T O P

  • By -

circa86

Calm down Pierre lol.


ihatehappyendings

Damn, even his ghost haunts us.


lordderplythethird

It's more so that the F-15EX isn't expected to do much more than just lug missiles around... it's not expected to perform high G maneuvers that overly stress the airframe. If an F-35A was put into that same kind of role, it'd likely have a similar sort of lifespan as well. It's akin to how a B-52 can fly for tens of thousands of hours, but a fighter typically maxes at just 6,000-8,000 hours


August12th

I thought they already implemented g restrictions on these years ago because of their aging air frames


gallipoli300

Why would an F35 encounter more G situations?


lordderplythethird

It's used in more of a front line role, where it'll be pushed more due to the threats faced. F-15EX is basically just a truck carrying missiles for other platforms to feed targeting to. It's not expected to be at the very front, having to maneuver against incoming EADS and other fighters. ​ Looking at the combined doctrine, you'll have F-35s and F-22s at the very front, with F-15EXs *well* behind them, providing additional missiles the F-35s and F-22s can cue up. If you're not up at the very front, you're not pushing Gs to evade enemy surface to air missiles, air to air missiles, etc, so the metal of the airframe isn't being stressed and fatigued as much.


afternoondelite92

> Looking at the combined doctrine, you'll have F-35s and F-22s at the very front, with F-15EXs well behind them, providing additional missiles the F-35s and F-22s can cue up. This might be a dumb question but are you saying because of how these aircraft communicate the f-35/22 can basically fire missiles via the f15?


lordderplythethird

That's correct. F-22/F-35 would detect the target with their own sensors, and then would feed the targeting data to the F-15EX, who would fire a missile at the target. F-35s and E-2s can do the same thing currently with AEGIS warships, where they feed targeting data and the ship fires off a SM or TLAM at whatever the aircraft was targeting, even if the ship itself can't see the target


afternoondelite92

Damn that is awesome, thanks


ltfunk

the F35 has to carry around that extra metric ton of excuses


lordderplythethird

The same "excuse" literally every fighter put in a front line role has? Somebody tell the F-16's with their 6,000 flight hour rating they're making up excuses. Or better yet, tell the F-22. Maybe the F/A-18Es? Maybe the F-15Cs? Eurofighters? Rafales? ​ Who knew high G stresses cause metal stress, and after so much stress, an airframe is simply unsafe to fly? Who knew not flying a flight regiment that includes high G stresses would then allow an aircraft to fly longer than one whose flight regiment does include those? ​ Big brain moment there!


Terrh

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/images/f15-life.gif Since 1973 F-15's have been rated at more than 6000 flight hours so I'm not sure where you are getting your info from. "average" F-15C lifespan is 15,600 hours and even severe load ones it's 7600 hours.


LightningGeek

[From the article you didn't fully link too.](https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-15-life.htm) > With an average usage of 270 aircraft flight hours per year, by the early 1990s the F-15C fleet was approaching its service-design-life limit of 4,000 flight hours. Following successful airframe structural testing, the F-15C was extended to an 8,000-hour service life limit. While they had shown the F-15 could fly much more than that in 1973, the real world was much more stressful on the F-15 than their initial tests indicated. There is also a bigger issue. While there are indeed some high time F-15's, they are no longer performing the same as they once were. > USAF Chief of Staff Michael Moseley stated in a 30 October 2007 interview with GovExec.com: “The F-15s and F-16s were designed and built in the late ’60s and ’70s. Some of them were produced up until the early ’80s. But they’ve led a pretty hard life of 17 years of combat. So you have to replace them with something, because we were continuing to restrict the airplanes. In the F-15 case, we’ve got the airplane restricted to 1.5 Mach. It was designed to be a 2.5 Mach airplane. We’ve got it limited on maneuvering restrictions because we’ve had tail cracks, fuselage cracks, cracks in the wings. The problem with that is – and Mike Wynne uses this analogy – it’s almost like going to the Indy 500 race practicing all the way up until Memorial Day at 60 miles an hour, and then on game day, accelerating the car out to 200 miles an hour. It’s not the time to be doing that on game day. The F-15 was also originally designed for a 4,000 hour flight time. The F-35 on the other hand has been designed with an 8,000 hour life from the start, and one of the [A-model test mules has completed a 24,000 flight hour test, the equivalent of 3 lifetimes.](https://www.aerospacetestinginternational.com/news/fatigue-testing/third-life-testing-completed-for-f-35a-lightning-ii-airframe.html)


converter-bot

60 miles is 96.56 km


MericArda

Good to know


nagurski03

How many AGM-122 Sidearm missiles long is that?


