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Space Stations, Space Shuttles and Beyond - The Aerospace Discussion Thread

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BenRG:
So, it's clear that we have one or two engineering/space-head types here on the forum. This is good for me as an interest in these sort of things is one of my hobbies!

I thought that I'd get things going by discussing the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning-II. Depending on whom you ask, it's either the last word in crewed air superiority fighter aircraft or, alternately, a horrible clunker that will get people killed and whose only function is to divert public funding to LM.

My view? From the start, I've had reservations about the JSF. A combination of too many chiefs, too many different roles and certain limits imposed by low-observable architectures seem to have conspired against it having good performance in any single role or reasonable combination of roles. I have no doubt that it will go into service; there is too much political capital invested in it now. However, I suspect that, somewhat like its technological predecessor, the Hawker Harrier, it will suffer somewhat for its unique capabilities and, also like the Harrier, it will suffer for costing just a little bit too much to optimise to certain roles and no-one will be willing to pay for it.

RedWolf4:
To be fair, I have heard from a few sources here and there that the American Harriers found themselves quite the niche in CAS and ground strike roles, though I suppose that was the result of design optimization.

BenRG:

--- Quote from: RedWolf4 on 11 Dec 2014, 05:17 ---To be fair, I have heard from a few sources here and there that the American Harriers found themselves quite the niche in CAS and ground strike roles, though I suppose that was the result of design optimization.
--- End quote ---

Yeah, I was very much writing from a British perspective. Lots of good work was done in the US by McDonnell-Douglas to optimise the Harrier for the battlefield support role. Similar and even more advanced plans existed here in the UK but were never funded. However, if I get into a rant about that, I'll go way off-topic.

J:
my understanding of the f-35 is that it's supposed to be a cheaper replacement for the f-22, but that its budget has inflated over the course of the project to a point that may compromise that.

i may be misinformed though.

ev4n:
The aerospace industry being what it is, the f35 was always going to be overpriced and overspec'd.

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