US Air Force to divest a total of 310 aircraft in 2024 including 32 F-22A Raptor | Hacker News Reader

US Air Force to divest a total of 310 aircraft in 2024 including 32 F-22A Raptor

airandspaceforces.com

26 pointsbelter43 comments

>200 NGADs

Are they making the same mistake as they did with the F-22 by acquiring a precious "silver-bullet" fleet? How do they account for downtime due to maintenance or any sort of damage?

I think that’s the way the US AF has always operated - a high low mix; a handful of expensive ultra capable “mission” aircraft with lots cheaper mass produced ones for “routine” use.

E.G. F-15 vs F-16

The F-22 vs F-35 was suppose to fit that mould too but the F-35 turned out to be more expensive than expected - although the cost has dropped in recent years and they are hard at work to reduce it further.

Yes, but what is the alternative? In order to be combat effective in the Pacific theater, NGAD will need to have a long unrefueled operating range (roughly F-111 size), super cruise, broadband stealth, large AESA radar, numerous other sensors, advanced EW, and an internal magazine large enough to accommodate weapons with greater range than the AIM-120. Those capabilities are all terribly expensive. But what's the point of building a lesser aircraft? Anything less capable won't even be survivable enough to make it to from US air bases to the first island chain.

The dilletantes on here always claim that manned tactical aircraft are obsolete and should be replaced by swarms of cheap drones. But it's impossible to build a cheap drone with the range, sensors, and payload necessary to be effective in that environment. Look at the unit cost of something like an MQ-4C or MQ-25A. Remote piloting isn't going to viable in a hostile EW environment, and current AI software is incapable of handling highly dynamic situations. I do expect though that at least some NGAD variants will be designed as optionally manned so that they can be employed as drones against heavily defended fixed targets.

One could imagine a next generation Valkyrie could handle this role well. Something big and fast enough to chuck missiles at 300 mile ranges - with a radar to match.

Those were always intended as complementary systems. NGAD will have to act as a control node for advanced UCAVs because satellite links may be unavailable. Current AI technology is far from being sufficient for autonomous operations on most missions. The XQ-58 Valkyrie shows some promise, but like most other current tactical aircraft it lacks the range and speed to be effective in the Pacific theater. A larger next generation model is likely to have a very high unit cost.

Ahh I was thinking of the B-70 Valkyrie from the 70s. A Mach 3+ intercontinental high altitude bomber.

I don't think they're saying they want only 200 NGADs. I think it's saying that they want to have enough CCAs so that they can have 200 sets of 1 NGAD + 2 CCAs. It also says 300 F-35s, which certainly isn't going to be the case; rather, that refers to 300 sets of 1 F-35 + 2 CCAs. The link in that paragraph has some slightly different wording that makes it clearer

I think divestment of the A10s make sense. Those Fairchild frames are super dated and ill-suited for battles against peer adversary.

A10s are probably not the one you need to retire. In an all out war, they’re the easiest to maintain and the best ones to fly with damages. They do have a specific role, but in that role, it is one of the hardiest planes to exist.

A-10s are basically useless in the Pacific theater. They don't have the range, speed, or defensive systems to even make it to the fight. (And the same limitations make attack helicopters even more useless there.) A few squadrons composed of airframes in the best physical condition (fewest stress cracks) will probably be kept around for potential use in low intensity conflicts in other theaters but most will have to go to the boneyard.

A-10 are too expensive for low intensity conflicts. Planes like Super Tucano would be better if we need to fight that kind of war. It would have been better if US kept Super Tucanos instead of giving them to Afghan air force.

It is also quite possible that drones will do the CAS job by the time it is needed again. Or that missiles will make too dangerous for anything.

How about a C-2 based gunship. Carrier launchable so Navy could buy.

Forget it. The Navy would never buy a new aircraft that could only ever be used for CAS in low intensity conflicts. They have no budget for that mission and no extra space in carrier air wings. The Air Force will probably keep a few AC-130 gunships around but they're just not survivable against any sort of competent air defense.

Gunships are less survivable than A-10. They only operate at night because they are so vulnerable. They are only for special circumstances.

I’m not sure we need CAS solution, bombers and fighters at medium altitude with precision munitions worked well. Light attack works well for counter insuregency. For contested airspace like Ukraine, drones might be the only option.

