12 ms·

>Isn't this sort of thing expected through the process of developing cutting edge hardware and software? To a great extent, that's the fundamental problem with

• joering2 7y ago
  > It's also really bad at being a helmet A buddy of mine is actually flying the jet. He said helmet is cool to wear first time but quickly wears out in real flies and is even worse in combat. A lieutenant that first flew it many years ago called it "karate mirror"; he explained it must have been designed by someone who never fought a fight, but somewhat was stubborn enough to assume when you fight karate you would love to have a back mirror to see whats happening behind. They military argues with contractors atm to actually come back to a regular helmet, because there is really no added value in flying Mach 1 and engage in fight in front of you and having ability to see behind or even under, when you have all sort of warning systems that monitors your surrounding and allows you enough time to alter your direction before you get hit.
  • TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I wonder if the VR cams+helmet would make more sense for helicopter pilots, both military and S&R. In XXI century, you don't need to see things around you when flying what's essentially a protein-guided reusable missile launching missiles - but it could come in handy in aircraft that operate at low speeds and altitudes.
    • joering2 7y ago
      Absolutely! LM already has know-how so its a matter of time before it will become an option on their other crafts. Another buddy of mine (doesn't work on the project but still connected inside LM enough) said that when management seen military officials defending overblown F35 budget they felt actually they sky is wide open to further abuse of $$ and spent shitload of money and time to design and overdesign that helmet. Eventually you will see it everywhere where it make sense, be it Coast Guard, heck - your local crane operator. But it will take 10 years before LM will makeup the money they "lost" developing it, so it will take time. But F35 will eventually fly without it, no doubt.
    • mrguyorama 7y ago
      The modern apache helmet system already has limited AR capabilities. IIRC, it even includes some in helmet display stuff like systems info and night vision, and also can be used to train the cannon
• stouset 7y ago
  Look, I love the A-10C. It’s a wonderful plane. I’ve flown it for years in sims as part of a realism-based squadron. And I too am sad that such an iconic plane is being put to pasture. But it’s beyond time for this meme to die. The A-10C just isn’t suitable for this task any more. Low and slow just doesn’t cut it. It’s slow to respond due to a cruise speed of 200-220KIAS (compared to 550-575KIAS for an F-15E). Having to get to within 1.0–1.2nm to employ the famed GAU-8/A Avenger (or rockets) makes it a MANPAD and AAA magnet. The gun is limited in the types of targets it’s effective against nowadays as well. And if you aren’t using the gun or rockets, you’re dropping JDAMs (GPS and laser-guided bombs) or firing air-to-ground missiles like Mavericks. If you’re using these, you’d rather do so high and fast: you get both increased effective range and more forgiving margins of error during weapon release. And if you’re doing this, you might as well just put them on an F-15E which outclasses the A-10C in terms of carrying capacity, response time, survivability (unsurprisingly, not getting hit because you’re at 600KIAS at 30,000ft is better than surviving being hit because you were flying 250KIAS at 500ft), weapons availability, and virtually any other trait you can imagine other than “loiter time”. And response time trumps loiter time hands-down, especially when loitering dramatically increases the odds of losing the pilot and/or airframe to surface fire. On top of this, if you're in permissive airspace there's always a tanker nearby to extend your ability to loiter (and if you're not in permissive airspace, your A-10C fleet is grounded anyway). The A-10C is lauded, and rightfully so, because it was such an effective CAS platform. But it’s not any more. All of the praise you hear about it it real and deserved, but comes from the perspective of people who saw it in action because that’s the plane that filled the role and so that’s the plane they saw in action. With other planes now filling that role, you will hear the similar praise about those planes for pretty much the same reason. The people who aren’t singing its praises are the commanders who see the frightening number of lost or damaged airframes and see how poorly it stacks up against other planes readily available in our fleet. Edit: And I have to respond to this point. > We know it's a hell of a lot less reliable than existing US aircraft and competing foreign aircraft. The F-35 is literally one of the most reliable aircraft we have ever flown (second only to the F-22). Since 2006 (thirteen years), we've had four losses. For the F-22, it's four losses in twenty-two years. The F-15? 46 were lost from 1972–1985. And nearly twenty-five percent of our F-14 fleet has been lost in non-combat accidents.
