heavy attack aircraft are still useful and it's a mistake to move towards multi-role everything
>>62505593>posts a multi role that failed in its -F- role and was relegated to attacker.
Is the F-111 comparable to the Su-34?
>>62505593The strike eagle platforms, F35s, super bugs, rafale, and recent su30 variants can all basically perform in a heavy strike/battlefield interdiction>>62505593 role.
>>62505593When multi-role aircraft can carry all the same munitions that dedicated ground-attack aircraft can, what's the point?
>>62505608It’s probably more comparable to the F-15E
>>62505604It would have been fine being a long range missile chucker
>>62505593That's what the B21 will be for, the rest can be handled by F-35s as multirole and F-22s for air superiority.
>>62505614Rafale is a multirole, totally incomparable
>>62505604Didn't it have the most ground kills in the Gulf War?
>>62505726Yes, it was a huge leap forward, but the engines and mechanical complexity doomed it, both the USAF and USN thought they could make something better and smaller.It's the closets thing to the F-108 in service.
>>62505604It was a tactical bomber since it saw full deployment. It was exceptional at the role and saw a full life of service, stop coping.
>>62505773Yeah they were eating a disproportionate chunk of the Airforce's maintenance budget.
>>62505815it's also a failed fighter
>>62505593Thread theme:https://youtu.be/eG5U2Q-CL2A?si=F_1WVdomuR6_zmzK
You're a decade behind. Americans are moving towards specialized drones, or at least drones with swappable mission packages.
>>62506159Niggas be like "it failed in its original role" when its wholly contributed to the war(s) it served in
>>62506296the P-47 raped the Luftwaffe; the F-111 didn't
> Was bad at everything.> Just happy to be here.
>>62506369The smol Skyhawk was a beast of an attack/light bomber. Can even dogfight too.
>>62506369>wasn't a pilot lethal, overpriced, overweight, overcomplicated, underperforming piece of shit like the rest of aircraft it served alongsideAt least A-3 was great, figures they were designed by the same guy.
>>62505593Multi-role everything because you can. If the specialisation became smaller and smaller, down to processors-level, why wouldn't you cram everything into a single jet if you could? In the end the economy of scale will benefit you, and the data you get from that one type of jet will be more comprehensive. They probably even have a term for that, like 'data-at-scale' or something. I don't know I'm not really a jet guy.
>>62506269Even the Ghostbat is very multirole. But again, if you can fit it all on a platform, why not?
>>62506410It BECAME one. It was designed around the limitations of the J65. As super light as it was, the J52's extra 10% of thrust did a lot for it.
is it a hot take to think even a turd like the F-104 could have become a decent multirole thanks to precision guided munitions? I know some of them were supposedly armed with anti ship missiles and that makes a lot of sense to me
>>62506565>F-104why bother, when you had the F-4 Phantom?
>>62506565The F-104's problem was that it was the minimum amount of plane to begin with. That's why it was such a pilot killer.Contrast it to the A-7 for example, which was so overbuilt and stable that one was once flown with the carrier wings FUCKING FOLDED.
>>62506565>k even a turd like the F-104 could have become a decent multirole>DoubtThat crap required constant adjustment to fly stable, not ideal if the pilot needs concentrate to control the PGMs.
>>62506570you can't procure Phantoms for whatever reason but your country already has of F-104s
>>62506592*lots of F-104salso>>62506581>>62506584I'm fairly sure the 104's instability problems stem from its tail configuration, there was a proposed design with a more conventional tail that would have taken care of that, it just never got adopted because by then the 104 was already obsolescent
>>62506584Just run two seaters with a wso
>>62506616Proportions are so fucked on that
>>62506635It kooks better in civilian colors It's also not that bad as far as two seaters go. The f16 and mig25 two seaters are much much worse to look at.
>>62506609The problem were related to Keller's tiny wings with deliberate instability and very bad pitch behavior. Those thin anhedral wings are good for an interceptor but suicidal for an attacker, in a similar way as the early swept wing fighters that were hard to control at low speed.The F-105 was exactly the opposite.
>>62505773>It's the closest thing to the F-108 in service.Fucking pencil pushers and greedy bureaucrats robbed us of having such cool aircraft
>>62506684>KellerKelly*
>>62506349The F-104 raped the Luftwaffe though
>>62506592>you can do X for Y reasonwell if you put it that fucking way beggars can't be choosers>>62506702saw that coming a mile away
>>62505703So, still an "F" failure.
>>62506709> saw that coming a mile awayIt was low hanging fruit but I couldn’t resist
>>62506296The two are not mutually exclusive, anon.
>>62506581>one was once flown with the carrier wings FUCKING FOLDED.Sauce, that is neat af.
>>62506581>>62506719https://youtu.be/t94E4DZqKR0?feature=sharedAt NIGHT even.
>>62505604Wasn't the F designation a relic of early development that was dropped once the Navy dropped out of the program?
>>62505593When did the USA capture a Mig-23BN?
