We all know that since WW2 the US makes the best combat aircraft out there, but what are some examples that were straight up bad?
We all know that since WW2 the US makes the best combat aircraft out there, but what are some examples that were straight up bad?
Thunderscreech
I was gonna say Airacobra (after the USAAF talked Bell into deleting the supercharger in order to save weight), but I think fpbp won.
Even the Airacobra was pretty decent in Soviet service, it just sucked for pretty much all theaters the US needed it for
Airacobra was fine, and it wasn't the only fighter casualty of USAAF prioritizing turbos for bombers rather than fighters. Most of its bad reputation comes from the underpowered P-400 models that were held back from export after Pearl.
The fact that the P-38 and P-47, the only two production turbo fighters of the war, got away as well as they did is almost a miracle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigory_Rechkalov.
anyways the p-39 manifold pressure was limited on us service, it was used as a cas/fighter plane insted of a pure fighter and it had only one engine over the pacific.
It's reputation was tainted by pilots that were screeching for the p-38 (aka the best looking aircraft of ww2).
Future best COIN drone base. Fly squadrons of them 24/7 until unconditional surrender is obtained or locale Massada-ize itself.
F-20 Tigershark
FUCK YOU
crybaby
Elaborate, everytime I hear about that thing people say it would be a gripen done years before it but less bad.
It would be a worse Gripen.
Honestly the Gripen is very well designed, it's just that the production numbers were so low that it was never able to achieve really competitive pricing.
They made like 10x as many F-16s.
It didn't make use of most improvements on the YF-17, so it had a wing load and TWR similar to a 1950s F-104 with minor improvements over the F-5, now compare that with the F-16. The engine was good but the airframe was too small to make good use of it irl (limitations on payload and range). Being smaller and a old airframe would make it slightly cheaper (fairly smaller engine) but the F-16 had far better payload, range and far less limitations, besides it was far more popular (USAF) and it had far better "momentum" in its development.
The new engine made it far more complex and expensive than the old, reliable and simple twin J85 without having far superior armament compared to a F-5 with an avionic upgrade. To fix it you need to improve its airframe/landing gear/wings.
The avionics was almost as bad as early F-16 but with less room for improvement.
The F-16 was simply better and in the end it's a F-5 in 1980, too late, too few and with basic limitations. The only advantage was being exportable.
The KAI T-50 fixed some of its shortcomings. The F-20 was an expensive anachronism.
That was less "bad" and more "too expensive". They were told the F-16 wouldn't be exported.
>broke its pilots before the air frame could break
You are gay.
>af guardian
>f7u cutlass
>f4d skyray
>f3h demon
>f-111b
>just the regular f-111 (IT GAVE THE GROUND CREWS CANCERS AND DISEASES)
F-111 was necessary for modern stealth aircraft and still useful for low-priority missions real stealth plans don't deign to sacrifice hours for. Oh, and playing OpFor as chink stealth aircraft.
It's not the plane's fault the idiots in charge of disposing of stealth skins did so in an irresponsible manned.
F-104 is arguably in the running, though I'd say that's more a case of "does not suffer incompetent pilots" than "bad airframe." It's certainly far from the best.
>Eternally butthurt Chuck Yaeger-hater always has to smear their shitty opinion around.
hey fuck you mang!
Osprey
Hey said combat aircraft, Osprey is not a combat aircraft.
Osprey has killed more crayon-eaters than all our enemies during its service life.
It's the safest rotorcraft in US inventory fucktard. The last crash due to a mechanical issue was in 2006.
I was looking at local news archives and I found a report from 1989 about the Osprey, talking about how it was going to get axed due to budget cuts and had no future.
The term the used was "loser".
F-100, F-105.
What makes the Thunderchief bad? It did have a high loss rate but I thought it was because it had a job with a stupid high risk, doubly so when it had the misfortune of being the one pioneering wild weasel tactics.
>what makes it bad
It wasn't and that annon is a moron
the US has more bad planes than any other country simply because they have more planes than any other country
they pushed the f-number on fighters well into the hundreds, resulting in them needing to start it back up again from zero, only to result in 22 new fighters since then
even if only a fraction of them were bad, thats still going to be more duds than any other country
No one’s criticising the US you insecure gay. Anon just wants to know which planes are shit.
Beaten to death already but A-10
I wouldn’t call it bad. It was very much good for what it was envisioned for.
