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[Razgriz-Specter]

F-22 will be replaced before it ever see combat lol. Ridiculous

No, if that design is the final design it will likely have its first official flight in the next few years.

YF-22's first flight... 1990.
F-22 entered service... 2005

Its years and years away from replacing anything.

 

[Mindlog]

luckygodzilla is basically right. We're facing a future where basically anything that's not high and stealthy is going to get wrecked versus a high-end adversary, and low-end scenarios where you might as well use something much cheaper and lighter than an A-10, like the Super Tucano.

High end adversaries will reach airfields without aircraft. So short to mid range aircraft could be ruled out like attack helicopters largely are now. The short-range stuff would need to be high tech yet cheap (I know) and most importantly decentralized. I wonder if eventually that leads to more drones that are smaller and cheaper than a Reaper.

The Navy thinks the X-47 is too costly yet not stealthy enough (I know) so from a pure philosophical standpoint I'm curious to see what direction this takes. UCLASS is flailing in part because of these competing needs which exacerbate the typical difficulties developing these new systems. They're trying to F-35 a drone.

 

[AmyS]

Yes, the F-22 equivalent at least conceptually. We'll buy less of them, but they'll be far more capable at least in theory, as compared to the F-35(the low)

As for generation debates, Ask the Navy, or the Air Force, or France's Dassault who skipped 5th gen entirely to focus more on 6th gen on what they consider such defining features. Hell even the Russians are looking into their own definitions of 6th gen in spite of the lack of T-50's

Yeah. The F-22 and F-35 are the equivalent to the F-15/F-16 high/low mix, except that the F-16 was an outstanding aircraft and dog fighter, unlike the F-35 which is terrible at everything.

So anyway, we can pretty much say that both Northrop and Lockheed have their own concepts for a 6th generation, high-end air superiority fighter to replace the F-22. Northrop's unnamed concept seen in that video, and Lockheed's 'Miss Feburary' concept first shown a few years ago, below.

https://youtu.be/d8U_w-MiX-A?t=1m33s

No, if that design is the final design it will likely have its first official flight in the next few years.

YF-22's first flight... 1990.
F-22 entered service... 2005

Its years and years away from replacing anything.

Trivia: Lightning II was Lockheed's unofficial name for its YF-22A prototype. Rapier and SuperStar were production names under consideration by the Pentagon.. The F-22's in-service name became Raptor.

 

[BradC00]

YF-22's first flight... 1990.
F-22 entered service... 2005

Its years and years away from replacing anything.

for comparison, the x-35s first flight was in 2000, testing started in 2006, and the first training sq opened up in 2011.

I agree it won't be replacing anything anytime soon.

 

[npm0925]

This is what we get instead of free college and healthcare.

 

[Nikodemos]

Yeah, going to have to disagree with that. Knocking parts off can disable a tank... or merely make life marginally more annoying for the crew. It might make it easier to kill later, but then something has actually to come along later.

Guns for killing tanks I think is a dead concept for now. Going in for guns is much more dangerous than simply using a Brimstone or some other missile from altitude, and a huge gun imposes a pretty severe penalty on the airframe. The masturbatory A-10 line about it being designed around the gun cuts both ways- if you don't need the gun, well, that's a lot of wasted space and weight that could be used on something else. With missiles, you simply don't take them if you don't need them.

You don't need to rip apart a tank in order to take it out of action. Cassetted turrets are a hot item now, and they lack the old-school targeting periscopes tanks had for over 90 years. In these tanks the gunner sits in the machine's bowels, surrounded by LCDs. Destroying the target acquisition modules renders him blind. Sure, the entire turret is easier to swap for a functional one, but critical time is lost.

Modern tanks are pretty well protected against missiles. Not even the old nemesis, the top-attack munition, is a guaranteed kill. The Armata Common Tracked Platform has zenith mounts specifically designed to protect against missiles with a top-attack envelope (seen here and here, the small rear-most trapezoidal boxes on the vehicle). Only high-supersonic missiles (that can hit before the ADS has either acquired or fired) or saturation strikes (which overwhelm the ADS's ability to manage threats) are viable, and either of the two is considerably more expensive than the classic ATGM (be it air or ground-launched). Guns are immune to close-in interception, and can damage or completely destroy these systems (along with other electronics and ERA bricks, greatly facilitating ulterior efforts to disable the tanks).

Just responding to this particular point since Eugn basically said everything else I was going to. See I'm not so certain of the benefits of designing another attack plane around an even bigger gun. We struggle to penetrate modern armor with 120mm shells, so I'm not entirely certain how much more appreciable killing power you're getting for the additional five mm.

