BEST FIGHTER FOR CANADA

Don't worry.  This is a one-parter. It comes around on a seemingly regular basis. Either here, in the Facebook group, or some other media; someone will spout off that golden nugget that attempts to put a nail through everything I and others like me have tried to do over the last few years.  That nugget reads like the following: Those close to the F-35 program sing its praises.  Its critics are those who have never flown on it or worked on it.   It raises an interesting point. Why trust a random blogger over test pilot who flies the aircraft?  Why trust a scathing aviation reporter when official press releases are saying everything is tickety-boo?  What does it matter to us, anyway?  It isn't as if we will ever fly this airplane. While it is true that us aviation enthusiasts, bloggers, critics, and other layman are not as "connected" with the program as the pilots, executives, and politicians anchoring their careers to the JSF, there i...

"PEW PEW PEW!" Captain Buster Junior cleared his throat and spoke loudly and clearly into his helmet microphone. "Computer...  Initiate air combat protocol.  Arm all missiles, activate all electronic warfare modules, and charge up the directed energy weapon." His order was confirmed by the CF/A-55E's onboard artificial intelligence.  "Affirmative.  Sensors confirm two hostile bogeys coming in from the east.  Radar jamming initiated.  Missiles armed.  Fusion cells charged to ninety-eight percent." "Great."  Captain Buster Junior answered.  "Transmit the usual multi-language message stating that they have violated Canadian airspace and..." "CAPTAIN!  Missile launch detected!" The pilot reflexively banked his aircraft into a defensive maneuver and barked back at his aircraft.  "CRAP!  Okay, target that missile with the DEW turret and prepare to fire CUDA missiles!"   "Acknowledged.  Directed Ene...

Sorcery?  Black arts?  Not quite. One can not discuss fighter aircraft these days without mentioning its "stealthiness".  Stealth has become such an overwhelming issue that it has come to define the "Fifth Generation" of fighter jets.  Many even claim that a stealthy aircraft need not worry about other more traditional performance parameters like speed and maneuverability.  "You can't shoot what you can't see!" they say.  It is implied that stealth aircraft fly around completely unseen, like some sort of ninja in the sky. So how does stealth work? I am not going to pretend that this is a definitive thesis on the subject.  Modern stealth design is complicated stuff.  It is far from wizardry however.   Radar Radar is, in simplest terms, a form of electromagnet energy.  It is emitted from one source, radiates outward, then bounces off various objects in the atmosphere.  It is invisible to the naked eye, ther...

"Fighters make movies, bombers make history." Or so the saying goes. It's hard to imagine aerial warfare without bombers.  They have certainly "made history".  What would WWII have been like without squadrons of B-17s flying over Nazi Germany?  How long would the war have gone on if the B-29 "Enola Gay" hadn't dropped the world's first atomic bomb over Hiroshima?  Would the Cold War have played out differently if B-52s and Tu-95s didn't stand at constant readiness armed with nuclear "deterrence"? One has to wonder if the bomber's ability to "make history" is still relevant, however.  The days of carpet bombing have (thankfully) been mostly put behind us thanks to startling images from the Vietnam war .   The era of televised warfare put the horrors of battle front and center on the living room TV set.   B-52s flying over Hanoi  weren't dropping tons of explosives on military targets and "evil...