Is Boeing X-32 really ugly?

Originally posted by Travellar

Originally posted by ch1466
For which you can reasonably thank the Bloody Brits and the All-Rock-Above-Adams-Apple USMC for their obsession with independent naval airpower without supercarriers.


KPl.

I just wish Harriers could be operated from destroyer decks!

LOL give some to us Canadians and Im sure we could find a way too make it work. After all the beartrap which is a hooking device that pulls our Old Seakings out of the air when the deck is pitching a lil to much was made right and tested right here in Canada. Im sure a device could be made to work to guide a harrier onto the deck of a distoryer. Mind you im not sure how practical it would be. The SeaKing is used for ASW and im not sure that the Harrier would preform that role. What would be the point is my question i guess.

www.readyayeready.com...

[edit on 20-1-2006 by Canada_EH]

[edit on 20-1-2006 by Canada_EH]

Canada EH,

>>
I just wish Harriers could be operated from destroyer decks!
>>

Actually, this is wiser than you know. Right now, the principle short coming of all surface combattants is that they simply /cannot/ see over any local horizon with reasonable (400knot or better) speed and loiter (2hrs@500nm) to make a difference.

Helicopters are nothing more than fast PT boats with a hole in the gas tank and that means that you are either taking it in the shorts because you can't establish 'intent' before it's too late (Stark, Sheffield) or you are missing shots that you can't take simply because you don't know the opportunity is there.

VLS capable sacrificial drones like the Sea Ferret cannot pack the kinds of (must be recovered) $ensor/comm$ $uite that is necessary and may not have adequate "We know you are there, now see that we do so..." intimidation factor when you are running a combined SENSECAP (AEW) and FORCAP (Back Off!) role in one airframe.

OTOH, even a tiltrotor is just too slow and _far_ too expensive to go routinely flinging itself and it's 50ft rotor disk off a DDG rolling like a drunk on rollerskates in category 5 seas.

If we were as smart as we advertise, we would redouble the value of our SAG concepts by designing a small drone that used elements of the SDLF from the F-35 (a good idea, badly applied) packaged into a simple flying wing (gas can outboard of the centerline) or deltoid shape.

We would then avoid the RAST idiocy and Skyhook the little monsters aboard, powered down. THAT is the key because differential GPS (JPALS) can easily hold an airframe at hover in X airspace under almost any windforce conditions if the captain just knows how to drive his damn boat well enough to get it 'into the wind' or lee sided.

And once you do that, it's a lot easier to stabilize a derrick arm and then stiffen the lot as a unified (double lugged plus pneumatic surface weld with a rubber collar) body through the next trough before swinging them both aboard.

The big question then becomes whether you want that same arm or an offset equivalent to also serve as a low-impulse catapult launcher (think Kingfisher) so that you can shoot heavier than you can land. The less you force the engine to do in terms of thrust:weight, the more efficient it becomes on a given load of JP and the _lighter_ overall you can make the airframe as a function of powerplant installational variables.

Right now, no nation can really afford a full size carrier building program at rates sufficient to maintain let alone swell a class. Particularly for U.S. a 1-2 deck per decade budgetary annorexia is not going to even sustain fleet levels. At the same time, we are seeing weapons like Fast Hawk and ARRMD start to point the way towards aeroballistics that can range upwards of 1,000nm inshore. While DF-30 and similar are just a step away from showing MARV level guided threat back down on carrier groups as much as 2.500nm offshore.

While DEWs and Upper Tier can potentially leverage that threat, so to do they hostage ALL overhead 'in a real war' (commercial satellites have been dazzled by as low as 30w guidance lasers).

In an era of zero collaterals media politics, how do you target what you cannot see if not by using low value _LO_ signature assets to fling robots over the beach fast enough, cheap enough, deep enough, to find the enemy moving in his own well-defended backfield?


KPl.

Ok lets see if i understood what you said enough. Im trying to mash through what you saying so i can make a reply. I defently dont have some of your knowledge but im willing to enteratian a lil convo if you are.
K first off as you said countries these days are not able to supply the money to build full size carrier forces. What I envision for a country like canada who's population doesn't even care about their military a way to build a supply a way to build a distroyer that can fly a VTOL like the harrier. Is 2 planes per ship a hanger and pad or maybe 1 plane and a helo. size wise i dont know how much space the seaking is given on ur ships but i could find out if u dont know. you also need spare parts etc. But here is the next complication. We are losing the harrier (which Can never had) and are moving possibly onto the 35 which is in some turmoil from what i can gather. A plane like the 35 would be nice but range is it the best choice? what other options would guys put forward for a VTOL on distoryers. Is it possible. It seems that it would hold advantages but what are the negative sides of this?

www.globalsecurity.org...

