If we had just kept the F-22 production line funded...

[ladajo]

You're quibbling. You're also inflating the definition of CV beyond what it actually is. USN Supercarriers are not the only ships on earth permitted the designation "CV." LHAs/virtual CVEs provide a mid-sized CAS air group to MEUs on deployment. If you don't want to call it that for reasons of acronymical correctness and scale, that's fine. But they still fill a niche not far different from the RN Invincible class CVs. Rip the flight decks off the current Jeeps ala the Essex class CV to LPH rebuilds, fit a new ski jump/ catapult deck ala the Admiral Kuznetsov class, and they can service a COTL and rotary airgroup of 25 to 35 aircraft. Jump jets no longer required.

That plus a well deck for the MEU would be truly killer, but possibly too much to hope for.

The difference between a CV wing and and LHA(D) wing is like being on two different planets. I am not arguing about the CV designator, but if I must, how many "CV"'s can embark 75 to 100 aircraft? How many CV's can embark more than 50? How many can embark more than 25?
My point is the list gets exponentially shorter the higher you go in deck loading. It is like your next quote, (humor aside), The E/F is only an F-18 in looks. It is similar, but even more radical to saying a CH-53E is the same as a D. The E/F program was a really good fast one pulled on Congress IMO, a whole new air-frame built under an existing project line label.

The strike and superiority capability brought to the table by a CV, compared to an LHA(D) is like saying, "here is my nuclear bomb, what did you bring? Eh? What's that? oh, a Series 80 GPB. Sorry, I think you are at the wrong party, try down the hall."

F/A-18? What's that? Do you mean the YF-17 Heavy?

Funny quote though, in that it brings out the prototype lead to a larger production variant, lead to a larger new aircraft...

[CaptainBeowulf]

When I last read this thread, it was about 6 pages long, so I'm not sure if anyone has posted the following links... but I don't feel like reading another 6 pages right now:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/01 ... et-zzzzzz/

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/01 ... on-budget/

While I would have liked to see more F-22s, given that the most expensive part of the program (initial development cost) has already been spent on, I'm not freaking out over it.

I'm on record here as supporting spending on long-term development programs that will provide next-generation technological advantages. For instance, a Polywell powered DD with rail guns would be nice. But when it comes to fighter modern fighter planes, I tend to agree with those who say that your sensors, jammers, avionics and the munitions you're carrying are more important than the plane. For intercepting other planes, the most important thing is to have a state-of-the-art air-to-air missile.

[DeltaV]

The J-20 appears to have a delta wing (I saw some pictures of its wheelie during a high-speed taxi test) and if so it most reminds me of an FB-22 (sometimes called the Strike Raptor).

Lambda wings.

Delta with Russian-style shock tips and leading strakes. The chunky gear doors have fewer reflecting joints when closed than folding doors would have.

[DeltaV]

For intercepting other planes, the most important thing is to have a state-of-the-art air-to-air missile.

I think having an effective AESA radar and passive IR sensor would be just as important.

[Skipjack]

Actually, there are two, one for flight test and one for ground test.

Prototypes, prototypes, prototypes. These are not production planes. You do remember how much time has passed between the first F22 prototype and the production version, do you?

These things never get finished on time in democracies, with budget battles, union strikes, etc. Firing squads are great motivation to keep on schedule. There will be hundreds in the production queue by then.

You are completely exaggerating the situation in China. People dont get shot there for not delivering a product on schedule. This is ridiculous. Sure there are tons of human rights violations in China, but you are completely blowing things out of proportion. The massacre on the Tiananmen square is now 21 years ago. The people responsible for that are not in charge anymore. Most of the new ones are more in Deng Xiaopings mindset. Not to say that he was a holy man or something, but he was against the massacre back then and he had a big influence.
Generally the trend in China is towards a slow democratisation. From what I understand, they want to transition to a democracy, but they want to avoid a turbulent transition. Not saying that being a democracy prevents a country from violating human rights or something. But IMHO things in China will get better as time goes by. Give it another 10 years and it will most likely be a real democracy.

Your faith in US Intelligence is astounding.

I was more thinking about allied secret service agencies, that will provide the CIA with the information, as usual. Of course you always have to make sure that whoever is providing you with the information is not feeding you wrong information. Some of these allies might have their own agenda...

