[PeriscopeDepth]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Don't get me wrong! I'll take more F-22's over F-35's in a heartbeat, but I'll take F-35 over the alternatives. F-35 is the next best thing to F-22, so I'm all for it. UCAV has one main drawback in my mind. I was going to write a long reply here, but I erased it since it really comes down to one word - adaptability. It lacks it big time, and the Air Force expects many to get shot down because of this one problem.

Again, you are overstating the threat. The fact is 99% of the time we will be bombing barbarians further into the stone age. I don't need a man that costs several million dollars to train flying a $70+ million airframe that isn't suited to loiter at radius AT ALL to do this. A robot that flies out to point X, can loiter at point X longer, carries the same two PGMs (or eight SDB on BRU-61 rack)that the F-35 does, and costs 1/4-1/3 as much is FAR more suited to this task. Both economically and in its capabilities. And the other 1% of that threat is Chinese. And the F-35 is utterly incapable of bringing the fight to one of the largest countries in the world and penetrating said country in depth in a denied access scenario. Not to mention that we WILL lose a bunch to the Chinese in 2020+. Far more than Desert Storm. And we all know the US public's opinion of casualties.

And as far as adaptability goes, I wouldn't call the F-35 the pinnacle of adaptability. Block I weapons integration will be JDAM/JSOW (though B model can't sling JSOW due to reduced weapons bay size) only for A2G. So for a long while, F-35 will NEED F-15E and F/A-18E/F for "mission support" (by which I mean the ability to sling anything that doesn't fit in F-35 weapons bay or simply isn't integrated because team J$F screwed the SDD phase so badly). $70+ million a pop for a manned VLO cow fighter spec'd interdictor that can only sling two JDAM/JSOW is f*@king ridiculous. There is no other way to see it.

Don't get me wrong though, the UCAV has it's place, especially the day that stealth is negated. however, it is not a pilot on site. A good way to put it - It's similar to having a video conference at a company, or having everyone all in one room. Video conference works, but it's not like having a physical presence so that you can direct the conference in the most effective manner.

BAD analogy. The assumption that you need a man in the cockpit to fly an airliner profile to a point where he pickles a GPS guided munition and then RTBs is completely ridiculous. The vast majority of Day 1/Raid 1 targets are fixed. And since 1991 UCAV's have been flying precision strike in the form of cruise weapons. Granted, there will be cases where you want to retarget the UCAV. But this should be done with a manned air presence directing the cow bomber UCAV to a different target. Not with the majority numbers of manned cow fighter interdictors.

And the day that stealth is negated is coming a lot sooner than you think if we whore out the tech manufacturing processes needed for it in the name of a business model. In the same way the Norwegians and Japanese sold the Soviets the tech they needed to make quiet submarines in the 1980s. Not to mention anything of hunting SAMs and DEW weapons.

In the first Gulf war, they were flying more than one pilot to an aircraft. Dunno what they are doing right now, but this negates that problem and has already been used.

We may have very well had a 2:1 manning ratio in '91 before the post Cold War cuts. But since then, the US military has had its nuts cut. And after we get out of Iraq, they WILL have more drawdowns. Which will make F-35 even more unaffordable. Keeping the cost of the F-35 down to halfway affordable absolutely requires mass buys by USAF/USN/USMC and export countries. Which is looking less and less likely. Especially if a Dem wins in November.

Not enough in my book. No one said 'why'? Just said it from what I read.

It really shouldn't be that surprising. Every time an aircraft is replaced and its operating costs are touted as being lower, it doesn't turn out that way. F-4->F-15->F-22 being another case.

This is the reason it exists, and the reason people much smarter than I keep making sure it exists.

The reason it exists is because we can't mass export the F-22 and mass export is where the money is. And I stopped believing that my government "knows better" a while ago. Government/nation more and more can be called Federated Trade Conglomerate. But that's a different thread.

PS. I forgot to talk about it's (the UCAV's) major vulnerability - It's SATCOM link. In an era where a state like China can shoot down a satillite, this is one tech I would not want to be 100% reliant on. One anti-sat missile and your whole strike force is left to fly it's waypoints on it's own and strike on it's own without any hope for mission re-targetting.

Another one is bandwith. There simply isn't enough SATCOM bandwith to run a large UCAV force currently. Both can be overcome through: tech advances in the next decade, as well as directing UCAV's through manned aircraft. When needed. Autonomous UCAVs aren't as big a problem as you make them out to be, just as autonomous Tomahawk missiles weren't. Don't think the UCAV has any more technical hurdles than a manned aircraft that supposedly fits three seperate mission roles into one airframe while VLO'd.

PD