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Quoted: What if, one had an F-22 and simply wanted to reverse-engineer it with some more modern software? All things being equal - how long would it take us and how long would it take the CCP to get the production line going? View Quote Well we'd obviously have the benefit of SOME of those components still being made, and that we have a greater understanding of the tech used vs the CCP. But in either scenario, we're talking about YEARS. Building assembly lines and getting the supply chain going to feed the assembly line would be a huge endeavor. I think you underestimate how many different components and subcomponents go into a plane. In your F22 example, a LOT of those parts aren't being made anymore, especially the most complex ones, and the tooling and know-how is largely lost. To restore the know-how, tooling and have ALL of those parts flowing to an assembly line with trained builders is a huge endeavor. The F22 remains the world's most supreme air supremacy fighter ever built. No, it wouldn't be easy or quick to start building it again. People smarter than me have said that if would be faster, cheaper and easier to build an F-22/F35 hybrid (better) than building the legacy F22 as it was last built. In doing so, tech actively being manufactured could be leveraged (vs that which hasn't been made in more than a decade), which would be much more expedient. Again, however, this would be a new design. The last time this was seriously discussed was ~5+ years ago or so when Japan was considering funding such a development. Obviously they've since moved on and are investing in developing a clean-sheet 6th gen fighter which theoretically would exceed the capabilities of this hybrid aircraft. |
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Quoted: I'm honestly surprised we haven't had a company meeting yet about needing to up production for our aircraft parts. I'm in the development machine shop now but wrote the book on building and assembling F35 rudders and would likely get moved back to that role should things get spicy. View Quote |
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Quoted: Trained pilots would be the big problem I would think. [/img] View Quote Wonder how long it would take to train a competent fighter pilot or focusing on ground attack. Not talking about training ACES, but good enough to get the job done. Get the fittest commercial airline pilots and throw them into a grueling regiment. Skip the SEAR, gender equality classes, etc. |
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Quoted: Wonder how long it would take to train a competent fighter pilot or focusing on ground attack. Not talking about training ACES, but good enough to get the job done. Get the fittest commercial airline pilots and throw them into a grueling regiment. Skip the SEAR, gender equality classes, etc. View Quote This will tell you most of what you want to know. But suffice it to say, even when steps are skipped. It's going to take awhile. Episodes 11, 12 and 19 should fill in some gaps. |
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With all the technology they cram into these fighter aircraft these days it takes years and billions of $$$.
You go back to the days of the Korean war where F86's were engaging Mig15's and you could build 10 thousands of them. Or even the 1960's in Vietnam where F4's were engaging Mig17's Today a guy sitting at a desk can press a button and take out pretty much anything. |
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Quoted: Today a guy sitting at a desk can press a button and take out pretty much anything. View Quote Um... No. Drone pilots don't sit at a desk. They get their own climate controlled shipping container with a set of controls. Also they can't take out pretty much anything with a drone. Despite what some people believe they aren't that capable just yet. |
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Fighter pilot AI isn't ready yet (according to publicly available information) but not being ready yet certainly didn't prevent deploying new weapons in the previous world wars, I don't see why it would prevent it in the next. If WWIII broke out tomorrow I think we'd see AI pilots within a year. Sometimes it would blue screen, every so often it would lawndart or shoot down a wingman, but as soon as somebody starts running out of meat pilots they will shrug and plug whatever AI they've got into airframes and call it better than nothing. After another year or two of fighting and a crash $700 billion development program they'll be on the 1,000th software update which will be 100 times better than the beta and future armchair historians will ponder why air forces failed to deploy it on day 1.
