Top Gun
Take my breath away..... and now you'll be singing it all day :-)
Lockheed, USAF hold breath as F-35 pilots report hypoxia
A quarter of the world's F-35s have been temporarily grounded after starving their pilots of oxygen. The announcement was made by the 56th Fighter Wing at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona after five F-35A pilots reported “physiological incidents” after which they had to draw on backup oxygen supplies before landing. Luke's …
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 07:01 GMT bazza
Re: O2 many issues
They've been putting the F35 up against a variety of other fighter aircraft in air combat competitions. It's done exceedingly well, when it actually makes it up into the air. Ok, it's early days, but it's beginning to look like the weapons system is actually pretty awesome.
Whether it will end up living up to the initial billing, i.e. a superior all round air/ground attack aircraft, only time will tell. I was pretty sceptical about it ("multi-role" really annoys me - smacks of trying to save a penny and wasting lots of pounds), but I think that if they can just finish it, get it right, for some roles it could turn out to be really something. An ugly something, and it does-it-a-different-way something.
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 07:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: O2 many issues
Ok, it's early days, but it's beginning to look like the weapons system is actually pretty awesome.
After many tens of billions of development costs, and at $130m a piece, I'd hope so. If you'd thrown that sort of money at upgrades to F22 and the other older fast jets, the US military would have got a whole lot more for its money.
But regardless of whether they can make it work, the idea of a shared platform between three fundamentally different missions has built in a series of compromises for the life of the aircraft. S/VTOL on fast jets has never been a materially useful military capability. If you're penny pinchers who won't build a proper carrier, S/VTOL may be a necessity, but that's attributable to government accountants rather than because the capability is actually solves a military need.
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 07:52 GMT Baldrickk
Re: O2 many issues
Yes, because every nation can afford to build Nimitz class carriers... the US have 10 built over 50 years, you are pumping them out so fast yourselves... /s
Besides that, half the US carriers are of the STOVL type, carrying either helos or the venerable Harrier, which, oh, they bought all the old British ones. I'm sure they don't value the VTOL capabilities at all...
Remember that the F-35 comes in different varieties, and only the carrier based one gets the VTOL.
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 10:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: O2 many issues
because every nation can afford to build Nimitz class carriers...
Bizarre logic on your part. There's no need for the sort of scale, cost and complexity of a 100,000 tonne nuclear powered monster carrying 90 aircraft. A 50,000 tonne steam or gas turbine powered vessel with catapults could field a decent air wing of fifty aircraft including supersonic jets (eg R09, back in 1968). Had the idiots of the British government included catapults in the original spec of the QE class carriers, we wouldn't need the costly abomination that is the F35B.
Besides that, half the US carriers are of the STOVL type,
Doesn't make it a good idea though. A helicopter assault ship is just that. Giving it a couple of Harriers won't give it any defence capabilility against any modern air power. Although the dawn of hypersonic missiles and "swarm" tactics by non conventional militaries may mean that even a Ford class with a full collection of F35s is nothing more than a big, fat, dumb target.
the venerable Harrier, which, oh, they bought all the old British ones
If the Harrier was such a brilliant military asset, why did the US decide to build the F35B using Russian technology from the crappy Yak 38 and unproven Yak 141? It would seem that it did not occur to the Pentagon, that if there was the slightest hint of military potential in that tech, the Russians wouldn't be selling it to them. A further thought, is WHY the US and UK want carriers at all, given that the Russians have only one, that they are not looking to replace. We've jointly caused global mayhem by using our carriers as a small part of twenty years or so of hobby wars, they're clearly not much use in a real war against any modern military, they don't appear to be frightening Fat Boy Kim in North Korea, so is bombing Stone Age tribes in the Middle East and central Asia the single use case?
F-35 comes in different varieties, and only the carrier based one gets the VTOL
We do know. The whole F35 programme is bedevilled with the consequences of trying to share parts, use compromise specifications. Even if the F35B element were stopped today, the two other variants will still be "under the influence" of trying to make a multi-role aircraft for the remainder of their service lives.
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 16:52 GMT Danny 14
Re: O2 many issues
Harrier is old hat now yes. But the AV8B on the otherhand is pretty much up to date. The usmc want to hold onto them. They are a multirole carrier capable aircraft and only lack supersonic capability.
They can mount AMRAAMs for cheap AA and have a decent upgraded radar.
Wonder what tech they are based on.....