Frankly the gun is most useful for hitting infantry or soft transport, and 30mm is already overkill for that. Regardless of my opinions on the validity of building another gun-centric platform, you'd probably be better served with a four barreled 25mm with more magazine depth than 35mm.

I'm not a fan of gatlings. I think they're too bulky, too heavy and the motor takes too much internal space (compared to a standard revolver cannon). And larger calibres allow for smarter shells and more complex warhead arrangements.

Thin skinned transports are going away fast. After the horrendous 'performance' of Ukrainian mechanised infantry (well over a brigade's worth of troops shredded in a handful MLRS ambushes), pretty much everybody realised they need to big-up on their APC armour and protection systems. So a lightweight gun on a future CAS plane would be less useful than a large-barrelled one. And against dispersed infantry larger shells are better, since you already have airburst munitions like AHEAD, basically turning the gun into a high-velocity grenade launcher.

The Navy thinks the X-47 is too costly yet not stealthy enough (I know) so from a pure philosophical standpoint I'm curious to see what direction this takes. UCLASS is flailing in part because of these competing needs which exacerbate the typical difficulties developing these new systems. They're trying to F-35 a drone.

UCLASS is flailing because of the moronic "single airframe" requirement (or, rather, "minimal number of airframes", instead of the classic "task-appropriate airframe" that was the norm until the late '80s). It doesn't fucking work, it never did, yet they're still trying to turn a hacksaw into a hammer.

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

Yeah. The F-22 and F-35 are the equivalent to the F-15/F-16 high/low mix, except that the F-16 was an outstanding aircraft and dog fighter, unlike the F-35 which is terrible at everything.

So anyway, we can pretty much say that both Northrop and Lockheed have their own concepts for a 6th generation, high-end air superiority fighter to replace the F-22. Northrop's unnamed concept seen in that video, and Lockheed's 'Miss Feburary' concept first shown a few years ago, below.

F23 v2

Looks nice.

 

[bengraven]

Snake...? SNAKE??!

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

Just in time for Ace Combat 7.

 

[AmyS]

F23 v2

Looks nice.

Yup.

 

[luckygodzilla]

You don't need to rip apart a tank in order to take it out of action. Cassetted turrets are a hot item now, and they lack the old-school targeting periscopes tanks had for over 90 years. In these tanks the gunner sits in the machine's bowels, surrounded by LCDs. Destroying the target acquisition modules renders him blind. Sure, the entire turret is easier to swap for a functional one, but critical time is lost.

Modern tanks are pretty well protected against missiles. Not even the old nemesis, the top-attack munition, is a guaranteed kill. The Armata Common Tracked Platform has zenith mounts specifically designed to protect against missiles with a top-attack envelope (seen here and here, the small rear-most trapezoidal boxes on the vehicle). Only high-supersonic missiles (that can hit before the ADS has either acquired or fired) or saturation strikes (which overwhelm the ADS's ability to manage threats) are viable, and either of the two is considerably more expensive than the classic ATGM (be it air or ground-launched). Guns are immune to close-in interception, and can damage or completely destroy these systems (along with other electronics and ERA bricks, greatly facilitating ulterior efforts to disable the tanks).


I'm not a fan of gatlings. I think they're too bulky, too heavy and the motor takes too much internal space (compared to a standard revolver cannon). And larger calibres allow for smarter shells and more complex warhead arrangements.

Irregardless of the effectiveness of guns, the issue still remains that in order to effectively employ them against armor you need to get low and slow. And assuming that we're talking about effectiveness against Gen 4+ MBT's, that brings up critical questions of what kind of systems are in place to protect the armor in the first place. I mean a Small Diameter Bomb moving at about Mach 0.85 has roughly the same kinetic energy as a 120mm kinetic energy penetrator round (~5.5 megajoules), but exerts that energy over a wider area due to it's size. On the other hand though, it does also have a 93kg warhead, which will obviously do some damage. Would a SDB kill, say, a T-14's crew? Hard to say, but I'd lean towards no due to the unmanned turret. Would it disable a T-14 and render it combat ineffective? I'd say it would, and even with active protection you're still getting the explosion and the rain of shrapnel that would neuter most exposed systems. And not to mention you get to do this at 20,000 feet at mach 1.2.

Moving up a notch, against larger munitions (1000lb or 2000lb JDAMs) or bunker-busters any tank, regardless of any active protection system is screwed; having one of these go off a few meters early isn't going to help you much. Of course, using a 2000lb bomb on just a tank isn't exactly ideal, but it's an option in a worst-case scenario.

