124 replies to this topic

[Mole]

razenWing, on 14 February 2017 - 02:46 PM, said:

A lot of people are raising good points... based on CURRENT limitations.

Can you drop a tank in any interstellar environment (high, low gravity, little to no atmosphere, etc etc) and still expect it to function with no roads? How many sand planets are humanity even going to colonize? So weight distribution problem is complete none-factor.

Also, comparing actual weapon range vs realistic weapon is just wrong. IF mechs are in real life, we have to assume their weapons would not be the comical 1 km range (which mind you, is designed FOR VIDEO GAMES), but like 50km cluster missiles and punch a hole through the mountain auto cannons.

Third, we are forgetting the protection values that is within the lore itself. Mechs are machines that pretty much camouflage from all known methods of electronic detection. They are like stealth tank with 1000 additional years of refinement. So no, when thinking of make believes, you can't just look at the tank of today and imagine that's what it's going to be like in 1000 years.

Also, while the leg weakness is true, but that holds true for all weapon platforms. You can easily rip treads off of tanks with IEDs. You can easily aim for the propeller blades of an Apache. So that's a common denominator, not a specific weakness. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out to take the mobile system of a heavy weapon platform. Cause I can argue it would be just as easily to kill a tread (which mind you, have more than 4 joints, but each individual "link" is a joint in itself, so you are looking at HUNDREDS of joints, not just 1 tread) than a leg.

So the question comes down to, exploring an unknown alien world with no roads and flat surfaces, which would be better? Legs or treads? I think the answer is fairly obvious in that regard.

(And with the glass cockpit, again, that's a common denominator. How many video games have you played showing a sniper killing a military helicopter through the window? So why are mechs singled out? And wouldn't future human figured out ways to reinforce that cockpit than just glass? And do you have no driver space inside a tank? I mean, an unmanned UAV/tank/mech is pretty much the only way to guarantee pilot/driver safety. So again, the problem is having a human inside, not the location of a human)

This is all true but there still will never be any reason to make them several stories tall. Walkers will have a place, I have said that. But nothing on the scale of battletech.

[SmokedJag]

razenWing, on 14 February 2017 - 02:46 PM, said:

A lot of people are raising good points... based on CURRENT limitations.

Well, to addres it from a physics perspective...

Issues with Large 'Mechs

-- Joints need to be unobstructed to work, meaning they are very difficult to armor. Even if you put a housing over them, it can't be as thick as tank glacis armor. A joint kill of a walker, especially a heavy mass one, will mobility kill it at least as surely as it mobility kills a human. Tanks can be mobility killed as well but the tracks are comparatively difficult to hit and there are only two of them.

-- Center of gravity. Humans have a lot of weight in their legsand butt, such that our center of gravity is around our sacral vertebrae. Attempts at making freestanding walkers inevitably wind up having to load weight into the legs in a broadly pyramid fashion. If your center of gravity is too high you will just fall over; the neural helmet doesn't help here because humans again have a much LOWER center of gravity than you might think. And people with massively overdeveloped upper bodies (don't skip leg day!) or obese guts do have problems with balance and can't move very well. Most BattleMech designs are grossly top-heavy with no consideration of balance.

-- Square-cube law. BattleMech masses are arbitrary and not connected to the art drawings. Mass bloats rapidly with increased physical dimensions, even if you aren't loading new heavy equipment and support structures, which heavy and assault 'Mechs do. The weaponry anyway; internal structure is abstracted as a ratio with hitpoints without concern for stuff like putting 35+ tons of weapons above the waist or 15 ton weapons in lower, non-offset arms. Bigger 'Mechs will also have thinner armor because their surface area is much, much larger. I'm not sure how much more protected surface area a Thor has than a Locust but "order of magnitude" comes to mind. Four times as much armor isn't going to come close to making the same thickness skin, meaning that the heavy 'Mech is at least as easy to kill as the light 'Mech.

The upshot of all of this is that a Heavy or Assault 'Mech would have to be far heavier than its BT weight classes (again with that nasty offsetting leg weight as well) which will in turn impact its ground pressure and its energy demands to move.

