F-35... destined for greatness?

Apparently you missed my sarcasm. I agree, it's highly unlikely that the North Korean missile, with payload or otherwise, would reach American soil.
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Sorry, I must have ducked when I read that, because the sarcasm went right over my head.

Well I've definitely not studied the statistics on Iran so I will bow to your knowledge there but I do know that in 1991 many of the same arguments were raised about Iraq. At the time I believe Iraq had one of the most advanced and sizeable armies in the middle east.
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Yeah, they said the American tanks would be slaughtered by the tank hordes of Iraq, the SAMs would knock our planes out of the air. This was before we knew a M-2 Bradley could penetrate T-72's frontal armor, and how big a role air power would be. Keep in mind, that was the first ever Cold-War style battle ever fought.
Iran may have a big army, but it is nowhere near 'advanced' when compared to the US. Iran would be forced into an insurgency-type war (Like Iraq). The problem is that the Iranians for the most part support their government and will all oppose Western forces, making it much tougher than Iraq, where the Iraqi do support coalition forces, and their new government. We would be fighting all of Iran, verses less then 15% of Iraq.
 
Edfilho said:
BTW, what happened to the F-19 designation?
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From what I could research, that designation was simply passed up, in going from the F-18 to the F-20. One reason, (the best of the ones I read) is that Northrup asked for the F-20 designation, and the Air Force never went back to F-19.
 
Thanks...
BTW, the A-10 is actually very maneuverable. and its ability to carry very heavy payloads while flying low and slow and being tough enough to return to base are strenghts I fail to see on the F-35.
 
Edfilho said:
Thanks...
BTW, the A-10 is actually very maneuverable. and its ability to carry very heavy payloads while flying low and slow and being tough enough to return to base are strenghts I fail to see on the F-35.
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The only one that isn't very clear as being a strength to the airframe is being tough. A-10's do have a propensity to be able to return to base after a good spanking, but after that the bird is done. The pilot is happy to have been able to flown home instead of bailing out, but the ground crew is still less one working airplane, which is written off and stripped for parts. I guess spare parts are better than nothing, though.

And I've been told by people who worked with the A-10 that the payload capacity is rarely used to its fullest. The idea behind the bird was likely to chew up as many Soviet tanks as it could in a single run when they invaded poland. But that hasn't happened, and the chances get infinitly smaller every day of it happening, and the monster that is the A-10 becomes less needed.

The modern US military won't be turkey-shooting communist hardware in the third great war, so they've got to find tools that better fit the jobs they think they'll need to do. They may not be as cool as the old MAD-era technology, but they ought to be plenty capable.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Why would the Soviets need to invade Poland?
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Hehe, while I don't know what t.c.cgi could possibly mean, such an invasion actually very nearly did happen in 1956 - the Polish communist party tried to do a few things without the USSR's consent, and the USSR threatened to intervene (which seems plausible enough, given that at roughly the same time, the Soviets invaded Hungary for much the same reasons).
 
t.c.cgi said:
The only one that isn't very clear as being a strength to the airframe is being tough. A-10's do have a propensity to be able to return to base after a good spanking, but after that the bird is done. The pilot is happy to have been able to flown home instead of bailing out, but the ground crew is still less one working airplane, which is written off and stripped for parts. I guess spare parts are better than nothing, though.

And I've been told by people who worked with the A-10 that the payload capacity is rarely used to its fullest. The idea behind the bird was likely to chew up as many Soviet tanks as it could in a single run when they invaded poland. But that hasn't happened, and the chances get infinitly smaller every day of it happening, and the monster that is the A-10 becomes less needed.

The modern US military won't be turkey-shooting communist hardware in the third great war, so they've got to find tools that better fit the jobs they think they'll need to do. They may not be as cool as the old MAD-era technology, but they ought to be plenty capable.
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I think they're trying to remind you that the Soviets "owned" Poland back then (no offense intended), therefore not needing to invade that country...

Moving onward, even though USA is not going to fight the URSS anymore, the A-10 had an excellent performance in the latest conflicts. Well, I'd guess it's more about economy than military efficiency. The F-35 is like the Midway, they're trying to make one plane-fits-all, and limit themselves to just 3 or 4 kinds of fighter craft.

BTW, I think it's pretty obvious that no pilot would ever prefer to bail out instead of flying home... Not only is bailing out intrinsically dangerous (even over friendly territory), but there are the added perils of being captured.
 
Edfilho said:
I think they're trying to remind you that the Soviets "owned" Poland back then (no offense intended), therefore not needing to invade that country...
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Well then lets say I used the wrong words. How about "moved through"?
 
That missile could reach partsof the US, like Alaska, and is claimed to reach the Hawaiian Islands and a small part of the Northwestern coast. But that missile still can't carry a big payload to anywhere. And there are Patriot PAC-3 missiles in Japan now, Navy cruisers in the Sea of Japan, and the missile interceptors in Alaska that could all shoot it down.
 
Iceyl86 said:
Ok, everyone agrees that a Korean missile couldn't reach american soil... does that include Hawaii
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We didn't agree with that, we agreed that it couldn't carry much of a payload - which applies to Hawaii.

What the TV news won't tell you, though, is that there's absolutely no reason North Korea would ever attack whatever tiny portion of the US coast it could reach. Even if they're in some kind of situation where they're absolutely going to throw away their country starting a conflict, their targets will absolutely be South Korea and Japan.
 
You know, the odd thing is... if Korea were to attack the United States, where would they get aid? China!? Considering that they are our #1 trading partners, i highly doubt it. Vietnam? Please... if we didn't have idiots in charge of the US in the 50s-70s... well the Vietnam conflict would have gone very differently, they might have even become our allies.

What really gets me though is why people think we should have focused our attention on Korea instead of Iraq... one question; Why? We've been having peaceful negotiations with them for years now... people are jumping the gun based on the outdated fears of McCartheism. Also... ok Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative, we can all agree that attacking Iraq was a poor decision... the best military tech they had of thier own was equivalent of WW1 technology. But why Korea? Pakistan or Iran... that I can understand. Iran... well they hate us because of Jimmy Carter's stupidity... but Pakistan... the Taliban was formed from the Fundamentalist "Freedom Fighters", which they paid for with our tax money. It is also where Osama Bin Laden is hiding now. Yes they are our ally... but that is only because thier president is our ally. If he gets killed, forget it, we're loosing an ally, and things will get twice as bad for the Afganis.
 
Every single thing you said above is some horrible piece of generic, unthinking internet repeat-o-crap. Go away, go away, go away, we need better men here.
 
Iceyl86 said:
we can all agree that attacking Iraq was a poor decision... the best military tech they had of thier own was equivalent of WW1 technology.
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More like Cold War tech, AFAIK.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Every single thing you said above is some horrible piece of generic, unthinking internet repeat-o-crap. Go away, go away, go away, we need better men here.
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You are making statements without any examples or anything backing them up. This isn't internet crap. This is stuff that I have studied. Where? History of the Vietnam War HST-321, Empires of Central Asia (taught by a man who had to LIVE in these places) HST 335, and Soviet Foreign Policy HST-302. Would you like me to give you a list of direct source material that backs me up?

Or are you going to tell me that you know more then people who study this stuff as a career and/or actually lived through it.
 
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