Rick50

Agreed! Good points raised. On the one hand, PGM delivery has been jammed quite hard in that area of conflict... though seemingly not at airfields. But in future, be it this conflict or others not started yet, commando jamming behind enemy lines will almost certainly become a real problem for some adversaries. Even at "friendly airfields". Maybe with scheduled "shut downs" for PGM deliveries, but then sparked up again to disrupt enemy comms, datalink coordination, and so on. I think that between sporadic GPS signals, INS, triangulating of known fixed radio broadcasts (FM music radio towers, VOR's, cell towers, NDB's) might all help to give a decent enough "position fix" to put you close enough to a friendly airfield that you could get the ILS signal... which could be displayed on HMD... Then there is StarShield, which might offer everything one needs to get home. Maybe.

Parts on fighter jets fail all the time. That's why they are "hangar queens"... I seem to remember the F-15A was noted to require 15 hours of maintenance for an hour of flight, at least back in the 1980's, not sure about today. And that was dead simple compared to the flying fighting supercomputer "do every single airforce job there is" multirole jets of today. The engineers making these jets DO indeed know what they are doing, but the role of even a simple fighter jet is demanding a LOT more strain on materials that make up a jet, than your Chevy or my Toyota. We ask and expect a great deal more of fighters, than our regular vehicles. It's not just parts breaking though, it's also inspections to look for signs of airframes being pushed near or past their limits, looking for signs of invisible cracks using NDT methods. A general rule of thumb seems to be that at any given time, military aircraft will have only 2/3's of the fleet up and ready for combat, the 3rd is either in maintenance or inspections, or awaiting parts. Rich and ready nations might have better and faster maintenance and parts supply, but then they probably also have much more complex aircraft with many more systems needing to be taken care of... huge maintenance difference between an F-5E and an F-22, due to more sophistication and the stealth coatings that need to be repaired and maintained too. As for screens failing in aircraft, sure, in civilian aircraft it does happen, but rarely. I'm no engineer, nor even in aviation, nor airforce during my life, but we are mostly focused in this thread about fighter jets with a single giant screen... and subjecting these to high G's seems to be a fairly new thing. I expect they've been tested extensively, and should have a high "survivable duty" rating. I just thought it interesting to explore the benefits of such giant screens for fighter use, then the rather significant downsides to using a single large screen, and then explore ways that engineers and airforces might find solutions and workarounds to save the day, save the mission... or maybe just saving a pilot and the fighter for repairs! I imagine all of this has been gamed out, then engineered with lots of solutions, but I've seen many times in the real world, where such things were forgotten, not even considered about "what happens if...", only to discover some pretty major problems not even dreamed of. But really I just thought it an interesting thought experiment!

Modern FADEC should be able to give you set programs for endurance, or cruise efficiency per mile on their own without pilot intervention. Particularly for a super advanced fighter of today. Have a solid button on the side console, press and hold for 3 seconds and it illuminates a color to indicate it's mode, different color for another mode. Modern nav systems, should be able to get you right to the runway, much like a cruise missile, and the data from SIDS STARS systems. Precision GPS could do the same job as an ILS, and or ground personel on a data link could select the ILS frequencies for you. Or maybe you have a dozen preprogrammed ILS freqs, and a wheel knob on side console to pick one. When it shows in your HMD, you are golden. One auto nav mode might be a stealthy exfiltration back the way you came, thus not compromising the missions' return path. A different mode might be "fast and direct as possible" in case an interceptor is on it's way to you. A third mode might be "sip fuel limp mode" for maximum fuel efficiency if you are leaking or just low on fuel, might be enough to get home, or at least enough to get to a CSAR pickup point! Although the pilot wouldn't see it, the data link could come in very handy in such a situation: other airforce personnel could monitor your sensors and systems, and give commands to the pilot, or command systems and sensors directly. It would suck in many ways, delays due to network, but it could save the pilot, the airframe, ... maybe even save the mission. Think of it like the pilot is now just a passenger mostly, but now has a dozen guardian angels flying with you, watching over you, setting up AIM-260 shots, doing IFF for you, monitoring ground and air threats, steering your headings, getting your HARM or JDAM set up and fired. Think of it like: this WAS a manned fighter, now it's mostly a UCAV or "loyal wingman" that happens to have a human in it, with eyeballs for a HOBS shot and landing short final. The caveat is that this would need a monster of a datalink with super low latency, a dozen ground personnel that are super competent in a team, in enough numbers, who don't already have many dozens of jobs and tasks in time sensitive situations. Another possibility: if helmet mounted displays ever get full color in insanely high resolution, maybe all that data could be just displayed in helmet... lower quality than the dash display that has now failed, but maybe good enough to fully continue the mission. This does all make me wonder about modern airliners though... if such a screen fails mid-flight.

