"Magic Helmet" For F-35 Ready For Delivery 184
Graculus writes with news that the so called "magic helmets" for the controversial F-35 are ready for action. This week, Lockheed Martin officially took delivery of a key part of the F-35 fighter's combat functionality—the pilot's helmet. The most expensive and complicated piece of headgear ever constructed, the F-35 Gen III Helmet Mounted Display System (HMDS) is one of the multipurpose fighter's most critical systems, and it's essential to delivering a fully combat-ready version of the fighter to the Marine Corps, the Navy, and the Air Force. But it almost didn't make the cut because of software problems and side effects akin to those affecting 3D virtual reality headsets.
Built by Rockwell Collins ESA Vision Systems International (a joint venture between Rockwell Collins and the Israeli defense company Elbit Systems), the HMDS goes way beyond previous augmented reality displays embedded in pilots' helmets. In addition to providing the navigational and targeting information typically shown in a combat aircraft's heads-up display, the HMDS also includes aspects of virtual reality, allowing a pilot to look through the plane. Using a collection of six high-definition video and infrared cameras on the fighter's exterior called the Distributed Aperture System (DAS), the display extends vision a full 360 degrees around the aircraft from within the cockpit. The helmet is also equipped with night vision capabilities via an infrared sensor that projects imagery inside the facemask
Built by Rockwell Collins ESA Vision Systems International (a joint venture between Rockwell Collins and the Israeli defense company Elbit Systems), the HMDS goes way beyond previous augmented reality displays embedded in pilots' helmets. In addition to providing the navigational and targeting information typically shown in a combat aircraft's heads-up display, the HMDS also includes aspects of virtual reality, allowing a pilot to look through the plane. Using a collection of six high-definition video and infrared cameras on the fighter's exterior called the Distributed Aperture System (DAS), the display extends vision a full 360 degrees around the aircraft from within the cockpit. The helmet is also equipped with night vision capabilities via an infrared sensor that projects imagery inside the facemask
Cost (Score:3)
FTA:
The helmet runs for about $600,000, which doesn't include software integration with the aircraft’s systems.
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Don't worry, it'll come down in price:
The helmet runs for about $600,000, ... But Lockheed Martin hopes the cost will drop as production ramps up.
Yup, I can see production really ramping up for the F-35. Like most things in life, it's possibly to build something to do everything, just don't be upset when it does everything badly.
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The F-16 was overpriced for its time. The F-15 took years to work out the bugs. The f-16 was designedin the 70's. Continuing to use70's tech is stupid. Do you still drive a 70's car?
Re:Cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you still drive a 70's car?
If the price of a new car was $180M, I would definitely stick with my trusty 70s car.
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Races are a voluntary event just like air battles.
The USA is not currently in danger of being invaded and does not currently need a $1 trillion fighter jet. We could have instead used this period of relative calm to assess our needs in a 5th generation fighter and been smart about designing and manufacturing it.
Instead, we immediately handed over an unbelievably high sum of money to the first defense contractor who shit something out in powerpoint. Then we repeatedly shoved more and more money into their
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That's how we ended up battling superior A6M Zero's with technically inferior F-4F Wildcat's during the first years of WWII.
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Yet in the end Japan lost the war because their industrial power was much inferior.
Guess where is that industrial power today.
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"Army"
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
BTW: You reject most of the brainwashing - don't believe the hype about the brown people, either.
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How America’s immigration wars were poisoned by the military-industrial complex [salon.com]
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How America’s immigration wars were poisoned by the military-industrial complex [salon.com]
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Then I suggest you not enter any races in which the loser will die.
I would suggest that you give more thought to 'races' where outnumbering the opponent and firing anti-aircraft weapons at them from the ground is acceptable...
Even if we suspect that a nasty shooting war with a modern adversary is in the cards, it's a bit of a problem that our current next generation super plane costs so much that we'll necessarily have them in quite limited numbers and be unwilling and (in a conflict of any nontrivial size or duration) unable to expose them to serious risks.