The US may have designed its last fighter, given the exponential national debt. USAF wants a new fighter by 2040, but that assumes a semi-normal budget. More likely is 2050, if ever. Those 187, oops, 186 now, F-22s will have to face at least 3-4 times as many J-2Xs and T-5Xs in the second half of their lifespan. By the way, Russia has paid off all of its debt.

Well one reason for the debt is your huge spending on defense.
You stop doing that, you will get your debt under control.
Of course this would not fit the defense lobbyists in congress...
Now the Chinese are spending much less money on defense than the US does. How and why would they build 3 times as many of these planes? Somewhere there is a mistake in the calculation.

[djolds1]

I am not arguing about the CV designator, but if I must, how many "CV"'s can embark 75 to 100 aircraft?

USN fleet carriers Essex through Ford classes, IJN Akagi & Kaga.

How many CV's can embark more than 50?

Kuznetsov class. The RN's upcoming QE class Supercarrier will come close. The RN's retired Illustrious through Audacious classes.

How many can embark more than 25?

Virtually every carrier built over the course of the last 92 years, back to HMS Hermes.

My point is the list gets exponentially shorter the higher you go in deck loading.

Yup.

And that makes LHAs NOT functional equivalents to CVEs HOW, exactly?

Of course, were I God I'd prioritize jeeps over fleet carriers - I prefer redundancy over efficiency. More survivable. IMO the Germans proved the failure of the "quality over quantity" philosophy during WW2. Carriers are target-bait for Sunburns and BrahMos'.

[mdeminico]

Of course, were I God I'd prioritize jeeps over fleet carriers - I prefer redundancy over efficiency. More survivable. IMO the Germans proved the failure of the "quality over quantity" philosophy during WW2. Carriers are target-bait for Sunburns and BrahMos'.

No kidding... when you look at the Tiger and Panther tanks vs a Sherman, it looks like we sucked at building tanks. Till you realize that we weren't going for the best piece of craftsmanship on the planet, we were going for something that could be built in sufficient numbers to be present in a large number of fields of battle, and overwhelm the enemy with numbers when we had to face another armored vehicle.

It's just too bad they didn't listen to Patton's suggestion after the war of re-tooling American factories with German designs, and going after the Russians. Look at the lives that cost in the last 65 years.

[djolds1]

Of course, were I God I'd prioritize jeeps over fleet carriers - I prefer redundancy over efficiency. More survivable. IMO the Germans proved the failure of the "quality over quantity" philosophy during WW2. Carriers are target-bait for Sunburns and BrahMos'.

No kidding... when you look at the Tiger and Panther tanks vs a Sherman, it looks like we sucked at building tanks. Till you realize that we weren't going for the best piece of craftsmanship on the planet, we were going for something that could be built in sufficient numbers to be present in a large number of fields of battle, and overwhelm the enemy with numbers when we had to face another armored vehicle.

The chassis for the Sherman was entirely serviceable. It sucked in practice because it was under-gunned due to the nascent Pentagon's harebrained "Tank Destroyer" doctrine, brainchild of General Lesley McNair. A logistics genius, but badly misinformed on the realities of armored combat. With an improved main gun (such as the UK's Sherman Firefly) it was much more effective.

It's just too bad they didn't listen to Patton's suggestion after the war of re-tooling American factories with German designs, and going after the Russians. Look at the lives that cost in the last 65 years.

In general, they did. The M-46/60 series MBTs have some obvious German influence, in addition to being M26 evolutions. As for going after the Russians, fat chance. One of the better covered up details of late WW2 is how close large swaths of the US military were to mutiny when looking at the expected loss ratios for a probable Operation Downfall. US desertion rates in the ETO were many times higher than the reported numbers, Ike instructed the crews of ferrying troop ships not to inquire closely for proper documentation from embarked soldiers returning home, and in general the ETO troops felt they had fought and finished "their war." Jumping straight from WW2 to WW3 was not in the cards.

[ladajo]

The functional equivilent?
LHA(D)s are built to move bodies to beach and back, and to provide LIMITED CAS. Jeeps were designed and built to do ASW, with limited SUW.
LHA(D)s have exactly no role in ASW except to be a victim, or by the Official Term, "Flaming Datum". An LHA(D) may be able to embark an ASW rotary asset an fly it, but it is very much pointless given the lack of ability to fight it. At least a CVN has some ability to fight the rotary, granted not very much.
There is almost no air v air capability (AV-8s), limited SUW (the few AV-8s, and they don't want to do it).
In the modern arena, it is apples and oranges at best. The ski jump bit brought up earlier is a great example. That bit of kit came about for two reasons, the most important being the gas savings for launch, given limited on no tanking abilities for the "wing". AV-8s burn a ridiculous amount of gas in the vertical launch/recovery mode. Gas that equals station time.

