JediMaster

And once again the decision to retire the F-14 but keep the legacy Hornets around seems misguided.

Indeed military aviation has made a lot of progress, it's just not been beneficial. New programs take longer and longer and cost more and more so there are so few of them now. The USSR was in the middle of its collapse at the time, so the US military was still at its peak. On a side note, how much effect do you think the virtual steamrolling of Iraq in 91 contributed to the severe drawdowns in the later years of the 90s? I'd say it had everything to do with it. During Desert Shield, a lot was made of how strong Iraq was, its huge standing army and large although a bit outdated air force, having just recently finished an 8 yr-long war with Iran that made its troops quite good, etc etc etc. In retrospect, it seems like the higher-ups were prepping the public for heavy losses. Then we went in and it was a cakewalk, the "100 hr ground war" that no one could have predicted with a straight face. Well, the USSR was gone, Iraq fell over a long weekend, obviously the military was too big right? It only made sense to cut it down and save a lot of money since we'd never have to fight anyone as big as the USSR again, right? Saddam Hussein's defeat in 1991 did more damage to the US military than all his successes combined by convincing the politicians that it could lose a ton of fat.

I've never understood the idea of contractors overseas (unless you're in the UK or Germany or something so you don't need active duty doing mundane tasks), but stateside the reasoning makes sense...without them the armed forces would need to be twice as big to do all the day-to-day stuff and that costs more. It may not seem like it, but add in that you have to pay for housing for those in the military, their more expensive benefits than contractors get (contractors get only money, not a single other thing), the highly expensive training starting with boot camp (or more for officers) and moving to on-the-job training that most contractors do NOT do (they only hire those that already know what to do most of the time), and you can see how it adds up. In fact, I know the payments they make for health insurance will be going up to more realistic (ie closer to what the rest of the country pays) rates, but still cheaper of course, as the DoD is finding that even they are suffering from the costs of that. The system fails in a couple of ways though...first, both civilian and contractor jobs have turned into former-military welfare. You do your 4 yrs enlisted and you're guaranteed access to top-paying jobs for life. I'm a rarity--a contractor with no prior military service. I had to fight hard to get this job, while I've seen those that are barely qualified get similar jobs over perfect candidates just because from 1996-1998 they were overseas half the time in a uniform. There are regulations in place that make this a certainty for civilian jobs, but in theory contractors are supposed to be free of this. In practice, though, those in charge at these contractors are former military so there's an informal "good old boys" club while at the same time it's a subtle bribe to the military people they work with along the lines of "see, when you retire maybe you could get a job with us as long as we keep our contract"...and believe me, I see it a LOT. This is a small base I work at, only 5000 people or so, yet in the 10 yrs I've worked here I can go into ANY building and point out to you several people who I know were active duty one week and came back the next week without a uniform and likely getting paid more (in the civilian jobs case, contractor jobs rarely pay more, that money all goes to "stockholders") to do the same job except now they can't be told to TDY or PCS anywhere at a moment's notice. So the problem is the theory of how contractor and civilian jobs should work is really unimpeachable, so you won't have any high-level mandates to eliminate it, but the practice is totally different. Unfortunately, no one will change the practice itself because there's no one with the desire or authority to do so. Those with the authority are benefiting from it, so why change it? Those who want to can't do a damned thing about it.

Yeah, at jet speeds you'll be through those building in about 3-5 seconds unless you take the perfect N-S line along the coast in which case you might hit 10 seconds.

C'mon, when has the Mediterranean Sea EVER vowed your destruction???

That's the part that gets me...a lot of so-called "stealth defeating schemes" that are floated depend on a few very unlikely factors. First, and most important, they require the detectors to know where and when the planes will be coming to have their "net" up and running because few if any seem to be 24/7 360 degree detection nets. So all the stealth fliers have to do is go when you don't expect from a direction you don't expect! Many of them also require planes in the air when the forces enter their airspace, and there aren't many countries who can manage a continuous BARCAP waiting for these planes. Then, unlike conventional planes where most of the time "if you can see it you can hit it", with stealth planes just knowing where they are is insufficient. If your radar says "the plane is there" but none of your SAMs can track it, what good is it? Most won't be as obliging as the F-117 over Bosnia that flew at low level over the same spot multiple nights. That means you're limited to getting a fighter up there within range to use guns or IR missiles. You'll need a good GCI or datalink to provide that fighter with a vector as until they're right on top of it they won't see the stealth plane either. Then you'll have to hope it's the B-2 when you get there, because if it's not that means it's a plane capable of turning and shooting YOU down with the difference that they have the range advantage and can fire on you before you can fire on them. Now someday in the future will be the next historical milestone...the first stealth vs stealth fighter combat, and like the first jet vs jet combat in Korea it will get remembered. However, when jets first entered service in WWII, no one would've predicted the first jets would fight each other over Korea in less than 10 yrs. With both China and Russia now making them and then selling them to other countries, who knows where or when or who? My guess is you won't see F-35 vs F-35 or J-20 vs J-20, but beyond that it could be anything. If China sells J-20s to Pakistan, we could have J-20s vs T-50s over Kashmir be the first.

Well, frankly, as a species humans are lousy at fortune telling. Just look how often the weather dudes are accurate about what it will be like in 5 days...

