British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/british-f-35bs-to-bring-vertical-landing-abilities-to-highways

by clouddrover • 3 years ago

136 238 3 years ago

thedrive.com

carabiner• 3 years ago

Sikorsky is gonna bring back the Comanche. I can feel it. Yeah baby!

ethbr02• 3 years ago

That's the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/30405/behold-sikorskys...

Aeolun2• 3 years ago

This looks like real life Airwolf

meepmorp2• 3 years ago

Dunno, the V280 was selected for FVL and FLRAA at the end of 2022; if only for pilot training and maintenance logistics, it probably makes more sense for FARA to go that way, as well.

sillywalk4• 3 years ago

"FTA: they would involve placing aluminum AM-2 mats along a strip of highway, up to 1,500 feet long. This will be sufficient for the stealth jets to carry out short takeoffs and vertical landings while protecting the road beneath them."

"AM-2 matting consists of 1 1/2" x 2' steel rectangles coated with a epoxy nonskid material, available in both 6 and 12 foot lengths, and are assembled in a brickwork pattern to form runways, taxiways, parking and other areas required for aircraft operations and maintenance. Thirty ISO containers can be constructed to form a 1,500 square foot vertical, short landing and take off airfield and can accommodate up to a total of eleven CH53, UH1, AH1 and AV8B aircraft. " [1]

I wonder about FOD. i.e. all the crap in and around a highway that could damage the engines..

[1] http://www.cassholdings.com/AM2.htm

chinathrow• 3 years ago

I wonder about FOD. i.e. all the crap in and around a highway that could damage the engines..

They would send out personal to remove FOD (foreign object debris) before any operations and before laying those mats, I assume.

sillywalk4• 3 years ago

Just some musing on the logistics and difficulties etc. of theoretical "distributed" highway F-35b operations..

[Numbers found by google search :_) ]

30 ISO containers for just the runway, = 30+ vehicles, + munitions, spare parts, maintenance personnel, that computerized logistics thing - ODIN/ALIS, food and water, security for the personnel, generators to power all the computers to support the aircraft, . would there need to be SAM support? anti-drone support?

Fuel would seem to be a real issue especially - an upgraded refuelling tanker-truck holds ~20k litres, and an F-35b can take ~10k litres I think. One refuelling tanker-truck = two air sorties.

dingaling• 3 years ago

The "FOD Plod"

madaxe_again3• 3 years ago

I can’t help but think it must be about protecting the aircraft rather than protecting the surface, as in ukraine roads are commonly built out of reinforced concrete slabs, and somewhat less commonly, but still frequently, they are built to take the weight of tanks, and are wide and straight enough to accommodate even large aircraft - there’s a strip of highway north of Mariupol that was originally built to accommodate strategic bombers.

The other thing that they would do is to even out the surface - decades of frost heave has left said concrete slabs pretty uneven, even in a car, never mind a jet, landing.

sillywalk4• 3 years ago

Well protecting the surface protects the aircraft - the exhaust from the F-35B version is so hot it melts the concrete and could kick of bits of debris.

Sharlin4• 3 years ago

Is concrete used much in Europe? I’d think asphalt is a much more common highway surface material.

p_l• 3 years ago

It's really about the surface, which would be quickly destroyed by jet exhaust.

One of the impulses for changing surfacing methods for runways in Soviet Union was early jets ripping asphalt off the surface, for example, though later planes had higher-mounted exhausts that caused less problems.

As for road landing in Ukraine (and other Warsaw Pact countries, and Sweden), it's a mix of special road segments and special aircraft design (for example, consider MiG-29 with its intake shields that close when it's on the ground, and sturdier landing gear on many aircraft)

hengheng2• 3 years ago

Sorry to bother you on a random comment, but is your airship thing still current?

jacquesm• 3 years ago

Interesting, here is a picture with a bit more detail:

https://ascelibrary.org/cms/10.1061/(ASCE)MT.1943-5533.00016...

tolien2• 3 years ago

"FTA: they would involve placing aluminum AM-2 mats along a strip of highway, up to 1,500 feet long. This will be sufficient for the stealth jets to carry out short takeoffs and vertical landings while protecting the road beneath them."