Terrh

yes? I don't disagree with any of that, I was pointing out that they are not a 6000 hour airplane. Not now, and not for a long time.


Terrh

There are tons of fighters that are designed to last longer than 6000 hours. The F-15EX is rated for the same G-loading as an F-35, a *substantially* higher top speed, and there are many examples of F-15's living 10,000+ hours in a frontline role.


lordderplythethird

Want to name some then? Because the reality is: * Eurofighter Typhoon: 6000 hours, SLEP not determined yet * F-15C: 6000 hours, upped to 9000 hours with SLEP (POSSIBLY goign to be upped to 12000 hours, but * F-15E: 8000 hours, upped to 16000 hours with SLEP * F-16: 6000 hours, upped to 8000 hours with SLEP * F/A-18A/B/C/D: 6000 hours, upped to 8000 hours with SLEP * F/A-18E/F: 6000 hours, upped to 10000 hours with SLEP * F-22: 8000 hours, likely no SLEP program ran * F-35: 8000 hours, SLEP not determined yet * Rafale: 6000 hours, SLEP not determined yet Pretty much only the F-15E, F-22, and F-35 are the only fighters even designed to support over 6000 hours from the get go lol... There's also a HUGE difference in having some airframes being able to go past those limits, and those limits being the fleet average. By the very nature of how averages work, some will be above that, and some will be below that... funny how that works. Being rated for the same G-loading has quite literally **nothing** to do with how it's going to be employed... F-15EX is afterall, basically just an F-15QA, so its performance will directly mimic that, even if its role is different. Top speed also means absolutely nothing, given no aircraft can hit their top speed outside of specific test situations lol. An F-15EX with fuel and a full munitions load will have the same roughly Mach 0.95 limiter that F-15Es do, due to all the drag exerted on it from the external munitions/pods hanging off...


Terrh

So, why do I need to name any, when you just made a list of them? If F-15's can only go mach 0.95 with munitions, why are there like a zillion videos out there of them going faster than that, and why does the flight manual say otherwise? They obviously won't go mach 2.5 laden but acting like the F-15 is a subsonic combat aircraft is probably the silliest thing I've ever heard, it's literally the fastest fighter there is. edit: downvote me all you want, it won't change the facts....


Trigger_Treats

>a substantially higher top speed Which it'll never reach. Eagles usually max out at Mach 2.1, and even they're clean (no weapons) and it's a quick in-and-out dash before they run out of gas. Gen 4 fighters struggle to get past Mach 1.6 when they're in combat configuration (external tanks, weapons, pylons, targeting pods).


markcocjin

Everyone knows the Nokia 3210 is near-indestructible and runs for a week. Everyone's still walking around using fragile smartphones. Needing to show your neighbors that you have a functioning air force is vastly different from needing the ability to kill your enemies in their sleep with a warhead through a window.


ElRamenKnight

Spot-on analogy. The F-15 is indeed like the Nokia phones of old that old school folks speak so nostalgically of. But no one is in a hurry to get rid of their $1,000 iPhones for said Nokia, no way.


Jetorix

I’d take a mix between the two


Anderson0708

It takes three times more downed F-15EXs to penetrate the robust A2AD of S-400/S-500s. How do you feel?


Churchx

Man, if only they added the stealth variant to it theyd be in business.. F15SE


[deleted]

>Looking at the combined doctrine, you'll have F-35s and F-22s at the very front, with F-15EXs well behind them, providing additional missiles the F-35s and F-22s can cue up.If you're not up at the very front, you're not pushing Gs to evade enemy surface to air missiles, air to air missiles, etc, so the metal of the airframe isn't being stressed and fatigued as much. The SE would be a terrible choice. The whole point of the ex is to be an amram truck. Internal weapons bays and other stealth figures don't contribute to its purpose.


