JediMaster

Other than its odd shape and the RAM coating, there was nothing spectacular about the 117. It was basically an F/A-18A without radar when it came to the avionics I think. Of course, getting a sample of RAM and making it yourself are two different things. The bigger deal is getting a piece of it makes it easier to learn how to defeat it than to replicate it. However, since the 117 is out of service and I don't think any of the stealthy trio we'll have now (B-2, F-22, F-35) will use the same RAM, that info will prove rather low in value. If anything, the interior of the 117 probably simply showed the Chinese how easy it is to make a stealth plane as long as you have no radar, low agility, and good RAM.

Somehow I missed this over the weekend. Oh well, too bad as I had some time then to do it, but I guess I'll have to look into it this week now!

For games it supports (I don't think it works on unsupported games), Xfire will take screenshots and videos in game. I've never tried the videos but the screenshots work fine. And it's free without being trialware.

If that wasn't photoshopped then it was brilliant.

I preferred the limited war missions the most. The Cold war ones were also good, but the inability to attack anything but your main target, even fighters trying to shoot you down, was frustrating. The all-out war missions were fun at times, but lacked the tension of the limited war. Sneaking in watching that radar detection bar as you tried to "thread the needle" around ADA was so great. I liked to sneak in, hit the target, and then when all the radars and fighters came looking for me, I'd use up all the rest of my weapons on anyone in the way! Another interesting fact--F-19 was the last flight sim made where West and East Germany were CURRENT theaters, not historical. Oh, how about flying off a carrier in the F-19? Or getting a gun kill on a MiG 6km away? BTW, anyone play the sequel, F-117 Stealth Fighter 2.0? Even though it had better graphics (true VGA), the correct plane, and more theaters (like Vietnam), it just never felt as impressive to me as F-19 did.

Still waiting for that demo/beta/whatever I get early access to as an owner of Borderlands...

The Russians may have had some real jerks as leaders, but the people have always been great.

I thought you wouldn't have any fingers left to give Apple after having to sell them all to pay for their products...

Well, the difference there is you can be stealthy OR you can carry a gun...not a great choice!

You want loud? Watch a shuttle launch from a couple of miles away. I'm partial to the Blue Angels myself, even though I like the F-16 more than the Hornet...

North Cape FTW!! I used to exit and reload missions until I got one attacking a Typhoon or a sub base because I loved those so much! The other thing I loved that no modern sims have is the excellent debrief, showing you flying around the map with little pop ups of incidents like getting detected by radar, your firing of weapons, their firing at you, etc. The TW debriefs are that in paper form, but I liked seeing the "Indiana Jones" style line moving around the map!

Gobble my nuts!

When you look at that and you look at other planes that were NOT cancelled, it certainly smells weird. Of course, with the claim of state secrets preventing the release of other reasons, we'll never know. However, considering they didn't even have a plane flying yet it certainly never seemed like it had the chance, just that it was cancelled because in a post-Cold War era the price seemed too high just for the USN to get stealth.

Well, considering the advances in SAM ranges, the Taiwan Strait might be considered "SAM-infested hostile territory" very shortly. Besides, our track record of figuring out where we will have our next conflict is pretty bad. Who in 1985 would've guessed we'd have a massive conventional war in Iraq in 6 yrs? Who in 1987 would've guessed combat in Somalia in 6 yrs? Who in 1992 would've guessed combat over the Balkans in 6 yrs? Who in 1995 would've guessed we'd be invading Afghanistan in 6 yrs? Who in 2003 would've guessed we still wouldn't have finished with neither Iraq nor Afghanistan in 6 yrs? I'm not showing decades in the future scenarios here, I'm just talking 6 yrs, the length of time many people get for car loans now! Considering planes take 2 decades to get in service, the likelihood is you'll be in and out of a conflict you never predicted between first flight and IOC!

You don't buy F-22s to replace F-16s and A-10s and AV-8Bs. That's like replacing a fleet of Chevys with Lexus. The Chevy will get it done for less. The problem is they screwed up on how to get the Chevys built.

I concur that calling it Il-2 when there are ZERO Russian planes in it is the height of stupidity. SoW was much better even though I wasn't really a fan of that either. Calling it Cliffs of Dover instead of BoB is fine, it conveys a similar if less accurate meaning.

You can fight it, Stary. Just remember one thing...you're not "smart enough" to beat it. You can't out-think it. You can't beat it, no one can. You'll never be "cured." You can't let your guard down and think "well, now it's ok" because you'll find yourself back at square one. Realize that you will be involved in a struggle the rest of your life, but that you can persevere if you hold on to what that life means to you, and you will come out better for it.

LOL, I can just imagine small UAVs with MAD stings out the back, like a fleet of RC P-3's, flying over the battlefield and marking the location of tanks for destruction by PGMs... The tanks would have to keep moving to avoid that, and something tells me that would instantly defeat this camo...tanks kick up a lot of dust and stuff that is easily seen.

