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> And the A10 is even lower-altitude than that. So the window where you are vulnerable to MANPAD operator is less than of that AC-130. > Welcome to the CAS ro

> And the A10 is even lower-altitude than that. So the window where you are vulnerable to MANPAD operator is less than of that AC-130. > Welcome to the CAS role. You .... Ah, yes, sorry, sir, looks like I need to take my Hazelnut Bianco Venti Latte and get out of your lawn, sir? > AC-130 has a ton of flares to misdirect enemy missiles automatically There is no ejection seats on AC-130. It would be never be operated where MANPADs are the norm. > A10 basically has no form of defense Oh ffs, A-10 is armoured with 15-40mm titanium plates, while AC-130 armoured with hopes and prayers. > so I'm not even sure if MANPADs can lock onto an F35 reliably If F-35 is at the MANPAD altitude then somebody (pilot) fucked greatly. F-35 in CAS role would never drop to MANPAD altitude and Shilka doesn't care about the plane stealthiness.

dragontamer 3y ago
> If F-35 is at the MANPAD altitude then somebody (pilot) fucked greatly. F-35 in CAS role would never drop to MANPAD altitude and Shilka doesn't care about the plane stealthiness. *Multi-role* fighter. F35 has gun-pods and absolutely is expected to play some CAS role. Its not a dedicated CAS aircraft, no. Its not as good as other aircraft at the job (AC-130 has more loiter time, bigger guns, etc. etc.), but in a war you use what you can get your hands on. -------- And suddenly talking about different weapons now that MANPADs are (probably) useless vs a Stealth Aircraft is the case-in-point of a multi-role fighter with multiple advanced capabilities. No weapon is immune to all weapons or defenses. But F35 is immune to most missiles due to the nature of stealth. Stealth is the modern armor: if you can't be seen or can't be tracked, you can't be hit. I wouldn't say that F35 is ideal for gatling-gun strafe runs of enemies, but the fact remains that it _CAN_ do the job if forced (thanks to those configurable gunpods). IMO, the war on the ground being fought right now? A system that can kill enemy Helicopters, perform SEAD, stealth capabilities and even do CAS (albeit a crappy job at it but "can do the job") is so obviously useful to the Ukrainian war that its hard to take any counter-argument seriously. > If F-35 is at the MANPAD altitude then somebody (pilot) fucked greatly. F-35 in CAS role would never drop to MANPAD altitude and Shilka doesn't care about the plane stealthiness. What's the Shilka's RADAR-guided gun supposed to do against an airplane it can't even see? Are the operators expected to aim and shoot purely on optics?
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  > F35 has gun-pods and absolutely is expected to play some CAS role > in a war you use what you can get your hands on In a war you don't use a multi-billion toy for it's marketing qualities. Because this is the way lose your multi-billion toy. > MANPADs are (probably) useless Beam riders (eg Starstreak). And as soon as you are -lt 2km then you are in IR/UV/Image recognition danger zone too, because: low, fast, precise - choose two. > albeit a crappy job at *sigh* No. It can't do CAS with it's guns. It can do precision drops for CAS (which were done by F-16 against fortified and non-moving targets quite effectively) but it never would be deployed in A-10 style, because that would be the one step before the embarrassment of losing a modern stealth fighter to some MANPAD. > an airplane it can't even see At 5-7km? Are you sure it can't be seen at all at that distance? It's a radar absorbing and a radar dispersing materials, not an invisibility cloak from Harry Potter. And yes, you can point it and spray-n-pray. With AAA rate of fire you can do this. > Are the operators expected to aim and shoot purely on optics? "but in a war you use what you can get your hands on"
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    > In a war you don't use a multi-billion toy for it's marketing qualities. Because this is the way lose your multi-billion toy. The most recent batch of F35A unit cost was $110 Million. I think you've got some severe misunderstandings about the nature of the F35 project. Its a multi-billion $$ *research* project, but each airplane is much cheaper than that. > The F-35’s price per unit, including ancillary costs like depot maintenance, ground support equipment, and spare parts is $110.3 million per F-35A, $135.8 million per F-35B, and $117.3 million per F-35C. This airplane is designed to be mass produced well. The mass production / upfront engineering costs are massive, but the airplane itself is... ya know... an airplane. > No. It can't do CAS with it's guns. That's why the F35 has gun-*pods*. It can equip the pods and turn into a CAS fighter. The F35's ability to equip gunpods and perform a CAS role is well known. Its not very good at it and has all kinds of restrictions, but it is in fact a use-case that had some level of design thought go into. ------------ > At 5-7km? Are you sure it can't be seen at all at that distance? It's a radar absorbing and a radar dispersing materials, not an invisibility cloak from Harry Potter. And yes, you can point it and spray-n-pray. With AAA rate of fire you can do this. Uh huh. https://media.cheggcdn.com/media/1fe/1fe5f562-7e84-4761-9bce-f9900f7efd9b/phpk6H02N https://media.cheggcdn.com/media/1fe/1fe5f562-7e84-4761-9bce... You know that bullets drop different heights given the distance to target, right? You can't just spray-and-pray at these distances, the difference between 5km and 5.5km is a lot of space that the "bullet drops". Ask _any_ hunter or marksman. They'll have tac-marks on their rifle for how high to aim even at 100m vs 300m shots. When you start dealing with much further out targets things get even worse, especially if you're "aiming up" and the ballistic trajectory of bullets starts to grow very complex. Doubly so when these aircraft are moving at 500mph+, so you need RADAR to calculate how far to lead the bullets. At 5km, an AA gun will take as long as 5 to 10 seconds before it reaches the target, so you need significant amounts of calculation on the Jet's direction-of-travel (and leading your shot) before you even have hopes of hitting it. Now yes, RADAR + Computers do the job well... against an A10 or otherwise aircraft devoid of stealth. If you blind the RADAR system and none of these computers work anymore, you pretty much have free reign and are nearly immune to bullets. You can't be tracked, you can't be calculated, you can't be hit. Hitting a 3D target maneuvering in the air is very difficult. That's why we built aimbot / Anti-air gun systems to calculate these things. All of those computers cease to function the minute the aircraft is stealth. If the computer doesn't know the distance, bearing, or velocity, it cannot compute and will not be able to hit the target. ------------------- But that doesn't change the fact that you're playing "Batman utility belt" with these weapon systems. We started with MANPADs and now we're talking AA guns, but in either case the stealth-capability of F35 defeats both so it doesn't matter. Are you gonna pull any other weapon out of your bag of arguments? We're like 3 or 4 arguments through weapon systems that would have made the A10 fully irrelevant and you're still struggling to make a coherent case on what weapon would reliably hit an F35.

