Military Plane discussion thread - Let’s talk Fighter/Attacker planes.

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Cedric_Eff said:
Say as you may, thrust vectoring is a crucial air combat tool. It really does change the way air battles are fought.
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It's more crucial to AAMs than the fighters themselves in a fluid tactical environment. If we're talking pure sport BFM though, you're probably right
 
How come the US Air Force doesn't use the F-16D like they do with the F-15E?

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I've been kind of on a cyberpunk kick lately waiting for the game Cyberpunk 2077 to finally release (though I've always been a big fan of the genre), and it's got me wondering when/if some of the more realistic aircraft designs might become reality. For those who don't know, it's really common to see VTOL aorcraft with tilt-rotors/tilt-jets, ducted fans, quadcopters, etc. in the cyberpunk genre. I know there's the V-22 Osprey that's in service, STOVL aircraft like the F-35B, and the Bell V-280 Valor that's competing for the US Army's Future Vertical Lift selection, but it just seems to me that VTOL aircraft are really useful and versatile, yet they aren't getting the kind of R&D that they should. I mean, an aircraft the size of a C-130 that's capable of taking off and landing where a traditional cargo plane simply couldn't seems like a no-brainer to me. Am I alone here?
 
The Dude said:
I mean, an aircraft the size of a C-130 that's capable of taking off and landing where a traditional cargo plane simply couldn't seems like a no-brainer to me. Am I alone here?
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The basic problem with vertical lift is it requires about 5-10x the thrust of a horizontal takeoff. Once you get the bird in the air and convert to horizontal flight, you'll never throttle much above 10%. So VTOL is very useful, but at the same time it wastes a lot of power.

I suspect we'll eventually see a VTOL Hercules class cargo bird, as a subclass of a HOTOL aircraft, which will greatly outclass the VTOL version in range, and/or payload.
 
The Royal Air Force had great camouflages. I swear paint jobs are like half the work of making a great air force. Like the Red Baron in World War sporting the full all red look. These camoflauges need to make a comeback as the current RAF is fully cucked and just another division of the USAF these days rather than creating their own jets. What happened to British aviation that they don't make their own planes no more?

1200px-Hawker_Hurricane,_Battle_of_Britain_Memorial_Flight_Members'_day_2018.jpg


beaufighter.jpg
 
MrJokerRager said:
The Royal Air Force had great camouflages. I swear paint jobs are like half the work of making a great air force. Like the Red Baron in World War sporting the full all red look. These camoflauges need to make a comeback as the current RAF is fully cucked and just another division of the USAF these days rather than creating their own jets. What happened to British aviation that they don't make their own planes no more?

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I like the mid-to-late war RAF blue-green patterns better. It makes the yellow and red highlights around the wing-mounted guns pop out more. Feels like as the war dragged on, you go from the bright green-brown pattern to the desaturated and almost greyish blue-green, as if the war-weariness is seeping into the color palette.

In the First World War, I think it is hard to beat the late-1918 Jagdstaffeln's color schemes. Each Jasta had its own distinct color scheme, but even within each Jasta, there was a lot of individual customization and unique takes on the standard Jasta pattern by the individual pilots. With only a few exceptions, I think pretty much all the pilots who chose to customize their paint scheme beyond the basic Jasta standard came up with visually striking and aesthetically pleasing designs. The sharp clean lines and high contrasts in colors reminds me of the design aesthetic in some parts of the German Expressionist movement.

I think the single, solid color patterns like von Richtofen's all-red Albatrosen and Fokker or Goering's all-white Fokker are pretty visually uninteresting though.
 
MrJokerRager said:
The Royal Air Force had great camouflages. I swear paint jobs are like half the work of making a great air force. Like the Red Baron in World War sporting the full all red look. These camoflauges need to make a comeback as the current RAF is fully cucked and just another division of the USAF these days rather than creating their own jets. What happened to British aviation that they don't make their own planes no more?

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The Comet disasters and bad management from both private industry to state owned brought the death of British aircraft industry. BAE has some planes but it’s just trainers and business jets.
 
