JediMaster

You count far too high! Britain put its STOVL eggs in the JSF basket and that's that. The only other comparable naval-capable jets in production are the Russian MiG-29K, the Super Hornet (which is too big to be the entire fleet, why I skipped the Su-33 really), and the Rafale. The Rafale is the closest thing to the F-35 in size and it has failed to make a dent in the export market to date. EADS will not make a STOVL or naval plane because quite frankly it would cost more than the Euro gov'ts want to pay (which is basically "as little as possible!") and they have no clear requirement for one. France got theirs. Italy, Spain, and the UK want F-35Bs, but they're not going to pay to build them on their own. They're still struggling to buy all the Typhoons they promised to! They won't have a chance of funding until after the last Typhoon is delivered and by then all the Harriers will have been long grounded. SAAB might have been able to make a Gripen variant back when they started the program, but it's too late now and they're not likely to go down the naval/STOVL route. Frankly, other than France hoping JSF implodes so they might sell some Rafales, no one wants JSF to fail because there's literally nothing else out there.

Granted you can sometimes get by with a smaller warhead for a ground target, but you don't need multi-stage shaped warheads for an airplane like you do armor. There MUST be multiple warheads, and the guidance system has to be different, fuzing is different (air have prox fuzes, but ground you want impact)...in short, this is the missile equivalent of making the USAF and the USN both use the F-111. Hopefully it will fare better.

Exactly right. The problem with the program is quite literally they're putting all their eggs in one basket. If it works, great. If it fails, though, it will be the most spectacular failure in history as well. In the late 80s/early 90s there were to be several different programs to replace them, but in the post-Cold War drawdown it was decided it would save money to make a "one size fits all" plane with the belief that technology would now allow us to do what we could not in decades past. However, while our AIRCRAFT tech has improved, MANAGEMENT tech is the same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. (Cue Talking Heads...)

When it goes out to learn some Physical Education, it's SKYPE.

IR guided Bomb = Maverick with no rocket engine and bigger warhead. I suppose if there's issues with getting close enough to use a laser to guide the weapon in, or you're concerned about losing lock due to smoke or having to evade, it's a great fire-and-forget weapon.

I've seen a peanut stand And heard a rubber band I've seen a needle that winked its eye But I be done seen bout everything, When I see an elephant fly So anyone make a flying elephant with big ears for TW sims yet?

Why not simply have both?

I'm in the middle of reading his Time Odyssey Trilogy right now. A true great in SF, the last of the "golden age" authors to leave. I also remember when Asimov died 15 years ago. That was an equally sad day.

Bob, you rock.

I'm very skeptical of this. Generally, you want an AAM to have a small warhead so it can be fast and agile, while you want a larger warhead for an AGM and it's slower, bulky, and can't turn well. Against an air target a 50lb warhead or less is great. Against a ground target, you really want 100lb or more. Unless they'll build them in 2 versions with different warhead sizes, I can't see how one missile will do both jobs.

Retrofit F-111's with the F-22's engines??! Hardly. Talk about expensive for little practical gain.

Who knows at this point? Officially I recall that 2020 or so was to be the out of service date, but I'm not so sure now.

Well, there's 2 sides to "help"--one side is the "we can't do it without someone's aid" side and the other is the "done faster/better/cheaper together than alone" side. I'd say it's definitely the 2nd one in the JSF case. Of course, the Harrier program has been joint for decades itself now, although that was McD/Boeing and not LockMart.

Nice to know there are some people here that are actually older than me, if only by a couple of years!

On high detail you run into the limitations of the Intel graphics chip. Laptops with nvidia or ATI graphics will do better in that area.

I have a whole hangar full of bent props from before I got a handle on it.

Ubi is the publisher, but Oleg's team that made Il-2 is developing it.

I'm sure there aren't too many unexploded Roman devices left around.

You're throttling up too much too fast. Think of it like driving a car...you don't want to smoke the tires! Instead power up to around 40%, then smoothly increase no faster than 10% every couple of seconds. You should already be rolling well before you hit 100%.

Joe uses it over there and likes it. Check the front page of Hardocp.com right now and there's a picture of someone racing GTR2 using it across 3 monitors. The main thing is you need a powerful video card as it makes your card see a single giant 2500x1280 or something monitor.

LOVE SHACK, BABY!

That's certainly a major alteration if you were planning on being a pilot.

We could just as easily replace them with new F-15s (which are still in production) and be better off. To alter those Flankers to work with our weapons and logistics would negate any perceived savings.

EOD = crazy people.

Well, the F-117 has only been public for not even 20 years. It was late 88 when that crappy picture was released. Of course, the plane had already been in service for several years at that point. The B-2, on the other hand, was brought out before it had made its first flight.