Actually, the challenge of landing an unmanned on a destroyer sized deck has already been tackled. (The above link is an article only bit about the UAV/helo for the LCS.)

The real problem with putting Harriers on Destroyers isn't with guiding them in. The problem is the Harrier's directed exhaust system of levitation would burn a hole in a Destroyer's flight deck. This is why I made my previous comment with a bit of a snicker.

The other challenge is that to the Tin-Can Navy, Helicopters are the greatest things in the world. They can stay aloft for several hours, and even longer with refueling and hotpumps. They can ferry decent amounts of cargo and passengers around, Delivering mail, VIPs, and medevacing sick/injured personell for treatment. The eyes of the pilot/copilot are absolutely invaluble for identifying craft and maritime interdiction. (Such as the pirate Dhow the USS Winston Churchill chased down this weekend). Got a sub problem? Send a Seahawk out to drop a few sono-bouys and a torpedo. Got a pilot down? Get the helo out there to get 'em out of the water. Say, is that a boghammer or a fishing boat we've got over the horizon? well, go look! In other words, being able to land/refuel VTOL aircraft would be nice, but Destroyer's flight decks are unlikely to be graced by fighter aircraft anytime soon.

*edit: forgot to mention, the X-32 was REALLY ugly.

[edit on 23-1-2006 by Travellar]

To answer your question simply put, yes the X-32 really is all that ugly, also, on the note of looks compared to the YF-23 and YF-22, I believe the YF-23 is better looking, considering the fact that the F-22A actually has certain features of the YF-23.(this all came about when Northrop and Boeing joined in to help with some of the project, although vastly Lockheed and Martin, I believe that the YF-23 has a little bit of an influence in the F-22A.

Shattered OUT...

CEH,

>>
What I envision for a country like canada who's population doesn't even care about their military a way to build a supply a way to build a distroyer that can fly a VTOL like the harrier. Is 2 planes per ship a hanger and pad or maybe 1 plane and a helo.
>>

Rotary Wing ASW is dead. You could have a dozen helos and not be able to do more than inner zone work. Which is pointless if the threat has even a 60nm AShM and _utterly ridiculous_ if it has a 250nm class (SSGN) heavy strike option. There is some indication that hyperspectral IR and LIDAR work (see 'April Showers') has more or less turned the the ocean transparent in many parts of the world (in which case you use another sub as the kill vehicle, long before the threat enters an independent or battle group based ops area). And that you are better off with fastlay bottom sensors and robotic platforms in the highly energized/muddy coastal zones.

Rotary Wing SAR is an accident waiting to happen. Particularly if you are working under Littoral conditions (200nm either side of the whitewater) or 'From The Sea Forward' (400nm inland) whereby not only is your response time /glacially/ slow. But you are almost entirely dependent on tanking to get your there. Even just trying to be a hero to offshore fisheries or resource exploitation EEZs in peace time gets very dangerous as your payload threshold for pickups and fuel emergency-at-takeoff dictated by the >
Size wise i dont know how much space the seaking is given on ur ships but i could find out if u dont know.
>>

navy-matters.beedall.com...

Spotting factors for navalized helos tends to be pretty good. I seem to recall that the folded length on the SH-3 (CH-124 to you folks) went from about 55ft to around 48 and the rotor disk from 62 feet to 'width of fuselage'. Takeoff gross was roughly 22,000lbs. That said, the Iroquois was a pretty tight ship (closer to an FFG than a DDG IIRC) and I seem to recall they went to individual 'garage' style stalls rather than an extensible or shared space like we did. Only 2 of anything on those. There are about 3 other classes plus 2 'futures' so the rest I will leave to you to Google from here-

www.navy.forces.gc.ca...

>>
you also need spare parts etc. But here is the next complication. We are losing the harrier (which Can never had) and are moving possibly onto the 35 which is in some turmoil from what i can gather. A plane like the 35 would be nice but range is it the best choice? what other options would guys put forward for a VTOL on distoryers.
>>

Well, to me, the RQ-8 Firescout-
www.jinsa.org...

Is little more than an QH-50 -
www.peostri.army.mil...