-- Physical room i.e. the space in our universe that the dimensions of the matter of shells/missiles physically occupy. Virtually none of the BattleTech designs have enough room in their chassis to store realistic quantities of munitions and none of them hard follow rules regarding getting the ammo automatically from the magazine to the weapon. BattleTech also cheats here by having surface magazines (missiles) that are not armored and cannot be armored not explode when hit, including when hit by energy weapons that would handily detonate solid rocket fuel.

-- Perpendicular instead of parallel/lateral armor faces. There's a reason armor slope was refined for AFVs and something that looks like a humanoid is stuck with large vertical surfaces that cannot take advantage of it.

Edited by SmokedJag, 14 February 2017 - 04:02 PM.

[Kuaron]

Mechs make perfectly sense in a futuristic world where the wheel has never been invented!

[oldradagast]

Mechs make some sense in a distance future in one environment: combat entertainment. Sure, they wouldn't be anywhere nearly as useful as a super-future tank in real combat 99% of the time... but nobody in the arena wants to watch 2 super-future tanks just sit there, peeking from cover, shooting zillion-mile death rays at each other. Hence, giant armored humanoid mechs to the rescue! They are far more exciting to watch, and many of their weaknesses make the battle more dramatic. Interestingly, the fact they are easier to cripple would actually work well in this type of environment in that it's easier to get a win without having to basically blast the enemy apart. Heck, you could even explain away the absurdly short weapon range by having to keep the combat close and interesting for the spectators.

Maybe none of the battles in Battletech are real. Maybe we're all just piloting these big target mechs with their silly-range weapons for the joy of the crowd while somewhere, out there, armies full of boring tanks are fighting the real wars. Or, perhaps, real war proved TOO deadly and TOO efficient, so the "arena war" in which we all fight in intentionally vulnerable, impractical, and short-range mechs was created to replace it. Far fewer casualties and much more fun to watch.

Edited by oldradagast, 14 February 2017 - 04:31 PM.

[Metus regem]

Vanguard319, on 14 February 2017 - 03:22 PM, said:

It's still easier to kill tanks that are out in the open than one that is in some kind of cover.

Well aware of that too, I used to fly AH-64D's....

[WolvesX]

I see a role for walkers and even humanoid designs in aspects of different real world applications like warfare.

14 meter tall, 100 ton mechs I don't see comming, but take a look @ the locust:

The design is still not utilitarian enough and 20 tons might be too much, but things like this I could imagine in terrain like in parts of Afghanistan.

A weapon system like this one would have to go with minimal armor and much more agility than in MWO. The AC2s here would be irl 1 weapon system with a turret on top. Jump jets would be a must and artificial muscel fiber also.

The combat distance would be nothing like you see in MWO and missile weapons would play a much larager and deadly role.

But then there are the costs of such a system, I would bet that a system like that would almost, even if it would work, cost efficent.

Edited by WolvesX, 14 February 2017 - 05:48 PM.

[Vanguard319]

WolvesX, on 14 February 2017 - 05:33 PM, said:

I see a role for walkers and even humanoid designs in aspects of different real world applications like warfare.

14 meter tall, 100 ton mechs I don't see comming, but take a look @ the locust:

The design is still not utilitarian enough and 20 tons might be too much, but things like this I could imagine in terrain like in parts of Afghanistan.

This I could see working as part of an armored calvary, like you say, it's small enough to that it can make good use of terrain as cover, I also had a thought that something like a Protomech could be possible.

[Kael Posavatz]

Don't forget having the radar cross-section of a largish building!

But at least we'd have functional energy weapons! None of this crap-range or melting-armor though. By the time you reach energy throughput to make a practical weapon the range will be measured in kilometers, and energy-transfer will cause the target to explode (even if it's just pieces of armor) rather than melt.

