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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Less Sunk Cost Fallacy and more we are straight up out of time to replace our old planes.
They're literally falling apart at the seams and we need a new craft yesterday.
Unfortunately the F-35 is utter shit and we have nothing else to replace it and no time to bring up a new design from scratch.
edited 13th Oct '15 11:43:53 AM by LeGarcon
Oh really when?Last I heard, the Eurofighter project was going much better. Let's buy it instead.
edited 13th Oct '15 11:46:23 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
The French are smug enough as it is,due to being right about Iraq, picking up all of our arms contracts, and just because their the French. Give them anymore reason to feel superior and they will burst like a smug French Ballon.
Edit: Oh and none of those fighters have stealth, which is the Air force's latest obsession.
edited 13th Oct '15 12:12:01 PM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom."Stealth' is a misnomer, but having a low radar cross section makes so many missions above enemy territory safer as you gotta screw up and get too close to radar towers to be targeted by homing missiles.
Punch a small hole in their network and you are free to pwn, without that you would have to take down all radar towers in a hundred miles. Ubisoft would hate you for it.
However from my understanding the F-35's 'stealth' is a kinda a fail too.
edited 13th Oct '15 12:29:44 PM by DrunkenNordmann
We learn from history that we do not learn from historyNeither is a fair proportion of the F-35.
Or the gun
it replaced?
I should have potholed Sarcasm Mode, but I thought I was being obvious.
Traditionally the US never really left the production of critical aircraft to foreign producers due to security reasons.
So unless it is a low priority aircraft like cargo ships and COIN aircraft, the US isn't going to rely on foreign units. It isn't a bad thing though.
For the F-35 the first iterations were doing poorly because they were prototypes, the current ones are doing as well as they should. It is administrative bickering that is delaying the project, including horsing around with making the software because the companies responsible were doing nothing until they were outright called out for being woefully behind schedule.
Even the F-16 had most of the criticism leveled against the F-35, sans the ridiculous procurement cost, specially needing to be flown by software control rather than the old analog controls.
Also a lot of reports over the F-35 poor performance were insanely overblown.
edited 13th Oct '15 12:44:50 PM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent legesFolks, I know that levity can help us cope with serious topics, but when taken too far it causes people to lose track of the topic being discussed. Thanks for your understanding.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"You can be conceived somewhere that you're not born.
Edit: Just saw the mod post, give me a sec.
Edit 2: So, to do as Fighter has instructed. The F-35, I believe one of the big boondoggle things has been argued to be the extent of stealth that has gone into it. So while some basic stealth might be a good idea, it's not worth shilling out to make everything fully stealth, just make a specific stealth plane and have that for stealth missions.
edited 13th Oct '15 1:36:05 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranStealth is a ridiculously important concern in fighter tech. Since guided missiles have become the dominant form of anti-air weaponry, and advanced to the point where they can reliably hit targets in any direction, in any weather, at extremely long ranges, the best defense against them is simply not being targeted in the first place. Stealth planes are not Invisibility Cloak level of "completely undetectable to sensors", but by reducing the radar and infrared cross-section, they become harder to spot, harder to identify, and harder to target. Given that combat aircraft are basically playing Rocket Tag, that's hugely important.
Stealth features are the primary reason why we need brand-new plane designs rather than updating existing designs with new technology. Stealth it's something that can be back-fitted into an older airframe. It needs to be a design consideration from the beginning. The shape of the fuselage, the materials used in construction, the placement of the engines, all of that goes into making a plane stealthy. You can't just add a "stealth coating" to an existing plane and call it a day.
edited 13th Oct '15 2:14:20 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

edited 13th Oct '15 11:08:32 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"