[djolds1]

The functional equivilent?
LHA(D)s are built to move bodies to beach and back, and to provide LIMITED CAS. Jeeps were designed and built to do ASW, with limited SUW.
LHA(D)s have exactly no role in ASW except to be a victim, or by the Official Term, "Flaming Datum". An LHA(D) may be able to embark an ASW rotary asset an fly it, but it is very much pointless given the lack of ability to fight it. At least a CVN has some ability to fight the rotary, granted not very much.
There is almost no air v air capability (AV-8s), limited SUW (the few AV-8s, and they don't want to do it).

So what? You have a functional air wing here. Shall we revert to acronymical correctness again and insist on CVL?

In the modern arena, it is apples and oranges at best. The ski jump bit brought up earlier is a great example. That bit of kit came about for two reasons, the most important being the gas savings for launch, given limited on no tanking abilities for the "wing". AV-8s burn a ridiculous amount of gas in the vertical launch/recovery mode. Gas that equals station time.

Possible enhancements to make the jeeps more useful and flexible.

[CaptainBeowulf]

For intercepting other planes, the most important thing is to have a state-of-the-art air-to-air missile.

I think having an effective AESA radar and passive IR sensor would be just as important.

Yes, ok, those too. So you need an airframe that mounts the best sensors and missiles, and preferably provides some stealth.

F-35 will do, maybe even Super Hornets. It would be nice to have 500 F-22s, but large numbers of F-35s and Super Hornet F-18s could do the job sufficiently well for the foreseeable future... and there are too many other priorities for the money than the F-22 for now.

[CaptainBeowulf]

Regarding tanks, I've heard from/read in various sources that the various Sherman variants were also the most mechanically reliable tanks in WWII.

The problems of the Tiger are actually pretty well known. The engines and transmissions failed the whole time - the tank was just too heavy for them. Some iterations of the Panther were pretty reliable, but there were actually a lot of Panthers with significant problems as well.

In addition, recall that during the western Europe campaign both sides were actually having severe logistical trouble. The Germans were running out of resources as they lost territory to the Russians in the east, but the French and Belgian ports were either too banged up or not set up correctly for bringing in supplies. The allies were actually bringing in a lot of stuff through Marseille and up the Rhone valley railways. Shermans, being smaller, also used less fuel than Panthers and Tigers.

So, only a superficial look at the comparative designs makes the American tanks look pathetic. When you go beyond gun calibers and armor thickness, you see other balancing factors. Yes, the Sherman had some fundamental flaws - it was designed relatively narrow and tall, like most western tanks before the mid-1940s (including earlier German ones). As we learned during WWII, a tank should be wide and low. It needs wide tracks for better flotation, and it needs to be able to get into a hull-down position easily and present a small target to the enemy. Nonetheless, the Sherman would have been fine if they'd all been upgunned to something like the Firefly.

I also recall there being an up-armored American "Jumbo" Sherman. If McNair hadn't been so intransigent, we probably could have seen something along the lines of a Jumbo-Firefly. Such a tank would have been a match for a Panther or a Tiger I, while still probably being more reliable and using less fuel.

The other important thing is joint warfighting principles. A lot of German tanks were taken out by allied air attack. The combined allied ground/air forces were a more effective fighting machine than the Germans by the fall of 44 and spring of 45, although some individual German weapons platforms were superior, one-on-one, to allied ones. Yes, it was still close, for instance allied casualties in the Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge) were about 90,000 men and 800 tanks vs. 100,000 men and 1000 tanks for the Germans. But the more effective joint force will win - not the one with a few overengineered showcase systems.

This comes back to the planes - sure, maybe a J20 will turn out to be as capable as an F-22. But will the Chinese military be in any position to support it throughout the battlespace in a joint warfighting effort in the way that the U.S. can support its platforms? Without a massive increase in spending in all spheres, I'd say no.

I'd bet that a few hundred F-35s, supported by sensors, data links, and data fusion coming from satellites, land and sea forces, and UAVs, and being supplemented by land and sea-based surface-to-air-missiles, would be able to take on a similar force of J20s and come out ahead. The Chinese won't be able to match that level of joint support without massive increases in their defense spending to at least 60-70% of U.S. levels (I'm assuming here that the Chinese can maintain lower labor costs even for complex manufacturing).