With 'mod bod' fuselage covers for better aesthetics. And a tenth the payload. Either system would work, with sensors, for endurance missions immediately around the boat but the numbers of these remain fairly small and are largely safety of navigation biased (especially without weapons).

The problem is that, as the Army has spent a decade discovering with their various brigade/maneuver/divisional radio control airplanes, if you can only stay up about 3hrs, and it takes an hour each way to make max radius of around 120nm, the amount of /target search/ you can do is limited. Which is essentially what drones are all about. Not tracking an established threat, whether known or on-approach to a friendly maneuver force (predictable) but _saturating_ a give threat battlespace to find the /unknown/ threats.

If you want to do that with a rotary wing asset you have to be able to stop the rotor, and accelerate to 300-400 knots for your transit in. Slow the airframe enough to maintain a low-throttle setting cruise and then come back out. Unfortunately, even with systems like the X-50 Dragonfly-

home.earthlink.net...

This is not simple as the rotor size/stiffeness requirements and airfoil shape does not support good lift:drag ratios and you are still effectively paying through the fuel tank for all the hotpipe and untouchable tail volume necessary to support the main rotor and ducted tail propulsor. This inevitably means lower ceiling and payload performance from the front fuselage pod, usually as a function of radius or MEP trades.

The 'ideal' system is one which, as I said, doesn't partake of the idiocies of manned 'everything is a fighter mission' flight system redundancy (which is effectively all a tail is worth) but still preserves the airfoil area and power of jetborne fixed wing design in only a slightly smaller scale-

www.aoe.vt.edu...

Since it's virtually a 'sure thing' that if the pilot bigoted services accept a UCAV based platform at all, it will be /purely/ as a no-bombs-allowed sensor platform. And it's equally certain that if the USN ever gets a CSA that it will be only because the USAF's stranglehold on targeting/tanking has been broken off at the wrist in destruction of the heavy-tanker/MC2A (high ticket followon to the E-3 and 8) programs. The only remaining question is how you want to 'distribute the remaining mission elements'.

IMO, the combination of the greatly increased internal fuel and the use of the F/A-18E as a 'fighter whale' will largely avoid the need for generation of a followon to the long lost EKA-3/KA-6/ES-3A mission. While ASW, as I said, is dead or they wouldn't have plopped 2 billion into the various Viking upgrades only to ditch the entire fleet.

That only leaves the heavy AEW mission (with the massive AS-18A array on the back of a 'new' E-2D). And the overland ELINT/RISTA options.

Which, IMO, don't /need/ to be carrier based, at least exclusively.

Bluntly, as long as airdales navy is the one holding the leash on the haze grey admirals, there will never be developed a small-carrier air component which can drop bombs.

For your needs, such as they might be (CF-188s are principally anti-drug/terror operators and I doubt if the JSF will be STOVLized just for a -highly- 'residual Atlantic powerprojection option) I would go with one of the Container Ship carriers that the UK investigated shortly after the Falklands/Conveyor theme proved workable. In that you can build a runway, services and even CIC/Air Defense system out of prefab container combination of freight containers and then run limited air ops from them with either rolling-VL or Skyhook methods to keep jetblast damage and thermal protection problems down (though the SDLF is relatively cool). You might have to modify the bridge/forecastle structure to get truly good recovery and skijump options but it would be cheap compared to traditional CV building, even in the L/S areas.

Again, the question is mission. Canada's fleet remains highly optimized for the Atlantic and Polar ASW/SAR missions while being fairly small for any kind of global mission expansion of charter. As such you wouldn't get as big an expansion of your surface assets ability to fling things inland as the USN would with pure-recce systems off SAGs while a more conventional (manned) strike optimization faces the same (subsonic) problems of airwing size to radius and fleet train logistics.


KPl.

And what would you have CH, destroywer and drones to do everything now? Since it seems according to you everything is pointless, except drones and small ships. Let's get rid of the fleet and make everything unmanned already then. Get rid of the need for ASW and SAR capability altogether. Maybe we can make our SHIPS unmanned too. Would THAT suit you?

Originally posted by ch1466
Rotary Wing ASW is dead. You could have a dozen helos and not be able to do more than inner zone work. Which is pointless if the threat has even a 60nm AShM and _utterly ridiculous_ if it has a 250nm class (SSGN) heavy strike option. There is some indication that hyperspectral IR and LIDAR work (see 'April Showers') has more or less turned the the ocean transparent in many parts of the world (in which case you use another sub as the kill vehicle, long before the threat enters an independent or battle group based ops area). And that you are better off with fastlay bottom sensors and robotic platforms in the highly energized/muddy coastal zones.

