Practicing for airbase runways being hit. Sweden does this too but to the next level since they believe in the dispersed air force strategy given their expectations for the Cold War.
I know this feeling. Too much shill exposure has your brain frying as you try to decipher their posts right?
I believe they're still operating out of their airbases instead of using the road centric approach the Swedish do. The Ukrainians had some losses early on, including a notable event where they were supposed to get a defecting Russian fighter only for the mole to be on the Ukrainian side where they called a strike in at the agreed on defection base and lost some planes on the ground there.
Sweden did it back in the 70s with out regular jets. Congrats, you yanks figured out a 50-year old procedure.
>Sweden this Sweden that
Listen, it's not some super secret special sauce like the coating on the F-35 or target identification AI, the whole of fucking NATO trained in the 70s for shit like this, okay? Not just Sweden - EVERYONE. Even the fucking Soviets. You're nothing special. So sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up and enjoy some nice 80s Fulda Gap porn.
that's literally the reason it exists you absolute fuckin' retard, and if you don't understand why, leave. don't come back. you shouldn't be here. you shouldn't be anywhere. remove yourself from the gene pool.
The ability to operate from improvised or rough landing sites unsuited to conventional fixed-wing air is one of the attractive features of VTOL. It also helps that at least a few places design some of their highways with the ability that it can be used as a makeshift airstrip, at a push.
Good lord, an AIRPLANE landed on a paved HIGHWAY? This is bigger than the moon landing, stop the presses, what scientific miracle
>ability to operate from improvised or rough landing sites
That's not what this is. We've been landing jets on roadways for decades, it was part of Cold War doctrine. The only difference between a runway and a highway is width and/center divider and the fire engines are closer at the airport
the A-10 and the Super Touc can land and launch on a few thousand feet of gravel. The Fat Amy cannot
That and the BITCH air traffic control can't tell you to go around when there is a small child in the middle of the runway. Get the fuck out of the way or get run over, Timmy
The A-10 needs 9000 feet of runway.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/a-10-specs.htm#:~:text=A%2047%20K%20lb%20A,of%20less%20than%209%2C000%20feet.
F-35B needs 6000 feet although that depends on payload and fuel.
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/about/initiatives/airshow/F-35B_Airshow_Flight_Profile.pdf
I want a timeline where early 60s tech continued and we got air to air nuclear tipped missiles. But with modern tech that provides high yield extremely low radioactive fallout, so we can use them over our own territory without worry. Just imagine >flying fighter jet >see faint white trail coming towards you >pull high G's and successfully dodge the missile >it goes 500m past your aircraft >massive white flash, shut eyes in pain >realize you don't have thermoreflective paint >your wing fuel tanks cook off from the heat >die in a fiery explosion before you can eject
It's kino
>Not using enhanced radiation bombs >Cleaner(tm) fusion roasting >Extra Hispanicy radiation to fry electronics, humans >If the pilot survives the immediate radiation their avionics are toast and they end up dead stick >Plane on fire anyways >They're still going to die of ARD anyways
The heat flash doesn't last long enough to heat a fuel tank enough to pop it. The shockwave would remove the wings and tail of your aircraft though. Maybe even implode your canopy.
>100 AIM-120s
Do they have some swarm mode or does that just mean that the lead J-20 in a formation is just ultra fucked as 100x AIMs prox detonate on it?
Modern fighter radars can lock on to multiple targets at once.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Modern fighter radars can lock on to multiple targets at once.
We're talking about a bomber though and I don't think an aircraft AESA can track 100 targets at once.
There was an extra large falcon with a nuclear warhead in service for a while.
After it was retired, the warheads were reused in the nuclear variant of the walleye TV glide bomb which is cool/insane in it's own right
A giant nuclear sidewinder was also proposed but the Navy essentially said "Damn bro that's cool but I don't remember asking", to our collective disappointment
I have an idea for that setting, it just requires that no one adopts ICBM's. Either have the US and Soviets sign an early SALT agreement to not develop them, or have some component not be available. Then we get massed bomber formations, nuclear armed interceptors, parasite fighters, emergency point-defense interceptors, all the fun stuff.
Have a callous disregard for safety on early rocket experiments massively fuck up and render near earth orbit a no fly zone for a century due to a constant rain of trash from failed tests exploding. It's kinda bullshit science-wise, but good enough as a plot device.
Kessler Syndrome is dumb for reasons I'm not going to bother explaining to you, but the biggest thing is the idea that it would shut down ICBM trajectories for long enough that they're no longer a viable method of delivery.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Kessler is a meme and the #1 pleb filter in any discussion about orbital warfare. Go play 1000 hours of KSP before posting again.
Kessler syndrome doesn't make sense in the 1950s but that's like, 30,000 satellite launches ago, many of which are either still up their and dead or are Starlink
The fission fuel is radioactive and is never 100% used up, it also contains non-fissile radioactive isotopes. Tritium for the fusion is also radioactive.
Additionally the fission products are very likely to be radioactive.
All that radioactive material is spread in the atmosphere and will come down somewhere.
After some google search:
MAX TKOF WEIGHT in VTOL: 18,000 LBS.
A pair of 400 kiloton B61 gravity bombs: 715 LBS (x2)
So far, the B61-12 has only been approved for carraige inside the F-35A. While giving the F-35C the requisite pylons and funswitch shouldn't be difficult, the B's IWBs are a bit small for the B-61. Sure it could carry the bombs externally, but at that point you may as well launch an F-16V off of a stretch of highway for the same effect.
Yes, they can
Even the fucking Harrier had like 100nm of combat radius with straight up VTOVL and a pair of missiles
Rolling off even just 50 feet adds to that
The real question is do you want to be within 100 miles of a pair of W61s
>Can it vertically take off with it though?
F-35B is short takeoff-vertical landing. I mean it would be cool if it could do vertical takeoff for any reasonable use case (it can vertically take off, but not with any reasonable combat load) but there just aren't that many situations where the use case is take off from amphibious assault ships.
In a combat scenario, even your forward air bases would have some runway space. Refueling, rearming and taking off from a helipad is not a must have. It's a good to have but it would have been a big tradeoff requiring a lot more development and it would've made F-35B significantly different than the other variants which is roughly why X-32 lost the JSF competition.
