Obama the best adman for Sukhoi, Mikoyan, and Kamov ever.

[Starglider]

Guess if I want to learn something I have to research it myself.

Just search this board for 'ABM'. We've had many, many threads that deal with this and the ABM supporters always win, because the facts clearly support their position.

Before the latest test, the Pentagon said 12 tests of the ground-based system had been conducted since 1999 and seven of them had been successful.

The military always blows sunshine up everyone's ass within earshot about their pricey pet projects but I'm willing to give them the benefit of a 50% success rate.

Developmental test series are not representative of how a system will perform in the field. 90% of the tests I run on software fail, but that's because I am deliberately stressing systems to the limit. ABM development tests aim to check key system parameters, and a 'failure' will usually deliver just as if not more information than a success. When 'all-up' tests that specifically check performance under operational conditions are run, they are usually successful. Note that in operational use distant targets can simply have another interceptor fired at them if the first one misses, and near targets can be engaged by multiple interceptors in salvo; interceptors are a lot cheaper than ICBMs. This is how existing naval missile defense systems tolerate relatively modest kill rates.

Oops looks like you were caught in a lie. How surprising.

What? Shep corrects your wrong figures and provides some context and you accuse him of lying? You know I'm not generally inclined towards profanity, but I think as a description of you 'shitstain' really is the appropriate term.

Yeah, because the A-12 program was such a huuuuuuge cash cow for Grumman and McDonnell Douglass, it's why they're still independent, and not part of huge conglomerates.

I'm sure you could find lots of little examples of defence contractors supplying equipment that isn't inherently used to kill people. However that doesn't dispute my claim that a peacetime environment results in less profits for military contractors.

And of course you have no idea what an A-12 is and can't be bothered to look it up (though I don't know why Shep brought that program up - I'm not aware of any Israeli connection).

[TimothyC]

Ok, Yes I started some off-topic post, and for that I apologize, I'm just tired of holding my tongue/hands so on Obama's decisions for foreign policy/military policy. I'll probably go back to that now. I should have also brought up the situation where Obama ordered a stop to selling Gas Turbines to Allies, and where he stated he was against deploying an anti-missile site in Europe.

Starglider: Shep brought up the A-12 as an example of a military program that didn't go anywhere, and ended up with both major contractors having been folded into larger companies rather than still being independent.

[Starglider]

Starglider: Shep brought up the A-12 as an example of a military program that didn't go anywhere, and ended up with both major contractors having been folded into larger companies rather than still being independent.

I know, but Kar Kar is too ignorant to even be aware of that much less try and claim it to be a case of profiteering - his ranting seems confined to the more visible 'stoking conflict in the middle east'.

[MKSheppard]

So when's the wedding date, Elf, Shep?

August. I've changed my avatar to commemorate the occasion.

[Kar Kar]

Just search this board for 'ABM'. We've had many, many threads that deal with this and the ABM supporters always win, because the facts clearly support their position.

That's nice. I haven't seen much in the way of facts yet.

Anyway new thread, different members, new discussion. If you're tired of the subject you're more than welcome to bow out and let others discuss it.

Developmental test series are not representative of how a system will perform in the field. 90% of the tests I run on software fail, but that's because I am deliberately stressing systems to the limit. ABM development tests aim to check key system parameters, and a 'failure' will usually deliver just as if not more information than a success. When 'all-up' tests that specifically check performance under operational conditions are run, they are usually successful. Note that in operational use distant targets can simply have another interceptor fired at them if the first one misses, and near targets can be engaged by multiple interceptors in salvo; interceptors are a lot cheaper than ICBMs. This is how existing naval missile defense systems tolerate relatively modest kill rates.

Oh how convenient for you. The system isn't inaccurate it's just the stresses of rigorous testing!

Can you provide anything from a reliable source that provides the accuracy of the ABM system in "normal" conditions? I'd even take speculation from a decent source.

What? Shep corrects your wrong figures and provides some context and you accuse him of lying? You know I'm not generally inclined towards profanity, but I think as a description of you 'shitstain' really is the appropriate term.

Guess you have Elfdart on ignore.

Sheps claim.

Why? Because it's part of the Camp David Accords;

Is obviously false because there isn't anything about military aid in the accords. Since he's apparently made the claim before and been debunked he's either forgetful or dishonest.

Last I checked dishonesty also counts as lying.

And of course you have no idea what an A-12 is and can't be bothered to look it up (though I don't know why Shep brought that program up - I'm not aware of any Israeli connection).

I have no idea why Shep brought it up either.

I see you didn't bother addressing my claim either.