Rotary Wing SAR is an accident waiting to happen. Particularly if you are working under Littoral conditions (200nm either side of the whitewater) or 'From The Sea Forward' (400nm inland) whereby not only is your response time /glacially/ slow. But you are almost entirely dependent on tanking to get your there. Even just trying to be a hero to offshore fisheries or resource exploitation EEZs in peace time gets very dangerous as your payload threshold for pickups and fuel emergency-at-takeoff dictated by the

Originally posted by Travellar

Originally posted by ch1466
I don't know about Canadian, but US doctrine requires enough continuous presence around the world that we can't afford to rent our Carriers. (not to mention thier usefulness as area command centers)

Well we have no need to create the same type of presence as the US needs. We do need to be able to do our job well though and as effecticly as possible. So basically canada is doing ok espailly once the Cyclones are put on the destoryers and the Seakings is replaced. The need for a VTOL fighter really isnt there for the canadian forces at least.

uh, you missed on the quotes there. That's your responce to my comment, not my responce to CH1466's

Zaphod,

>>
And what would you have CH, destroyers and drones to do everything now?
>>

I would have 15-20 principle aircraft carriers (more than we do now) in the 20-40,000 ton class as CVL or SCS equivalent SLICE based hulls using the maximum amount of commercial services to keep crew counts down below 300 with perhaps another 200-500 in the expandable airwing.

They would be purpose built to have a two-layer hangar system to allow a /tiny/ manned compliment of 12 F-35 class (since apparently we 'have to' have them) or 4-6 V-22 class spotting factors in the 'lower bunk' hangar.

While the 'upper bunk' was dedicated to endurance UCAVs with a total airwing compliment of perhaps 70-100 aircraft granting the ability to maintain a minimum of 5, 5 ship, SENSECAPS or CASBITS, a minimum 500nm away for 5-6hrs at a time. In rotation. Either independently or in combination with 'special' ground force teams finding targets by stepping on them.

That these hulls would also be 'convertible at sea' by virtue of landing a C-130 or even C-17 sized airlifter with massive 'COD gas' fuel offload and the potential for full battalions of Marine forces would be just a further flex-mission option INCREASE of ability, not presently availabe to 'bigger decks'.

That this CAN be done (microdeck with nearly four times the Reagan airwing) is evidenced in what the Essex class and even Yorktown classes achieved in WWII on similar (23-35,000 ton) hulls. Even as the SLICE hull gives you a sufficiently wide flight and hangar deck spaces to bring aboard these major assets (no island, no angle deck), in a hurry. At 40-50 knot WOD advantagement.

For those 'bay' areas which were too dangerous, too low-rent or simply unreachable by larger task forces for various political, strategic or logistical coverage reasons, heck yes, I would prefer to have /some/ presence in the form of ships which could perform the much the same mission (WE ARE WATCHING YOU.) without as much fuss. Something no helicopter will ever manage due to range, operating ceiling and threat levels. Indeed, we would be /better off/ with an OS2U system than the current reliance on rotary wings, IMO. And somehow I doubt if you thought about how many small and/or gundeck assets had that kind of 'naval spotter' option back in the day.

>>
Since it seems according to you everything is pointless, except drones and small ships. Let's get rid of the fleet and make everything unmanned already then.
>>

The best way to prosecute ASW is with active yankee search as there the thermal layers are instantly mapped and the convergence zones don't matter unless you (bottom bounce) choose to let them.

Yet a submarine cannot engage in this activity because it highlight's it's own position, virtually (2,500mph under water sound speeds) instantaneously. Once it does so, the FIRST HIT will kill it. Or leave it such a noisy cripple as to make no difference. Forget the men, that's a 2 billion dollar crap shoot investment.

Robots win here because they can hunt in packs and use Sprint-Drift as a 'bounding pairs' tactic without any real care about their own survival. Even as the combination of AIP and SuperCav lets you build a boat with 3,000ft dive and perhap 70knot transit, 200 knot sprint, rates as little more than an enlarged torpedo. For about 20-100 million each.

Crash a 100 million dollar asset into a 2 billion dollar asset and provided he has fewer than you do, you STILL win.

Manned subs have no chance against this.

On small ships. Half the ass end of a carrier is a giant steam kettle and turbomachinery area. Utterly unnecessary because the 35-45 knot speed provided does not compare to the cost of an asset which _cannot_ speed-steam to /anywhere/ because it has no nuke escorts other than bump-and-nudge impotent subs. So you are stuck marching to pace of the slowest soldier in the 15-19 knot fleet trains.

