Toryu

Unter Trump braucht man keine Lobbyisten mehr - die Wirtschaft sitzt direkt im Kabinett. Milliardäre oder Millionäre mit besten Kontakten in die Wirtschaft. Das bisherige Agieren (Gängelung von wissenschaftlichen bzw. Forschungseinrichtungen, Beendigung des Baustopps der Keystone- und Dakotapipeline, etc.) ist nichts als Politik nach Facon der Wirtschaftslobbyisten. Ob der Wegfall der Lobbyisten nun positiv oder negativ zu bewerten ist, sei mal dahingestellt. Wenigstens ergibt sich beim Lobbyismus noch eine förmliche Trennung.

There's no "your facts" or "my facts". There's only *facts*. What is a questionable IQ?

Clearly an honest mistake by a woman and administration so keen on presenting "alternate facts" and being anti-science. Now if you'll take a dictionary, you'll see that there's ony one kind of alternate to "fact" - that one is called "fiction". Don't thank me, thank Webster's.

Same here! I skipped X-Plane 10 becuse I didn't want to invest in a new rig already (same with DCS), but as my laptop is now coming of age, it's probably time to seriously consider a gaming reactor. IL-2 right up to and including '46 (the whole modding-thing really tore up the community) X-Plane 9 (showed me the potential of X-Plane) FSX (bought it, but it really is a bridge too far for my rig) FS9 (which runs pretty well but shows it's age) WoX WoX2 Thought about getting into F4 BMS again, but didn't care for the whole installation-process. Besides, my rig doesn't want to read CDs anymore. This also kept my from re-discovering Lock On and DCS.

Go, watch it. It's been directed by Clint Eastwood, so you can't do anything wrong there. Certainly better than the 23rd comic-hero movie or Transformer-bullsh*t or Star Wars knock-off. BTW: People always think that the Hudson-landing was a wonder of stick-and-rudder skills. It wasn't - my grandma could have done the landing, and so could any other pilot (professional or private) worth his "wings". The issue that set Sully apart from many others was the decision to no try for the obvious (an airport or a long, inviting road*), but take the widest, longest and safest (!) runway available, without trying to knee-jerk the airplane to a (rare in NYC) clear landing-spot. This is what saved the lives of all the people. This and the good prevailing weather. Are you into anything special, book-wise? I've got tons of books, many of which I could recommend. Depends on what you're looking for, though. :) They say fact is more gripping than fiction, because fiction has to make sense... ___ * 1) In the 1970s, there was a DC-9 in Georgia (Southern Airlines) that had just departed Atlanta, flown through a bad southern storm and had it's engines drowned and banged-up by hail and biblical downpours. The pilots had their windshields smashed and flew through the clouds blindly. When they came out of the soup and realized they wouldn't be able to make the runway of Dobbins AFB, where they were getting vectored to. They saw a straight road, though and tried to shoot for it. They made it, but not without slicing a wing through a gas-station, turning the almost-have-gone-well landing into an inferno with a sizeable loss of life. One of the pilots had been in the military, flying fighters. 2) In the early 1980s, there was an Air Florida 737 in Washington D.C., going south to Florida. They were inexperienced with winter operations and decided to do some nonstandard-stuff (powerbacking with the use of their reversers, trying to keep the wings de-iced by taxiing close behind a DC-9 in front of them and taking-off without the use of engine anti-ice). They didn't realize their EPR-reading was extremely mismatched from their take-off N1-setting. They took off with substantially less power than was required for their calculations. Hence they ended up rotating with iced-up wings and too little power and stalled it out of ground-effect right into a brigde. The co-pilot (pilot flying that day) was an F-15 pilot, yet was unable to recognize the issues (he was close, though) and also unble to fly the airplane - including thinking about just firewalling the throttles. What do we learn from this? Fighter-pilots die for dumb resons as well. Accident-reports of all air forces are filled with accidents just like that. The issue tha they are surviving combat (well, many aren't) does not neccessarily mean they're superior aviators. Fun fact: Hans-Joachim Marseille, who was the leading western front ace of the WW2 Luftwaffe and probably the best deflection-shooter of all times, was a crappy pilot (he crashed several airplanes, mostly on landing), but he made up for it in combat.