Hmm... if losing the giant display, not only have you lost ALL your instruments, ALL you tactical situational awareness, ALL your nav data... ALL your stores data, all weapon data, all threat displays, all datalink displays... you'd be resigned to just RTB if that's even a possibility at that time. ... but you've also lost MOST of your buttons and controls that aren't on the HOTAS system... I'd almost advocate for a second redundant screen behind the one that just failed and ejected... but I don't really see that happening. I guess you'd be down to just HMD and HOTAS if your main display dash fails...

It's also worth considering that the B-52 will soon be getting an engine replacement. Yes, that's right, this slow very old tech, that has precisely zero stealth, is intended to fly on in service until it sees 100 years of active duty! Sure, it'll need heavy EW even for long distance standoff wps deployment, but this IS the plan. Meanwhile, once the B-21 comes into service, they'll terminate the B-1B Bone, as it's maintenance costly and doesn't offer significant advantage over the B-52 or B-21.

tryina sneek in under the radar!!

These latest from China (J-50 and J-36) look a lot more stealthy than the J-20 Dragon... then again it looks like they may have different mission sets. To me the J-36 looks to be doing long range strikes, like the Beagle, SU-34, A-12 Avenger /Burrito, and maybe mini-B-21 Raider? The J-50's very long nose looks like it could house side looking radar arrays... recon perhaps? ELINT and or EW ? Something else?

Another Chinese stealth prototype takes to the air, this is different from the 3 engine delta design, this one seems a twin engined single seater: https://www.twz.com/air/chinas-j-50-tailless-stealth-fighter-seen-in-new-imagery

you know, you are right, I'll give it 30 minutes and then delete my discussion on this sub-topic, as it's wildly off topic. Screenshot it if you like, but I don't want to poison the rest of the discussion, risk the whole thread being deleted. If anyone wants to debate further, or ask questions, challenge me on it, I'm game. But I won't do so on ED's forums or this site's PM's. Instead, PM me with an email address, and we could continue by private email. 30 minutes have elapsed, so I have edited my previous posts "Edited: well off topic"

Look, I hope this concept is wrong. That some of us have been lead to a silly notion. I'm just saying, keep an open mind about this as you watch news stories in the future, and remember past events. And I'm done on this sub-topic.

Edited: well off topic

Edited: well off topic

Edited: well off topic

Whatever shortages in munitions count the Western nations will have, once the Uk Black Sea war is over, I feel it's certain that Russia will have it's own struggle to rebuild their military to even a basic purely defensive capability. I know they can do it, but it might take half a decade or more to rebuild. Hulls of all shapes and sizes sent to depots all around the nation to fully refurbish. Then build up basic stocks of munitions. After that, they can focus on the shortcomings discovered in the war. More importantly, get their economy going again, get off wartime financial mode, get people out of uniform and back to work in the civilian economy. Probably the same for Ukraine too.

To expand on cannibalisation vs constant peacetime maintenance, with the cannibal situation, you are constantly removing components of uncertain age or condition, and placing them on units that need to go right back into the fight. That takes time, removal can sometimes damage that part. Now the unit it was removed from, is further from ever being used. Worse, as you cannibalise your fleet, if you don’t keep VERY careful records, you may not realise when you are getting close to a shortage of a particular item, and not order from the original manufacturer in time to meet wartime needs. By contrast, the war storage method, means that a new part with zero hours on it, got installed at leisure in peacetime, and then had function tests done, again in peacetime. It’s not sitting on a shelf rotting, or waiting to be stolen, it’s installed already. And because it's all based on ordering and installing new parts, you know exactly how many you have in inventory, and you can inform and discuss your future anticipated needs for parts in time for them to adjust to the future reality. But again, it's more expensive up front.