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Wednesday 14th June 2017 09:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: O2 many issues
But the AV8B on the otherhand is pretty much up to date
Still a rehash of a design concept originated in 1957 - still unstable and tricky to fly, still can't carry any decent weapons load in VTOL, still aerodynamically compromised, still as stealthy as the Eiffel Tower. The newest of these AV8Bs are fifteen years old, and the design was completed 22 years ago. Not "up to date" in my book.
The jarheads want to hold onto the Harrier and take F35B not because these have much proven worth, but because they're desperate to keep their own fixed wing mini air force, and that SVTOL capability is just about their only real chance of having an argument for their own fixed wing capability. Logically, if USN can provide the ships for the USMC, then USN should provide the ocean-going air assets, with USAF doing the non-water based air missions. USMC may be the cream of the US fighting crop amongst conventional forces, but as a mini-military it is simply a job creation scheme for senior officers.
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Wednesday 14th June 2017 18:35 GMT Dave 15
Re: O2 many issues
The weapons issue is easily handled using short take off... with or without skijumps. The f35b isnt even as stealthy as the eiffel tower when it heads back to top op the fuel tanks that it empties so quickly... which is why it will get shot out of the sky with ease.
Frankly you can add manoeuvrability in the mix as well, the harrier is old but has tricks the f35 doesnt that means it stands more chance of evading the odd missile that might lock onto its radar footprint. If you were very worried about stealth you could take the rather sensible single engine concept and redsign the outer box to make it angular and stealthy.
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 14:45 GMT Baldrickk
Re: O2 many issues
@Ledswinger
My point about the size of the carrier was to do with it being large enough to land conventional jet aircraft on the deck.
Sure, you can launch them with a catapault - and I agree, we should have had them in the original spec, but recovering them with a restrictive runway is a lot harder.
While the Harrier did have full VTOL capability, it was typically launched conventionally, and landed vertically for this reason (and limited coolant meant that you wanted to minimise time spent in vertical mode)
You'll have to ask an aeronautical engineer as to why they chose the design they did for the F-35s. My assumption is that the more conventional engine layout was superior for both the stealth aspect and for the sharing of parts. Note that the F35 has only one jet nozzle and the Harrier has four.
I wasn't suggesting to put the Harrier on new carriers, it was indeed a very successful aircraft, but you are correct, it is inferior to the current generation in combat. Until the F-35B becomes operationally availiable though, it is afaik the only VTOL jet availiable to the US. It's continued use shows that it is indeed useful still, because of that capability.
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 15:24 GMT imanidiot
Re: O2 many issues
Either system has it's drawbacks. I think the F35 design allowed for a more stealthy design with better IR signature than the harrier concept. Limited cooling is however still a problem. The F35 is apparently more than capable of melting the deck underneath the tail if kept in a low hover too long
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 15:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: O2 many issues
Remember that the reason the Harrier does short take off and vertical landing on the old British carriers is operational. With a full combat load, the Harrier doesn't have the power for a vertical take-off. Landing on the other hand you have minimal fuel, and have likely dispensed with munitions as well, so vertical landing becomes feasible.
Water available for the water injection minimises time in the vertical, but realistically, time in vertical for take off and landing is minimal anyway.
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Wednesday 14th June 2017 18:31 GMT Dave 15
Re: O2 many issues
Inferior? Yeah, right, at least it could fly, it could fly near a thunderstorm and managed to fly more than once.
Hermes managed to land fast jets ... they use arrester wires and always have .. even nimitz size does.
True that the airframe needs to be up to handling that sort of brake. They could probably have done wires on illustrious etc but the harrier having only wheels in the centre and a couple of supports at the wing edge is not an ideal arrester wire candidate
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Thursday 15th June 2017 11:02 GMT Peter Gathercole
Re: O2 many issues @Dave 15
The Illustrious class of carriers had much too small a flight deck to operate conventional fixed wing aircraft operationally.
While it would have been possible to land a plane on the flight deck, it would have to be empty, requiring all other aircraft to be struck below while the landing was happening.
One of the advantages of the angled flight deck (a British innovation, and one not fitted to the through-deck cruisers - sorry, light carriers) was to allow concurrent flying-on and off operations.
Before that time, a carrier was normally either launching or recovering aircraft, not both (this was because if you missed the arrester wires, you need to have a clear space to throttle up and take back to the air in order to make another attempt). There were some experiments with barriers, but they tended to damage the aircraft in an arrester-wire miss. they were mainly used if an aircraft was damaged already.
