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There's a common theme for just about all of those aircraft: they're ugly. There's truth in the saying that good aircraft are always beautiful aircraft.
by flyinglizard 10y ago
There's a common theme for just about all of those aircraft: they're ugly. There's truth in the saying that good aircraft are always beautiful aircraft.
- rgrieselhuber 10y agoBeauty is truth.
- 67726e 10y agoThat's an incredibly subjective metric.
- IshKebab 10y agoOr is it that we associate beauty with 'conventional' planes, which by definition fly well.
- Godel_unicode 10y agoGoogle "A10 warthog". This is probably the exception which proves the rule. The air force hates it because it's ugly, but they can't eliminate it because it's amazing at doing what it does.
- maxerickson 10y agoCongress funded the Warthog in spite of what the Air Force requested, a request that had little to do with appearance.
- goodcanadian 10y agoI actually find that to be a reasonably attractive plane: unusual to be sure, but not ugly.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- justsid 10y agoI would like to one up you, I find it to be quite a sexy plane! I can’t even put my finger on why it does, but I just find it way better looking than regular figher jets.
- geoka9 10y agoI too think it is beautiful, especially when you watch it performing aerobatics at low speed.
- ecnal 10y agoCorrect: it is fantastic at being vulnerable to air defenses, leaving it unable to engage the Iraqi Republican Guard in 1993. http://www.afhso.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-100927-061.pdf http://www.afhso.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-100927-061...
- Blackthorn 10y agoThey don't hate it because it's ugly. I think the simplified version here is they hate it because they don't want to fulfill the role it does.
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoWhich is baffling. It's your job, guys. Your entire organization with all its staggering budget exists to provide certain specific services to the nation. Deciding which of those services you feel like providing is not in your job description.
- johan_larson 10y agoEvery air force in the world is run by fighter pilots. Even well-meaning serious-minded people tend to emphasize what they know best. Hence air superiority tends to get far more attention than any other aspect of air combat operations. Frankly, I think the US might be better off allowing the US Army to set up its own units for close air support. I suspect if they were allowed free choice of equipment they would operate some type of rugged STOL fixed-wing airplanes for that purpose.
- andrewflnr 10y agoDoes anyone else think that the whole idea of different branches of the military is a stupid one? Why have different chains of command for different pieces of hardware used in the same mission?
- rjsw 10y agoCanada tried merging the different branches and found that it didn't work too well.
- andrewflnr 10y agoWell of course if you shove it on them after the fact it won't go well. Everyone gets their egos ruffled. You would have to start from scratch. I'm assuming you're talking about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_the_Canadian_Armed_Forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_the_Canadian_Ar...
- DiabloD3 10y agoIt is not a plane with a gun attached. It is a gun that someone built a plane around. Brrrrrt.
- bpodgursky 10y agoTo be "fair", they hate it because it's not a dogfighter.
- bdamm 10y agoThe F-35 isn't a dogfighter either.
- lostlogin 10y agoDepending on ones view of the program, it could be described as the first half of dogfighter.
- JshWright 10y agoThey "hate" it because it is completely useless against an enemy that has anything even vaguely resembling a military. It's a great plane for the "war on terror". It would be completely useless in any other war.
- 650REDHAIR 10y agoThe same war we've been fighting for 15 years with no signs of stopping.
- JshWright 10y agoEvery government needs an enemy... We're just fortunate that there aren't any real ones around right now. When that day comes, hopefully our military tech is up to the challenge. The A-10 most certainly isn't, and I'm not convinced we have a real replacement coming any time soon.
- Someone 10y agoI don't think anybody is arguing it should the only plane in the arsenal; complaints against its retirement are that a country with the ambitions of the USA should be able to fight any war, and, since it has chosen to enter this one, should deploy the best it has there. Back to the article: if the military were as agile as it was in World War Two, it would have built something better than an A10 within a few years of entering the war in the Middle East. In the search for that better product, it also would have designed, built, and deployed quite a few strong candidates for this 'worst air force' article, killing quite a few of its own pilots in 'field testing' the various designs. I'm not sure the F35, with its "we can design a plane that will work great in any war, if you give us a few decades" is an improvement over that. If it ever has to go to war against something "even vaguely resembling a military", and it turns out to come up slightly short in the first few encounters, what would the next step be? If it would take another decade to fix that, chances are the war would be lost before a fix was deployed.
- Nimitz14 10y agoYou don't have a single fucking clue about what you're talking about.
- grzm 10y agoPlease provide an substantive argument rather than attack the commenter. There's never a need to be uncivil on HN.
- mannykannot 10y agoJust about every airplane achieves a certain state of grace by taking to the air - though it is illusory if it has nasty handling characteristics.
- cm2187 10y agoThe F16 is probably the best illustration. In my opinion no modern aircraft surpasses its elegance from a pure design point of view. And it is still being produced now, 40 years after its first flight!
- JshWright 10y agoIf we're talking American fighters, I think the P-51 is an even better example. It was obviously obsoleted by the jet era, but it was one of the sexiest planes in the air at the time, and could outfly just about anything else.