Besides, any half decent IADS is going to inherently limit the engagement ranges of any aircraft, especially non stealthy airframes. If the S-400 can engage a conventional fourth generation airframe all the way out to 240 nautical miles, you'll never see the gun employed. Furthermore one has to consider attached assets such as SPAAG or even infantry packing MANPADS that can make any aircraft bleed during strafing runs. Frankly if the airspace gets sanitized to the point of being able to strafe tanks with relative impunity, we've probably already won the war.

UCLASS is flailing because of the moronic "single airframe" requirement (or, rather, "minimal number of airframes", instead of the classic "task-appropriate airframe" that was the norm until the late '80s). It doesn't fucking work, it never did, yet they're still trying to turn a hacksaw into a hammer.

Well actually the reason for UCLASS's recent cancellation is not due to some misconceived notion that dedicated task-appropriate airplanes are not allowed now, but rather because the actual capabilities offered by the platform are largely redundant if you're already equipping the navy with F-35 C's anyways. After all, according to the navy, motivation behind re-jigging UCLASS are informed in part due to the very lack of having dedicated airframes. With, 20-30% of all hornet missions are dedicated to tanking, it makes a heck of a lot more sense having a dedicated tanker platform rather than having two ISR/Strike platforms on deck. Not to mention the fact that we can get C's on flat tops faster than we ever could get the UCLASS fully certified for operational readiness.

Also I never quite got this attitude that somehow multi-role aircraft are these horribly compromised machines. I mean, are people going out and arguing that the F-16, F-18, Rafale, F-2, and Su-35 are fundamentally compromised warplanes?

I'd wager that all those planes have worked and then some, especially with the hornets.

 

[Ovid]

I don't get it. Like who is the target audience for that? Are they buying superbowl ads to impress congress members who are at the game? Or are they trying to be like "look how cool we are, please come work for us" to the mass audience? Johny Average isn't going to go home and be like "Jane, I think we should buy a sixth generation fighter jet".

I guess you make argument that they're advertising for investment (stock) dollars.

 

[Hoo-doo]

Oh, and for people who still wonder why they're doing it, Northrop Grumman also have this lovely website to drum up support for this project -

http://www.americasnewbomber.com/

Just lovely.

Your country is a fucking caricature. What the actual fuck.

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

I don't get it. Like who is the target audience for that? Are they buying superbowl ads to impress congress members who are at the game? Or are they trying to be like "look how cool we are, please come work for us" to the mass audience? Johny Average isn't going to go home and be like "Jane, I think we should buy a sixth generation fighter jet".

Probably wants to form a favorable opinion in the population's minds.
A "look at what your tax dollars are doing, building this incredible aircraft decades beyond everything else in the world"
while the alternative is the typical backroom deals and you have a public wondering why we need to pay to replace F22s, etc which to the typical civilian seems like we just got.

 

[TacticalHotdog]

The F-22 saw deployment in Syria, but not against another air force. It was used as a strike craft rather than AS. Still disappointing though.

There was that incident in the Persian gulf where a F22 chased off some Iranian F4s from intercepting a drone. It can defuse situations with only it's presence in a given airspace. The intersting part was that it managed to effectively sneak up behind the F4s and pull up right next to them without them noticing.

Earlier this year, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little, said that an IRIAF (Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force) F-4 Phantom combat plane attempted to intercept a U.S. MQ-1 drone flying in international airspace off Iran.

As we reported back then, one of the two F-4 Phantom jets came to about 16 miles from the UAV but broke off pursuit after they were broadcast a warning message by two American planes escorting the Predator.

The episode happened in March 2013, few months after a two Sukhoi Su-25 attack planes operated by the Pasdaran (informal name of the IRGC – the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution) attempted to shoot down an American MQ-1 flying a routine surveillance flight in international airspace some 16 miles off Iran, the interception of the unmanned aircraft failed. After this attempted interception the Pentagon decided to escort the drones involved in ISR (intelligence surveillance reconnaissance) missions with fighter jets (either F-18 Hornets with the CVW 9 embarked on the USS John C. Stennis whose Carrier Strike Group is currently in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility or F-22 Raptors like those deployed to Al Dhafra in the UAE.

New details about the episode were recently disclosed by Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh who on Sept. 17 not only confirmed that the fighter jets providing HVAAE (High Value Air Asset Escort) were F-22 stealth fighters but also said that:

“He [the Raptor pilot] flew under their aircraft [the F-4s] to check out their weapons load without them knowing that he was there, and then pulled up on their left wing and then called them and said ‘you really ought to go home'”

If the episode went exactly as Welsh described it, it was something more similar to Maverick’s close encouter with Russian Mig-28s in Top Gun movie than a standard interception.

http://theaviationist.com/2013/09/19/f-22-f-4-intercept/

 

[Dead Man]

Unnecessary rolling. Unneeded onboard pilot. Must be a sci fi movie.