dragontamer 3y ago

> If F-35 is at the MANPAD altitude then somebody (pilot) fucked greatly. F-35 in CAS role would never drop to MANPAD altitude and Shilka doesn't care about the plane stealthiness. *Multi-role* fighter. F35 has gun-pods and absolutely is expected to play some CAS role. Its not a dedicated CAS aircraft, no. Its not as good as other aircraft at the job (AC-130 has more loiter time, bigger guns, etc. etc.), but in a war you use what you can get your hands on. -------- And suddenly talking about different weapons now that MANPADs are (probably) useless vs a Stealth Aircraft is the case-in-point of a multi-role fighter with multiple advanced capabilities. No weapon is immune to all weapons or defenses. But F35 is immune to most missiles due to the nature of stealth. Stealth is the modern armor: if you can't be seen or can't be tracked, you can't be hit. I wouldn't say that F35 is ideal for gatling-gun strafe runs of enemies, but the fact remains that it _CAN_ do the job if forced (thanks to those configurable gunpods). IMO, the war on the ground being fought right now? A system that can kill enemy Helicopters, perform SEAD, stealth capabilities and even do CAS (albeit a crappy job at it but "can do the job") is so obviously useful to the Ukrainian war that its hard to take any counter-argument seriously. > If F-35 is at the MANPAD altitude then somebody (pilot) fucked greatly. F-35 in CAS role would never drop to MANPAD altitude and Shilka doesn't care about the plane stealthiness. What's the Shilka's RADAR-guided gun supposed to do against an airplane it can't even see? Are the operators expected to aim and shoot purely on optics?