What it is, however, is outdated.
> It was very much good for what it was envisioned for.
Beaten by F-16s at tankbusting
Not when the A-10 was designed
>It was very much good for what it was envisioned for.
>"we need tank killer aircraft ground attack plane that can take out t-64 and t-72"
:DUUUH look at that boi it can take out m-42 and m-60 from the side "
" eee ok? but i wanted something that can take out modern t-series russian tanks "
HERE ARE THE BIG MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX BRIBES NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP AND ACCEPT OUR TESTS VS M-42 AND M-60
30mm ac can not do jackshit from more than 1500m and not exactly flat angle to t-series tanks
just send that modern messile that can be caried by any other jet fighter witch also fly 2x faster than a-10
A-10 lol.
I think it’s sort of funny such a slow jet has held its place in service so long, considering it was made by a pilot who kept flying a stuka well past the point they were on par with everything else.
F35
Even now that it's finally usable after 15 years, hypersonic tech has completely invalidated it.
Not so much the F-35, but the whole concept of a multiroll aircraft being used for everything.
There was a time where the US was willing to have the best airframe for a specific job. Then it became all about cost.
But hey, at least we give Israel their 3.5 billion a year.
Logistics > specialization. It costs more to maintain/supply a bunch of specialized airframes and at this point you don’t get much out of it compared to multirole. These days, the only meaningful division is fighters vs strategic bombers (B1/2/21)
>It costs more to maintain
This should be irrelevant for a country like the US. The money we dump on useless shit could easily pay for specialized and more capable aircraft.
Like the other anon mentioned, thank god we give Israel all that money.
>you don’t get much out of it compared to multirole.
For bombing goat herders, yes, for fighting a capable adversary, no.
Nah F-15E is the best light bomber and CAS plane in the world. The real flaw of the F-35 is it can’t carry as much shit. Should have just made an F-15 with stealth geometry and RAM.
The move is towards increasing precision and denying your opponent a realistic chance of shooting down your plane (which means you get to use that plane for more). We're seeing that philosophy play out pretty well with precision-guided artillery in Ukraine vs. the shitshow of Russian arty.
If all you need to do is carry shit that's what the B-52 or that new smaller stealth bomber is for
>F-15 with stealth geometry and RAM
Was tried with the SE and no one cared about it, the thing about truly LO aircraft is that you do it from the ground up, taking a previous gen aircraft and just hoping to make it as stealthy as a F-22 or F-35 does not work.
The F-35 is a whole system used for multiple tasks, a hypersonic missile is but a single weapon.
It’s not that hypersonic tech isn’t useful, it’s just that an F-35 will be much more practical and efficient at destroying ground targets in most scenarios instead of a limited inventory holyfuck projectile that’s main purpose is flying at the speed of mach bro jesus balls
I'm saying that our universal super stealthy swiss army knife is invalidated because hypersonic ballistics can target and neutralize it before it can get halfway to its own target if the enemies with that tech need to.
The F35 is the event horizon where you're going to see manned fighters become obsolete in favor of the next generation of drones. Sure the vertical takeoff is cool and it's turned our fleet of LHAs and Ds into light carrier groups, but we really spent over half a decade in sunk cost fallacy hell to get a bomber fighter combo that is less fast and less practically useful than Vietnam era fighters. And don't tell me it's so stealthy it doesn't need to be fast. We know they are more targetable by enemy detection systems today than the black hawk and the night hawk were in their days and they don't have the power to out speed what China or Russia will be sending to intercept them with. Maybe out maneuver, but I won't hold my breath that will ever be proven considering how fragile and finicky the platform has been on that quality, much less prove to be an efficient tool of war that can successfully neutralize Chinese or Russian primary targets.
>hypersonic can target a F35
AYY LMFAO
Targeting systems can't lock on to f35s? Really? That's your hill?
So now the Kinzhal is a AAM too ayy lmao
Impressive, not even the most openly baseless Lockheed lobbyist would claim what you are here. Do you do it for free? Lol
LMAO even.
you are laboring under the misunderstanding that stealth or target acquisition is a binary. of course an F35 can be targeted. what you will find is that radars which can see an F-35 at great distance do so using lower frequency RF waves which inherently reduces the resolution of the track to the degree that the information is not useful for targeting. that is why these systems are referred to as early warning radars and not fire control radars. the radars using higher frequency waves required to produce targeting solutions are precisely the kinds of radars a stealth aircraft is built to counteract. an F-35 can remain unseen deeper into the SAM envelope than a non stealth aircraft and will be far more difficult to target once detected. its not as simple as detecting the craft and firing the missile.