>what purpose could be served by flying a multirole stealth fighter off any well equipped stretch of road, LHD, or even particularly ambitious helipad
multiple roles, it's in the name; strike, SEAD, ghetto AWACS, air superiority, nuclear strike
>know someone who lived in the middle of nowhere >15km of shitty forest path that could be called a road only in this fucking country with the only connecting road being the shitty local highway with one of these landing strip improvements made a year or two ago at this pointin time >he's driving to work some monday >runs into a few extremely confused people in cammies >is as confused himself >they stop and question him on how the fuck he got onto that stretch of road since there have been two blockades every way since friday >somehow they missed he lived off some shitty dinky dirt path >they tell him to fuck off back home immediately since planes are about to take off >gets home, calls work, they don't believe him, goes back on foot >some lt. col. has been called by radio and has appeared to unfuck the surprise fuck in an official capability >decides to just fucking call this guys work and tells them he isn't going to be coming to work for a week due to national defence concerns and if they have any complaints to direct them to the airforce staff >next day some reservists bring him two weeks worth of sausages and beer for his week-long surprise holiday that he ended up getting paid for in full somehow >a few years later they have reservist pioneers just build him a new fucking road that connects somewhere else
>US Air Force and Engineer Corps are so cool
I was replying to a post about finnish airforce highway use about how the airforce was using a highway
what made you think for one second I wasn't talking about the finnish military
>If this is China the guy's bare foot will be the only thing sticking out of a soil mound somewhere near by or he will be working in the coal mines
Except outside of your imagination, Chinese are fucking renowned for being stubborn as shit and refusing to move despite the government building fucking highways around their houses. Google "Chinese nail house" and you'll find hundreds of examples like pic related
>US Air Force and Engineer Corps are so cool
I was replying to a post about finnish airforce highway use about how the airforce was using a highway
what made you think for one second I wasn't talking about the finnish military
>Google "Chinese nail house" and you'll find hundreds of examples like pic related
It goes both ways, usually depending on how visible the situation is and how much the local party boss and developers can get away with.
You'll have nail houses in Shanghai but not so much in the backwaters of Gansu or something where they can do whatever they want.
There's been plenty of cases of villagers just being beaten up and their houses torn down by gangsters in the pay of party officials and developers.
This sounds so incredibly european that it’s absolutely believable.
>it’s the 80s, Cold War still on >northern half of Germany >NATO playing soldier with lots of tanks >neighbor who builds roads and bridges literally spends the entire decade fixing one crossroads and a bridge over and over again because bongs and krauts destroy it on a regular basis during exercise >there is also a barbecue with the soldiers at that crossing because he made a fucking fortune off the military and getting shitfaced with the locals is good for morale and mil civ relations >he is still talking about silly dudes in skirts trading whiskey for a ride to the next brothel
I always love this kind of military - civilian interaction.
Friend's Polish grandma had some silly American crash a HEMTT into her garden, apparently no-one on board could speak her language well and the grandma herself was scared shitless since the only guy who could at all was black. Soon they were surrounded by locals who probably would stone the poor bastard if not for local military guys that arrived to disperse everyone. This was soon after the Truck of Peace stuff that happened in Germany which probably didn't help. They pulled the truck out, took pictures and like two days later someone showed up with an envelope of cash that was way more than was neccessary to cover fixing everything.
America's military needs to become this based. We should be conscripting everyone at 18 onwards for 2 year contracts to build driveways, fix potholes, and clear brush in rural areas, and have 4 year 11xs doing grocery runs for rural population centers to keep them from bitching when the regiment shows up to nowheresville Kansas to practice maneuvers
No fucking way an F-35B will ever be able to safely do that. Pay close attention, that B landed on a concrete highway that would be more typically be found in Germany. Pointing that P&W F135 on Finnish tarmac would blow a hole through it in seconds. Then you've got rocks and dust billowing into the air and getting sucked back into the engine for another cycle.
Updating the roads of note to have concrete in addition to blacktop is a good excuse to do a bunch of civil engineering infrastructure projects while also being far cheaper then developing a new fighter or flying F/A-18s past their expiration date.
Or just sticking to the order of 64 F-35A Block 4s and landing them on the same airstrips as our old Hornets because we bought the same drogue parachutes for them that the Norwegians use.
Look, ya'll have been flying naval fighters out of a land base for long enough that expecting purely logical behavior like that is a stretch. Maybe now that Russia has broken it's teeth and jaw, there will be less of an emphasis on surviving a first strike and being able to sortie off of whatever flat surface doesn't have a hole in it, but showing that the F-35B can do improvised landing strips does open up the possibility and doesn't cost the US anything.
Oh sure, it is a nice additional capability to have. Could resupply USMC or Royal Navy Bs just by laying some heat-proof concrete landing pads next to the main bases and dispersion airstrips. And just in general as a proof of concept for global operations.
But Finland has no good reason at all to buy the B, unless we start building up a mini-carrier battlegroup.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Why not? Just flex on the Russians some more kek
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Nah, budget is tight as it is. Better spent on acquiring more long-range precision ground fires like GLSDBs and PrSMs. And switching from an old-school footslogging army to a more motorized and mechanized one.
I would agree, but I also don't understand the reason Finland has been flying F/A 18s instead of F-16s and 15s but clearly they put a large emphasis on the ability to take off from wherever instead of the US approach of making sure that a runway crater can be patched quickly to not have to fly an airframe that makes so many compromises to allow the usage of nonstandard landing and launch surfaces.
Finland has two airbases acting as Hornet main hubs. Russia shutting them down by spamming ballistic and cruise missiles was a very realistic expectation, even in retrospect. We do have the ability to fix holes on a matter of hours. Dispersion would absolutely have worked and enabled continued air operations.