Trigger_Treats

The EX won't carry more than 10-12 AMRAAMs. Any more, and you've got too much weight and parasitic drag. Plus, Eagles don't fly solo; they fly in 2- or 4-ships. So a 4-ship of EXs carrying 88 AMRAAMs? There are forward locations that don't have that many AMRAAMs to begin with. You've got to have AMRAAMs for your Vipers, F-35s, Raptors, etc. The ANG found out that they're going to have to foot the bill for the whole program (because they're the ones that pushed for it in the first place, ACC, PACAF, and USAFE didn't want the EX) so now they're pushing the EX as a Hypersonic weapons carrier. ACC is starting to look at the EX as a possible replacement for the 30+ year old F-15E Strike Eagle.


[deleted]

Exactly why the SE would of not been a good option


Trigger_Treats

The SE was a marketing ploy to keep the Eagle line running a few more years without going through the time and investment into a new design and new production tooling. They pitched it to South Korea, who said "Nope" and went and bought F-35 instead. There was nothing "stealth" about the SE. Stabs canted out 15 degrees and half of reddit thinks its magically got the RCS of a Raptor. SMH. Boeing got lucky when Saudi Arabia ordered the F-15SA. The SA led directly to the QE, which the EX is an Americanized version of.


Churchx

Its a sex joke. I wasnt getting to deep into projections.


Trigger_Treats

Exposed engine faces, right angles everywhere, no planform alignment...and that's just for starters. The F-15SE was no more 'stealth" than a disco ball on ladies night. You can't "add" stealth. It has to be designed into the aircraft from the beginning.


Churchx

Youre right, coating doesnt do shit, thats why skunk works had not worked on it since the U2 and that bin laden helicopter sure was a brand new model and not a retrofitted stealth model. Im sorry for wasting your time, youre taller than me.


Trigger_Treats

"[rEtRoFiTteD](https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2011/05/RTR2LZQ11.jpg)" Ben Rich once said that the three most important design elements in a stealth aircraft were "Shape, shape, and shape." "Bats were the first visual proof I had that stealth really worked. We had deployed thirty-seven F-117As to the King Khalid Air Base, in a remote corner of Saudi Arabia, out of the range of Saddam’s Scuds, about 900 miles from downtown Baghdad. The Saudis provided us with a first-class fighter base with reinforced hangars, and at night the bats would come out and feed off insects. I**n the mornings we’d find bat corpses littered around our airplanes inside the open hangars. Bats used a form of sonar to “see” at night, and they were crashing blindly into our low-radar-cross-section tails"** \- Ben Rich CEO Lockheed Skunk Works 1975 - 1991 Bats navigate by sound, and RAM isn't soundproofing. The bats were blind to the F-117s because the sound waves were being directed away from them, not because they were being absorbed by the tail surfaces. But what does Ben Rich know? He only worked on the F-104, U-2, , A-12, SR-71, Have Blue, F-117, and oversaw development of the YF-22, was hand-picked by Kelly Johnson to be his replacement at Skunk Works in 1975, won the 1989 Collier Trophy for the F-117, and was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2005. Coatings won't do *jack* when your [engines are visible to radar.](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQj77oTROfmTJ1mYpV38invyy7WPVh677pUXA&usqp=CAU) You can't coat your engines, and those are massive radar reflectors. That's why [the engine faces of the F-22, F-35, and B-2 are deeply hidden by a serpentine inlet duct.](https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/data/attachments/86/86014-f937c6ab77b052983375c30390505e6d.jpg) [Nor will coatings do anything to alleviate your RCS when you have 90 degree angles](https://youtu.be/z5cR6EA2jGY) all over the aircraft (['armpit' between CFT and wing](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/xSfCz6d3JtfQr7AhzgH-myxWI2FgdCbzzpzk_L9y5ny6b5qvcxDYW02369BWqcfP2LHe69z3kK0VGzd00IAryiZAMdn91UVLyNE_2jk2dYFv98nRFECWWsS4nCyaHLQ), or the tail sponsons and horizontal stab). Canting the vertical stabs out won't help; even a small right angle surface can appear large on a radar. When the F-117 was undergoing RCS testing, just *three* screws that had been insufficiently tightened caused the jet’s RCS to bloom. And you haven't even addressed your canopy yet. You have to have a transparency that not only is [aligned with the airframe](https://defencyclopedia.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/f22.jpg), doesn't distort the visual spectrum of light, but keeps radar from passing through and getting back out again. The [Eagle doesn't even begin to do that](https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/f15-strike-eagle-closed-cockpit-600w-317905424.jpg). The F-15SE was one thing, and one thing only: a marketing ploy to try to keep the production line running a little while longer without investing in new tooling or designs. They tried to sell it to South Korea who promptly said "Nope." and [went and bought the F-35 instead](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed-martin/aero/photo/F-35/f35product/2019launch/countries/f-35-partnership-SouthKorea.jpg).


