JediMaster

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=43128

The casting ideas are already flying. Have to admit I think Steve Carell as Murdock would work. I can't see this NOT being stupid, though.

I'm guessing you're taking his "fly to the point you want to park" literally. I doubt he was being precise. It's probably more a comment on the slow approach speed compared to land ops, nothing more.

As for the slowing down of the carrier, I don't see anything unusual about that. U-2 ops were not common, but the exception, and I'm sure special adjustments were made for them.

If it doesn't bother you, than don't worry about it! Some people obsess over getting a game to play on the highest possible settings without bothering to see what they gain from it. A 1% increase in your perceived visual experience for a 25% decrease in performance just doesn't add up.

I don't think that one's ready for primetime. It would still need years of development. Besides, other than STOVL and supersonic ability, it has none of the JSF's other features:

stealth (not ANY)

AESA

internal weapons bays (stealth and drag reduction)

carrier ability (you can carry more a farther distance compared to STOVL ops)

land-based practicality (wasted space for STOVL equipment limits range/payload)

integrated avionics to make the plane harder to kill and easier to make kills with

Procurement laws are literally 180 degrees from common sense.

We can't just buy PCs for our use at this base. No, the law REQUIRES we not order direct from Dell or wherever but instead purchase them through a 3rd-party middleman that is a "minority owned/operated business." Why? So they can get some defense spending dollars! Just so the bigger companies aren't the only ones profiting, despite the added costs to taxpayers, inefficiencies (multiple issues with incorrect orders over the years), and plain stupidity of the idea.

In other words, you CAN'T do the logical and cost-effective thing because the LAW says you're not allowed to! That's Congress, passing laws to generate jobs for their consituents even while forcing them to pay higher/more taxes to cover it!

I don't know, I'm still not sold on the P-8. The idea a twin-turbofan can do the job of a quad-turboprop...

The P-3 shuts down 2 engines and cruises at very low speeds on patrol to save fuel and extend loiter time. What can a 737 do to compete with that? It may have the same loiter time at lower throttle numbers, but I think it will fly higher and faster as a rule and only have that loiter time by having vastly larger amounts of fuel onboard.

I never learned why the P-7 was cancelled, it seemed a better fit.

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%.