The speed there is in m/s and 500m/s is a little bit....excessive (that would be Mach 1.48). Also, consider what Gunrunner says. In a subsonic design (means: Mach limited), maximal true airspeed is attained at crossover-altitude, which usually is somewhere between FL230 to FL280 (depending on the actual figures).

The funny thing is, that removing the launch bar effed up the dynamics of the nose-gear (the bar acted as mass-damper), so in order to minimize shimmy, they re-introduced a non-operative pretend-bar. RAAF https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/RAAF_A21-30_McDonnell_Douglas_FA-18A_Hornet_on_display_at_Temora.jpg SpAF: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Spanish_Hornet_(10409626133).jpg RCAF: http://www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca/assets/AIRFORCE_Internet/images/news-nouvelles/2016/04/stuart-sanders-hornet-2.jpg SwAF: http://www.janes.com/images/assets/970/59970/1579270_-_main.jpg The Finns, Kuwaitis and Malaysians also have the bar or pretend-bar installed. It's the small things ...or the VMFA-251 tail-flash: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/US_Marine_Corps_VMFA-251_personnel_2005.jpg

Jedi, Gepard has a point: The US likes investing in hugely expensive projects that at the end of the day don't really do much except creating shareholder value (and even that is questionalbe). Look at SDI, look at the A-12, the initial F-22 program and now look at the F-35. All that stuff is technologically amazing, but not needed right now. Gone is the fiscally conservative way of thinking. There is no war to be fought anywhere, where F-35s or F-22 bring the edge - the only wars where that'd be the case is a confrontattion with China or Russia, which I can't see for economic reasons (and more convenient means of battle than going full 20th-chentury-hot war). Now you'll throw me into the fire, but the whole F-35 programme is a big communist scheme to me: Free money from the DoD for LM. Just think of what else could be done with a trillion dollars...

There was a flight by an operational F-104C, using tweaked inlet-cones (similar to those on the NF-104) and the larger tail of the twin-seaters/ G-model. They went out to about Mach 2.5 with acceleration still ongoing, when the pilot (Tom Delashaw) RTBed. http://www.i-f-s.nl/f-104-records/ There used to be a pilot's account of Delashaw, but I can't find it now. The F-104G has three limits concerning speed: M 2.0 (mainly a stability limit) 750 KIAS (q-limit) 121°C Compressor Inlet Temperature The windscreen-thing was probably an issue on all fightes back then. Luckily, the fuel wouldn't last too long anyway.

You can't build a Mach 3 capable airframe by just bolting on water-tankss, tweaking the inlet-system and modifying the flight-controls of a Mach 2 airframe. The most critical problem north of Mach 2 is shock-heating. You can go Mach 2.5 for a very short time in an aluminium-airframe (as actually demonstrated by F-4s during Project Skyburner), but that's about it. Aluminium will weaken a lot above 120°C, which is about the leading-edge temperature at Mach 2*. If you want to go faster (even just on a dash), you'll need different materials: stainless steel (heavy) or titanium (a dog to work with - especially machining - thus gold-dust expensive). The US had their strategic bird at this time (SR-71), and giving funds to Israel for tweaking a Mach 2 bird into a low-volume Mach 3 retrofit-program wasn't a politically and fiscally sane idea. ___ * Depends on a couple of factors, but generally Mach 2 is an upper-bound for aluminium-airframes for this very reason