They did this before as part of an airshow demo. The Royal Engineers (Army co-operation!) had built pads at RAF Fairford for RIAT then the F-35B flew in, engaged STOVL mode (i.e. lift fan door open, rear engine nozzle pointed down etc.) and landed vertically on it then took off again.

Can't remember what year it was; Google suggests the MoD released PR saying they had done the same thing at Marham in 2018 but it's possible the demo was by a USMC F-35B.

sillywalk4• 3 years ago

I'm curious how long it takes / how many people / what special equipment or vehicles were required to set up these types of semi-improvised runways.

adolph• 3 years ago

The headline says vertical but this describes short takeoff on a well prepared surface.

I wonder if the F35B’s thrust would rip up a highway like SpaceX’s first starship launch.

https://news.usni.org/2014/01/15/sna-2014-heat-f-35-mv-22-co...

everybodyknows• 3 years ago

AM-2 Aluminum Matting, Portable Aircraft Arresting Gear and Marking (lighting) Systems. AM-2 matting is the base upon which the entire EAF system rests.
AM-2 matting consists of 1 1/2" x 2' steel rectangles ...

So, are they aluminum or are they steel? Or some structure involving both?

koube7• 3 years ago

When I want to know more about the future of warfare as a hacker news reader I base my opinion on a few cherry picked twitter/reddit videos (plus literal Russian propaganda) and this makes me more knowledgable than military leaders and qualified to dictate the direction of military procurement.

Mat37774• 3 years ago

How would you know who is qualified for what?

koube7• 3 years ago

I don't have perfect knowledge of this but disagreeing with military leaders based on a couple videos is definitely non-credible. Linking Russian drone propaganda is useful to let people know that drones exist perhaps, but not for much beyond that.

Beyond that central theme, certain things don't pass the smell test in my opinion. For example:

- Lancets are winning the war. Who is winning the war is debatable but usually I hear that artillery is the decisive weapon of this war. Additionally Ukraine is winning on artillery attrition, with some claims of a 3:1 ratio of attrition, so drones are not significant on this, at least not significant enough to overturn the attrition rates.

- Russia has swarms of drones that home in on RF sources. I have seen no such thing although I am open to being proven wrong here. My understanding is that jamming has been effective for both Russia and Ukraine EXCEPT for offensives where the attackers need to extend beyond the protection of EW.

- Western weapons get less useful by the minute. This one is technically true as all armies adapt to new challenges. However I wonder what the condition of the Crimean bridge is today.

mcpackieh3• 3 years ago

I hope you've learned something about the hazards of sarcasm.

tudorw• 3 years ago

Would this make highways a legitimate military target?

amitport• 3 years ago

They always were.

dumpsterdiver• 3 years ago

As another poster mentioned, fuck yes it does. They always were. Roads transport war machines.

marvin• 3 years ago

This is in the context of fighting Russia, and current events demonstrate that the legitimacy of a target is moot.

But of course highways, infrastructure, is a relevant thing to destroy in war.

hajile8• 3 years ago

Do you have any evidence to back this up?

Look at Civilian vs Soldier dead for various major wars.

Only ONE war has WAY more soldiers killed than civilians. If Russia is trying to target Ukrainians, they are doing a worse job than any war you can name.

                 Civilians  Soldiers
    WW1              10M         7M
    WW2           50-55M     21-25M
    Korea           2.7M       0.8M
    Vietnam         2.5M       1.1M
    Kosovo          1-5K     0.5-1K
    Afghanistan     500K[1]    100K
    Iraq            135K[2]     40K
 
    Ukraine[3]        9K    65-250K

[1] I don't trust US numbers in Afghanistan. There are prominent cases like the US claiming 25 casualties in a village when there was video evidence of many more bodies not mentioning all the bodies vaporized by the bomb.

