US Air Force in a seriously stealthless state

Or...

"are still being examined for a possible problem with their oxygen generation system. Several pilots complained of "memory loss and disorientation during flight""

"War crimes memory wiping system"

I don't subscribe to this point of view...

F-22s and F-35s are even stealthier than usual those days!

F35 stealth?

Ignoring the debate on how stealthy the F35's really is in flight...safe to say it's *not* stealthy on VTOL, going by these pics - it's halfway to being a transformer!

Quite the reverse I think

The F-22's stealth capability has never been better. Now not even the pilots know where they are.

PS: Where's Lewis? Could you not get him to criticise the Merkins?

Where's Lewis ?

An article about significant problems with not one, but two military systems and Lewis isn't here to tell us how crap the programmes are. Oh wait, they're American programmes, of course.

Complexity and expense

There's an old (US) joke that the various air services in the US had 250 000 planes in WW2, 150 000 in Korea, 100 000 in Vietnam, 10 000 in the 1980s and 5 000 today. By 2050 the US will have one jet fighter, which is used by the Air Force on even days, the Navy on odd days and the Marines every Feb 29th.

The serious point I'm trying to make - at this stage it looks like modern fighter aircraft are too complex for reliable use. Which is better to have, 150 brilliant F-22s which are grounded, or 200 cheap F-16s or MiG-29s which just work?

Can't resist.

Shoulda bought British then, innit?

Oh shoot, not Lewis. Where's the bugger gone off to just now then?

The olive anorak, thanks.

What, you don't see them flying?

See, that's stealth to me. (apply joke icon here)

But where are the F-117s? Are they parked along side F-14s in 48hrs readiness state (fill it with gas, change the oil, kick the tires and done) just waiting the eruption of the next major war? Yes, the B2 bombers can fly half the planet and back, but smaller bombers had their uses.

The stealthless part totally forgot the F-117 fleet.

I was a little puzzled...

...by the balanced and measured coverage on problems with US defence projects until I checked the byline; one assumes that problems with Lewis's oxygen supply have caused him to forget El Reg's office address/email address/fax number...? That's what you get for buying that overpriced American tat... *

*Note to US-ians; trolling LP, not you, OK?

They should have bought Eurofighter...

nt

@Bumpy Cat

"Which is better to have, 150 brilliant F-22s which are grounded, or 200 cheap F-16s or MiG-29s which just work?"

It's better to have 50,000 drones for the same cost as those planes above to overwhelm the enemy's forces.

Obsolete Tech

The F35 and F22 are essentially obsolete anyway. Gulf War 1 was a great example of this. The F117 was out in all its glory, but in my operational studies course at RAF Cranwell in 1995 the lecturers kept making the same point. Only 2 aircraft flew over Baghdad. At night, you had the F117. By day and night you had the Tomahawk. Unmanned aerial vehicles will dominate the next 50 years of airborne warfare, and once someone starts to realise this, things will change rapidly.

It costs something like $6bn to float a new carrier, pretty much the same again to equip it with aircraft, and something like $1bn a year to drive the thing around the seas and operate it. Someone is going to realise that for considerably less you could build a sparsely manned ship that has the capability to launch a thousand UAVs. I'm predicting that when someone realises this we have the 21st centuries HMS Dreadnought moment. (For those who don't know, the launching of the Dreadnought made all the world's battleships obsolete, and effectively led to Britain losing it's position as the world's premier naval power).

Of course, I don't want to gloat about an ally, but as others point out, where is Lewis to talk about this. He regularly points out how Britain should have bought the F35 (or F16/F18) instead of Eurofighter. But it is worth pointing out that Eurofighter is very nearly as stealthy as the F35, and we have over 60 of them flying in the UK now. Plus problems like this result in cost overruns, so the price of the Eurofighter might not seem as silly in a few years' time.

Stealth?

We don't need no steeking stealth.

For examples why, see Libya, Iraq, etc etc etc.

Anywhere stealth might be necessary to drop a bomb, a drone or cruise missile is a better option.

A few stealth transports might be more useful.... (Ah, that's right. Noone's supposed to know about the Black Hercules fleet which has been flying around since the 1970s - they're too busy being distracted by all the stealth fighters.)

Ahem..

"The USAF is putting 20 examples of the F-35 through their paces" ...actually there are only FOUR development F-35As currently under flight test - the other development F-35s are for the US Navy and USMC. And since the F-35A is still some way from active service, grounding them is making zero impact on the USAF's "stealth capacity". Come on Lester, you're getting worse than Lewis!

Stealth...

If I recall correctly, stealth planes work because the radar stations are, well, *stationary*, or so much like that leaked from the physics paper of the Russian boffin that actually *bumped* into radar stealth, or *deflection of radio waves*, before said book was *sold out and not edited again*.

If Russians enjoyed so much putting their military gear, cruise missiles included, on trucks, during cold war...

Not as stealthy as the Afghan Airforce ...

they seek it here, they seek it there, those incredibly elusive Afghan Airforce wares.

Lester not Lewis?

I assume Lester wrote this because Lewis is sitting in the corner rocking backwards and forwards sobbing quietly to himself that something American & military isn't working properly?

American Design

Its a half british plane any way as a good portion of engineers on the project where british. I suspect when America collapses unde the weight of its own debt then those engineers might come back to blighty and we can call ourselves GREAT Britain again.

Meh...

You yanks have nothing on the Royal Navy for Stealthiness 'ness'. Our currently in service dozens of Naval Aircraft and all three Aircraft Carriers are so stealthy that even WE can't find them.

"150 brilliant F-22s which are grounded, or 200 cheap F-16s or MiG-29s which just work?"

150 brilliant F-22s which are grounded, or 200 cheap F-16s or MiG-29s which just work?

Look, that's the kind of behind the times thinking that has held back the Metroploditan Police's ability to respond to the riots in recent days.

You'll never get a job in the forward-thinking procurement arms of the MoD or the Metroploditan Police or ACPO Ltd.

Don't you realise that modern thinking knows it's far more sensible to buy a tiny quantity of mostly-in-the-warehouse heavy armour-plated US Ford/Jankel pick up trucks ? The ones which unfortunately nobody could find the keys to this week after we put them away after using them against peachy G20 protesters in 2009? And then when we did find the keys we hadn't got cash for the petrol?

What would the alternative be? Your kind of outdated thinking would suggest that local chief constables authorise spending a few hundred pounds per police van with some local corner-shop welder in every town that still has one, so that pretty much every police van has a low-tech demountable windscreen protector and maybe bull bars, so the vans can be reinforced at zero notice, in quantity, to help suppress the kind of low-grade high-volume disorder we've seen this week. Sorry, but that kind of thinking is SOOOO 1981. 1981, when Sherpa vans, Escort vans, etc were used in exactly that manner, largely successfully, largely at relatively low cost. Not in 2011 though. Or maybe, just maybe, in the remainder of 2011 someone will wake up.

I'll get me coat. It's the stab-resistant one.