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Another "praise the Raptor" article

Uncle Fester said:
"Sweep 11, 12, north group BRA 020 at thirty, high, hot, heavy, hostile, commit!"
"I'm sorry Dave...I can't do that. You're jeopardizing the mission."
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"What are you doing Dave?, I saw what you told command, I can read lips"


For those who don't follow, here's the condensed version..

I feel it makes more sense than the actual movie

 
miniaircraft15.jpg
Maybe they could downsize the F-35 and really stretch the budget dollars...
 
Junkball said:
I don't really understand the possiblity of controlling UCAV's from a sort of 'mothership' A/C (say an F-22 for argument's sake), when a pilot is often task-saturated at the controls of ONE aircraft, much less directing a 'swarm-type squadron' all over the hostile skies.

'Spose some HAL 9000-type AI junk would help things out though.
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Like you've said, it all just depends on how automated and networked such machines get, and how sophisticated a computer the "mother ship" is.

Again, I'm just a civvy college student here, but if I were guessing I'd say in the next 20-30 years the biggest problems with this idea will not be in practicality of design or AI, but in terms of security, stealth, affordability and resistance to countermeasures.
 
It would be interesting to see the, I'm sure thousands, of requirement and design changes the government specified over the years it took to develop the F-22.

Sure, we can blame the contractor but having worked on developing a couple of ACAT 1 programs over the last ten years it is a surprise anything gets built with the byzantine DoD acquisition program running the show.

DoD Agile development may even be worse if my current experience is any guide.
 
Pugs said:
It would be interesting to see the, I'm sure thousands, of requirement and design changes the government specified over the years it took to develop the F-22.

Sure, we can blame the contractor but having worked on developing a couple of ACAT 1 programs over the last ten years it is a surprise anything gets built with the byzantine DoD acquisition program running the show.

DoD Agile development may even be worse if my current experience is any guide.
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Concur, and the more bells and whistles an aircraft or weapon systems has, the more time it takes to get prime contractor to get a product to Developmental Test Squadrons so they can shake it down for Spec compliance after the very tight knothole of flight clearance process by an small army of performance monitors. Once it gets through that lengthy "phase", it has to be certified ready for Operational Test and production quality articles given to the Operational Test Squadrons. Meanwhile, this drawn out process creates opportunity for requirements creep and dilemma of technology refresh (after Critical Design Review, configuration is frozen yet by time a system is ready for testing, many times processors inherent in any aircraf tor weapon design are typically obsolete or no longer available).

And adding more complication to the mix, despite numerous attempts to reform the acquisition process, there a myriad of reports and documents that have be churned out to get through the Acquisition Milestones.

That said, author of the article is totally wrong about contractors being motivated to draw out the developmental process to make more profit. The nonrecurring engineering effort to bring an aircraft or weapon system into production rarely, if ever, brings profit to a company. They want to get to production as soon as possible because that is where they make their money. Often times, they invest quite a bit to propose products as well as get a product developed sufficiently to get it through developmental testing and into production.
 
heyjoe said:
Often times, they invest quite a bit to propose products as well as get a product developed sufficiently to get it through developmental testing and into production.
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Yep, look at the F/A-18G. The company spent lots of their own money in development knowing the Navy was going to need a Prowler replacement and while we diddled around rewinging jets in St Augustine they developed the plan on their own. They should be rewarded for that.

I think the first time I spent time in the G sim in St Louis was 1995 (and it had been up for a while) and I don't know when the Navy first got aboard but McDonnell was working on it before they became Boeing and what I provided input on varied a lot to end up like it the sim I flew in 2005.
 
Don't forget to throw in the extra expenses that come when you deal with the Federal Government. How much of that developement cost was spent complying with things like sexual harassment training, diversity, equal opportunity, making sure that you had enough minority and female owned sub-contractors and political contributions?
 
JIMC5499 said:
.... much of that development cost was spent complying with things like sexual harassment training, diversity, equal opportunity, making sure that you had enough minority and female owned sub-contractors and political contributions...
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All important criteria when considering the war-fighting potential of our military arsenal ... you know; the kind of things that make our enemies quake w/ fear and lay awake nights ....

Pray, let us not be so dismissive of what 'really' counts .... ??? :D
 
I'm kinda curious how you old-timers managed without weekly reminders not to drink and drive and monthly reminders not to have sex with underage, severely intoxicated girls.

On a serious note, what's the solution to the acquisition mess?
 
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