Furthermore, air ops DO NOT REQUIRE high hull speeds to launch aircraft. The combination of an 11-15 knot cruise and natural oceanic winds easily gets you a 20-25 knot WOD. Commercial diesel electric ships are now so efficient that container vessels can sustain a 19-22 knot cruise BOTH WAYS across the Pacific before refueling. With only roughly a tenth the engineering space volume wasteage and enough automation to keep the crew count from spiraling out of 'support the supporter' control.

Simple hydrogen propulsion is probably so close in large (specialized = money for laying in of refrigerant systems and dockside handling logistics) naval applications that it is only our self-blinded fascination with atomics that keeps us from making renewables FIRST AND FOREMOST a military exploited energy source. No 1 million gas stations, no highway safety standards, indeed no infrastructure beyond the ports which we already homestation in. Just an order of magnitude increase in the fuel mass:energy release quotient (i.e. a 30 knot SLICE may be sustainable as much as sprintable).

Comparitively, the Hanford reservation is filling up fast with the aftermath of 'proud ships' whose terrible poisonous legacy will last for half a million years or more. Far beyond anything 'historically relevant' to their existence. Probably millenia beyond what even society itself will 'remember' about their nature and danger.

On Threats. The greatest drawback in landbased ASST/ASUW ops is the _lag_ between targeting from overhead and the establishment of point tracks by the shooter or sea control platforms. We are talking /hours/ of delay. Yet, in less than 20 years, ballistics will have the ability to smart-MARV their way down onto hulls with less than 20 minutes of transit from over 2,000 miles out. The only things which will stop this on a 'The countermeasure MUST be cheaper than the measure to be effective as a force protection asset' basis will be DEWs. Mechanical intercept, in addition to being horizon limited, will almost certainly cost as much as the weapon it attacks and have a _harder time of it_ because the bullet:bullet velocities will be so much more vastly greater than the bullet:hull ones.

In less than 10 years, DEWS will start to proliferate. THEL enters field trials in 2015. WHEN THAT HAPPENS. The difference between a ship hull and an aircraft one will be ZERO in terms of 'chances of evasion or escape from envelope. Only terrain following (ultrashort horizon) and hypervelocity/multistrike options will have a hope of saturating enough to kill the target, whether or not they get the laser or maser as the 'secondary threat'. UCAVs will have to be the principle modus of operation then. Because they will be the only thing that can be blatantly _sacrificed_. In the blink of an eye.

Don't tell me that we are not caught in a rut of scaling systems to human reference points of time and space. Don't tell me that that desire to keep MITLing our way into ever more wasteful expenditures (70 billion for 150 F-22s, 256 billion for probably

You want to build a max 40,000 ton carrier, and put a C-17 on it??? Ain't No Way. And claiming it can be done by referencing WWII carriers is one of the funniest things I've seen yet. You're comparing putting a plane designed to carry an M-1 MBT onto a small deck carrier, with putting planes that didn't need a catapult, and were much smaller. What a JOKE! The C-130 that landed on the FULL DECK carrier barely had enough room to land. Whether you take the island off it or not, Ain't No Way a C-17 sized plane is landing on a carrier. Period. Exclamation point. Full deck or small deck.

I love all the technobabbly btw. Great way to get your point across, confuse people with technospeak.

Travellar,

>>
I have some problems with those comments
>>

Pick a 'comment' and we'll talk. An old friend of my Dad's worked with him in oil exploration. One day, they were looking at some midocean IR charts and spotted two linear anomalies that looked like image tearing in the satellite detector.

A little bit of math showed that they were two hulls, side by side, making more than 20 knots, 1,000ft down. I was told this story in the 1990s. The chart in question was created in the early 1980s.

Don't tell me we emasculated S-3 community, cut back on the P-3 community, largely eliminated SOSUS and left ourselves with only the SH-60F. 'Just because there was no threat'.

Unless you really mean _there is no hidden threat_.

>>
Though you seem to have changed subject imediately afterwards. first, rotary wing aviation is far from dead. Given their space requirements, flexibility, and capacity, there is no other option available today or in the forseeable future to replace them on Destroyers.
>>

The first requirement for fighting is sighting. The first use of naval airpower was as a spotting agency for the fall of shot on naval guns. Naval missiles now reach 50 times farther than even a 16" round did. While costing 295,000 dollars per shot. If the DDG _can_ solve the problem, with VLS loads of 'whatever', it needs to be given the independent targeting to do so.

