F35 is Effed Up!

Aren't manned fighter jets going the way of the horse and buggy anyhow?
 
The last real Dog fighter was the Phantom

I think it's better to say "the last fighter used in a dog fight was the Phantom." The F4 was a fat girl with high heels on at the dance. The lack of its ability to dog fight is why so many were shot down and forced the Navy and Air Force to open up fighter schools. The F15, F14 and F16 are great fighters. The F22 smokes them all.
 
I think it's better to say "the last fighter used in a dog fight was the Phantom." The F4 was a fat girl with high heels on at the dance. The lack of its ability to dog fight is why so many were shot down and forced the Navy and Air Force to open up fighter schools. The F15, F14 and F16 are great fighters. The F22 smokes them all.
I watched the Israelis take out worn out Phantoms and destroy our Tomcats when the rules were no long range missiles
 
I watched the Israelis take out worn out Phantoms and destroy our Tomcats when the rules were no long range missiles

100% true I get it. Watch the documentary of Top Gun and why they had to invent the school.

The F4 was never even designed with a gun, it was a missile platform for interdiction of the Soviet bomber fleet.
 
agree with most of above: drones win.
F-whatever. train and have a few.
masses of drones will beat one F-up.
 
agree with most of above: drones win.
F-whatever. train and have a few.
masses of drones will beat one F-up.
Ehhh, infrastructure wins.

Whoever has the funding to back drones or fighters with the support staff, cyberops, networking, maintenance techs, awacs, etc wins.

If the generals(all pilots) keep us in manned planes, but keep all the infrastructure behind it, it doesn't matter.

Drones are their own headache.

Let me run a scenario by you:

Let's say you want to use a squadron of drones, say, 20 drones. You will need to stream the video from the drone continuously, without lag, and be able to, again without lag, operate the drone.

Let's say its 720p. So, we probably need to wirelessly transmit, what 10gbps from hundreds/thousands of miles away in real time. Multiply that by 20.

How are you going to do that reliably on a large scale?

That is the issue at the moment.
Satellite has latency, and is not particularly fast. Prone to interference. Can possibly be attacked by other satellites/missles.
Something like Alphabet's Loon, high altitude balloons could be used. Again, have to worry about all the above problems.
Maybe drones gliding continuously at near orbit? This could work, would need many drones to provide coverage, and you'd need to come up with an entirely new networking protocol to switch between access points dozens of miles in the air moving thousands mph.

And then you've got to think about cyber operations involving them, electronic countermeasures affecting the drones directly or the signals coming to them. Man in the middle attacks on the signal. Programming the drones to work if connection is lost(do you program a robot to kill?).

A drone is great. Many drones are a networking nightmare.

Drones will eventually replace manned airplanes. Working on an Air Force base, I don't think it will happen any time soon. I could be wrong(civilian intern).
 
"...squadron of drones, say, 20 drones.'

well, instead of squadron, i am thinking "swarm"...20,000.
 
@vaskeet

I loved the F-4 at SJAFB...loud, big, and thick, black exhaust you could see for miles. But definitely had to be reinvented several times over.

@vaskeet , the A-6 is my favorite AC. I remember those at Cherry Point.
 
@vaskeet

I loved the F-4 at SJAFB...loud, big, and thick, black exhaust you could see for miles. But definitely had to be reinvented several times over.

@vaskeet , the A-6 is my favorite AC. I remember those at Cherry Point.

I spent most of my career as a Avionics flightdeck troubleshooter final checker on the A-6 I also did a tour as the avionics maintenance instructor for both Navy and Marine A-6 Intruder techs Like me you must have a soft spot for a big ugly dump truck that could dump a load of manure over someone who really ticked you off
 
At NTC, we had a F-4 come in hot, maybe 50' off the deck directly over our tracked vehicle. Just wow. Once at Ft Chaffee, AR, we watched F-16s, A-7s & A-10s doing gunnery. The A-7 is a cool old bird & fun to watch, but nothin' like watching an A-10 pilot jukin' & bobbin' & layin' down the BBRRRRRTTTT.
 
I spent most of my career as a Avionics flightdeck troubleshooter final checker on the A-6 I also did a tour as the avionics maintenance instructor for both Navy and Marine A-6 Intruder techs Like me you must have a soft spot for a big ugly dump truck that could dump a load of manure over someone who really ticked you off

My dad retired from the Marines, he was in the intelligence shop, his next to last tour before retirement was at Cherry Point. I remember those and A-6s finally, this was the mid-70s.

When I was at East Carolina in 1989 I had considered going to Navy OCS and they (officer recruiter) hooked up an orientation hop on a KA-6D from Cherry Point to Oceana. I love that aircraft, probably my favorite amongst all. I am a military airplane nut.
 
I was at Eglin AFB when they transitioned from F4's to F15's. Used to watch the F4's smoke and lumber their way into the air. One day I heard the roar, and kept looking for the brick clawing its way off the runway. Out of the corner of my eye, i saw something... An F15 making a vertical climb from near the center of the runway, accelerating vertically. WOW... big change.
 
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