JSF

[Tripp]

Thought this article was interesting (from the Aero-News Network):

SecDef Cohen Wants JSF

We usually think of "The Pentagon" as a pretty "tight-lipped" place. Today, the secretary threw the press a curve.
Reporters queried Cohen on a variety of subjects and both sides wrapped by thanking each other. Then, to everyone's surprise, Cohen asked the media, "No questions on the Joint Strike Fighter?"

"Do you want to say something?" a reporter dubiously asked.

"I do want to say something," Cohen boldly replied.

To everyone's surprise, the secretary then expressed his views on the importance of the Joint Strike Fighter, the military's next generation, multirole, strike aircraft designed to complement the Navy F/A-18 and the Air Force F-22 aircraft. The Senate Armed Services Committee had just
voted to cut about 25 percent of DoD's fiscal 2001 budget request for the plane.
"There have been a number of reports that have surfaced in the last day or so about the, quote, 'lack of support' within the services for the Joint Strike Fighter," he said. "I would like to be very clear about this.

"This aircraft is important not only to the Marine Corps, it is also equally important to the Air Force, which will depend for a very large number of the Joint Strike Fighter to fill its inventory in future years. It is also equally important to the Navy.

Cohen said it's "simply wrong" to conclude there is no need to support the Joint Strike Fighter just because certain aircraft, such as the F/A-18E/F model, are now coming off the production line and because funding has been secured for the F-22. He expressed his confidence that the JSF is the fighter aircraft of the future.

"The Air Force fully understands this," he said. "The Navy fully understands that it's not going to be the F/A-18E/F model that will provide the kind of capability and security for our fighters of the future. It will be the Joint Strike Fighter."

Expressing his personal support for the aircraft, as well of that of the services, Cohen said, "We will see the Joint Strike Fighter come into the inventory.

"This is not something that was mandated by either me or the department or the Office of Secretary of Defense. This is a program that was designed by, and offered by the services because they understood that they needed to have an aircraft that would serve the needs of the Marines, the Navy and the Air Force. And that's precisely what the Joint Strike Fighter is going to do.

"And so it continues to enjoy my strong support, just as I have supported the F-22 and the limited number of F/A-18E/F models. That was always within the Quadrennial Defense Review's recommendations. It was supported by the Joint Chiefs then, it was supported by the service chiefs, and it will be supported in the future. Thank you."

Edited by - Tripp on 18 May 2000

Edited by - Tripp on 18 May 2000

 

[Kenny Husin]

Speaking of the JSF, has it already been decided (between the X-32 or the X-35) which one will be the production JSF If the Navy is to get some, will there be a two-seat version It's been brought up before, but any update on the subject will be appreciated.
Thanks!

 

[Dave Shutter]

Kenny H: I think a big factor in the decision will depend on continued sucess of the Raptor, since the lockheed version is basicaly a "mini-F-22", with a single Raptor engine and a lot of the same systems and design features. If I had to bet, I'd bet on the Lockheed. Platform commonality is a huge money saver and you can expect to see as much of it as possible (no matter how dumb, or contrary to mission requirements) in future budgeting, especially under President Gore's future administration (God...please save us...one bolt of lighting...it's all I'm asking for!) That's why NATO all uses the same ammo, and it's what spawned concepts such as "strike/fighter" in the first place.
My $0.02.

Fly Navy!

D

 

[Phoenix]

Any democrats on this forum ?
Well, this all sounds OK, but when will these fighters go into production? 2020? Maybe 2034? Anyone know anything about it?

DEATH FROM ABOVE!

 

[Tripp]

quote:
You bring up a great point and it touches on a point that I've made several times throughout the Forum - which is that by the time this thing is ready, the human pilot may be obsolete. Not that that's a good thing - but it's just reality.


