4 ms·

How the F-35 triggered TOPGUNs Biggest Syllabus Revamp in 4 decades

10 points by bkohlmann 6y ago

ruytlm 6y ago
This article takes an awful lot of words to say not much, and it is entirely speculative on any of the details of the alleged syllabus revamp, as "The U.S. Navy has stayed tight-lipped about the specifics of its new Lightning II syllabus". Every comment about the content of the syllabus is speculative: >"Other changes the F-35C is likely to bring to the existing TOPGUN course include.." >"It’s very possible that TOPGUN has introduced tactics that.." >"The long-range BVR engagements are likely to be where the biggest changes have come.." >"The length of the course suggests that the F-35C syllabus likely follows that of the Super Hornet in terms of core elements.." All it is really saying is: TOPGUN has graduated its first two F-35C pilots. Under current structures, these pilots will return to their units, and likely share some of what they've learned. Their training was likely based on the existing Super Hornet training but redeveloped to suit the F-35C, which serves a different combat role. The rest reads like some bastard child of an undergraduate essay and attempts at SEO. I resent that so much of the web has become this amplification of an ounce of signal into a ton of noise.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Agreed, this article is a nothing burger. The US air doctrine (excluding Marines) is air dominance at any cost, hence the F-22 and F-35 prices. We'll see how well that works with such small inventories. (Less than 200 F-22's were made.) For those not familiar with current stealth, it absorbs radar, so are invisible to normal radar detection.
  - scarier 6y ago
    A couple of minor quibbles: The Marine Corps has an absolutely massive investment in the F-35 program, implying a willingness to risk a core mission set (FW CAS) in favor of the things the F-35 is good at. Also, there's a lot more to stealth than radar absorption--arguably, the cornerstone of the technology is aircraft shaping to reflect radar returns in a direction away from the transmitter.
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      No, most Marines aircraft are not stealthy. No, actually the latest stealth completely absorbs radar waves. Get your facts straight.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Almost invisible and only to the type of radar it has been tuned against which usually means the fire control radar of fighters and missiles.
oxAAAFFB 6y ago
This article is everything that’s wrong with internet media distribution. I’m traveling and my data overseas is very restricted in bandwidth. It takes a long time for the text to even load. And the text is among the first things to be loaded. And things are displayed as they are loaded because of course they designed it that way. And so I have to sit there reading a few lines at a time before another image or formatting element is loaded, shifting the entire column of text randomly in one direction or another. The fucking text randomly moves as I am trying to read it. It’s like it was designed to torture people. And the cherry on top is that it’s not even fucking necessary, as HN demonstrates, because a lean webpage could load everything in a fraction of a second. But no, everyone things it’s a good idea to pass around a fucking megabyte of JavaScript just to read filler articles. Good job. Good. And thanks to the writhing inbred freak that is modern JavaScript, I get to enjoy another form of tech enlightenment which is that every time I scroll slightly upwards the fucking dynamic title bar pops down and blocks the text that I was reading. And then I scroll down and it goes away, ruining the alignment of the text with the top of the screen which I maintain to aid my reading. And like a tenacious torturer the fucking title bar pops up and down and up and down. I am living forever in the insane JavaScript bouncy house praying to god that I can find some way to kill myself to make the pain stop.

10 points by bkohlmann 6y ago

This article takes an awful lot of words to say not much, and it is entirely speculative on any of the details of the alleged syllabus revamp, as "The U.S. Navy has stayed tight-lipped about the specifics of its new Lightning II syllabus". Every comment about the content of the syllabus is speculative: >"Other changes the F-35C is likely to bring to the existing TOPGUN course include.." >"It’s very possible that TOPGUN has introduced tactics that.." >"The long-range BVR engagements are likely to be where the biggest changes have come.." >"The length of the course suggests that the F-35C syllabus likely follows that of the Super Hornet in terms of core elements.." All it is really saying is: TOPGUN has graduated its first two F-35C pilots. Under current structures, these pilots will return to their units, and likely share some of what they've learned. Their training was likely based on the existing Super Hornet training but redeveloped to suit the F-35C, which serves a different combat role. The rest reads like some bastard child of an undergraduate essay and attempts at SEO. I resent that so much of the web has become this amplification of an ounce of signal into a ton of noise.

redis_mlc 6y ago
Agreed, this article is a nothing burger. The US air doctrine (excluding Marines) is air dominance at any cost, hence the F-22 and F-35 prices. We'll see how well that works with such small inventories. (Less than 200 F-22's were made.) For those not familiar with current stealth, it absorbs radar, so are invisible to normal radar detection.
- scarier 6y ago
  A couple of minor quibbles: The Marine Corps has an absolutely massive investment in the F-35 program, implying a willingness to risk a core mission set (FW CAS) in favor of the things the F-35 is good at. Also, there's a lot more to stealth than radar absorption--arguably, the cornerstone of the technology is aircraft shaping to reflect radar returns in a direction away from the transmitter.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    No, most Marines aircraft are not stealthy. No, actually the latest stealth completely absorbs radar waves. Get your facts straight.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Almost invisible and only to the type of radar it has been tuned against which usually means the fire control radar of fighters and missiles.

oxAAAFFB 6y ago

This article is everything that’s wrong with internet media distribution. I’m traveling and my data overseas is very restricted in bandwidth. It takes a long time for the text to even load. And the text is among the first things to be loaded. And things are displayed as they are loaded because of course they designed it that way. And so I have to sit there reading a few lines at a time before another image or formatting element is loaded, shifting the entire column of text randomly in one direction or another. The fucking text randomly moves as I am trying to read it. It’s like it was designed to torture people. And the cherry on top is that it’s not even fucking necessary, as HN demonstrates, because a lean webpage could load everything in a fraction of a second. But no, everyone things it’s a good idea to pass around a fucking megabyte of JavaScript just to read filler articles. Good job. Good. And thanks to the writhing inbred freak that is modern JavaScript, I get to enjoy another form of tech enlightenment which is that every time I scroll slightly upwards the fucking dynamic title bar pops down and blocks the text that I was reading. And then I scroll down and it goes away, ruining the alignment of the text with the top of the screen which I maintain to aid my reading. And like a tenacious torturer the fucking title bar pops up and down and up and down. I am living forever in the insane JavaScript bouncy house praying to god that I can find some way to kill myself to make the pain stop.