[2] Another definite lie. Studies done in 2004 and 2006 published in Lancet showed around 1M excess deaths of which almost all were directly attributable to the war and at least 31% were directly attributable to US forces. Who knows how many people died in all the conflicts that followed in the next 15 years. The US officially rejects these studies as flawed, but the British MoD considered it to be robust and adhering to best practices. Further, it used the same methodology and team the US considered to be stellar when doing the exact same thing the exact same way in the Congo.

[3] From the Ukrainian MoD and/or Ukraine-leaning groups, so the likely bias is to overstate Civilian deaths, overstate Russian KIA, and understate Ukrainian KIA.

Thoeu38810• 3 years ago

Highway landing and take-off on its own is useless. F35 requires extensive machinery to maintain, in needs proper airport and hangars. It is not possible to operate it somewhere from forest! And vertical landing/takeoff can not support any load, it can not even be fully fuelled!

In Czechia we are replacing Gripens that can operate from almost anywhere. It only needs a few hundred meters of road, and single truck to refuel and restock ammunition.

Our new F35 will only be able to operate from a single runway in entire country!

prmoustache• 3 years ago

It still saves you on cost and space to host backup airstrips in case your country enter at war if you can share part of it with civil use.

hef198983• 3 years ago

Those motorway strips were all over the place in Geany during the Cold War. Most, if not all, got built back since. The idea of operating modern milizary aircraft from ad-hoc and improbvised airfields is nothing new. Easier to do with s/vtols so, added bonus for aircraft being carrier rated.

chipsa4• 3 years ago

It's vertical landing, not vertical take off. It's still a short rolling take off. I actually wouldn't be suprised to find they do a short rolling landing too (rather than go full hover, use the lift fan to allow them to land at lower than normal stall speed would be). They've tested the rolling landing on board the HMS QE

And yes, for full maintenance, you do need need a proper airport and hangars. But for a quick refuel/arm and launch, you don't need that much. It's a trade off in capabilities: do you want to have a highway strip launch capability, or do you want something that is much less likely to get shot down. It's doubtful that the F-35 will only be able to operate at a single runway, unless your country only has one runway. It should be capable of operating off nearly any concrete runway you have (highways are typically not constructed to the same standards as a runway).

Thoeu38810• 3 years ago

From what I know, we only have single military airport capable of supporting F-35. Fully loaded F35 needs 2.5 km of high quality concrete. It also needs extensive overhaul after every flight to maintain stealth coating. There is no "quick refual/arm" with stealth, it is more like operating Space Shuttle!

There are also civilian airports, but we would propably run out of those very soon. And using civilian infrastructure for military purposes (like bombing foreign country) would not be politically very digestible!

philwelch• 3 years ago

The Czechs are buying the conventional variant of the F-35, not the vertical landing variant.

MiscCompFacts• 3 years ago

Here’s a video showing STOVL(Short Takeoff and Vertical Landing): https://youtu.be/hO5mZxaiyUQ. The distance it needs to take off is incredibly short, should work on any short straight road with enough clearance on both sides. It does need to come slow crawl engage STOVL landing.

ajuc2• 3 years ago

That's what people were complaining about in Poland in 00s when we bought F-16 in addition to our MiG-29.

That the airplanes will be hard to maintain, aren't as rugged, can't handle street landing and improvised conditions. There was a huge scandal because one of the F-16 was flown from USA to Poland and did emergency landing on the way because of some minor technical issue.

20 years later and we lost two MiG-29 to bad maintenance and no F-16.

pessimizer4• 3 years ago

That's because the F-16s might be in (and even 'owned by') Poland, but they're for the defense of the US. We're not going to let them fall apart.