  • 7y ago
• j9461701 7y ago
  >It has been designed and commissioned by people who believe that "most advanced" necessarily means "best" and who are indifferent to the actual tactical and strategic requirements. They said the exact same thing about the F-15. And the F-18. Both of which went on to spectacular success - the F-15 in particular has never once been bested in air to air combat, while claiming 105 enemy kills (including MiG-29s). It's able to do that due to its big sexy radar and complicated electronics and all the other techno-gadgets that people like Pierre Sprey decried every step of the way because he still thinks we live in 1967. On the ground, there is less room for innovation. Guns are a mature technology. The primary concern in 2019 are things like reliability and cost, because the difference between an AK47 and an M16 is not that big. They both shoot bullets, they both are capable of full-auto, they both are light. To the soldier holding them, big difference of course - but from the 10,000 mile perspective they're basically doing the same job in the same way. It doesn't make much difference if I'm a general planning strategies whether my rifleman are holding M4s or M16s or AK47s. Air combat is different, technology is still radically changing things every generation. And if you're caught a generation behind it's hard to make a fight of it. We have jet engines, and our enemies don't. We have solid state avionics, our enemies don't. We have AESA radar, our enemies don't. And now? We have all those advanced technologies in the F-35, like production line stealth, that no other peer enemy yet has deployed on the field. Certainly technology is not everything, you also need training, tactics, support systems. But it is undeniably a massive advantage, and one that's worth a little teething to get. >The Army and Marines have been crying out for years for a suitable replacement for the ageing A-10. It's the finest close support aircraft ever made, it has a legendary reputation among infantrymen who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the USAF are still planning on retiring it in favour of the F-35, an aircraft that is simply incapable of performing the same role. Even if the F-35 were inarguably an excellent aircraft, it's the wrong aircraft for a vitally important job. The A-10 is a really awful CAS platform. It's ungodly slow and so takes forever to get on station, the cannon is horrendously inaccurate, it's got a low mission capability rating and the entire concept of its design (low-flying ruggedness) was rendered obsolete with the invention of the manpad. I mean this is the platform that flew the least number of CAS missions of any capable airframe in Iraq 2, yet had the highest number of friendly fire incidents in absolute terms. If you're curious how, the cannon. All the other platforms are using fancy sensors and PGMs, while the A-10 is often going on gun runs with the Mk-1 human eye. The A-10's only two numerical advantages are loiter time and cost per flight hour, but drones exist now so it doesn't even have those unique positives anymore. The fact that soldiers love the A-10 is meaningless - sailors loved battleships too, even after they were turned into big metal deathtraps by airplanes. The troops just really like giant cannons, even when they're not actually useful anymore. >Servicemen don't want cutting-edge innovation - they want weapons systems that work reliably in the field and provide useful combat capabilities. Soviet jets could handle pebbles being blown into their air in takes. They could handle smacking down onto the tarmarc at a velocity that would cripple any modern American jet. They could be nearly shaken apart, but were just built so robustly they'd still make it home. Comparatively American jets were fragile prima donnas who needed huge amounts of maintenance and could only be flown on the most pristine of air fields. But once they were in the air? USAF planes showed exactly why all that TLC were more than worth it. I'd rather be sitting in an F-15 than any Soviet fighter ever put in the sky. At the risk of repeating myself, the ground pounder ideology of "rugged, reliable, lowest-possible-tech" is suicide in the air. In the air, technology advantages still play a huge role and so suffering a low mission capability rating is quite possibly worth it if you get a massive return on power (within reason of course).
• icelancer 7y ago
  Generally speaking your post is true, but as others have pointed out, the A-10 is rapidly becoming an unviable CAS platform due to MANPADS and other improvements in anti-air support. What the others didn't really point out is that the F-35 is definitely capable of what the A-10 does and more. It is faster, brings a drone-like attack platform, and can engage from much higher altitudes. And this is coming from someone (see my other comments) that doesn't particularly care for the JSF/F-35. The A-10 needs to go away, and the F-35 will be a more than capable replacement for it. Now, the other F-35 roles...
  • azernik 7y ago
    It has those survivability advantages, but it has nowhere near the loiter time of the A-10. Flying at higher altitude is also not necessarily safer - it puts you out of reach of MANPADS, but in clear view of larger SAMs. Evasive flying generally involves nap-of-the-earth flying, which hides from larger SAMs in radar cover and provides MANPADS and AA artillery with short engagement times. The A-10 is also built heavy and robust enough that MANPADS often aren't enough to bring it down - only vehicle-mounted or static air defense systems have big enough warheads. If anything, the problem with the A-10 is that it's overbuilt. Its cannon is built to take down tanks in an era when air-carried cannons probably can't get through modern tank armor, and is heavier than is strictly necessary for an anti-infantry role. The air force is looking at much lighter planes like the A-29 and AT-6B for low-threat environments, but could perhaps field a plane with similar loiter-time and survivability characteristics to the A-10 with less weight wasted on that ridiculous cannon.
    • hindsightbias 7y ago
      We dont ever commit troops until we have air superiority. A B-52 could loiter all day long and carry more bombs than a squadron. In fact, the USAF brags about B-1/52’s doing CAS. So whats the unique need for a fighter that costs as much to operate as a B-52. https://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-plane-cost-per-flight-hour-chart-2016-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-plane-cost-per-fli...