I don't see how the Hornet is a "non-standard" fighter, none of the Hornet operating nations besides US have aircraft carriers. I don't see any combat ability-related compromises, I see a lot of advantages over the F-16. Being able to take hits better in the Gulf War was a major factor for the Hornet's selection.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
I would agree, but I also don't understand the reason Finland has been flying F/A 18s instead of F-16s and 15s but clearly they put a large emphasis on the ability to take off from wherever instead of the US approach of making sure that a runway crater can be patched quickly to not have to fly an airframe that makes so many compromises to allow the usage of nonstandard landing and launch surfaces.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
>the reason Finland has been flying F/A 18s instead of F-16s
Better capability all around >15s
Restricted to best buddies of the USA, which Finland wasn't then
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Did they get the Superbug before becoming NATO friendly? I'd rather be in a 16 then a regular Hornet, especially since the 16 was a much more readily upgraded platform then the original flavor F/A 18 and it shows.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
They got regular C/D Hornets in the 90s, when they were trying to be all "hey um now that the Berlin Wall is down can we be officially good guys instead of uncomfortably neutral" so they didn't rate F15s for damn sure.
Why do you say 16s are more upgradeable? That may or may not be true, but 18s still start off ahead
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Modern F-16 upgrade packages are still pretty competitive for anyone who's not flying an F-35, while the baby Hornet obviously didn't get nearly as much love with the smaller consumer base and the USN moving to the Super Hornet which is really a different plane but kept the name to get Congress to play nice given how dissimilar the airframes are. While they're all fine planes, the F-16 is still getting upgrade packages that the USAF is paying for the development of whereas I can only find the USN doing similar stuff for the Super Hornet.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Those upgrades are mainly for the earlier models of F-16s to bring them up to date with stuff that's already production standard for even the regular F-18s. Classic Hornets have been getting all the upgrades as well such as JHMCS, datalinks and even AESA, it's just not as widely reported as Super Hornets. The USMC has a lot of them and so does a few key partners like Canada and Australia.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
They're making some pretty big improvements to the block 40 to 52 Vipers which are already some of the newest birds, with the EW package probably being the biggest deal for new stuff, though it's a question of if the US would be willing to export that, I suppose.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
>block 40 to 52 Vipers
Those are pretty dated. The 16V has been sold to multiple overseas customers and is way more advanced. Those upgrades you mention are probably to bring them up to 16V standard.
The legacy Hornets got those too. So that particular batch you're looking at, probably ANG? they're actually way behind the curve.
Supposedly, USAF. As to dated or not, it's a matter of perspective since yea, block 50 rolled off the line in the early 2000s at the latest, but that's still pretty new for a F-16 or even fighter in general really.
>Updating the roads of note to have concrete in addition to blacktop is a good excuse to do a bunch of civil engineering infrastructure projects while also being far cheaper then developing a new fighter or flying
ha yah >"just update the roads! easy!" >" so cheap too! its just roads! not some complex fighter jet!" >"we just need an excuse to spend money on our roads! basing fighter jets off them to help ukraine is the perfect idea!" >"no problems here! just 'updating my roads real quick!"
PrepHole brains are chemically castrated, im conviced
it costs like Multi-billion dollars and half a decade to build a highway exchange in America, and thats just one city, on one side of town, for one highway network, at one fucking interchange
it would cost $TRILLIONS to >"just update the roads! we need an excuse for that one! and helping ukraine is perfect amirite!?"
Good thing roads last forever and snowy countries like Finland never have to spend any money on infrastructure upkeep anyway, and it's still cheaper then developing an fighter regardless.
It's also amusing how you start sperging out about Ukraine when it isn't even mentioned anywhere in this thread. I wish you a very pleasant drone dropped death in the near future, my little brain broken chud.
Roads don't last forever and frequently need upkeep. They don't need it as much as say a dirt path, but in no way is any modern road decades proof. It will need touchups, retexturing and general maintenance. Infrastructure is a continuing cost wherein if done right you pay a huge upfront cost, but then benefit from decades of usage and cheaper upkeep.
Good thing roads last forever and snowy countries like Finland never have to spend any money on infrastructure upkeep anyway, and it's still cheaper then developing an fighter regardless.
It's also amusing how you start sperging out about Ukraine when it isn't even mentioned anywhere in this thread. I wish you a very pleasant drone dropped death in the near future, my little brain broken chud.
Now, maybe I was being a bit obtuse but I was simply making the point that you can't just plop down a VTOL jet on tarmac. During the Falklands War, the Royal Navy was able to use improvised ships as "VTOL carriers" for their Sea Harriers. But they weren't usable for that as-is, they had to put significant heat-proofing on those steel decks. A tarmac road most certainly cannot stand the blast of a jet engine from a very close range, some jets have been known to blow out the hydraulics of those carrier jet blast deflectors.
Building concrete landing pads in Finland would be viable and overall affordable, but it's rather the cost and degraded performance of the B-model itself is not worth it.
>Building concrete landing pads in Finland would be viable and overall affordable
there is nothing "affordable" or "viable" about rebuilding a nations road-infrastructure to better suit jet sorties into ukraine
road projects are usually the largest, most expensive infrastructure projects a nation-state can engage in
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Holy shit, why would every road need to be paved with concrete instead of just the landing sites? Better question is how well the concrete would hold up against frost and winter tires, you should see the condition our roads are in despite frost-proofing to the best of our ability and resources.
And what the fuck does Ukraine have to do with defending Finnish and Estonian borders/airspace?
civil engineer anon here. specifically pavement maintenance. Generally unless there is some massive push from above or a massive change in traffic patterns, we won't change Asphalt concrete pavement to Portland cement concrete pavement. PCC pavement is expensive and yes it does last.
So what do you think, am I right in thinking asphalt can't handle jet blast? Dunno what those highway airstrips are made of tho, now that I think of it they might be made of something more durable than the regular tarmac. The potholes caused by winter tires would be a very serious problem.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
highway airstrips are asphalt. Asphalt science is complex, and there are many ways to design mixes. I wouldn't be worried about potholes as that is a result of the sub surface conditions. potholes begin by the asphalt flexing due to the base rock having drainage issues usually. this results in alligator cracking and then spall which leads to a pothole.
It is regular asphalt, I would assume they just monitor the pavement pretty well and repair it regularly.
I would highly doubt that they use concrete as a base layer, and then asphalt on top. This is stupid expensive and also the joints on the concrete would reflect upwards and cause inevitable cracking. I mean sometimes this is useful, but it is rare.