Wait... The Pentagon started to cut costs?! When?? Wait ‘till the Pentagon learns of this! And the taxpayers!! Sure, the Abrams today is the same hulls and turrets of the 1980’s, but… there’s a mountain of difference between the effectiveness of the original configuration and the current SEP 3. The originals didn’t even have the 120mm gun, nor the later armour package. The “increments” you speak of are very significant individually, but taken all together, are nothing short of generations ahead. The battlefield capability improvement from original Abrams to that of today, IMO is much greater than the difference between a T-64 original, and a fully current T-90 of today. It would be more fair to say that the original first Abrams was so far ahead of it’s time, that it took the rest of the world years to catch up, and that until the T-14 starts being fielded in real numbers (say 25 into combat), Russia still had not caught up, 45 years later. So if a tiny guy burns down your residence, are you bullying him if you ask the police to arrest him? Also, have you looked at just how MUCH money was being spent for those 20 years??! There was NOTHING cost effective at all. Sure, they weren’t losing Eagles and Bradleys very often, I guess there’s savings in that. But the hundreds of bases built and supplied, fuel food and supplies for hundreds of thousands of troops, not for a 3 month exercise, but TWO DECADES of operations!? No, there was no savings going on for the American taxpayer that I could see. And while all that was going on, America still had to put dozens of nuke subs to sea, bought more SM-6 missiles at 5 million each, upgraded their Abrams three times, built a rather large fleet of UCAV’s and surveillance drones, launched perhaps 25+ spy surveillance satellites... “Parts kits” are a lot less handy than what America has… the older vehicles and systems get put into “war storage”. In Russia that seems to mean, “park it and let it rust indefinitely”. In America that means regular parts inspections, fuel drained and replaced, grease removed and re-greased, new gaskets and rubber hoses for the engines are replaced. Batteries preserved and replaced. It means getting driven a few KM’s every few months, to make sure. Continuously. The difference is, in war, Russian mechanics will have to tow that vehicle to the shop, go through and assess all the problems, and try fixing what they can, triage the vehicles, and send some to the troops. By contrast, the American going to get vehicles from war storage, brings a wrench to attach the battery cables to their posts, presses the START button, goes to the fuelling bowser, and drives away to the railhead to ship it wherever it’s needed. Probably doesn’t even need a mechanic to look at it, because it was just inspected 4 months ago in detail. In the world of fleets, “cannibalisation” is when you grab parts off units to put onto other units. Nothing wrong with doing so, all organisations will do this to some extent, even America. But there are significant downsides to doing things that way, especially if you don’t keep detailed records of the parts removed, records that are kept accessible. By contrast, a full proper “war storage” means keeping the stored vehicles in the highest state of readiness. YES it is more expensive that cannibalising, but you get a better bang for the buck, better deterrent to adversaries, because all those vehicles, weapons systems are READY NOW. No delays. Not to mention your maintenance crews WILL be tired fatigued and make mistakes during wartime, because things break down. But proper war storage reduces that extra workload, so they can focus on keeping vehicles in the fight, or recovering them, instead of trying to build a fleet from rusted out junk. This thread discusses consumption of “war items” and how production doesn’t keep pace with war. The American/Western war storage means that production of those hoses, gaskets and all the other parts, is continuous, ordered regularly from suppliers. The Russian method… well, I wonder how stretched their supply of engine parts consumables has been the last few years? Shortages getting enough coolant hoses? Radiator cores? Fuel and oil pumps? Enough hydraulic lines? Look, I’m not trying to criticise Russia on this, they probably didn’t have enough budget to do the Western/America style, it’s costly and some might call that a luxury most nations could not afford. Sometimes theoretical war is too costly and other things need budgetary money. Seems rather pricey for a vanity project… all that quality steel could have gone into next gen MBT’s or IFV’s. All that engineering, construction and drydock time could have been allocated to things actually needed. I don’t think I buy this explanation. I think it’s more like a cope, an excuse “uh, well… uh, we didn’t really need it, yea that’s it! We DIDN'T need it so it doesn’t matter!” Sorry, but no one builds an aircraft carrier “just for fun” and that’s not needed for some reason or another. Nations and Navy’s of the world don’t even KEEP carriers operational, the moment they no longer have a need/use for them…. Just keeping them operational, maintenance, upgrades, fuel consumption, time occupying a drydock (which is very valuable and prevents other ships and subs from getting maintenance / upgrades), keeping fully trained crews, doing air evolutions risking aircraft crashing/damage on the deck to maintain proficiency… in every case, the moment a Navy decides it doesn’t need a carrier, it ditches that carrier. If it can’t be sold, it’s sold for scrap. If scrapping the hull isn’t practical, it’s moored in a remote location and abandoned, no more paint for that hull, it goes nowhere. Why? Because just keeping a carrier operational is prohibitively expensive in any national defence budget, whether you are the USA, USSR or Canada. Yes, Canada used to have two aircraft carriers, at one time, HMCS Bonnaventure and HMCS Magnificent. They were very expensive for my nation at that time, and were sold or scrapped, depending on the conspiracy theories you believe or don’t believe.