There's really only one thing to consider...at what range can you attack the enemy vs the range he can attack you? What range you "see" each other at is irrelevant if you can't do anything about it. The 120D is supposed to have significantly better range than the 120A/B/C did, and they're supposedly working on an even longer-range version. If the F-15 doesn't enter range of the attacking stealth plane until after that plane has already been able to fire on the F-15, what does it matter? The F-15 won't be able to hide from the attacker, between its non-stealthy powerplant faces in the middle of giant intakes and large fins, so it has to rely on being able to take them down first. If anyone here read Debt of Honor, there was a great chapter in there where F-15s and F-22s did a neat deception with the F-22s hiding amongst the 15s and then breaking off and coming around from another direction to take down the AWACS and other forces in the rear while the Eagles provided a big "here we are" diversion. Again, though, fighters don't operate in a vacuum. Sure, in the middle of the ocean the non-stealthy plane may appear equal to the stealthy one, but near enemy ground forces the nonstealth one has to worry about SAMs as well. So our F-15s are dodging SAMs AND enemy stealth fighters, while the enemy stealth fighters only have to worry about the F-15 getting too close...sounds like a recipe for disaster for the Eagle.

The problem is the materials needed for flight at that speed in atmo aren't cheap or easy to make. For a small missile it's one thing, for a manned plane that doesn't cook the people inside it's a whole other ballgame.

The problem is last I looked the C was significantly more expensive than the A. Granted converting all the A model purchases to Cs would bring the cost down, they'd still cost more which means fewer planes for the USAF although the USN would likely then be able to get more. However, with the Super Bug program under full steam, the USN has never been antsy about getting the C anyway, they'd be fine with being last as long as they get a few more Bugs to make up the slack of retiring legacy Hornets. The problem with axing the B is the Marines currently have ships designed around the Harrier that suddenly would be helo-only...well, like the RN currently is facing, actually! I'm not into the Marine's maritime assets, so I have no idea with how old or new their fleet of those ships are, but it seems they have quite a bit of life left and if they're forced to get Cs that means they have to be on USN carriers, displacing USN squadrons. Again, it would save money (although I've seen data that suggests that, minus the engine, the F-35B costs less than a 35C, but the engine difference makes the B slightly more) as the USN would likely cut back on the number of its squadrons (since all the Marine squadrons would integrate with the CVWs and replace some USN), but what sort of capability reduction are we looking at for that savings? The Army pulled the Comanche because they saw they'd designed a helo that, while very advanced, was more than they needed as well as overpriced. We weren't losing Apaches and Kiowas to radar-guided SAMs and AAA, we were losing them to small arms fire, RPGs, and MANPADs. The Comanche had little over the Apache in the ability to avoid those threats and its survivability is hard to say. Of course, the Army then cancelled the Comanche's replacement (aka Kiowa replacement) for runaway cost growth on a far simpler program, so...

I resemble that remark!!

Here's a hint...to make it easier to use the mission editor. Set up a standard random single mission like you've done in the game for years with the plane you want to fly and the date and terrain. When it pops up, then hit the mission editor button at the bottom and make changes to that basic mission already created for you. It's a LOT easier to modify an existing mission than to create one from scratch! You can change what planes the various flights are using quite easily. Then the only change you have to make is to add the carrier on the water, make it an airbase, and drag your (carrier capable) plane from the base it put you at to the carrier. The only tricky part is getting the carrier to be a base and not just a naval object, but the posts here cover how to do it. It took me maybe 10 mins to figure it out the first time (and I've NEVER messed with the .msn files or campaign files in 8+ yrs of TW simming).

Frankly, for a newcomer such as yourself there are so many planes already SF2-ready it will be some time before you exhaust them and are ready to try converting SF1 planes over. Some are easier than others, of course. Also, by the time you're ready a lot of those SF1 planes might have already been converted by others or superceded by newer versions for SF2. Don't worry about it for now.

To cancel it now would be a tremendous waste of money. A lot that has been spent has been to fix the issues. To buy a smaller number or can it once you've worked it out seems really stupid. What are you going to replace it with, starting another new program that is guaranteed to have its own issues but not be ready for 20 years? This recent obsession with total program costs and how many will be bought before they shut it down is ridiculous. They're STILL building F-15Es and F-16s and just recently stopped building legacy Hornets. The problem isn't with the program itself anyway, the problem is the people running it can't estimate costs for crap. The whole idea of concurrent development and production was to cut costs, but that only works as long as no significant issues are found (a pretty big assumption). If they are, then you have early production models that are at best out of sync in their configuration and at worst totally unusable pending fixes that cost more than just waiting and building the plane "fixed" would have. Then you start having the production delayed, and that drives up costs in the early years on a per plane basis. So, in short, the model picked made assumptions about how it would go, but if those assumptions turn out too far off the mark there is no "cheap" way of fixing them. Either you continue as originally planned and have a bunch of planes that need to be fixed or you delay production and, well, it costs just about as much in the long run as "fixing" them would! The main thing is going to be to keep the F-35 in production for decades to leverage all the money put into it the last 10 yrs.