9 ms·

Highway landing and take-off on its own is useless. F35 requires extensive machinery to maintain, in needs proper airport and hangars. It is not possible to op

Highway landing and take-off on its own is useless. F35 requires extensive machinery to maintain, in needs proper airport and hangars. It is not possible to operate it somewhere from forest! And vertical landing/takeoff can not support any load, it can not even be fully fuelled! In Czechia we are replacing Gripens that can operate from almost anywhere. It only needs a few hundred meters of road, and single truck to refuel and restock ammunition. Our new F35 will only be able to operate from a single runway in entire country!

prmoustache 3y ago
It still saves you on cost and space to host backup airstrips in case your country enter at war if you can share part of it with civil use.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Those motorway strips were all over the place in Geany during the Cold War. Most, if not all, got built back since. The idea of operating modern milizary aircraft from ad-hoc and improbvised airfields is nothing new. Easier to do with s/vtols so, added bonus for aircraft being carrier rated.
chipsa 3y ago
It's vertical landing, not vertical take off. It's still a short rolling take off. I actually wouldn't be suprised to find they do a short rolling landing too (rather than go full hover, use the lift fan to allow them to land at lower than normal stall speed would be). They've tested the rolling landing on board the HMS QE And yes, for full maintenance, you do need need a proper airport and hangars. But for a quick refuel/arm and launch, you don't need that much. It's a trade off in capabilities: do you want to have a highway strip launch capability, or do you want something that is much less likely to get shot down. It's doubtful that the F-35 will only be able to operate at a single runway, unless your country only has one runway. It should be capable of operating off nearly any concrete runway you have (highways are typically not constructed to the same standards as a runway).
- Thoeu388 3y ago
  From what I know, we only have single military airport capable of supporting F-35. Fully loaded F35 needs 2.5 km of high quality concrete. It also needs extensive overhaul after every flight to maintain stealth coating. There is no "quick refual/arm" with stealth, it is more like operating Space Shuttle! There are also civilian airports, but we would propably run out of those very soon. And using civilian infrastructure for military purposes (like bombing foreign country) would not be politically very digestible!
  - thunderbird120 3y ago
    >It also needs extensive overhaul after every flight to maintain stealth coating. There is no "quick refual/arm" with stealth, it is more like operating Space Shuttle! I don't know where you heard that but it's completely untrue. Some older radar absorbent material required intensive maintenance but the F-35 is not like that. It's not that much more difficult to maintain than a previous generation fighter. It would be completely impractical to operate if you needed to completely overhaul it every flight.
    - Thoeu388 3y ago
      Right now that is not verifiable. It is a clasiffied information, only supported by claims from manufacturer. And maintaince cost is already dispuded at court in Switzerland. >It would be completely impractical to operate if you needed to completely overhaul it every flight. And? Maybe it is every 2nd or 10th flight, that does not make it much more practical. Cost for operating F35 is astronomical. Old Soviet airplanes we had could take of from grassy fields!
      - avereveard 3y ago
        And their circle of hit probability with preprogrammed missiles is misured in hundreds meters instead of a handful. The war for which they were built never materialised, and their performances now largely obsolete. And who's going to sell you replacement parts anyway if your principal adversary is also your plane supplier? You want suppliers that don't threaten to nuke you every other week. Soviet planes came at a much higher cost...
ajuc 3y ago
That's what people were complaining about in Poland in 00s when we bought F-16 in addition to our MiG-29. That the airplanes will be hard to maintain, aren't as rugged, can't handle street landing and improvised conditions. There was a huge scandal because one of the F-16 was flown from USA to Poland and did emergency landing on the way because of some minor technical issue. 20 years later and we lost two MiG-29 to bad maintenance and no F-16.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  That's because the F-16s might be in (and even 'owned by') Poland, but they're for the defense of the US. We're not going to let them fall apart.
- Amiable5326 3y ago
  No idea where Poland got that idea about F-16s as they have a reputation for being a reliable and robust fighter even before Poland purchased the planes, unlike the MiG-29 which is a maintenance queen (particularly the engines) and has a reputation for being a mediocre plane whose career mainly consists of being shot of out of the sky.
  - ajuc 3y ago
    There was a competition between F-16 and Grippen :)
consumer451 3y ago
One of the coolest things about the Gripen is the support infra. Even while in the fancy hangers, all support equipment is in 20 foot containers. This makes it very mobile when the fancy runway gets a few holes put into it. Also, only one professional soldier and a few conscripts can service the jet, all while standing on the ground, with mostly automotive style tools. The efficiency of turnaround is something that is incomparable to all other fast jet systems of which I am aware. The most informed analyst on this matter appears to be Justin Bronk [0] If I was an F-35 buyer, I would also buy some more Gripen-C if at all possible. That should be the "High/Low" mix in 2023 and beyond. If I was king of "The West," I would have had sent all available Gripens to Ukraine months ago. [0] https://www.rusi.org/news-and-comment/in-the-news/ukraines-top-guns-need-new-jets-win-war https://www.rusi.org/news-and-comment/in-the-news/ukraines-t... [oops, around the Economist paywall] https://archive.is/gOKqZ https://archive.is/gOKqZ
pxmpxm 3y ago
In Czechia we Never any seen any Čech actually use that silly term...

