some F35 info

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syscom3 said:
It wont. And the taxpayer will pay the price for the naval version of this contraption.
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And can you back up this statement with current unbiased FACT? Tax payers pay? For what? The contract over runs MUST be approved by the DoD, the F-35 is now a firm fixed price contract. There were some great discussion here that INTELLIGENTLY spoke of the pros and cons of the A-10 vs the F-35, so as I previously told you put up or shut up!!!
 
I'm still a wee tad concerned with the.....hidden weapons, missiles and the gun, back in the day with proper fighters and real NASCAR ( ), it was either the gun jamming or missile malfunctioning, here it's more....here the gun can jam or the door throwing a tantrum and not work, the same goes for them there missiles, either they malfunction or the doors gives you the finger...or do they have a backup systems?

All these thingmajigs seem to be rich man's concoctions, too many factors that can give you a firm kick in the mummy daddy batteries when needed...

(What else can I do to throw spanner in the works? )
 
Lets see. F4 Phantom, two engines. Good for long over water flights in case one engine gets damaged. A6; ditto. Two engines. F14. Ditto. Two engines. F18, two engines. Good. A7, well one engine, but its a low cost light design so we can live with it.

F35 .... Hmmmm, only one engine. Why is that? Because we are being forced to by an Air Force airframe and it only has one engine. But what happens if the engine fails on the catapult launch? Its a 200 million dollar loss.
 
I think there are plenty of aircraft with a single engine that have comparable reliability to twin engined types. one that comes to mind is the harrier or AV-8.

A comparison under similar service conditions, for a one and two engined type is difficult to come up with . Id be interested to hear of examples....
 
Hmmm...single-engined Navy aircraft. Well, there was the F9F Panther and Cougar, A-4 Skyhawk, A-7 Corsair II and F-8 Crusader just for starters...and that's aside from every Navy carrier aircraft of the piston era prior to the one-off Tigercat (not to mention the ubiquitous Spad).
 
but this is one of those statistical minefields that we are bound to have endless arguments over. Take the a-4 as an example. In USN service aboard their big attack carriers this little hotrod had a pretty good safety record even in wartime. I don't have the statistics, but im relying on anecdotes from 35 years ago. They did well in terms of deck landing safety records all through conflicts like the Vietnam era.

On our little baby clapped out excuse of a carrier we had a terrible record with them. A-4s were at the high end of the service envelope for a piece of junk like the Melbourne. The RAN knew from at least 1968 that the flight deck was too small and the power of the catapult too weak to properly handle an a/c like the Skyhawk, but we kidded ourselves into believing that if we strengthened the flight deck, hotted up the catapult we could make do. In fact the deck ended up like a sheet of corrugated iron and the catapult for the last 8 years of its use was so clapped out we had to restrict payloads and close our eyes and think of England every time we went on flying ops. rough weather flying was always cancelled. US pilots on exchange, even the rotary wing jocks were never permitted to land on the old girl. The A-4 birds paid a heavy price for these shortcomings......out of the 21 in RAN service, no less than 11 were lost in deck accidents over a 17 year period.

The lesson I think from this is that safety and accident rates aren't dominated by the number of engines. there4 are any number of variables that will affect attrition rates, which I think would be magnified in any number of ways under wartime conditions .......
 

Since the intoduction of the F4 in the 1960's, only one carrier aircraft were introduced into the fleet with one engine. The A7. The A7 soldiered on until the twin engined Hornet was available in quantity. The F8 was a 50's design that was gone soon enough once the twin engined F4 was available.

What was deployed in the 40's and 50's is irrelevant.
 
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Oh come on Syscom, you can do better than that! The F-4 was also a 50s design, for pity's sake...it was just 2 years younger than the F-8. Additionally, the A-4 was only 3 years ahead of the F-4.

I'd also suggest opening your aperture beyond the USN. The F-8 was in service until 2000 in the French Navy. Other late-intro single-engine naval aircraft include the Sea Harrier FRS1/FA2, Harrier AV8A/B, Etendard IV-M and Super Etendard (I'm also tempted to add the Yak-38 because its 2 engines did not afford any more resilience if one engine failed).
 
Don't forget the A3D, which was introduced in 1958 and served until 1991 (some units even served in the Gulf War)

Quite a few 1950's (even WWII designs: A-1 served over twenty years, for example, itself replaced by the A-6 which was designed late 1950's) served well beyond the 60's and 70's
 

We are talking about the USN. Not the Russians. Not the USMC. Not the French. Not the British. *Except for the A7* All USN airframes since the mid 60's have been twin engines. Whatever airframes you are throwing into the mix, it's irrelevant to the USN of the middle 60's when two engines became a contract requirement. The F8 was rapidly removed from service as F4's and then F14's became available.

And I forgot to mention the A3. Two engines more by design requirements than by contractual requirement.
 
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