Gunrunner

Paran will invade Dhimar... again ?!

@russo, yeah, so Wrench has BIG hands, got a problem with that ? :)

Any chance of a 4000-5F (same pylons as the N, same nose as the M, with SPIRALE dispensers at the wingroot (at the back)) ?

Straw-man is already at least 200 years old. It's been used in it's current form and meaning in English for at least a century and with another (somewhat related) meaning in French for twice as long. Furthermore, unlike most other informal fallacies there is no other name for it anyway.

Wait, the door pops UP ? Of all the solutions they chose one probably requiring the most energy to actuate and creating the most problems when it fails (as it won't open cleanly naturally, neither would it close cleanly, while staying in the airflow) ? Ok, to be honest, it's probably the one adding the least weight. I just love this program...

Myth 1 : Can't turn, can't climb, can't run Answer: Doesn't really deny it, only puts it in the context where the F-35 will most often be "unladen" even though they carry coconuts while previous fighters were "laden", and reiterates the idea that "pah with all its gizmos it won't need aerodynamic performance anyway". It completely ignores the fact that over the life of the aircraft : A) changes in needs and requirement will mean that the plane will probably over time not rely only on internal carriage anymore. B) potential opposing planes will not be at a technological disadvantage, making the probability of classical engagement higher over time. Myth 2 : Can't fly at night or in the rain Answer: That's been solved, and thunderstorms are nearly solved too. I'm willing to accept that one. Myth 3 : The F-35B melts through decks Answer: No, it only diminishes their lifespan, everything's fine if we change the deck material. BULLSHIT, that's a straw-man, most serious commenters never suggested it did instantaneous, critical damage, but that over time it would wear it out much faster... which it does, to the point that they're acknowledging that they'll change deck material to solve that issue. Now on concrete spalling... this is entirely dismissed, however, to my knowledge this has not been tested with a fully loaded plane (requiring more thrust thus more heat and/or over a longer period) and not on every type of concrete revetment, I would not wager that all air bases are safe from F-35B yet. Myth 4 : The F-35 can't do CAS Answer: If we redefine what CAS is, provided all our gizmos work as intended and use expensive ammunitions, yes it can. It's all good on paper, but I don't see it working in a real war... Then there's the bullshit about using the gun without exposing itself to AA or MANPADS, the bit about the payload being higher than an A-10, yeah, with external payload, meaning you lose stealth, you can't run, you can't climb, you can't turn... It's enough to fight insurgents, but not a high intensity war. Then survivability... yes, on paper, let's wait their first conflict to say it actually works as intended shall we ? Myth 5 : Stealth doesn't work Answer: Noooo, LF radars need large antennas, we'll destroy them with cruise missiles before using our precious, precious planes... entirely missing the development of ground based radar networks since the 90's (granted, none of these are operational anywhere officially). Then this beautiful bit about advances in radar, making stealth not moot, but still an advantage over non-stealth aircrafts... yes of course, "stealth" aircrafts will still be detected later, but as long as they're detected far enough it doesn't matter anymore. And the final, "No stealth isn't a dead end, we've got event better things... for the next aircraft"... that will do a lot of good to the F-35 for sure. Myth 6 : The B variant compromises the others Answer: Straw-man, straw-man... the real claims about the compromise are about weight increase over the program and the development delays due to the focus over the F-35B and it's engineering problems. Myth 7 : A single engine us unsafe Answer: Non-sequitor about reliability of older engines... Nope, which is true, except that at present the reliability of the F-35 engine is not exactly at the point where it's entirely "safe", but even the most alarmist reports points that it's getting there... whether it will end up being the most reliable engine of all time as intended is another matter entirely, but it certainly will be safe enough. Myth 8 : The F-35 is too expensive, concurrency doesn't work Answer: All true, but only valid for the US and other air forces buying the F-35 over at least a decade. Doesn't address at all the cost problems for early adopters in low numbers like most european customers.

Trying to reinstall everything from scratch, far from home, on a test machine, and unfortunately TW's download page seems to be down, as are the servers for the auto-installer (they fail to respond). Am I the only one facing that ? How long has it been going ? Seems like the end is nigh for SF2 on PC...

Thanks, guess I'll have to find a way to get my install files or abandon the idea of playing SF2 during my vacations, damn, guess I'll have to content myself with Kerbal Space Program...

Deep Blue, without a doubt, any giant great white that can nearly beat Kasparov ought to be a force to be reckoned with !

Typhoid, care to detail your problems ? SF2 seems to work fine for everyone else so far, but you never detailed what your problems were. Likewise when it comes to display, on one hand you say quality is bad, but pictures are great then blame quality and complain about performance... Could you care to elaborate and have you tried updating your GPU driver before doing the rollback ?

It's not dead, it's pining for the fjords.

Campaigns are ok now, thanks.

