Boeing will build the US Air Force’s next air superiority fighter
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There's a reason for this - basically it is to keep the US' defense design and manufacturing capability functional and (don't laugh) cost-effective. If it all went to one company, y'know like launch capability, that one company could hold the government hostage financially and otherwise.Not shocking, looks like:
F35: Lockheed
B21: Northrup
NGABoeing
Each prime gets their plane. Not shocking whatsoever.
You know - like DOGE.
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It may eject the pilot, no guarantee the cockpit will eject first.But will the canopy open mid-flight and eject the pilot?
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The F-22 looks sexier over time because although it was criticized for how expensive it was to develop and continues to be to operate, the plane has some awe-inspiring maneuverability and unlike the F-35, appears to be capable of pulling off its primary mission.
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Maneuverability is important when it’s the 1970s, missiles still suck, and you have to put guns on your target. The F-22 was designed in the 80s, back when designers still behaved as if missiles sucked. Now we have missiles with high off-boresight cueing. You don’t need to point your nose at the thing you want to kill, and maneuvering is purely defensive to help you defeat an inbound missile.
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The F-22 is also much closer to being a one-trick pony. It's great at air-to-air combat. Air-to-ground, it only carries gravity bombs (unless something new has been integrated recently). They're guided, great, but stand-off range is severely limited. It can't carry the cruise missiles or anti-ship missiles or anti-radiation missiles that the F-35 is capable of firing. If the JSF program had followed the Raptor's design philosophy of extreme specialization, instead of the F-35 they'd have designed and procured four aircraft for air combat, strike, electronic warfare, and reconnaissance roles.
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I have a really hard time understanding how long-range rocket artillery can protect anyone from drones. HIMARS is not in any way an anti-aircraft system.
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It is indirect protection. It doesn't target in-air drones, but if you can get intel on where the drones are being stored, HIMARS was being used to hit that.
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That's because the B-52 and the F-15 were built with specific roles in mind, and execute those roles well. The F-22 is a fancy toy for shooting down weather baloons.
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The B-52 was built with the specific role of dropping nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union, something it has never done. Now it’s a conventional bomb and missile truck.
The F-15 was built with the specific role of competing with misconceived notions of the MiG-25, before the west discovered the MiG was actually a piece of shit. Now it’s a conventional bomb and missile truck.
It sounds like all we really want is a bomb and missile truck, but with stealth, and sensors, and comms.
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Gentle way to say it: there are a lot of people with very strong opinions about military stuff and war who don't understand the first thing about military stuff and war.
Not knowing that a HIMARS is a medium range indirect strike platform designed to strike static targets would be a good example of that.
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Maybe they can make it a dual utility role and designate it the F/U-47?
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In 1995, after getting 100% all my exams as a fifth grader, my parents delivered on their promise of letting me pick a model from a newly opened hobby store in the neighborhood. Neither did them, nor I realized at the time that it was selling much more sophisticated models that required sanding the rough edges, careful gluing, self-painting and everything. I was initially drawn to the F16 or the M1A1, but it was obvious to the clerk that I would be way over my head. Not wanting to let potential sale to slip by, he cheerfully suggested that I should choose the F-22 due to it being "the hot, cutting edge air superiority fighting machine". Certainly it wouldn't be due to the cleaner outline and larger pieces that would make assembly easier.
Needless to say, I failed miserably in putting it together. Never gotten to the painting stage, and hurt my fingers at multiple places fumbling with crazy glue.
Now 30+ years later, I'm still as clumsy as ever. Maybe if/when the "F-47" comes out, I'll be on the look out for my second model jet fighter.
Needless to say, I failed miserably in putting it together. Never gotten to the painting stage, and hurt my fingers at multiple places fumbling with crazy glue.
Now 30+ years later, I'm still as clumsy as ever. Maybe if/when the "F-47" comes out, I'll be on the look out for my second model jet fighter.