[Ruar]

Locust is a scout. A tank can't travel that fast on terrain. Hovercraft can't really travel that fast on terrain. The reason it seems odd is the Locust in MWO is weaponized instead of the primary role of scout due to map layout being static instead of an ever shifting battlefield.

Mech design is not so clear cut. Arm mounted weapons are generally bad in the game but in a real setting the ability to just poke an arm around a corner with enough sensors to see the enemy to aim provides a tactical advantage. Having chest mounted weapons gives a steady platform for firing. Something we don't consider is how strong the mounting brackets have to be to handle recoil. Modern tank main guns are 120mm which is moderately smaller than the largest AC in the game at 203mm. So a modern tank is similar to an AC10 which is seen on the Patton tanks in lore.

In general mech design ignores things like ballistics because of the small length of barrels. There is a need for gasses from tank rounds to expand in order to get the rounds enough velocity. A mech with a long barrel would provide an excellent handle in close in fighting. It would also severely restrict movement unless mounted in odd ways like we see on the Marauder's AC5.

Mech design also ignores most tenants of having armor. Sloped angles to deflect incoming fire. Highly polished surfaces to resist laser heating. Scaled armor plate designs permitting movement while providing superior resistance to kinetic strikes. Joints being extreme weak spots for direct damage or having armor melt into them. Having larger than necessary cockpits with vulnerable glass.

The idea of a humanoid mech designed to carry weapons and inflict damage can work, but not the way they are made in Battletech. Missiles, rockets, and shaped charges would be the weapon of choice with lasers and ballistic weapons used to soften up until closing enough range to use rockets. Drivers enclosed in the strongest armor relying on sensors and cameras to drive with. Weapons designed and positioned to be used from covered positions or with as little interference as possible. There would also have to be massive infantry and armor support as well to ensure mechs don't get flanked. Infantry would also be able to avoid sensors while dealing substantial damage with explosives.

All in all the idea of a mech can work, but it's a combined arms concept with a totally different design method.

[Snowbluff]

WolvesX, on 14 February 2017 - 05:33 PM, said:

I see a role for walkers and even humanoid designs in aspects of different real world applications like warfare.

14 meter tall, 100 ton mechs I don't see comming, but take a look @ the locust:efficent.

I agree entirely. Locust with an AMS to stop the small antitank missiles is more sensible than using 100 ton mechs like modern armor.

People don't think forward very well. It wasn't until the F22 that stealth fighters made any sense. Tactics for mechs would have to be developed as they are.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

the Mechs in MWO all very to big ...in Lore most tall up to 10m ...biggest Atlas with 14m later 16m ..with the Time ,the BT Mechs taller and taller ,and the Weapons ranges designed for the size of a Table ...never in Mind for a Video game.
6-10 m Mechs good for rescue or a amored Transport and Support for this for Missions like Somalia ..Helicopters very easy to destroy ..seeing Black Hawk Down...good armed ,more Amor as a Helicopter or Humvee ...problematic Hitzones have all Vehicles ...Tracks , Wheels ...a Mech have a higher Viewpoint for small urban Areas, and can better seeing Troops top of Buildings with ATW..and in real Mechs better with 4 and more Legs

[razenWing]

SmokedJag, on 14 February 2017 - 03:58 PM, said:

Well, to addres it from a physics perspective...

Issues with Large 'Mechs

-- Joints need to be unobstructed to work, meaning they are very difficult to armor. Even if you put a housing over them, it can't be as thick as tank glacis armor. A joint kill of a walker, especially a heavy mass one, will mobility kill it at least as surely as it mobility kills a human. Tanks can be mobility killed as well but the tracks are comparatively difficult to hit and there are only two of them.

-- Center of gravity. Humans have a lot of weight in their legsand butt, such that our center of gravity is around our sacral vertebrae. Attempts at making freestanding walkers inevitably wind up having to load weight into the legs in a broadly pyramid fashion. If your center of gravity is too high you will just fall over; the neural helmet doesn't help here because humans again have a much LOWER center of gravity than you might think. And people with massively overdeveloped upper bodies (don't skip leg day!) or obese guts do have problems with balance and can't move very well. Most BattleMech designs are grossly top-heavy with no consideration of balance.

