[HN Gopher] US Air Force to divest a total of 310 aircraft in 20...
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US Air Force to divest a total of 310 aircraft in 2024 including 32
F-22A Raptor
Author : belter
Score : 21 points
Date : 2023-04-09 11:58 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.airandspaceforces.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.airandspaceforces.com)
| pknomad wrote:
| I think divestment of the A10s make sense. Those Fairchild frames
| are super dated and ill-suited for battles against peer
| adversary.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| A10s are probably not the one you need to retire. In an all out
| war, they're the easiest to maintain and the best ones to fly
| with damages. They do have a specific role, but in that role,
| it is one of the hardiest planes to exist.
| nradov wrote:
| A-10s are basically useless in the Pacific theater. They
| don't have the range, speed, or defensive systems to even
| make it to the fight. (And the same limitations make attack
| helicopters even more useless there.) A few squadrons
| composed of airframes in the best physical condition (fewest
| stress cracks) will probably be kept around for potential use
| in low intensity conflicts in other theaters but most will
| have to go to the boneyard.
| ianburrell wrote:
| A-10 are too expensive for low intensity conflicts. Planes
| like Super Tucano would be better if we need to fight that
| kind of war. It would have been better if US kept Super
| Tucanos instead of giving them to Afghan air force.
|
| It is also quite possible that drones will do the CAS job
| by the time it is needed again. Or that missiles will make
| too dangerous for anything.
| ianburrell wrote:
| A-10 are expensive to maintain because of their age. The high
| maintenance budget is the reason AF is retiring them.
|
| Their role has almost completely disappeared and Ukraine has
| proven it. Su-25, the Russian equivalent, have been shot down
| at alarming rates because of all the MANPADs, SAMs, and
| fighters.
| elromulous wrote:
| This says a lot about what we already knew about the F-35.
|
| While the F-35 was (originally) billed as an air superiority
| multirole fighter, the design by committee approach resulted in a
| machine that is not great at anything. The AF knows this, and
| that's why they're filling in with the f-22 stopgap until a true
| next gen air superiority fighter arrives.
|
| The F-35 will serve as a case study of how not to run government
| contracts. Woefully over budget, behind schedule, and doesn't
| meet the original requirements (iirc congress+-the military even
| relaxed the requirements at some point).
| neerd wrote:
| The F-35 suffered from each branch wanting the plane to be
| something different. The same airframe has to support radically
| different internals and flight characteristics on the A, B, and
| C models. The program had a myriad of issues but if each branch
| had just developed its own the cost would have been overall
| lower.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| Sometimes, in government procurement especially, you have to
| realise that the 'program' and 'the outcome' are two distinct
| entities. F35 was a high profile, congress level program that
| everyone knew was a priority. If i was some Air Force general
| that has been thinking about halolenses, Advanced AI,
| manuverability, radar, cloaking, etc. You could get funding
| through the project. So many different things came out of the
| f35 outside of the f35.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| It also had to be built with tech the US was willing to
| export to foreign "partners" (and whatever allegiances they
| might harbor).
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| In the article, they ordered 76 f35's, which is max production.
|
| >resulted in a machine that is not great at anything.
|
| the f35 is the most capable aircraft in almost every KPI.
| Granted, The program was ungodly expensive, but we are still
| paying $2B for each b2, so at $300-760m a pop, it's still
| ungodly expensive, but the DOD's budget is infinite.
| nradov wrote:
| We are not _still_ paying $2B for each B-2. Production of
| those ended years ago. The replacement B-21 is expected to be
| somewhat cheaper (although still very expensive) with a unit
| price in the $700M range.
| [deleted]
| chiph wrote:
| With recent foreign military sales (Switzerland, Norway,
| Czech Republic, maybe Greece), the R&D costs of the F-35 are
| now being spread over a much larger fleet. It's still not a
| cheap plane .. but the price is dropping by building them in
| volume (like was originally intended for the F-22).
| Production rate is up to about one being delivered every
| other day.
|
| Lockheed Martin and it's many contractors have made a large
| investment in production tooling & automation so the planes
| are being built in a process more like an automotive assembly
| line than individually like in years past. Note the large
| fixture @3:00 holding the wings vertically to make it easier
| to drill accurate holes.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPEy3QwsKjQ
| greedo wrote:
| Not sure where you're getting your figures, but the B2 has
| been out of production for decades, and the cost for the F-35
| is below a new build F-16.