I would think that they use a dense graded HMA mix rather than a rubberized mix for this, and have a superior compaction standard for both the baserock, and the asphalt itself.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
in the past (at least in Poland) asphalt used on those highway airstrips was usually light grey colour and was much tougher as it was the only part without potholes - but with currently used asphalt there is no visible difference (or they dropped requirement to use those places i visit as airstrips)
bro thinks American infrastructure is better than Euro infrastructure. it's like the one thing they have going for them. other than the healthcare. and education. and the-
I wasn't going on a dick-measuring contest, I was trying to make a point that you can't land or takeoff VTOL jets on just any surface like you can a tilt rotor.
That's the exact opposite of what he said but you got triggered all the same; so much for that vaunted yuro education. Don't you fucking start on this dick-swinging horseshit or I will sit down here and tell you some cold hard World Bank facts all about the troubles in Europe until you cry for your cuntry. Also, reconsider the fact that YOU'RE the moron who thinks that there's not a single concrete highway in all of the fucking United States, and this is really fucking difficult for the USA to pull off. You have to be a special kind of both stupid AND sheltered to imagine that the USA doesn't have concrete technology and all of it runs on asphalt.
Not to mention the US subsidizing the world with it's medical advancement, technology, and drug research. Literally selling to all the thirdies and NATO stepchildren at lower rates because America funds the majority of their real-world defenses and Medicine.
No small wonder they can blithely go on with other projects while being leeches and think it's just their accomplishments alone.
Nah they chose the F35A, its landing and takeoff distances are good enough.
CATOBAR hardware is useless for highway operations
F-35A is the cheapest, best performing, and least troubled model. If you look at Lockmart's own statistics, even the B exceeds minimum requirements while the C model doesn't and it's the most troubled. Naval arrestor hooks could be nice except the drogue parachute is better in every way except raw stopping power (heh)
it doesn't take off vertically in normal operation
the F-35B is a STOVL aircraft
Short Take Off, Vertical Landing
It could take off vertically, but it would have a limited amount of fuel and almost no payload
> What could I possibly gain from the ability to land, refuel, and rearm in locations outside of an airfield which are going to be the main targets of disabling a fleet of aircraft.
I'm sorry you lack object permeance-level IQ to understand why this is useful.
>for what fucking purpose?
I swear this board gets dumber by the day.
Because air fields and air bases are giant, immobile targets that can be taken out of the game fairly easy.
Being able to use your planes from regular strips of roads is just a tactical, strategical advantage.
An enemy might pepper every huge air base with cluster and other ammunitions that fuck up the tarmac.
An enemy has no chance of fucking up every mile of highway.
Not to disagree with your overall point anon but just as a little addition: >An enemy has no chance of fucking up every mile of highway.
Obviously EVERY mile of highway isn't actually appropriate even for an STVOL fighter. Certain stretches were built with it more in mind than others, so the actual target selection is only a fraction of the entire network.
That said it's a pedantic point because the US Interstate Highway System is something close to 47000 miles of road total. Even 5% of that is still a ludicrous amount of extra usable emergency takeoff space.
DOT regulations require straight stretches on the interstate every few miles. Every one of these stretches can be used as an emergency landing strip and is not uncommon to be by small prop planes in dange. Google Cessna lands on highway and pick your fav story
They're practicing for if/when they have to do it from similar/smaller runways out in teh Pacific.
When the Doolittle Raiders were training fro their raid on Japan, they used a training field in Florida with lines painted on it to simulate a carrier deck. Same idea here.
becuase...
A M E R I C A
F U C K Y E A H
But the B was a British offshoot
Literally one of the things it and the Harrier is designed for
>Is
Are
My brain is becoming ESL
Shouldn't it be "were"? Or "have been" in a case if their design would be still worked on?
No that was a genuine esl trying to sound smart and failing, notice they never responded
Doesn't matter. They are designed for this (emphasis on the design outcome). They were designed for this (emphasis on the design process).
Practicing for airbase runways being hit. Sweden does this too but to the next level since they believe in the dispersed air force strategy given their expectations for the Cold War.
I know this feeling. Too much shill exposure has your brain frying as you try to decipher their posts right?
The Swedish dispersed operations concept is pretty close to what Ukraine is doing today to avoid strikes. Spreading out and moving shit around.
I believe they're still operating out of their airbases instead of using the road centric approach the Swedish do. The Ukrainians had some losses early on, including a notable event where they were supposed to get a defecting Russian fighter only for the mole to be on the Ukrainian side where they called a strike in at the agreed on defection base and lost some planes on the ground there.
What the Ukrainians are doing is not even close to Swedish doctrine. See Bas 60 and Bas 90
Shill exposure should be a medical condition for real
>Sweden this Sweden that
Listen, it's not some super secret special sauce like the coating on the F-35 or target identification AI, the whole of fucking NATO trained in the 70s for shit like this, okay? Not just Sweden - EVERYONE. Even the fucking Soviets. You're nothing special. So sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up and enjoy some nice 80s Fulda Gap porn.
What does "to the next level" mean in your hometown of Shitsville PA?
I don't know, tell me what you think Swedes do that is so much more advanced than NATO
that's literally the reason it exists you absolute fuckin' retard, and if you don't understand why, leave. don't come back. you shouldn't be here. you shouldn't be anywhere. remove yourself from the gene pool.
underrated
The ability to operate from improvised or rough landing sites unsuited to conventional fixed-wing air is one of the attractive features of VTOL. It also helps that at least a few places design some of their highways with the ability that it can be used as a makeshift airstrip, at a push.
Good lord, an AIRPLANE landed on a paved HIGHWAY? This is bigger than the moon landing, stop the presses, what scientific miracle
>ability to operate from improvised or rough landing sites
That's not what this is. We've been landing jets on roadways for decades, it was part of Cold War doctrine. The only difference between a runway and a highway is width and/center divider and the fire engines are closer at the airport
the A-10 and the Super Touc can land and launch on a few thousand feet of gravel. The Fat Amy cannot
That and the BITCH air traffic control can't tell you to go around when there is a small child in the middle of the runway. Get the fuck out of the way or get run over, Timmy
The A-10 needs 9000 feet of runway.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/a-10-specs.htm#:~:text=A%2047%20K%20lb%20A,of%20less%20than%209%2C000%20feet.