 

[irfaanator]

I live in Dayton, Ohio, a few blocks away from Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and it's still a little bizarre to drive past billboards for this kind of stuff. There are prominent ones for Northrop Grumman advertising military drones right across the street.

Weird.

yea same for me since I live near there as well. Kinda makes sense since the airforce base is all fairborn really has

 

[GifGafIsTheBestGaf]

There was that incident in the Persian gulf where a F22 chased off some Iranian F4s from intercepting a drone. It can defuse situations with only it's presence in a given airspace. The intersting part was that it managed to effectively sneak up behind the F4s and pull up right next to them without them noticing.

http://theaviationist.com/2013/09/19/f-22-f-4-intercept/

We need a new top gun movie for the new generation

 

[Monocle]

OK fine, I'll buy one.

 

[hipbabboom]

An advertisement indirectly subsidized by the American taxpayer telling Americans how awesome they are, America Fuck Yeah.

DIPLOMACY YO

This is where my thought went as well. I get little upset thinking that my tax dollars paid for that (the commercial) a little

 

[andythinkpad]

Then it's quite amazing other countries can do diplomacy without it.

Actually the carrier group were american military industrial complex'd best investment. I am not talking dumb projects like the B-2 that wasted way too much money. You know why the American dollar is the world currency? why oil has been traded in USD instead of mix of major currencies? Why America can liberally print more money and off load the inflation to the world? The carrier groups ensure it.

 

[Droplet]

This is where my thought went as well. I get little upset thinking that my tax dollars paid for that (the commercial) a little

Northrop Grumman isn't exclusively a US government contractor. There are a good 20 other countries whose tax dollars probably indirectly went into that commercial too.

Spoiler

I have no idea how the finances work here.

 

[Prinz Eugn]

High end adversaries will reach airfields without aircraft. So short to mid range aircraft could be ruled out like attack helicopters largely are now. The short-range stuff would need to be high tech yet cheap (I know) and most importantly decentralized. I wonder if eventually that leads to more drones that are smaller and cheaper than a Reaper.

Airfield destruction is certainly a possibility, but the cost in having a decent air defense is much cheaper than the cost of having the ability to take out far away air bases consistently. Vietnam and the Gulf War saw the US Air Force not having their bases really threatened for the most part, despite facing advanced (for the time) air defense systems. And in the in the highest end of scenarios, all of this is pointless because the MIRVs are already on their way.

You don't need to rip apart a tank in order to take it out of action. Cassetted turrets are a hot item now, and they lack the old-school targeting periscopes tanks had for over 90 years. In these tanks the gunner sits in the machine's bowels, surrounded by LCDs. Destroying the target acquisition modules renders him blind. Sure, the entire turret is easier to swap for a functional one, but critical time is lost.

Modern tanks are pretty well protected against missiles. Not even the old nemesis, the top-attack munition, is a guaranteed kill. The Armata Common Tracked Platform has zenith mounts specifically designed to protect against missiles with a top-attack envelope (seen here and here, the small rear-most trapezoidal boxes on the vehicle). Only high-supersonic missiles (that can hit before the ADS has either acquired or fired) or saturation strikes (which overwhelm the ADS's ability to manage threats) are viable, and either of the two is considerably more expensive than the classic ATGM (be it air or ground-launched). Guns are immune to close-in interception, and can damage or completely destroy these systems (along with other electronics and ERA bricks, greatly facilitating ulterior efforts to disable the tanks).


I'm not a fan of gatlings. I think they're too bulky, too heavy and the motor takes too much internal space (compared to a standard revolver cannon). And larger calibres allow for smarter shells and more complex warhead arrangements.

luckygodzilla covered most of this, but seriously: keep in mind a 210kg+ Maverick is going to give zero fucks about a system designed to defeat ~20kg munitions.

Also, the SDB has a shaped-charge warhead so any T-10 is going to have a very bad day if it gets hit (SDB can have a really long flight time though, so no guarantee).

Plus, as the obviously-updated-by-Russian-propagandists page on the Armata MBT variant even explains, there are backup systems in place. In a combat situation, good luck telling which tanks are partially blind and which ones not, but are still very, very angry.