-- Square-cube law. BattleMech masses are arbitrary and not connected to the art drawings. Mass bloats rapidly with increased physical dimensions, even if you aren't loading new heavy equipment and support structures, which heavy and assault 'Mechs do. The weaponry anyway; internal structure is abstracted as a ratio with hitpoints without concern for stuff like putting 35+ tons of weapons above the waist or 15 ton weapons in lower, non-offset arms. Bigger 'Mechs will also have thinner armor because their surface area is much, much larger. I'm not sure how much more protected surface area a Thor has than a Locust but "order of magnitude" comes to mind. Four times as much armor isn't going to come close to making the same thickness skin, meaning that the heavy 'Mech is at least as easy to kill as the light 'Mech.

The upshot of all of this is that a Heavy or Assault 'Mech would have to be far heavier than its BT weight classes (again with that nasty offsetting leg weight as well) which will in turn impact its ground pressure and its energy demands to move.

-- Physical room i.e. the space in our universe that the dimensions of the matter of shells/missiles physically occupy. Virtually none of the BattleTech designs have enough room in their chassis to store realistic quantities of munitions and none of them hard follow rules regarding getting the ammo automatically from the magazine to the weapon. BattleTech also cheats here by having surface magazines (missiles) that are not armored and cannot be armored not explode when hit, including when hit by energy weapons that would handily detonate solid rocket fuel.

-- Perpendicular instead of parallel/lateral armor faces. There's a reason armor slope was refined for AFVs and something that looks like a humanoid is stuck with large vertical surfaces that cannot take advantage of it.

Cube-Square law is a frequently quoted rule as to why mechs are not feasible. EXCEPT, the official data has Atlas the same volume as a modern Abhram tank, except right side up. If you look at battlemechs in the lore, not just in the Mechwarrior series video games where they are clearly exaggerated in terms of size, but Battletech lore where they were mere a piece of the battlefield, then there's not an issue with size.

And I don't see how treads are "harder" to kill. US Armies are losing Abhrams all the time due to simple IEDs during the Invasion of Iraq. The fact is, if something is going to precision kill something (e.g. mech joints), then that same precision can be applied to kill other things (e.g. tank treads) And as I said, there's a lot more "joints" on a tread than 2 legs.

Center of Gravity - that's more of a technical issues. We are assuming that this is worked out through some futuristic gyros 1000 years more advanced than what we have.

Regarding ballistic storage, again, this is not a battlemech issue, but a weapon platform issue. Just because it's a tank doesn't mean it doesn't carry high explosives at some point. Any weapon system being hit in the storage department will cause failure fairly quickly, regardless of the platform. (A few notable terrorist attack on US Navy Destroyers during the early 90s come to mind)

As for having clean surfaces, TO BE FAIR, outside of Atlases, most IS assault mechs do have angular armors. Though, we are technically not arguing whether mechs in 1000 years will appear exactly like how battletech envision them. Cause, I think you are absolutely right in that most... won't. But they are what they because frankly... they look cool for video games. So, I don't think that's really an issue either. Mechs in realistic future will have the angular fierce armors like they should.

Edited by razenWing, 14 February 2017 - 09:22 PM.

[Alek Ituin]

SmokedJag, on 14 February 2017 - 03:58 PM, said:

Well, to addres it from a physics perspective...

Issues with Large 'Mechs

-- Joints need to be unobstructed to work, meaning they are very difficult to armor. Even if you put a housing over them, it can't be as thick as tank glacis armor. A joint kill of a walker, especially a heavy mass one, will mobility kill it at least as surely as it mobility kills a human. Tanks can be mobility killed as well but the tracks are comparatively difficult to hit and there are only two of them.