The XL shared a common fuselage and everything apart from the wings (even the engine) was the same as in the current production blocks. It's a tech-demonstrator, funded by GD and only later entered the race for the F-111 replacement. The SH, in contrast, is a whole different aircraft from the ground up, with a few shared parts. The point is the Sea Harrier didn't do well at all, compared to what a conventional carrier air wing (F-4K / Buccaneer) could have done. There would have been substantially fewer losses on the british side, had they had their "back in the days" carrier-capabilities. A bit of a straw-man argument you're putting up there. The F-51 didn't do too bad in Korea at first, but with increased MiG-activity, the 200kts of airspeed-differerence made it obslete. No way of putting in an LRU that equates the difference. Luckily, the F-86 was largely just a jet P-51 with hydraulics - the tech gap back then was pretty slim. The F-14 was a purpose-designed aircraft (same was the F-4) - quite the opposite of the F-35C. Bad example. So the F-35C is a great tanker or FAC aircraft? Is it a fleet-defender? How much payload can it carry and still be "stealthy"? Lipstick on a pig. BTW: The RCS-refinement I'm talking about is a concession in your direction, as you seem to think it's a get-home-free trump-card (no pun intended). It's not, but if it helps sell the aircraft, why not? You could stick it onto another platform, but unfortunately the external jammers would f+ck with the F-35's stealth and putting a stealth-plane in charge of jamming is a bit agricultural in the first place. I'm not spinning anything. The services came up with a set of requirements, to which Boeing, MDD, LM and others' yelled "sure we can do this". Probem was that the requirements are partially working against each other, which compromises overall performance. LM's design was chosen (rightfully - Boeing's was a dog), but still has to carry that crutch of trying to dance at all parties. In the end, LM, GE/P&W and RR got lots of money for it and couldin't deliver on time (not entirely their fault, given the specs) or on budget. That is forseeable waste of taxpayer's money. Why does the SH not deliver at lower overall cost? Got any specs on that - other than a LM-brochure? You seem to forget that the airplane is already 100% over-cost, meaning there will probably be a 50% reducton in orders, leading in turn to a flight-hour attrition rate twice as high as planned for. That's the problem when you try to replace a relatively cheap, hi-volume fleet with a complexity-burdened answer-to-all airplane.

Have there been any exercises with relevant aircraft of today yet? Being an aerospace engineer first and foremost gives me a pretty good idea of how costs grow and inflate with expectations and requirements in a project - better than someone who knows the project mainly from Aviation Week articles. No offense there, just engineering entangled with economy. The more parties involved and the more inflated the requirements-catalogue, the worse. The problem is universal nowadays - and Boeing will tell you a story or two about their own duck-ups with their 787-programme, which is the same thing in a different colour (wonder-airplane sold by economists without cross-checking with the engineering-departments for feasibility). Or maybe ask Airbus how they're doing with their A400M wonderbird. In terms of AA metrics, the SH has better AoA-potential over the overweight F-18C with similar kinetic capabilities. The mid-Lot F-18Cs were pretty short on thrust, before the F-18C got the higher thrust -402s. The most critical issue on the SH are the toe-out pylons, which would be reduced or done away with on the upgraded SH (centerline pod and CFTs). The problem with the positives of the F-35 is that they are compromised by the F-35 being an airframe that is not optimised for each services role. On top, being a money-pit for 25 years now, it prevents the Navy (whose primary mission is to reign the seas and not reign the air) from investing elsewhere with a higher bang/ buck ratio. BTW: The F-18 partially came to be, because there wasn't enough money left for procuring the initially planed number of F-14s. The Navy wasn't so much into a lightweight-fighter. The aging F-4s did play a role and somebody though the A-7s needed replacement (which they didn't). MDD not only axed Northrop over the F-18, they also lulled Congress into buying an airplane that wasn't quite needed. The Strike Fighter concept stuck and showed it's worth, but the Attack comunity was vey weary of the new airplane and rightly said that it was (then) a capability shrink compared to the A-7. There's a good book by Kelly Orr about the whole story behind the F-18. What you stated about the Sea Harrier "stands" because there were about 14 unexploded argentine bombs in Royal Navy ships that didn't go off and because the French were kind enough to let the RN have a brief look at the Exocet missile capabilities and possible counter-strategies. Take those two away and the Sea Harrier looks much more like what it is/ was. I already gave you a hint at the operational costs of the aircraft, which aren't rooted in the procurement/ flyaway-costs, but in the costs for training, support and logistics. The F-18/ SH has these already established and up/ running in full gear. Aircraft today are "obsolete/ relevant" mainly because of the boxes in them. As I said before, today's wars aren't about delivering a nke to Moscow, but more about helping the tent-industry geting more business. The wars the F-35 was supposed to fight back in the early 90s are pretty much gone. Take the avionics-package of the F-35 away and the airplane looks only half as cool. That's exactly what the upgraded SH does - bridge the avionics gap between the SH Block II and the F-35 and give the SH some stealth-gizmos that help reduce it's RCS. It's not the full show, but good enough at lest cost. For the Navy, this is probably the better package: Reduce the number of F-35s and put some upgraded F-18E/Fs in there - they'll use them anyway for almost anything in the air wing; might as well keep them "relevant". No, I think a CFT-equipped F-16, employing the latest weapon-technology (small caliber PGMs, JSOW, etc.) and using a chin-inlet Targeting-Pod does the job well enough. The funny thing about the boxes is that they are smaller (better say "more compact" in terms of computing-power per volume) than the boxes they are replacing. The only issue I can see is avionics cooling and providing enough power for all the gizmos. The CFT alone is a huge selling-point on the SH, as the canted/ toe-out pylons produce sheetloads of drag. Leave them at home and carry your arms on the tip-rails, fuselage-stations and the pod and you'll have a performace-increase right there. Becuse the F-16XL is a slightly stretched F-16 with a diferent wing. The Super Hornet is a different airframe (about 25% larger and there is a relatively low parts-commonality between the two; I'd have to look that figure up, though) with different engines. Surely he says that - he wants more airplanes and he doesn't have to pay for them.

