
!!!
So far the B fleet is unable to meet its target of flying for 12 hours or more between critical failures.
The target (That it cant meet) is the equivalent to ~10 sorties please tell me this is not normal for a combat jet!
British F-35Bs deploying to the South China Sea next year may not meet key reliability metrics set by an American government watchdog, its annual report has revealed. The US Department of Defense's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOTE) warned that the multinational F-35B fighter jet fleet is lagging behind a key …
Sopwith Camel could do this as well...
Here in Finland the Ministry of Defence is pondering replacements for the ageing F/A-18 Hornets. They're testing Rafale, EF, Super Hornet, Saab Gripen and of course, F-35A. I'm pretty sure the powers that be have already selected F-35 but they're just putting on this charade to explaing why we bought the most expensive craft available.
The fighter just needs to be good enough to deter Russia anyone from attacking, nothing more.
Well, assuming you mean the Dassault Rafale, it could reasonably be argued that we did.
The original Eurofighter program include France as well as the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy.
France wasn't happy with aspects of the program (not least of which being that they were not program leads, if most reports are to be believed), so left and developed the Rafale.
So the project that came out with the Rafale started off as the same project as that which came up with Typhoon (Eurofighter), and the UK stuck with it (and now operates Typhoon).
And Typhoon is really rather good.
Dassaut were producing "delta wing" fighter jets since a long time. The company building Typhoon was created from scratch. Typhoon and Rafale have a similar "delta canard" design. Which final design is probably the best?
Have you noticed any design faults on the Typhoon?
First the canards are so far forward that the pilot's view of the ground is blocked. OK for air-to-air, which was the Typhoon's original target.
Then the wheels fold up laterally into the wings, making it more difficult to put extra tanks and heavy weapons close to the centerline - on the Typhoon they're all mounted wayyy forward. The wheels on the Rafale fold up longitudinally.
The great one is how the Typhoon sales people have always criticized the Rafale for being designed to do everything from the beginning, whereas the Typhoon was specialized for air-to-air. But now they've stopped saying that because they're trying to compete as a multirole fighter
Nope, I've not noticed any design faults on Typhoon.
There are design compromises, but they are not the same thing. One you missed by the way is that the Tornado RAPTOR reconnaissance pod apparently doesn't fit, so Typhoon could not seamlessly take over the recce role from Tornado.
Typhoon was designed to be exceptionally agile, and particularly effective in the air to air role (both within visual range and beyond visual range), but was always intended to have a full air to ground capability: In the RAFs case, the priority was to get a replacement for the Phantoms and Tornado F3s in the air to air role, both of which were considered to be inadequate in the 1980s. However, Typhoon was also designed to replace the Jaguar (finally retired from the RAF in 2007, and that was due to budget cuts, not because it was considered to be obsolete and no longer fit for service).
With Rafale, the French has specific requirements including that it should be carrier capable. That design requirement meant that it too had design compromises. The UK, Germany, Italy and Spain were not interested in carrier capability (perhaps with hindsight an error on the UK's part, although the FAA seem very convinced that they want VSTOL on the carriers, not Cat-launcher aircraft). The French also had requirements for the weapons fit on the Rafale (including that it could deploy their air-launcher nuclear weapons -more design compromises.
The Rafale is a very good aeroplane. I would certainly rate it as far better than the F/A 18. Had the UK chosen to go with conventional take off carrier aircraft, Rafale would have been a good choice.
But for what the RAF wanted and are using the Typhoon for, the Typhoon is better - for the really quite straightforward reason that the Typhoon was designed to do what the RAF wanted, and Rafale was designed to do what the French navy and airforce wanted.
The F22 / F35 pairing is often compared to the F15/F16 pairing, though I think both the F15 and F16 started off as dedicated interceptors, with the air to ground capability added, whereas, while the F22 was also supposed to be air-to-air only, the F35 was always intended to be dual role (air-to-air and air-to-ground). As such, I believe it was supposed to be less capable in air-to-air than the F22, but also to be cheaper, since it was anticipated to be the new F16 'NATO-standard' fighter.
Plus, the Americans refused to export the F22 to anyone.
Of course, the F22 super fighter that was designed to be solely an interceptor has since been modified to drop bombs, because clearly, erm, something.
After all, the USAF doesn't have enough F15s and F16s to drop bombs on AK-toting insurgents riding around in Toyotas.
