The sky-high aircraft and aviation thread

IIRC it was the people responsible for the oxygen supply fucking up the batches instead of a F-22 and F-35 specific problem.

Yeah, there were A-10 pilots affected for a while too.

There's something specific wrong with the 22 and the 35. Maybe they're cursed

Almost every aircraft type we fly has had some issues with their OBOGS. That thing just doesn’t seem to work right. Given that the issues are spread across several different models of OBOGS I’m guessing it’s an issue with some common valve or something.

“Raptor cough” is a slightly different issue and isn’t caused by the OBOGS failing but rather the strain put on the body flying the aircraft while breathing through the OBOGS.

As far as the F-35, people just like to hate on it. It’s an easy target that fits their preconceived notions about the military and defense industry. The hate has died down as everyone’s slowly realized the thing actually works.

The “low manuverability” complaints are all due to older software blocks having hard caps on max G and Ao A. The software blocks with full control authority have no manuverability issues. As far as issues with the targeting system, EOTS seems to work fine and there haven’t been any real issues with the radar set.

Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 10th 2018 at 4:58:42 AM

The OBOGS issues are also fairly recent and like noted spread across a number of aircraft with no prior histories of these issues. Raptor cough is in part due to how the craft is operated. It had something to do with oxygen intake at altitude and various air pressures. Seriously though, they could just use a damn pressure suit. It would not be the first high-performance aircraft that needed one.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Aug 10th 2018 at 6:56:25 AM

Thanks to my surprisingly large family, I have a cousin that did a join training exercise with the US and Canadian Air Forces with the Brazilian Air Force.

She pretty much felt in love with the F-35 specially the EOTS suite, to the point she now completely thinks that there is no way people can get collateral damage unintentionally or without being unaware of it, because last time she few it, she spotted a Polar Bear with the helmet and her wing man told her to stop looking at the bear. Why? She got an automatic weapon lock on the bear.

I also find amusing how the people like to shit on the F-35 when the F-4 Phantom and the F-16 went through the same kind of shit and I am not even going to mention how the F-14 had a massive development clusterfuck, that is before the remaining of them were shipped off to Iran.

That implies I like the F-4 either, "Its living proof that if you give it enough thrust even a brick will fly" is not a compliment, and for that matter the F-14 is a living endorsement of KISS.

Nope, that was part of it yes, but the main problem is that it is a fat body heavy aircraft with short stumpy wings.... which is pretty good for going fast, but it makes it turn like ass... See the F-4 it has the same problem with the bodyshape. No mater what you attempt, you cant make something like that turn good.

It doesn't have a pressure suit?

Edited by Imca on Aug 10th 2018 at 12:58:26 PM

Immy: As far as I know they don't have enclosed pressure suits like the SR-71 and U-2 pilots did. The SR-71 pilots needed it to cope with the pressures at altitude which is where most of the problems for the Raptors occur.

Uhh...wrong. And surprisingly the F-35 actually has larger and wider wings than the F-16, which I’m assuming you’re using as the benchmark here.

You can’t really compare the aerodynamics of the F-4 and the F-35 at all, they’re designed decades apart to begin with and are just in general vastly different aircraft.

F-35 pilots have nothing but good things to say about the manuverability of the F-35 these days, particularly its controllability at high Ao A’s and turning profile. It’s proven more than capable of maneuvering on par with the rest of our inventory.

What I always wonder about F-35 hate is that there are all kinds of things you could actually call the jet out on, and yet people who call it out use the same tired stuff every time.

Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 10th 2018 at 5:03:01 AM

The A and B variants both have wing areas greater than any of the fielded F-16 variants. The only craft that we still fly that has more actual wing area than the C variant is the F-22 which has a greater wing area than any active inventory fighter craft hands down. Hell, the F-22 has a larger wing area than nearly every variation of fighter we have flown in the past as well.

The biggest problem that people seem to have with the F-35 is that it is not in fact an A-10 Warthog.