Anything can lock on to anything, the question is simply at what range. An F-35 just has the ability to get closer to radar before the radar sees it than other comparable aircraft
F35 is more maneuverable than a hypersonic missile
>to get a bomber fighter combo that is less fast and less practically useful than Vietnam era fighters.
oh, lad
>And don't tell me it's so stealthy it doesn't need to be fast. We know they are more targetable by enemy detection systems today than the black hawk and the night hawk were in their days
do we?
>they don't have the power to out speed what China or Russia will be sending to intercept them with.
google Kinematics.
Air warfare is more than making the fastest missile or jet.
maneuverable long range air breathing hypersonic cruise missiles dont exist yet
>hypersonic ballistics can target and neutralize it
please shut the fuck up
>I'm saying that our universal super stealthy swiss army knife is invalidated because hypersonic ballistics can target and neutralize it before it can get halfway to its own target if the enemies with that tech need to.
the F35 in the SEAD role specifically. HUR DUUR LETS USE A STEALTH PLANE AS Wild Weasel HUR DURR
Yes? That is literally the best use for it.
>powerful sensors to know exactly where the enemy is
>low observability so you can get closer to the radar than a similarly sized 4th Gen
>integrated EW to get even close and/or degrade enemy radar
>fully integrated stand-off munitions so that you can kill the radar from a distance
>HUR DUUR LETS USE A NON-STEALTH PLANE AS Wild Weasel HUR DURR
certified mong
>hypersonic
you mean air to air missiles? or do you actually think maneuverable hypersonic cruise missiles are a thing and that this somehow makes f35s obsolete
>he fell for the diapersonic meme
>Hypersonics
hypersonics have nothing to do with the F-35, that's a venn diagram with two non-intersecting circles. The F-35 hangs around your airspace doing spooky observational shit without you knowing. Pointing at your cool anti-shipping missile doesn'ty stop it from doing this
>”hypersonic tech” has invalidated hypersonic jets
not the reformer wannabe but there are no (manned) hypersonic jets, since that usually is taken to mean mach 5+ and the blackbird topped out at 3.3
The gutless cutlass.
I remember reading a story in the Smithsonian Air and Space magazine.
>take off in cutlass from airbase home to a F7U Cutlass squadron
>10 min into the flight
>hydraulic failure
>call tower and declare emergency with request for immediate landing
>tower tells him he's number 4 for landing
>pilot yells at tower "wtf, I'm declaring an emergency, I should be number one"
>"yeah, we know, but there's three other F7Us in the pattern who have also declared emergencies"
>The type was responsible for the deaths of four test pilots and 21 other U.S. Navy pilots.[1] Over one quarter of all Cutlasses built were destroyed in accidents.
Holy shit.
Some other anon already mentioned it but the Cutlass. A lot of early naval jets had problems or just lackluster performance.
You are like a little baby. Observe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Scimitar
>Overall the Scimitar suffered from a high loss rate; 39 were lost in a number of accidents, amounting to 51% of the Scimitar's production run.
if I remember correctly, the fatality rate was also high in accidents.
Veritable fucking moron with no understanding of either hypersonics or the F-35
>lets' use a stealth plane capable of remaining undetected/untargeted by radar against enemy radar/AA
how is this a bad idea exactly?
Though it was outdated from the start and I love to hate on it, I will give it credit for being able to use Sparrows and certainly being better than slavshit.
tbf it was just an experimental prototype
The Scimitar is sexy tho.
Harriers are worse.
30% have been destroyed in accidents.
Well, you've got significantly more flight hours on the harrier.
That's like saying white people in the US are more dangerous than black people because whites commit more crime in total.
Harrier has 31.77 accidents per 100,000 hours
F18 has 3 accidents per 100,000 hours
Harriers have the highest combat loss rate of modern fighters too
Harriers are pieces of shit
F18 isn't VTOL.
so what?
F18 loss rate shows what is normal, it's not even an exemplary aircraft for mishap
Harrier brings nothing to the table
VTOL is a meme that has never mattered
Let me lay this out so even an imbecile eastern yuropoor can understand.
