What would you do with a quarter of a billion dollars a year?
"Air Force statistics show that Fighting Falcons have crashed an average of 13 times a year since 1982, when the plane was first flown heavily, costing an average $260 million annually in destroyed aircraft."
We used to call them the falling falcons, at Hahn AB we lost 3 in one year alone.
Austin Kelly
What in your eyes is the main culprit? Design problems, poor maintenance, pilot error?
Alexander Anderson
We just called them lawn darts.
Grayson Ramirez
Sometimes the engine just quits, which was not really good for a single engine plane.
Ian Ramirez
Why the fuck does the military bother using anything but the F-15 and F-22 for fighters/interceptors?
Carson Clark
They are so easy to fly that the pilots get cocky.
Luis Peterson
What the fuck do I know, I was a munitions systems specialist.
Jaxson Wilson
I was a maintainer for six years on the F-16. The guy above called them "lawn darts" and that's the general view of the jet. Its like the entire aircraft was designed to be used for a year then thrown in the trash (XB3). Nothing about the jet is maintainer friendly and every jet has deviations from normal maintenance, mostly from bad previous repairs or a mountain of structural problems
Ryder Russell
I understand it had a lot wiring problems at one time, insulation chaffing.???
Nathaniel Morales
How do the guys in charge usually react when one of these things go down? Does anyone get any shit or is it such standard operating procedure they say "just add it to the tally?" I guess the pilot should be forgiven if it wasn't there fault but I can't imagine being the guy who was responsible at keeping the $20 mil government machine in the air and failing at that.
Caleb Fisher
A jet going down in the Air Force is a huge fucking deal. The second they know one is going down, all electronic logs of maintenance are frozen, paper copies are confiscated, every toolbox used within X days of working on the jet are confiscated, every person within X days that has their fingerprints on maintenance is drug-tested... it's a shit show. They're looking for someone or some-shop to burn, anyone to blame but the pilot, and they're usually successful. It's a big deal.
Brandon Anderson
I wouldn't know, I was a lowly airman. I had friends that literally went out to pick up the pieces of jet that were littered on the farmers fields.
Nicholas Wood
It might seem like a lot, but some Soviet planes crashed way more frequently.
Austin Roberts
They do FOD inspections more regularly.
Elijah Peterson
Because retards think that because the airplane isn't able to do 50 different things at once, it's not a viable platform. This is why the A-10 and F-22 are slowly being phased out by the shitshow that is the F-35.
Luke Howard
They react with a massive shitstorm of blame game.
Brandon Richardson
You could win a war with just these two plus A-10.
Carson Hernandez
you gave those for us for free. i don't give shit if it's suck, it could fly and fire missile in case papuanigger uprising.
Leo Scott
S-400 you rocket scientists trying out manuever 9G guided missile. which is why it cost mountain.
Sebastian King
Imagine if that money was just distributed out to the common folk, how's that for a stimulus package
On the positive side, the crash rate has been much lower since John McCain stopped flying.
Jackson Clark
A quick question, Croatia is about to buy 30 years old Israeli F-16 c/d Barak's.
How much did they fuck up? They are going to repair them all the time aren't they?
Ryder Reyes
To be fair, McCain was a Navy pilot who flew A-1 Skyraiders and A-4 Skyhawks. He's also rumored to have been the cause of the fire onboard USS Forrestal that killed a bunch of people.
Evan Martinez
Boy the F35 sure was a good idea.
Parker Howard
Because it does everything apart from air-superiority which the F-22 is used for. Also, the F-35's main strengths are it's stealth and electronic capabilities which allow it to avoid SAMs like the S-400 (as Israel have recently shown) which no aircraft could outrun.
Landon Howard
Thanks for this. Makes perfect sense.
I remember a story where on this base in the US a gun was missing. Unlike ammo or other expendables, guns are treated like property and it was a total shit show when one went missing. Base locked down, soldiers were all threatened. Turned out they just forget to fill out paperwork and it was in use.
Parker Rodriguez
actually yeah that's my point, i 'm just too retard to use this board or phrasing, and endup multipost.
Liam Stewart
I'll never understand the purpose of a single engine fighter aircraft. Redundancy is the name of the game.
Couldn't the F-16 have been build with two smaller engines?
Couldn't the F-35 have been built with two smaller engines?
For what purpose were they designed with one engine?
I have to imagine that statistically speaking single engine fighters will ALWAYS have a higher rate of airframe loss incidents than twin engine fighters.
William James
idk... My dad was a F-16 pilot during the Gulf War. He loves the plane. Typical boomer.
Brody Brooks
The jews prolly kept thier planes in good shape.
Carson Turner
did a fucking jet engine land in a trailer park and the trailer park people DIDNT keep it?
Brandon King
Fuck off, upside-down poland, some countries actually develop new shit instead of staying in the stone age.
Austin Diaz
That shit is all contaminated with hydrazine.
Chase Walker
Another reason for F-16s having so many issues is that they were designed as lightweight fighters.
