I've repeatedly discounted your comments, but I simply can't seem to make headway.

The F4E ICE was a modified German version of the F4E. It had much better engines than any other version of the craft, a dedicated WSO, and it still only barely outperformed the F16. The other F4 variants absolutely did not turn better or have a higher rate of climb than the F16.

Dogfighting hasn't been around since WW1? Are you crazy? What would you call the numerous dogfighting techniques developed during WWII? Admittedly there was a drop off in dogfighting during the Korean War, but that was because we were shifting to jets as our primary fighters and people didn't have the speeds worked out. When we went to Vietnam, we found that many times the planes were so fast they were closing into gun range before they could get a missile solution. Hence the creation of the Fighter Weapons School (aka TopGun).

The Air Force couldn't believe it was a skill issue and decided to go a different way, loading more sensors and different cannon onto the airplanes. They still relied on missiles primarily, assuming that dogfighting was DEAD. Well, after some time passed, Navy kill to loss ratios went from 3.7-1 to 13-1 and (SURPRISE) Air Force kill to loss ratios got even worse.

After this, the Air Force quietly created their own DACT program, unwilling to be vocal about how wrong they were. Now, if you primarily play video games about air sorties, you might get the idea that you get a lock a couple of miles before you even see the enemy, confirm the engagement, click a button, and then fly back home. Actual pilots will be glad to set you straight on that, since you might have to get close to the intruding craft and follow them, waiting. What happens when you get close? Dogfights happen.

As far as the capability of the plane, of course it is going to fail tests. But the problem is that, like in the case of the Marine's test, so much money has been invested in this plane that people are ignoring the failures because they are scared the program is going to get shut down. Realistically, that just is going to increase the time this plane takes to get ready for service, increase the costs, and it isn't going to fix the underlying problems in the design of the craft.

I don't know what else I can say. The plane is going to turn out to be a much more expensive version of the F22 and it will most likely quietly be cancelled later down the line like the F22 was. The bad thing is, the government will immediately jump to the next jack of all trades plane and once again we will find it is a master of none.

I've already discussed why helicopters and drones are good in areas of light cover while sucking in areas of high cover. They fulfill a role, but realistically they aren't always the best option.

I also explained what happens in real combat. So called fast movers end up being tasked to do roles that they were not designed for. No plan stays certain in the face of the enemy. There will come a time when the F35 is expected to provide the same type of support as the A-10 and it is going to suck hard at it, planes will be shot down and pilots will die or be captured. I suspect this will happen especially with the forces using the F35 that are not the Air Force, such as the Marines. Here is a link to the laughable failures that the Marines had with the plane, but due to the 'cannot fail' nature of the project, they certified it anyway. http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/not-a-big-suprise-the-marines-f-35-operational-test-wa-1730583428

Finally, the A-10 was absolutely not designed initially to be a Soviet tank killer. The initial A-X program was created because of the DISMAL performance of the Air Force and F4 in providing close air support to troops.

The Secretary of the Air Force contacted Pierre Sprey and asked him to come up with a design spec for a close air support plane. After consulting with the pilots we had in Vietnam, mostly the successful ones that were flying the prop driven A-1 Skyraider (which btw, destroyed the F4 JET in CAS operations), it was indicated that the ideal aircraft should have long loiter time, low-speed maneuverability, massive cannon firepower, and extreme survivability. It was only later, after the plane had been mostly designed, that the USAF asked that it be also tasked to counter the Soviets.

As I said, the Air Force has always hated providing CAS to the other branches of the Armed Forces. They constantly forget that you need to make a multi-role fighter actually function in a multi-role environment, preferring to think that they can buzz in and buzz out while the rest of the military does the 'dirty' work. However, they always get burned for it. Just like now, when they were fighting as hard as possible to kill the A-10, they discovered that fighting a force that is mobile and that hides in cover/cities (ISIS) is damn near impossible with fast planes/drones. Which is why they changed paths and rescheduled the A-10 phase out to 2028 (or beyond).

The Air Force is quite silly when it comes to close ground support. They never learn that the 'we'll be in and out before they can touch us' doesn't work well.

To give you an idea of what they are planning to return us to with this idea and plane, I refer you to the Vietnam War. The F4 was capable of fast fly-by's, but the problem was that in the foliage it was hard to hit targets at speed. Therefore the F4's had to start reducing speed and take higher attack angles, which caused an issue with the engines. Flameouts and stalls were rampant because the plane was designed for fast fly-by's, not the type of combat it was seeing. Additionally, the slow speed and high AoA EXPOSED the plane to severe enemy return fire. The F-4, by 1 January 1972, ranked second to the F-105 in SEA combat losses-362 (all models), most of them downed by the enemy. Later, in F-4Es alone, the Air Force lost eight in 2 months of intensive combat.