This is
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> This is especially bad if they turn out to be seriously vulnerable to any missile system developed that isn't ruinously expensive per shot or a closely held secret used only by somebody's elite guard
Or if, say, the very large and expensive amount of fuel used b supersonic aircraft can be cut off by the opposing force bombing the oil lines from their own country that we relied on to get cheap fuel. It's a bit of a conundrum when the country you're invading is a major source of your fuel. Or if what you
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Quantity has a Quality all of its own.
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Do you still drive a 70's car?
If the price of a new car was $180M, I would definitely stick with my trusty 70s car.
Depends on if you're up against other 70s cars or something more recent that could wipe your muscle car off the road.
What's the requirement?
What's the cost of meeting the requirement?
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Its main advantage is its ability to integrate sensor information from multiple sources. But this does not warrant building a hugely expensive fighter from scratch. Put the same system on an F18 and F16 and you will have even more capable fighter.
The F-35, AKA Joint Strike Fighter, is more akin to what happened to the Space Shuttle - it's a single aircraft that is suppose to meet the needs of all the different branches. This also why the Space shuttle was such a brick to fly, so costly, and had wings. Hopefully the F-35 won't meet the same end.
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Problem is foreign air forces might not play the game and instead send up long range stealth cruise missiles at one hundredth the cost or one hundred times as many incoming fighters. All networked together, sharing data and combining their attack.
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"plus our allies are buying a whole bunch"
And in the meantime we in the UK won't have an aircraft carrier worth the name for the best part of a decade...
We have the boats... just not the planes (I assume the recent grounding will put back delivery another year or two)
Should have stuck with the Harrier...
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FTA:
The helmet runs for about $600,000, which doesn't include software integration with the aircraft’s systems.
How would you like to be the first guy to drop one of these... you know it's going to happen...
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That said, I wouldn't want to be the lucky guy who gets to find out.
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Elmer Fudd (Score:5, Funny)
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Spear and magic helllllemt!
For those under 30 who might not get the reference: What's Opera, Doc? [imdb.com], 1957
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I'm in my 20s and I saw that cartoon a hundred times as a kid. It's probably still being shown.
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Brilliant [youtube.com].
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Sorry, the spear is going to cost extra.
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Outstanding... (Score:5, Interesting)
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the aircraft is functional with several squadrons already stood up and operating. the mechs are already training in how to maintain it. pilots are already running training missions to become proficient.
the helmet is not required to operate the aircraft, and in many ways should have been its own research and development project, simply because of its own complexity. but once completed the helmet and its systems oan be retrofitted to most any aircraft dramatically increasing pilot capability and awareness.
the
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What I mean is that the plane isn't even in service yet.
That's the problem. My country decided to buy these things and participate in the development as a level 2 partner. That has some advantages, and at the time was cheaper than buying off the shelf, plus we got a good deal of offset orders for our own aerospace industry. However, the projected cost per plane has already increased by 45%, and it's still not clear how much the final sticker price will be, or how the plane will perform.
The one big advantage of buying off the shelf is: you know what you're
Is this the same Lockheed Martin... (Score:1)
that's embroiled in the Social Security IT boondoggle?!?
It's boondoggles all the way down!!!
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Bugs... (Score:2)
Does this thing acutally work or is it as bugridden as the rest of the F-35? I sure would not want to be sitting in an F-35 when the rendering software has a buffering issue or just plain segfaults in the middle of a dogfight.
Re:Bugs... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure it'll see many dogfights in any case. I'm told that the F35 is the largest, heaviest fighter with an airframe that produces the most drag, that the US has ever produced, and the huge engine that makes it fly puts out a very clear heat signature without providing much range, speed or maneuverability. It's been described as "can't run, can't fight, can't hide", and missions assume that older fighters go ahead and clean up the resistance so the F35 can complete its mission unchallenged. So, I'd imagine that if the F35 finds itself in a dogfight, something has gone very wrong with the mission.
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Another flying bus!!! So much for Col John Boyd and the E-M modeling...
History, we don't need to learn no history!
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the AWACS are there to guide the F-35 to kill enough aircraft first so there is no dog fight
I'm curious (Score:2)
Re:I'm curious (Score:4, Informative)
What was wrong with the F-22 that the F-35 was going to fix?