The original claim was that the harrier was "worse" than the Cutlass.
The point was made that the Harrier has significantly more flight hours, which also implies a longer service history.
Now, explain to me, how the Harrier was worse than the F7U.
>not even an exemplary aircraft for mishap
it is if you consider its a carrier based aircraft
Do F18s fly from carriers?
Very much so, yes
Because Danger Zone memes.
>So what
VTOL is the cause of most of those accidents, its original prototype was also designed in like 52. F18 was designed in the 70's and it's not particularly revolutionary, but a concept built upon another.
Not even remotely comparable honestly, the flight hours on the harriers are nutty.
The marine corps thought the harrier so valuable a platform to them they literally didn't give a shit about attrition losses, and to this day, almost >>> 60 YEARS <<< later after commission still fly harriers to this day while waiting on massed F35-B's (Basically another harrier) as replacement kek.
tbf US once had a supersonic VTOL replacement program in the early 80s but the plane they picked didn't work and so the project fell flat.
in an alternate universe Convair Model 200 won the contract instead and we'd have USMC zooming around in a supersonic VTOL.
VTOL matters because you can use way smaller carriers and a VTOL fighter does a lot of things way better than rotary wing aircraft can ever hope to.
I mean, Russia's shitty carrier, if it ever is used again, could be legitimately threatened by a small carrier that can launch F-35s.
What does the F-18 have to do with the F7U?
me on the left
>gotta go fast
>Just do it.
Ok 3 wire
>4 November 1955, pilot Lt George Millard was killed when his Cutlass went into the cable barrier at the end of the flight deck landing area of USS Hancock. The nosegear malfunctioned and drove a strut into the cockpit which triggered the ejection seat and dislodged the canopy. Millard was launched 200 feet (61 m) forward and hit the tail of a parked A-1 Skyraider and later died of his injuries.[2]
This is like something you'd see out of one of those ridiculous spoof comedy movies like Hot Shots!
the period after world war 2 to about 1965 was the government basically just giving out grants for hundreds of billions of dollars to build random unknown borderline impossible experimental jet aircraft out of unstable experimental airframes and fly them without even testing them. most of them didn't even have a reason for existing
with the x-1 they straight up bolted a plane to the bottom of a b-29 and then dropped it like a bomb, with a person inside of it, to give it a glide start. that was considered an intelligent and the most reasonable course of action at the time. its why boomers like to idolize impossible dangerous shit despite there being obviously no benefit to anybody
i'm being honest about that sentiment - what use is there for supersonic hydrodynamics? i'm not propelling anything past the speed of sound. it wasn't about scientific progress either, the technology you have access to haven't moved an inch since 1949.
Because its cool, but to be serious, maybe there is some merit in trying concepts to see how it works in practice even if its stupid on paper, it might surprise you, its the core fundament of experimental equipment.
My dad was on the Hancock in the mid '50s. He might have been there when that happened. Never told me about that, but he did say that pilots trying to get out of the cockpit in an emergency would break their ankles or legs. The the nosegear was so long the cockpit was 14' off the ground.
It is such a good looking plane
Is it? It looks like something AI-piloted in a videogame that launches out of a flying carrier
Its looks are pretty unique, I will give you that.
>OP asks for straight up bad planes
>People start naming every single plane they know a bad anecdote about
This is the only plane that qualifies of the ones posted
This
guy backs up his claim about F-104 with data
and
is the only anon actually explaining why he believes F-20 was bad
> Anon in
The new engine made it far more complex and expensive than the old, reliable and simple twin J85 without having far superior armament compared to a F-5 with an avionic upgrade. To fix it you need to improve its airframe/landing gear/wings.
The avionics was almost as bad as early F-16 but with less room for improvement.
The F-16 was simply better and in the end it's a F-5 in 1980, too late, too few and with basic limitations. The only advantage was being exportable.
The KAI T-50 fixed some of its shortcomings. The F-20 was an expensive anachronism. is literally wrong about all that shit. It used an engine that variants of the F-16 had, expanded upon into later and more efficient engines, avionics, and more. Make no mistake it wouldn't have been a powerhouse 4th gen, but it certainly could have been an ultra cheap 3++ equivalent that would have served a number of countries well and provided trainer options to this day instead of some of the light attack craft and trainers developed. Plus Chuck Yaeger endorsed it's performance just fine, that anon is eternally sneeding as a result.