[Mr. Coffee]

That's nice. I haven't seen much in the way of facts yet.

Anyway new thread, different members, new discussion. If you're tired of the subject you're more than welcome to bow out and let others discuss it.

Then do as Starglider suggested and do a board search for "ABM" and read the (many) threads where the topic has been discussed at great length and detail. Just because someone brought the topic up in a new thread does not negate the previous threads that dealt with that subject.

[D.Turtle]

That's nice. I haven't seen much in the way of facts yet.

Anyway new thread, different members, new discussion. If you're tired of the subject you're more than welcome to bow out and let others discuss it.

I'll save you some work looking, so here are some thread about this topic (the bottom two are linked in the first topic):

If not dismantled how would CAD work and how would affect US
Quick question regarding IBCMs
Pulled over by an F-16!

[MKSheppard]

Anyway new thread, different members, new discussion. If you're tired of the subject you're more than welcome to bow out and let others discuss it.

So you're that kind of poster. The one who raises the "OUR SHIELDS ARE IMMUNE TO LASERS" bullshit in PST without reading the fucking board FAQ?

Oh how convenient for you. The system isn't inaccurate it's just the stresses of rigorous testing!

Nevermind that IIRC, something like 75% of all the first BGM-71 TOW ATGMs fired in tests failed for various reasons -- and the TOW has gone on to become our most reliable ATGM.

Can you provide anything from a reliable source that provides the accuracy of the ABM system in "normal" conditions? I'd even take speculation from a decent source.

During the 1962-66 era, Zeus family ABMs made a total of 64 attempted intercepts of which 59 were successful. A classified number of those intercepts were skin-to-skin hits.

Last I checked dishonesty also counts as lying.

We also bribed Jordan by forgiving their not-insubstantial debt after they signed a peace treaty with Israel in the 70s; got that tidbit from teh "The Israel Lobby" by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt

I have no idea why Shep brought it up either.

You're too stupid to google A-12 then?

I'm sure the fantastic success of the F-14 Tomcat provided oodles of money for Grumman, which is why they're still based in Bethpage, NY as an independent company; and not part of the LockMart Conglomerate in Bethesda MD.

In fact, for a time in the 70s, Grumman was pretty much losing money on each F-14 sold to the US Navy, due to inflation and the fixed cost contract they were under.

[Guardsman Bass]

We also bribed Jordan by forgiving their not-insubstantial debt after they signed a peace treaty with Israel in the 70s; got that tidbit from teh "The Israel Lobby" by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt

Elfdart still is technically correct, though; there is nothing stated in the text of the Camp David Accords about the US being required to give aid to both Israel and Egypt as part of the agreement. That aid was given to help re-inforce the agreement, but it wasn't officially part of the final text form of the Camp David Accords.

[Sidewinder]

I doubt the Israel would buy from Russia, i.e., the state who provided advanced weapon systems, and trained personnel to operate these systems, to Israel's enemies in several wars. But AgustaWestland, Dassault, Eurocopter, Eurofighter, and/or Saab will benefit from this refusal.

Anyways, Israel already has a bunch of Apaches. If they want to shoot up Palestinians, I'm sure their UAVs would be suitable for the job.

Spoken like someone oblivious to a UAV's limitations. If you want a UAV to be useful against enemies with air defense systems more advanced than "Shoot your AK-47 up in the air, and pray for a lucky shot that brings down the enemy aircraft," e.g., MANPADS, you must install electronic warfare and other very expensive systems that'll raise the UAV's price to that of a manned aircraft.

MQ-9 Reaper: US $10.5 million for one aircraft with sensors.

AH-1W SuperCobra: US $10.7 million per unit

The UAV's advantage is loiter time, i.e., you don't need to land the aircraft to change a tired flight crew for a fresh one. The disadvanges are

1) Reduced field of vision- I've yet to see a UAV with two independent cameras that can look in two different directions at once, like a manned aircraft's flight crew can.

2) Related to #1, difficult takeoffs and landings- the USAF lost 1/3 of its Predators because of these difficulties.

3) Difficulties when the ground station is unable to maintain communications w/ the UAV. Reasons include terrain inhibiting line-of-sight communications- see this accident involving a US Customs and Border Patrol Reaper- and jamming from enemy EW systems.

4) Difficulties w/ interoperability, i.e., operating a UAV alongside manned aircraft. It'll be years before an Army or Marine Corps officer will trust an MQ-8 Fire Scout to escort a Blackhawk to a POI's house, and then provide air support while infantry rappel from the Blackhawk and storm the house.