That is almost entirely normal for modern combat aircraft. You've got lots of cutting edge systems that are essentially artisan due to the quantities produced. If you think that's bad jets in the 50s/60s such as the Supermarine Scimitar allegedly* needed 1000 man hours of maintenance per flying hour.
*I've read this a lot but I have yet to find a definitive reference. Even so they needed a lot of work to keep them flying.
I've seen numbers of the English Electric Lightning putting it at over 100hrs of maintenance for one hour of flight (for example, the tires had to be replaced after ten landings, often less).
Aircraft have got more complex over the years, because they are more capable*. More complexity means more hours of maintenance.
*(eg, the F-35B can carry about three times the bomb load of a B-17, and drop it about 100 times more accurately).
To be fair the Lightning (me262) wasn't intended to last that long
One last ditch mission to try and take out a few of the Russian (Allied) bombers before they dropped their bombs on Blighty(Fatherland)
The F35 is never going to go into combat against any modern airforce, it's far to expensive to risk, its job is to fly around for 20-30 years generating support contracts
“expensive to risk, its job is to fly around for 20-30 years generating support contracts“
I’m afraid you’re right. Buy hey, if everybody had them, it would end all wars. “F-35 - Good for peace, good for GNP!” (from L-M marketing slides).
Bad jokes aside, superior* weapons are always bad for peace. ~Zero risk to take out inferior enemy troops, guess what does to the threshold to initiate a war?
*When latest Service Pack has been installed and license keys have been paid for.
get weapons that are too valuable to risk
Which is exactly what happened in the Dreadnaught era - which is why there was only one (inconclusive) naval battle during WW1 since the ships were simply too expensive to risk.
And people wonder why repeat our mistakes - because those in power refuse to learn from history.
The F-35 was designed to transfer money from the US (and foreign) governments to Lockheed Martin and it is doing that very well.
The secondary task - being a viable military aircraft - is rather harder especially as it is crippled by stealth technology which several Russian radar systems can circumvent. That's not going to stop the really important payment of bonuses to the LM execs. Tough on the aircrew and those they support.
The stealth technology is BS. 1/4 wavelength means any UHF radar will see it easy. So the only stealth is angled panels that reflect radar, as long as the frequency is not too low. The Russians do have sets that operate over a wide range, as do the Chinese. Think SS400. Plus if their 5G gets in, there will be an app to detect aircraft - if its not raining.
The Americans assume a saturation cruise missile strike will defang such nasty missile sites so it is safe for the F35 to fly in. Oh wait, the Israelis had some faster jets shot down or shredded, so old assumptions are very suspect. After 2-10 minutes on afterburners, mission survival for the F35 with bays open to vent heat, will be hot targets indeed.
In the mid-90s, I used to play a combat flight sim called "US Navy Fighters". You had a selection of the US Navy's contemporary carrier-capable combat aircraft available for each mission. After every mission, you had an allocation of man-hours that you could use to repair or maintain your fleet. Obviously, taking damage during combat quickly put you behind the eight ball maintenance-wise, which is how the game placed an emphasis on Not Getting Hit!
Fortunately, there was also an unlimited number of A-7s available to you as a fallback, for when your F-14s, F/A-18s etc. were all too worn out or damaged to fly. They were the equivalent of the forfeit car in a Top Gear challenge, but at least you could "expend" them with impunity.
So what the RN needs is an unlimited supply of A-7s.
If you think that's bad jets in the 50s/60s such as...
Please do note, that was 5x - 70 years ago.
As in, I was born in 1961, I don't need maintenance after 12 hours of work. Oddly, neither did the B-52 or F-105, both of which are 1950's aircraft. Nor did the F-16, FA-18, F-15 and oddly, the F-22.
All of those aircraft (indeed, all aircraft) require maintenance after flight, even if it's just a quick checkup.
Numbers on military aircraft are hard to find, but for the B-52 I found a source from 1957 saying that after 25 flight hours (or three flights), it requires a post-flight check, which takes 12-15 man-hours, not including the pre-flight checkup. I suspect BUFFs take a bit more looking after these days now that they're all fifty years old or more.
Maybe the Chinese can sell you folks an aircraft carrier. If they can conjure up a hospital in ten days, slapping together a warship in six months or so should be no big problem. Or maybe HMAS Melbourne is still around stashed in some obscure inlet disguised as a shrimp farm. It had an excellent record for sinking destroyers. True, they were friendly destroyers, but that's more sinkings than most modern aircraft carriers can claim.
> HMAS Melbourne[...] had an excellent record for sinking destroyers.