      • 7y ago
• nradov 7y ago
  Times have changed. The B-1B is now generally regarded as the finest close air support aircraft ever made. Compared to the A-10C, the B-1B can get on station faster, loiter longer, carry more precision weapons, and has better sensors and communications.
  • tech2 7y ago
    And only costs 40x as much as the A-10 ;)
• zipwitch 7y ago
  What does the F-35 actually offer in the field that couldn't be provided by a cheaper, simpler, more reliable weapons system? It offers Lockheed Martin one-point-five trillion dollars, much of which will be spent in key Congressional districts. That's all. I suspect that those responsible for making decisions about the F-35 are perfectly fine with this. Rhetoric aside, our government and military appear to think they exist in a world where direct Great Power military conflict is not a possibility. The F-35 seems perfectly adequate to swiftly wreck anywhere on Earth that is not Europe, China, Japan, Russia or India. And that seems to be our actual goal in terms of capabilities for the immediate future.
  • LoSboccacc 7y ago
    I mean the cynic in me agrees there's a lot, and I mean a lot, of porking barrels going on, but at some point you are going to have to build unreliable bleeding edge systems so that the next generation can become mass market sucks to be an early adopter, but this is no different than a gen0 Apple hardware, to draw some parallels. what really gets me is that because of rules upon rules on acquisition, making such thing and marketing them as they really are (tech demonstrator, prototypes, unrefined products, whatever you want to call them) would never fly. you have to twist those as great budgeting opportunities, inflate the earning options of export versions etc etc. it's like generations of rotten politics coming into play, portraying it as a greedy company and some unscrupulous congressmen is not wrong per se but a little reductive.
    • pas 7y ago
      The rules are always flexible enough. They never matter. The power structure, the actual humans making decisions are all that is important. And currently that behemoth is hell bent on not giving a fuck about itself, its components [the humans] are mostly looking out for themselves, there's not enough institutional inertia to change this, etc. I'm not saying it needs to be dismantled, torched to the ground, blablabla, but of course there needs to be deep, systematic, qualitative and quantitative changes. Personnel, ideology/dogma, leadership, training, culture, process, structure. "Congress" (or more precisely the upper echelon of the power structure - Congress/courts/administration are just the venues where the show happens) is in a gridlock over moral issues, that means everything else is at best performing at the level of the status quo, at worse things become chips in the very high-stakes poker game.
• scotty79 7y ago
  > ... suitable replacement for the ageing A-10. It's the finest close support aircraft ever made ... I'm actually quite happy that they are focusing on theoretical weapon F35, not a practical upgrade to a practical weapon. I'm hoping theoretical weapon will be used less. I think modern weaponary is so muderous that we should be focusing more on its role as a deterrent (in which being hyperadvanced might help) not the practical aspects (how efficiently it helps people to kill people when in use).
  • Gibbon1 7y ago
    Be happy. The F35's going to be used about 2/3 less because it costs about three times more to fly.
    • hutzlibu 7y ago
      Yes, thats why more and more drones will be the cheap replacement. And in a not so distant future .. we might probably see a swarm of cheap drones just overwhelm that awesome F35
      • ceejayoz 7y ago
        Part of the goal of the F-35 is to serve as a mini-AWACS command and control aircraft for groups of drones.
  • CapricornNoble 7y ago
    A big reason why casualty rates in wars have steadily declined is BECAUSE modern weaponry is so efficient.
    • scotty79 7y ago
      Just own casualties or total casualties on both sides of the conflict?
      • CapricornNoble 7y ago
• myrandomcomment 7y ago
  Having been on the receiving end of of an A-10 fire support mission more than once, I can speak for the effectiveness of the job they do. Their time on on target is the key to their effectiveness. They are flying tanks. I do not really care the politics of the the replacement, just that the replacement is just as effective. Lives depend on this. It should not be a pissing contest between political views but what just works. As a former grunt I just want my ass saved.
  • pas 7y ago
    Would a plane better at loitering be able to provide more useful fire support? Or is that simply solved by having more A-10s and cycling them more? (Maybe that's the cost economics problem that the department can't justify? So fuck logic let's just shift the cost structure and pour trillions into a new plane that might look better in the accounting tables?)
    • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      If the guys on the ground are having a no good very bad day then having fewer aircraft that can loiter longer is likely going to be better because every time an aircraft shows up there's a ramp up period while the pilot figures out WTF is going on down there and that ramp up period comes with reduced effectiveness and increased risk to the guys on the ground. Also, time to target is very important. An F15 with the wrong munitions that's seconds away at mach 2 is much more helpful than an A10 that can put the hurt on an entire tank company but is minutes away.
