Hughes H-1
...and those pointy X-Planes
North American XB-70
cman
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Sonic boom rattles SoCal!
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If you like cool airplanes and have some time to kill, you can sure waste a lot of it browsing the NASA Dryden Research Aircraft Photo Collection.
Speaking of the F-22 boondoggle, this was in my paper this morning:
<<....Gates also dared challenge the military-industrial complex over egregious military spending on projects such as the $65 billion F-22 stealth fighter plane that was designed to penetrate Soviet air defenses that were never built and has yet to fly a combat sortie in either the Afghanistan or Iraq wars....>> Sure looks pretty though, eh?
Hmm. How long can I continue to bite my tongue?
Until all people who may wish to do us harm have beaten their swords into ploughshares. It's better to build a weapon and never have to use it, than to need a weapon and not have it ready to use. The reality of war is like Murphy's Law, when you're least prepared is when it will come. I'm the most dovish ex-mil you'll ever meet, but even I know the value of constant vigilance and preparedness. Think of all the billions of dollars of nukes (and nuke R&D) that were made in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s that are now obsolete and unusable. MAD works though.
What!? Everything my generation said is wrong? Love is the answer Give peace a chance War is not the answer cause only love can conquer hate     
As long as 'They' think the same way, it's all good. Would that we could believe that . . .
Yes, I'm sure all the poor grunts in Iraq who had to buy their own body armor or cobble together more for their Humvees will be glad to know that when Independence Day comes Will Smith will have something to fly that can beat off the aliens. I'm certainly happy that the big hats in the Pentagon aren't emulating the French (having prepped for the Franco-Prussian war in 1914 and WWI in 1940), but being too far ahead, IMHO, is about as bad as being too far behind. The brass's love affair with toys at the expense of bodies on the ground has tilted too far. I'm as hardcore a fan of military technology (particularly planes) as anybody, but the soldiers themselves should come first and they're not being served as well as they should. At something like $150M per unit, the F-22 is a CEO-type luxury. end of rant
I'm not going to trot the hackneyed logic of I've been there and you haven't, so my opinion is worth more, but I and 95% of my fellow military vets know what we want - the biggest, baddest club out there. In 1986 (!!!) when the F-22 went into R&D we were still neck-deep in the Cold War (which the Soviet Union was 'winning' arms-wise), and we had no way of foreseeing what our needs would be 20 years hence. Even today, where . . . right now . . . we don't need lots of squadrons of it, we cannot foresee what we'll need 5 years hence. It's the cost of living in a still-precarious world. The body/humvee armor fiasco was not the product of any faulty vision, it was the obvious consequence of rushing into action withOUT any vision at all. The armor was available, but between Congress's recalcitrance (rightfully so) of throwing indiscriminate wads of money into the fray, and the internecine squabbling of Pentagon purse-string holders, the GI on the Baghdad street was forgotten. Right now the R&D for the F-22 follow-on aircraft is already underway. It will cost much more than the F-22. Shall we tell them to just scrap it because we don't know how many we'll need and when we'll need them? A myopic view of the matter only takes the present into account. It sure LOOKS like we don't need that many right now. But I'm not willing to bet my future on it. My rant out.
My vote would be Yes, scrap it now.
Great point GH. While egg heads are spending billions on toys, our men on the ground need the best protection we can possible produce and they were not getting it. I still think we can and should try to do both.
Wow and people call ME naive. I assume you are one of those people who demand peace at any cost. When you've lost you're freedom, it's too late to consider the cost.
You're not reading what I wrote. It's a unique feeling to be The Hawk here. That's never happened to me before.
You know not of what you speak - it's just that simple. I know what the Soviet Union was capable of then. And I have never seen unclassified documents about it since. It's far scarier than what you can imagine.
Tin foil hats are on, I see. Look, I'm not saying that what the SU had wasn't plenty scary, but the US had (and has) more than our fair share of scary shit too.
Oh no, you're free to take it off now. Russia, China, who have you, are pale ghosts of the SU
Indeed we did, and ours was far more technologically advanced (smarter), but they had MORE and BIGGER sticks than we did - again, it's just that simple. As was oft repeated then: The USA - the world's second largest nuclear power. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/TsarBomba.html One of their 100-megaton bombs, built and tested, airburst over NYC would kill 20-30 million in the first day and over 50 million in a week.