Pilots noting the little to any difference in turn-capability over the F-16C obviously do think the airplane is underwinged. What now? The SH does have a much better overall performance than the F-18C (payload/ range, bringback-capability, loiter-time). It also does add a mission or two (tanker, Growler, CAS/ FAC for the two-seater). Capability-wise, the F-18 had been a step back, compared to the A-7, but it added substantial AA capabilities, which helped it sell in Congress. The then percieved bomber and cruise-missile threat never really materialized, though. Vought cried foul and wasn't really wrong. The SH also is a step back, when compared to the A-6, but again, it offers AA capabilities, which helped it being sold. That and the F-14 becoming too much of a financial burden. The SH was a much more radical engineering-endeavour than the F-16XL. SHs aren't "cheap", but are considerably higher value overall, given their multirole-capabilities and the fact that the most important financial burden (support and logistics) is already in place any only has to be amended for parts-changes. The Sea Harrier only barely delivered and showed major flaws in the whole Fleet Air Arm concept. It should be pretty obvious by now, that the entire Falklands War was much more down to dumb luck, than to a percieved-by-some Sea Harrier superiority. Had the FAA had still possessed their F-4Ks, the war would have ended way more favourably for Britain. What makes you think that sensor-interation and information-sharing can not be retrofitted? If the only real advantage is boxes, there is no point in buying the whole airframe around it. The only issue in the field is "stealth", which is just a marketing name for reduced observability in a specific detection-bandwidth. The funny thing is, there is proof. Built in about 4,500 copies. It's called F-16. Purpose-built, with retrofitted capability. You might compare that to a multi-nation clusterf*ck, called "Eurofighter"/ "Joint Strike Fighter" / "A400M" / etc. You can interchange "muti-nation" with "multi-service". It's the same game - the difference being that "multi-service" has all the disagreeing parties already sitting in one building. Not that the whole issue isn't trivial in the first place... But what do I know - I'm just a lowly aerospace engineer anyway.