F-35B needs 6000 feet although that depends on payload and fuel.
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/about/initiatives/airshow/F-35B_Airshow_Flight_Profile.pdf
The 9000 feet is for safety in case of engine failure.
can this thing carry nuclear warheads? that would be cool
I want a timeline where early 60s tech continued and we got air to air nuclear tipped missiles. But with modern tech that provides high yield extremely low radioactive fallout, so we can use them over our own territory without worry. Just imagine
>flying fighter jet
>see faint white trail coming towards you
>pull high G's and successfully dodge the missile
>it goes 500m past your aircraft
>massive white flash, shut eyes in pain
>realize you don't have thermoreflective paint
>your wing fuel tanks cook off from the heat
>die in a fiery explosion before you can eject
It's kino
>Not using enhanced radiation bombs
>Cleaner(tm) fusion roasting
>Extra Hispanicy radiation to fry electronics, humans
>If the pilot survives the immediate radiation their avionics are toast and they end up dead stick
>Plane on fire anyways
>They're still going to die of ARD anyways
The heat flash doesn't last long enough to heat a fuel tank enough to pop it. The shockwave would remove the wings and tail of your aircraft though. Maybe even implode your canopy.
>China launches invasion of Taiwan
>"our PLA fighters will block out the sun"
>US sorties a single B-52
>Confused Pooh.jpg
I still want to see the B1 Air superiority mod to happen so we can watch the US sortie 2 B1s and watch as China has to face 100 AIM-120s
>100 AIM-120s
Do they have some swarm mode or does that just mean that the lead J-20 in a formation is just ultra fucked as 100x AIMs prox detonate on it?
Modern fighter radars can lock on to multiple targets at once.
>Modern fighter radars can lock on to multiple targets at once.
We're talking about a bomber though and I don't think an aircraft AESA can track 100 targets at once.
They'll figure out how to kick AIM-120s out the back of a C-130 sometime
Not just lock on multiple targets, retargeting of inflight missiles is doable
>rapid dragon-ing pallets of aim-120s
what if Rapid Dragon, but from Starship, with enough propellant leftover to boostback to Guam
and then you can load them up with Marines and ODST into Shanghai
At what point is the planned Starship explosion, sir? I feel that is somewhat important.
it doesn't explode if things go correctly, but you knew that and want to seethe about the big rocket so go off
>B52
Dale Brown is that you?
>nightmare of taiwan strait
I mean, the US produced unguided air to air nuclear rockets during the cold war in large quantities.
>using nuclear tipped missiles against single fighters
thats retarded
scarcity mentality talking
not a factor in this hypothetical
just fire a spread
There was an extra large falcon with a nuclear warhead in service for a while.
After it was retired, the warheads were reused in the nuclear variant of the walleye TV glide bomb which is cool/insane in it's own right
A giant nuclear sidewinder was also proposed but the Navy essentially said "Damn bro that's cool but I don't remember asking", to our collective disappointment
I have an idea for that setting, it just requires that no one adopts ICBM's. Either have the US and Soviets sign an early SALT agreement to not develop them, or have some component not be available. Then we get massed bomber formations, nuclear armed interceptors, parasite fighters, emergency point-defense interceptors, all the fun stuff.
Have a callous disregard for safety on early rocket experiments massively fuck up and render near earth orbit a no fly zone for a century due to a constant rain of trash from failed tests exploding. It's kinda bullshit science-wise, but good enough as a plot device.
>It's kinda bullshit science-wise, but good enough as a plot device.
It's called a Kessler syndrome and it's very much a possible future we're walking into
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
it's basically what happens in Gravity
Kessler Syndrome is dumb for reasons I'm not going to bother explaining to you, but the biggest thing is the idea that it would shut down ICBM trajectories for long enough that they're no longer a viable method of delivery.
Kessler syndrome doesn't make sense in the 1950s but that's like, 30,000 satellite launches ago, many of which are either still up their and dead or are Starlink
Kessler is a meme and the #1 pleb filter in any discussion about orbital warfare. Go play 1000 hours of KSP before posting again.
If the fireball doesn't touch the ground there is no fallout. Nukes don't automatically create fallout
The fission fuel is radioactive and is never 100% used up, it also contains non-fissile radioactive isotopes. Tritium for the fusion is also radioactive.
Additionally the fission products are very likely to be radioactive.
All that radioactive material is spread in the atmosphere and will come down somewhere.
The ground provides 99% of the fallout but all fission fuel is imperfectly burned up and dumps byproducts into the atmosphere.
Pray to the Machine God to give you metallic hydrogen technology.
>can this thing carry nuclear warheads?
It can carry a pair of 400 kiloton B61 gravity bombs internally.
Can it vertically take off with it though?
After some google search:
MAX TKOF WEIGHT in VTOL: 18,000 LBS.
A pair of 400 kiloton B61 gravity bombs: 715 LBS (x2)
Not vertically, no.
So far, the B61-12 has only been approved for carraige inside the F-35A. While giving the F-35C the requisite pylons and funswitch shouldn't be difficult, the B's IWBs are a bit small for the B-61. Sure it could carry the bombs externally, but at that point you may as well launch an F-16V off of a stretch of highway for the same effect.
https://www.acc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2799580/f-35a-completes-milestone-5th-gen-fighter-test-with-refurbished-b61-12-nuclear/
Yes, they can
Even the fucking Harrier had like 100nm of combat radius with straight up VTOVL and a pair of missiles
Rolling off even just 50 feet adds to that
The real question is do you want to be within 100 miles of a pair of W61s
>Can it vertically take off with it though?
F-35B is short takeoff-vertical landing. I mean it would be cool if it could do vertical takeoff for any reasonable use case (it can vertically take off, but not with any reasonable combat load) but there just aren't that many situations where the use case is take off from amphibious assault ships.
In a combat scenario, even your forward air bases would have some runway space. Refueling, rearming and taking off from a helipad is not a must have. It's a good to have but it would have been a big tradeoff requiring a lot more development and it would've made F-35B significantly different than the other variants which is roughly why X-32 lost the JSF competition.
The small ones, yes.
Nuclear bombs can be carried just like regular bombs.