Amiable5326• 3 years ago

No idea where Poland got that idea about F-16s as they have a reputation for being a reliable and robust fighter even before Poland purchased the planes, unlike the MiG-29 which is a maintenance queen (particularly the engines) and has a reputation for being a mediocre plane whose career mainly consists of being shot of out of the sky.

consumer451• 3 years ago

One of the coolest things about the Gripen is the support infra. Even while in the fancy hangers, all support equipment is in 20 foot containers. This makes it very mobile when the fancy runway gets a few holes put into it. Also, only one professional soldier and a few conscripts can service the jet, all while standing on the ground, with mostly automotive style tools.

The efficiency of turnaround is something that is incomparable to all other fast jet systems of which I am aware.

The most informed analyst on this matter appears to be Justin Bronk [0]

If I was an F-35 buyer, I would also buy some more Gripen-C if at all possible. That should be the "High/Low" mix in 2023 and beyond.

If I was king of "The West," I would have had sent all available Gripens to Ukraine months ago.

[0] https://www.rusi.org/news-and-comment/in-the-news/ukraines-t...

[oops, around the Economist paywall] https://archive.is/gOKqZ

pxmpxm• 3 years ago

In Czechia we

Never any seen any Čech actually use that silly term...

fmajid• 3 years ago

Parking lots would make more sense than highways.

Sharlin4• 3 years ago

Parking lots would make no sense whatsoever, and I fail to see how you’d even get the idea that they would.

moffkalast• 3 years ago

I assume OP means because it's a VTOL? It doesn't need a runway, just a large enough flat spot.

adolfojp• 3 years ago

They're STOVL airplanes. Short Take Off Vertical Landing. They can only take off vertically on exhibitions, when they're carrying no weapons and little fuel. For normal operations they need a short runway.

hajile8• 3 years ago

I believe they also have a VTOL capacity of about 5,000lbs (vs 2,500lbs for the Harrier). The second you switch it to STOVL though, that capacity increases dramatically, so there's generally not going to be a reason to attempt VTOL in combat.

Off-topic, but the F-35 VTOL design is amusing to me in that it was designed by Russia, but they never made more than a prototype and sold the tech to the US where we've now used it to make planes to take on Russia.

fomine3• 3 years ago

Extremely big parking is an US thing!

79524• 3 years ago

A modern industrial estate could be more useful than somewhere more remote. You get large car parks to park vehicles and build things. Warehouses to hide equipment, do maintenance, and provide shelter. You have access to grid power and water. It will be on existing transport networks.

And it might just provide better cover. Western europe has hundreds of places like this. The enemy has to work out which building you are using in a group of fifty other non-descript buildings.

tomaytotomato2• 3 years ago

Has the RAF actually surveyed some of the motorways in the north of England recently?

I nearly broke a spring from a dipped pothole on the M6 south.

Not to forget all the smart motorway signs every 100 meters and signboards overhead, will make a landing "interesting".

Shrezzing• 3 years ago

Vertical landing drops staight in from the sky, and comes to an immediate halt. These planes just need a strip of concrete wider & longer than the plane itself. Realistically you could comfortably put one down on a motorway service station carpark, and then lay a short portable runway along its off-ramp for takeoff.

nicholassmith• 3 years ago

Realistically you could comfortably put one down on a motorway service station carpark

I'm sure the exceptionally canny operators of motorway service stations would find a way to make some extra money off them then. Come for a coffee, stay for a jet launch.

Theodores• 3 years ago

It is never going to be for the UK.

With Ukraine you want the plane to take off from Ukraine, not the UK, or else it is seen as direct involvement. So the plane takes off from the UK, lands in the motorway somewhere near Keeeev and then the Ukrainian pilot hops on, to carry out the mission.

He then lands on the highway again, the plane stays still for the British pilot to get in, he does so, flying up to meet a tanker over Poo land to then get home by teatime.