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 18:50 GMT Joe User
Re: O2 many issues
Ledswinger: Had the idiots of the British government included catapults in the original spec of the QE class carriers, we wouldn't need the costly abomination that is the F35B.
I think would it have been cheaper to equip the carriers with catapults and conventional aircraft than to flush money down the crapper on the shoddy F35's.
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Wednesday 14th June 2017 09:52 GMT Mark Dempster
Re: O2 many issues
>I think would it have been cheaper to equip the carriers with catapults and conventional aircraft than to flush money down the crapper on the shoddy F35's.<
From the outset, yes you're probably right. But existing catapults rely on steam generators. The US carriers are nuclear powered, so generating steam is easy. The UK carriers aren't, so would need separate steam generation facilities - and there's no room.
They were built with the 'capability' of being retro-fitted with electric catapults, but that technology's not been developed yet...
We'd probably have been better off retaining the Harriers until the new catapults are available, instead of selling them to the yanks for £1
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Wednesday 14th June 2017 18:38 GMT Dave 15
Re: O2 many issues
No room?
You are jesting? These are the biggest carriers the royal navy has ever had and smaller carriers (like hermes) managed to provide steam. FFKS my kettle is a steam generator and is hardly huge. If we had been half intelligent these carriers would have been nuclear... but then again defended by crap planes like the f35 these carriers will be clutter on the ocean bed before the first fuel tank is empty
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Thursday 15th June 2017 10:18 GMT Peter Gathercole
Re: O2 many issues @Mark Demster
The US EMALS system is having problems at the moment, and if one had been fitted to one of the UK carriers, it would have taken almost the entire electrical output of the gas turbine/diesel electric powerplant in the QE for the duration of the recharge. This is probably the main reason that EMALS was rejected as a late addition.
Besides, who in their right mind would only fit a single catapult to such a large military asset. One mechanical failure would render the significant benefit of such a carrier useless, turning it into a liability in a combat situation.
The EMALS system uses an electro-mechanical kinetic energy storage system that draws significant power during the recharge. It is notable that the electrical generation capacity of the Ford sub class of the Nimitz design has a higher electrical output than the Nimitz, mainly (but not entirely) to provide power for the EMALS. This is such that it will not be possible to fit EMALS into the older Nimitz carriers.
The QE and PoW should have been designed as nuclear ships from the outset, but the general dislike of nuclear in the UK Parliament and population has resulted in ships that will succeed or fail on the back of one of the most expensive, complex and apparently troublesome aircraft ever created, and that is from a US contractor who has built a maintenance system that allows them to dictate how the aircraft can be used.
AFAIK, this will include the carriers not being able to do engine replacements in the aircraft without returning them to a maintenance base, that may not even be in the UK. Certainly not while at sea. Who's bright idea was that! Compare that with the F and F/A-18, where the aircraft can stowed as sub-assemblies, and assembled or used as spares while on active deployment (and would have been much cheaper and available now!).
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Wednesday 14th June 2017 18:28 GMT Dave 15
Re: O2 many issues
er Harrier crap????
Seriously idiots like you said that and were roundly proved wrong when supersonic french built planes fell out of the sky in the Falklands, and again when we needed air power in the middle east.
These days it is as much more to do with the ability to be where needed with a decent missile or two than to travel fast. The missile needs to catch the plane it needs to destroy not the launch platform. The harrier is better
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 11:51 GMT Jon 37
Re: O2 many issues
"Yes, because every nation can afford to build Nimitz class carriers... the US have 10 built over 50 years, you are pumping them out so fast yourselves... /s"
But they last a long time. And there's no need for the latest hi-tech on them - the aircraft and escort ships need all the latest fancy missiles, radars, stealth, etc, to defeat the latest enemy aircraft/ships/missiles, but the carrier itself is just a big ship with a flat deck, a couple of catapults and hangers. OK, it needs nuclear reactors, which are complicated, but those are usually designed to last well over 50 years. So there's no reason why a carrier shouldn't last for many decades, and through a couple of generations of aircraft.
Which is why the penny-pinching on the UK carrier is so shortsighted - not only does it increase the cost of the aircraft we buy now, and limit our aircraft options, it has the same effects when we try to buy the next generation of future carrier aircraft.