Satellites don't cut it. Not if the area is so low-rent that you can only afford a surface task force to begin with, I doubt if you'll even be able to task. CERTAINLY, when the President says "Where's the nearest carrier..." he is not doing so solely for it's ability to look nice steaming offshore. He probably is saying "where's the nearest asset capable of mapping out the situation and then having the option to escalate, evacuate or rescue as needed'. Why /divert/ a CVSF if you can _do the initial survey_ with airpower?

In the PG during the Iran Iraq war, we found it very hard to keep track of everybody because the SH-60 was unarmed and the OH-58 and MH-6 were too short legged. So we ended up _responding_ to threat PCI and mining tactics /after the fact/. Often embarrassingly with an excess of "You won't sortie from that platform anymore!"

When the Stark was hit, it was because was late picking the target (an aircraft which had been flying similar routes for multiple nights prior) and didn't have the ability to run up alongside and say "Howdy, I see you there, do you see me here? Think about this..."

Something that no AEW conversion of a Sea King (or an Osprey) would be able to do to a Mirage F-1QE5. Something which /maybe/ a MALD or ITALD (or even BQM-74) derivative could achieve. But could not do more than once which means there will be no blowup radome and searchwater conversion. No long horizon. No TIME to unmask the aft emitter for the Standards, liven up the CIWS and SRBOC, and get the captain a cuppa wakey-wakey..

Don't talk to me about 'flexibility for what is little more than a naval hack if not admirals toy.

Because when I want something that can give me a global look from altitude, the helo can't do it.

When I want something that can fly 500-700nm downrange AND BACK so that Blk.IV Tomahawk can USE their datalink target update, throttle up-down and holding pen features, based on someone else doing the targeting, the helo can't do it.

Because when I want CSAR on a jet pilot downed 'somewhere' 150nm inland and the HH-60 driver looks at the numbers and laughs in my face, I _know_ the helicopter is not the asset to do it.

Those are military missions. Those are missions beyond vertrep or medevac or hack-liasoning the big wigs.

What they are not is necessarily a mission which will bring in a big deck just to support a small VLS.

>>
Maybe a variant of the V-22 if they can get it flying right.
>>

And they never will because it has a two 38ft rotor disks and costs 60 million each and so has long since lost the USN's interested, even as a VERTREP asset. No bulkcargo means no conversion to AEW or CSAR or ASW (especially now that there is 'no longer' an underice arctice scenario to think about). More importantly rotorblast is so bad that you cannot do half the things that allows a conventional helo to pretend it can remain airborne 'indefinitely', within 100nm of the task group (something which also effects CSAR options). If you take it farther than that, you are both challenging fixed wings and laughing in the face of 'established Navy doctrine' which is effectively that inner zone ASW is all that is requried in a world where probably 90% of attacks are going to be missile based.

>>
At over 200 knots, a helo represents a very fast means of getting some kind of asset out where we need it, and doing this in a hurrey.
>>

Snort. Compared to what, a clipper ship? Besides which RBS becomes harder and harder to deal with over about 170 knots. An MH-53 that needs to go 250 in and out to make a CSAR pickup is going to need at least three tankings, even with a bellybag that's only down to about two. And it will require more than 4hrs to execute. If, /by size/ you can only have two 'equivalent' (EH-101 or NH-90) platforms on your tiny little frigate or destroyer hangars, what do you do as 'inshore planeguard' when a third call comes in both your assets are coming back with with the tanker halfway RTB'd?

CSAR had between a 50 and 70% failure rate in SEA. There were times when a rescue meant counting the added lives that were going to be lost over the 1-2 already in the chute and pilots turned off their beacons rather than be an element of further disaster. And what did it /really buy/ U.S.? Aircrew morale wasn't much better because they knew the reason they were shot down was because they were predictable in their tactics (night after night, day after day) bombing 'hollow' truck-part target sets.

If you want to save pilots, pull them. The plane will go further. If you want to add MILITARY UTILITY to the DDG, stop doing utility missions and give it the ability to /contribute/ to the war effort (shorter=fewer on the casualty scale). That, IMO, can only happen by allowing them to be more proactive, not simply in targeting for a live war (in which case throwaway recce assets might be acceptable if you shoot enough warshot based on their call). But in general (recoverable, wide area) 'monitoring' surveillance in it's absence.