B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-but muh BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT

I don't know about you but I'd rather have a three meter wide trench carved in the landscape through a swath of enemies from BRRRRRRRT than a single uber-precise JDAM dropped on one tank or machine gun.

F-35 can't do the former, only the latter and only if they've been keeping up on their updates.

I'd rather have the JDAM.

Cause you know, it isn't the planes carrying primarily PG Ms that are the champions on the blue-on-blue score and collateral damage.

Edited by AngelusNox on Aug 11th 2018 at 2:07:31 PM

Yeah, I don't really care how they kill the bad guys if I need support. It could be a Cessna lobbing off Hellfires and it'll make the same difference as long as it works.

I would rather see us start to use the lighter and smaller PGM's for CAS like the laser guided rockets, mini-bombs, and smaller scale missiles.

Also, a 30mm cannon doesn’t carve a “three meter wide trench” in anything, really.

Most Warthogs fly with their gun either mostly or completely empty to decrease takeoff weight.

Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 12th 2018 at 6:19:20 AM

Another point in favor of the A-10. It could carry a LOT more of those than an F-35 ever could.

Or we could replace the A-10 with a prop-driven platform and get more or less the same capability for less.

Actually that’s not quite true either. An A-10 can carry 16,000 lbs of munitions. The lightest-capacity F-35 variant carries the same amount, and the heaviest one can carry up to 18,000 lbs. The Air Force already stocks compatible pylon adapters to make up for the difference in pylon count.

And before you say “well those numbers are for the F-35 with external weapons carriage, it’s not stealthy like that” keep in mind that we’re comparing it to the A-10 here which is about as stealthy as a widebody airliner.

The issue is how expensive the F-35 is for those kinds of missions, but the obvious solution as already pointed out is to invest in light attack aircraft, which the Air Force is currently doing.

Assuming all we ever fight again are brain-dead hajis and ill-equipped Russian mercenaries yes. Given recent geopolitical issues, that seems unlikely.

Otherwise the Super Tucano, OV-10 Bronco type aircraft is too vulnerable to Anti-Air. Not saying the A-10 isn't, but it has a better track record than such planes against smallbore triple-A.

The A-10 is insanely vulnerable against peer-state AA. In fact, a peer-state conflict is th one conflict you’d actually want stealth jets to be doing CAS in.

A-10s wouldn’t see action in a peer-state conflict until the literal last days of the war, and probably not even then.

Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 12th 2018 at 2:56:56 AM

You remember Kim Campbell? The Air Force captain who made the news for bringing back a sizable portion of her Warthog after the rest of it got shot off over Baghdad? That wasn't newsworthy because Warthogs normally shrug off that kind of damage, it was newsworthy because they normally don't.

Incidentally, I got to meet her a year or two back. She was a Colonel at the time, and her story of the incident is pretty funny in that "Lemme tell you about the time I should have died but somehow didn't." sense.

Friendly reminder that Warthogs aren't designed to deal with Anti-Air. That's what Wild Weasel platforms like F-16CJs are for. Get in there fast, swat the bad guys, and hopefully get the hell out before they tag you. At the very least draw fire from ground attack platforms.

Edited by AFP on Aug 12th 2018 at 4:48:56 AM

The A-10 could barely survive the generation of AAA it was born in, let alone the 30mm setup thats on a Tunguska.

Anti-air has outstripped the capabilities of aircraft armor pretty much since the invention of anti-air. You simply can’t put enough armor on an aircraft for it to be effective.

On the flipside, if you argue that turboprop COIN type aircraft are better because they are cheap then you might as well go drones. There's nothing cheaper than Reaper. Especially factoring in the cost of human loss.

The same could be said of any aircraft. If technology is in such a state that air-to-air dogfighting is truly obsolete, that traditional close air support requires standoff weapons from many kilometers away, then we have no need for manned combat aircraft at all. Drones will be cheaper, carry the same loads and do the same missions every bit as good as human pilots ever will. And drones don't whine or bitch or get huge ass egos.