The Air Force found that relying extensively on Helicopters such as the Cobra was ineffective as well. They could deliver good anti-personnel coverage, but not hard targets. They were also slower to arrive to the combat arena. Finally, no helicopter we have ever put in combat, prior to the Apache, has been heavily armored. We don't use Hinds like Russia. The Apache is armored with Kevlar areas and reinforced armor around the cockpit, and has proven effective in open land combat, but has not been extensively tested in areas of high cover during actual combat.

Ironically, the painful lessons learned in Vietnam led to the development of another aircraft, The A-10. Sadly, we are going to waste a ton of money and probably quite a few pilots before we learn this lesson again.

The F-35 can do everything better than any other plane. It's weapons are better, it's senors are better, and it's communication and situational awareness is much better. Thanks to the stealth, it has better survivability.

The only area it has some disadvantages in performance are the acceleration and maneuverability. Which is a small disadvantage, it still accelerates incredibly fast, just slower than a lighter plane, which is just physics. But it's not a slouch by any means. Plus the maneuverability is still being worked on, it's all fly by wire and they can do some really magic things with those systems once it's all tuned. They haven't started pushing it to the limits yet from what I've heard. (and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this whole "our plane sucks" thing was another tactic of spreading misinformation).

Here's the other thing. The F-16 can out maneuver and out accelerate the F-35. But every Russian fighter can out accelerate and out maneuver the F-16, anyway. Yet the F-16 always comes out on top. Why is that? Superior sensors, weapons, comms and tactics.

The F-35 is the best plane to achieve air superiority, because not many pilots have a death wish. Air combat is about survival, not about kills. Even in the Gulf war, the Iraqi's didn't want to fly against the F-15s because they knew they'd get just get shot down. They never even took off. So imagine how they would feel against a plane that can't be detected, let alone locked onto. A plane that can lock onto you and fire without you knowing. Not a good feeling knowing that at any moment you could explode without warning.

The A-10 is bullet proof, but not missile proof. It's a sitting duck against shoulder mounted IGLA's. Only the cockpit is bullet proof BTW which is great for the pilot, but not so great for the rest of the plane

I agree that the F-35 for the current war is overkill, but electronics and technology keeps getting cheaper day by day, and in 10 years time, even the current enemies will start buying more sophisticated systems. It's better to be prepared. As being reactionary like in WW2 and Vietnam was quite costly to the lives of allied forces. The F-35 will probably be in service for another 30 years, so it needs to try to meet as many requirements as it can for that time period, until the next plane comes out shooting lasers instead of missiles.

Also close air support these days is already done mostly by soft skin planes like the F-16. So not much difference there. Apart from the expense I guess. It's not low and slow either. You have a plane fly at such speed and high altitude the people on the ground never even know about it.


If you feel like it I'll give you a game of DCS World some time. It's a free flight sim (also used to train US national guard and other nations too). It really demonstrates the value of good sensors and weapons over flight performance

Now when it comes to being a waste of money, only time will tell. I guess either way it's win win though, because if there is no conflict that needs this plane it's only a good thing. And if there is a conflict we have the plane ready. But for the time being it really does seem like it's a waste of money. A lot of money, especially in a time of debt.

No, but the F-16 can out accelerate the P-51, but I don't think the F-35 can out accelerate the F-16, can it?

If the stealth tech worked every time, yes, it would have it nailed. I don't think it does, and even if it does, it's methods will be 'cracked' as soon as they're known and we'll need an entire new plane with new systems. You're right, when it goes as planned. It does not always go as planned, and we don't want to lose an F-35 every time we make a mistake in predictions, do we?

I think it's more like a camouflaged sniper hiding in the trees that's taken over the responsibility for also being an artillery brigade and a front line infantry brigade.
It can't do most of what it's designed to do, can barely do what it's best at, and if it's caught, it can't defend itself.

I really don't think there's a job they have for it that can't be done by the F-15, F-16, F/A-18, F-117, B-2, A-10, etc....meaning there's no need for it at all, and we could have had hundreds of those planes for the cost of the R&D done so far for a plane that doesn't yet work, and costs a mint when it is finally deployed, not just to build but for upkeep too.

I'm pretty sure a lot of pilots in WW2, and Korea, and Vietnam would disagree about dogfighting ending in WW1 and about it being all strategy and not performance. For instance, in WW2, we kicked ass largely because a zero was made of paper and couldn't take a hit while the mustang was a flying tank....or so I've read.

I can sure think of a bunch of other things the fed could have spent $1.3 Trillion on....we could all be traveling in tubes for that much money! The Republican's could make a camp to send all Muslims to on the moon for that kind of money.