He lands on a regular runway.

aembleton• 3 years ago

But what about if you want to disperse fighter jets away from runways so that its not so easy to destroy all of our planes?

cyclecount• 3 years ago

As long as our global society puts this much carbon in the atmosphere for "defence" purposes, we have no chance of maintaining a human-friendly climate on Earth in 20-30 years.

cabalamat• 3 years ago

Defence is c. 2% of the world economy and probably something similar for carbon emissions.

nerdponx• 3 years ago

I would guess its carbon emissions are disproportionate to its size.

tremon• 3 years ago

Highways will be able to land vertically with this technology?

wongarsu3• 3 years ago

Cold-War West Germany had about 30 "Emergency Airstrips", about 3km long Autobahn sections that could be converted to airports for military use. Complete with parking lots designed for aircraft parking, mobile air control towers, etc. Large enough that we landed C-130 Hercules on them.

Similar strips exist in Finland, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland. Though most of the German locations are now retired and removed.

koheripbal• 3 years ago

This is true in the US and Canada as well.

H8crilA3• 3 years ago

Crucially this is also true in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Air Force has found a new clever way to keep using normal air bases. After a hangar got bombed by cruise/ballistic missiles they would print a 1:1 aerial/satellite picture of the rubble, hang it over the actual rubble and then clean up under the print. It took quite a few weeks for the Russians to understand this ruse.

The doctrine of always having air superiority in NATO (and thus not needing makeshift runways) is so far rather justified given the hilarious level of incompetence shown by the VKS. Although the RAF seems to be more anxious about it, they definitely know much more than me. We do need a lot more air defense though, it's clear that before the next NATO-Russia confrontation they will have a rich arsenal of flying trashcans like the Shahed, as well as some decent missiles.

phil21• 3 years ago

This is true in the US

As far as I could tell after a bar argument, this is more or less an urban legend[0]. While the referenced article only debunks the "Every 5 miles" myth, further (brief) reading led me to believe if there were ever any designed airstrips into the interstate system they were short-lived and likely very one-offish style programs.

[0] https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/mayjune-2000/one-mile-...

gte525u• 3 years ago

The US trains for this but I'm not sure it's needed domestically. FAA funds local and regional airports - there are plenty of airstrips all over that could accommodate a fighter or a C130.

Nursie• 3 years ago

Outback Australia has some dual-purpose sections of road too, but more for emergency medical flights!

hengheng2• 3 years ago

Oil pipeline routing in those areas is really funny.

qaq• 3 years ago

Same was true for USSR but obviously way bigger numbers. Thats how Ukraine managed to keep jets flying after the runways were targeted.

sklargh3• 3 years ago

This is an issue I care deeply about as I believe effective dispersal is a useful conventional deterrent to conflict.

To add - this is a more trodden upon path than many realize. The RAF trained extensively on establishing dispersed airfields for the Harrier force. They dedicated a lot of resources to being able to conduct dispersed operations from modified fields (fields, not airfields) https://youtu.be/QOf1AAf1yqc.

The US Marine Corps’ F-35B community has limited experience with what I’d semi-austere forward arming/refueling points(FARPs).

F-35B landing at FARP. https://youtu.be/le4W1Pk-Dn8

There is enough here about the challenges of fast jets off of roadways and poor condition airfields. I’ll just add that a jet is only as capable as its ground crew, spares, available munitions and fuel stores, so getting those things to a remote strip and protecting them is a big challenge and resource drain. The UK armed forces are already stretched quite thin for personnel so how operable this concept is TBD.

People with an interest in dispersal should watch this video https://youtu.be/MNak9lB_q00 and read this wiki - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_90. The nordics really expect much of their aviation infrastructure to be destroyed in a conventional conflict and plan accordingly.

mlinksva• 3 years ago

I'm inclined to agree, but am almost totally ignorant, would enjoy pointers to/reading critical takes on the role of dispersal. The reason I'm inclined to agree is that war is a worst case scenario, and very uncertain (bottom of worst could fall quickly) so it seems odd to prepare to fight war under ideal (large intact airfields) rather than very ugly circumstances. Perhaps the cost efficiency in peacetime of centralization allows (the US anyway) such an overwhelming advantage that the correct calculus is to maintain that advantage rather than prepare for the worst?