justsomehnguy 3y ago
> F35 has gun-pods and absolutely is expected to play some CAS role > in a war you use what you can get your hands on In a war you don't use a multi-billion toy for it's marketing qualities. Because this is the way lose your multi-billion toy. > MANPADs are (probably) useless Beam riders (eg Starstreak). And as soon as you are -lt 2km then you are in IR/UV/Image recognition danger zone too, because: low, fast, precise - choose two. > albeit a crappy job at *sigh* No. It can't do CAS with it's guns. It can do precision drops for CAS (which were done by F-16 against fortified and non-moving targets quite effectively) but it never would be deployed in A-10 style, because that would be the one step before the embarrassment of losing a modern stealth fighter to some MANPAD. > an airplane it can't even see At 5-7km? Are you sure it can't be seen at all at that distance? It's a radar absorbing and a radar dispersing materials, not an invisibility cloak from Harry Potter. And yes, you can point it and spray-n-pray. With AAA rate of fire you can do this. > Are the operators expected to aim and shoot purely on optics? "but in a war you use what you can get your hands on"
- dragontamer 3y ago
  > In a war you don't use a multi-billion toy for it's marketing qualities. Because this is the way lose your multi-billion toy. The most recent batch of F35A unit cost was $110 Million. I think you've got some severe misunderstandings about the nature of the F35 project. Its a multi-billion $$ *research* project, but each airplane is much cheaper than that. > The F-35’s price per unit, including ancillary costs like depot maintenance, ground support equipment, and spare parts is $110.3 million per F-35A, $135.8 million per F-35B, and $117.3 million per F-35C. This airplane is designed to be mass produced well. The mass production / upfront engineering costs are massive, but the airplane itself is... ya know... an airplane. > No. It can't do CAS with it's guns. That's why the F35 has gun-*pods*. It can equip the pods and turn into a CAS fighter. The F35's ability to equip gunpods and perform a CAS role is well known. Its not very good at it and has all kinds of restrictions, but it is in fact a use-case that had some level of design thought go into. ------------ > At 5-7km? Are you sure it can't be seen at all at that distance? It's a radar absorbing and a radar dispersing materials, not an invisibility cloak from Harry Potter. And yes, you can point it and spray-n-pray. With AAA rate of fire you can do this. Uh huh. https://media.cheggcdn.com/media/1fe/1fe5f562-7e84-4761-9bce-f9900f7efd9b/phpk6H02N https://media.cheggcdn.com/media/1fe/1fe5f562-7e84-4761-9bce... You know that bullets drop different heights given the distance to target, right? You can't just spray-and-pray at these distances, the difference between 5km and 5.5km is a lot of space that the "bullet drops". Ask _any_ hunter or marksman. They'll have tac-marks on their rifle for how high to aim even at 100m vs 300m shots. When you start dealing with much further out targets things get even worse, especially if you're "aiming up" and the ballistic trajectory of bullets starts to grow very complex. Doubly so when these aircraft are moving at 500mph+, so you need RADAR to calculate how far to lead the bullets. At 5km, an AA gun will take as long as 5 to 10 seconds before it reaches the target, so you need significant amounts of calculation on the Jet's direction-of-travel (and leading your shot) before you even have hopes of hitting it. Now yes, RADAR + Computers do the job well... against an A10 or otherwise aircraft devoid of stealth. If you blind the RADAR system and none of these computers work anymore, you pretty much have free reign and are nearly immune to bullets. You can't be tracked, you can't be calculated, you can't be hit. Hitting a 3D target maneuvering in the air is very difficult. That's why we built aimbot / Anti-air gun systems to calculate these things. All of those computers cease to function the minute the aircraft is stealth. If the computer doesn't know the distance, bearing, or velocity, it cannot compute and will not be able to hit the target. ------------------- But that doesn't change the fact that you're playing "Batman utility belt" with these weapon systems. We started with MANPADs and now we're talking AA guns, but in either case the stealth-capability of F35 defeats both so it doesn't matter. Are you gonna pull any other weapon out of your bag of arguments? We're like 3 or 4 arguments through weapon systems that would have made the A10 fully irrelevant and you're still struggling to make a coherent case on what weapon would reliably hit an F35.