Indeed, that thing was *lethal*
> True, they were friendly destroyers, but that's more sinkings than most modern aircraft carriers can claim.
Bah, kill first and claim everything you hit "the target". How can they have been friends if we sank them? Eh?!.
See.
>“The F-35B continues to be the only modern fighter jet capable of operating from Britain's two new aircraft carriers”
>What about the Harrier?
Harriers entered service with the RAF in 1969.
I and I suspect many others on this site would be very happy with the idea that something >50 years old constitutes 'modern'.
Alas, I fear language is not on our side.
The Harrier, while a truly superb aeroplane, was apparently really rather difficult to fly, and is rather too old to constitute 'modern'.
Vulture central,
if your coverage of the F35 goes on to be so negative, you will be blacklisted by Lockheed-Martin just like Apple, and you'll never be invited to the swish conferences, or be sent gratis review samples of the latest jets!
A bit more positive coverage surely wouldn't harm, no?
No way, Lockheed-Martin is so desperate to have orders on the F-35, that any publicity is good publicity.
The Vultures might be required to return all review samples* they receive, though, unless they change their tone a bit.
*The actual jets, I believe missiles and bombs are considered consumables.
Yeah.
"Agile development" and "Minimum Viable Product" are basically just a fancy name for releasing software without testing it properly and then possibly fixing it up later if the users complain hard enough. It's rapid because the last 5% of the development, (ie. getting it right) takes up 95% of the time. So we just don't do that bit. Project managers and accountants love it. Time and Cost wins out over Quality every time.
But engineers that take pride in their work despise it because it is the very opposite of developing a quality product. It is the reason why almost everything we buy these days doesn't work properly or fails to live up to expectations.
It was. Now it isn't.
I did slightly wonder about this scenario: Britain is under attack, Germany is planning an invasion, Dowding notices number of fighters dropping dramatically, asks what is the problem. "Well, Sir, we're having a little trouble getting the Merlins to Turkey to be fixed."
In short no.
The Turks were getting a P & W engine overhaul facility, which they had to pay for. Cue everyone saying all of the Europes F-35's were going to Turkey. But no-one was happy with that. There are also engine overhaul facilities in Norway and the Netherlands. It's likely the UK ones will go to Norway for theirs.
Roll out your troubles in your old pork barrel
And smile, smile, smile!
Don't let your joy and laughter hear the snag
Smile boys, that's the style
What's the use of worrying
It never was worth while
So, roll out your troubles in your old pork barrel
And smile, smile, smile.
The company hasn't been BAe since 1999 when it merged (bought out in reality) Marconi, after which it was re-branded BAE Systems (yes, I used to work there).
The two overarching setups are BAE Systems PLC (UK) and BAE Systems Inc (USA); one of the UK sites is part of Inc which makes for an interesting time from a security standpoint.
Within those, there are numerous business groups, some better than others.
To add to that history.
"Marconi Electronic Systems, merged with British Aerospace to form BAE Systems. In 2006, extreme financial difficulties led to the collapse of the remaining company, with the bulk of the business acquired by the Swedish telecommunications company, Ericsson."
""Agile development" and "Minimum Viable Product" are basically just a fancy name for releasing software without testing it properly and then possibly fixing it up later if the users complain hard enough."
Seeing so many upvotes, I'm relieved, since that was my understanding as well, being an ex dev (late 90s) !
But I was too scared to be given the "you don't get it" treatment.
I'm glad I've made my coming out on this :)
See also "Indian Ocean"
A handy bolt-hole for Chinese Naval vessels in the time of any conflict in the Indian Ocean. There is also an airport nearby built with [cough] Chinese funding...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magampura_Mahinda_Rajapaksa_Port
"Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) and China Merchant Port Holdings signed an agreement on the Hambantota Port to lease the port to China Merchant Port Holdings for 99 years"
"The large Chinese loans, inability of the Sri Lankan government to service the loans, and subsequent 99-year Chinese lease on the port have led to accusations that China was practicing Debt trap diplomacy."
Coding "minimum viable product" for "critical flight and weapons software" is asking for catastrophic failures! And to "release capabilities via smaller, more frequent service pack updates", in other words not giving you everything needed to do the job, is digging the hole even deeper.
This level of adherence to Agile religions can work for non-critical accounting applications, or games. But for stuff that can kill you? For stuff that is actually DESIGNED to kill you?
Yes, Waterfall has its own problems. But swinging the pendulum all the way over just exposes other issues.