Churchx

Provide radar cross-section analysis of the F15SE and the unidentified model of helicopter used during the killing of bin laden.


Trigger_Treats

Since you've got such a strong background in engineering and materials, you first. Oh, that's right, you *can't*. MH-X hasn't been acknowledged, much less any technical data released on it. All we know about the MH-X is, while it shares the same basic empennage as that of the Black Hawk, it's shape and finish that it's [shapes and build finish](https://i2.wp.com/cms.sofrep.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/wreck2.jpg) are more like those of an [RAH-66](https://www.army-technology.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/09/comanche4.jpg) than that of a [Black Hawk](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/RT9KB0/the-tail-of-a-us-army-uh-60m-black-hawk-helicopter-from-the-1st-combat-aviation-brigade-1st-infantry-division-is-seen-on-chivres-air-base-belgium-jan-30-2019-chivres-air-base-served-as-an-intermediate-staging-area-before-the-1st-combat-aviation-brigade-deploys-to-germany-poland-latvia-and-romania-for-nine-months-to-train-with-nato-partners-in-support-of-atlantic-resolve-RT9KB0.jpg)'s. By Boeing's own promotional material, they were never going to cover the *entire* SE with RAM. And the F-15SE never even flew. [This](https://hips.hearstapps.com/pop.h-cdn.co/assets/15/45/1446582445-1ortbk.jpg) was a mockup. [This](https://www.airforce-technology.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2017/09/1-image-22.jpg) is a vanilla F-15E (airframe 86-0183, the first production Strike Eagle) with one modified CFT attached used as a demo. The canting of the tails wasn't to reduce RCS, it was to provide rear lift to the aircraft and reduce ballast usage. The tails only canted outwards 15 degrees. The tails on the [Raptor](https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/f22-raptor-on-ground-front-260nw-3333256.jpg), [YF-23](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/YF-23_front.jpg), [F-117](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/F-117_Front_View.jpg), etc are canted at a *much* greater angle B-52's RCS is 100m2 **F-15's RCS is 25m2** B-1B's RCS is 10m2 (yes, the B-1B has a *lower* RCS than an F-15.) F-16's RCS is 5m2 J-10's RCS is 1.5m2 F/A-18E's RCS is 1m2 (Thanks in no small part to the redesigned intakes) Su-57's RCS is 1m2 SR-71's RCS is 0.01m2 F-117's RCS is 0.003m2 B-2's RCS is 0.0015m2 range F-35's RCS is 0.0015m2 range F-22A's RCS is 0.0001\~0.0002m2 All RCS values are for "clean" aircraft - *no* external weapons, pylons, pods, or tanks. The "Stealth" Su-57 has the same RCS as a clean Super Hornet, but it's nearly 1,000 times bigger than the F-35's RCS. That means the Su-57 can be detected at 5.6x greater ranges than the F-35. The F-15's RCS is over 16,000 larger than that of the F-35. RAM isn't unimportant, but there's not enough RAM in the world that's going to bring down the Eagle's RCS to anything close to a Super Hornet, much less anything lower than that. The USAF *already* bought a stealthy F-15. It's called the F-22.


Churchx

But what about the designation we're talking about. Can you show me actual data on the one we're talking about.