Loyal Wingman is already in test flights with the Australians, we're not as far from something usable as you might think. The desperation of war moving the performance and reliability goalposts and a big swing in resource allocation could push it into deployment very rapidly. |
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Quoted: Um... No. Drone pilots don't sit at a desk. They get their own climate controlled shipping container with a set of controls. Also they can't take out pretty much anything with a drone. Despite what some people believe they aren't that capable just yet. View Quote Besides... we have subs and missile cruisers that can launch anywhere on the earth. |
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Quoted: it takes 2 years to train a pilot to be able to hang on the wing of an experienced flight lead and lob a missile now and then mostly in the right direction. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Trained pilots would be the big problem I would think. And seeing manufacturing in this country has been fucked for decades................ ![]() it takes 2 years to train a pilot to be able to hang on the wing of an experienced flight lead and lob a missile now and then mostly in the right direction. What is it, ten years to effectively lead a wing? |
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Quoted: There's a common misconception that the long time frames for new fighters are due to the amount of time it takes to develope modern aircraft. They are due to the amount of time it takes to milk the defense budget. If an actual war were putting a gun to our head the process could be streamlined greatly View Quote This. "Development" is a financial process, and dealing with head-in-the-clouds AF staffers who live somewhere between fantasyland and wishcasting. |
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Was the F-35's oxygen problem solved? I don't remember how they turned out
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Quoted: Wonder how long it would take to train a competent fighter pilot or focusing on ground attack. Not talking about training ACES, but good enough to get the job done. Get the fittest commercial airline pilots and throw them into a grueling regiment. Skip the SEAR, gender equality classes, etc. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Trained pilots would be the big problem I would think. [/url] Wonder how long it would take to train a competent fighter pilot or focusing on ground attack. Not talking about training ACES, but good enough to get the job done. Get the fittest commercial airline pilots and throw them into a grueling regiment. Skip the SEAR, gender equality classes, etc. um no it is completely different employing a fighter is nothing like and has almost no commonality with flying an airliner |
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Quoted: Trained pilots would be the big problem I would think. And seeing manufacturing in this country has been fucked for decades................ ![]() View Quote Pilots would be an issue right now-many are being drummed out for not taking the Jab. Pilots think for themselves and have options outside of the military. |
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Yeah, well. We will see.
Drones clearly serve purposes. But what are we going to do, unman war completely? Just let the robots do all the work? |
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Quoted: Four years with orders for forgings placed two months in and access to wind tunnels with absolute first priority. Three years with some stars aligning. NO new engines, cockpit avionics, weapons, helmets, seats, DAS/DIRS windows, or low observable technologies. None. Then the missing piece is leadership that allows risk, demands quick decisions, and backs up the staff. No hand wringing, decide. Apply a policy that every major part is released on time and weighing less than the bogey weight. Fire any manager that thinks CATIA should be used for the project. Can the morons that spout the diverse input and observations from the unqualified to comment is valuable. It's not, there is zero chance that the idea is obviously not bad, or has already been considered. Plow them out of the way. Stick with the contract requirements. There will be two or three instances when a minor problem crops up that the government wants to fix, can articulate the technical reason, and on exam it makes sense. But make the government earn and fund every change, like it or not. After first flight, continue on the test cards no matter government interference or opinions. Start weapons separation flights the same day. Five to ten flight test airplanes will be required, including one for static test that is complete at first flight and refurbished for other purposes, and a fatigue test airplane. There's more, but this is a a good start. View Quote That one is oddly specific. |
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Quoted: Like driving a school bus vs. a Rally Car I imagine. View Quote I would like to post what Cara "Starbuck" Thrace said in this subject. But that clip is unhelpfully not on YouTube. So I guess you will have to settle for this! ![]() ![]() Hello There Basically she said to the 'airline pilots' she was training that the old and busted Viper Mark 2s they were training on would rip off their heads and shit down their necks if they didn't do everything perfectly. I didn't much like the BSG reboot. But it had its moments. |
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Quoted: How long would it take to create a new fighter aircraft if a conventional world war III started and the US needed new modern fighters ASAP? The F22 took 20 years from development to its first operational use. In WWII it took less than 18 months for the P51. View Quote 87 Months. |
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Quoted: The quickest way to to get relatively modern aircraft would be to un-mothball the F16s, F15s and F/A18s stored at the AMAARG boneyard. View Quote The F-18's at the boneyard are garbage. Complete garbage. Worn out, clapped out, complete garbage. The Marines don't want them they are so bad. |
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Pretty sure that a lot of hardware at Davis Monthan would be re-activated first.
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Quoted: Guess its difficult to think of a scenario like this since our fighters are so advanced over other nations and it takes so long to develop them. Maybe a better question is how fast could we ramp up f35 production and pilots. Could we make 2000 of each per year? Right now were making 156 per year. Along with all the supporting logistics. View Quote I honestly can't imagine what 2k F35s would be able to accomplish that 500 plus a thousand F15s wouldn't. |
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A few thoughts...
There is a lot of defense budget milking going on and this sort of makes sense in that talented engineers are not likely to sign on to a one year contract if they have options. There's also all of the bureaucracy where the companies have to subcontract out to every Congressional district if they want to get funding. In time of national emergency this goes away. We are usually trying to drastically increase capability with new designs and this means a lot of R&D. If we were merely trying to approximate the capabilities of things we already have then it would take far less time. Then there is risk as in how much risk are the designers willing to take? Are they going to run a few simulations, look at the results, and say, "it'll be fine" or are they going to make damned sure it is fine even if it takes a few extra billion dollars and another half decade? Cut all that stuff out and things would go much faster. |
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I still think that we should have a Lot of F-15 interceptors sitting at the Air Ports around the country to protect the cities. But then maybe Demented Pooping Pedo Biden doesn't really care about his voters.