I am out of my element a bit here, but my understanding is that the F22 is an air superiority fighter only, whereas the F35 was supposed to be a multirole aircraft (air-to-air and air-to-ground) with (optional) VTOL features, (which no version of the F22 has) all in the same airframe. It was supposed to be the Windows 8 of fighter aircraft, a single airframe to take the place of a bunch of other craft.
And, it was (giggle) supposed to (snerk) be (Bwaaaa haa haaa) affordable. Sorry, I can't say that with a straight face.
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What was wrong with the F-22 that the F-35 was going to fix?
I am out of my element a bit here, but my understanding is that the F22 is an air superiority fighter only, whereas the F35 was supposed to be a multirole aircraft (air-to-air and air-to-ground) with (optional) VTOL features, (which no version of the F22 has) all in the same airframe. It was supposed to be the Windows 8 of fighter aircraft, a single airframe to take the place of a bunch of other craft.
And, it was (giggle) supposed to (snerk) be (Bwaaaa haa haaa) affordable. Sorry, I can't say that with a straight face.
Pretty much. It has similarities to the relationship between the F-15 and F-16 development projects. One was built to do one thing, the other was built as a response to it when it started getting out of control. A kind of "Little and large" relationship. Though now the f35 has gotten out of control...sheesh :(
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What was wrong with the F-22 that the F-35 was going to fix?
I am out of my element a bit here, but my understanding is that the F22 is an air superiority fighter only, whereas the F35 was supposed to be a multirole aircraft (air-to-air and air-to-ground) with (optional) VTOL features, (which no version of the F22 has) all in the same airframe. It was supposed to be the Windows 8 of fighter aircraft, a single airframe to take the place of a bunch of other craft.
And, it was (giggle) supposed to (snerk) be (Bwaaaa haa haaa) affordable. Sorry, I can't say that with a straight face.
So, it's a flying Swiss Army Knife. Sure, it has a spork, scissors, tweezers, a nail file, a screwdriver, and a dozen other tools and perhaps even a knife in there somewhere for good measure but it sucks as any of them.
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You mean about as practical in use as this swiss army knife [mobilemag.com]
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Cost.
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The F-35 was supposed to address the soaring costs by use of a fairly standard airframe and parts across 3 distinct users. The F-35 would also prov
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The F-35 was supposed to be cheaper and sold to US partners. Sort of like the F-16.
It turns out it is costing more per plane than the F-22 however.
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The F-104 Starfighter was supposed to be a cheap Mach 2 fighter. It was precisely that. It was also designed in record time with nothing but drafting boards and sliderules. It was just accident prone. The F-35 has taken forever to develop, costs more than an F-22 per unit, is slower than the F-104 Starfighter from the 1950s. It uses less fuel and has more advanced weapons. That is about it.
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Once the basics of supersonic flight were understood and the materials science behind the engine tech was perfected, it was easy to produce an aircraft that went Mach 2, so the F-104 isn't something to really be compared to the F-35.
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The F104 wasnt designed for ground attack, or to replace 5 different aircraft.
It also wasnt designed for manueverability or air superiority, nor did it have much in the way of avionics.
It was a pure zoom climb interceptor, heance the extreme top speed.
It's nickname of the Manned Missile is entirely accurate.
Comparing the 104 to the 35 is like comparing a $500,000 Ferrari with all the bells and whistles to a $1000 VW Bug that's had a rocket strapped on the back.
(and being slower than the 104 really isnt rele
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The F104 wasnt designed for ground attack,...
And that's where most of the mishaps originated, misuse of the F-104 in the ground attack role. The F-104 actually had a good safety record when it was operated as intended: a high-altitude, VFR interceptor. The Italians for example had a good safety record. The Germans, not so much.
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.... It uses less fuel and has more advanced weapons. That is about it.
It's all about the weapons and the sensors to cue those weapons. The airframe is secondary. It just gets the weapons to where they need to be to be launched.