>what purpose could be served by flying a multirole stealth fighter off any well equipped stretch of road, LHD, or even particularly ambitious helipad
multiple roles, it's in the name; strike, SEAD, ghetto AWACS, air superiority, nuclear strike
>for what fucking purpose?
to prove to the Finns it fits their "using highways as runways" doctrine so they'll buy them/
>1.26 MB
Binland didnt buy F-35Bs tho
Yet
Theyre buying F-35As
baka
what if we sell then MORE jets
https://www.f35.com/f35/global-enterprise/finland.html
oh look
a retard who cant read
>know someone who lived in the middle of nowhere
>15km of shitty forest path that could be called a road only in this fucking country with the only connecting road being the shitty local highway with one of these landing strip improvements made a year or two ago at this pointin time
>he's driving to work some monday
>runs into a few extremely confused people in cammies
>is as confused himself
>they stop and question him on how the fuck he got onto that stretch of road since there have been two blockades every way since friday
>somehow they missed he lived off some shitty dinky dirt path
>they tell him to fuck off back home immediately since planes are about to take off
>gets home, calls work, they don't believe him, goes back on foot
>some lt. col. has been called by radio and has appeared to unfuck the surprise fuck in an official capability
>decides to just fucking call this guys work and tells them he isn't going to be coming to work for a week due to national defence concerns and if they have any complaints to direct them to the airforce staff
>next day some reservists bring him two weeks worth of sausages and beer for his week-long surprise holiday that he ended up getting paid for in full somehow
>a few years later they have reservist pioneers just build him a new fucking road that connects somewhere else
US Air Force and Engineer Corps are so cool
If this is China the guy's bare foot will be the only thing sticking out of a soil mound somewhere near by or he will be working in the coal mines
chinksects are slaves and their boss is a teddy bear
>US Air Force and Engineer Corps are so cool
I was replying to a post about finnish airforce highway use about how the airforce was using a highway
what made you think for one second I wasn't talking about the finnish military
>If this is China the guy's bare foot will be the only thing sticking out of a soil mound somewhere near by or he will be working in the coal mines
Except outside of your imagination, Chinese are fucking renowned for being stubborn as shit and refusing to move despite the government building fucking highways around their houses. Google "Chinese nail house" and you'll find hundreds of examples like pic related
lol, the dude wasn't even talking about the US
>OUR HOUSE
>DOOT DEET DOOT
>IN THE MIDDLE OF THE
>Google "Chinese nail house" and you'll find hundreds of examples like pic related
It goes both ways, usually depending on how visible the situation is and how much the local party boss and developers can get away with.
You'll have nail houses in Shanghai but not so much in the backwaters of Gansu or something where they can do whatever they want.
There's been plenty of cases of villagers just being beaten up and their houses torn down by gangsters in the pay of party officials and developers.
t. former expat in China
This sounds so incredibly european that it’s absolutely believable.
>it’s the 80s, Cold War still on
>northern half of Germany
>NATO playing soldier with lots of tanks
>neighbor who builds roads and bridges literally spends the entire decade fixing one crossroads and a bridge over and over again because bongs and krauts destroy it on a regular basis during exercise
>there is also a barbecue with the soldiers at that crossing because he made a fucking fortune off the military and getting shitfaced with the locals is good for morale and mil civ relations
>he is still talking about silly dudes in skirts trading whiskey for a ride to the next brothel
Possibly the most Binnish anecdote I've heard in several years. How can America even compete?
IT
WAS
ABOUT
F I N L A N D
I
N
L
A
N
D
YOU RETARD
Read his post again
I always love this kind of military - civilian interaction.
Friend's Polish grandma had some silly American crash a HEMTT into her garden, apparently no-one on board could speak her language well and the grandma herself was scared shitless since the only guy who could at all was black. Soon they were surrounded by locals who probably would stone the poor bastard if not for local military guys that arrived to disperse everyone. This was soon after the Truck of Peace stuff that happened in Germany which probably didn't help. They pulled the truck out, took pictures and like two days later someone showed up with an envelope of cash that was way more than was neccessary to cover fixing everything.
Mortal of the story my friends polish grandma was blacked war by 13 African Americans.
>next day some reservists bring him two weeks worth of sausages and beer
Calling bullshit
Based on my experiences in similar military settings, that particular turn of events seems extremely plausible.
why? was it because of the sausages?
But that was the most finnish part of it
America's military needs to become this based. We should be conscripting everyone at 18 onwards for 2 year contracts to build driveways, fix potholes, and clear brush in rural areas, and have 4 year 11xs doing grocery runs for rural population centers to keep them from bitching when the regiment shows up to nowheresville Kansas to practice maneuvers
beautiful
No fucking way an F-35B will ever be able to safely do that. Pay close attention, that B landed on a concrete highway that would be more typically be found in Germany. Pointing that P&W F135 on Finnish tarmac would blow a hole through it in seconds. Then you've got rocks and dust billowing into the air and getting sucked back into the engine for another cycle.
Updating the roads of note to have concrete in addition to blacktop is a good excuse to do a bunch of civil engineering infrastructure projects while also being far cheaper then developing a new fighter or flying F/A-18s past their expiration date.
Or just sticking to the order of 64 F-35A Block 4s and landing them on the same airstrips as our old Hornets because we bought the same drogue parachutes for them that the Norwegians use.
Look, ya'll have been flying naval fighters out of a land base for long enough that expecting purely logical behavior like that is a stretch. Maybe now that Russia has broken it's teeth and jaw, there will be less of an emphasis on surviving a first strike and being able to sortie off of whatever flat surface doesn't have a hole in it, but showing that the F-35B can do improvised landing strips does open up the possibility and doesn't cost the US anything.
Oh sure, it is a nice additional capability to have. Could resupply USMC or Royal Navy Bs just by laying some heat-proof concrete landing pads next to the main bases and dispersion airstrips. And just in general as a proof of concept for global operations.
But Finland has no good reason at all to buy the B, unless we start building up a mini-carrier battlegroup.
Why not? Just flex on the Russians some more kek
Nah, budget is tight as it is. Better spent on acquiring more long-range precision ground fires like GLSDBs and PrSMs. And switching from an old-school footslogging army to a more motorized and mechanized one.
