Correct. F117 i s what I meant.

I think the F111 was the starfighter (without looking it up)...



:thumb:

In all fairness, as much as I dislike Obama, he's right here.

It's not like we have 12 of these things. We have nearly 200 and to this point there's nothing in the world that can hang with our F-15's and F-18s, let alone the F-22. The Chengdu J-10 is not battle tested, it's evidently pretty buggy and it's still right at about the level of the Hornets or even the F-16. In other words, our 4th string fighter, essentially the Ford Focus of fighter aircraft, is considered roughly on par with the best China has to offer.

The Mig-35 hasn't shown anything yet and appears to be reverse engineered from an F-15. The SU-27 (and J-11) are good aircraft but again, nothing better than the F-18. The Sukhoi PAK FA is a direct competitor to the F-22 but they've been 'unveiling' that thing for 3 years now, who knows if it will ever actually be mass produced?

If we were ever in a situation where full-scale war erupted and we needed an true air-superiority fighter, we'll be just fine with the ones we have while we replenish. And none of that even considers possible F-35 production/use (aren't we building a couple thousand of those as well?). We have plenty of fighters.

I'm inclined to agree; we don't need anymore of them. Granted, given the choice between building 17 of these and dumping another billion into vote-buying....er....urban renewal projects, I'd much rather have te Raptors. That said, we could find far better things to spend the money on even within the national defense realm.

Yeah, the Wart Hog and the F-4 Phantom, too. If they could make a new version of the Phantom with anywhere near the performance of 15's, 18's or the 22's just the sight of that drop-winged, needle-nosed, shoe-box son of a bitch would be a deterrent as good as any of the little Korean guy's junk missiles. Better yet, one of the Phantoms screaming in to take out the missile sites. Accompanied, of course, be a Phantom Wild Weasel anti electronic warfare radar jammer.

Never happen though but it's fun to think about.

The A-10 is getting ready to have complete refits with added radar and computer systems.

Like the B-52,the A-10 is a design that is just really good at what it does.
No point in making a new one if the old one can be updated for a minimal cost.

F-117 was first used in the US military's intervention in Panama.

The F-111 was the "Aardvark" fighter-bomber... Either that or the same thing as the British "Tornado" fighter-bomber.

They got stuff that does that too now.






Only not in a good way...:shake:

Yes. Favorite aircraft of all time, Fairchild Republic knew what the hell they were doing.

The F-35, IMO is much more versitale and I tend to agree with the decision to eliminate the need for the F-22, as it is already adapted to all branches of the military unlike the F-22.

The plan is to replace the F-16 Fighting Falcon over time with the F-35A, F-35B will replace the AV-8B Harrier, and the F-35C will replace Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. IMO only one of those aircraft need to be replaced and that's the Harrier, but it nonetheless can do whatever the 18 and 16 can do.

Welcome to a year ago.

These were delivered a year ago in MAY 08.

http://www.aircraftmechanix.com/foru...ed-to-langley/

This is the date heading.

<TABLE style="WIDTH: 100%" class=forum-2><TBODY><TR><TD style="WIDTH: 50%; FONT-SIZE: 8pt">POSTED BY: marc on 07/26/2008 07:54:09</TD><TD style="TEXT-ALIGN: right; WIDTH: 50%; FONT-SIZE: 8pt"></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

The second pic, looking down at the fighter really shows how well that camo pattern works.

<b>They're the first military aircraft ever built that is equipped with a 'Black-out - Button'.
What that means is this ...

The best conditioned fighter pilots are capable of maintaining consciousness up to in the vicinity of 15+ G. The Raptor is capable of making 22+ G. turns.

If some day an adversary builds a missile that is capable of catching up to one of these airplanes and a Raptor pilot sees that a strike is imminent, he hits the 'b.o.b.' and the airplane makes a virtual U-turn, leaving the missile to pass right on by.
They know that in the process he'll temporarily lose consciousness, so the Raptor then automatically comes back to straight and level flight until he wakes back up.</b>

:eek:

"Ruh-roh!"

The Military doesn't release anything like F117 to the public till the replacement is already in service.

Of coarse what most people don't realize is that a lot of what makes the F-15, F-16, and FA-18 so good are the pilots who fly them. We have the best pilots in the world, hands down. Korea was an important lesson, and we haven't got caught with our pants down since then.

DT

F-111 = http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft...11/f111_03.jpg

F-117 = http://www.jimbrooks.org/web/aviation/full/f-117_43.jpg