http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/11/stealth.fighter.ap/index.html
Well, that’s what time and RPVs will do for you. Plus, to be stealthy enought to defeat any of the US’s likely current or meduim-term-future enemies, all you need to do is attack at night. A B-52 would be stealthy enough to do the job!
Cheers,
Chris.
Oh, I dunno, China could be a lot of fun…but I think the F-22 and F-35 will be stealthy enough to handle them, we just need to build more of them than we are…at least, more F-22s than we are.
That’s a shamefully short service-life…
Not really…it is a realistic life unlike aircraft like the KC-135 and B-52…they were meant to retire decades ago. The only reason they have stayed is because the programs/systems that were meant to replace them never measured up to the bar or were the result of too much political fodder.
I just got the press release from Boeing about their appeal to the GAO to contest the tanker contract. After reading what they said and the RFP from the AF, they certainly are right. Of course if they would have played by the rules before, it would have been a done deal, but two wrongs don’t make a right…a political appointee who accepts bribs and a company who pays them. I think this tanker deal is going to be around until the next President makes a decision about it.
Although what you say is true for the two examples you cite for large, multiengined a/c, it doesn’t hold true for planes like the F-4, F-105, F-14, F-15, F-16, A-10, etc…these a/c had service lives of 35 (longer for the F-4 and Starfighter) plus years…any way it is spun, they had very short service life…especially for the cash laid-out…
You also have to emember that F-117s are now old technology, but with at least one having been lost to enemy actioin, there’s a reasonably good chance that it could fall into unfriendly hands. Old technology it might be, but I can’t help feeling that the Chinese would pay quite a lot of money for it.
Plus, you have to remember, they’re expensive to operate and maintain, not especially fun to fly, and - and this may be the real clincher - they have limited development potential. F-4s, Harriers or F-16s they’re not.
Finally, there’s nothing they can do that can’t now be done better and cheaper by RPVs, and, as I pointed out earlier, not really that much call for what they can do and can’t be done, better and more cheaply, by a F-16.
If we ever need to get stealthy with the Chinese or Iraqis, presumably it will be RPVs, B-2s and F-22s that will be doing it.
Cheers,
Chris.
Check it out, guys…
Have you noticed the Nighthawk is “faceted” with angular panels while the B-2 is smoothly contoured? They’re both “stealth” though. It’s the difference of ten or so years of technological advancement.
…Because the computers back in the 1970s didn’t have the computational power to predict radio wave echos off of curved surfaces. Then all-of-a-sudden, Bam! better computers and the resulting aerodynamic-stealth designs are at the ready and are being built currently.
The F-117 had a fleeting window of usefulness now that the unmanned aerial vehicles and superior manned airplanes that have stealth AND higher performance! We’ve truly got stealth “fighters” now.
Yes and no. It’s a respectable service length for an aircraft that was at base a proof-of-concept. It did what it was made to do. Stealth is here, and it’s incorprated into every new fighter design. The fact that it was a viable platform for even that long is testament to its revolutionary status. It could have been much shorter. Some other aircraft with revolutionary technologies had even shorter service lives.
It’s service life was long enough to blow the crap out of the Iraqi air defences in two different decades.
I don’t know how true it was but there were stories about that it might not be as invisible to radar that has originally claimed.
There were claims that during the first Gulf War British naval radar was able to track the F-117 from 40 to 100 miles away. This was because of the frequencies used by the older radars we were using.
That’s only when our guys roll down the window and hang their elbow out. [^]
Hmm they retired the old girl. Didnt see that coming
Very sad indeed, I like that plane. [:)]
I was surprised by the news that the F-117 was retiring. I still find it hard to believe that the Tomcats are out of service, just seems like it was yesterday when they were testing the first prototypes.
Scott
Yeah but they are supposed to be retiring the B-2 in a couple of years too seeing as it is a 20 year old air frame which started rolling out of the Assembly line a couple of years before the 1st Gulf War.
makes you wonder what they have flying around in its place that nobody knows about
[#ditto]
yep. how many years was it in actual service before it was revealed to the public? 7-8
my cousin who was in the navy, was stationed at china lake in the late 80’s early 90’s, he said when he was on night shift in the hangers (avionix repair) that every so often the MP’s would come and close the hanger doors, and put everyone in the maintanance office. so “somethin” could land.
seeing the F-117 retired doesnt suprise me as much driving past the bone yard at Davis Monthan and seeing B-1’s out there