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UK.. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31530840 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31530840 Remember with turbine powered bombers the flight takes 5 hours crossing the aerial

UK.. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31530840 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31530840 Remember with turbine powered bombers the flight takes 5 hours crossing the aerial zone of at least 5 NATO countries with modern aircraft and radars. And we know it was loaded with nuclear weapons, because of radioactivity. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/dec/26/putin-raf-typhoon-aircraft-russia http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/dec/26/putin-raf-ty... The Typhoon is unable to engage the enemy said by David Cameron to pose the biggest threat to Britain’s security. And it will not be able to do so until 2019 at the earliest. In fact, maybe the paradigm of airplanes is outdated since USSR giving cheap missiles and crude radar to the viet kong have proven that in terms of costs planes can be shot down with a 1/100 ratio in terms of costs. Plus aerian superiority paradigm (a WWII idea) works against developed countries relying on a dense industrial country. But, it does not work against people relying on AK47 and propane bottles coupled with a simple radio system. Money is the nerve of war. Angles: Sorry I can't find the article explaining how the DOD imposed using a software for B2 (and not F35) that limited the possibility to make nice curbs. However just look at the plane. And remember any physics lessons you have been taught : sharp angles make discontinuities. Discontinuities are easy to spot. Stealth anyway is a scam. B2 were spotted by US radars technologies bought by french since 1991 with networked radar (thomson). Validated during 1st iraki war while radar operator could put a name on the weired stuff they were seeing on screen they already saw flying over European space without authorization. (Spying allies is really not nice) You can evade one radar by deflecting signal. But if in a network of radar the signal is reintercepted, then it is bad for the plane. Also since 2000 it has been proven that the flight of a stealth plane above a normal "cellular phone grid" can be detected by the additional energy that it bounces back. Still with networked radar, stealth planes can make "holes" of expected energy. (ionosphere does reflect a little part of energy, and stealth fighter makes "shadows/holes") it may require bigger wavelength though. With IR detection, plane still leaves energy traces (like air friction). Stealthiness only value is in plane vs plane fight to diminish the electronic signature, thus a frontal stealth is more than enough. Stealth is a costly arm race. That is exactly what killed USSR that tried to fight USA IDS program (that was a scam). Strategic thinking must address the costs problems.

talmand 11y ago
Your BBC link says fighters were scrambled to approach the bomber that did not enter sovereign airspace. I'm not sure what your argument is. I would say it's always been cheaper to shoot down an airplane than to build, use, and maintain it. That's nothing new. I don't recall anyone ever claiming that stealth would make the planes undetectable, only harder to detect. You do realize that what we know as stealth technology today was developed 30 to 50 years ago? I would assume new technologies have been developed to defeat it. Even accidentally, such as your cell phone grid example; which did not exist when the stealth technology was developed. Doesn't mean it has always been a scam. Today's planes are "stealth-like" which means they have similar technologies but no one expects them to disappear into the night. As for the cost, I agree. This trend of bigger, better, and more expensive is stupid.
- SFjulie1 11y ago
  Actually the Tu95 were grounded after a series of crash (they are not that good ;) ) (nice pictures of the new bombers used by russia here http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/raf-typhoon-jets-scramble-intercept-6426538 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/raf-typhoon-jets-scramb...) And I cannot find the UK articles from 1 year ago saying the exact problem with typhoon and why UK wanted to replace them with F35. I remembered something about costs, availability attrition and budget. Like typhoon were to expensive and that 24/7 battle readiness was kind of a joke given the budget. I was in the french navy for my conscription. The aeronaval would have preferred F16 over rafale ~2000 for exactly this: 1 rafale = 10 F16 (at the time) and OPEX of rafale >> F16. And they could have had another diesel carrier thus france could have had a fully usable aeronaval task force for the same price. Anyway: cellular grids where not that developed yet, but efficient distributed radar were. And every "refinment" is kind of another order of magnitude in the equation. Harder to measure, harder to counter, harder to build but it can be anticipated : every generations are almost an order of magnitude more expensive. Can you see a pattern? Stealth like aircraft (Typhoon, Rafale, F35, F22) are hard to sell because they cost a lot due to complexity (in software notably). Thus government HAVE to subsidize them ... Thus, people try to make them polyvalent BY DESIGN (waterfall model) and like any jack of all trades they tend to master none of them and inflates OPEX and KPEX with erosion of the benefits and a LONG development time that make them likely to be obsolete when delivered. A lot can be said on the history of aircraft industry. I dare say we lost the art of being smart that requires some fast feedback loops (agile but correctly done) with minimal correct design (waterfall but correctly done) and cost efficiency. That is the difference between the spitfire and the Me109. Can a general purpose warbird be built during peace time? I do not think so. They are like hammers built without knowing which nail will need to be hammered or may be screwed. But simple cells (F4, mirage, F16) with awesome lines (ok, I am found of nice looking planes so it is not serious) that can sustain modifications (like the spitfire) have proven to be good planes ... on the long run when you have good workers, engineers, (tests) pilots, industrial able to make them evolve in a reasonable time and price constraint. The quality of out warplanes reflect the actual problem with our civil economy : Quality and costs do not matter when industries relies on finance and not production for making benefits. Bonus : This guy was amazing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Quill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Quill <== tests pilots. Kind of a badass QA man like most of the tests pilots in great planes history.