>>
Quit worrying about 200 or 400+ NM, most of the things that need doing you can park a ship much closer to, and from that vantage point, 12-60 NM becomes a far more interesting operating area.
>>

Which is why the USN is second best backup /eunuch/ to the Air Force. Having given up the targeting mission (the closest they come is the P-3 AIP), overland, they have NO IDEA 'what the rest of us are doing'. Despite the fact that there are no Sea Apes.

>>
I don't care if someone has a 250 or a 2000 NM missile that can be shot at me, I care if they can discriminate me from every other thing floating around the area and shoot me specifically. Few countries on this planet will waste a missile, (or pair of missiles) they have less than a dozen of, and which cost more than my house, on the off chance they'll hit the one target in a hundred they want to shoot at. Can a Sub hide from a destroyer? Absolutely! Can a sub target or engage a destroyer without getting just a wee bit closer than it's own commander might be comfortable with? Don't count on it.
>>

What do you think it means when the Chinese have 'fireworks party' shootexes with DF-15 and DF-30 being /salvoed/ into zones just off Eastern Taiwan? It means that they have the economic mass to make ballistics an affordable expense. If you _insist_ on bringing Carrier Air in that close (because nothing else has air _sustainment_ on a reloadable sortie basis), the costs go down and the value:exchange goes UP. For them. This _encourages_ the opfor to go with this system. Evolving it to the point where it's reach and it's targeting are superlative. While OTH-B systems like ROTHR and JORN make it oh-so-simple to see-2-sea whereby you cannot help but be 'guessable' as a target matrix _because there are no other civillian assets out that far_. Not that the Chinese will mind if they bag a few civvies.

In close. You become just another Escuadron de Phoenix easy ASST for little more than modernized FROG followons.

Blue Water and you are your own discrete signature.

It's that simple.

OTOH, the only sub:destroyer exchange you use is almost equal. And the reason why the TASM wasn't successful was because it was slow and so /generated it's own TLE/. Even as we didn't have the brains or bandwidth to launch them as self-targeting 'formations' like the Sunburn or use drone assisted (Sea Ferret works as a throwaway when the asset value is high) assets. As the Russians were already doing with Reis derivatives off of Tu-95.

Now we know better. And have the options. And so does everyone else. Which means that, 'rather than face twenty hulls' they will fire past 1-2 and still get the CVBG center.

And yet it's all unimportant because if you are NOT FIGHTING A WAR the Carrier task force won't be there. But that doesn't mean you still don't need to see Abdullah drive his black SUV into Omar's driveway at 0D30 some night. Because his _low value_ asset tag and association with a given place or event is what makes you realize "Hey, Omar is not on our side, that makes everything he's been saying about what's going on in Dumbustan invalid, maybe we'd /better/ send in the Marines."

Something that will NOT happen if the asset is not recoverable (it may be many nights worth of 10-12hr patrol durations before Abdullah decides to pay a visit) because you cannot afford to throw away recce as even sacrificial /drone/ asset, on a hunch. Most particularly if Dumbustan is 500nm inland and the reason the Navy is there is because nobody else wants us on their dirt and so the USAF is access-denied.

>>
As for the mention of the Atlantic Conveyer, that story represents both the best and worst aspects of an ad-hoc carrier. Yes, it worked, and filled an otherwise unfillable gap. But it only worked because other units were along to support, and unfortunately, many of the aircraft onboard were lost when the vessel was sunk. I don't know about Canadian, but US doctrine requires enough continuous presence around the world that we can't afford to rent our Carriers. (not to mention thier usefulness as area command centers)
>>

I agree. For Canada, or another small power using long range STOVL, it works. For U.S. and I suspect the UK, it might not, just on BOTOTS and expecations of rapid generation of air superiority with overwhelming numbers. OTOH, he want's full scale airpower. I do not. Not in this application. As for losses, that's your fault. You brought an essentially undefended jeep carrier asset into a COEA rather than perform the transfer a day or two's steaming out of area. Put all your eggs in one basket and you had _damn well better guard that wicker_.

Ironically, I do believe that either one-time helodecking or steel-mat recovery on Falklands itself would have been a good expenditure of a SHAR or particularly GR.3. Because the Chancha's were coming within visual range of the islands and then coming up to contrail height to help ease the rendezvous problems of their tube-electronics (failed NAVWAC) A-4B/C's trying to come back out with bullet holes everywhere.

And one dead tanker (of two effectives) is a halving of enemy sortie rate.