Also, you don't need many carriers - the whole point is that they're mobile, so a couple in each ocean is plenty. For the sorts of things the UK gets involved in (e.g. supporting the Gulf War or retaking the Falklands) we'd have plenty of time to get them in position, so two carriers are sufficient. Further, a huge part of the cost is the planes and escort ships, so you don't want too many.
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Wednesday 14th June 2017 18:21 GMT Dave 15
Re: O2 many issues
ROT!
Hermes flew fast jets before they removed the catapults and arrestors and put her skijump on
The little carriers we had were a bit too small for a fast jet but actually not that much too small
Our current two large floating targets (no planes so not carriers) are more than big enough for fast jets being several times as large as the eagle or ark who both (being bigger than hermes) also flew fast jets... and actually BRITISH fast jets at that
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Thursday 15th June 2017 10:50 GMT Peter Gathercole
Re: O2 many issues @Dave
That depends on what you call a fast jet!
The only supersonic jet that was deployed on UK carriers was the F-4K Phantom II (FG.1), which was a US design re-worked with British engines and avionics. Only the Ark was capable of flying the F-4K. as Eagle has not been fitted with the reinforced and water cooled blast deflectors that allowed the Ark to operate them. This meant that the Eagle was withdrawn from service before the Ark, even though it was actually in a better state of maintenance (I very sadly saw her in her last days, moored and in reserve at Drakes Island in the Plymouth sound).
Ignoring the Harrier, the last UK produced 'fast' plane was the Blackburn Buccaneer, which was a formidable surface attack aircraft, bot not supersonic. Prior to that it was Sea Vixens, Sea Venoms, Scimatars, and Sea Hawks. All of these were designed in the '40's and '50s, and were regarded as 1st of 2nd generation jets at best.
Amusing story. The F-4K needed afterburners in order to launch with full weapons load (The Spey engines were less powerful without afterburner than the US General Electric J79 engines fitted to the F-4J). When joint operations with the US happened, it was found that the heat of the afterburners, and the increased angle as a result of the lengthened nose wheel would soften and melt the deck and blast-deflectors on the US carriers,which meant that the UK planes were not welcome on the US carriers.
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 06:53 GMT bazza
Re: Hmm
It's not just Lockheed. The F22 has had problems (Lockheed again), but the F18 has also had problems, as has the T45 Goshawk; they're both Boeing products. The Goshawk is based on the BAE Hawk, which is British, and AFAIK that has never had any problems in its long and reliable history, so the Americans must have changed something.
To me it sounds like there's a problem with the US standards that govern how oxygen systems are designed, tested, etc. To have basically the same problem on four different types from two different manufacturers when one of them in it's original form (the BAE Hawk) has never had an issue sounds too much to be coincidence.
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 09:58 GMT SkippyBing
Re: Hmm
'To me it sounds like there's a problem with the US standards that govern how oxygen systems are designed, tested, etc. To have basically the same problem on four different types from two different manufacturers when one of them in it's original form (the BAE Hawk) has never had an issue sounds too much to be coincidence.'
I believe the original Hawk used Liquid Qxygen, which is a bit of a nightmare storage wise and to work with. The Goshawk and the other aircraft you list use an On-board Oxygen Generation System which produces sufficient oxygen at the right pressure from the atmosphere, except when they don't. This has a lot of advantages in terms of infrastructure and logistics requirements when it comes to supporting the aircraft.
As far as I know there's only one system in use so the fact that the failures are being experienced on types from different manufacturers isn't surprising. The fact it's only happening on distinct sub-fleets is, for instance so far there have been no occurrences on the EF-18G which is just a Super Hornet with more electronics.
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 19:36 GMT bazza
Re: Hmm
As far as I know there's only one system in use so the fact that the failures are being experienced on types from different manufacturers isn't surprising.
Aha, now that's interesting. The variation in behaviour is indeed surprising. They're clearly finding it hard to pin down the reason why. Perhaps having just one standard design is a disadvantage...
I wonder if they can put a LOX system in?
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Tuesday 13th June 2017 08:07 GMT Adam 1
Re: Is this part of...
And why not. I imagine the main limitations on performance are the meat bags inside who you need to keep alive. There is only so many G's of force that a pilot can survive, let alone function within. Plus they need air, water, waste disposal, ejection seats, parachutes etc.
I would have thought it more effective to have a swarm of hundreds or even thousands of drones if you are spending north of a hundred mill a pop.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