Finland has two airbases acting as Hornet main hubs. Russia shutting them down by spamming ballistic and cruise missiles was a very realistic expectation, even in retrospect. We do have the ability to fix holes on a matter of hours. Dispersion would absolutely have worked and enabled continued air operations.
I don't see how the Hornet is a "non-standard" fighter, none of the Hornet operating nations besides US have aircraft carriers. I don't see any combat ability-related compromises, I see a lot of advantages over the F-16. Being able to take hits better in the Gulf War was a major factor for the Hornet's selection.
I would agree, but I also don't understand the reason Finland has been flying F/A 18s instead of F-16s and 15s but clearly they put a large emphasis on the ability to take off from wherever instead of the US approach of making sure that a runway crater can be patched quickly to not have to fly an airframe that makes so many compromises to allow the usage of nonstandard landing and launch surfaces.
>the reason Finland has been flying F/A 18s instead of F-16s
Better capability all around
>15s
Restricted to best buddies of the USA, which Finland wasn't then
Did they get the Superbug before becoming NATO friendly? I'd rather be in a 16 then a regular Hornet, especially since the 16 was a much more readily upgraded platform then the original flavor F/A 18 and it shows.
They got regular C/D Hornets in the 90s, when they were trying to be all "hey um now that the Berlin Wall is down can we be officially good guys instead of uncomfortably neutral" so they didn't rate F15s for damn sure.
Why do you say 16s are more upgradeable? That may or may not be true, but 18s still start off ahead
Modern F-16 upgrade packages are still pretty competitive for anyone who's not flying an F-35, while the baby Hornet obviously didn't get nearly as much love with the smaller consumer base and the USN moving to the Super Hornet which is really a different plane but kept the name to get Congress to play nice given how dissimilar the airframes are. While they're all fine planes, the F-16 is still getting upgrade packages that the USAF is paying for the development of whereas I can only find the USN doing similar stuff for the Super Hornet.
Those upgrades are mainly for the earlier models of F-16s to bring them up to date with stuff that's already production standard for even the regular F-18s. Classic Hornets have been getting all the upgrades as well such as JHMCS, datalinks and even AESA, it's just not as widely reported as Super Hornets. The USMC has a lot of them and so does a few key partners like Canada and Australia.
They're making some pretty big improvements to the block 40 to 52 Vipers which are already some of the newest birds, with the EW package probably being the biggest deal for new stuff, though it's a question of if the US would be willing to export that, I suppose.
>block 40 to 52 Vipers
Those are pretty dated. The 16V has been sold to multiple overseas customers and is way more advanced. Those upgrades you mention are probably to bring them up to 16V standard.
The legacy Hornets got those too. So that particular batch you're looking at, probably ANG? they're actually way behind the curve.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44525/608-u-s-air-force-f-16s-are-getting-the-types-largest-combined-upgrade-package-ever
Supposedly, USAF. As to dated or not, it's a matter of perspective since yea, block 50 rolled off the line in the early 2000s at the latest, but that's still pretty new for a F-16 or even fighter in general really.
Look up the list of customers for F-16Vs
FNS Perkele aircraft carrier needs to be a thing.
>Updating the roads of note to have concrete in addition to blacktop is a good excuse to do a bunch of civil engineering infrastructure projects while also being far cheaper then developing a new fighter or flying
ha yah
>"just update the roads! easy!"
>" so cheap too! its just roads! not some complex fighter jet!"
>"we just need an excuse to spend money on our roads! basing fighter jets off them to help ukraine is the perfect idea!"
>"no problems here! just 'updating my roads real quick!"
PrepHole brains are chemically castrated, im conviced
it costs like Multi-billion dollars and half a decade to build a highway exchange in America, and thats just one city, on one side of town, for one highway network, at one fucking interchange
it would cost $TRILLIONS to
>"just update the roads! we need an excuse for that one! and helping ukraine is perfect amirite!?"
Good thing roads last forever and snowy countries like Finland never have to spend any money on infrastructure upkeep anyway, and it's still cheaper then developing an fighter regardless.
It's also amusing how you start sperging out about Ukraine when it isn't even mentioned anywhere in this thread. I wish you a very pleasant drone dropped death in the near future, my little brain broken chud.
Roads don't last forever and frequently need upkeep. They don't need it as much as say a dirt path, but in no way is any modern road decades proof. It will need touchups, retexturing and general maintenance. Infrastructure is a continuing cost wherein if done right you pay a huge upfront cost, but then benefit from decades of usage and cheaper upkeep.
Now, maybe I was being a bit obtuse but I was simply making the point that you can't just plop down a VTOL jet on tarmac. During the Falklands War, the Royal Navy was able to use improvised ships as "VTOL carriers" for their Sea Harriers. But they weren't usable for that as-is, they had to put significant heat-proofing on those steel decks. A tarmac road most certainly cannot stand the blast of a jet engine from a very close range, some jets have been known to blow out the hydraulics of those carrier jet blast deflectors.
Building concrete landing pads in Finland would be viable and overall affordable, but it's rather the cost and degraded performance of the B-model itself is not worth it.
>Building concrete landing pads in Finland would be viable and overall affordable
there is nothing "affordable" or "viable" about rebuilding a nations road-infrastructure to better suit jet sorties into ukraine
road projects are usually the largest, most expensive infrastructure projects a nation-state can engage in
Holy shit, why would every road need to be paved with concrete instead of just the landing sites? Better question is how well the concrete would hold up against frost and winter tires, you should see the condition our roads are in despite frost-proofing to the best of our ability and resources.
And what the fuck does Ukraine have to do with defending Finnish and Estonian borders/airspace?
civil engineer anon here. specifically pavement maintenance. Generally unless there is some massive push from above or a massive change in traffic patterns, we won't change Asphalt concrete pavement to Portland cement concrete pavement. PCC pavement is expensive and yes it does last.
So what do you think, am I right in thinking asphalt can't handle jet blast? Dunno what those highway airstrips are made of tho, now that I think of it they might be made of something more durable than the regular tarmac. The potholes caused by winter tires would be a very serious problem.
highway airstrips are asphalt. Asphalt science is complex, and there are many ways to design mixes. I wouldn't be worried about potholes as that is a result of the sub surface conditions. potholes begin by the asphalt flexing due to the base rock having drainage issues usually. this results in alligator cracking and then spall which leads to a pothole.