On Saturday afternoon (Dec 6th), two F16's flew no more than 1000 ft over our house. They were coming from the Rose Bowl, where they were marking the kick-off of the UCLA-USC game. Pretty impressive sight.
There was also some fighter activity here in Pasadena yesterday, as well (I could hear it, but didn't see it). I assume it was for Pearl Harbor ceremonies.
Note that the 100-Mt design was not aircraft deliverable (at least at the time in the early 1960s). The scaled-down 50-Mt version was, however it was too expensive for what it was. A short lesson in nuclear bombs: the damage area of a nuclear weapons scales as the cube-root of the yield. So, a 1-megaton (1000 kt) weapon only has 10 times the damage radius of a 1-kt bomb. That means that bigger yield isn't better. The 100-Mt device would only have a blast radius about 4.5x that of a megaton weapon. It's thus far more "efficient" to cover an area with multiple smaller warheads than one large one. That's why strategic arsenals never really exceeded the 20-Mt range, with the average size being about a megaton (and most tactical nukes being in the 100-500 kt range).
Which is why their MIRV (Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle) capabilities were so fearsome. I tracked Delta submarines that housed 16 silos for them babies and if the balloon had ever gone up, I was supposed to sink that mutha before it launched. [not a snowball's chance in a thermonuclear blast that I could have done it in time!  ]
Kool.
cman
My gawd. Look how we have migrated from a simple sonic boom to the ultimat big nuclear boom. Poor Marlow has been painted as a peaceful highschool teacher and track coach with a secret warmongering past.
Lets get back to the sonic boom. Bring back the great old Lockheed F-104 at mach 1.1 right over the Rose Bowl during the New Years game. That should shake em up!
See, even a Stanford grad/Gator fan has redeeming qualities. 
So much so, that I have given him a pass on his current political derangement , attributing it to a passing aberation. 
Whew! I thought there for a second that you were going to demand that Texas Relays officials polo back, and it's my fave!
Nah, not all Indians are "Indian Givers."
I could probably scare up an OU shirt if you need one to wear to the Oklahoma/Florida donnybrook.
Um . . . that's such a nice gesture, but I think I'd like to keep my kneecaps for a while longer, so thanks, but no thanks.
Now we've gone from sonic booms, to nuclear booms, back to sonic booms, to a football game to free shirts to kneecapping. I guess "stay the course" has a new meaning in the USA,............now it means, wander all over. scheesch.
The B-2 stealth bomber did a fly-over of the Rose Parade this morning, which was somewhat impressive (it was an hour late!). But, the absolutely MORE impressive sight was following the fly-over of the game. Our house is about 2 miles directly south of the Rose Bowl. The B-2 banked directly over my front lawn, at what had to be no more than 600 ft altitude. Simply incredible sight (and bone-rattling sound)! That's a New Year's tradition I always look forward to!