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Just put an Air Force One sticker on it, and you're done? Doesn't even have to be a two-seater, just gold-plate the pilot's seat and ... on second thoughts, this 47 probably won't live to see the plane fly.
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So what I'm hearing is we want an F-35.
And yeah, the F-15 as introduced to service was pretty much pure air-to-air. It only had pylons for Sparrow and Sidewinder. The mounting fixture existed for extra stores, but production aircraft didn't have the outer pylons fitted and didn't have the software for dropping air-to-ground ordnance. Early ones had the inner pylons wired for ground ordnance, but some later production removed that to save weight. The ones that could got the needed software later, but I don't think it was until after the Strike Eagle (F-15E) entered service in the late 1980s.
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Not to mention the B52 went from dropping nukes at high altitude to carpet bombing at high altitude then low altitude penetration, then back up again and now carries practically everything in inventory that moves mud. I wouldn't be surprised if they hang a bunch of the new AMI-260(?) missiles off of it with targets designated by the F22/F35/F47. Boy, F47 just rolls off the tongue like last night burrito doesn't it.
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Except with enough range to be useful in the Pacific without needing most of the fleet to be refuelers, plus AI, and optional crew, and a regional C&C node, and hookers.
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AIM-260 is going to be somewhat limited by the requirement that it fit in the same envelope as an AMRAAM. There are a couple programs that might be larger missiles (AIM-174 and LREW). If they are, they'd make more sense for a stand-off missile truck to carry, since they wouldn't fit in the internal bay of an F-22 or F-35 and would let the BUFF stay farther away from danger zones.
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That missile has a better range than any of the current AMRAAM models is why I suggested it and should fit current pylons. Longer ranged missiles would be even better.
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That, I'd love to see. Seriously. If someone can make a battery energy-dense enough to usefully power an electric ducted fan on a full-size aircraft for more than 3 minutes, that'd really be a breakthrough for all aviation.
(It won't be Tesla, that's for sure.)
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It's always a bit hard to tell details with missiles in development, because information is speculative (and maximum ranges against an agile target are likely to be quite a bit different from hitting something slow and lumbering) . That said, the publicly known goal for AIM-260 is at least 200 km of range. That is a decent improvement on AMRAAM, which is around 160-180 km for the most recent variants. Estimates for the range of China's PL-15 range from 200 km to 300 km, so depending on whether (and by how much) AIM-260 exceeds that 200 km range goal, it could be anywhere from slightly longer-ranged than a PL-15 to parity to much shorter-ranged. That's probably OK if you're in a stealthy fighter aircraft. It's not OK if you're in a B-52.
The R-37M Axehead is supposed to be an even longer-ranged missile intended for use against AWACS or tankers that would also be a likely countermeasure to the missile bus aircraft, so something that outranges that (or can shoot it down) is necessary for the technique to be practical. AIM-260 could have as little as half the range of Axehead if the most pessimistic range estimates for AIM-260 and the most optimistic for Axehead end up being accurate. It won't be as agile as an AMRAAM, but you don't need a lot of agility to keep a BUFF in your sights.
AIM-174 is an air-launched RIM-174, which has an official 240 km range against aerial targets when launched from the surface (unofficially, it may be somewhere between 350-450 km). It should gain range from an air launch, but they don't carry the booster stage of the surface-launched version and may lose some extra range if the motor was downsized for aerial carriage. Stencils on missiles photographed during exercises suggest the AIM-174 is about 60% the mass of a RIM-174, but I don't know how much the SRB booster weighs relative to the rest of the missile. That still means it's around 6 times as heavy as an AMRAAM, and the only thing seen carrying it so far is a Super Hornet.
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In that case, the BUFF could carry the full RIM-174. Assuming there could be rails and software to go with it.
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This is why the B-21 program should be expanded. It's got great capacity and range to bring a whole lot of munitions to a battle space.
Even it's dropping a drone swarm instead of missiles or bombs, it makes for a great skytruck, just like the B-52.
Oh, and it's already in service and actually functions, so that's kind of a big point in favor for the B-21.