Also I never quite got this attitude that somehow multi-role aircraft are these horribly compromised machines. I mean, are people going out and arguing that the F-16, F-18, Rafale, F-2, and Su-35 are fundamentally compromised warplanes?

I'd wager that all those planes have worked and then some, especially with the hornets.

It's just fanboy 101 level crap. It's really exciting to think about how purebred and "uncompromised" something is, and people have been finding any excuse to hate the F-35 in particular for over a decade. It's a natural fit. Plus, the multi-role (and multi-service) thing makes the marginally informed jump to the F-111 and something something McNamara was an asshole and the F-14 was in Top Gun.

Additionally, I believe the Rafale was actually "omni-role" according to Dassault, while the Typhoon was/is "swing-role," whatever that means.

 

[wildfire]

See you in the claouds.

Does make you wonder what secret sauce goes into their stealth tech.

 

[Joezie]

Yeah. The F-22 and F-35 are the equivalent to the F-15/F-16 high/low mix, except that the F-16 was an outstanding aircraft and dog fighter, unlike the F-35 which is terrible at everything.

Well sure. The F-16 was designed to be an AS fighter and evolved into Multi role and the 35 is Multirole Strike from day 1. This isn't rocket science as to why the F--16 is a good dog-fighter.

F-16 is Air First Ground Second
F-35 is Ground First Air Second

As for being terrible at everything, I'm probably going to need sources for that, that aren't Pierre Sprey(lol) or David Axe. Right off the top of my head vs the F-16, the F-35 has:

Better slow speed performance
Better High Angle of Attack performance
Greater straight line acceleration.
An equal Sustained turning advantage, only really losing the F-16 when the F-16 literally carries nothing in training configurations.

And this comes from actual Dutch pilots who have been training with both aircraft.

 

[Dryk]

The A-10's biggest problem is its dogshit power-to-weight ratio. It has some ridiculously anemic engines, meaning the pilot can't GTFO after s/he has dropped the boom. Stronger engines would help a successor spend less time in the MANPADS/autogun zone where most of A-10 losses were taken. Dive in, unleash, zoom out.

That's a problem that could be pretty easily solved on a new platform. Turbofans have come a long way in 50 years.

 

[Averon]

Sorry if this was answered, but did this actually show up yesterday?

 

[LordOfChaos]

“Then, we take off. Invisible - like the wind!”

“And, suddenly, the future passes before our eyes! BUT IT’S NOT THE FUTURE! It’s the present!”

Oh god. LOOK AT YOUR PLANE. NOW LOOK AT ME. NOW LOOK AT YOUR PLANE. YOUR PLANE IS NOW DIAMONDS.

-literally this writing quality

 

[Mindlog]

It's just fanboy 101 level crap. It's really exciting to think about how purebred and "uncompromised" something is, and people have been finding any excuse to hate the F-35 in particular for over a decade. It's a natural fit.

I don't quite understand the Navy's need for a large multirole drone. Neither do the four companies competing for the contract. Current and near future needs are swinging in the other direction. Cheap and expendable weapons to direct fire from their proposed weapons and to supplement the currently existing large multirole platforms. Hearing the cliche' Pentagon Wars project creep scene is hard to avoid.

LOCUST should refocus exactly what the Navy needs out of their UCLASS program.

 

[Joezie]

Sorry if this was answered, but did this actually show up yesterday?

The commercial did.

 

[luckygodzilla]

I don't quite understand the Navy's need for a large multirole drone. Neither do the four companies competing for the contract. Current and near future needs are swinging in the other direction. Cheap and expendable weapons to direct fire from their proposed weapons and to supplement the currently existing large multirole platforms. Hearing the cliche' Pentagon Wars project creep scene is hard to avoid.

LOCUST should refocus exactly what the Navy needs out of their UCLASS program.

Well hey, UCLASS is dead and we're getting a dedicated tabker platform out of its carcass. Might not be an expendable drone, but it clears up the entire fighter wing for what it was actually designed for.

 

[HStallion]

So my question is do we even need to keep making man hey fighters, bombers, etc. It seems like we are going more and more to drones and the like.

Honestly I could see swarms of small cheap mass produced drones clogging the skies and being a far greater threat than a multi billion dollar fighter.

 

[golem]

So my question is do we even need to keep making man hey fighters, bombers, etc. It seems like we are going more and more to drones and the like.

Honestly I could see swarms of small cheap mass produced drones clogging the skies and being a far greater threat than a multi billion dollar fighter.

Mostly drones are useful in uncontested airspace. We don't have the communication technology to solve remote piloting lag nor do we have AI technology advanced enough to enable survivability in hostile environments