JediMaster

The goal is to get a cockpit that operates like our old "god mode" radar and stuff worked in the sims of the 90s. Realism advocates will balk when the real plane is as easy to fly as our sims were with all the aids turned on, but the idea is to make the enemy face as superior an opponent as they can manage, not to make a "pilot's airplane" where only the most talented pilots can actually accomplish anything.

The C carries 1500 lbs more internal fuel than the A model, so my guess is the internal tanks were expanded and some of the stuff that was in the way got moved to the gun's spot in the C.

His ETA is almost 18 months. I think we're all expecting EDGE and Nevada to be out already by then. Again, people must stop thinking that any of these 3rd party planes have anything to do with what ED's doing with EDGE, Nevada, or its own like the F/A-18C. No one talks about "what MS needs to do first for FSX" when Aerosoft and these others makes planes for it.

Depends on what you're looking for. It this is looking to fit in between SF2 and LOMAC/FC with full MP ability, I think it could succeed regardless of what ED is doing. However, it has to actually be RELEASED to do that.

Officially it's Advanced Super Hornet. Score one for the marketing team.

I'd totally forgotten about RB3D, I haven't touched it in the 21st century and the mods weren't in my consciousness. Yeah, FS-WWI is what I meant.

The range might be less, but that's greatly dependent on tanks and refueling, something pretty much standard now. So it's nothing major. I think the T/W ratio might be better, the Gripen is lighter but also has a smaller engine, but it's roughly the same. Don't know exactly about the radar, although I think the Blk 52 is indeed a bit better. As I said though, they're roughly equivalent. Now if Poland had some SPECIFIC requirements as far as unrefueled range or radar capability then it's possible the Gripen didn't make the cut based on that, but they're roughly capable of the same missions.

It's really quite sad.

While I hope to see it in the fall of 2014 (according to that), I can't swing it now.

Nice to see there that, despite everything that happened, some Poles still think like Hitler, their Great Liberator. I don't think Gripens are worse, though. They're pretty much equivalent in many ways. I can't see MiGs being a top pick, though.

I think they have far better techniques now. Slip something into his food/water and he'll likely be very forthcoming with any questions they ask.

This is like the Silent Eagle, or the F-16XL, or the Tomcat 21, or the F-20, or the A-7F, or any of a number of proposed upgrades that never got farther than a couple of flying examples if they were lucky. It's funny that they've used up to the G, making this H, because your first instinct is to say "Oh, H is for Hump. My humps. My Hornet's lady bumps."

You have put an admirable amount of work into all this, very impressive! As someone who hasn't used OFF since the Phase 1 release eons back, it was quite startling to see that at a quick glance it's not completely left in the dust by the more modern-engined WWI sims. It has its limitations, but given the limitations you need to have in ROF due to your PC's age it's quite competitive. There's a 4th WWI sim as well as ROF, OFF, and FE1/2, if you feel adventurous.

The commonality means things like radar procedures, interceptions, ECM, blah blah blah will all be identical. The USMC will have some unique differences due to VSTOL, the USN has the extra corrosion protection, and carrier equipment, and the USAF gets the gun. BTW...I've not read if the USMC is getting any C models or not? Right now, USMC Hornet squadrons deploy in CVWs, but the Harriers have their own ships. If the USMC replaces both types with 35Bs, that would mean the USN has to cover 100% of the CVW manning for deployments as they're not going to bother with B's on the CVNs...the "extra work" they're doing now because of the stronger and hotter exhaust would have to be duplicated there as well, and that's not cost effective. So since the USMC Hornets have always been land-based or carrier-based, while the Harriers have been land-based or on THEIR carriers, I wasn't certain if they were splitting their buy with some Cs as well as Bs.

As it says right in that slide, USN has not issued any formal requirements. They take the USN's statement about how long they expect the Super Bugs to stay in service, and going on the historical precedent of introducing a replacement roughly 10 years before the last is retired estimate when the new plane has to show up and work backwards. Is the USN working on this idea? Certainly. However, they have no formal plan and haven't said a peep. The contractors can't wait, though. If Boeing waits but LockMart doesn't, guess who has a significant advantage when the USN gets around to formalizing it and they find LM's already done a couple of years of design work on their own dime?

No, last I heard they aren't getting any C's. They had bought B's long ago from early production, and when they decided to get C's instead it was too late to change that. So they were always going to get 2 or so B's from the early lots and then start getting C's. When they (surprise!) discovered C's would make the carrier(s) more expensive (which are still only in the design stage, maybe the keels are down, I've not followed their carrier construction that closely), they changed their minds back to the original plan. I guess the planners made their choice for the C in a vacuum or something.

As they said on the Daily Show last night, this is how the US Gov't discredits him. He releases a story about the big too-powerful US gov't knowing everything about everyone...and then we can't find one amateur booking flights in his own name.

Oh yes, the whole hard/normal FM thing. Everything the modders did used to be for hard, then normal became the standard but I don't remember why. Some change in one of the patches IIRC?

Which .CAT file has the 5D?

That's ok, Superman's powers NEVER made sense. The wavelength of light from a star means jack-all. You won't be denser, you won't be stronger or faster, you don't have heat vision, you sure as hell can't fly. If Krypton had been a heavy-gravity world, that might have explained a few things as far as greater strength and reduced susceptibility to cuts or stabbing, but no way bulletproof, or fire proof, or any of that. Superman's story was always way more fantasy than SF.

I always found it odd that the USN's FRS was going to be at Eglin AFB. I guess since the USAF is to have the most of the type, the infrastructure was built there, and the other 2 services/variants are based there as well for simplicity?

It's amazing that his career got that far.

That Backfire looks awesome.

As any lawyer will prove to you, eyewitness testimony isn't the most reliable. As the footage of the "missile attack" on California a few years ago proves, even footage can be misinterpreted when a plane leaving a contrail is called a cruise missile or ICBM. AFAIK, there are no videos or even photos of this, so it's just based on what people said they saw. The fuel tank exploded, and an IRM will hit the engine of a 747 long before it locks onto the middle of a plane, so it makes no sense to say it was a missile. Now if it was a BOMB that did it, I'd believe that 100x more easily, but those NTSB guys would have to be totally incompetent to miss that. Oh, and making it a cover-up makes zero sense. What is the motive of covering it up? Notice it's not happened again, which if it was a case of "crap, we can't stop people from shooting down our planes with SA-7s" you'd think we'd have seen more of? The final report IIRC said "the center tank blew up, we're just not exactly sure why". A static electricity discharge, which shouldn't have happened, could easily have done it, but they don't know how it could've happened. So they know WHAT, just not HOW...so conspiracy theorists, who love to assume that they're never told the truth and the more convoluted and deep the rabbit hole is the more likely it is (in contravention of evidence that the simplest solution is usually correct over 90% of the time), have a field day with this. Just like 9/11. Just like JFK. Just like the Moon landings. Just like a million other things.

That's what I figured, I just wanted to be sure.