Does China conduct these shock trials? If not why doesn't it.
US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
- Start date
Does China conduct these shock trials? If not why doesn't it.
Time for china to make a large naval exercise just off hawaii?
that looks like a mine hunter doing a controlled detonation to destroy a mine.
Seems like the NGAD is much further along than anticipated, given that we know it has flown and now members of Congress have been taken to see it. They also plan to start retiring the F-22 in 2030, which means at least some NGADs must be flying by then. Maybe only several years from it being unveiled?
The real question is what the secret sauce is that justifies the new generation designation. All aspect stealth, unmanned, DEW?
The fact that they are giving the project so much fanfare is worrying. When the US started working on truly revolutionary designs like the F-117 or the Raptor they leaked zero info, much less schedules. So much was the secrecy that the Night hawk caused a rash of UFO sightings near Gloom Lake. Since they are not marketing the NGAD, why the high profile promotions?
The secret sauce as the same as always.
Bullshit.
There are no "generation" designations outside of what journos are paid to write as PR for competition among special interest in the Pentagon. Before "fifth generation fighter" became a thing only historians of aviation spoke of generations in their books and papers and those differed depending on who made the classification. Then Cold War ended, budgets were slashed to the bone and suddenly "fifth generation" emerges to help peddle bullshit sauce in the media so that Congress understands just how important this new jet is. Suddenly "fourth generation fighters" were not enough because Russians could have "four-and-a-half generation fighters".
What can I tell you Dan? We need a full generation leap to secure America's future air superiority or our troops' lives will be in danger.
And the funniest thing is that F-22s might never be used in a peer conflict for which they were designed before they are withdrawn from service.
The reason why the program needs so much support is simple if counter-intuitive for people who fell into the bullshit trap and are drowning in it.
The F-35 is a resounding success. It decisively won the only war it was ever meant to win. It captured the monopoly of jet fighter market. Lockheed is the "lead partner" in the NGAD program because there's nobody left who can do the job.
However the F-35 production structure is such an unwieldy gargantuan mess that there's no amount of money that is too much for it. It's Eurofighter squared. There's just this one jet and everyone has a stake in it.
And it's a piece of shit that nobody really wants because it's expensive to fly, full of black boxes, a huge snooping machine and almost everything has to go through Lockheed and the DoD.
If Lockheed had its way it would shove the F-35 down Pentagon's throat so hard it would go out the other end. Everything that's necessary to do so is already in place - the hordes of journos in the media, trolls online, lobbyists in the back rooms and Congressmen on the Hill. And all they have to do is say exactly the same thing that they've been saying until a few years back and put the blame for cost overruns, delays, failures and performance on lack of funding and support. Lockheed is fighting a real war here. The war for its shareholders profits. And it will fight till the bitter end.
But the Air Force knows that it's no longer about bombing tents and goats but preparing for a real fight against an opponent that is as serious as the Soviets if not more so. And because they have a real fight to deal with they know what they need. And F-35 ain't it. They can't wish it away. So they do the next best thing.
What can I tell you Norah? We need a full generation leap to secure America's next generation air dominance or our troops' lives will be in danger.
I wonder if they have already selected the aircraft, maybe even had a competition. I wonder if these are preproduction test articles. I just think it is weird that members of congress would be taken to see some prototype before a final selection has been made.
Prior to this they were talking about investigating different approaches to next generation combat aircraft ala the Century series in the late 1950s. I wonder what happened to that. Maybe budgetary constraints?