Weird planes
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not-bono-ever
meh
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
General Electric have their own 747 for testing new engines, this badboy will go on the 777x...
Won't it just fly in circles?
I see the front wheels are turned to compensate
I see the front wheels are turned to compensate
New to them, and they've probably upgrade the systems with Chinese stuff. Regardless of the pinched design, I love the lines of the thing - have done since I first saw one at an airshow years ago.
They claim 90 miles per gallon per passenger, less than you'd use in a car doing the same distance.
Potentially unmanned and swarm technology - Time will tell if it's a Harrier or an F35
DownwardDog
Riding a Brompton with a power meter.
Harrier: Experimental aircraft that accidentally became an successful operational one after everything else was cancelled.
F-35: Massive commercial success. 355 built out of 3,500 planned by 12 (or 13 or 14 depending on Canada and Singapore) countries.
Tempest will be neither of those things.
DownwardDog
Riding a Brompton with a power meter.
It's not new to them. Iran has had F-5B/F-5F since the mid 70s and have been gradually destroying them by remanufacturing them into less useful local variations ever since.
Home grown new to them. I know they bought a load from America and those are all about buggered by now, but these are a new trick, even if they are a stolen one. I'd love to know how the spec compares to the original and what they've done with the electronics.
Harrier - massively successful and sold to the States - not something that happens often
F35 - Full of bugs (maybe not too shocking as it's so new, but it's bloody expensive)
Prophetic or embarrassing words?
DownwardDog
Riding a Brompton with a power meter.
The Harrier wasn't "sold to" the US in the normal sense. They paid for most of its development and, from the beginning, it was a shared project between the UK, US and West Germany (who bailed on it). All of the US Harriers (bar the first two I think) were built in the US.
The US saved the platform from obsolescence by getting McDonnell-Douglas to design a new supercritical composite wing to replace the original that was famously "drawn not designed" by Hawker. This gave us the AV-8B, GR5/7/9 Harriers which were the best of the breed.
F-35A LRIP 10 cost is $89m. So it's "bloody expensive" compared to what?
Chz
Stark Raving Sane
It's true - both the production costs and running costs of an F-35 have dropped below that of a Typhoon. It's probably as least as capable as the EuroFighter in an AA role, and quite a lot better than it in strike. Yes, it's been a massive black hole of a project, but the money sunk into it was to ensure that it ended up this way. It's still a few years from its goal of being cheap enough to derail F-16 sales, but I reckon it will get there.
DownwardDog
Riding a Brompton with a power meter.
The F-35 cost was never close to the Typhoon. The UK tax payer has lashed out 40bn quid for 160 Typhoons but they've already scrapped 16 leaving 144. Don't do the maths, it's too upsetting.
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
the overwhelming majority of that £40bn has been in development costs, and it costs what it costs to develop it, it doesn't matter whether, or how many anyone buys it - unit costs are, at least in part, heavily influenced by how many are produced, and Typhoon was unlucky in its birth co-inciding with the 1990's. defence budgets went into freefall, and the perceived need for a very capable fighter/interceptor (that was always planned to be a capable strike aircraft) fell into the black hole into which the USSR fell.
there's always an intelligent argument to be made that we would have been better off buying US - F-15's were available from the late 1970's, and no one would argue with a straight face that the UK's Lightning/F-4/Tornado F2/3 Air Defence force provided better, or even approaching equal capability to that which the F-15's could produce. whether the UK's involvement with Tornado would have continued - probably, because the F-111 was still shit at the time, and the only other option was to continue with the F-4 Phantom - is debatable, but with the introduction of the F-15E in the early 1990's, its probable that the Tornado GR1 would have been scrapped to pave the way from an F-15C fighter force and an F-15E strike force. the savings would have been significant, and the F-15's have a huge advantage over the Tornados in that either variant can, to some extent, undertake the role of the other. its even possible that a brave government would have gone for an all F-15E force, and just stripped off the externals from some of them to provide the fighters...
the downsides of course are there for all to see - a petulant US president who can stall or cancel any defence sale he doesn't like based on a twitter spat...