How can it look so great and be so terrible?
You win. It's hilarious how fucked up this plane was:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-gutless-cutlass-12023991/
Starfighter. Was literally nicknamed the Widowmaker.
That was because the germans decided to turn a high altitude interceptor into a ground attacker loaded with a shit ton of bombs. The plane itself was fine
No lol, everyone who was using the G had a huge amount of crashes since it was just cheaped out garbage.
Set world records in speed and height. Loved by pilots who actually flew them. Technological marvel that had no competition at the time of its first flight.
Memes aren't reality.
>dart with stubby wings is fast
Damn, meanwhile everyone dying from it. There is a reason why Chuck Yaeger hated it
>high altitude interceptor
It wasn't even good at that because of limited fuel capacity. It was a research jet that got shoehorned into combat roles
>That was because the germans decided to turn a high altitude interceptor into a ground attacker loaded with a shit ton of bombs. The plane itself was fine
It had super high landing speeds.
fun fact, the USAF on average had more accidents with the Starfighter per flight hour than the Luftwaffe
My uncle died test flying one
F-89D
>interceptor for bomber formations
>had over 100 unguided rockets on the wingtip
>no guns
>an entire squadron couldn't shoot down an unguided rogue F6F wildcat target drone and instead rained salvos of rockets onto California towns starting wildfires
>an entire squadron couldn't shoot down an unguided rogue F6F wildcat target drone and instead rained salvos of rockets onto California towns starting wildfires
Two fighters is a squadron now?
Not to be pedantic, but the squadron responded but only sent up 2 planes. So technically it was an intercept squadron but they all weren't in the air
A-5
shut your whoremouth
why exactly do you think the A-5 was bad?
kinda, but since it was literally the first of its kind in service with no known counters, it didn't need to be that good to dunk on the enemy so I wouldn't say it qualifies as bad.
>no known counters
Enter Serb dad with 60s AA missile
>why exactly do you think the A-5 was bad?
IIRC the original had weapons release problems.
I think the original concept was to come in low, poop our a single nuke between the exhaust nozzles and zoom skyward. But in practice the weapon got caught in the slip stream.
AFIK the RA-5 recon version was fairly successful.
The F-5, so bad US didn't want it and made it just an export.
It was a pretty successful export and the US used them as aggressor and training aircraft extensively.
F-104
>F-111
>tree-top mach flying with a computer built with fucking tubes
>complex variable wing
>weighs as much as an early 737
>less prone to accidents compared the F-5
Literally how?
Computerized terrain avoidance, the F5 was fairly barebones as far as computerization went. Also pilot training dramatically improved post 1968.
One of my dad's cousins was at this school when this happened:
https://tucson.com/news/blogs/morgue-tales/tales-from-the-morgue-stories-of-the-1978-jet-crash/article_401fd042-5a02-11e4-b2fa-ffce4f19db9a.html
>1950s plane
>Can climb at Mach 2.2
>Made it to 138,000 feet
>Razor sharp wings you can cut yourself on
>Wings so think the thing needs to hit 265 MPH to take off
>Landing gear will melt at 288 MPH
>Unstable when flying below super sonic speeds due to wings
>Slow turner, ended up being an only ok dog fighter
>US quickly abandons it due to safety problems but offloads 1,000+ elsewhere
>Biggest customer is West Germany
>42% crash rate for a major production aircraft
It's simultaneously an amazing technical achievement, still holding the the altitude record and still being faster than almost all fighters almost 70 years later and also a piece of shit that killed more of the operators' pilots than any enemy.
F 117.
One grew a tumor.
The Starfighter is still the fastest US fighter with the highest altitude, but it was notoriously hard to fly, having extreme problems when it wasnt going supersonic and slow turns. Foreign countries used them longer than the US. Between 24-42% of all units crashed while in use with these forces, absolutely atrocious safety rating.
And unlike many other unsafe planes, they built almost as many Starfighters at F-15s.
Starfighter gets a bad rap because the Germans Air Force were retards. They took a high altitude interceptor and tasked it with low level penetration missions. To compound on this they also took inexperienced pilots and taught them fly high in the clear skies of the American southwest before taking them back to Germany and tasking them to fly at treetop level in inclement weather. Throw in lackluster ground crews for good measure and you've got a recipe for success. But no it's the plane's fault when an inadequately trained pilot flying a poorly maintained air frame outside it's design envelope slams into the side of a hill. Much of the issues with the star fighter stemmed from user error, this is especially evident when you realize that a some operators had significantly better safety records than others.