July 2013 (which is probably the reason for the Mirage 5 recurring fuel tank "bug"), with all plane DLCs.

Excellent job, however, two bugs so far : - Mirage 5PA double fuel tanks, as almost usual with your campaigns, the Mirage 5 suffers from unskinned fuel tanks from the model appearing along the skinned ones. - 1965 campaign, Indian side, you'll end up playing Pakistan with Indian planes, I have no clue why.

No no, we are reasonable and not greedy at all, we'll be satisfied with the Clemenceau-class carriers and their escorts instead... are we not merciful ? Joking aside, seems to be top notch work as usual, can't wait to try them out.

I think that at some point the community will have to either negotiate with TK for a crowd-funded project, acquire the code or a licence to it if we want to move forward beyond simply new content.

Yep, you don't have to but it's much better for decals and offers you greater flexibility if/when you'll be working on your damage/destruction model.

The moddability and the resulting vast, unrivalled choice of brilliant mods making almost anything from the 40's to now playable, it's the only sim out there offering good to excellent Phantoms and Mirages. The devilish, mostly non-cheating AI (even when shot down it's worth sticking around and enjoying the spectacle). The right mix of arcade and serious simulation making it the perfect survey sim. The fact that it's almost as playable with a mice and keyboard than with a full stick set.

AFAIR TK stated he abandoned the PC market some time last year. The reason isn't because mobile is more profitable, but because it is profitable, period... SF2 in general and SF2NA in particular were large investments - from the perspective of a company the size of TW - and I'm willing to bet they've not been recouped, worse TK ended up facing rising piracy - both of the games and the assets (aircraft models) - as well as rising criticism from the community for the direction he took trying to make SF2 more profitable (delayed expansions, locking down of content, hard wiring of settings etc...), even DLC didn't end up being as profitable as hoped. I can't fault him for deciding to cut his losses, he gave us a lot in an era where flight simulators, especially hitting the right sweet spot, are few and far between. It's just a pity there isn't enough of us to make his business model profitable. Sure I'd love updates, expansions and an updated engine, but not at the cost of TK endangering his own financial situation (which apparently was the case at some point pre-SF2NA). Maybe we can persuade him at some point to come back after he made enough money with low risk, low investment mobile projects or to sell/licence/abandon the source code (even though we lack the type (and number) of people to make it useful in the short term), but for the time being we're on our own with a tacit approval for community patches.

@2skicomrade, indeed, on paper NATO has a massive advantage over Russia, in reality taking every member into account NATO's forces readiness is about about half what it ever was during the Cold War and there's so much political divisions and lack of will that it is mostly toothless and very unlikely that any single member, let alone the alliance as a whole, ends up taking aggressive action against anyone without a conflict pre-existing (the two exceptions are the US and Turkey, and even then, for the US the political situation is more complicated than Russia seems to figure). However, since the US alone are enough to tackle Russia as it currently stands, that point is relatively moot anyway. I'm not entirely sure of how Russia is treated in the US these days but in parts of the EU I know, the alarmism is due less to Russia's military capabilities than attitude, we have EU members who not long ago were part of the USSR or its sphere of influence and they see recent Russian attitude as worrying, they are happy as they are and don't ever want to be pulled back into Russia's sphere of influence and in their eyes it's what Russia actually wants. Worse, we have pro-Russian intellectuals, even in France and Britain, who will nowadays argue that Putin is the best thing that happened to Russia, that he put a stop to the country's pillage by "Jewish oligarchs" (yes, they often make sure to point that those oligarchs are supposedly Jews, as if that were significant for anything else than their underlying anti-semitism), that despite a few suspicious death of journalists and political opponents, the average Russian has never been freer or richer (and maybe he built Autobahns too) and that Ukraine is historically part of Russia therefore it's perfectly OK for them to take it again (that sort of argument makes Poland and Baltic states fairly nervous usually).

Except supposedly the Cold War is over but apparently someone forgot to forward the memo to Putin.