https://www.twz.com/land/ground-launched-small-diameter-bomb-headed-to-ukraine-for-its-second-try-at-combat-report

We just recently saw how EW can really mess with some "smart weapons", with JDAM and GMLRS, and even GLSDB units getting thrown off target by ground based Russian EW spoofing. Enough that it stopped delivery to the region until a fix has been found. I guess they are field testing a fix right now with the GLSDB. This is a ground launched rocket, fired from the M270 or HiMARS vehicles, but then a "Small Diameter Bomb" pops out glide wings, and follows GPS waypoints to it's possibly hardened target. SDB as in normally seen on a Strike Eagle Beagle, but mounted on a 227mm rocket motor! My point though, is when such weapons are suddenly, even temporarily rendered "inert", then the troops are even more dependent on the remaining weapons and munitions that still work. Including the "dumb" munitions, which we didn't have enough of. Just recently I wondered how long this "FPV Drone" era might last. Sure, at the moment it looks like an unstoppable force. But as people see this threat evolve and expand, there WILL be countermeasures of many kinds imagined and then fielded. Armies will have no choice but to adapt... can't have multi-million dollar vehicles taken out so easily by $500 toys, there's too much invested in tank warfare, not just in terms of money, but strategy defensive and offensive, training doctrine... but most importantly, what's the alternative to a tank or IFV ? I'm not convinced there IS an alternative just yet. Slat and cage armor will be improved, no doubt. Russians are fielding EW jammers on select vehicles to disrupt FPV drone signals. Sure, fibre optic lines neuter that, but the lines end up very short, and are vulnerable to tangling on trees buildings and then breaking. We know America is developing laser weapons to drop smaller drones, and eventually will increase capability and effectiveness. An EMP burst has been tested, seems to work, but I don't think they are yet at the point of field testing, considering this would potentially damage friendly radios and datalinks, but that might be a future counter. Lately, armor shown at Arms trade shows have been sporting 30mm guns on independent RWS turrets, with the description that it would incorporate a small scanning radar to look for drones, and then send up shells on precision timing to airburst close to said drones. I do think that would be effective, but that's a LOT of development effort to neutralise deadly quads... might not be much choice though. On the upside, some of that development might be fully applicable to a later EMP or Laser solution. I think the tank solution to FPV drones will mostly come to improved physical armour design, and possibly stealth. Prevent open hatches letting grenades fall through them. Prevent the drone from getting within a meter or two of the actual vehicle. Close the gaps that they have been exploiting. Chameleon like color-matching with the environment, thermal matching panels, so that the drone thermal cameras don't see the tank. "BAE System has recently developed ADAPTIV, an adaptive camouflage for combat vehicles that reduces their thermal signature"

Corruption in so very many organisations and nations, no doubt. Seems that way with the rotting tires situation at the beginning of the war. I saw a story a little while ago, about a museum that had a T-34 giving it back to the Russian army... not sure if that was real or some weird urban legend... Russia has indeed developed a lot of new tech in the last three decades. But it seems to me that very few examples have been fielded, few upgrades actually fitted to their jets. It's also true that even making "simple" tanks ships and jets takes time and money too, even without super tech stealth... those numbers just don't happen overnight. Even in wartime. Production of new Russian tanks, or even refurbished/upgraded hulls, is just not keeping up with losses from quad copter drones. I guess even just having financial capacity is so stretched that might lead to peace before anything else. Maybe it's a good thing that wars are so costly in lives and money, ends them earlier and may sometimes prevent them in the first place.