The West German air force was not qualified to fly the plane. Simple as.
Hyper specialized fighter/interceptor that was amazing for its time (the 1950s).
Yeah, because it worked so well for everyone else who used it lmao
F-104 wasn't intended for use by non-serious air forces, hence the horrible attrition due to pilot incompetence once they sold them off. Most planes are more forgiving of lazy/untrained pilots, but the F-104 was never one of those.
>Naval strategic bomber, 84,000 lb MTOW (lmao)
>Immediately obsolete as a bomber
>Ejection seats deleted to save weight
>since WW2 the US makes the best combat aircraft out there
lol
lmao
Someone post the graphic. You know the one.
Go on, tell the class who you think build better aircraft.
The Euros?
The Russians?
Sure you don’t think China can build anything worth the scrap metalit’s made from.
The Japanese.
You realize the F-2 is a worse-performing variant of the F-16, right?
Was it terrible, even for the time? Yes
Did it fucking rule? Also Yes
hypersonic air to air missiles exist in service and are a serious danger. but they are still reliant on an accurate kill chain. something the F-35 is designed to disrupt.
F-104. Goes fast, doesn't turn, likes killing its pilots
Le winged stovepipe
Murican MiG-31.
Ladies and gentlemen I present to you - the MANNED drone!
Japan invented the manned drone 70 years ago.
Hard to say, the Ohka beat the Fi 103R into the air unpowered, but the Germans then got theirs into production before Japan got around to testing theirs with the engine. Admittedly the German pilot was supposed to try and bail out just before impact, but expected survival rate was below 1%...
What about Mistel?
>maneuver killed by a fucking cropduster
The one in your pic
Honestly this, that thing was A-10 tier and I dont know why no one disses it.
Because it rarely got a chance to do its designed job. A few shootdowns of Libyan planes.
Accidents, but that's to be expected when it's flown so much and was so complex. The Iranians had good success with them and with the Phoenix missile. So the aircraft seems effective enough.
But yeah, because of Top Gun, Macross and Robotech, The Final Countdown, etc., Tomcats will forever be loved.
>Because it rarely got a chance to do its designed job.
That doesn't make it shit.
Didn't say it was. Just said that judging the F-14 as an actual fighter becomes difficult because it never really got the chance in American service. The war it was made for never came. Many people just judge the looks, which definitely earn it a gold medal.
>it rarely got a chance to do its designed job
had its chance during the two iraqi wars, didnt do anything worth of notice in both
>iran
wildly varied accounts with no real consensus between them from a country that has no reason to show transparency
>phoenix
never got a confirmed kill, failed in all its documented uses
the tomcat was largely criticized by its own operators during service, the israelis that tested them were unimpressed. It was unreliable, hard to maintain, expensive, had lackluster flight performance and suffered from teething issues during its entire lifetime
>had its chance during the two iraqi wars, didnt do anything worth of notice in both
No plane except F-15 did anything of note in Desert Storm because it was the only one with the non cooperative IFF system. Iraq war was a joke.
>wildly varied accounts with no real consensus between them
Is that grounds for ignoring all of them? That's literally the primary place of success of it.
F-35 - Its entire premise was to launder/embezzle/commit fraud under the guise of creating some mediocre meme fighter
Does the Harrier even count? I thought it was a British designed aircraft.
AV8B-II was like 85% McDonnell Douglas so kinda sorta
the F-102 was eventually turned into the successful F-106, but it was originally not a good plane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_F-102_Delta_Dagger
>mach 2.3 interceptors with nuclear air to air missiles
we will never have such kino ever again
Pretty much any early carrier based jet until the F-8 and F-4
panthers, banshees and cougars were alright
F9F Panthers absolutely dunked on Mig 15s.
One pilot shot down 4 Soviet Mig 15s in one engagement and it was a 1v5.
>since WW2 the US makes the best combat aircraft out there
The Korean War would beg to differ. US fighters were bitch slapped by MIGs in anything close to parity.