    • patrickk 7y ago
      Here's an interesting article, some quotes So if the A-10 was never going to be around in enough numbers, what could be done? Only one group had enough distance from the Air Force and enough independent money to consider a viable alternative: buying a cheap, lightweight attack plane on their own. That was the Navy SEALs. A group of them met with the Secretary of the Navy in 2006 to tell him about the problems they faced with getting good enough air support. Like other American combat troops in Afghanistan, the SEALs sometimes found that high-tech gear couldn't reliably get the job done, or that cheaper, lower-tech solutions worked better. This is how the US military almost adopted the A-29 Super Tucano, a $4 million turboprop airplane reminiscent of WWII-era designs that troops wanted, commanders said was "urgently needed," but Congress refused to buy. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8qxzyv/low-and-slow https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8qxzyv/low-and-slow
• nnq 7y ago
  The US army is not lacking in capability... you have an excess of it! What you'll earn by having this probably-prototype put into production is tons of valuable data about what works in production, what to improve, what components fails first, how that single-airframe stuff can be made cheaper and more reliable etc. Based on this data nobody else will have, engineers will be able to design weapon systems (think even ML-asysted design based of v2.0 based on telemetric data gathered over decades etc.) nobody else will be able to compete with even if F-35 is a flop. I imagine this is why people fret about the Turkey thing, all this is about the data (that you wouldn't want Russian systems to get a copy of) not about the flying brick. Overall, putting boring reliable tech in production does not generate much useful data. Putting unreliable prototypes does. And it's all about techno-military supremacy long-term game here, not losing or winning one little war in a country you don't care about. Now about the pilots and soldiers... yeah, you're doing R&D in "production" (where "production" == "warfare" here), (the wrong) people will be killed, there will be a blood price paid for all this technological advancement, but in the end you'll benefit from it. ...only thing I find slightly horrifying is that this mindset (of "screw the 'client', let'd do some R&D in production to get unique insights and special competitive advantage from it" - that has already sipped into commercial hardware and software for a long time btw), creates an incentive to "gather more and better data" and when this translate to "wage more war" it doesn't bode well...
  • sjtindell 7y ago
    Good points above about lack of reliability and wasteful spending. I also agree with this comment, although it’s incredibly expensive (imagine what the Valley could do with $1.5 trillion) the data is hard to put a price on and keeps us out in front of potential future enemies.
    • hpkuarg 7y ago
      > imagine what the Valley could do with $1.5 trillion They could finally build some high-density apartment buildings ;-)
      • kindatrue 7y ago
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• afpx 7y ago
  This is a useful perspective. Thanks. I have some colleagues who work in training at DoD. We often discuss how weapon systems (and training) could be vastly improved if well-defined use cases, requirements, and experience design were sketched out before weapon systems were sent to Congress for procurement. Unfortunately, oftentimes these bills are bloated with ‘advanced technology’ so that the contractor pie is split across enough districts to get a budget line item.
• arisAlexis 7y ago
  maybe the high level army hierarchy is expecting different war conditions than the Army and the Marines. Much in the like of drones, killing robot machines, remote lasers etc.
  • neuronic 7y ago
    Case in point: "China Unveils New Armoured Vehicle Capable Of Launching 12 Suicide Drones" https://www.defenseworld.net/news/24744/China_Unveils_New_Armoured_Vehicle_Capable_Of_Launching_12_Suicide_Drones https://www.defenseworld.net/news/24744/China_Unveils_New_Ar...
• shitgoose 7y ago
  building a bloated, overpriced product that solves world's problems, but cannot accomplish a simple task it was meant for - so it is not just in the software world, eh?
• alexhutcheson 7y ago
  > What does the F-35 actually offer in the field that couldn't be provided by a cheaper, simpler, more reliable weapons system? I've yet to hear a good answer to that question. I think this line of criticism stems from confusing two mission types which are superficially similar, but actually have very different requirements: - Attack missions like Close Air Support involve hitting enemy tactical targets on or near the battlefield. In recent conflicts the US has been involved in, these have mostly been in very permissive environments (limited defenses except MANPADs). This is the mission most people are thinking of when they talk about how great the A-10 is, or suggest buying the A-29. - Strike missions involve hitting targets that might be deep behind enemy lines, protected by multiple layers of radar, air defenses, etc. This is much more difficult to do, and is getting harder as radar, fighter aircraft, and AA missiles improve. Doing it successfully against even a moderately equipped enemy requires aircraft with higher-end and more specialized capabilities than you would need for typical "Attack" roles. You might notice that Strike is the second word in Joint Strike Fighter. That's not a coincidence - the strike capability is the major distinguishing feature of the aircraft, and what drives a lot of its requirements (stealth, decoys, etc.) The fact that it can also do a decent job at Attack missions is a bonus, but the US has a lot of F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s who can also handle that role in a permissive environment for the foreseeable future. This blog post explains the distinction in more detail than I'd be able to: https://www.navalgazing.net/Strike-Warfare https://www.navalgazing.net/Strike-Warfare