MVP has a very different meaning around systems with critical failures than when barfing out the latest get-rich-quick webapp. That "V" stands for viable, and that means passing ALL critical failure tests.
Likewise on the devops side. If you look at larger projects, CICD takes on a very different feel when the test time becomes longer than the mean time between commits. When it is measured in weeks or months, the discipline again is going to look very different.
And I use the word "discipline" deliberately. Proper agile is a disciplined search for the best process to address the development goals of an organization. Likewise, proper devops is about ensuring that the engineering principles of software development and of operations are being applied throughout the organization.
Waterfall was a straw man process. The very next words in the paper were, "Such efforts are doomed to fail" Unfortunately, they were on the next page. Waterfall's weakness is in the presumption that any step in the process can be completed before feedback from later steps has been received. That can work for houses. Software--no.
Amazing how so many people who never saw 'Waterfall' are so expert at bagging it, by implication British SDM which was not so bad. American skunkworks planes were also waterfall - with requirements first.
I'd say waterfall projects fail as the cash burn rate is too high early on. Agile more successful as nobody on the team has seen quality, so sort-of-works is a winner.
The UK is buying history's most expensive military aircraft ever and the UK has to spend the time and money to prove it's operational reliability?
Or am I reading it wrong?
Not only that but the damned things have to use WX to operate the maintenance software, I hope they can kill the telemetry and avoid an in-flight BSOD inducing incoming patch.
F35 the gift that keeps on costing, perhaps they should done a fleet lease scheme.
F35 the gift that keeps on costing, perhaps they should done a fleet lease scheme.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how the US operates with defense and allies these days. The US Federal Govt "buys" the aircraft and then "onsells" it to the ally as a form of lease. It means that things get hairy when said ally attempts to sell said military assets after making use of them. It's how they've been managing allies and friends since Lend-Lease got set up.
Ahhh but the UK isn't just buying it, they're a (the only) Level 1 partner which means they were allowed to define key requirements*, and get to build large chunks of it**. Presumably that also gets you a vested interest in proving it meets the operational reliability metrics.
*Something the MoD were quite reticent to do in case they over-complicated the programme, I think the bird strike resistance of the windscreen was one thing they insisted on hence the internal support that marks the end of the double thickness section.
**The rear fuselage of all of them and the lift fans of the Bs for starters.
Perhaps for the other ranks but you can't expect an officer to eat common digestives.
However because of a little side-deal BAe did, the F35 is only compatible with Dutchy Original shortbread and since the MOD budget obviously isn't going to stretch to that - the fleet is grounded
Too many posts where people are (deliberately?) mis-representing what MVP is SUPPOSED to be…
“Viable” is supposed to mean that it works.
“Minimum” is supposed to relate to the richness or paucity of features.
Obvioulsy, some teams/management don’t get that either but it seems, if there is “adherence to Agile religions” then, they must be using it properly.
if there is “adherence to Agile religions” then, they must be using it properly.And like any religion, it fragmented immediately into thousands of cults and sects whose ultimate aim is to deliver power (frequently in the form of obscene amounts of cash) unto the leaders, and fuck the 'worshippers'.
I disapprove of these planes being flown. There are far too many possible chances for accidents or them being shot down. With how much these planes cost, the best option is to keep them stored in hangars where they are only a limited risk.
If anyone in the F-35 governments are reading this, please invest instead in F-16 and F-22 jets which are substantially less expensive and only consider the use of F-35 jets when the F-16 and F-22 planes can’t possibly do the job.
Think of it as using the 1997 Toyota Canary to drive to and from work in urban rush hour rather than the Bentley since scratching the Canary doesn’t matter but the Bentley will cost you and your insurance company a small fortune. The F-35 series planes should never be put in the air where they can be damaged... it’s simply fiscally irresponsible.
I wholly agree!
I think we should can all our other flying machines and have a fleet exclusively comprised of F35's of various sorts, none of which should be allowed to be put in the air.
Maybe then we could stop sticking our noses in the world's business! It'd be a massive cost reduction and very likely would improve the way other countries look at us.
And frankly, it seems that most places we stick our nose, we either get stomped or make almost precisely zero difference. At least in the past 70ish years.
Bit difficult to buy F-22s as they stopped building them in 2011. Also if you think the F-35 is expensive I've got some bad news about the F-22... A Block 70* F-16 isn't that much cheaper either by the looks of things.
*The most recent production standard which looks to be about $57 million a go vs $79 for an F-35A.