The T-55 example is very relevant. It's still a steel pillbox, with a big gun with range, that is mobile. And 95% of the time isn't engaging other vehicles, much less enemy tanks, but doing infantry support, breaching operations, overwatch, sentry ops. Meaning, still useful. And there's nothing but budgetary concerns stopping anyone from upgrading it, ceramic armor plates, cages and slats, thermal imagers and radars, all the items you mention. If you consider the current development of the M10 Booker tank, an upgraded T-55 takes on even more relevance. One problem I see whether it's munitions production or car parts, is a trend towards just in time manufacturing, no surge production capacity, no warehouses filled with spares. Instead, they want customers to ignore the older system that works just fine, and in a crisis suddenly demand a new product be developed for them to buy. A coworker related a story about his buddy buying a beautiful 10 year old luxury car (sporty? can't recall) for a modest price, knowing it needed a new windshield. Problem: no windshields available to buy, seemingly anywhere. Not many spares were ever made. Can't commission a glass maker, because the windshield has several car-specific sensors mounted to it, that they don't know how to manufacture. Car sits idle waiting for someone else's accident that spares the windshield to cannibalise from. Back when the Cold War was on, a common saying in the military was "we have quality technology, but Russia has numbers, and numbers have a quality of their own", or a variation of that. And in some respects, both points of view are correct at times... sometimes numbers, especially munitions production, have a quality all their own. Does that 7th Gen, Mach 4 super fighter really matter, if it's no longer got a supply of missiles, and is reduced to "using harsh language"? Does the pilot resort to WW1 methods and shoot a pistol through the canopy?!! No, of course not, but you see my point. I would have thought there would have been contractual incentives to keep surge production viable for defense manufacturers: keep more line workers current, rotate through, extra factory capacity, while keeping low numbers for peacetime, but do special "war exercises" to get them used to high production, maybe for one full day, morning afternoon and graveyard shifts. Also, store extra capacity.

For sure, Silver, I'm just pointing out that all these map suggestions are really good, and many are great ideas for many reasons, and that it's my HOPE that map creation tools are improved and sped up, while maybe improving quality without requiring armies of artists and coders to create maps! Meaning, some kind of transformative change, a giant leap of innovation for this purpose. I don't know that my thought has any chance of ever happening, just expressing my desire for such improvements to dramatically increase the variety of DCS maps to help fill in detailed regions for the "world map" Back in the day, a certain civil aviation simulation from Washington State, that shall remain un-named, used to have a lot of user-made addon maps... individuals or small teams would create custom terrains, custom image overlays, and then even create custom highly detailed airports and unique buildings. I'm sure it took them a long while to create such maps... but if they had much better tools enabled creation to be MUCH faster and easier... I dunno, might be a silly idea that just won't be possible? I just know that with current AI being able to assist people writing songs, creating still pictures of complex visuals, and even video presentations without human artists, I would think that an AI could be trained to help making many aerial photographs "blend" together without obvious "seams" in the missmatched pics. Same for AI making the topographical data into something that looks realistic but uses a reasonable number of data points. Then AI to help place buildings, houses, roads, trees and such, but look "organic" and natural?

I've said it before, but I think we don't so much "need" this map or that map, but rather improved tools and resources to create maps MUCH faster and better. That way, we can get ALL the maps we are able to make!!! Maybe an AI tool to take NASA topographical data and sat images just blend it together, fix the seams and blend it together... yea, might not be possible, but a lot is possible now that wasn't in the past!

Venice? Really? That's kinda cool! Beautiful city I visited as a little kid, yet I still remember that visit 50 years later!!!

OOOhhh !!! Sooo edgy!! So political!! First, you ought to look into how a minor accounting error or judgement call, in the accounting department, that results in small fines, got turned into a felony... just for this particular case (look at previous cases for precedent). Second, political topics are not liked in this forum. With 500 posts I would have thought you knew that.