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But then the USN would have to call the USAF for fighter support.
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I do believe that is already in the plan. The B21 is more than just the bomber role.
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Officially, only 2/3rds that of the F-15EX, though with far greater range, and stealth. But yes, that is one of the proposed duties, assuming it's sufficiently cheap and numerous to be used in such an opportunistic support role. That won't happen if it's used like the B-2, and "forward deployed" to only a quarter way around the planet from its targets.
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Or F/A. But really, the F, A, B, etc roles are obsolete and basically meaningless at this point; that was a distinction relevant until about 30 years ago, but no longer.
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Very true, just as the F117 and F111 are attack or tactical bombers, everything smaller with ordinance is F and everything larger with ordinance is B. Then you have the C, KC and so one.
But in the purest sense, the F35 is a tactical support and attack aircraft that can defend itself.
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Yeah, the whole A/F/C thing gets trounced on when the operators continually take the airframes so-carefully crafted by the acquisition folk and figure out how to stack/hang bombs in/on them. Bombs must be a real big thing, somewhere...
(apologies to my Army friends...)The mission utility of a particular airframe also depends to a certain extent on the operator. I recall when I was a command post airman our wing would send pilots and aircraft to (IIRC) the Montana Air National Guard for DACT (dissimilar aircraft combat training). The guard wing was flying A-37s (T-37 with slightly larger engines), and one squadron had this old-dude major who'd been flying that aircraft for decades. Our F-15 and F-4 pilots would come back from sorties against him beaten, uttering "He knows where I'll be even before I do..."
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True, but (I believe) only two as external stores because the Improved Common Pylon is only rated to 5,000 pounds and a RIM-174 is in the 3,000 pound range. Back in 2018 there were talks of developing a 20,000 pound pylon in anticipation of needing that much capacity for hypersonic missiles, but I haven't heard anything about that in the last few years. The bomb bay is just large enough to (probably) carry another pair - at least 1, definitely, but the usual rotary launcher for missiles is no bueno because they have a 1.57m wingspan and the bay doors open 1.8m (and they're 6.6 meters long to the bay's 8.5 meters, so no longitudinal stacking). There's going to be overlap, but my brain is not up to geometry today.
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With it being in service for the next 300 years I would bet they will come up with a proper pylon for one of the configurations. The B21 won't have enough internal storage for much beyond the current AMRAAM sized units, should they go that route with the B21.
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True dat. The AC-130 is probably the only one to still follow the old conventions.
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There was a fighter version of the F-111. Seven of them were built before it was canceled because it was overweight and was designed for fleet defense when the Navy changed its requirements to demand a dogfighter, so they took the F-111B's radar, missiles, and engines and had the F-14 built around them.
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I should have specified the production variant. Not the prototypes.
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UK likely giving this one a miss: "allies may hold off on ordering it after President Trump claimed the US would only sell a cut-down version. That is the opinion of Air Marshal (Retired) Greg Bagwell, President of the Air and Space Power Association"
https://www.forcesnews.com/usa/trumps-deal-maker-not-seller-after-claim-kill-switch-new-f-47-jets
https://www.forcesnews.com/usa/trumps-deal-maker-not-seller-after-claim-kill-switch-new-f-47-jets
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Very true. Economies of scale work against the B2, and we can't really afford for the B-21 to be a hangar queen that occasionally gets trotted out to fly a 14,000 mile round trip mission with four aerial refueling interludes just to drop 12,000 pounds of smart munitions on some red army surplus radar truck that hasn't been upgraded since the 1970s.
I was getting the B1 and B21 mixed up in terms of payload, so that's my bad. The B-21 can still carry a respectable payload, but at only 30,000 pounds you're right, it is on the lighter side.
According to what I've been able to gather, the big thing for the B-21 is that the maintenance and operation costs are expected to be $65,000 per flight hour, which is almost 1/3 that of the B1 Lancer and 1/2 that of the B2.
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