| paulddraper wrote:
| That it is
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _why they 're filling in with the f-22 stopgap until a true
| next gen air superiority fighter arrives_
|
| The sort of combat where an F-22 would outfight an F-35 is
| somewhere between extremely rare and obsolete. Add to that the
| massive costs of running the F-22, and the balance shifts to
| having more F-35s and armament over a luxury squad of F-22s.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Pentagon Wars, but for the F-35.
|
| The thing is, and as we're about to see with the Bradley in
| Ukraine, it's not as big a deal when your adversary is
| absolutely terrible at war.
|
| I guess we could just keep counting on that never changing...
| greedo wrote:
| And despite people getting entertainment value out of the
| "Pentagon Wars", the Bradley has proven its detractors wrong
| on almost every count.
|
| It's like watching Dr. Strangelove and thinking that's how
| the National Security Council operates.
| ianburrell wrote:
| The important thing with Pentagon Wars is that the
| detractors couldn't tell the difference between AFV and
| IFV. It is like comparing a minivan or pickup truck and
| complaining that the truck has bed (with machine gun) and
| carries less people when that is the whole point. IFV made
| AFVs obsolete and the US needed to build the Bradley to
| compete with Soviet ones.
|
| Or testing the Bradley against anti-tank weapons when it
| was never designed to survive them cause it is not a tank.
| And most tanks can't survive them.
|
| The other funny error in Pentagon Wars is complaining about
| the $12 billion price tag. When the Bradley program cost $6
| billion and was underbudget.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
| Maursault wrote:
| thx for posting. I just love it when Richard Schiff yells.
| It's music to my ears.
| greedo wrote:
| The F-35 was never billed as an air superiority fighter. The
| basic idea was a stealth version of the F-16. It was always
| designed in mind with the F-22 performing the Hi in the Hi-Lo
| mix.
|
| Your comment is woefully uninformed and misleading.
| elromulous wrote:
| I think the narrative that it needn't be an air superiority
| fighter came later (I.e. they changed the requirements when
| they realized it would not be competitive in practice).
|
| iirc it was originally intended to be an air superiority
| fighter. Consider this line from the wikipedia F-35 entry
|
| "intended to perform both air superiority and strike
| missions."
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| The entire government is a case study on how not to run
| government contracts.
| cguess wrote:
| Got a better process?
| curt15 wrote:
| >200 NGADs
|
| Are they making the same mistake as they did with the F-22 by
| acquiring a precious "silver-bullet" fleet? How do they account
| for downtime due to maintenance or any sort of damage?
| worrycue wrote:
| I think that's the way the US AF has always operated - a high
| low mix; a handful of expensive ultra capable "mission"
| aircraft with lots cheaper mass produced ones for "routine"
| use.
|
| E.G. F-15 vs F-16
|
| The F-22 vs F-35 was suppose to fit that mould too but the F-35
| turned out to be more expensive than expected - although the
| cost has dropped in recent years and they are hard at work to
| reduce it further.
| nradov wrote:
| Yes, but what is the alternative? In order to be combat
| effective in the Pacific theater, NGAD will need to have a long
| unrefueled operating range (roughly F-111 size), super cruise,
| broadband stealth, large AESA radar, numerous other sensors,
| advanced EW, and an internal magazine large enough to
| accommodate weapons with greater range than the AIM-120. Those
| capabilities are all terribly expensive. But what's the point
| of building a lesser aircraft? Anything less capable won't even
| be survivable enough to make it to from US air bases to the
| first island chain.
|
| The dilletantes on here always claim that manned tactical
| aircraft are obsolete and should be replaced by swarms of cheap
| drones. But it's impossible to build a _cheap_ drone with the
| range, sensors, and payload necessary to be effective in that
| environment. Look at the unit cost of something like an MQ-4C
| or MQ-25A. Remote piloting isn 't going to viable in a hostile
| EW environment, and current AI software is incapable of
| handling highly dynamic situations. I do expect though that at
| least some NGAD variants will be designed as _optionally_
| manned so that they can be employed as drones against heavily
| defended fixed targets.
| lumost wrote:
| One could imagine a next generation Valkyrie could handle
| this role well. Something big and fast enough to chuck
| missiles at 300 mile ranges - with a radar to match.
| nradov wrote:
| Those were always intended as complementary systems. NGAD
| will have to act as a control node for advanced UCAVs
| because satellite links may be unavailable. Current AI
| technology is far from being sufficient for autonomous
| operations on most missions. The XQ-58 Valkyrie shows some
| promise, but like most other current tactical aircraft it
| lacks the range and speed to be effective in the Pacific
| theater. A larger next generation model is likely to have a
| very high unit cost.
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(page generated 2023-04-09 23:01 UTC)