>>62505593This is correct, but the B-21 is the successor to the Vark anyways>>62505604Anon it's less of a fighter than the F-105
>>62505604Moron, it wasn't "multi-role" like the term means today. The USAF F-111A was to be a pure fighter-bomber while the USN F-111B was their fleet defense missile interceptor. Neither could do the role of the other.By the mid '50s the USAF had no interest in the 'A' for 'attack' designation. You had fighters and bombers and the bombers were the domain of Strategic Air Command. But tactical airpower still had a very important role to play blowing up things on the ground. So you had designs like the F-105 which is designed entirely for the role of blowing up those things on the ground (primarily by lobbing a tactical nuclear bomb next to them). But they're still technically 'fighters' because they're a lot smaller, they can engage aircraft in a pinch, and the real bombers are for SAC.To the USAF the F-111 was the next step beyond the F-105. They're weren't interested in using it for other roles, although McNamara did repeatedly try to shove an interceptor variant down their throat. He even killed the Lockheed F-12B program so he could try to force the F-111 interceptor on them. Ultimately the F-106 would be the last of the dedicated USAF interceptors because:1. Fuck McNamara2. That specific mission was being seen as ever less-important since the real threat to CONUS in a nuclear war were Soviet ICBMs and SLBMs, not their strategic bombers.>>62505625F-111 had much greater range than the Super Hornet and even the Strike Eagle. We need a fighter with the same sort of legs today. Think about the F-111, the FB-22 and FB-23 concepts, and you get an idea of what would be very useful for the USAF to have.>B-21 can do thatNot quite the same thing. The B-21 is smaller than the B-2 but it's still bigger than what we're talking about. The B-21 is also still going to be a pretty rare asset even if they do build 100 of them. Speed is also useful in its own right.
>>62505593Muh f-22
>>62506712The F-117 a failure too?
>>62508071Funny you should say that>In the summer of 1977, after a political realignment by its government, Egypt provided a number of MiG-23MSs and MiG-23BNs to the United States; these were evaluated under a pair of exploitation programs codenamed HAVE PAD and HAVE BOXER respectively. These and other MiGs, including additional MiG-23s acquired from other sources, were used as part of a secret training program known as project Constant Peg to familiarize American pilots with Soviet aircraft.[23] Additionally, a Cuban pilot flew a MiG-23BN to the U.S. in 1991, and a Libyan MiG-23 pilot also defected to Greece in 1981. In both cases, the aircraft were later repatriated.
>>62508529Here to remind you that the Thud still has a positive A2A KDR. So its still a better fighter than most commie shit. And yes the only reason the F-111 was ever forced into the fighter role was because of McNamara. He forced the Navy to consider the F-111B and they dropped it as soon as he was gone.
>>62506684The wings were the reason why the F-104 was exceptional in the role it was intended for as a strike fighter at the time, a nearly suicidal one way trip to deliver a nuclear warhead to a WP airbase.It would happily sit at Mach 1.1 at 200ft off the ground in a straight line and be almost entirely insensitive to ground turbulence and updrafts.The only problem is that in order to train pilots at it you need them to do this over and over, all day every day, and all it takes is one fuck up and they are never coming back.Well, that and the German airforce training for CAS with several overflights of the same target area for economy reasons instead of dropping the full load on one pass and return to base, which meant they needed to manouver to line up each and every pass at low altitude, often still with a close to full weapons load and 2 to 3 drop tanks, which is practically retarded considering the flight characteristics of the F-104.This is very similar to how Soviet MiG-21SMT/BIS ground attack sorties were trained, although not as spectacularly bad as the handling characteristics of the F-104 they too had their fair share of issues.Like the early MiG-21SMT departing controlled flight at high AoE straight into a flatspin depending on the weight balance of the fuel tanks, leading to most of them to have the big hunchback fuel tank replaced with the smaller tank from the BIS.
>>62508608>By the mid '50s the USAF had no interest in the 'A' for 'attack' designationthat's the best explanation for the F-111 phenomenon I've ever heard
>>62509899explain the F/A-18 then please. or the A-10.
>>62509630Would have been funny as hell to send one up to intercept a Bear off the coast of Alaska or something, I know why they never did, but still.Besides, i wouldn't want to fly an aircraft maintained by parts bought from third world proxies and/or cobbled together by maintnance personel on base with whatever parts they could improvise or copy by hand.
>>62509904The Hornet is a navy plane and the A-10 was a 70's project, retard.
I just want the Aardvark back, bros. I know she was a massive maintenance whore, basically with several men deep inside her almost every minute she wasn't flying, but she had something about her.
>>62509942and you claimed the us forces were sick of the A designation in the 50's. ergo, planes developed much later shouldn't HAVE an A designation.
>>62509982I didn't claim shit. I'm a different Anon. But they did say the USAF not "US forces"
>>62510024The designation scheme got unified after the tri-service replaced the older system...
>>62510030
>>62506726That's an F-8, but still a cool story.
>>62510030The only means they have to use the same designation system, that didn't tell them they had to designate it an attacker. Keep digging that hole.
>>62508608>Think about the F-111, the FB-22 and FB-23 concepts, and you get an idea of what would be very useful for the USAF to have.What if we made an FB-35
>>62506616>>62506666Is the tail the problem here? Didn't that Brazilian passenger plane that crashed recently go into a flat stall due to its t-tail?
>>62510942>Making Fat Amy even fatter
>>62511016No, the brazilian plane was well maintained (It had crashed some time ago) and the de-ice of the wing wasn't working.
I rremember readint hat one of the things that doomed the F-111 was its ejection seat system. The whole cockpit was shot out of the plane and landed with a parachute and it was brutal for the pilots. One ejection and your back was basically fucked for life.
>>62509982>planes developed much later shouldn't HAVE an A designation.just because you never grew out of a phase doesn't mean that others don't
