Not a boffin,
I've got nothing personal against Mr Sweetman, and have a number of his books. But in the same way that I cringe every time John Nichols is wheeled out as an 'aviation expert', I'm afraid my natural inclination is to take Mr Sweetman's utterings with a large sack of salt. He does not work anywhere near the coal face where hard facts and findings are known about.
But my question still stands - what is this hypothetical 'something' that's going to make you want to bolter? If you have a hydraulic or brake issue then you'll jettison whatever you need to and get to VL weight. In 10 years of flying Harriers I don't recall ever hearing of someone 'boltering' an RVL, and that's with a 50kt+ groundspeed touchdown (roughly twice the energy of a 35kt touchdown). About the only thing that I can think of would be an instantaneous catastrophic failure of both brakes at the moment of touchdown. And the risk of that is probably down well below the 10E-6 threshold that we lose sleep over.
I'm not sure that I see the difference between what's a fix and what's a promising experimental technique. If SRVL can be shown to work safely and without any other operational limitations (such as the ATC one you mention - don't know anything about that I'm afraid) then it can't be a bad thing. But it is only one string of the bow. We might yet be able to get P&W to give us more thrust from the F135, the F136 is very promising about being able to generate a lot more thrust, more weight might be trimmed from the aircraft etc. There are a lot of what-ifs and mights, but that's what happens when you're in the very early stages of flight testing a 5th generation aircraft.
It's rather frustrating though when you are relatively close to the programme to see ill-informed comment from the likes of Sweetman forecasting nothing but doom and gloom, based on nothing more than a journo's mood that day, or who bought him lunch - even more so when other people then start quoting it as gospel.
glad rag,
Don't know what you're smoking old chum, but what other military aircraft in history has been flown by the people that built it? It's quite the norm for pilots to fly aircraft and engineers to build them. And I really don't follow your logical leap from a discussion about a technique to land a heavy aircraft on a carrier to a question of operational effectiveness for an AESA-equipped, extremely stealthy weapon system. Can you fill in the gap a bit for me?
I note though that you've conducted an in-depth analysis of 21st century surface-air and air-air threats and compared the detectability of a wide selection of modern air platforms to the relevant emitter frequencies and concluded that the best way for us to provide air support to our sailors and marines is to bin F-35. What are you proposing instead? Nothing? Prayers? Or smoking drugs for everyone?
Regards,
Single Seat, Single Engine, The Only Way To Fly
Last edited by SSSETOWTF; 8th Aug 2008 at 21:29.