there's always an intelligent argument to be made that we would have been better off buying US - F-15's were available from the late 1970's, and no one would argue with a straight face that the UK's Lightning/F-4/Tornado F2/3 Air Defence force provided better, or even approaching equal capability to that which the F-15's could produce. whether the UK's involvement with Tornado would have continued - probably, because the F-111 was still shit at the time, and the only other option was to continue with the F-4 Phantom - is debatable, but with the introduction of the F-15E in the early 1990's, its probable that the Tornado GR1 would have been scrapped to pave the way from an F-15C fighter force and an F-15E strike force. the savings would have been significant, and the F-15's have a huge advantage over the Tornados in that either variant can, to some extent, undertake the role of the other. its even possible that a brave government would have gone for an all F-15E force, and just stripped off the externals from some of them to provide the fighters...
the downsides of course are there for all to see - a petulant US president who can stall or cancel any defence sale he doesn't like based on a twitter spat...
DownwardDog
Riding a Brompton with a power meter.
If the UK's combat aircraft procurement strategy were to provide the most capability for the least money you'd end up with a 100% F-15E fast jet fleet. It's already a great A2A platform straight off the showroom floor as it has AESA radar with the digital APG-79 backend processor from the Super Hornet - this is a whole generation beyond the mechanically scanned radar in the Typhoon. The only cost disadvantage compared to Typhoon is that you've got to crew it at 2:1 and keep a WSO track open but it would still be a small fraction of the cost. A2A squadrons would just put a junior pilot in the back seat as the French do in the Rafale-B.
The South Korean "Slam Eagle" spec. would do nicely...
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
I wouldn't call this weird, but we do not have a thread for modern military aviation news so i guess this is the best home for it.
Russia has recently had the first flight of its new unarmed combat drone. Nothing unconventional about that. But if some reports are to believed, this UCAV might have been conceived as flying companion to the SU-57 stealth fighter. A kind of K-9 unit for fighter pilots to assist in combat missions. If if true, it'd be cool as fuck, as well as quite innovative (I am not aware of similar projects in existence or development).
Russia's new stealthy 'Hunter' drone just took flight for the first time with the country's most advanced fighter
Russia has recently had the first flight of its new unarmed combat drone. Nothing unconventional about that. But if some reports are to believed, this UCAV might have been conceived as flying companion to the SU-57 stealth fighter. A kind of K-9 unit for fighter pilots to assist in combat missions. If if true, it'd be cool as fuck, as well as quite innovative (I am not aware of similar projects in existence or development).
Russia's new stealthy 'Hunter' drone just took flight for the first time with the country's most advanced fighter
Free cataract surgery for millions?
1927
Funnier than he thinks he is.
Hardly.
Dogsauce
I’ve got Skol but I’m not a Scholar
Of what use is an unarmed combat drone though, how does it engage in combat without weaponry? Does it ram stuff or act as a shield?
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
The article lays out what the Russians claim it does - it flies well ahead/off to the side of the manned fighters, uses radar (which gives away it's position), transmits the data to the manned fighters, which fire their missiles at targets illuminated by the UCAV's without using their own radars and giving themselves away, as well as being an unpleasant surprise for the illuminated targets.
Western fighters already do it, and the wingman drone idea isn't new, or an unexplored concept in the west...
You could use the wingmen drones to provide jamming support, or targeting, or SEAD - it's a clever idea, because however expensive a drone is, it's not going to be as expensive as a fighter+crew, and the infrastructure ready to rescue them if they get into trouble.
DownwardDog
Riding a Brompton with a power meter.
Boeing have been working on the concept with the XQ-58A Valkyrie and the 'Loyal Wingman' program with the RAAF.
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
Along similar - ish - lines is the recent announcement of an MOD contract with MBDA to produce a 'stand in jammer' variant of MBDA's SPEAR CAP 3 missile - instead of a warhead, the EW variant will carry a jammer (or, in the future, possibly a radar linked to the F-35 that fired it...). It's a single shot job, rather than a reusable UAV, but it shows the direction of travel of the manned/unmanned mix.
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
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