This a multi-generation e-mailing that I got from a Marine pilot buddy: Subject: F22 Briefing Just a little more data on the greatest flying machine going. Except, maybe the F-35. AWESOME MACHINE. F-22 Briefing - Dallas 2008 We were briefed on operations with the F-22 by two pilots of the 90th Fighter Squadron, presently in Alaska at Elmendorf. They were unassuming young jocks who looked remarkably like we did 40 years ago. While they tried to keep the briefing low key it was obvious they felt superior in capabilities to anyone else in the world. I agree with that assessment. PERFORMANCE They didn’t talk much about the performance of the 22 but most of us had seen demo flights. I include an Energy Maneuverability chart below for comparison to the F-15, the predominate fighter of the day before the F-22 came into service. Redefining the meaning of high performance, This chart shows the ability of the F-22 to MAINTAIN 5 G’s at max power. The 22 can sustain a 5 G turn in max power up to 54,000 feet at about .95 mach. At mach 1.8 he can sustain a 5 G turn at 62,000 feet. The F-15 can maintain a 5 G turn in full power up to about 30,000 feet. I estimate that an F-4 could maintain a 5 G turn at max power below around 5,000 feet. I don’t believe an F-100 could MAINTAIN a 5 G turn at any altitude. By this I mean that in an F-100 you could go as fast as you want on the deck in full burner, enter a 5 G turn and you would begin to lose energy, eventually falling below 5 G’s. I compared the Dash one E-M charts for the F-4E and it cannot even MAINTAIN LEVEL FLIGHT at max power at the upper levels of the F-22 5 G range. Incredible! COMBAT CAPABILITY We were given an unclassified briefing that was nonetheless eye watering. Conversation with ET Murphy had given me an Eagle’s eye view of the Raptor but this was from the other side. When I mentioned these tests at Eglin, the Raptor guy said that it didn’t matter how many were against the Raptor. Kills were only limited by numbers of weapons carried. First of all the F-22 cannot be seen by the enemy. It does not use active radar like other fighters. Yet it has a complete 360 degree threat awareness capability, seeing everything above it, below it, from in front and behind. This includes all aircraft in the area and all missiles on the ground around it. The F-22 is tied into all others in his flight and sees everything that all F-22’s in his flight sees, and everything (that he wants) that an AWACS sees, if one is around. He sees this in an easy to read, all purpose scope that has user friendly displays. For example, friendly aircraft are displayed as green blips on his scope, enemies are red. They say, “If you're red, you're dead.” The can engage multiple enemy targets with their fire-and-forget, all aspect missiles (the latest AIM-9’s, AMRAMS and Sparrows). They have multiple communication options including scrambled audio that can be used within their own flight only, if they so desire. They can coordinate information through a system they call “High Fiddle” which is High Frequency Data Link, tieing them together with Data Link. They have sensors that let them look through the floor of the cockpit, so to speak electronically and see missile sites on the ground, displayed on the scope with SAM rings depending in size on the type of missile detected. They practice coordination with F-15s/16’s and can guide the latter to avoid having them flying into the SAM rings while the F-22’s can move through them without worry. The F-22 radar keeps track of all targets by shooting out pencil beam radar signals, lasting fractions of a second that gives them heading, speed, and type aircraft information. And it does this automatically, keeping track of all aircraft in the area. The radar, on its own sends these signals out periodically to keep track of the targets around without giving away its own position. All weapons (including JDAMS if needed) are carried internal. When they fire a missile, the bay doors snap open, the missile fires and the doors close immediately. Only in the second or so that the doors are open is there any radar reflection area to be detected. They have variable nozzles for the engines which allows them to appear to defy the laws of physics while maneuvering. These nozzles move left, right and up and down, allowing the aircraft to move laterally and to engage in any attitude. In other words a fighter could be chasing an F-22, assuming he could see it, and the 22 could turn laterally and fire its all-aspect missiles from any position or attitude. I asked one of the pilots how they used the nozzles. He told me that they just used normal controls and the computer does the rest. At one point in the briefing on of those attending, talking about fighting F-15’s, said something like, “I guess you can fly circles around the F-15’s.” One of the young Raptor drivers spoke, almost under his breath, saying “That’s basically what we do.” I was close enough to hear him. Not everyone did
Whoever thinks the F22 is a boondoggle just needs to picture himself in their flight boots. What machine do you want strapped to your butt when the whistle blows? And we all know it will - hopefully constrained to a tactical strike - but I for one am glad we have them.
To be cheesy and melodramatic, the cost of freedom is priceless. The exorbitant cost of the F-22 is mostly the R&D involved, not just how much it is to build one. The R&D started decades again, when we did not know what our priorities would be. I agree that the F-22 and the number ordered LOOKS like a waste of money we don't really have, but that is not something we could have determined before the fact, nor do we know what the world will look like in 5 years, when we might actually NEED these aircraft. This is the same dance we go through when the DoD wants a new $mega-billion submarine or aircraft carrier. The cynics say they are unnecessary, too costly, and will be obsolete by the time they are built, but even here in the 21st Century, we still need them. National Defense cannot be second-guessed. That's one of the great lessons of history.
I agree and with Iran most likely buying some "super jets" from Russia in the near future it is important we have a jet that can fly circles around it.
I'm with Marlow. Despite his deplorable political leanings and eclectic taste in movies (not that that is a bad thing) he is right on this one.
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