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Quoted: That's what the Chinese kinda tried to do with the J-20, however... You can look up videos of this thing flying, it is big and the engines are far less powerful and efficient than what's in the F-22. When you see an F-22 or even for that matter an F-15 take off. It leaps off the ground. J-20s struggle into the air like an old man getting out of a bathtub. In order to support such a sophisticated device you need very advanced infrastructure. Which the Chinese communists simply do not have. Though they are working on that as hard as possible. The one advantage we have at the moment is that as corrupt as defense procurement is in this country. It's worse in China. View Quote F22’s landed at ANC one year when I worked There (elmedorf was having runway repairs) . When they took off… 99%’of the traffic through anchorage airport is 737 pax, and 747 cargo. Lumber down the runway and creep into air. The f22’s were AWESOME ,1/4th if the runway and straight up, barrel rolling , or rocket ship down runway then up at 45 degrees angle still accelerating. One did a loop and was back over runway and then climbed out. A terriable comparison would be watching semi truck go round taladega then watching some F1 cars in a f1 track. |
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Quoted: How long would it take to create a new fighter aircraft if a conventional world war III started and the US needed new modern fighters ASAP? The F22 took 20 years from development to its first operational use. In WWII it took less than 18 months for the P51. View Quote |
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It would be decently quick to change the F35 into a cockpit-less AI/Drone. Existing tooling for the most part, powerplant, little to no structural design changes, etc.
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Quoted: F22's landed at ANC one year when I worked There (elmedorf was having runway repairs) . When they took off 99%'of the traffic through anchorage airport is 737 pax, and 747 cargo. Lumber down the runway and creep into air. The f22's were AWESOME ,1/4th if the runway and straight up, barrel rolling , or rocket ship down runway then up at 45 degrees angle still accelerating. One did a loop and was back over runway and then climbed out. A terriable comparison would be watching semi truck go round taladega then watching some F1 cars in a f1 track. View Quote You ever go to the airshow on JBER/Elmendorf/whatever you wanna call it? ![]() Those raptors are fucking crazy as fuck. Loud and they rattle your bones as they go overhead quickly. |
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Quoted: @fsjdw2 You ever go to the airshow on JBER/Elmendorf/whatever you wanna call it? ![]() Those raptors are fucking crazy as fuck. Loud and they rattle your bones as they go overhead quickly. View Quote First time I saw an F-22 was like something written by some cornball. I was walking around a tent at an air show. There's an F-22 parked behind it. I think to myself, "yes! I finally got to see one! I do hope I will get to see it..." The thought was interrupted by his buddy appearing over my head, doing a minimum radius turn. And I mean over my head, I didn't hear him. It just kinda... Poofed into existence over my head. He completes his turn and lands. I get the feeling that he might have been showing off a bit for the crowd. But I was impressed. |
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Quoted: How long would it take to create a new fighter aircraft if a conventional world war III started and the US needed new modern fighters ASAP? The F22 took 20 years from development to its first operational use. In WWII it took less than 18 months for the P51. View Quote I'd say anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, if need be. The USAF already designed, built, and flew a brand new fighter-jet in one year. That shows and provides some semblance of a timeline. In a true (we need this shit ASAP) scenario, I wouldn't put it past them to crank them out that fast. Here's the article. Our manufacturing has come a long way. Factor in 3D printing and automation, and you got yourself an army of planes. It's the pilots that would be in short supply. So they'd probably be UCAVs. |
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Quoted: um no it is completely different employing a fighter is nothing like and has almost no commonality with flying an airliner View Quote I was more meaning desperation. Like Europe was taken over by Russia and China took over most of the Pacific Rim and is about to invade the US which has depleted most of it's fighters and pilots. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Four years with orders for forgings placed two months in and access to wind tunnels with absolute first priority. Three years with some stars aligning. NO new engines, cockpit avionics, weapons, helmets, seats, DAS/DIRS windows, or low observable technologies. None. Then the missing piece is leadership that allows risk, demands quick decisions, and backs up the staff. No hand wringing, decide. Apply a policy that every major part is released on time and weighing less than the bogey weight. Fire any manager that thinks CATIA should be used for the project. Can the morons that spout the diverse input and observations from the unqualified to comment is valuable. It's not, there is zero chance that the idea is obviously not bad, or has already been considered. Plow them out of the way. Stick with the contract requirements. There will be two or three instances when a minor problem crops up that the government wants to fix, can articulate the technical reason, and on exam it makes sense. But make the government earn and fund every change, like it or not. After first flight, continue on the test cards no matter government interference or opinions. Start weapons separation flights the same day. Five to ten flight test airplanes will be required, including one for static test that is complete at first flight and refurbished for other purposes, and a fatigue test airplane. There's more, but this is a a good start. That one is oddly specific. Crash And Try It Again I'm guessing someone got sick of "click ok to terminate" errors. I will say it's gotten better lately... Or maybe my computer just has more memory now... I tried NX for a while to support a project that used it, but didn't really get enough exposure to compare the two. Probably also some personal bias in there, I think I heard McDonnell Douglas developed it/used to own it, vs. Dassault |
