RE: brigadier general robin olds.... the real deal......
aleshanee > 04-27-2017, 10:31 PM
so when it came time to replace the f4 phantom.... the airforce and navy chose 2 different fighter planes to do it.... .. the navy chose
the f 14 tomcat and the airforce went with the f 15 eagle... .. both were originally designed to be multirole fighters and intended to be
built in large numbers like the f4 phantom had been.... .... but the cost of the f 15 and f 14 was enormous.... so a few years later the much
cheaper f 16 falcon was designed and built to supplement the f 15 eagle in the airforce.... and the f 18 hornet was purchased for the navy
to supplement the mighty f 14 tomcat in the same manner... ... that freed both the f 15 and f 14 to serve primarily as air superiority fighters
while the f 18 and f 16 were used in the multirole capacity of both air superiority and ground attack...... and all 4 of those aircraft were also
sold and exported to other friendly countries..... including one that didn;t stay friendly.....
then years later it came time to replace both the f 15s and f 14s in the u.s. inventory as well....... in the early 2000s the f 22 raptor stealth
fighter was designed and chosen to replace the f 15 for the air force...... but what many people do not know is that a navy version of the f 22
was also designed which would have replaced the f 14 in the navy..... ..(currently... and in the years since the f 14 was officially retired....the f 18
has not been able to completely fulfill the role the f 14 once performed).... .... ... the navy version of the f 22 was to have been a swing wing long
range fighter similar to the older f 14 but much more capable and with the same stealth features as the f 22 raptor....... ....however.... the projected
cost of the navy version of the f 22.. designated the f -24 tomcat 2, was deemed way too high..... so it was cancelled.... ...
then after only about 200 f 22 raptors were built it too was deemed to be too expensive to continue building ..... ..and it was also cancelled.... ....
so the u.s. military returned to the idea of having a less expensive fighter serve in both the air force and the navy in a multirole capacity like the f 4
phantom had done before..... ....they chose the f 35...... ... but the cost of building it didn;t turn out to be as easy on washingtons wallet as they had
planned.. ........ while still not as expensive as the f 22 is.... or as it;s navy counterpart that never developed would have been..... the f 35 is still far
more expensive than the pentagon said it would be... ....... meaning they won;t be able to build as many of them as they originally wanted .... so the f 18s
f 15s and f 16s it was also supposed to replace will most likely continue to fly for many years to come.. longer than they were ever expected to....... as will the
limited number of f 22s.... which to date is still the best fighter aircraft in the world.... far better than the f-35... and lucky for the u.s. ...the f 22 by law cannot be
sold or exported to any other country... ....it;s to remain for the sole use of the usa.. .. ....
at least the military planners got that one right....... .
the u.s. airforce f 22 raptor....
a lot of navy veterans think it was a big mistake for the pentagon to cancel the f 24 tomcat 2.....
and they seriously doubt that the f 35... which some have dubbed the "potato".... will be able to
fill the big shoes left behind by the original f 14 tomcat.... or even fill the roll currently performed
by the f 18 hornet.... .... but i guess we shall see.... as they say.....
one thing i am aware of from living close to an airforce base that f-22 raptors fly daily patrols from.... is that f-22s are much
louder than the f-15s were....... i;m not sure how that extra noise contributes to the idea of stealthiness.... but i will say this...
f-22s seem to fly a little cleaner than the f-15s... leaving no visible smoke trail at all.... and leaving a lot less smoke than the f-14 did......
..... and all modern u.s. fighter aircraft.... burn clean compared to the old f-4 phantom that left a darkened smog trail in the sky all but
the totally blind could follow..... .. i use to watch that and wonder why instead of an expensive infrared heat seeking missles, nobody ever came up
with a smoke trail following missle..... i use to think that since household smoke detectors were so cheap surely a missle designed to detect and
follow an aircraft smoke trail that was so clearly visible to the eye had to be more economical than one that detected a heat source from a distance,
..... and then was subject to failure half the time...... ...but with the loud profile of the newer f-22 engines they could probably design one that followed
the noise as well..... maybe that;s among the things the new generation of radars will be designed to detect..... ... eventually improved satellites and
more effective anti-radar weapons will make stealth features designed to hide from radar obsolete anyway...... but for now..... the f-22 rules the sky....