The F-16s do have a lot of life left in them (they're still built, after all - and taht for a very competitive price; training and ressources are in place, well established and working well), just like the F-15s, which will obviously have to, as the original replacement-plans (F-22s) have been axed long ago. The F-35 won't be able to replace them. They're not designed to do so. Lipstick on a pig won't help there. Care to elabore what kind of "unique capabilities" these are? A S-400 system can only be overcome by a good electronic warfare strategy - no matter if F-22s are involved or not. Especially if your fleet of F-22 is slim. What about an eventual S-500? Now, you won't have that system in Dafuqistan, but sure as hell, you will see it in Russia eventually. The Chineese aren't asleep either. They're getting their own set of ideas based on their own "stealth"-programmes. There is always something particularily bad about not designing a fighter for a role it is intended to fulfill. It's like arguing the F-111B is not a dog compared to an F-14 - and even there, the F-14 had been compromised by the ill-suited hardware of the F-111 (TF-30 engine) for almost 15 years. It's like arguing that the F-18 is not compromised as a naval strike-fighter (particularily internal fuel-capacity and drag-figures do to the LERX and boundary-layer slot design) by it's YF-17 Air Force LWF-programme heritage. Any time there's a compromise (especially, when outside of your mission-parameters), you're worse off in total. That's a fact, and not just whishful thinking on my side. The F-35 has been burdened by an unrealistic set of mission-requirements, all stuffed into one airframe and supposed to be redeemed by some black magic, coming from it's avionics boxes. Unfortunately, that's not how the game works: One airplane for each service would have outperformed the F-35 and donse so at a lower total price. Looks like this has to be learned anew by each generation of generals and politicians. "Achievenets" don't really count - the Luftwaffe axed their VTOL-projects in the 60s, mainly because they realized that overall strike-performance was compromised too much to be of any use. All of that despite their tech-achievements (first supersonic VTOL, etc.). The brits carried on with their Harrier, which was rather laughable in it's payload-range capabilities in it's first two Marques, but somewhat useful for some missions. Only later design-changes and other tech-implementations (ARBS, Radar, FLIR) offered a more capable airplane (largely thanks to MDD's enlarged, glassfiber wing). VTOL projects have largely died, because for the cost (weight, reduced useful volume) of the lifting-technology, other capabilities suffered too much. How many operational F-35 pilots have flown anything different than a 3gen fighter before? Given the Harrier II-heritage, I'd probably also be pretty wet-pantied about the airplane, but given the fact that it doesn't outperform a 40 year old design (F-16) in basic airwork, makes it look bad. Bells and whistles can be retrofitted, aerodynamic performance not so much. There's only so much, a beefed-up engine can do, when you're underwinged. The Super Hornet is avaiable right now, can be retrofitted for a fraction of the money, and the support structure and training is already well established. There is significantly less financial risk in allocating more funds in that direction, while cutting a couple of orders on the F-35 side of the game.

You mean like the whole 10 years the Vietnam conflict took? Or like the 10 years that OEF and OIF and it's sequels? The F-22 is seldomly deployed forward, because it's so valuable and not really needed (and because it's support is such a pain in the butt, due to it's low numbers in service). The same applies to the F-35. Only when huge numbers are in service (and actually deployed to a war that mainly consists of bombing a 20$ tent with a 200,000$ bomb), the cost of maintenance will accept normal combat deployments of F-35s. They're simply too sophisticated to be flown-down (hours and load-cycles wise), when a 30 year old F-16 can do the job as good. The lifting-fan configuraton adds complexity and burdens the aircraft with an unneccessarily high bypass-ratio for the main engine at higher Mach. Also, the lifting-fan was the source of lots of problems and delays (almost canning the project altogether) and will continue to be troublesome. The placement of the lifting-fan determines other internal load-distributions, such as weapon bays, fuel-tanks and avionic compartments, which in turn are supposed to be similar in all models. Also, designing an airframe and engine for three services with entirely diferent service-requirements leads to staggering performance-issues in each service-variant. Wing-, fuselage-, and engine-sizing is based a relatively confined set of parameters, which in turn has ramifications on key performance values. E.g. a smaller wing weighs less and thus requires less thrust for vertical take-off, so the smallest possible wing will be used in common. The F-35C in turn needs a much bigger wing, as the small wing not only lowers A2A and cruise-performance, but also won't safely fly at normal carrier approach-speeds (incl. fuel requirements and weapons bring-back capability requirements). Structural load-paths have to be designed in a way that not only the lighter weight Air Force model could handle the loads, but also the Navy model would (bigger wing means different load-distribution). The larger design-descent-rate and landing-gear requirements (cat-launch forces are acting through the nose-gear) als play apart, and so do material-requirements for saltwater-environment. In order to have maximal parts-commonality (which is a major design-goal of the F-35), all those issues have to be kept in mind, managed and designed accordingly. Thus, the end-design is compromised by design-constraints of the two other versions, which in turn degrades performance of each version, even though they are a diferent airplane with different design-missions and mission-requirements. I'm just giving a couple of rough examples here. The list goes on. A larger number of Super Hornets (with CFTs, upgraded cockpits and those stealth-pods) and a lower number of F-35s is the way to go.

