth technology.
No, it loses any modern engagement, because modern engagements will be against stealth aircraft. It will lose every real world engagement to an F35, because it will be destroyed before it can detect the F35.
It can compete against last generation aircraft. Of course, so can the f35, and the f35 will have a much lower attrition rate.
You don’t buy new aircraft to fight last generation’s battles.
If you don’t want to buy new fighters, that’s certainly a course of action that could make sense. But buying new aircraft like the eurofighter typhoon is nonsensical for the US military. It can’t even launch from a carrier, which is how the US deploys most of its aircraft. They could potentially just buy more super hornets.
But the thing is, stealth isn’t really an optional feature at this stage.
No one was talking about the US buying them. It was the RAF. And I’d really like to hear about the scernario where the Eurofighter has to engage the F-35. Please expand on that thought.
A against same generation fighters, the typhoon is fine. Although it doesn’t have the same advantage that a stealth aircraft would have. So while it can engage other old fighters, they can also engage it.
It probably won’t have to go to against F35’s, but you are essentially just hoping that no one you ever need to fight against makes a stealth fighter.
Oh, one point of clarification though, i had thought we were taking about the F35 for the US military. For the RAF, it’s certainly possible the typhoon could do what they need it to do, as their mission isn’t really the same scope as that of the US.
The Eurofighter discussion started when talking about the RAF buying 24 F-35s.
For me, I hope in the end the F-35 meets all of it objectives and is a smashing success, but to this point it has looked like a colossal fuck up and is a poster child for all that is wrong with defense procurement. And while the F-22 and the F-35 might be the bees knees, the cost is so high that the numbers that are and will be inventory I think will make it hard for the Air Force to meet all the missions set before it. For little low intensity conflicts it isn’t an issue, but stealth also isn’t really an issue in those conflicts. If we do find ourselves involved in a high intensity conflict in the future the low inventory could really bite us in the ass. I think it should have been possible to build a very capable aircraft at a much better value in both cases.
This is, without question, true.
I’m not arguing against how mismanaged its development has been, as that’s pretty much established fact.
I’m just pointing out that stealth technology is of critical importance in all modern aircraft engagements, as most combat is now taking place beyond visual range. It’s largely determined by who can detect the other guy first.
The biggest problem with the F35 at this point, and the reason it’s development costs have exploded, is because it’s mission has continued to grow, and it is being made into everything for everyone.
If successful, it likely will be an exceptional aircraft. But the development costs will have been extreme.
It’ll potentially be like the osprey, which had similar issues in its development, but which actually is now, finally, a successful aircraft.
Stealth is critical for a strike aircraft so it can avoid engagements. One could argue that when any strike aircraft has to, itself, fight its way to the target, it’s already a failed mission. It’ll have to jettison ordnance and fuel probably, won’t have time over target, etc. So whether a strike aircraft can actually fight interceptors is sort of moot. Multirole aircraft can do multiple things, but its best if they don’t try to do them all at once. That is, when configured for air to air, fight other planes. When configured for air to ground, hit ground targets. It’s generally a Bad Thing to mix those things together.
[quote=“TheWombat, post:216, topic:65082, full:true”]
Stealth is critical for a strike aircraft so it can avoid engagements. [/quote]
Avoid engagements with whom? All of our recent strike missions have against people with line of sight weapons. And our doctrine has been for decades to achieve total air superiority before doing anything else. When enemies who actually have SAM radar (few and far between these days) dare to turn it on they are destroyed without using strike aircraft to do it. Sure, there are wartime scenarios in which we might deploy close air support without that kind of domination of the skies, but these days I suppose they mostly involve some variety of World War III. Only the Russians have any reasonable prospect of coming up with enough planes and missiles to pose any kind of aerial threat, and if we have to use CAS against them we are already fighting our last war ever anyway.
I’d say the Chinese probably have a decent chance of developing the capability
[quote=“Miramon, post:217, topic:65082, full:true”]
I think you missed my point–engagements with other aircraft. Everything you say is true about ground attack missions. That’s the point I was trying to make–you don’t need stealth to do CAS.
Oh, okay. I don’t expect us to be fighting any aircraft whatsoever for the entire life of the F-35, but you have to have some kind of capability there. Seems to make more sense to continue F-22 development to escort dedicated attack aircraft that are cheap, heavy, and can do more damage with their payloads, but I guess the unit cost wasn’t high enough or something.