Case in point:

quote:
Global Hawk UAV Goes Trans-Atlantic Twice, Unrefueled

The Air Force's Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle excelled during two missions flown last week in support of its first international joint military force exercise, "Linked Seas '00." Winging its way toward Europe for the first time, Global Hawk Air Vehicle No. 4 took off from Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., May 8, and flew non-stop to Portugal, carried out some radar imagery tasks, and then returned to Eglin some 28 hours later.

During this flight, the UAV first traveled up the eastern coast of the United States, climbing to 51,000 feet where it demonstrated direct down-link of radar imagery to U.S. Army systems located at Ft. Bragg, N.C., and U.S. Navy systems onboard the USS George Washington, docked at Norfolk Naval Air Station, Va. Global Hawk then banked toward Europe, heading east across the Atlantic and passing north of the Azores Islands, enroute to Portugal. "While over Portugal, Global Hawk took classified radar imagery of targets in Portugal and the Madeira Islands, disseminating these images via Royal Air Force station Molesworth, U.K., to SOUTHLANT, regional command for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Supreme Allied Command Atlantic," said Lt. Col. Mike Trundy, deployment commander, Global Hawk Office, Reconnaissance Systems Program Office, Aeronautical Systems Center here, which is developing the new UAV for future Department of Defense applications. "The images were provided to regional commanders as intelligence data for amphibious (exercise) landings planned later in the week.

"This was the 50th successful mission for the Global Hawk Test and Demonstration Program with several "firsts," according to Trundy. "This was the first time Global Hawk -- normally housed at the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. -- was launched, and recovered from not one, but two, geographically-separated East Coast deployment sites: the Launch and Recovery Element at Eglin , and the Mission Recovery Element at the Joint Warfighting Center at Suffolk, Va.," the colonel explained.

"This mission was the first trans-oceanic crossing for Global Hawk; first successful operation of the UAV in international airspace, involving simultaneous, sequenced control among three Atlantic airspace regulatory agencies; and first demonstration of Global Hawk's unique reconnaissance capabilities for NATO units," Trundy added.

Another first: Global Hawk successfully demonstrated direct imagery dissemination from an Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance platform (itself) to the Army's Tactical Exploitation System, according to Trundy. "This also was the first UAV mission flown in one theater of operations while being controlled by another.

"During the Linked Seas 00 portion of the first sortie, we had some problems with the quality of the SAR (synthetic aperture radar) imagery," Trundy explained. "We fixed that by replacing a faulty SAR transmitter, once Global Hawk returned to Eglin, and ground-tested the entire unit prior to the second sortie, which began on Thursday, May 11."

Launching again from Eglin, Global Hawk was under the control of the LRE for this sortie. The MCE at Suffolk, which had multiple crews providing 24-hour-a-day mission coverage, monitored cruise operations and imagery collection and dissemination to the USS George Washington. Global Hawk returned to Eglin in good shape, with no maintenance actions required, following 14.1 hours of continuous flight during the program's 51st successful mission.

The Global Hawk program has flown a total of 627.6 hours since flight operations began in February 1998, according to Trundy. "This includes 19 Global Hawk sorties -- 344 hours -- dedicated to the demonstration and evaluation phase of the program since June 1999."

 

[Phoenix]

Personally, I don´t believe that human pilots will become obsolete. You can never flay the aircraft from a distance, like you could from the cockpit. During a combat, your view is a lot more limited if you´re using a remote camera and that´s a fact. I heard a lot of pilots say that. And they DO have a point.

DEATH FROM ABOVE!

 

[Dave Shutter]

A USMC EA-6B, sqaudron commander agrees with you 100 percent Pheonix! I met with one at the air show and we talked about new technologies, and the Pentagon's habit of "multi-rolling" everything to death to save $$$, namely the Super Hornet (which was parked next to us!)

Consider the recent Kosova air campaign where we almost ran out of conventional TLAM cruise missles and had to convert some Nuke's to regular ordnance. fifteen years ago, all those missions would have to have been carried out by conventional bombers, so in a way, pilots have already been replaced!