I was unaware Greece or Israel ever went as far as the UK for airshows.

If it's FC that's giving you the problems, it's likely the command reassignment that happened with that expansion. In the original LOMAC, and still in FC for the Russian planes, the trigger does everything...cannon, bombs, missiles. In FC for the 2 US planes, however, the command was split. Trigger is now the cannon, regardless if you have the cannon display on the HUD, and the "pickle" button on the top of the stick releases bombs, missiles, rockets, etc. So you can literally fire rockets and cannon in the A-10 at the same time if you have the bizarre inclination to. The F-15 doesn't really need that ability, but the real planes do it that way--trigger is only the gun, the pickle button releases "stores". In the Russian jets, they use the trigger for everything so what matters is what weapon is selected or the cannon. This caused some confusion back when FC first came out...uh, a really long time ago now I guess! FC2 is the same way. If you look you'll see each plane has its own settings list, and the 2 US planes have separate commands for cannon and stores while the Russians share the same key.

That one we call muad'dib. Someone had to say it.

And don't forget how it will appear in foul weather. Even the Predator showed up when water was streaming off it!

I suppose the question of whether the patch just addresses the obvious air start bug or covers a lot more will be answered when we get it!

There is a ton of stuff that's needed that MSFS didn't have. I know before their mass layoff years ago the ACES guys had talked about how they were laying the foundation in the engine for the return of MSCFS, but they had no firm plan for a date or anything. Then they were canned and MSFS itself was killed. You need working weapons, damage effects, AI that can engage in combat, ground AI that's not just civilian traffic that can engage in combat, a damage model for all the planes that specify how they react when hit (not just cosmetic, although that too must be implemented), a campaign of some sort... The changes that must be made are not trivial and I don't believe the ACES team put nearly enough into that FSX expansion to let modders do it. I think they see those foundations and have convinced themselves they can do it, but I think they will sooner or later run into a hard-coded wall that they can't break that will stop them.

The problem is there is NOTHING else. This isn't 30 yrs ago where if one program flounders you have another waiting in the wings. The only option is buying more planes from the 1970s, in the case of the F-16 that is as the others are all out of production. The DoD put all its eggs in one basket and now they're scrambling because it's spilling.

Well, when he did SF2 releases most of the stuff for every plane was redone to some extent and I guess he figured he could save himself some time and money by not bothering to update the A-6's pit from WOV and making it AI only. I'll be honest, I only flew the A-6 a handful of times in WOV myself. I spent a lot more time with the fighter bombers and pure fighters. So from my own personal experience, I can affirm that if you have several planes to choose from the ground attack-only plane will get less attention than the multirole or pure AA planes. That goes for all the stock and 3rd party planes I've used in SF1 and 2. Bombers and pure AG planes I do fly, but no more than 1/4 of the time. The remaining 3/4 I'd say I split between fighters and fighter-bombers. Take note that if it's a ground plane with a good gun, like the F-105, I count that as a fighter-bomber. The A-6's weakness is it has no gun, so all you have is your bombs and the ability to (slowly) run away.

In that case you better back off and nuke it from orbit. Just to be sure.

All the talk about either the end of days or that this is nothing but a tech demonstrator with no practical use is obviously off the mark. The truth as always lies in the middle. The only question is "is this the first?" The F-117 was the first stealth plane publicly revealed, but it was years after it entered service and even then it took quite some time before it was shown publicly to people with cameras. Only many years afterwards did we finally see the prototypes and the Tacit Rainbow and other demonstrators that led to it. On the one hand, it's quite likely China built their own demonstrators first and kept them secret and who knows when or if we'll ever see them. On the other, in an attempt to appear "not far behind" there's a good chance they simply started with this as all the early work has already been done on scale models. Besides, one thing you can't tell from a photo is how it appears on radar. There are times where you can see an obvious mistake that will mess with stealth, but just because something LOOKS stealthy doesn't mean it really is. That info, of course, they'll want to keep to themselves.

Sweet! I only have EECH/AH for Apache action right now, and I know Flexman still has quite some way to go on his sim, so I'm eager to fly this baby in NF4!

Well, seeing as a MiG was in there, I hope he puts both in the next release to give a little balance. If they were both NATO planes I could see him putting one off till the one after that....

"Psychological and mental traumas management" Uh...so they model PTSD? Years of therapy? I'm not sure exactly what that's supposed to mean...

How do I shoot at women and children? Easy, I lead a little more.

Dogfights amongst the buildings in Miami? LOL! This isn't NYC, there's not exactly a lot of really tall buildings there. You have to fly around 10 stories up to actually get between them, and that's helo altitude! Some of the gameplay looks nice, although I can do without the prerendered stuff in a trailer.

From that angle it really does look like the old Firefox!

Most number of MiG kills I ever had in one mission was with an F-111-fired SRAM. I'm talking AA kills, BTW...a whole flight of MiGs was in the air over their base and I think I got 10 kills? Maybe 12. There were also dozens of ground kills, of course. The trick was to fire from a good distance away, I think I was well over 10 miles. Nukes don't need precision aiming.

Of course it took some time to really get out there in service. The AMRAAM was in use during Desert Storm but was never fired because so few of them were in the field. It took several years for its first combat use.