talmand 11y ago

Your BBC link says fighters were scrambled to approach the bomber that did not enter sovereign airspace. I'm not sure what your argument is. I would say it's always been cheaper to shoot down an airplane than to build, use, and maintain it. That's nothing new. I don't recall anyone ever claiming that stealth would make the planes undetectable, only harder to detect. You do realize that what we know as stealth technology today was developed 30 to 50 years ago? I would assume new technologies have been developed to defeat it. Even accidentally, such as your cell phone grid example; which did not exist when the stealth technology was developed. Doesn't mean it has always been a scam. Today's planes are "stealth-like" which means they have similar technologies but no one expects them to disappear into the night. As for the cost, I agree. This trend of bigger, better, and more expensive is stupid.

SFjulie1 11y ago
Actually the Tu95 were grounded after a series of crash (they are not that good ;) ) (nice pictures of the new bombers used by russia here http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/raf-typhoon-jets-scramble-intercept-6426538 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/raf-typhoon-jets-scramb...) And I cannot find the UK articles from 1 year ago saying the exact problem with typhoon and why UK wanted to replace them with F35. I remembered something about costs, availability attrition and budget. Like typhoon were to expensive and that 24/7 battle readiness was kind of a joke given the budget. I was in the french navy for my conscription. The aeronaval would have preferred F16 over rafale ~2000 for exactly this: 1 rafale = 10 F16 (at the time) and OPEX of rafale >> F16. And they could have had another diesel carrier thus france could have had a fully usable aeronaval task force for the same price. Anyway: cellular grids where not that developed yet, but efficient distributed radar were. And every "refinment" is kind of another order of magnitude in the equation. Harder to measure, harder to counter, harder to build but it can be anticipated : every generations are almost an order of magnitude more expensive. Can you see a pattern? Stealth like aircraft (Typhoon, Rafale, F35, F22) are hard to sell because they cost a lot due to complexity (in software notably). Thus government HAVE to subsidize them ... Thus, people try to make them polyvalent BY DESIGN (waterfall model) and like any jack of all trades they tend to master none of them and inflates OPEX and KPEX with erosion of the benefits and a LONG development time that make them likely to be obsolete when delivered. A lot can be said on the history of aircraft industry. I dare say we lost the art of being smart that requires some fast feedback loops (agile but correctly done) with minimal correct design (waterfall but correctly done) and cost efficiency. That is the difference between the spitfire and the Me109. Can a general purpose warbird be built during peace time? I do not think so. They are like hammers built without knowing which nail will need to be hammered or may be screwed. But simple cells (F4, mirage, F16) with awesome lines (ok, I am found of nice looking planes so it is not serious) that can sustain modifications (like the spitfire) have proven to be good planes ... on the long run when you have good workers, engineers, (tests) pilots, industrial able to make them evolve in a reasonable time and price constraint. The quality of out warplanes reflect the actual problem with our civil economy : Quality and costs do not matter when industries relies on finance and not production for making benefits. Bonus : This guy was amazing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Quill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Quill <== tests pilots. Kind of a badass QA man like most of the tests pilots in great planes history.