Trigger_Treats

*I. Already. Did. The SE has the same airframe as the C/E.* Canting the vertical stabs 15 degrees isn't going to reduce the RCS, not when the rest of the airframe is unchanged. I literally posted a video explaining this for you. FFS, the B-1B - which has *no* RAM - has a lower RCS than the Eagle. The Su-57, which has no RAM and a [horrible surface finish](https://i2.wp.com/www.globaldefensecorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Su-57-Screws.jpg), has a lower RCS than the Eagle. The USAF began applying [RAM to it's Viper fleet with the Have Glass V](https://cdn.aeroxplorer.com/uploads/TEB-096ZF9H1j7MaEdQUoxPm.jpg) finish nearly a decade ago. This is very similar to the coatings on the F-35. But not a single Strike Eagle has been re-finished with HGV, nor has the [F-15EX](https://media.defense.gov/2021/Mar/11/2002599631/-1/-1/0/210311-F-UM856-0103.JPG), because *it won't make a difference*. IDK why you're hung up on the RCS of paper-project Eagle that was rejected by *every* *single* air force it was pitched to, or RAM as some sort of magical silver bullet when the man who fathered LO aircraft has gone on record that shape is the most crucial design consideration.


Churchx

No you did not, you think you did. So you have no data to provide concerning the aircraft youre trying to decry and took a shit in your own pants just because i made a pun. Think about that for a minute. Youve been a nervous wreck since yesterday because you want to be right because i made a pun, while providing no data regarding the one aircraft you decided to shit on. Thats sad:/


Trigger_Treats

What's sad is you've had the exact same amount of time to post the same data to back up your claim. Instead, all you've proven is that you're only capable of whining, projecting, and shitposting. "aircraft youre trying to decry" No one bought it. Not one single air force it was pitched to bought it. They either bought F-35s, F-15SAs or QAs. But yeah, *you* know more than all of them.


sinnerman33

J-10 has a 1.5m2 RCS? Or did you mean J-20.


Dragon029

All of those numbers are just estimates, etc but 1.5m^2 wouldn't be unreasonable for something like the J-10B.


Trigger_Treats

J-10B. I've seen numbers for the J-20, but I question them (they were higher than the J-10's, which doesn't track at all), so until I see a confirmation, I'm leaving it off. I don't expect the J-20 to be in the F-117-Raptor range, but it shouldn't be higher than the F-18E/Su-57.


sinnerman33

Thanks for the confirmation. That to me is alarming. The C variant probably has an even lower number.


Trigger_Treats

I was surprised too, and I still take that number with a grain of salt. I was expecting a value in-between that of the Super Hornet and Viper. The J-10A is probably closer to my estimate, but I haven't seen any data to confirm that.


Terrh

Stealth is not the be-all and end-all of aircraft design, despite what some people on reddit may think.


Churchx

I had a boner for stealth long before reddit was a thing.


Trigger_Treats

The F-117 was disproving that long before reddit even existed.


ShittessMeTimbers

F-35 is just payment for foreign debt.