Here's another video talking a bit about the costs of dispersal, and costs basically being the reason for not doing it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-lcu2kBXQI

sbierwagen3• 3 years ago

Notably, in the recent CSIS wargame of a Taiwan invasion, the US lost 90% of their aircraft on the ground. Even dispersing to civilian airports in Japan doesn't help much (Japan has plenty of airports but PLARF has plenty more missiles) and of course hugely complicates logistics. https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publi...

canbus• 3 years ago

Funnily enough, just came back from RIAT yesterday after seeing one of these pretty much hover in mid air... what a sight! amazing machines.

Pixie_Dust2• 3 years ago

“in light of potential Russian aggression in Europe”

Who was it pushed NATO right up against Russia's border. Despite repeated statements from the Russians that there would be push-back. --

coob > “NATO have always been on Russia’s border.” (deleted)

On the Soviet Unions border. When the Soviets relinquished control of the client states to the west, they were given an understanding that NATO would not expand east.

(and modded down)

fsloth5• 3 years ago

Modded down for a good reason.

1. The client states weren't client states. They were de-facto annexed polities with centuries of distinct characteristics. After Soviet Union fell these countries could resume their legitimate existence.

2. Russia has always been an imperialistic, genocidal and brutal country, incapable of creating anything of lasting value. A country on the Russia's border has no reason to be categorized under "russian dominion".

Legitimate states have unalienable right under international law to guide their own path, regardless who their neighbours are.

If your neighbour is Russia, you really want to ally with a larger party.

"Who was it pushed NATO right up against Russia's border."

Nobody PUSHED NATO. This is what is wrong about the posting above. The CCE countries, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, knew very wall what Russia was and that it had not changed.

They wanted to join NATO exactly because they knew Russia would one day again attempt to annex them.

Unless Estonia was in NATO, Russian armors might very well be now in Tallinn.

D_Alex• 3 years ago

Russia has always been an imperialistic, genocidal and brutal country, incapable of creating anything of lasting value.

Wow dude, that is quite deranged.

Unless Estonia was in NATO, Russian armors might very well be now in Tallinn.

Russia borders 14 countries, and I don't think it fought with any except over the issue of NATO membership.

79524• 3 years ago

Maybe the west did make some mistakes in its dealing with Russia. But that does not justify Russian aggression or negate the need to repel that agression.

pessimizer4• 3 years ago

West: mistakes

Russia: aggression

PedroBatista3• 3 years ago

Yeah cool, and can the support necessary to keep an F-35 active be performed on a road?

The Harrier and Gripens can and kinda were designed with that in mind. The F-35? I doubt it.

I'm sure on paper someone will write and another one will approve, but in reality and in a real war scenario I have serious reservations.

smcl7• 3 years ago

To an non-expert like me the Gripen just seems so well-suited for Ukraine's Air Force in this conflict - relatively inexpensive, can land/operate in tougher conditions, can be serviced nearby (Czechia), outfitted to handle Western/NATO missile tech. I wonder what caused them to push so hard for F-16 instead.

fsloth5• 3 years ago

I would guess the F-16 fleet is easier to quickly expand than one based on Gripens as the supply of F-16:s is larger. Also creates a direct link to US military industrial complex which will help with US support in coming years (good business). The intake in f-16 seems really troublesome for takeoffs in ruddy envorinments.

PedroBatista3• 3 years ago

One of the reasons is there are much more F-16s both in number of units and consequently support ( of all kinds ) and know-how from many operator countries.

Unfortunately the Gripen is the plane everyone talks and loves but "nobody" buys them. The Rafale is in a similar situation. AFAIK there are many minor reasons but the main one is: "Nobody got fired for buying IBM", aka the F-16, it's all fine and good, NATO, etc, etc, but America has A LOT of pull when someone wants to buy planes, they tend to be "persuasive"..

hef198983• 3 years ago

Easy: avaiability, in every sense. There are many, many more F-16 in service to draw from. As are more operators, making training easier. And maitennace, everything from spqres to sites to people, is much easier to come by at scale for F-16s.

