"Dweezil Dwarftosser" wrote in message
...
Tarver Engineering wrote:

"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 17:36:33 +0100, ess (phil
hunt) wrote:


An air superiority system needs high thrust/weight ratio, high
manueverability, reasonable range, short response time etc. It also
needs a sensor suite that can find, sort and allocate weapons to the
enemy. Ideally it should have longer reach than the enemy platform and
possess sufficient stealth to allow first-look/first-shot.

The sensor suite for US operations is increasingly space based with
Global
capability.

Only as long as the birdies above don't sustain interference
or attack. What then? You still need the traditional means
of reliably delivering the weapons to the target. Hotshot
fighter jocks could probably still succeed with a grease pencil
mark on the sight glass, and memorizing a set of direct bomb
tables... but must we resort to WW I tactics every time Ivan,
Mustafa, or Won Hung Lo geek out a way to scramble the RF?

If they start jamming communications it won't matter if the information is
space based, or comming from an AWACS. In order to make any kind of
comparison you would ahve to compare to what is done today.

A reliable airborn weapons platform with data link capability
is what is needed.

Sure. As long as you never transmit the good stuff in the clear
until you REALLY need it in a war. Wipe out the other guy within
the first ten days or so, and you're home free; after that, he'll
be turning your displays into masses of grass...

I don't believe there is much support in the system for the lone wolf
fighter pilot scenerio. There may be soem of that inside the F-22
community, but that space is not the rocking chair career booster it onece
was.

The USAF airplane procurement cycle is too slow and bogged down
with politics to produce tech advantages in individual manned
airborn equipments.

Not to mention the scads of college boys writing code
to do things they don't understand - and feel (erroneously)
that the GIs - from E-1s to generals - can never understand.
Libraries, libraries, libraries; if it doesn't work as spec'd
with existing, just add others to bog it down some more.

Yes, that kind of thing even comes to the fore in the commercial World.
Tremble spent a fortune trying to be in the aviation avionics business, only
to find that their softhead small GA pilots could not follow a
specification.

God help everyone if a condition exists which they haven't
planned to accomodate. (An absolute certainty!)
If you spend enough money, you'll either fix it or hide the
errors so well that the things will be sitting in DM before
anyone figures it out.

The Mars rover just went through what you describe, but they were
fortunately able to hack it back to life.

The expendature of $60 billion for space based sensor
systems as part of the missile defense (ABM) is the required
direction for Pentagon systems and the fighter mafia will only
miss the boat again in ignoring the facts. The F-22 being a
prime example of USAF not adjusting to USAF requirements in
acquisition. Military tech no longer exists in a
vacuum.

Once upon a time, John, there was a method where Airman Dukes
(who just tripped over the answer to a problem) could tell the
designers/programmers WHAT they did wrong, WHY it doesn't work,
and HOW he fixed it.

You might have thought so, but today engineers can barely speak to techs.
During my 6 months at BCAG while I was a systems engineer in cabin systems
we had an AT&T flightphone to integrate to a Collins SATCOM. The first
system had already been delivered to another Airline with a Honeywell Satcom
and it should have been a piece of cake for me to just run through the
integration testing and have the DER stamp off.

The first meeting my lead and I had with the chief tech at plant one he
brought up the fact that he had palced a chassis ground wire on the STB
(seat telephone box) to eliminate a shock hazard, as that was his liability
requirement for the testing to go forward. Olin even put a big warning
sticker on the box, but my lead could not understand what he was saying.
Further down the production like I added a chassis ground wire to the
airplane, which greatly upset my two DERs. Now the already released
airplane would have to be changed post release. The DERs expalined to me
that the integration testing was done without the ground and I pointed out
to them that the technician had told them twice right in front of me that
what they said was not true.

Later I discovered my lead was off to AT&T for his new job. Unfortunately
for him, all of AT&T's telephones were scrapped due to their "unsafe
install". I was out due to AT&T's anger, but AT&T was gone from every
airplane. For you see, a short look into the history of AT&T's STB and ZTB
boxes would have shown that the designs were stolen from me in the first
place by DPI Labs, then stolen from them by Global Wolfsburg and then stolen
from them by Olin. Once I had identified the "shock hazard" there was no
higher authority to argue the point with me.

(Been there, done that.) No longer.
That avenue is closed; the geeks don't dare admit error; and to
fix the problem would be a very costly admission indeed.

Sometimes there is a lot of money tied up in some geek's design and changing
it might have system global implications, or even scrap $millions in
equipments.

Military tech used to be walled off from the just curious by
classification alone; today, that SOB is hermetically sealed
deep underground, surrounded by tripwires, moats, mines, and
dead ends - all to designed to protect the core from infiltration
by those who know enough to make a difference - and simplify
the process. It's the vacuum of space...

So true, but in the case of the F-22 even other ivory tower engineers are
ignored.