It is regular asphalt, I would assume they just monitor the pavement pretty well and repair it regularly.
I would highly doubt that they use concrete as a base layer, and then asphalt on top. This is stupid expensive and also the joints on the concrete would reflect upwards and cause inevitable cracking. I mean sometimes this is useful, but it is rare.
I would think that they use a dense graded HMA mix rather than a rubberized mix for this, and have a superior compaction standard for both the baserock, and the asphalt itself.
in the past (at least in Poland) asphalt used on those highway airstrips was usually light grey colour and was much tougher as it was the only part without potholes - but with currently used asphalt there is no visible difference (or they dropped requirement to use those places i visit as airstrips)
This isn't a normal road. This is a road designed for military planes.
bro thinks American infrastructure is better than Euro infrastructure. it's like the one thing they have going for them. other than the healthcare. and education. and the-
I wasn't going on a dick-measuring contest, I was trying to make a point that you can't land or takeoff VTOL jets on just any surface like you can a tilt rotor.
That's the exact opposite of what he said but you got triggered all the same; so much for that vaunted yuro education. Don't you fucking start on this dick-swinging horseshit or I will sit down here and tell you some cold hard World Bank facts all about the troubles in Europe until you cry for your cuntry. Also, reconsider the fact that YOU'RE the moron who thinks that there's not a single concrete highway in all of the fucking United States, and this is really fucking difficult for the USA to pull off. You have to be a special kind of both stupid AND sheltered to imagine that the USA doesn't have concrete technology and all of it runs on asphalt.
Not to mention the US subsidizing the world with it's medical advancement, technology, and drug research. Literally selling to all the thirdies and NATO stepchildren at lower rates because America funds the majority of their real-world defenses and Medicine.
No small wonder they can blithely go on with other projects while being leeches and think it's just their accomplishments alone.
Wouldnt finns prefer f35c for that? Not many countries have a need for verical takeoff and landing.
Nah they chose the F35A, its landing and takeoff distances are good enough.
CATOBAR hardware is useless for highway operations
F-35A is the cheapest, best performing, and least troubled model. If you look at Lockmart's own statistics, even the B exceeds minimum requirements while the C model doesn't and it's the most troubled. Naval arrestor hooks could be nice except the drogue parachute is better in every way except raw stopping power (heh)
it doesn't take off vertically in normal operation
the F-35B is a STOVL aircraft
Short Take Off, Vertical Landing
It could take off vertically, but it would have a limited amount of fuel and almost no payload
Finland ain't real bro, it can't hurt you.
>Operating off of short/improvised runways
>Operating off of wasp style carriers
Flex
>rearmed
Rearmed for what? What did they shoot to need to rearm?
Could just be a drill. Land the plane, re-arm, fly to other location, disarm, fly back to base, repeat.
>What did they shoot to need to rearm?
Yuma, Arizona.
>NOOOOOO, NOT THE HECKING CACTURINO
Why that cactus havin a smoke?
It was 420.
the boring practice that makes a military actually work.
because we can, vatmoron
STOVL aircraft can use improvised runways. It's a major selling point.
> What could I possibly gain from the ability to land, refuel, and rearm in locations outside of an airfield which are going to be the main targets of disabling a fleet of aircraft.
I'm sorry you lack object permeance-level IQ to understand why this is useful.
refuelling on oil rigs and building tops of course
this is for fighting in taiwan
china btfo again, runways no longer impt for B planes
What is a "PCH"?
Pacific Coast Highway
ACE you retard
Why did it need to refuel and re arm? Who were they shooting at?
When Americans do it, it's based.
When slavs do it, it's retarded.
?feature=shared
pic related
https://www.f35.com/f35/news-and-features/the-f35a-drag-chute-system.html
>for what fucking purpose?
I swear this board gets dumber by the day.
Because air fields and air bases are giant, immobile targets that can be taken out of the game fairly easy.
Being able to use your planes from regular strips of roads is just a tactical, strategical advantage.
An enemy might pepper every huge air base with cluster and other ammunitions that fuck up the tarmac.
An enemy has no chance of fucking up every mile of highway.
Not to disagree with your overall point anon but just as a little addition:
>An enemy has no chance of fucking up every mile of highway.
Obviously EVERY mile of highway isn't actually appropriate even for an STVOL fighter. Certain stretches were built with it more in mind than others, so the actual target selection is only a fraction of the entire network.
That said it's a pedantic point because the US Interstate Highway System is something close to 47000 miles of road total. Even 5% of that is still a ludicrous amount of extra usable emergency takeoff space.
DOT regulations require straight stretches on the interstate every few miles. Every one of these stretches can be used as an emergency landing strip and is not uncommon to be by small prop planes in dange. Google Cessna lands on highway and pick your fav story
VTOL
Although the fins prefer STOL so as not to need to heat-proof the roads against thruster heat.
the F-35 is the best plane ever created in military history, regardless of what you ziggers, turd worlders, and democrats say
Acting like nobody can afford to build roads is definitely one of the PrepHole takes of all time
Sweden did it back in the 70s with out regular jets. Congrats, you yanks figured out a 50-year old procedure.
Draken was pretty hard to land even in general too, iirc. Poor stability at slow speeds.
To refuel and rearm???
>why do people need to refuel and rearm?
Why indeed. A question for the ages.
Also Russians, but I'll concede that the difference is negligible.
Can't you wail about your genocide in some other thread?
Holy shit you're stupid. Go be a tourist on /b/
Because fuck your road rage in particular.
Surprise airstrike on Pismo Beach.
Don't the Swiss keep their jet in random roadside bunkers so they can drag them out and take off from roads and shit?
Yeah, they just operate their airforce off of the highway system. Building runways is for suckers.
So do/did Sweden.
They're practicing for if/when they have to do it from similar/smaller runways out in teh Pacific.
When the Doolittle Raiders were training fro their raid on Japan, they used a training field in Florida with lines painted on it to simulate a carrier deck. Same idea here.
In case China blow up every airbase within 4000km
Ukraine are using highways as landing strips.
And what a good job they've done.