The F-104 had the pilot's eyeballs as the long-range sensor, and a primative gun radar. The weapons were the M61 and AIM-9. The F-35 has an advanced radar system, data-link, probably other sensors we don't know about. Weapons would be the AIM-120, AIM-9, JDAM, and other weapons we probably don't know about. The only debate is those sensors and weapons
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It didnt have a turret, enough armor, and couldnt swim.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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It depends on what role they want the F-35 to play, I've seen that it was designed alternatively either as a fighter or multirole aircraft. As a swing-role or multirole craft this could easily dominate. As a fighter, that is harder to see for the very reasons you brought up...size, drag etc...but the stealth and electronic warfare packages, which I assume this helmet plays a major role in monitoring and interfacing, might be a trump card that overcomes it's deficiencies in air-to-air and air superiority c
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About the ECM, the story is that the F35 only has effective ECM in the same frequency range that it's own radar uses -- effectively limiting it to C band. It has stealth features, but they are largely negated by the heat put out by that huge engine. These two weaknesses sum up the "can't hide" part of the F35's deficiencies.
Mind you, I've been out of the war toys business for many years. I only know what I've read. But it's not promising.
Re:Bugs... (Score:4, Informative)
And where did you hear it? According to wikipedia:
Wingspan:
F35: 35'
F14: 64' / 38' (swept)
F15: 42'
F16: 32'
F18 C/D: 40'
Empty Weight
F35: 29,000 lb
F14: 43,700 lb
F15: 28,000 lb
F16: 18,900 lb
F18: 23,000 lb
Combat radius (internal stores)
F35: 600 nm
F14: 500 nm
F15: 1000 nm
F16: 340 nm
F18: 400 nm
Of what can be verified, none of what you heard is correct...
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Every new aircraft gets slated to hell though, people were saying the harrier jump jet was useless for similar reasons. The idea of a VTOL aircraft useful in both air to air and air to ground was an impossible ineffective pipe dream according to many.
Yet it's still in use by the US now and has seen more combat than most other jets having been engaged in everything from the Falklands, to Iraq (both times) to Afghanistan.
You only really know how great an aircraft is when it's tried and tested in combat, every
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The harrier nozzles can't be put into a forward position, they're shielded from the front.
The harrier itself was a 60s aircraft, though like the Skyhawk saw upgrades throughout it's lifetime. Aircraft like the Super Etendard, and Dagger were 70s aircraft.
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It's not bug-ridden, it's handy-capable.
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Can you call them "bugs" when they were specific design specifications?
The F-35 is a $300billion dollar abomination. Earlier today, there was a story about a $300million dollar IT mess in federal government and there were howls of outrage.
This useless plane is 1000 times more expensive and unlike the IT mess, the plane's "bugs" are there by design.
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I would not bet on it being the last fighter. There are already proposals for a 6th generation fighter floating around such as the Boeing F/A-XX.
The pilots have g-limits but it is certainly possible to increase speed or reduce fuel consumption.
Universal antipathy (Score:2)
Check out the groupthink.
There's still one thing missing (Score:2)
I can build lots of drones for $300B USD (Score:1)
Leave the pilot on the ground and you won't need a fancy helmet.
Two words (Score:2)
.
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If you put the person controlling the drone inside the drone, it would fix the latency issue... oh wait.
Prior Art (Score:2)
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net... [nocookie.net]
Pretty cool video showing the helmet in operation (Score:5, Informative)
This video
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c... [c-span.org]
shows the symbology and operation of the helmet as a reporter wears it. It's expensive, yes, but it's revolutionary.
If this helmet is that great (Score:3)
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that is the eventual goal, and the helmet probably should have been its own development project.
that said, just "adding" something to existing airframes is difficult. unless you've worked on planes, you probably have no idea just how cramped for space they are internally with all the avionics boxes and wiring (miles and miles of wiring)
Israeli defense company (Score:2, Insightful)
An Israeli defense company, eh?
Well, no one is quite the expert at mass murder that the Israelis are, as they're proving in Gaza right now by butchering 4 civilians for every enemy "soldier" that they kill.
Can you imagine the uproar if 80% of those killed in Afghanistan by US forces were civilians?