The F-35 prices are still a bit fictive, I won't put my money on the F-35A actually being useably produced for less than $100M. The F-16 "total cost of ownership" prices can be reliably forecast (although not by me).
However for a carrier aircraft, India is looking at either the F-18 or the Rafale, so best choose one of them.
please invest instead in F-16 and F-22 jets which are substantially less expensive and only consider the use of F-35 jets when the F-16 and F-22 planes can’t possibly do the job.A couple points:
1) The F-22 is the superior air superiority fighter. Think of the F-22 as the F-15 replacement, with the F-35 being the F-16/18(A-F)/A-10 (jack of all trades) replacement. Therefore if the F-22 can't do the job (assuming it's an air superiority job) then the F-35 won't be able to do it.
2) Australia originally wanted to buy the F-22, but the US refused point-blank to even consider a sale to anyone, at all, ever. They didn't want what they see as the most capable and advanced air-to-air figher in the world in anyone else's hands at all, not even their strongest bum-chums allies.
Or they're embarrassed about how much they cost to produce and maintain. They have great aerodynamics and best-of-class stealth, but terrible avionics.
The Eurofighter is easily a better airplane than the F22, but it like a lighthouse on radar unfortunately.
Either way, neither a F22 nor a Eurofighter will ever take off from an aircraft carrier, way too big.
You're right, and there's even an abomination of a project called the "Sea Typhoon". They actually drew a diagram with an arrestor hook. And thrust vectoring engines, always good to add something they can drop later on... If anyone can bear it, I found it here..
https://www.eurofighter.com/multimedia/download/naval-typhoon-cutaway-1015
yeah but the arrestor gear and hardend landing to handle ship operations put the base weight up considerably.
the best option was the BAe P.125 that was a more modern faster harrier, but a certain TBlair et all decided to throw in with the americans and dump BAe on the scrap heap
>The Eurofighter is easily a better airplane than the F22, but it like a lighthouse on radar unfortunately.
Not strictly true. Both Typhoon and Rafale use non-metallic composites extensively, which are (apparently) translucent to radar energy, and thus reflect much less of it.
In the case of Typhoon (possibly also Rafale), it also has 'proper' stealth design on bits of the airframe where (I) it makes a difference and (ii) it doesn't compromise the aerodynamic design (the air intake, for instance; also, the back plate to the radar is angled, rather than vertical).
So while most certainty not 'stealth' designs, they could reasonably be called 'reduced radar cross section' designs, being significantly harder to detect than anything other than a true stealth design.
But I upvoted you anyway.
Thanks for the upvote!
I am consistently amazed at what fighter aircraft manufacturers will say! I have never seen one admit to a restriction or a liability. Sometimes they do leave in a kicker to stay honest, like "... when we get the budget".
Anyway, the Typhoon engine air intakes look "difficult" to make stealthy. They're rectangular. And I don't remember anyone saying that they have an "S-bend" to hide the turbine blades from direct radar illumination. On the other hand, in the Rafale backstory there is a phase when Saudi Arabia asked for "low radar cross section". That happened just as they were going from prototype to final design. The story goes that the final aircraft looks just like the prototype, but that "nothing is the same". Dassault markets the Rafale as a "Discrete Omnirole supersonic fighter". Discrete as opposed to being "Oh my Holy God" obvious.
Typhoon gets the message out about using RAM (radar absorbing materials) but doesn't really directly say anything about their cross section. Rhere's no official published radar cross section info from any the respective manufacturers.
The F-35 says its "really good" form in front - not so much from the back and sides. The Rafale has a huge flat tail that's probably easy to pick up from the side. Your milage may vary...
There have been rumours about RCS of both Typhoon and Rafale. Neither is obviously 'stealthy'
As ever the devil is in the detail, but the general consensus is that Typhoon has a significantly smaller RCS than Rafale, and has the smallest RCS of any 'non-stealthy' modern combat aircraft. The teams designing Typhoon did actually apply RCS reduction measures to key parts of the Typhoon airframe, and certainly LO technologies were far better understood by the UK and German designers than the French did in the timeframe.
To my knowledge Saudi Arabia never were involved in Rafale in any serious manner. From Al-Yamamah onwards, and the shut out of the Mirage 4000, they were firmly in the US/UK camp for new combat aircraft. The French put a lot of stock in their EW measures (both in aircraft and ships), sometimes with some justification (but a lot of Rafale fans seriously over-estimate how good Spectra is...) but also as a marketing strategy to allay any fears over limited LO. It's something Typhoon tried recently with 'Digital Stealth'. It relies on believing that French EW is significantly better than anything else. And given how good we know Israeli and Swedish EW is it doesn't really stack up. The best EW kit though is from the US. I've seen people actually believe that Rafales EW is better than the F-35's 10 year newer system....they also ignore just how good Typhoons is.
