New low cost US jet fighter

[RN7]

Anyone noticed this little monster emerging from Cessna.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textron_AirLand_Scorpion

Expected to cost less than US$20 million a unit, its subsonic but long ranged and uses affordable but advanced build material and sensors. Its designed to perform similar roles to ISR armed drones but has an internal bomb bay and six wing hard points. It can perform armed reconnaissance using sensors to cruise above 15,000 ft which is higher than most ground fire can reach, and it is rugged enough to sustain minimal damage. You could buy 5 of them for the price of an F-35 and the USAF is showing an interest in it and Nigeria is going mad to get its hands on it as it will be ideal for combating Boko Haram. So far Bahrain, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and the UAE have also shown an interest.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Not sexy, not stealthy, some mud-moving capability = no sale.

[pmulcahy11b]

Well. it's cheap, but are you getting what you pay for?

Might be more attractive to Second and Third World Countries like India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore, etc.

And Cessna doesn't have the pull in military R&D that other firms have.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Oh and as far as rugged goes? Yeah a 57mm round from a radar directed S-60 would break that thing into messy pieces of metal and pilot.

[RN7]

Oh and as far as rugged goes? Yeah a 57mm round from a radar directed S-60 would break that thing into messy pieces of metal and pilot.

Put it this way raketenjagdpanzer. A radar directed 57mm round from a S-60 would probably break an F-22 and an F-35 into messy pieces of metal and pilot if it got a direct hit on it, and would at the very least damage an A-10.

In a combat environment were there is no direct air threat from opposition fighter aircraft as in most of the anti-insurgency wars fought by the United States over the past 13 years and many other countries elsewhere around the world, why use an expensive 100 million dollar plus aircraft to do the job that an aircraft like the Scorpion could do equally well for a fraction of the cost? To use an F-16 which is no longer the cutting edge of American air technology to fly missions like counter-insurgency, irregular warfare support and reconnaissance costs US$ 18,000 an hour in fuel bills. A Scorpion can do the same job for US$ 3,000 an hour. Also besides an A-10, ISR drones and a few modified training jets and turbo-props what does the Western world produce to do jobs like a Scorpion could as cheaply?

[pmulcahy11b]

Not sexy, not stealthy, some mud-moving capability = no sale.

The A-10 isn't sexy -- as far as USAF pilots are concerned, if it's not an F-22 or a B-2, it's not sexy. And they're too expensive to keep around in large numbers. The aircraft we have are damn capable, and the F-35 seems to be dying the death of a thousand cuts. We need new aircraft that have that kind of capability -- for example, the FA-18E Super Hornet.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Put it this way raketenjagdpanzer. A radar directed 57mm round from a S-60 would probably break an F-22 and an F-35 into messy pieces of metal and pilot if it got a direct hit on it, and would at the very least damage an A-10.

In a combat environment were there is no direct air threat from opposition fighter aircraft as in most of the anti-insurgency wars fought by the United States over the past 13 years and many other countries elsewhere around the world, why use an expensive 100 million dollar plus aircraft to do the job that an aircraft like the Scorpion could do equally well for a fraction of the cost? To use an F-16 which is no longer the cutting edge of American air technology to fly missions like counter-insurgency, irregular warfare support and reconnaissance costs US$ 18,000 an hour in fuel bills. A Scorpion can do the same job for US$ 3,000 an hour. Also besides an A-10, ISR drones and a few modified training jets and turbo-props what does the Western world produce to do jobs like a Scorpion could as cheaply?

I don't disagree with anything you're saying; but what I think doesn't matter. How many awesome, light, useful solutions has the five-sided puzzle palace discarded just in our lifetimes?

Bombcat? Gone - we need F/A-18-E/Fs, now! Oh and F35s! So throw that old F14 away (...and just ignore how incredibly effective it was reborn as a strike fighter, a sort of carrier-borne F15E).

A10? Oh god the dirty shit the USAF is pulling trying to throw the A10 away makes me sick to my stomach. They have literally told Congress that pilots and ground crew and armorers for the F35 program can and will only come from A10 squadrons, period.

So while the USAF "has to" keep some 200 or so A10s for another few years they're going to play little asshole games to keep them as unready as possible.

Don't get me started on the light armor issue. The Army can't even call things like the M8 a "light tank". remember the nomenclature throughout the 80s? "RDF Tank", "Expeditionary Tank" etc. Now? "Cancelled Tank" (again).

RAH-66? My wife was at the epicenter of that cluster-fuck. Pilots slated to start flying the first sqdns of those birds calling her in a panic when they found out via CNN that the fucking thing had been cancelled, because they had sold houses and moved families to the Orlando area to start training on flight simulators for it.

I'm not questioning the utility of that bird one bit.

I'm telling you what you'd hear from <$MILITARY_BRANCH> if you propose it.

[RN7]

I don't disagree with anything you're saying; but what I think doesn't matter. How many awesome, light, useful solutions has the five-sided puzzle palace discarded just in our lifetimes?

Bombcat? Gone - we need F/A-18-E/Fs, now! Oh and F35s! So throw that old F14 away (...and just ignore how incredibly effective it was reborn as a strike fighter, a sort of carrier-borne F15E).

A10? Oh god the dirty shit the USAF is pulling trying to throw the A10 away makes me sick to my stomach. They have literally told Congress that pilots and ground crew and armorers for the F35 program can and will only come from A10 squadrons, period.

So while the USAF "has to" keep some 200 or so A10s for another few years they're going to play little asshole games to keep them as unready as possible.