All of the above under the caveat of needing it now.

justin663• 3 years ago

Sweden was publicly clear they weren't going to make the Gripen available to Ukraine, the planes exist in small enough quantities that some new manufacturing would need to happen in order for any of its operators to swap their existing inventory out and give it to Ukraine (not impossible in the long run since there is a new variant that some countries might want to acquire someday, but not happening in the short term), and - this is the big one - there are roughly twenty times as many F-16s in service worldwide as there are Gripens.

Everything that's commonly said about the Gripen performing admirably in rugged conditions and the F-16 being particularly vulnerable to foreign object damage is certainly true, but Ukraine would happily throw people and resources at the problem of maintaining intact and clean runways.

napoleon_thepig• 3 years ago

The F-16 is the most numerous fighter jet in existence today and some countries are replacing them with F-35s, so there are a few dozen F-16s that might be available soon for Ukraine. On the other hand, the amount of Gripens available is in the low hundreds, which in practice means that Sweden would have to donate a significant part of it's current air force capability to Ukraine.

hajile8• 3 years ago

Ukraine has shown that when your airspace and airstrips are contested, the only real answer is limited CAS where you fly in low, drop your load from as far away as possible, then pop flares and head back. A plane that is highly survivable and resistant to MANPADS is going to be superior.

For this, the US has the A-10 which was designed with this exact war in mind. It takes off from a short runway (and it can be a pretty rough runway because the engines are so high), requires more basic maintenance, and is proven to take MANPADS hits then still make it back.

Vecr• 3 years ago

The A-10 is too old at this point and I really doubt anyone is going to make more. The Sky Warden has better electronic systems but who knows if that's actually going to be acquired. The best tactic now is to fly high enough to avoid laser targeting from the ground and avoid radar targeting with stealth.

nradov4• 3 years ago

The A-10 was designed for an all-out conventional war with the Warsaw Pact. It was never considered survivable even then; plans assumed that almost all would be destroyed in the first few days of the conflict and that was considered acceptable.

A few airframes have taken missile hits during Middle East conflicts and made it back to base. Those then took months of extensive maintenance to restore to operational condition, and in some cases were written off entirely. A-10s are not at all survivable against modern Russian air defenses and would be mostly useless in Ukraine.

dralley5• 3 years ago

...No.

That's the best option when all you have are shitty short-range Soviet-era missiles and unguided rockets / bombs from the 1980s and radars that can't see anything past 35km.

If you have low-observability or stealth aircraft, with powerful radars, and weapons with 80km+ range, you would absolutely rather use anything else.

It doesn't matter if your plane is "highly survivable to MANPADS" when A) the enemy has a lot of MANPADS and larger AA weapons, and B) you run out of functional planes because they all got shot up. Not getting hit is strictly better than getting hit, regardless of how "survivable" the plane is.

syntaxing• 3 years ago

If you ever been to Xiamen (city close to Taiwan across the ocean in China), the highways near the coast have long stretches of straight with extremely low side barriers. I wouldn’t be surprised if these highways were designed specifically to land aircrafts during times of need.

t435623• 3 years ago

The F-35 obviously needs more preparation so they're really going to do it first with Typhoons and those are cool and potent aircraft even if they're not completely "Made in the USA (TM)".

There's an internal BAE project to give them updatable computers which can be ripped out and replaced every few years. Like the Gripen the idea is to separate the flight critical software, which needs lots of certification, from everything else which can then be updated much more easily and rapidly.

