Planes
-
ah, @Machpants so very much a maneuverability thing. Familiar with the Harrier and also with ships having thrusters, just hadn't considered it with fighter jets for some reason.
@Crucial that sounds a bit like the Timewarp song from Rocky Horror
-
-
@Machpants Yeah. Was more about the VTOL bit.
Didn't know that the V2 had it, did know about airships. So has been around for a while for sure.
Even my twin jet boat is steered by vectored thrust effectively. It doesn't do VTOL so well, although it feels like it at times.Still only the Harrier and Yak 38 as only VTOL jets?
-
@Machpants Yeah. Was more about the VTOL bit.
Didn't know that the V2 had it, did know about airships. So has been around for a while for sure.
Even my twin jet boat is steered by vectored thrust effectively. It doesn't do VTOL so well, although it feels like it at times.Still only the Harrier and Yak 38 as only VTOL jets?
nah F35, but doesn’t just use vectored thrust, most of the vertical thrust is a vertical ‘spare’ engine!
-
@Machpants Yeah, yeah. There were a few that had some sort of fan type thing rather than completely vectored. Wasn't the F35 STOVL rather than VTOL?
Yak 38:
"The Yakovlev Yak-38 (Russian: Яковлев Як-38; NATO reporting name: "Forger") was the Soviet Naval Aviation's only operational VTOL strike fighter aircraft in addition to being its first operational carrier-based fixed-wing aircraft." -
-
-
@Snowy looks pretty flash though 😁
-
@Paekakboyz said in Planes:
@Snowy looks pretty flash though 😁
Definitely fun - as long as you don't have to shoot back (or eject, as you don't have the fuel).
-
Thinking about that - it means that you can hide in a forest / jungle clearing and avoid the people shooting at you thing. Nice. Doesn't achieve the purpose of being at war and killing people, but at least you don't die.
A bit like me wanting to fly B52's after all of the engine failures I had over the years. Eight engines is fantastic to keep you aloft if one fails - but you have eight times the chance of having a failure too. Warped logic all around.
-
@Machpants said in Planes:
F35 has VTOL, like the harrier can't carry shit whilst doing it
How to make a plane ludicrously expensive for very little benefit.
-
This is why you make it expensive!
-
@antipodean said in Planes:
@Machpants said in Planes:
F35 has VTOL, like the harrier can't carry shit whilst doing it
How to make a plane ludicrously expensive for very little benefit.
The benefit is you don't need ludicrously expensive catapult carriers to launch them, just a ski jump. VTOL is not used operationally at all, the F35B is to all intents and purposes STOVL as snowy said. Landing is also a lot easier and safer and needs a lot less room, similar to a helicopter. They can also operate from very short strips, tho so can Russian jets simply by using fuck loads of excess thrust. But yes, paying a bit more for your carriers, and having cheaper more effective conventional fighters is the common sense decision. Thus UK and US marines against that.
The use of the vertical component (aside from landing) in operations is basically nil. You'd never slow down and land and try to hide, if you've got the time to do that you've got away anyway. The Viffing that was talked about with the harriers in the Falklands was basically PR bollocks - the harriers were so effective there because there pilots were so much better trained and they had all aspects heatseekers.
-
-
@Machpants like a home printer? low up front cost - big consumable charge
although don't they repurpose ex tank material or something for the ammo? -
@Paekakboyz said in Planes:
@Machpants like a home printer? low up front cost - big consumable charge
although don't they repurpose ex tank material or something for the ammo?Ammo was depleted uranium, same as tank ammo (APFSDS), I'm not sure if that's been phased out though. Still a fuck load cheaper than a modern anti armour missile, even thousands of rounds. But they are cheap as fuck, simple as, they could crank out a dozen or more for the cost of a F22, maybe even an F35. Hard to compare costs across the ages, but they'd be dirt cheap compared to space age fighters.
The real impressive jet is the B52, it's going to do over a century in service