-- Center of gravity. Humans have a lot of weight in their legsand butt, such that our center of gravity is around our sacral vertebrae. Attempts at making freestanding walkers inevitably wind up having to load weight into the legs in a broadly pyramid fashion. If your center of gravity is too high you will just fall over; the neural helmet doesn't help here because humans again have a much LOWER center of gravity than you might think. And people with massively overdeveloped upper bodies (don't skip leg day!) or obese guts do have problems with balance and can't move very well. Most BattleMech designs are grossly top-heavy with no consideration of balance.

-- Square-cube law. BattleMech masses are arbitrary and not connected to the art drawings. Mass bloats rapidly with increased physical dimensions, even if you aren't loading new heavy equipment and support structures, which heavy and assault 'Mechs do. The weaponry anyway; internal structure is abstracted as a ratio with hitpoints without concern for stuff like putting 35+ tons of weapons above the waist or 15 ton weapons in lower, non-offset arms. Bigger 'Mechs will also have thinner armor because their surface area is much, much larger. I'm not sure how much more protected surface area a Thor has than a Locust but "order of magnitude" comes to mind. Four times as much armor isn't going to come close to making the same thickness skin, meaning that the heavy 'Mech is at least as easy to kill as the light 'Mech.

The upshot of all of this is that a Heavy or Assault 'Mech would have to be far heavier than its BT weight classes (again with that nasty offsetting leg weight as well) which will in turn impact its ground pressure and its energy demands to move.

-- Physical room i.e. the space in our universe that the dimensions of the matter of shells/missiles physically occupy. Virtually none of the BattleTech designs have enough room in their chassis to store realistic quantities of munitions and none of them hard follow rules regarding getting the ammo automatically from the magazine to the weapon. BattleTech also cheats here by having surface magazines (missiles) that are not armored and cannot be armored not explode when hit, including when hit by energy weapons that would handily detonate solid rocket fuel.

-- Perpendicular instead of parallel/lateral armor faces. There's a reason armor slope was refined for AFVs and something that looks like a humanoid is stuck with large vertical surfaces that cannot take advantage of it.

1 - Tracks are ridiculously easy to hit, even from the front of the tank. All you have to do is cause even the slightest amount of damage to the track linkages or drive sprockets to completely f**k a track. Hell, it doesn't even take enemy fire to throw a track. Slip in to a ditch? Thrown track. Turned to hard? Thrown track. Tried to turn while going fast? Probably threw your track and flipped. Simply put, something as basic as a HMG can destroy a tank track, let alone something like an autocannon or grenade.

2 - Fair point. Rule of Cool trumped actual design considerations when BT art was drawn. Doesn't mean a walker can't be built, but it does mean it'd need a design closer to that of the WH40k Warhound Titan; where the torso is basically a squat box with the weapons hanging around waist level.

3 - Armor is irrelevant on a modern battlefield. Any actual protection an armored vehicle has anymore comes from Active Protection Systems (APS) or layered multi-purpose ERA, such as Malachit or Relikt. Tandem/Triple charge HEAT munitions have rendered even the vaunted composite armors of western MBT's effectively useless... Though the rise in practically mass-manufacturable nanoalloys and nanoceramics has given armor technology a shot in the arse, as it were. Still not enough to overcome the massive disparity between weapons tech and "hard" armors. Until the next armor breakthrough comes around, armored vehicles are basically going to revert to a "post-HEAT" state, where armor was useless against anything but small arms and autocannons, and speed/agility/maneuverability were king.

Also, as for AP impacts, even the newest MBT's are only designed to take frontal armor hits from APFSDS and the like. The sides and rear have to be protected by single layer ERA skirts, since doubling up side/rear ERA isn't currently possible without making the vehicle obscenely wide.

4 - Another fair point, the fitting rules would be far more interesting if you had designated loading bin crit slots (and thus limited total ammo space) to feed weapons... Though if we did that, the weapon systems themselves would need radical changes. Everything except lasers would get lighter by several tons, Missiles would be amazing, Ballistics would be insanely powerful for their weight, and Energy weapons would really only be worthwhile by virtue of not needing ammo... Though the PPC and its variants would be quite dangerous exceptions to that rule. I guess Plasma Rifles wouldn't be too bad either, insane mech-vaporizing firepower at the cost of practically zero range... Although IIRC there's a way to cause plasma clouds to create their own magnetic field, so with sufficient acceleration even a few microseconds of magnetic stabilization could give you a few dozen meters extra range.