Kornheiser said:
The Comet disasters and bad management from both private industry to state owned brought the death of British aircraft industry. BAE has some planes but it’s just trainers and business jets.
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Tbf, it was probably gonna happen anyway. Fast jets cost orders of magnitude more to develop, build and maintain than they did in the mid-20th century, take decades instead of months to develop, and the Cold War has been over for 30 years so air forces have been shrinking. Not many countries maintain indigenous high-end military aircraft industries anymore because it doesn't make sense to do that unless you can guarantee a steady stream of orders to keep the production line going and offset some of the R&D costs.

Russia and China are building their own jets for obvious political reasons, but Russia can barely afford to buy its own new planes. France spent €45Bn to develop the Rafale, out of stubbornness and national pride, but it's not obviously better than the Eurofighter and worse than the F-35, and they're basically having to suck India's dick for foreign orders to keep production going. Sweden has the Gripen, which seems to be a great little plane for countries that can't afford or don't need the best military hardware, but probably not relevant to major NATO members.

Even the USAF couldn't afford to order more than 187 F-22's after all the time and money that went into that program, and the future of military aviation looks like this anyway:

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Engineering will always be important but the next big jump in aerial combat capability will be based on software engineering. Instead of the RAF only having 138 F-35's and 147 Eurofighters, with pilots who cost millions and years to train for a short career, what if they could afford 5,000 armed drones that can make decisions independently or collectively, almost at the speed of light, are politically expendable, and can be deployed at any moment as quickly as someone can press a button on a keyboard?

Lockheed Martin and BAE will still want to sell big ticket items to tame politicians and staff officers, but there's no real reason why drone swarms need to be composed of expensive high-end models. Smaller companies can get into this market too, and maybe we'll see a return to the mid-20th century situation where there were lots of different aviation firms competing.
 
Sexual Chocolate said:
Tbf, it was probably gonna happen anyway. Fast jets cost orders of magnitude more to develop, build and maintain than they did in the mid-20th century, take decades instead of months to develop, and the Cold War has been over for 30 years so air forces have been shrinking. Not many countries maintain indigenous high-end military aircraft industries anymore because it doesn't make sense to do that unless you can guarantee a steady stream of orders to keep the production line going and offset some of the R&D costs.

Russia and China are building their own jets for obvious political reasons, but Russia can barely afford to buy its own new planes. France spent €45Bn to develop the Rafale, out of stubbornness and national pride, but it's not obviously better than the Eurofighter and worse than the F-35, and they're basically having to suck India's dick for foreign orders to keep production going. Sweden has the Gripen, which seems to be a great little plane for countries that can't afford or don't need the best military hardware, but probably not relevant to major NATO members.

Even the USAF couldn't afford to order more than 187 F-22's after all the time and money that went into that program, and the future of military aviation looks like this anyway:

View attachment 1569546

Engineering will always be important but the next big jump in aerial combat capability will be based on software engineering. Instead of the RAF only having 138 F-35's and 147 Eurofighters, with pilots who cost millions and years to train for a short career, what if they could afford 5,000 armed drones that can make decisions independently or collectively, almost at the speed of light, are politically expendable, and can be deployed at any moment as quickly as someone can press a button on a keyboard?

Lockheed Martin and BAE will still want to sell big ticket items to tame politicians and staff officers, but there's no real reason why drone swarms need to be composed of expensive high-end models. Smaller companies can get into this market too, and maybe we'll see a return to the mid-20th century situation where there were lots of different aviation firms competing.
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I’m not sure the the US companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman are capable of making cheap drones. They gotta be big, bleeding-edge high-tech and expensive because every congressman and senator wants a piece of the pie and all those manufacturing jobs their states (don't know about spy agencies like the CIA).
 
TiggerNits said:
I've listened to it. I kinda hate it because the euro pilots he interviews are extremely boring and wooden.
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They aren't all Europeans, you know. Plenty of Yanks. Jeff Guinn (who he talks to about the F-111) and Bruce Gordan (about the Convair Century-series planes) are especially good. That said, the interviews with John Hutchinson and Dennis Brooks might be peppy enough for you.
 
MrJokerRager said:
What happened to British aviation that they don't make their own planes no more?
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Multiple factors:
1) An attempt to consolidate the British aerospace sector into one nationalized company has led to a massive quality drop.
2) Due to said quality drop, they use other European collaborators to create more planes.
3) Dependance on European partners to produce aircrafts has led to a significant decline to the ability to produce domestically made aircraft.
4) France.
 
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