Of course, the Chinese can use sweatshop labor to build up their inventory while spending only 20-30% of what the U.S. does on defense... and then run into the sort of reliability problems the Germans did with their big tanks.

[DeltaV]

F-35 will do...

f-22_v_f-35_comparison.pdf

F-22A carries twice as many air-to-air missiles as the F-35A.
F-22A tactically employs at nearly twice the altitude and at 50% greater airspeed than the F-35A.
- Gives air-to-air missiles a 40% greater employment range and increased lethality.
- Increases air-to-ground weapons employment range.
F-22A can control more than twice the battle space of the F-35A.
F-22A AESA radar has more T/R elements than F-35 radar.
F-22A in production...F-35A initial operational capability date is 2013…key in considering F-15Cs need to be replaced now.
Only the F-22 features vectored thrust, giving it twice the maneuverability of an F-35.
The F-22 can turn at twice the rate of an F-35.

[ladajo]

Missiles, fair enough. Can be mitigated by two F-35's...
On board radar, while helpful, is not as important as the voume search done by the standoff air control platform (AWAC, Haweye,...)
The data link/presentation from the voume search to the engaging platform is the most important part in that. They are both fairly equivilent given CEC/Link 16 and standard displays. There is a move to get at least CEC receivers into everything we can in the air.
By your own argument (not that I agree) any aircraft can be upgraded to production line 3D vector. I still maintain that airframe design limits would prevent that. The proverbial "fly the wings off" effect.

Back to "Jeeps". This is not semantics for me, it is clear difference in mission and capabilities. You CAN NOT do anything resembling useful between employing an LHA(D) "wing" verses a CVN "wing". They are two different animals. The closest comparison comes with CAS, and that does not even compare well. The AV-8s are built for it, nothing on the CVN is. And in return, the CVN assets are built to do different things thatn the AV-8s. There is no comparing mission and use. The overlap of strike into CAS by F-18s is nice, but the fact remains that an F-18 was NEVER meant as a CAS platform, and the E/F even more so. Now put a navy pilot in it, and ask him to do CAS, and he will both look excited and worried. Excited, with a cultural imperative to be cool by blowing shyte up, worried cause he knows he doesn't really know how to do it right, like his marine counters plus he also knows the airframe tasked is not the best for it. CAS remains an arena where while precision can be very useful, you still retain a need for rapid area effect. This is where strike and CAS diverge.
One more fundamental issue with LHA(D), no catapult, no aressting gear, and no plan to ever install. This removes any ability to use heavy air, as such embarked on a CVN. The intro of F-35 will not change this. It will be employed the same way as AV-8s currently are from the amphib decks. If you are going to perstist in this argument, you may as well throw LPD-17 in as a "Jeep" carrier as well. In fact why not anything that can carry more than 2 fixed wing assets?
And back to the basic point, WWII Jeep carriers were conceptualized, constructed for, and primarily employed in "E" duties. Where the "E" means Escort against Submarines.
Big Deck amphibs are considered Capital Warships, hust like CVNs by navy and national leadership. And rightly so, but they fill a completely different mission set, and to redefine that in a loose argument from a non-warfighting professional, based about possible alternate uses is wrong and IMO, is merely an exercise in future musings on "innovation" not the reality of today.
Jeep = ASW
LHA(D) = Amphibious Assault = CAS and Cargo
CVN = Initial Entry Strike and Superiority
If you want the US to come up with a "Light CV", then the Amphib is not it. It is not constucted to run a strike group battle, does not have the equivilent C2 a CVN does for it, and nor will it. Thus the idea of ESG's going by the wayside. Good idea, not practical to implement effectively in that construct. ESGs died a death of trying to manage stike group assets from a "Flagplot" that wasn't. One visit to a Big Deck "Flagplot" (not even what we call it really), and a CVN Flagplot, and you will get the point, while capabilities have some overlap, abilities do not. In fact, you can not run a MEU or MEB event from a CVN anymore than you can "fight" a strike group from a Big Deck.

[Diogenes]

For intercepting other planes, the most important thing is to have a state-of-the-art air-to-air missile.

I think having an effective AESA radar and passive IR sensor would be just as important.

I read something the other day that said the Air in front of the plane would still produce a detectable Doppler shift radar signature. If this is true, it would seemingly be true for our stuff as well. I know the Serbs figured out a way to shoot one of ours down.