5 - Non-humanoid master race. Also, refer to #3.

Snowbluff, on 14 February 2017 - 08:07 PM, said:

I agree entirely. Locust with an AMS to stop the small antitank missiles is more sensible than using 100 ton mechs like modern armor.

People don't think forward very well. It wasn't until the F22 that stealth fighters made any sense. Tactics for mechs would have to be developed as they are.

Do you even history? The idea, or rather dream, of stealth aircraft has existed since the first early-warning radar system was built. As it happens, it was K r a u t Space Magic that almost made it a reality in late 45', though more by accident than anything else.

EDIT: Seriously, the censor is just ridiculous.

Edited by Alek Ituin, 14 February 2017 - 10:26 PM.

[Snowbluff]

Alek Ituin, on 14 February 2017 - 10:23 PM, said:

Do you even history? The idea, or rather dream, of stealth aircraft has existed since the first early-warning radar system was built. As it happens, it was K r a u t Space Magic that almost made it a reality in late 45', though more by accident than anything else.

EDIT: Seriously, the censor is just ridiculous.

Tactics for stealth aircraft are still in the works. Stealth has been a technology for a while, but a true blue stealth fighter? No, nothing even close to the capabilities of the F22 and the vastly more situationally aware F35 have existed until now. Red flag pilots from 17-1 have spoken about how tactics have to be developed as they learn to utilize these aircraft at their full potential.

Also, they censor K raut? T.T

[Hit the Deck]

WolvesX, on 14 February 2017 - 05:33 PM, said:

I see a role for walkers and even humanoid designs in aspects of different real world applications like warfare.

14 meter tall, 100 ton mechs I don't see comming, but take a look @ the locust:

...

The design is still not utilitarian enough and 20 tons might be too much, but things like this I could imagine in terrain like in parts of Afghanistan.

moo.

[Alek Ituin]

Snowbluff, on 14 February 2017 - 10:43 PM, said:

Tactics for stealth aircraft are still in the works. Stealth has been a technology for a while, but a true blue stealth fighter? No, nothing even close to the capabilities of the F22 and the vastly more situationally aware F35 have existed until now. Red flag pilots from 17-1 have spoken about how tactics have to be developed as they learn to utilize these aircraft at their full potential.

Also, they censor K raut? T.T

I kek at your F-22/F-35 fanboyism. When your sooper-dooper stealth interceptor gets routinely trashed by a fighter bomber with an ECM pod, something is wrong.

Even the Me-262 scored consistent victories against Allied aircraft while the pilots were re-writing the rules of aerial warfare to account for an entirely new type of aircraft. You can only blame so much failure on new tech and a lack of established tactics. At a certain point you have to concede that the F-22 and F-35 are both lowest-bidder garbage forced in to being via backroom politics.

Case in point: The YF-22 vs YF-23 prototype testing. The YF-23 was a clearly superior aircraft in damn near ALL aspects, not to mention being clearly superior for its intended role and usage, and still lost to the then YF-22 because somebody at Lockheed knew how to really slob a politician's knob.

[rollermint]

Roughneck45, on 14 February 2017 - 11:11 AM, said:

If you try to apply real world physics and concepts to BT and mecha you're gonna have a bad time.

Mechs never make sense without some very specific sci fi world building to support them.

My personal favorite is that they travel the stars but can't build a missile that fires more than 1000m.

Disregard BT TT rules (thats more for game balance) and apply the core concepts, Battlemechs are sound designs (apart from the fact they are TOO HUGE), especially the armoured humanoid pilotable robots part. If they were actually the size of commandos/locusts, they can easily take over tanks and basically all any other from of combat vehicle due to their speed, agility, versatility etc. I mean which military wouldnt want an armoured vehicle that can punch, kick, jump, duck and prone, use natural covers (or even create ones using the arms) and yet have double or triple the firepower of a standard battle tank or any other armoured vehicles?