It's funny how people always want to fight yesterday's war. There's not going to be a confrontation with China or Russia fought with airplanes. Ever. Too damn expensive. For everybody involed and the others. Shutting down the east-coast's power-supply via the internet is a much more efficient operation for the Chineese and Russians - better put some anti-hacking funding there than drowning LM in money. The F-35 has been great for sucking taxpayer-money from the government teet for 25 years - all to produce a "Jack of all trades, master of none" over-compromised airframe, that sucks at everything, except detection-range and avionics. Had there not been the force to build a VTOL-version to make the Marines happy (as if they're going to deploy that thing anyway to a forward base with minimal support*), the aircraft would look different and would perform better accross the board. The need for stealth in maned aircraft wil be greatly reduced in the next couple of years - thanks to drone-technology and stand-off weapons. ___ * Have a look at in-commission rates of F-4s and A-6s in Vietnam and then apply that to the F-35B at various probable theatres of operation. The Marines have gotten an overly complex aircraft for their mission, just play with the big boys and keep "costs down" - an idea that has never worked out that way. Ever.

Just three miles? How about the going Full Nelson and let them swim 12 miles.

CL, I think Feldwebel Schulz has been cloned and works all over the german juriditial/ police system.

The german judicial system is useless in getting people like him behind bars. They're always released early by some a$$hat psychologist or for being under the age of 21. TBH, my first reaction to those ID-papers was "how dumb are those terrorists"? Looks like they want to be dentified.

Looks like the Pakistani wasn't the culprit.

Weiß ich nicht - vermutlich die Wagenknecht?

Fairerweise sollte man anmerken, dass die alte Alice den "Neubürgern" und ihren Verhaltensweisen eher skeptisch gegenüber steht. Insofern ist sie hier konsequenter und linearer denkend, als so manche SozialromantikerInnen, die gar nicht merken wollen, dass sie einem Zielkonflikt zwischen sexueller Selbstbestimmung/ Auflösung des Patriarchats und und der "Kulturbereicherung" der 'Flüchtenden' entgegenrennen. Wie leicht ist es doch dann, dem Widerspruch auszuweichen und stattdessen den daruf hinweisenden Personen diverse -Ismen zu unterstellen... Ich finde auch F Petry nicht "rechtslastig". Das Wahlprogramm der AfD wäre in den 90ern ein normales, halb-konservatives Wahlprogramm zwischen dem rechten Flügel der SPD und dem linken Flügel der CDU/CSU gewesen. Das wird bei der journalistischen Behandlung des Themas gerne vergessen. Andererseits gibt es in der Partei auch genügend Knallköpfe wie Höcke oder v. Stoch.

Absolutely lovely! I just paid a little fortune to get hold of the two-tome Lela Presse Mirage F.1 books,and I'm kind of hooked

Da ich jeden Tag durch den großen Zirkus "Berlin" unterwegs bin, kann ich dir berichten, dass es leider nicht eine kleine Gruppe ist, sondern 30-45% der Bevölkerung sind, die die Politik der bunten Regierung toll finden. Es handelt sich dabei meist um Menschen mittleren Alters (Kinder der 68er), die sich recht gute Posten verschafft haben und deswegen mit der jetzigen Situation voll zufrieden sind. Oder eben junge Verblendete, die nach dem Streichelzoo-Abi (dank klagewütger Eltern) denken, das Leben wartete nur auf sie, dann aber mit der vollen Breitseite der Realität konfrontiert werden, wenn sie tatsächlich zum ersten Mal "angetanzt" werden. Nun sind diese Bevölkerungsgruppen in Berlin etwas überrepräsentiert, allerdings lässt sich das auf alle Regionen des Landes extrapolieren, in denen ähnliche Gefüge herrschen (Universitätsstädte und alle größeren Bevölkerungsverdichtungen). Wie sehr Teile der Bevölkerung am Leben vorbei denken zeigt sich ja bei den Eltern der kürzlich getöteten Freiburgerin. Ich denke, die AfD wird 20-30% holen, wärend sich die olle Mutti in eine Schwarz-Rot-Grüne Machterhaltungskoalition rettet und nochmal vier Jahre lang versucht, mit dem Holzbohrer das Schiff zu versenken.