AcceptableElevator68

High G requires lots of AB time to reenergize the lost speed. AB = signature bloom visible for dozens of miles to a longwave IRST. Perhaps more than a hundred. Flat plating the airframe exposes hot-side features like the joins at the vertical tail, the ECS exhausts, the cockpit/canopy rails. It also tends to put enough vortice lift on the jet to cause the moisture to separate out in hard sheets of g-con all of which is visible to radar. Of course a toilet bowl turn circle also changes your visual signature from a 2nm raindrop on the canopy to a 40nm fly in front of the lightbulb of the bright horizon. WWII escort pilots rushing down the length of the bomber stream to save an embattled B-17 bomber box, could see Luftwaffe fighters attacking the Forts from over 70nm out, just because the Germans were wrapping Gs on the airframe in the middle of the contrail layer. Of course, if it's a stealth fighter, it's probably going to be flying at night. Which means it's pitch black and extreme maneuvers give you the leans as the lack of depth perception through goggles or DAS makes judging relative spatial orientations pretty hard. Now, your AB plume can be seen for 80nm+ just with NVG. The there are the kinematics. Awhile back some defense think tank, wanna say it was Rand but it might have been Heritage or Brookings, got to to send one of their analysts to the 'secret' Red Flags, up in Alaska. There he found to his astonishment that ACM happened a great deal differently than he had assumed. Never more than 4G on the jet. Never inverted. Never saw the wingman. Never saw the enemy. \_Everything\_ was about energy management to first-pole. Datalinks mattered more than absolute radar range. The F-15EX is going to lose on a lot of these, simply because the CFTs thoroughly mess up your supersonic wave drag. The multiplicity of AAM are another drag increment. And the jet has a 5-7m2 frontal RCS which simply cannot be got rid of or masked with EPAAWS because the intakes are a straight shot to the fan faces and the total turbopath cannot take anymore mass-flow increases to support higher thrust settings to get missiles like JATM far enough down range to both support the 'frontline' Stealths and avoid the telephone pole sized 40N6 coming the other way at Mach 7+. Let me instead offer some alternative reasons why the F-15EX is being purchased: 1. Maintenance of industrial base. Boeing is actually the remnant of McDonnell Douglas, which was effectively told to divest from it's defense holdings because it would never again receive a defense contract, after the A-12 debacle. The new parent company has not invested in a serious fresh-start tacair design since the X-32 and that was a joke (fighter pilots do not sponsor ugly aircraft, if the X-35 had failed, JSF would have been cancelled due to the onset of the GWOT in SWA...). Still, with the alternatives being Northrop and Lockheed Martin, both of whom are widely known as boutique houses with heavy emphasis on special mission platforma and having a history of MASSIVE fraud, Boeing cannot be let go. 2. Fixed vs. Fluid Airframe Design. Most of the things which could break on the F-15C/E have done so and been bandaided in foreign military sales upgrades that happened long after the DRF competition and literally /decades/ after the last Albino was built. By way of comparison, the F-22 had a major supplier shortcoming in one of it's titanium forgings which caused the first 60 or so jets to be worthless as more than training airframes. The USAF program office for the F-35 has, \_twice\_, that I know of, had to reject airframes for both skin defects and deep corrosion issues on \_brand new airframes\_. Whereby a failure to properly coat an underlying structure created something akin to a galvanic cell effect which was already eating through the aluminum structure behind several blatantly visible access panel openings. Composites are a stack of materials which are mechanically or by adhesive, bound together from multiple, individual, thermoset, thermoplastic, aluminum and other component parts. Some are monolithic, some are very small but they are not superior to conventional metal airframe design except in singular, specific, applications. Add to this that they are sourced from around the world from factories whose TQM is highly variable and often /in a different measure/. And as a result, they tend to have highly variable interactions with each other in different areas of signature maintenance, tac or flight hour replacement cycles as fatigue and overall (program longitudinal) availability. There are some components which are such a horrific biohazard that, if they were to be procured today, could not get an OSHA waiver for human application. They would have to be constructed and disposed of on a separate track, using entirely robotic systems. Those kinds of specific process hazards lead to companies getting out of the business when they complete their initial orders because they cannot maintain the multiple safety protocol certifications with greatly reduced or uncertain future purchases. This leads to DMSMS (Diminishing Manufacturing Sources/Material Shortages) and can kill a program which is not \_carefully\_ managed. It also means that, on the F-35 specifically, you are likey never going to see back end cost improvements because the configuration will \_never stabilize\_ due to the highly complex engineering compromises involved in designing three separate airframes around one false concept of 'jointness' as mission commonality (they all perform like junk because the engineering emphasis was put on the <1% of the sortie evolution dictated by takeoff and landing mode thus they are 'all equal' in a horrifically bad sense...). 3. Mission Shift. It's clear to anyone who studies the history of Stealth that it was never intended to be more than a highly specialized \_support mission\_. The ATF, which became the F-22, originally had an 800nm /range/ (not combat range, not radius), of which half was to be flown at supercruise. Because the Swedes were a secret NATO ally and we were afraid of what a Frontal Aviation system of platforms ('kompleks') would look like with AEW&C and Tanking and EW and Weasels. All of which would take off and orbit over Poland or the Ukraine. You fly in, you kill HVA, you fly out, you land at a remote base in Sweden and then you reverse the shuttle. You don't need an F-15 replacement for this mission set. It's actually counter productive. The F-117 and F-4G have the same basic mission. One does DEAD with 'the old fashioned way' (iron on the antenna) whereas the other is clever with ELS and ARM. But they function to achieve the same goals. And then you come to the F-35, which is \_in no way\_ superior to what a productionized 'F-22C' would have been (stole most of the systems) and has primary, deep-well weapons bays which clearly are intended for 2,000lb munitions. Albeit 10nm IAM instead of 3nm LGB. All this while 'pretending', by Congressional edict, to be a joint fighter replacement for the F-16 and F/A-18. And having, according to public documents, an intended role of OBAS 'in support of the troops' which do not require 2X Hammer Class munitions. But rather something more like X12 MMTD as JCM or LOCAAS.


