i said, 30 year old concept.
Actually, LO in aircraft design started from 1911. The design concept history is in these forums if you care to look for it. In real terms, LO in jet powered aircraft started in 1947. (which led to the eventual design of the U2)
LOL! So you want to compare VLO to jet technology? Well, thats what the LM marketing hype wants you to believe, but if you look at reality it's a bit different.
Funny how kids from other countries naysay about the benefits of LO, and yet russia, china and india are making considerable effort to deliver manned LO/VLO solutions. Yes the reality is a bit different. Then they fail to completely understand that the LO and VLO advances have resulted in VLO/LO weapons systems as an adjunct to LO/VLO delivery. No idea, but they keep on bleating.
Only 21 B-2 has been built, non stealth bombers are still the backbone of the US strategic air force and no other stealth bomber has still even been designed.
- the USAF worked out that they didn't need B-52 numbers to meet the mission end statement
- B2's are only one part of the nuclear delivery equation - and the US doesn't need to focus on intercontinental delivery by manned air platforms. It's why the US and a few other nuclear weaponised states have 3 primary delivery options. The end of the Cold War saw a sea change shift in what the US regarded as end state delivery equivalency (and overall endstate overmatch)
F-117 has already been taken out of service
The stinkbug was taken out of service as it's RCS and mission requirements were met by the F-22 and JSF. Precision weapons design since 1983 is completely different. A plane that was made from basically 6 other standard aircraft with a VLO body was no longer regarded as relevant when other
systems were in the pipe.
while many older non stealth planes are still flying on and the F-22 has been slashed from 750 to 183.
and you miss the issue that as far as some DefSecStates, Congress and even Snr Mil Officers are concerned, the future battles are not State on State and so the focus should shift to rapid mobility against non sophisticated technology players such as terrorists operating out of inert nation states.
others will rightly argue that an emergent conflict is unpredictable, so all capabilities should be maintained. The F-22 happens to be in the transition of this philosophy stage - but it ignores the bottom line that the JSF is still regarded as their pre-eminent volume aircraft as the F-22 fills a niche manned capability.
Arguing the slash of F-22 numbers based on VLO competency is fanciful. But I guess thats why 3 other countries are hell bent on countering or developing their own.
Actually if you look at the real world results VLO technology has so far been a failure. The extreme and costly VLO seems more suitable as a silver bullet asset, like the snipers role in the army.
Hence why Russia, China, India are keen to develop manned solutions, US, France, UK, Poland, Japan, Germany, Israel are keen to field unmanned solutions. There are 3 different countries trialling reduced signature platforms in the middle of australia - obviously someone thinks its worthwhile at the tactical level.
You do realise that every generation of VLO aircraft released by the US has been a different design concept - and that within each release the cost of the development and maintenance has gone down (eg B-2)
and for goodness sake, making "silver bullet" statements again reinforces this teenage notion that it's the platform and not the system that wins battles. Learn to take a tactical systems view of this rather than a platform view and you might start to get the picture a bit better.
But of course USA has just refrained from fielding any significant numbers of stealth combat aircrafts to be nice to the enemy.
Grow up. You haven't demonstrated any comprehension of why modern
systems have been developed and yet continue to trot out idiotic comments.
!st Warning issued. Read the Forum rules before posting anymore.
JSF doses not have one singel customer yet in europe. so be aware what you are saying here.
Worth noting. The world is also bigger than europe
and what about this: US is the only country yet, to have stealth as a demand.
what about what?
No, Russia, China and India have made persistent public comments about making aircraft to either match or exceed F-22 capabilities in the LO medium.
The US has been building jet powered LO aircraft since 1959 - its now on its 4th to 5th generation of manned solutions.
No one else has been able to deliver anything except press statements and mock ups (since 1959)