BEST FIGHTER FOR CANADA

Next Generation Bomber concept art. Sorry I missed posting last week. Looks like a whopping 47% of you believe that the Su-35 should be the designated "bad guy" when considering future threats.  Fair enough.  It's fast, agile, and nasty. For this week, I wanted to slightly revisit the question " Is the dogfight dead ".  While the majority of you disagree with that statement, it would seem that those pushing for the F-35 have hitched their horse to the BVR combat wagon. Undoubtedly, BVR combat has become the norm, rather than the exception.  Better sensors and better missiles have lead to the point where if a pilot finds themselves in a fur-ball, than something has probably gone wrong.  Better to take out the enemy unseen, from a distance, without the need to burn excess fuel.  This is the case for the F-35. If there is validity to this argument; that fighter aircraft no longer need to maneuver, then why not push the concept further? Fighte...

X-47B Pegasus Captain Buster felt his stomach tie in knots when he was told the news.  How was this possible?  After countless years as one of the RCAF's most talented pilots, he was now wondering what he would end up doing until retirement. "Sorry Captain...  But I'm afraid you are now obsolete.  These new drones are cheaper, stealthier, fly longer, and can maneuver way harder than any manned fighter.  They really are the future don't you see?" Captain Buster was not convinced.  "How is some bucket of bolts going to make up for years of experience?" "That's the beauty of it, don't you see?  We just upgrade the software every couple of years and these things will be better than you could ever be!  Don't feel so bad.  It's much safer to stay on the ground anyway." "I don't know how to do anything except fly!  What am I supposed to do?" "Maybe we can switch you over to flying a transport or somethi...

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...

United States Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh recently made a speech reinforcing the USAF's commitment to three very big and expensive projects.  In question are the KC-46 aerial tanker, the F-35 multirole fighter and the Next-Generation Bomber (B-3?). While it would seem obvious that the USAF's top man would voice support for future projects, the cold, hard reality of the United States' sequestration means that any or all three of these projects could be ripe for the picking. Boeing KC-46A, the USAF's "top priority". The KC-46 is desperately needed to replace the USAF's aging tanker fleet...  Supposedly.  The KC-46 is said to be the USAF's  "top priority"  possibly even beating out the F-35A.  It would seem rather odd, however, that the USAF is so keen on getting new tankers, while at the same time, contemplating retiring their existing KC-10 tanker fleet early.   Development of the KC-46 has not been smooth, with budge...