Again TT aside, the only thing that doesnt make sense in BT is that anything beyond Light class are too big, a mech must not exceed 5m to be useful in current combat conditions as we know it. In that regard, mechas like the ones in Heavy Gear or even Hawken makes much more sense. Or the Dreadnought in Warhammer 40k.

Edited by rollermint, 14 February 2017 - 10:56 PM.

[Snowbluff]

Hit the Deck, on 14 February 2017 - 10:49 PM, said:

moo.

Dman, I was going to do a long post about how those are my favorite depiction of mechs in modern combat, but you beat me to it.

They're agile, fast, and deadly, but not without their weakness and are shown to have weight (one breaks a floor ). Being unmanned saves weight, and makes a loss of one suck, but not the loss of a soldier.

[Snowbluff]

Alek Ituin, on 14 February 2017 - 10:55 PM, said:

I kek at your F-22/F-35 fanboyism. When your sooper-dooper stealth interceptor gets routinely trashed by a fighter bomber with an ECM pod, something is wrong.

Even the Me-262 scored consistent victories against Allied aircraft while the pilots were re-writing the rules of aerial warfare to account for an entirely new type of aircraft. You can only blame so much failure on new tech and a lack of established tactics. At a certain point you have to concede that the F-22 and F-35 are both lowest-bidder garbage forced in to being via backroom politics.

Case in point: The YF-22 vs YF-23 prototype testing. The YF-23 was a clearly superior aircraft in damn near ALL aspects, not to mention being clearly superior for its intended role and usage, and still lost to the then YF-22 because somebody at Lockheed knew how to really slob a politician's knob.

15:1 is a wicked kill/loss ratio. Maybe you should look into some real facts? I mean, you're proving my point right now. You don't understand the advantages and sophistication of these systems because you are locked into an older mindset. I know concepts like spike management, radar ranges, and sensor fusion are hard to wrap your head around without first hand experience, but at least look into it.


The F22 won because it appealed to the F15 mafia, according to the lockheed test pilot. Both were great planes, but the F22 focused more on maneuverability. The level of technology involved makes it moot anyway. American engines and avionics are stupidly good. The ATF was going to be unrivaled for... well might as well be forever at this point, barring a new ATF-style project.

[Alek Ituin]

Snowbluff, on 14 February 2017 - 11:01 PM, said:

15:1 is a wicked kill/loss ratio. Maybe you should look into some real facts? I mean, you're proving my point right now. You don't understand the advantages and sophistication of these systems because you are locked into an older mindset. I know concepts like spike management, radar ranges, and sensor fusion are hard to wrap your head around without first hand experience, but at least look into it.


The F22 won because it appealed to the F15 mafia, according to the lockheed test pilot. Both were great planes, but the F22 focused more on maneuverability. The level of technology involved makes it moot anyway. American engines and avionics are stupidly good. The ATF was going to be unrivaled for... well might as well be forever at this point, barring a new ATF-style project.

15:1 where and since when? Every single time I've read about F-22's going in to red flags, they get thrashed by EFT's with ECM pods.

Also, the F-35 is a clusterf**k, struggling to maintain performance with aircraft decades older than it, while being 10x more expensive and capable of doing... nothing that it was supposed to do. Sure, an F-22/F-35 could sneak up on a MiG-29K or Su-37... But then its 6 buddies will hunt your arse down. An F-22 MIGHT be able to take another 1 or 2 down and/or MAYBE escape, but that F-35? It's so bad as an aircraft I'd be surprised if it could even turn around before it got shredded.

Shove the F-35's avionics in to a YF-23 or X-29/Su-47 airframe and you'd have an argument for its superiority. But from the published specs, they're either REALLY good at underselling the F-35, or it is REALLY f**king bad as an aircraft. Lockheed are so hit-or-miss it could honestly be either one.

Edited by Alek Ituin, 14 February 2017 - 11:25 PM.