>Century series
5 planes make it
>Teen series
4 planes make it
>Currently
3 variants of one plane make it
>Future
2 variants of no plane make it
spooky times ahead
>where F-5 and F-22
Same place where F-4, F-8, F-111 and F-117 are
Not part of a series
We probably won’t see another American plane like the F5 ever again, it’s not cost competitive to build US designs and the aviation industry is so globalized that any cheap fighters like the FA-50 and such are really just international mutt planes assembled in the absolute cheapest place you can still ensure quality, South Korea comes to mind.
The F-5 and F-20 also died out for a reason, very few countries want a cope plane, especially when they almost never use or lose the planes they have anyways. This may change if a war demonstrates a high loss rate of modern fighters and people realize attrition is a thing again.
F-5 wasn't a cope plane when it was designed, it was a low maintenance plane using existing and established tech but it was a very solid performer, not unlike the F-16 of its day, just with a lower k:d ratio. It was really special only because USAF ditched it so it got the rep of an "export fighter", unlike the next cost-minded designs like the F-16 and F-35. Imo F-5 would have been perfectly suited to the USAF back then too instead of the shitty starfighter as it could serve as a cheap but decent bombing platform/dogfighter, complementing the F-4 Phantom that would otherwise have to do all the work. Kennedy also liked the plane, too.
It’s a cope plane in the sense that it wasn’t capable of BVR combat, wasn’t as capable in a ground attack role, and didn’t have the raw speed and range numbers that a heavier fighter like the F4 could put out.
It is true that it was essentially regarded as too simple for the US. We had other very cheap ground attack options in the form of the A4 and A7s.
Remember that the big marketing thing of the 1960s and 1970s was BVR capability. I understand that in actuality until the mid 70s BVR was kinda a pipe dream.
I think there’s simply a break in design strategy from the F-5 to the F-16, the F-16 was actually fairly cutting edge. The F-5 was always designed to be simple and cheap. The F-35 is only cheap through extremely economical program design, it’s being funded by 30 or more countries and almost everything is buying them.
>It’s a cope plane in the sense that it wasn’t capable of BVR combat, wasn’t as capable in a ground attack role, and didn’t have the raw speed and range numbers that a heavier fighter like the F4
You're just decribing the "low" part of a hi-lo mix.
What happened is that the USAF skipped the F-5 and went from the F-104 and F-105 to the F-16.
>the big marketing thing of the 1960s and 1970s was BVR
it was having effective and reliable missiles at all in the first place
>the F-16 was actually fairly cutting edge
"Cutting edge" is relative, and the F-16 was still a compromise from not fielding an air force made up solely of F-15s.
>The F-35 is only cheap through extremely economical program design, it’s being funded by 30 or more countries and almost everything is buying them
Once again, still a compromise from fielding an air force made up solely of F-22s.
>went from the F-104 and F-105
F-105 wasn't anything low-tech and also sat in a weird spot where a fighter-bomber design started leaning heavily into the "bomber" part during USAF obsession with strategic and nuclear roles while neglecting the tactical ones. Only after the embarrassments of the vietnam bondoogle did they finally pull their heads out of their asses and followed the navy's lead.
It wasn't cheap, it wasn't low-tech and it was pretty cutting edge at the time. There also wasn't anything to do along with it except for the older aircraft that was used for bombing roles after new ones came out, like the F-100. With the amount of aircraft produced during the 50s the idea to make them able to carry a bomb load greatly improved their utility down the line instead of just relegating them to be sold to the 3rd world as surplus or sento to bumfuck nowhere with obsolescence.
He’s saying the F-105 is the Hi in the Hi/Lo mix of that. It doesn’t really work with the F-104 though because the USAF was always very lukewarm about the F-104, literally preferring the F-100 due to its higher bomb load. Hi/Lo does make sense, but in more of a “Light/Heavy” way and not in a “Cheap/Expensive” way.
The F-35 was supposed to be the lo in the F-35/F-22 mix but that’s not actually how it worked out. I’d rather be in a new F-35 now than an F-22 in basically every circumstance but raw WVR interception.
I prefer to think of the idea of the hi/lo mix as the F-15/F-16 thing, there wasn't really a thing like that before them. It's really a product of the F-15's cost that made it and before that there was no need for that, especially when US wasn't dealing with post-vietnam budget cutbacks. It could've been a good idea and is a good way to run an air force but it just wasn't prevalent in the old days.