I made the mistake of posting a tweet (I don't have many followers) of an article on Ars Technica about the poor state of the F35 programme, the spiralling costs and the litany of problems, only some of which are included in this article. Well, my goodness, the gungasm Colonel Blimps didn't half climb out of the woodwork, having somehow picked up on the tweet. None critiqued the article, but all ripped the messenger to shreds. Some "responses" were from serving naval types. I wondered at one point whether the navy is running a twitter campaign to ensure no criticism of their "floating conference centres".
The manufacturers know that too. That's why that torpedo landed on Sandwich golf course.
Sandwich golf course? I didn't read that in the papers.
Of course not. There was a cover-up. The members just found a new bunker on the 7th fairway the next morning.
So the torpedoes don't work either?
- No, only the new ones. The others are fine.
The ones designed during the Second World War.
- Over 40 years ago?
- They had lots of testing.
- You can't afford that with the modern ones.
- Why not?
Well, if there's a nuclear war, it won't last long enough for the weapons to be tested.
The whole QE Class and F-35 idea was a joke. Alll we needed was a shiny new set of ASW Carriers and a few of the supersonic variant of the Harrier BAe Proposed.
But some idiot in the blairite Defence Procurment Agency decided they wanted big boats with catapults, but then wouldnt pay for them, or decide which planes they were going to put on them.
So they retired the Invincible class, and bumbled around for a few years, ordering a cheap stopgap of Ocean on the way.... and decided the US JSF program with no fixed costs, built wherever a senator needed the jobs, on unproven technology, that had to be serviced where the US decided....
</rant>
Despite being left of centre myself I have to point out that the carriers and Trident are as much about keeping unions onside and keeping seats Labour as anything. Labour know that the Conservatives will never be seen to oppose flashy defence spending.
Decent kit for the boys in Afghanistan or Iraq isn't glamorous.
I seem to recall The Register doing an article on that. The UK govt was "just asking for a friend" if they could share desk space with other fighters, like F18 or Rafale... The question coincided with a love-in between the UK and French militaries. BAE panicked, thinking the F35 contract was at risk, and used the UDP party line - Ulster says "NO" !
Rather embarrassingly his first attempt to fly it was delayed when the plane wouldn't let him log in...they had to pull the cameras out while a maintenance chap sorted out the login bit, then he could fly.
I hope they're not expecting to use these things on QRA (Quick Reaction Alert).....
The "head" of DOTE is on his bullhorn again screaming doom. This guy does get old. And as to Agile being 'high risk', he needs to get out of his crack parlor and go see how it's actually done. There are plenty of DoD programs running this model and it works great; lower cost development and more functionality sooner than giant bloat releases.
He needs to go.
Quite frankly, Agile makes HIS people work for their pay... they whine a lot.
Saw a documentary series recently about how the RAF train its pilots. One eye-opener was how the RAF (or was it RN?) are training their F35 pilots (in the states)
Guy strapped in ready for take-off and a pretend bombing sortie..ready for action...the planes systems wouldn't accept the pilots PASSWORD! A guy in a SUV had to reset it remotely (cameras not allowed)
Imagine that in a carrier defence situation....scramble, scramble, scramble....."er....was it a capital at the start? Dammit I changed it recently...erm...was it the one I use for gmail or my paypal one?".
Sometimes it's bad enough when your sitting at a desk in an office but what about when you've got deadly incoming? No pressure...
I think sticky-note v1.0 may save your bacon (and the carriers). Christ on a bike.
http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html
It's a shame that I found that story after the F-22 & F-35 were announced, because it nicely sums up my concerns. As far as I'm concerned, AF procurement has been at best a hot mess since the F-117 (useful only in theaters with no sunlight & limited cell coverage).
Meanwhile, China steadily improves its missile technology.
With all of the #$@$ going on, I seriously doubt that we could do the SR-71 right now.
The US pours all its money into offensive weapons like aircraft and carriers, meanwhile Russia pours lots of money into missiles. Turkey bought the S-400 because its way more effective and way cheaper than anything the US has.
Missiles are defensive. Aircraft can be defensive or offensive. Therefore the US is scarier than Russia, amirite ?