They've also been flight testing a radar that can do electronic warfare as well as its normal job and the Typhoon, like the Gripen and Rafale carries the Meteor BVRAAM which is exceptionally good because it has a long range and a lot of energy to maneuver at the point where its nearing its target.

sidewndr46• 3 years ago

The Typhoon has a vertical landing variant?

t435623• 3 years ago

The article is about landing on roads, not landing vertically.

solardev• 3 years ago

Out of curiosity, in a fighter jet, what software ISN'T flight critical? Doesn't it all work together?

dharmab• 3 years ago

Some of the software is mission critical but not flight critical. If your targeting pod is down, it'll be harder to see the ground target or visually ID aircraft from afar, but there is no safety issue to the plane.

t435623• 3 years ago

For example the aircraft is unstable by design and software keeps it responding and making changes N times a second (IIRC 40times/sec or something like that) without which it might crash - so that system would be one you don't want to change frequently.

nawitus• 3 years ago

For reference here's a video of F-18 doing it (with conventional landing):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj_eJxy8ojk

wonderwonder• 3 years ago

I still have no idea what to expect from the F35. I'm not someone that knows a lot about fighter aircraft. The F22 was quickly hailed as the pinnacle of what it was designed to do, essentially unmatched today. Then they just stopped making them.

Reviews of the F35 are vague. Israel is buying them but it's essentially getting them for free. So why not? Anyone have a true read on if the F35 is actually a dominant platform?

ata_aman• 3 years ago

Short answer is different roles. F22 is specifically an air superiority platform, which is why only the Air Force has it. F35 is a multi role platform and a lot of its value comes from its ability to communicate with the infra surround its roles.

mrguyorama4• 3 years ago

The F35 is also meant to be very flexible, so that we can slap new toys into it as the world turns. It's supposed to run it's own little "fleet" of networked drones and MALDs and similar so that it can grab all the intel of everything about the enemy and send that info back to a bunch of A-10s and/or B52s carrying long range munitions to actually fire.

ianburrell• 3 years ago

The F-22 and F-35 are different. The F-22 is an air superiority fighter, it is stealthy F-15. The F-35 is a smaller multi-role fighter, it is sort of stealthy F-16 or F-18. The F-35 is significantly cheaper; the F-22 was cancelled because of the expense.

Lots of countries are buying the F-35. It hits a sweet spot of multi-role fighter with a big bonus of stealth. Also, there is VTOL F-35 variant that the US Marines and other countries with smaller carriers are buying.

The F-22 is still better in many ways. The F-35 is what is available now. The Air Force and Navy are working in two separate programs for replacing F-22 and F/A-18E/F respectively. The result should be much better than F-35, but also more expensive.

callalex• 3 years ago

It has been hugely successful at what it was designed to do: remove untold dollars from the American taxpayer and put them in the pockets of political donors.

nradov4• 3 years ago

That's not even the right question to ask. The F-35 is the only survivable, 5th generation tactical aircraft available for purchase today. So whether it's "dominant" or not is kind of moot since there are effectively no other options.

Sure, there are a few 4th generation airframes still in production and they are useful for certain limited missions like homeland defense and counterinsurgency. But those are dying platforms with little capacity to take upgrades and poor survivability against peer threats so it doesn't make sense for countries like the UK to buy more.

Bayart• 3 years ago

Wouldn't the F35-B be sensitive to random crap laying on the ground ? I don't know that its air intake was made for anything else than spotless surfaces. As far as I'm aware only the Soviets/Russians designed planes with that in mind.

NikkiA4• 3 years ago

The F35B is also known to have damaged existing aircraft carriers by melting the flight decks during testing.

This won't work, it'll fail for the same reasons the proposals to use highways for the Harrier fell apart in reality - too much damage to use it at any time other than wartime, resulting in no training for landing on highways, so it'll never happen even in wartime. Besides which, if you're at war where you need a defensive air force to be able to use make-shift airbases, you've almost certainly already lost.

79524• 3 years ago

It could get a few extra sorties out of the airplanes before they are all shot down or out of action due to technical difficulties. For a small country with limited external support that could be worth the relatively small cost.

Also, the "almost certainly already lost" situation is exactly what small countries are facing if Russia attacks them. Their main air bases are going to be attacked. Regular relocation of equipment may be the only way to survive more than a few hours.

nirse• 3 years ago

Hmm, never knew they have highways in the UK.

British F-35Bs to bring vertical landing abilities to highways

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