The difference is MY SYSTEM can be made to work that way too. And it doesn't require some naval aviator to waddle up in poopy suit and pray to Neptune that he doesn't drown or freeze to death while someone comes to get him.

Never doubt the ability of range and speed to create initiative through _persistence_. ALWAYS doubt (the _Pentagon Paradox_ capability is the inverse of expectation) the /presence/ of large, high-value, assets to provide that persistence, even if they can generate it.

Admirals are too conservative in war. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. But they are also too hide bound and power mad to force structure and doctrinal method systems in peace. And that most certainly is a very poor understanding of how war devolves from the destabilizing of peace.

If your air or otherwise assets are not present to maintain stability, the surety of war is almost guaranteed thereafter.

Which more or less makes their value (in the Falklands in particular) highly questionable when the RN chose to pull back even the Cutter that might have otherwise indicated 'we value this real estate'. If that cutter had had the ability to monitor the deployments of forces and perhaps even intercept a few of the Argie SOF (BT) brigade airlift that might have so embarrassed their initial 'success' with mass-casualty as to have utterly changed the picture of subsequent negotiatied outcomes or even combattant ones as to have made it far less of a 'contest' to the Argies who STILL treat that war as the time they stood up to a Colonial Power and 'almost won' on a points-for-machismo basis.


KPl.

[edit on 25-1-2006 by ch1466]

We cut the S-3 and P-3 because they were old. SOSUS is still fully operational, and in use every day. The difference is that now they allow civilian access to some of the data.

The biggest reason that so many CSAR missions failed in SEA was simple. It took so long to get assets in place that the NVA/VC had PLENTY of time to get a flak trap set up. The CSAR team wouldn't go in until they had four helos, and 12 escorts.

Have I mentioned how ugly the F-32 is today?

i think that the x-32 is quite ugly but very beautiful at the same time.

It is interesting to read comments concerning the LOOK of the X-32.
Most folks that claim to understand aircraft design by appearance only show a very
limited understanding of aircraft design. Aircraft designers are interested in -nice- looking
aircraft as most are, but function is the driver in most design solutions. Form follows function should not be forgotten. A good example is the A-6, which is certainly not any
great beauty.. The X-32 in its final configuration looked good and also would have probably been a better solution as a functional design. It was not carrying around a dead
weight of a fan on missions that could have been fuel for instance. It had the simplicity
of the Harrier with a 2-D nozzle that is used on the F-22. I think that folks develop a -real love- of a- LOOK- after they understand the Real function of the machine.

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
The X-32 in its final configuration looked good and also would have probably been a better solution as a functional design. It was not carrying around a dead
weight of a fan on missions that could have been fuel for instance. It had the simplicity
of the Harrier with a 2-D nozzle that is used on the F-22.

Actually only the STOVL version, the F-35B - has the "dead weight" of a fan behind the cockpit.
By 2018 there may very well be a solid state 100kw laser in that dead space, powered by a 25,000 hp shaft coming off the turbine. The laser would be capable of defending the aircraft from air to air and surface to air threats as well as enabling laser attack on other aircraft and ground targets.

BTW, as far as extra fuel goes, the F-35 can use external fuel tanks - same as the F-22.
One thing I wish the F-35 did have was the 2-D vectored thrust of the F-22 as you mentioned.
Beyond that, the Boeing X-32 looked like a pelican with it's mouth open...

reply to post by bios


I too loved the look of the X-32.

While I do certainly believe in the greater simplicity and efficiency of the vectored-thrust VTOL system, apparently, for the weights involved in the JSF requirement the direct lift was ultimately the most capable even if involving some level of "dead" weight.

The X-32 and X-35 each reminded of older military airplanes. The X-32 with its gaping chin intake, deep sided fuselage, and ground stance reminded me a lot of the A-7 Corsair II (an airplane, oddly enough, that I'm a big fan of....go figure.) The F-35 with its deeper-set cockpit, reversed inlet design, mid-fuselage wing mounting, and huge single engine exitting via a huge circular exhaust.......reminds me a lot of the F-105 Thunderchief. Me and Carlo Kopp on that one

But, the X-35 was closer to design configuration than the X-32 (which still had a wing redesign, nose/canopy changes planned, etc) that were going to cost more and delay production of "F"-32 protos. The F-35 was born as a result and I still like it a great deal. I've been fortunate enough to see the -A on several occasions during it's testing since I live in Ft. Worth and find myself up around LM every once in a while.