A-10 are expensive to maintain because of their age. The high maintenance budget is the reason AF is retiring them.

Their role has almost completely disappeared and Ukraine has proven it. Su-25, the Russian equivalent, have been shot down at alarming rates because of all the MANPADs, SAMs, and fighters.

I know it's highly unpopular thing to say but A10's are also failing at their own role.

Its main gun cannot achieve penetration against modern armor and their armor cannot survive against modern AA.

Even at the time of Gulf War 1, the A-10 was performing less well than popularly imagined. See the article "The Gulf crisis: The media point of view,' by David Hackworth (1991). (http://libgen.rs/scimag/10.1080%2F09592319108423001)

This says a lot about what we already knew about the F-35.

While the F-35 was (originally) billed as an air superiority multirole fighter, the design by committee approach resulted in a machine that is not great at anything. The AF knows this, and that's why they're filling in with the f-22 stopgap until a true next gen air superiority fighter arrives.

The F-35 will serve as a case study of how not to run government contracts. Woefully over budget, behind schedule, and doesn't meet the original requirements (iirc congress±the military even relaxed the requirements at some point).

The entire government is a case study on how not to run government contracts.

Got a better process?

The F-35 suffered from each branch wanting the plane to be something different. The same airframe has to support radically different internals and flight characteristics on the A, B, and C models. The program had a myriad of issues but if each branch had just developed its own the cost would have been overall lower.

Sometimes, in government procurement especially, you have to realise that the 'program' and 'the outcome' are two distinct entities. F35 was a high profile, congress level program that everyone knew was a priority. If i was some Air Force general that has been thinking about halolenses, Advanced AI, manuverability, radar, cloaking, etc. You could get funding through the project. So many different things came out of the f35 outside of the f35.

It also had to be built with tech the US was willing to export to foreign "partners" (and whatever allegiances they might harbor).

Pentagon Wars, but for the F-35.

The thing is, and as we’re about to see with the Bradley in Ukraine, it’s not as big a deal when your adversary is absolutely terrible at war.

I guess we could just keep counting on that never changing…

https://youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

thx for posting. I just love it when Richard Schiff yells. It's music to my ears.

And despite people getting entertainment value out of the "Pentagon Wars", the Bradley has proven its detractors wrong on almost every count.

It's like watching Dr. Strangelove and thinking that's how the National Security Council operates.

The important thing with Pentagon Wars is that the detractors couldn't tell the difference between AFV and IFV. It is like comparing a minivan or pickup truck and complaining that the truck has bed (with machine gun) and carries less people when that is the whole point. IFV made AFVs obsolete and the US needed to build the Bradley to compete with Soviet ones.

Or testing the Bradley against anti-tank weapons when it was never designed to survive them cause it is not a tank. And most tanks can't survive them.

The other funny error in Pentagon Wars is complaining about the $12 billion price tag. When the Bradley program cost $6 billion and was underbudget.

In the article, they ordered 76 f35's, which is max production.

>resulted in a machine that is not great at anything.

the f35 is the most capable aircraft in almost every KPI. Granted, The program was ungodly expensive, but we are still paying $2B for each b2, so at $300-760m a pop, it's still ungodly expensive, but the DOD's budget is infinite.

That it is

We are not still paying $2B for each B-2. Production of those ended years ago. The replacement B-21 is expected to be somewhat cheaper (although still very expensive) with a unit price in the $700M range.

With recent foreign military sales (Switzerland, Norway, Czech Republic, maybe Greece), the R&D costs of the F-35 are now being spread over a much larger fleet. It's still not a cheap plane .. but the price is dropping by building them in volume (like was originally intended for the F-22). Production rate is up to about one being delivered every other day.

Lockheed Martin and it's many contractors have made a large investment in production tooling & automation so the planes are being built in a process more like an automotive assembly line than individually like in years past. Note the large fixture @3:00 holding the wings vertically to make it easier to drill accurate holes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPEy3QwsKjQ

Not sure where you're getting your figures, but the B2 has been out of production for decades, and the cost for the F-35 is below a new build F-16.

> why they're filling in with the f-22 stopgap until a true next gen air superiority fighter arrives

The sort of combat where an F-22 would outfight an F-35 is somewhere between extremely rare and obsolete. Add to that the massive costs of running the F-22, and the balance shifts to having more F-35s and armament over a luxury squad of F-22s.