It failed due to two reasons. The F4E was a two seater aircraft with a dedicated radar and weapons co-pilot, meaning it was really more comparable to an F15, and the weapons loadout that the F4 could carry was greater.

The only other area that the F4E was even close to the F16 in was rate of climb, and it still lost there. Now if you mean the German ICE F4E that was modified with better engines, etc, then yes, it was slightly better in RoC and turning radius.

The design and per unit cost of the F16 were much lower than the F35, because it was built on data learned from the Vietnam War, not theoretical data on a conflict that hasn't occurred yet (or may never occur). I agree we should update our weapons as needed, but we should only ever update with field tested data, not on theoretical combat.

For instance, if I came to you and said I predict our future soldiers will need to be protected from man portable rail guns, and that I needed a trillion dollars to make the new body armor, would you give it to me? Or would you say that manport rail guns are highly unlikely to be used in the near future and we need to wait and see?

Look, it's really simple. The question was, "Will the US military obey unlawful orders."

I pointed to one proven instance where they absolutely did just that. I didn't bring up rape or any of that, you did, but it actually makes my case even more solid. Not only did they OBEY those orders, they took them several steps further on their own. Abu Ghraib is an excellent example because there was a court case and therefore there's a lot of documentation.

There are a ton of other examples, especially from WWII onward, firebombing major German cities, nuclear attacks on Japan, use of Napalm in Vietnam. Treatment of POWs.... It's a very long list of debatable war crimes, many of which are poorly documented. If you want to pick one as a better example, go ahead, but building up straw men to attack when you seem to essentially agree with the thrust of my argument seems petty and ridiculous.

Well it was good spur of the moment stuff, but let's be realistic, there was a Russian/US war. It just wasn't fought head to head, but through other countries, like Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Maybe she left out some ingredients she took for granted? I dunno, or it was all just bland ass food built off of post depression/WWII tastebuds. If her grandma was like my grandma, she was born in the depression, all the men in her family went to WWII, Korean War, she's a product of the Cold War, sons in Vietnam, and on and on -- she's had some rough first world problems shaping her from the get go. Poor ass family and then living off grandpa's Navy pay check.

So it may also be a way to make do with very little. My dad has some stories about my grandma feeding him some nasty concoctions and he declares spam no more. Grandma, despite having money now, still makes some gross ass food made out of random cheap things from the grocer. Campbell's + ANYTHING. Spam + ANYTHING. Saltine crackers, baby. That's the story of one of my grandma's at least.

Yeah, somewhere something got confused. My suspicion is that it became more fashionable again and then amongst some groups, they overshot the mark through the sort of one-upmanship you tend to get, particularly among college age political activists. An "I'm a more hardcore feminist than you!" type thing. That's the sort of thing that took some elements of the peace movement during the Vietnam era from basic anti-war/anti Cold war ideals, to militant factions claiming to be communists who supported the North Vietnamese regime and behaving in ways that hurt the overall peace movement (mistreating returning GIs and performing acts of sabotage and terrorism).

It seems you always get this thing with political movements. Groups with mostly but not entirely similar ideals and goals end up expending more effort opposing each other more than on their primary aims.

All that said, though I always understood the feminist movement to be concerned with social equality for all people, I wouldn't necessarily condemn them for being primarily interested in equality for women. They should, of course, be aware and acknowledge that this is just a specialized subset of the "social equality" movement as a whole.

Just remember these are people from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, who likely do not understand the harm they're doing, but are simply doing what they can to feed their families. Those are some hard knock lives.

And then there's us -- the ignorant technocrats who only become outraged when our access to information catches up to us and teaches us that our viral desire for exotic pets has fueled a harmful trade.

It's just ignorance all around. Our ignorant desires and the ignorant workers our desires have employed. Is there even an evil boss/distributer in all of this? Or is it just ignorance at every single level?

Someone advertising a truck dealership in Vietnam probably isn't abiding by the self promotion rules here...

*ban

google translate says

5-foot truck dongfeng | 5 foot semi truck dongfeng 22t | dongfeng truck prices 5 tripod 340hp | Truck Dealers dongfeng central Vietnam 5 feet | Order truck dongfeng 5 foot right foot 340hp truck dongfeng 5

Have you by chance watched Good Morning Vietnam recently?

Lol, I just had the same conversation with a friend!

My response was I'm not sure that comparison holds up.

Alien is a haunted house with a single killer.
Aliens is basically a vietnam war movie.
Different ideas, different directors and a completely different structure.

Whereas T1 and T2 are both chase movies by the same director.
T1 and T2 are much closer in structure.

"what is that? why is it trying to kill me?
run the hell away!
break in the middle for recuperation/exposition
chase scene in a truck
big explosion/crash
yay, it's dead! oh no, wait
final confrontation in factory"

Don't get me wrong... T2 is a great movie, but T1 has more menace.