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Quoted: Crash And Try It Again I'm guessing someone got sick of "click ok to terminate" errors. I will say it's gotten better lately... Or maybe my computer just has more memory now... I tried NX for a while to support a project that used it, but didn't really get enough exposure to compare the two. Probably also some personal bias in there, I think I heard McDonnell Douglas developed it/used to own it, vs. Dassault View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Four years with orders for forgings placed two months in and access to wind tunnels with absolute first priority. Three years with some stars aligning. NO new engines, cockpit avionics, weapons, helmets, seats, DAS/DIRS windows, or low observable technologies. None. Then the missing piece is leadership that allows risk, demands quick decisions, and backs up the staff. No hand wringing, decide. Apply a policy that every major part is released on time and weighing less than the bogey weight. Fire any manager that thinks CATIA should be used for the project. Can the morons that spout the diverse input and observations from the unqualified to comment is valuable. It's not, there is zero chance that the idea is obviously not bad, or has already been considered. Plow them out of the way. Stick with the contract requirements. There will be two or three instances when a minor problem crops up that the government wants to fix, can articulate the technical reason, and on exam it makes sense. But make the government earn and fund every change, like it or not. After first flight, continue on the test cards no matter government interference or opinions. Start weapons separation flights the same day. Five to ten flight test airplanes will be required, including one for static test that is complete at first flight and refurbished for other purposes, and a fatigue test airplane. There's more, but this is a a good start. That one is oddly specific. Crash And Try It Again I'm guessing someone got sick of "click ok to terminate" errors. I will say it's gotten better lately... Or maybe my computer just has more memory now... I tried NX for a while to support a project that used it, but didn't really get enough exposure to compare the two. Probably also some personal bias in there, I think I heard McDonnell Douglas developed it/used to own it, vs. Dassault NX has unfortunately been corrupted by Dassault, but it beats hell out of CATIA. NX came out of Unigraphics. Unigraphics started in McDonnell Automation Company, then passed to EDS. I can't recall whether it passed through McNeil Schwendler to Dassault. I wouldn't grade NX higher than C simply due to the departure from using intuitive labels for various functions. |
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Quoted: Well we could do something with P-51 capabilities in about 180 days, but another 5th gen fighter? Uh, the war would be over before contracting got me a work order. View Quote I think the truth is somewhere in between what you said here. We could do it much faster if it were wartime and more than just a jobs program that is intentionally drawn out as long as possible. It's amazing what people can do ... when they don't have a choice. |
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Since the Teslair division of Spacex has announced that the full self piloting cyberwing has been delayed again, we can expect it 2024 at the earliest.
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Supply chain and qualified pilots would be the challenge.
Half our shit is produced overseas. As for Pilots, if shit really hit the fan, I guess citizens could be trained, like in the movie Independence Day. |
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Quoted: Pilots would be an issue right now-many are being drummed out for not taking the Jab. Pilots think for themselves and have options outside of the military. View Quote What this dude said. We actually do have a massive reserve of pilots that can be trained and used. A excellent capacity to train pilots. Also flying fighters is only a very small niche of military aviation. The bulk of pilots fly transports, bombers and other support aircraft. Not many of my airline buddies or me would be enthusiastic about fighting and flying for a government that is notorious for loosing wars. That’s before we get into the political bullshit of COVID, white man bad and the meat puppet. I would see the war turning out like red vs White Russian revolution. We get into it, start loosing hard. say fuck this and go into our own revolution. This country culturally isn’t in a position to survive a war that is going badly. |
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Quoted: it takes 2 years to train a pilot to be able to hang on the wing of an experienced flight lead and lob a missile now and then mostly in the right direction. View Quote Are you flying/training as much as humanly possible or flying as much as the budget allows for the remainder of the FY? Do you think at the height of WWII, student pilots had holidays and weekends off? And those infamous training holidays like the day after thanksgiving and the month of December where staffing goes to half strength? |
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