I feel like people think modern air warfare is like Top Gun while the whole point is to attack out of visual range.

The whole point of modern air warfare is to knock out adversary aircraft (and associated facilities and supplies) on the ground before they can ever take off by using stand-off weapons and low-observable strike platforms. NGAD will still retain some significant air-to-air capability but I expect the concept of operations will focus on avoiding those fights except as a last resort. Why risk fighting a duel with your adversary when it's safer to sneak in at night and burn his house down?

It is actually extremely unclear exactly how modern BVR combat between stealth aircraft would play out, so no one can say that for sure. It may well be the case that combat between VLO fighters ends up such that superior kinematics matters.

It may also be the case that super-long-range engagement against information and control nodes is the key, in which case something like the J-20 may actually be superior, due to being optimized for the longest possible range of A2A combat.

The F-35 was never billed as an air superiority fighter. The basic idea was a stealth version of the F-16. It was always designed in mind with the F-22 performing the Hi in the Hi-Lo mix.

Your comment is woefully uninformed and misleading.

I think the narrative that it needn't be an air superiority fighter came later (I.e. they changed the requirements when they realized it would not be competitive in practice).

iirc it was originally intended to be an air superiority fighter. Consider this line from the wikipedia F-35 entry

"intended to perform both air superiority and strike missions."

primarily air command, leveraging the sensor suite to operate non air-to-air tasks. it's an advanced systems ship that can use information and agility to complete most missions that don't involve pushing peak gs, velocity and circle radius.

F-35 was spawned from the JAST initiative coming out of the Pentagon's Bottom up review. It was designed to replace the F-16, A-10, Harrier, as well as the F/A-18C and D models.

It was no more an air superiority fighter than the F-16. Would it be expect to be able to fight if needed? Sure, just like a Falcon would, but that wasn't it's primary mission/role.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/jas...

Ah, missed the edit window. Just because someone writes it in Wikipedia doesn't make it accurate.

The concept of an air superiority fighter really started with the F-15 Eagle (its contemporary, the F-14 was really a fleet defender designed around the AWG-9 radar and Phoenix missile system).

When the F-22 was developed, it was so far ahead of anything that USAF started referring to it as an "air supremacy" fighter that would treat opposing aircraft by "clubbing baby seals." That's how easy it would be for the F-22...

The confusion lies in the origins of the F-16. It was intended to be a daylight fighter with only short range missiles and guns, and highly maneuverable. Sprey and clan wanted a cheap fighter that could be built in mass. The life of the Falcon turned out quite different, and despite it being highly maneuverable, it was matched by other aircraft of the time (F/A-18, Fulcrum). Though it is one sexy bird.

But most USAF planning viewed the F-16 as a bomb truck (replacing the A-7) that could "swing" to help out in A2A if things got too hot. And eventually the F-16 became quite good at its strike mission, as well as SEAD/DEAD and even CAS once LANTIRN and Litening pods were wide spread.

This is the role the F-35 is intended to replace; the view is that NO non-stealthy aircraft can perform these roles in a contested environment with a near-peer opponent. And I think Ukraine is proving this out well...

No, the F-35 is one of the top 3 (depending on how you estimate the capabilities of the J-20 and the importance of sensors it could easily be #1) air superiority fighters in the world. A large part of that is simply that it's the first fighter designed since Moore's Law really got going in the 90s. Yes, the F-22 was designed after Moore, but it was an 80s design using hardened 80s computers, and its computing architecture is still reminiscent of that era. The F-35 is a 90s design using 90s computers, and our idea of computing changed significantly from the mainframe-style "upgrade one a decade" concepts dominant in the 80s to the PC "upgrade once a year" of the 90s. Combine that with American dominance in sensors and engines and even though the F-35's kinematics may not be as great as the F-22's, it's capable of killing airborne targets without needing those kinematics. The big unknown is the J-20 and whatever next-gen programs the PRC has going, but _currently_ the F-35 is likely better at killing air targets.

NGAD exists to be a fully-upgradeable air superiority counterpart to the F-35. It'll be 100% air superiority like the F-22, but will be upgradeable with relatively minor revisions like the F-35. It's designed that way because almost certainly the PRC air superiority fighters will be designed the same way. Its existence isn't a condemnation of the F-35, any more than the existence of a high-low mix isn't condemnation of the low part of the mix.

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