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> Can you imagine the uproar if 80% of those killed in Afghanistan by US forces were civilians?
They mostly are civilian casualties. Much of what's happening now in Afghanistan is guerrilla warfare, not military forces.
Bad Plane (Score:2)
This plane is an ef'ing joke, at least from my perspective as Canadian ex-military. Does not operate well in cold weather, and has only one engine. If you lose an engine while patrolling the arctic, you go down. This is an overpriced, overcomplicated piece of shit. Our government has produced at least two reports that have stated that this is an inappropriate and overpriced solution for what we need, yet regardless the federal government (across two parties) seems to keep trying to back it, and even now, an
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pay Canadian companies to produce a world-class, well-designed and actually useful aircraft
We could sell you some Bomarcs [wikipedia.org] instead. Our foreign curtomers will buy what we tell them to. So price and performance aren't issues (to us).
Only a few hundred billion dollars.. (Score:2)
It'll win all the dog fights US engages in these days! Priorities people, come on.
Benghazi. Deathpanels. Look over there!
Sci-Fi Story (Score:2)
Can't recall the name of the story though.
But... (Score:2)
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Yes but the toilet seat has downward facing fricking lasers that scan your "bodily output" to provide full medical tri-corder capability. A bargain at twice the price.
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You've got your period and comma keycaps swapped. Or you're European, I guess. Either way, it doesn't make sense to write numbers that way.
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Re:Watch the F-35 get blown out of the skies (Score:4, Interesting)
Why? What evidence or precedent do you have for that statement? When in recent history have our planes been blown out of the sky by Russian-produced missiles?
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Two letters...
U 2
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because the russian missiles worked so well in iraq in 1990 and 2003?
F-35 + electronic warfare will destroy the russian missile batteries
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Iraq did not have the Archer (R-73) or Adder (R-77) all aspect missiles available. Had they had those on Su-27 or Mig-29 platforms the result might have been a lot different.
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At which point the industry will present their "new improved" model (at twice the cost, naturally)
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Also most of their airforce was composed of utterly obsolete Mig-21s.
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Serbia managed to wipe out an F-117 with late 50's soviet SAM S-125.
Maybe iraq army was inept.
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By a dedicated but somewhat mass produced Russian missile, should a major conflict arise.
Or the dozen "good enough" fighter jets that swarm it.
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You might want to look at how many F-35s are actually being ordered. They could very well be outnumbered 12 to 1 in a given engagement with, for example, China or Russia.
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even if those numbers were true the F22 and F35 have been designed with the capability to track and engage extremely large numbers are enemy aircraft. the probably of them being swarmed by even half that number are slim to none as the mission doctrine is to engage from maximum range long before being detected, reducing the enemy numbers before they even know they are being hunted.
the F22 alone is publicly capable of carrying 6 AAMRAMs and 2 Sidewinders. the AAMRAMs would be fired off first as the distance i
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You must have missed where I said a typical "flight of four" aircraft.
The F22 is currently capable of carrying 6 missiles (typically the larger AAMRAM) internally in the main bay and 2 Sidewinders (1 each) in the smaller side bays. In addition it has 2 hardpoints under each wing, each of which can carry an additional 2 Missiles, for a total of 8 additional missiles. That's a maximum loadout of 16 AA missiles, at the cost of stealth capability.
So for a flight of four F22s you're looking at a typical "At Rang
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The F-35 is not an air superiority craft. I imagine the F-22s will clear the way, absolutely obliterating anything in front of them. There is nothing today that even approaches the air-to-air lethality of the F-22.
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bigoted
"King Obama" is racist? Fuck you and your race card.
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There's a whole world of bigotry out there that doesn't revolve around racism. Sure, it's typically used in association with easy visual targets, like the color of one's skin or gender, but bigotry can also crop up with regard to sexual orientation, nationalism, wealth, cultural trends (those hipster, amIright?), political orientation, or really anything at all. As soon as you carry negative associations with a group or label, you've engaged in bigotry whenever you deal with that someone of that group. Me?
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Just like strapping an Oculus Rift, to the back of a turkey.