USMC: We want more F-35s per year than you Limeys will get in half a decade

Re: Irrational

'The Harrier would still win a close range "dogfight" due to the well practiced freaky antics it can pull with thrust vectoring causing the opposition to overshoot, shortly followed by the overshooting aircraft getting a missile tossed up the ass. Tested and proved to work in combat conditions as well.'

Have you got a source for that, because despite it being practised I'm unaware of any occasion in actual combat where the Harrier used vectoring to cause another aircraft to overshoot it. Certainly none of the kills in the Falklands Conflict were achieved that way.

On a related matter the F-35 has just completed its first Red Flag exercise where they managed a 15:1 kill ratio.

Re: Irrational

Harrier is combat proven and difficult to fight against.

It is small, can hide its exhaust easily, manouverable, and had excellent RADAR (FRS1/FA2).

The BVR missiles actually have to be able to see the Harrier to hit them.

The US is not keen on its best aircraft, Harrier and A10

"freaky antics it can pull with thrust vectoring causing the opposition to overshoot, "

Invented by a couple of USMC pilots IIRC (Vectoring In Forward Flight)

Re: Irrational

You'd lose.

Maybe, but the source you quote (and all the way back to the Pentagon and Lockheed) I wouldn't trust an inch. The F35 programme is long on cost, short on delivery. Having some token exercise to generate some impressive "kill" figures is mere marketing by the military-industrial machine, and I don't believe it.

Against a third rate air force, certainly, and in an environment with no modern air defence weaponry. But against modern air defence assets, I'd expect the F35 to suffer significant losses (and the same for any other state of the art military aircraft from any nation).

Re: Irrational

>You'd lose.

>

>http://uk.businessinsider.com/f-35-slaughters-competition-red-flag-2017-2?r=US&IR=T

Irrelevant for the way the Harriers are being used (and have been intended ever since they were selected): Close Air Support.

And in that role, a F-35 will just suck, just for the same reason why the A-10 is kept busy over the fast guys in their F-16/F-15/-F18.

An A-10/Harrier can get in close on a strafing run within a couple hundred feet, the jet-jockeys would shit their G-suits out of fear they hit friendlies when doing so.

Re: Irrational

What was the opposition? F-5?

> something to be said for a Crack'ling rush vs far fewer, more capable, but more costly units.*

You're the sort of brood mother who never pauses to think of Mrs Zerg and the little Zerglets at home, waiting for the squick-squick-squick of daddy's pseudopods returning...

Today there's still one very expensive bit fitted to every cheap unit: the pilot. Expensive to train, and very dear indeed to someone, if only themself. Except in times of heroic sacrifice they get very glum if they think they're just cannon fodder. Give it a few years, then perhaps the sten gun equivalent in drones will take this up: couple of Raspberry Pis bolted to a Maplins quadcopter.

Of every-zerg-is-sacred-every-zerg-is-great, Max Hastings made the trenchant observation that the relatively slow advance of the Western Armies in WWII after Normandy can be best understood as everyone involved knowing that the war was already effectively won and not wanting to be the last one to die. Seen this way the timidity is a badge of civilisation: our chaps could focus on getting home alive without that being a sure appointment with a Gestapo lyncher or an NKVD machine-gunner.

Re: Swap

The original Harrier line was quite extensively reworked but we had the GR5/GR7/GR9 and the Americans the AVB8 - the only real external difference is that ours had additional pylons (weapons mounts) attached to the front of the outrigger fairings.

But we had them too.

Re: Am I missing something?

"Back in the 1960s the Yanks were trying to flog a turbine-powered Mustang as a heavily-armed, cost-effective ground attack platform for sale to third-world clients and allies. It seemed like a pretty good machine for that purpose but so far as I can remember it never went into production."

No, it didn't. Everybody interested had already bought WW2 surplus Mustangs at a fraction of the price with practically the same performance.

It was found that such Mustangs stood an excellent chance of bringing down a modern jet in a dogfight as the Mustang could outturn the jet massively. The approved method was basically high speed strafing passes so the prop fighter couldn't evade or return fire.

Personally I'd like to see the Sea Hornet back in production because it's got quadruple the range of the F35, would be a lot cheaper to operate and proved quite capable enough for close air support in it's original iteration. Not great for fighting WW3, but good enough for bombing people who's idea of AAA is an AK47. They also don't stand any chance of bankrupting the country building and operating them.

Re: Am I missing something?

" It wasn't a Spitfire they did it with, but a Mustang, which was pretty much te same thing only a 10-year newer design: same engine, marginally better manouverability, marginally lower rate of climb, much longer range, genrally regarded as one of the best three land-based fighters of the era (alongside the Spitfire and the FW-190)."

I can't help thinking that the Mitsubishi Zero Sen deserves one of those three top places, given the dismal performance of the Spitfires sent against it in the early days of the war in the Pacific and that the Chance-Voight Corsair was the first fighter that could really handle the Zero with any degree of confidence.

Re: Not completely stupid

Not to mention having no aircraft to do long endurance maritime patrols until the Boeing order is completed.

Given a free hand, I'd have David Cameron publicly hanged for that decision alone. And I'd take the family along with a picnic, make a day out of the event, and explain to the kids why the pudgy faced toff is going to dangle.

A big part of the tragedy of Nimrod MRA4 is the persistent inability of MoD to consider as separate weapons systems and platforms. This applies to armoured vehicles, ships, subs, and all combat aircraft. So in 2010 we were still bashing out Comet airframes by hand to a design concept that was not far removed from state of the art in 1949 (when the Comet first flew). And because of that foolhardy decision, vast costs were incurred trying to completely modernise a layout that had been outmoded since the 707 first flew in 1958 (edit: 1957, Boeing 367). And because the original engines were so ancient, they had to throw money at trying to get brand new modern engines for this 1940s engine-in-wing design. Sadly, this was a re-run of the similar debacle platform + avionics bungle during the embarrassing failure of the Nimrod AEW3 project.

I suspect if MoD had treated the avionics that went into MRA4 as a standalone project to fit in a modern airline airframe, the outcome would have been different. Our expertise in sub-hunting was world class, and the challenges of the MRA4 avionics could have been addressed appropriately. A suitable airframe would perhaps be a load of ex-airline, relatively low hours A319s, and the installation challenges and costs would have been far more controllable. We'd also have built an exportable product, whereas nobody in their right mind would invest in the Nimrod (and the necessary specialist support infrastructure).

I mentioned some great British aircraft. Sadly the Comet, whilst innovative, was not really part of that group, and you have to ask yourself why the British government has persistently scrapped good and useful projects, and then continued with the Nimrod airframe. My teenage son could make a better job of military procurement than the combination of politicians, civil service and the military.