Yes, a 1v1 dogfight at high noon with exsisting 4th gen. planes will always be won by the pilot with the best recations and field of vision, but take into account that most actions in the immediate future will likely be precision strikes against roque states. Usually carried out at night during which time the pilot sees everything through radar, sensors, PNVS, LANTIRN or the nighthawk FLIR pod, systems that could easily be data-linked to a remote station.

People say that in the future that "pilots will be taken out of the plane", thinking that AI computers will take over. Everything I've seen and read says that's wrong, and the real focus of designers is that missions will be flown REMOTELY, allowing not only for higher performance aircraft (20g+) to be designed and pilots to not be immediatey at risk. I would say by looking at exsisting technology that that's not very far away at all. There were about a half dozen different remote vehicles at the air show as well, and let me just say that they may look like neat little toys on the Disovery channel but after seeing them up close, their support equipment and meeting the people that fly e'm that their operation is dead serious business and that they are the future!

A recent show on Disc. ("Science at War" I think) covered the Raptor, and an AF Maj. talked about the F-22. He said he could tell you anything you want to know about the plane except for three things: top speed, (with 75,000+lbs of total thrust at full AB, and a body of "advanced composites " I'm thinking Mach3+) exactly how stealthy,(invisible) and it's detection systems!(huhh!) He described the plane as a flying internet search engine: you ask it for information around you, and it gets it! He suggested that this technology is heading in the direction where pilots will someday have sensory input (sounds like Firefox)where the computer of the plane enables the pilot to have 360" perception. It will advance to a point where, on the EM battlefield of the future, your two eyes will be your two least effective tools!

The robots are coming! Get your wings while you still can!

John: Andrews AFB show pics are on the way!

Go Flyers!

D



Edited by - Dave Shutter on 23 May 2000

 

[Tripp]

Phoenix, you're right--nothing compares to actually being at the scene of an air strike, but I tend to agree with Dave. We're going to lose our jobs to the sim-jockeys.

The pilot is an expensive commodity. It costs $1.5 million to train him (or her), factor in a 10 year career, plus the price of aircraft.

Now think of inexpensive remotely controlled aircraft. To the bean counters in the Pentagon & Congress, $$$ dictates policy. I assume you saw Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace . Remember all the robot ground troops? Same thing--little expendable warriors.

Hopefully (for our sakes...), all of this is a very, very long way away.

Dave, hopefully Lindros will spark something for your Flyers tonight... At any rate, Colorado's going to clobber Dallas once and for all tonight...I can smell it.

 

[Dave Shutter]

Did you see the last game where the Devils won in Philly, talk about Attrition! LeClair checked a Devil into the glass and it buckled, allowing his head to hit a steel framing bracket head on at full speed! They spent five minutes mopping up the blood! I work in a huge sports resturaunt and the crowd AAHHED with every replay! This isn't a series! It's a war!

Go Flyers!

D

 

[Tripp]

quote:
Did you see the last game where the Devils won in Philly, talk about Attrition! LeClair checked a Devil into the glass and it buckled, allowing his head to hit a steel framing bracket head on at full speed! They spent five minutes mopping up the blood! I work in a huge sports resturaunt and the crowd AAHHED with every replay! This isn't a series! It's a war!

Go Flyers!

D




Holy Check into the Penalty Box, Batman! I didn't get to see the game, but I just saw the clip on ESPN's website. To quote Robert Duvall from Days of Thunder : "He didn't hit you, he rubbed you. And rubbin' is racin'." Welcome to the Big Show!

Aack! My Avs lost! D@%$ Dallas to

Edited by - Tripp on 23 May 2000

 

[Phoenix]

You may have a point, but the armed forces will still require pilots to fly those aircraft. Even if they fly the planes from the ground. I don´t believe that a computer itself can make crucial decisions in the course of battle. So the military will still spend huge amounts of money to train the pilots. And that´s a fact.

DEATH FROM ABOVE!