On the SEAD mission, indeed, but in the future scenario sans-F-16 that's how the thing was sold when the limited stealth of the F-35 was questioned a few years ago, the story then was that it didn't matter because early SEAD would be the F-22's role. Doesn't that sound familiar ? And personally I think the F-35 would be a much better SEAD platform because its signal processing is both superior and what it can do with it much more subtle. What I question is the shifting official and officious narratives to justify the perceived shortcomings of the program, not the actual ability of the F-35 to perform the mission (well, that in turn makes me question the actual plane abilities, why lie and change stories if the plane actually delivers ?) On AWACS, I can understand it, but even with a fully networked force it will leave you with greater gaps in your coverage than AWACS, unless of course that's what the X-37 is for, but otherwise you are taking the risk of a spotty coverage, easily disrupted, or forcing you to put more planes in the air just to compensate the fact that you don't have a dedicated asset. Of course that means you don't have a single point of failure, but that also means you get easily degraded coverage which might endanger the whole operation (one aborted mission reduces your coverage in turn potentially endangering other missions and so on). It also poses the problem of operating costs in low-intensity contexts, I'm quite sure it's less costly to operate an AWACS than a number of fighters over the same time for the same coverage if there's little risk. So can the F-22 or F-35 act as "mini-AWACS" or as part of a network providing a large area coverage in the absence of a dedicated asset ? Certainly. Can they replace it or do as good a job ? No. On the engine front keep in mind that everything points toward the engine development being way, way behind schedule both in the software and manufacturing front, there is probably a lot of room for improvement especially once the F-35B reaches IOC and more time can be spent on optimizing engine software for the F-35A and F-35C. So yes, on paper it will still be underpowered but still, we're not seeing what the engine really is capable of yet.

Remember when we asked the question "Do dogfights matter in the age of air-to-air missiles ?" or "Do fighters matter in the age of missiles ?" ? Remember how that panned out ? Besides, manoeuvrability and acceleration are not only for dogfights. Hubris never ends up well. Wait, what ? Indeed, the F-35 is so superior to the F-22 that we need four times as much planes to perform the same mission ! War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength much ? Seriously, the thing has been sold for years as follow : - F-22 for early stage SEAD and HVT missions (replacing the F-117 and in part the B-2) and air superiority. - F-35 for everything else. And now they're telling us that the F-35 is actually the one performing early SEAD, even though it will take four times as much planes to obtain the same result ??? WTF (yeah, I know it's probably a typo, at least I hope so, otherwise they're implying they're ready to risk four times as much lives than strictly necessary). Either there were radical changes to the F-35 requirements making it's export rather puzzling (remember, the F-22 couldn't be exported because it was oh so secret and stealthy, couldn't let it fall into the wrong hands, and the F-35 was supposed to be "worse" enough that it could be exported, and now, not only is it much more advanced system-wise, but also stealth-wise ?) or this is starting to sound like grade A bullshit. Yes sure, because the point of the AWACS is not at all the great big long range radars covering 360° with almost the same range, right ? See, that's the kind of BS that makes me critical of the program, arrogant, short-sighted astro-turfing, diminishing the importance of weaknesses while over-inflating the advantages. Yes, sure, their vision of future warfare is glorious and might end up working, but sacrificing the rest of operational capabilities on the altar of a vision reeks of a time when we foresaw a future where everything was missiles and guns - even fighters themselves - were a thing of the past, pushing many to design around that idea sacrificing traditional capabilities, scrapping programs or even their whole industry because of a vision that never survived the first contact with reality. Sure, 50 years later the money spent following that vision paid up, and yet we still have fighters, most of them with guns. Nearly a trillion dollar would seem a high price to pay for potential benefits decades down the road.

And yet they've repeatedly hyped it as second only to the F-22 in air combat, they used every trick in the book to sell it to countries in the market for a primarily air asset. By the way, the same thing happened with the A-10, at first they claimed that it could and will replace the A-10, that it will be as good, if not better in the CAS role... now it was never meant to replace it, the A-10 won't be replaced so stop worrying about survivability to ground fire, it won't expose itself, stop worrying about loiter time, it won't be used that way, stop worrying about payload, it won't need payload the way it will be used, yada yada... if this kind of mission profile had been enough to "replace" the A-10, then the F-16 would have done it long ago. I think a lot of the antipathy toward the F-35 stems from the over-the-top and entirely removed from the realities of the program's progress and capabilities astro-turfing that's been going on for nearly a decade now, had it not been sold as some sort of perfect master-of-all-trades wonder weapon, maybe it wouldn't have as many detractors, even considering the delays and cost overruns.

*cough* BS *cough* 1) With or without the F-35 is as (in)apt at performing ACM and 2) passive stealth is already obsolescent, especially against high-tech opponents, and the RCS gains are obtained either at the cost of maintainability or ability to operate in harsh conditions. From reading the report a few things jump at me : 1) The helmet problem is concerning, it makes the whole helmet concept pointless, actually transforming what was meant as an advantage into a disadvantage. It's strange that with more than a hundred built, at no point in the program such ergonomics problem was identified. 2) The F-35 indeed appears to be "a dog", however I might have missed it but nowhere does the report state the software revisions used on that plane, it was an early airframe without all systems, it's quite possible that it used older software as well, meaning that engine and flight controls were still sub-optimal and not representative of the current state of the F-35 performance, so I wouldn't base my judgement on that report alone, other planes have demonstrated how much of a difference software can make, especially early in development (and for the F-35 it's still early, as idiotic as it sounds for a 23 years old program). Damn, you know things have gone awry when I actually end up defending the silly thing...