Call me a geek, but at the moment I think EMALS is a more worthwhile step (at the moment) than the UCAV itself. Bring back the A-4! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Hell yeah. Launch as many as you think you'll need and put 'em in a holding pattern (WWII-style cab-ranks?) seconds away on autopilot until they have a target and a human takes control.
Back to my point that they should have jsut stuck with existing plane models. Probably not long if computing power keeps it present exponential pace. Diagram it. Lets see what you mean. That a fallacious argument, for one you state that 1 out of 10 is a dud from the get go, certainly improved quality control could reduce that. Every two years computing power that we can cram into a space doubles I don't see why we can't make a smarter missile. So are you saying Su-27, F-15, F18, don't have hard points? :bugeye: Oh and how was it solved, with better missiles pray tell? And your just being insulting because you can't even make valid arguments anymore, I win. You ignored the "so claimed". Hey then by pure luck a Mig-31 could get passed a F-22. Incomparable as it was before the missile age. again incomparable because the missile technology was in its infancy then, more so in Vietnam they were under visible engagement rules! In the gulf war in comparison only 6% of air kills were with guns and then only one case was a F-15 the other 2 cases was A10s. Of the kills the majority was done with old sparrow missiles even. Hey the military doesn't, why should we? Its lead in military technology, not all technology. Effort to stay ahead by cutting those cutting edge programs? Yeah that makes sense! Maybe the US government is so manipulated by defense contractors it can't get its priorities straight.
And get walked all over... okay. Right. And bet peoples' lives that it'll happen. Hardly. Go learn something. I don't have a couple of hours to spare just for for your illumination. At what cost? Bearing in mind the QA practices we use anyway. Of course! A smarter missile can ignore the laws of physics. Why didn't I think of that. DO try to keep up. Su-27 has MORE hardpoints than F-18 or F-15. No it was solved because shooting down a satellite (i.e. a non-manoeuvring target) is a simple geometry. Wrong again. I'm making those remarks because YOU are failing to read and simply repeating things that have been shown to incorrect. I put it down you losing track rather than simple trolling. Then why do persist in bringing up MiG-25? Sure. What's it going to do then? Comparable because the point was about relative technology levels. And how many were fired? "Old Sparrow missiles"? Hardly. The ones in use were vastly updated late model variants -7M. And the targets were early-model aircraft. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Already addressed. I'm not going through it again. You mean the one you're complaining about them keeping? F-35? Yep. Try reading some background material. I'm done. The more you post the more you reveal you're unqualified to post.
This is exactly how I expect to see them enter service. Tactical Tomahawk is already used in such a manner. A UCAS could do the same thing, only better, and for a lot less money. Substituting one for the other should be a no-brainer. That wasn't an insult. You're dithering, interjecting, and in general behaving like a petulant, infantile sperglord who is so concerned with "winning" an Internet argument that it is preventing you from learning something about modern air power. (Which is something that you should pursue, elsewhere for now.)
By whom? Back to where we started. hypothetical lives in a hypothetical war. It took me 2 minutes to make the diagram, certianly you could spare the time, if not how am I to know your not simply bullshiting. Certainly less then the F-22 and F-35 programs! laws of physics you make vague and illogical references to and fail to explain how they actually would make missiles not work consistently. As yet I don't see what maneuvers a plane could take that would put and oncoming missile under such g loads you suggest. Certainly, but the F-22 has even fewer, try to think about what your saying your just re-affirming my argument again. oh so by drawing lines on a piece of paper you can knock a satellite out of the sky? Is that some kind of telekensis? Cause I thought you need some kind of interceptor warhead that has to be launch hundreds of miles up and to precisely get in the way of an oncoming satellite, silly me. The Mig-25 dogged F-15s, is there more I need to state there? The F-22 isn't going to do much better, both need to have missiles that are fast enough and can go high enough, Neither the F-15 or F-22 are fast enough or high enough flying to hit the Mig-25 any other way. Now if we can get missiles to do that, why not simply have upgrades of existing fighters with consistently better missiles and radar then the enemy, they would not need to be all around better then the enemy planes: simply they would need to be able to target the enemy first. No my point was about competent pilots, what ever your point was it was a red herring. Certainly they were not AMRAAM now where they? And at least 4 Mig-29 were taken down which were comparable for the time. Tell me what does the Su-27 have that would make it immune to missile attacks No you haven't, you have failed to explain how other countries are getting by with higher productively and higher standards of living without a vast military infrastructure to somehow support their industry. Actually I'm more inclined to keep the F-35 then the F-22. But ideally we would have been better off not having blown huge piles of money on either. So you failed to prove why we need this military infrastructure, failed to prove why we can't simply rely on upgrades of existing aircraft, and failed generally to back up your arguments with logic instead of insults, sound like your problem not mine.
Only if said first strike attacks were themselves conducted with ICBMs coming from another continent. Which isn't how any sane planner would do it - you maneuver some quiet submarines (or stealth bombers) as close as possible, and then hammer the enemy's arsenal, radars and air defenses with very little warning.
Does any country have that capacity? Good enough subs, stealth bombers, etc to launch such a sneak attack on the US? Perhaps someone was advertising such a capacity late last year when what seemed to be a missile was seen being launched off the coast of California? Regardless, don't we also have a significant second strike capacity due to nuclear weapons on subs that could still be launched even if an overwhelming first strike had managed to knock out all land based ICBM's?
The Russians still operate the exact same nuclear missile subs that the three-pronged arsenal was designed to respond to, in the first place. And China is certainly working on it. There are other countries with sufficient naval and air forces, but not enough nukes to carry out a first strike against an arsenal the size of the USA's. But the issue was building a first-strike capability for the USA. Yep, that's the other reason for building those subs and bombers (in addition to first-strike capability). The subs in particular are the ideal second-strike system - you keep them deployed in hidden places, so even if your country gets wiped out you can still fry your enemy's cities. Note that smaller countries like the UK and France maintain nuclear missile submarine forces for exactly this reason.
Talk to the pilots. They wanted the F-5, not the F-16. The F-16 handles like a pig when configured for anything other than a fighter role. When configured for CAS or bombing and locked by a missile the only option for the F-16 is to jettison its ordnance and flee. And go read the lawsuits against General Dynamics and the investigations by the DAF inspector general etc. Only the US has terrain guided missiles. Israel might have designed one since it stole US cruise missile designs, but hasn't actually tested one to my knowledge. So I type to fast. That's their reported top speed. They don't actually fly at that speed when cruising.
F-5 wasn't even considered when the LWF programme started. So? F-16 was originally designed as pure air-to-air. Then you're obviously getting confused as to what exactly was under discussion. False.