Don't get me started on the light armor issue. The Army can't even call things like the M8 a "light tank". remember the nomenclature throughout the 80s? "RDF Tank", "Expeditionary Tank" etc. Now? "Cancelled Tank" (again).

RAH-66? My wife was at the epicenter of that cluster-fuck. Pilots slated to start flying the first sqdns of those birds calling her in a panic when they found out via CNN that the fucking thing had been cancelled, because they had sold houses and moved families to the Orlando area to start training on flight simulators for it.

I'm not questioning the utility of that bird one bit.

I'm telling you what you'd hear from <$MILITARY_BRANCH> if you propose it.


Well the USAF may not want to buy the Scorpion, but there are many other air forces who don't have the vast defence budget of the United States who may.

On another note the F-35 is a disaster waiting to happen. Nobody has any confidence in its ability to do the job it was has been lavishly funded to do except for Lockheed Martin. However With the economy the way its is the Pentagon may eventually no longer have the funds to keep pouring into the bottomless hole that the F-35 has become. I really hope that the sixth generation F-X fighter is accelerated to replace the F-35 in production

[stormlion1]

The F-35 has its problems, the main problem is taxpayers are still throwing money at it. I mean shouldn't the developer have to pay for it? As for Scorpion, this thing is perfect as a light, cheap, throw away plane for sale to foreign governments, training, and deployment to battlefields where air superiority isn't a issue. Need to arm a small government? Send these, cheap and easy and your not giving away expensive US Aircraft, even stripped down ones.

[copeab]

The F-35 has its problems, the main problem is taxpayers are still throwing money at it. I mean shouldn't the developer have to pay for it? As for Scorpion, this thing is perfect as a light, cheap, throw away plane for sale to foreign governments, training, and deployment to battlefields where air superiority isn't a issue. Need to arm a small government? Send these, cheap and easy and your not giving away expensive US Aircraft, even stripped down ones.

The advantage of supplying a plane like the Scorpion is that if the country should turn against the US at some point later it's not going to be very hard for US fighters and AA to deal with it.

[RN7]

The F-35 has its problems, the main problem is taxpayers are still throwing money at it. I mean shouldn't the developer have to pay for it? As for Scorpion, this thing is perfect as a light, cheap, throw away plane for sale to foreign governments, training, and deployment to battlefields where air superiority isn't a issue. Need to arm a small government? Send these, cheap and easy and your not giving away expensive US Aircraft, even stripped down ones.

Probably one of the reasons behind its development.

[Targan]

On another note the F-35 is a disaster waiting to happen. Nobody has any confidence in its ability to do the job it was has been lavishly funded to do except for Lockheed Martin. However With the economy the way its is the Pentagon may eventually no longer have the funds to keep pouring into the bottomless hole that the F-35 has become. I really hope that the sixth generation F-X fighter is accelerated to replace the F-35 in production

The ongoing saga of the F-35 is embarrassing and annoying for the US, but let's be honest, the US wastes huge amounts of money in the defence area year after year. For countries like Australia, it's a real problem. We sunk (for us) lots of money into the F-35's development and we're counting on its delivery to fill a capability hole. We've bought a bunch of Super Hornets as a stop-gap measure because the F-35 has been delayed for so long. Australia's defence budget is a tiny fraction of America's, we really can't afford to cover the ever-rising projected per-unit cost of the F-35, and we can't afford to sit around for a decade waiting for the damn things to become combat-effective.

[RN7]

The ongoing saga of the F-35 is embarrassing and annoying for the US, but let's be honest, the US wastes huge amounts of money in the defence area year after year. For countries like Australia, it's a real problem. We sunk (for us) lots of money into the F-35's development and we're counting on its delivery to fill a capability hole. We've bought a bunch of Super Hornets as a stop-gap measure because the F-35 has been delayed for so long. Australia's defence budget is a tiny fraction of America's, we really can't afford to cover the ever-rising projected per-unit cost of the F-35, and we can't afford to sit around for a decade waiting for the damn things to become combat-effective.

Very short sighted of Australia to place all its eggs in one basket over this absolute bogey of an aircraft. However I think America manoeuvred Australia among many others into committing to the F-35 by denying them access to the F-22 which better suited its needs and then shutting down the F-22 production line. As far as I can see the F-35 is not fit for purpose. Its not very fast, its not very agile, it can't accelerate very well and its range and weapons payload is very mediocre for the amount of money pumped into it. Its reliant on its "electronic edge" and stealth but they cant get the software to work properly among many other faults. Have you heard the latest shite about it? It wont be able to fire its guns until 2019 because of software issues and its engine may shut down if it overheats, which is going to scare the pants out of every pilot who his going to fly it due to the fact it is a single engine aircraft. The Israelis who don't really want it in the first place will be putting in their own software and electronics when they get a hold of it as they just don't trust the crap that Lockheed Martin spouts about it.

Australia may have to start looking around at other aircraft if the F-35 keeps falling flat on schedule, as Flanker derivatives and the Chinese clones in the Asia-Pacific region will be quicker and longer ranged. God help the Aussies and the others if the Russians sell their latest AESA radar and air-to-air missiles to the locals. The Eurofighter or a upgraded F-15 might be its best option, although the Eurofighter is a bit short ranged for what Australia needs but its a lot better and more reliable than the F-35. The other so called partners in the F-35 may eventually cause the Pentagon to see sense about this crud of a fighter as they are reliant on exports to break even. The US will stick with it due the amount of money poured into the programme and a great deal of cronyism. Numbers may be cut but not while Obama's in office. Hopefully the F-22 will be reactivated until the F-X and the Next Generation Bomber programme reaches maturity.