5) Vulnerability to enemy fighters- you must be insane or delusional to think a UAV can beat a manned aircraft in a dogfight, considering #1 means the UAV pilot can lose track of a maneuvering airborne target, with ridiculous ease.

[Shroom Man 777]

Yeah, but going into territories with lots of aerial defenses thus necessitating countermeasures is for when Israel wants to kill Lebanese (or Syrians or whatever). But for killing Palestinians, simple UAVs would do just fine, right?

Unless the Palestinians have up-armed and made killing them harder.

[Pelranius]

If they want to go kill Syrians, what they have in Apaches is adequate enough. The Syrian military isn't terribly impressive. Note that I was only talking about getting at the Palestinians.

[Julhelm]

Yeah, because the A-12 program was such a huuuuuuge cash cow for Grumman and McDonnell Douglass, it's why they're still independent, and not part of huge conglomerates.

Please; commit suicide like I suggested earlier, for the board's sanity.

A-12 was an even bigger turd than F-111B and Cheney did the right call by cancelling it. Besides, it was McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics who teamed up on that project.

Here are some figures re the A-12's carrier suitability, from Stevensson's book I believe:

Launch wind over deck (WOD): -2 knots (Northrop) vs +19 knots (General Dynamics)
Arresting WOD (Mk 7 mod 3): +9 knots (Northrop) vs +12 knots (General Dynamics)
Waveoff rate of climb: + 680 feet/minute (Northrop) vs - 100 feet/minute (General Dynamics)

Sort of speaks for itself, doesn't it? Mind you the negative waveoff rate of climb is IF the MDD/GD A-12 had met it's proposed 40000 lbs weight and not gone overweight.

[thejester]

Presidents refusing to sell certain pieces of hardware overseas in hardly new, why is this any more of an OUTRAGE than the refusal to export the F-22?

[Julhelm]

Because a lot of military procurement programmes are funded and budgeted with a certain percentage of foreign sales in mind.

[ray245]

Didn't the policy of not selling the F-22 started out by the Bush administration?

[MKSheppard]

Didn't the policy of not selling the F-22 started out by the Bush administration?

No. Started in 1998ish, with This bill.

Buried in it is:

SEC. 8118. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to approve or license the sale of the F–22 advanced tactical fighter to any foreign government.

[thejester]

Because a lot of military procurement programmes are funded and budgeted with a certain percentage of foreign sales in mind.

I very much doubt that the sale of six units would make much of a difference to any program, let alone one that has already sold 200+ units overseas and hundreds more domestically.

[MKSheppard]

A-12 was an even bigger turd than F-111B and Cheney did the right call by cancelling it.

Actually, F-111B wasn't that big of a turd. It's just that the Navy really really really hated it and rigged many of the tests against it -- case in point, carrying out Air Combat Manouvering (ACM) tests with F-111B having a warload of six phoenixes, that's 6,000 lbs of weapons, while F-14A ACM tests were with I believe, four sparrows and two sidewinders; a mere 1,500-1,600 lbs.

But that's for another thread....

Besides, it was McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics who teamed up on that project.

My apologies; that was a very good catch; I take the blame for that fuckup.

[Julhelm]

Because a lot of military procurement programmes are funded and budgeted with a certain percentage of foreign sales in mind.

I very much doubt that the sale of six units would make much of a difference to any program, let alone one that has already sold 200+ units overseas and hundreds more domestically.

We're probably talking more than 6 units in the case of the JSF, however. Also the fact that they're not authorising the F-15SE for foreign sales either means not only Israel, but probably also Japan will have to look for another air superiority fighter in addition to a tactical strike fighter.

Which is good for us europeans, though.

[Sidewinder]

Yeah, but going into territories with lots of aerial defenses thus necessitating countermeasures is for when Israel wants to kill Lebanese (or Syrians or whatever). But for killing Palestinians, simple UAVs would do just fine, right?

If Palestinians had no air defense more advanced than "Shoot your AK-47 up in the air, and pray," a simple UAV will do just fine. Unfortunately, the Russians are selling their most advanced air defense systems to everyone with hard currency, e.g., MANPADS to Syria, which has close ties to Hezbollah, which has close ties to Hamas, which has been smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip, where the IDF is having significant difficulty finding Hamas' weapon caches...

Besides, Israel has fought multiple wars against enemies with modern air defense systems. You can use an aircraft optimized for such environments- say, an AH-1 Cobra- in low-intensity conflicts with greater ease than you can use an aircraft optimized for low-intensity conflicts in high-intensity conflicts. You can send a Cobra to do an MQ-9 Reaper's job, but you're insane or delusional if you send a Reaper to do a Cobra's job, e.g., escort and then provide air support to infantry, military convoys, Blackhawks and other transport helicopters...