prmoustache 3y ago

It still saves you on cost and space to host backup airstrips in case your country enter at war if you can share part of it with civil use.

hef19898 3y ago
Those motorway strips were all over the place in Geany during the Cold War. Most, if not all, got built back since. The idea of operating modern milizary aircraft from ad-hoc and improbvised airfields is nothing new. Easier to do with s/vtols so, added bonus for aircraft being carrier rated.

chipsa 3y ago

It's vertical landing, not vertical take off. It's still a short rolling take off. I actually wouldn't be suprised to find they do a short rolling landing too (rather than go full hover, use the lift fan to allow them to land at lower than normal stall speed would be). They've tested the rolling landing on board the HMS QE And yes, for full maintenance, you do need need a proper airport and hangars. But for a quick refuel/arm and launch, you don't need that much. It's a trade off in capabilities: do you want to have a highway strip launch capability, or do you want something that is much less likely to get shot down. It's doubtful that the F-35 will only be able to operate at a single runway, unless your country only has one runway. It should be capable of operating off nearly any concrete runway you have (highways are typically not constructed to the same standards as a runway).

Thoeu388 3y ago
From what I know, we only have single military airport capable of supporting F-35. Fully loaded F35 needs 2.5 km of high quality concrete. It also needs extensive overhaul after every flight to maintain stealth coating. There is no "quick refual/arm" with stealth, it is more like operating Space Shuttle! There are also civilian airports, but we would propably run out of those very soon. And using civilian infrastructure for military purposes (like bombing foreign country) would not be politically very digestible!
- thunderbird120 3y ago
  >It also needs extensive overhaul after every flight to maintain stealth coating. There is no "quick refual/arm" with stealth, it is more like operating Space Shuttle! I don't know where you heard that but it's completely untrue. Some older radar absorbent material required intensive maintenance but the F-35 is not like that. It's not that much more difficult to maintain than a previous generation fighter. It would be completely impractical to operate if you needed to completely overhaul it every flight.
  - Thoeu388 3y ago
    Right now that is not verifiable. It is a clasiffied information, only supported by claims from manufacturer. And maintaince cost is already dispuded at court in Switzerland. >It would be completely impractical to operate if you needed to completely overhaul it every flight. And? Maybe it is every 2nd or 10th flight, that does not make it much more practical. Cost for operating F35 is astronomical. Old Soviet airplanes we had could take of from grassy fields!
    - avereveard 3y ago
      And their circle of hit probability with preprogrammed missiles is misured in hundreds meters instead of a handful. The war for which they were built never materialised, and their performances now largely obsolete. And who's going to sell you replacement parts anyway if your principal adversary is also your plane supplier? You want suppliers that don't threaten to nuke you every other week. Soviet planes came at a much higher cost...

ajuc 3y ago

That's what people were complaining about in Poland in 00s when we bought F-16 in addition to our MiG-29. That the airplanes will be hard to maintain, aren't as rugged, can't handle street landing and improvised conditions. There was a huge scandal because one of the F-16 was flown from USA to Poland and did emergency landing on the way because of some minor technical issue. 20 years later and we lost two MiG-29 to bad maintenance and no F-16.

pessimizer 3y ago
That's because the F-16s might be in (and even 'owned by') Poland, but they're for the defense of the US. We're not going to let them fall apart.
Amiable5326 3y ago
No idea where Poland got that idea about F-16s as they have a reputation for being a reliable and robust fighter even before Poland purchased the planes, unlike the MiG-29 which is a maintenance queen (particularly the engines) and has a reputation for being a mediocre plane whose career mainly consists of being shot of out of the sky.
- ajuc 3y ago
  There was a competition between F-16 and Grippen :)

consumer451 3y ago

One of the coolest things about the Gripen is the support infra. Even while in the fancy hangers, all support equipment is in 20 foot containers. This makes it very mobile when the fancy runway gets a few holes put into it. Also, only one professional soldier and a few conscripts can service the jet, all while standing on the ground, with mostly automotive style tools. The efficiency of turnaround is something that is incomparable to all other fast jet systems of which I am aware. The most informed analyst on this matter appears to be Justin Bronk [0] If I was an F-35 buyer, I would also buy some more Gripen-C if at all possible. That should be the "High/Low" mix in 2023 and beyond. If I was king of "The West," I would have had sent all available Gripens to Ukraine months ago. [0] https://www.rusi.org/news-and-comment/in-the-news/ukraines-top-guns-need-new-jets-win-war https://www.rusi.org/news-and-comment/in-the-news/ukraines-t... [oops, around the Economist paywall] https://archive.is/gOKqZ https://archive.is/gOKqZ

pxmpxm 3y ago

In Czechia we Never any seen any Čech actually use that silly term...