Think beefier more capable F-5 Freedom Fighters.
Cheap short range fighters that could do the job so long as the job wasn't too hard.
But then the military thought hey. Wait a minute. These things are so cheap. Let's make them fighter bombers. Let's give them gigantic drop tanks and try to extend their range. Let's try to add all these upgrades to turn them into jack of all trades fighter aircraft.
And it didn't really work. All of that extra shit really wears out the airframe.
It's like training a guy to have a Bruce Lee body then making him perform Rich Piana tasks.
Logan Clark
(((drones)))
Chase Johnson
i didn't say it's bad thing burger. i don't live in a country where working people appreciated.
Gabriel White
electromagnetic pulse, and it's done.
Jonathan Martin
pretty nice aircraft past the crucial single engine fuckup, has some vestigial geometry towards the back but its blended wing is perfectly modern. no beating a bubble canopy either.
Highly doubtful. Most naval vessels (at least American ones) are hardened against EMP.
William Sullivan
>Make jet that can't glide. >Put one jet engine in it WTF why my planes crash?!
The F35 is going to be a disaster.
Cameron Ross
You know what's really funny? All of those expenses don't even add up to cost of a SINGLE F-22.
War isn't about who has best machine. It's about who has the most machines that are good enough. The F-16 is literally the world standard for economical lightweight, single engine multirole fighters for this reason. It's literally the most popular combat plane in the world, being more numerous than any other and being flown by 26 countries.
they havn't shown shit, an isreal f-16 and turkish f-4 have been downed in syria with s-3oo and a plain old air-defence gun , the s-400 hasn't been used yet >knock it off with the marketing already
They only have one engine so if that goes it crashes. The F-16 was designed as a cheaper alternative to the expensive 2 engine F-15, hence why it only has 1 engine.
Easton Morgan
Remember when a F-117 crashed in a neighborhood and the spooks came in and chased everyone out?
....No, they're very far from being a scam. They're one of the most reliable aircraft in the USAF's inventory, they're constantly flying off code 1 and returning code 1.
A good chunk of our F-15's (~70%) aren't even MR and whenever they fly off code 1, they always return code 2 or even 3.
Apparently it crashed at 10:30. Sorry guys meme magic isn't real.
>DOD: An Air Force F-16 assigned to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, crashed at approx 10:30 am during routine training on the Nevada Test and Training Range. The condition of the pilot is unknown at this time. Emergency responders are on the scene.
>would be a miracle if the unit doesn't get decimated in the first 3 weeks
>no need for heavy logistics
>no need for durable components, we would build new ones anyway
Caleb Powell
explain the difference between semi active radar and passive radar missile guidance in layman's terms
Elijah Roberts
Former army here
Things like M4s and other sensitive items will have an entire Battalion out walking a DZ for like 20 hours trying to find it.
Connor Barnes
Active radar >the missile has its own radar >which it usually uses for terminal corrections >also adds fire and forget capabilities >example AMMRAM METEROR MICA >Fox 3
Semi ative >The missile has no radar and his guides by the jet radar >Less accurate >Restricts the jet s manuver as it needs to maintain lock >example Sparrow >Fox1 >Less popular since the 2000s
Gavin Watson
For a fucking M4 carbine?
Cooper Gonzalez
>AMMRAM >METEROR >"active" when i said "passive"
oh yeah, in france too, when i did basic we spent 5 hours because one guy lost this piece
Yeah, and if you're the one that launched it, they confine you to quarters without even telling you that it went down. You get to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions for hours without any idea what happened.
I've had it happen twice, neither was in any way my doing.
Nolan Davis
PASSIVE RADAR
In order for a wave to come back to the antenna after touching an object it needs to have the energy to travel back and forth
Therefore a plane will be able to detect the enemies waves from twoice as far as the enemy would be able to detect him.
>as the waves hitting the plane wouldnt have the energy to come back to the enemies radar.
Therefore A PASSIVE radar seeker will track a target using the Radar waves it emits
PASSIVE IR Seeker >tracks the infrared waves a target emits >all short range missiles have a passive IR seeker
Brayden Evans
McCain was also not a native born American. Panama Canal Zone.
Asher Turner
I was a herk cc, that thing is built like a tank. Miss that thing
Anthony Nguyen
Read Boyd’s biography.
Basically weight savings was the name of the game. To the point that Boyd didn’t even want nose wheel steering or a built in ladder. The original design had no real radar, etc. It was a dogfighting machine. Adding a second engine increases weight which decreases performance.
Parker Evans
The F-15, F-22, and A10 are amazing aircraft... I think only one F-15 has ever gone down and that was just in the last few years. The F-35 is just one example of how the defense budget uselessly fills the pockets of those deep into the military industrial complex, and the F-16 will probably end up looking good compared to the F-35 eventually.
I had a former boss that was on the Forrestal asked him about it... he said he was below deck when it happened and he said his first thought was "Where'd those gooks get that big of guns?"