[Sidewinder]

A-12 was an even bigger turd than F-111B and Cheney did the right call by cancelling it.

Actually, F-111B wasn't that big of a turd. It's just that the Navy really really really hated it and rigged many of the tests against it -- case in point, carrying out Air Combat Manouvering (ACM) tests with F-111B having a warload of six phoenixes, that's 6,000 lbs of weapons, while F-14A ACM tests were with I believe, four sparrows and two sidewinders; a mere 1,500-1,600 lbs.

Besides the F-111B's most well-known problems- overweight, overworked engines, poor visibility from the cockpit, poor maneuverability- why did the USN hate it so? Maybe the F-111 was optimized for attack missions requiring low-altitude flight, and had difficulty performing air defense missions requiring high-altitude flight?

[Shroom Man 777]

How prevalent are advanced Russian MANPADS in Palestine, anyway? While the Russians had a lot of trouble in Lebanon, no one's mentioned any sudden surge of Palestinian resistance (thanks to new and better weaponry) in either Gaza or the West Bank.

[Jim Raynor]

Does the US requires F-22 to fights the wars that it needs to fight? I mean a major conflict with a power than can rival the United States has a high chance to turning into a Nuclear war (and the cost benefits of fighting a nuclear war is low), so I doubt that the US has a need to build so many F-22s.

No, the USAF doesn't need the F-22 right now, but look at it this way: the F-22 took 15 years to develop, and could wind up being in service for 40 (judging by the F-15). This is frankly not unusual for a modern fighter plane, and fighters elsewhere are certainly not getting any less sophisticated (the Eurofighter endured a similarly long gestation, for example). Given that kind of lead time, simply waiting until when or if you do require it to begin development isn't really an option. Furthermore, given how long the F-22 will likely be in service, can any of us say with any certainty what the geopolitical situation will look like 20, 30 or 40 years from now?

This is the best reasoning for making more F-22s, IMO. The reason America fights with such confidence and can pick its own wars against inferior opponents is because of the massive superiority of its military. Maybe the F-35 will be good enough for the next few decades (though not better than what our allies will have, since they're getting F-35s as well). Who knows?

I understand the economic arguments, and the F-35 will carry a wider variety of air-to-ground weapons. It does make sense for most of America's fighter fleet to be F-35s. But why can't they tip the balance just a little bit further toward the F-22, to maintain a reasonable hi-lo mix? It seems like a massive waste to throw away all the research that went into the F-22, maintaining a small and uneconomical number of around 180 of those planes.

Additionally, the F-22 is not a "one trick pony" as it's critics often claim, and can do more than just air superiority. It can carry two 1,000lb JDAMs (or eight Small Diameter Bombs) internally, allowing it to take over the deep-strike role form the now-retired F-117. Hell, it can even act as a SIGINT platform, though that function still has some bugs to be worked out (some critics have dishonestly tried to spin that to paint the whole plane as useless).

Exactly. I hate the bullshit rhetoric that F-22 critics have used against that aircraft, which are repeated without question by the media. The F-22 being useless and having "never fired a shot in Iraq or Afghanistan" is such verbal bullshit. The F-22 doesn't have a tremendous air-to-ground capability, but it's decent and has several advantages. By flying higher and faster with supercruise, it can lob JDAMs further than other aircraft. Since it's stealthier and faster than the F-35, it can strike even heavily defended targets. Stealth isn't complete, and future air defense systems may be too much for even the F-35 to handle. Do they really want to bet the next 40 years on the "low" end aircraft?

[Starglider]

I understand the economic arguments, and the F-35 will carry a wider variety of air-to-ground weapons. It does make sense for most of America's fighter fleet to be F-35s. But why can't they tip the balance just a little bit further toward the F-22, to maintain a reasonable hi-lo mix? It seems like a massive waste to throw away all the research that went into the F-22, maintaining a small and uneconomical number of around 180 of those planes.

Or you could build 100 or so FB-22s (slightly stretched F-22 with a delta wing), which would allow the existing fleet to be dedicated solely to air defence (and thus accrue less airframe hours) and provide a self-escorting high-grade stealth strike capability. It should be relatively cost effective, but any funding that might have been used to build those has probably migrated to UAVs. To be honest that's probably for the best, the US maintaining and expanding its lead in UAV capabilities is probably more valuable than incremental improvements in the manned fighter force.