>He’s saying the F-105 is the Hi in the Hi/Lo mix of that
No, I wasn't
I'm just describing the course of the USAF's aircraft adoption
Frankly I feel the F-5 was skipped over because the F-16 had a better airframe
>it just wasn't prevalent in the old days
Might be because of the slowing pace of aircraft development
In the old days, the "low" was simply older front-line aircraft in the process of being replaced by newer aircraft
>the F-16 was actually fairly cutting edge. The F-5 was always designed to be simple and cheap
Actually, the F-16A was anything but cutting edge, especially in the electronics department. It was basically envisioned as a day fighter with no radar guided missile armament, much like the F-5. It's only because of the insight of the designers and the reversal of priorities did the F-16C get its capability properly.
F-5 was meant to be cheap and simple, being one of the first aircraft designed with its lifecycle and operation costs in mind but it wasn't anything bad performance-wise at its time. It wasn't as powerful thrust-wise but it's probably the best turner of its generation, had a bomb load comparable or better than many its contemporaries aside from the F-4 and was pretty high performance all around. 3 tons of bomb load is similar to the Mirage, several dedicated bomber/strike aircraft that were in use at the time like the Canberra or the A-4 and more than the starfighter. Its only weak point were underpowered engines and they weren't that weak either, handily beating any non-supersonic aircraft of the previous years. It also initially lacked a radar but, again aside from the F-4 the aircraft radars at the time were mostly useful for gun and missile ranging, not guidance and were not very reliable and short ranged, as well as very costly procurement and maintenance-wise.
>"cope plane" evolution
F-5 -> F-16 -> F-35
arguably
>the f-22 can't do what the f-35 can do. pure air to air fighter
IF they hadn't gone into F-35 we'd have an F-22 Super Strike Raptor with all the shit F-35 has on it on a super low observable AND super manoeuvreable airframe.
but such a plane would be insanely expensive and the hi-lo mix would end up being F-16s and F-22Xs or whatever you wanna call the Super Strike Raptor. and there'd be no F-5 equivalent to sell to allies, and there'd be no Harrier replacement for the USMC.
the alternative therefore was to build the F-35, and lean on it and the F-22 in its current state for air superiority. then we move on, having completed the next-gen "low", to completing the next-gen "high", which is NGAD.
>IF they hadn't gone into F-35 we'd have an F-22 Super Strike Raptor with all the shit F-35 has on it on a super low observable AND super manoeuvreable airframe.
The F-35 is also low observable and exceptional at air to air, air to ground and ew.
>but such a plane would be insanely expensive and the hi-lo mix would end up being F-16s and F-22Xs or whatever you wanna call the Super Strike Raptor. and there'd be no F-5 equivalent to sell to allies, and there'd be no Harrier replacement for the USMC.
FB-22 would have been cheaper than the F-35 since it was a variation from the already existing F-22 instead of a new airframe. The problem is that the FB-22 wouldn't be carrier based, mediocre to bad at air to air and very good at air to ground. This would leave the role of air dominance to another aircraft which would put a strain on logistics and costs.
>and lean on it and the F-22 in its current state for air superiority
the F-22 can only ensure air superiority over NATO territories, problem is that in an asian/middle east/central asian/african/south american conflict you'd need to establish a air bridge for the F-22 to get it to the combat zone, after that the plane would need to go back to a friendly airfield in order to reload and maininence. The F-35 can just be launched and landed on a carrier while being able to do strike missions and similar air to air performance.
>The F-35 is also
I capitalised the AND and you just straight up ignored it.
>would have been cheaper than the F-35 since it was a variation
F-15EX has shown this is not possible; two engines will still be significantly more expensive than one, ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL
The price of rushing out the first Soviet mass-produced supersonic fighter, had issues with controls locking up and aircraft exploding due to fuel vapors. Plus the weapons were limited. Granted, some of these issues were fixed. The 19 is still gnarly looking.
This is a bad American fighters thread. Every soviet plane except the Mig 21 would otherwise be fair game.
Mig-21 would also be bad by those measures. It had pretty poor combat record, several air forces had bad crash rates with it, it had long lasting technical issues that were never fixed, etc. Its greatest boon was that it was cheap.
Mig-17 was the only soviet plane that has seen a decent success for its time, and even then it was dunked on by Sidewinders and newer aircraft.
when tech hasnt caught up with the idea
IE V-22 osprey