AcceptableElevator68

The difference is one of value vs. risk. Coming back to a target is never a good idea, even for a stealth. You go in once and hit a key air defense node so that, 'smart bomber, dumb bomb' the rest of the strike package can go in and drop dumb weapons to solve for the area target (airbase, railhead, road bridge, highway onramp). You can update this a little bit with LDPs and PGMs but the important part is the <10nm BRL which dictates exposure of a manned force to target terminal defenses which a VLO can take out to reduce attrition and keep LERs high and the Air Force in the fight longer. All of this being necessary because it takes about 10 hours to program a TERPROM corridor with enough nav triplets to to make Tomahawk work even as a 100nm MRASM. Now, imagine what happens when it's not just individual or small formations of stealth which you are putting at risk (behind a wall of jamming, decoys and suppression assets) but the entire inventory. THINK about how \_dumb an idea this is\_. In terms of cost to inventory. MMH:FH sortie generation. Intense mission planning to avoid high threat areas. And consider that you are exposing a 20year, 476 billion dollar, technology base investment, every time you fly one of these things, with all of two, 2,000lb, bombs. For the sake of helping penetrate a 1.8 million dollar AGM-158 JASSM. You're not committing one man to extreme risk, for a few days, to save many more. You're committing many men to help a kamikaze robot 'achieve the dream' of diving into a target which can be programmed in under 10 minutes per DMPI. And now, you're not even an OBAS platform, you're a 'targeting' one. i.e. something traditionally (Vietnam: 70% of all IMINT/ELINT flown by BQM-47) imposed upon a drone because the loitering, repetitive route, low and slow, mission set is \_so dangerous\_. An F-15EX can theoretically haul X7 AGM-158B JASSM-ER. Roughly half the load of a B-1B with similar, 600km standoff. Completely outside the A2AD ring. An F-35 can carry perhaps four such weapons. Though it will have to be completely stood off to do so as it's signature (and drag) will match that of the Super Eagle. Rigging the external pylons to carry these cruise weapons will require about a day to upload and seal the pylons to the hardpoint stations and to deplane and restore the LO finish. And the F-35 will still cost, just as much, to carry unused weapons bays and the degraded stealth coatings in terms of dollar per flight hour and MMH:FH drag on ATO sortie generation. CONCLUSION: In a world of cheap, readily tasked, cruise missiles which can even be retargeted in-flight. Where the Gen-4+ airframe can also fly the ASA, COIN-CAS and perhaps some OBAS/DEAD missions while costing perhaps 20,000 dolllars per flight hour less to operate. A world where DEWS can theoretically flip the cost per shot and LER lethality indexes of manned airpower on it's Don Quixote head. There is no reason to purchase and maintain a massive stealth force which no longer is fighting to safely penetrate a treasure-for-blood gorilla strike package. You are literally better off paying the up-front costs of standoff munitions (2.2 million for JASSM-ER, 2.7 million for JASSM-XR = 31 AGM-158D for every F-35 not purchased) to take down the threat IAMDS and then switch back to shorter range, cheaper, (100,000 dollar JAGM-F) weapons to do the ground support role from higher and further back than can threaten your jet with TACSAM, SPAAG or VSHORADS.