Fighter jets

Yet another thinly disguised United Ireland nationalist fantasy thread.. Though with an interesting carpet bombing twist! :rolleyes:

Never mind the huge cost (as others have pointed out above) of buying, maintaining and providing pilots and staff for fighter jets, where exactly do you think we'll get the money to support what is currently NI if indeed unification did come to pass anytime soon?

Maybe you've forgotten the massive amount of debt this country is saddled with, or the huge problems we have with fundamental services of a functioning society - healthcare, housing, cost of living, infrastructure and regional development etc etc

Maybe you've forgotten the huge inefficiencies within our public and civil service as it is without taking on that of NI, which happens to be its biggest employer.

I could go on but the bottom line is this... I'm sure someday a United Ireland will happen, and hopefully it'll be at a time when both communities up there have accepted the idea and it can happen peacefully, but we have more than enough problems with the country we have now without looking to actively invite more.

Lord Maguire wrote: »

The F-35 is western.

Dassault Rafale, although it would probably have been easier to get a good price a few years ago when they were struggling to export it and the French army was having to top-up the orders.

Or Gripen, not as nice but even cheaper.

Blazer wrote: »

The F35 is muck anyway. It’s been a disaster of a plane since day 1.
A few F22s is where it truly lies but we couldn’t afford them and there’s no way the US will sell them.
So maybe a few cessna’s with a few of the lads hanging out the windows pointing guns.

Program is now "to big to fail" projected cost in todays money is $1.5 Trillion Dollars
$1,500,000,000,000 <= that's a lot of 0's
Even for the US economy that's a heavy bill.

To put that cost into perspective, the Gerald Ford Carrier program is going to cost $37.3 Billion with each unit (of which there will be 10) costing about $13 Billion
So that's a total of about $167 Billion or:
$167,000,000,000

Big difference.

F-22 is at the moment the best active fighter plane in the world
But that will change when China and Russia unveil their 5th/6th gen figthers
Even at that the newer planes are extremely expensive for what they are.
Even the US is struggling to justify the cost.
The plan was to replace the Ageing F-15's of which there were nearly 600 with F-22's
In the end the cost was to high and the US went with about 200 F-22's and upgraded the older F-15's

Same will happen with the F-35, designed to replace the F-16 but won't because of the cost. F-16 for it's time was one of the best fighter planes ever made.

In relation to the question do we need them?
EHHHHH No!
We are a small country and we couldn't afford to run those aircraft.
We should be spending more on our Navy though. We have a huge amount of sea to patrol but we have very few ships.

Also with the advent of Railguns and Laser weaponry Air Superiority is not going to matter as much in 20/30 years. Aircraft will just need to be "in line of sight/in view" to be shot down. There are no countermeasures for these kinds of weapons. Israel has laser defense installations in testing capable of hitting inbound artillery shells.
There will be a shift to Land and Sea based weaponry with the Air Role being left for Drones.

biko wrote:

We don't need fighter jets, we just need a lot of SAMs

Maybe we should build a few houses and fund our health services more so than buy a few flying death machines?

Either a few glorified trainers something like a L-39 or alternatively a few SAMs, as above.

Ulysses Gaze wrote: »

The F35 still does not even work properly and the program has cost almost $1 trillion. It will be the biggest White Elephant in the history of military expenditure.

The Sukhoi Su-57, Chengdu J-20 and Shenyang J-31 will turn out to better and cheaper planes.

The israelis have already used theirs in combat.

Oink wrote: »

Yeah we get a few jets and then what.

While they’re flying around we suddenly discover 20 heavily armed tourists in the Dail which we didn’t even know were in the country. The internet and all comms are down for some reason, half the government has been poisoned, and the russkis are talking about cruise missiles. Oops.

The air shows, think of the air shows.

Lord Maguire wrote: »

I was reading the other day about the RAF and how they will soon take delivery of their first batch of F-35 Lightning II multirole fighter jets. I must say, they are quite an impressive of kit.

I have the price list here:


F-35A - conventional takeoff and landing - $94.6M

F-35B - short takeoff and vertical landing - $122.8M

The F-35C is carrier-based and not relevant to my point.


We are a neutral country and I respect that fact, but Switzerland for example, a famously neutral state, have modern fighter jets for air defence purposes. Why don't we?


We could get Eurofighters, the above mentioned F-35 and others, we are spoiled for choice.

I know that we would only use them in combat if the inevitable Loyalist conflict arises in NI should a border poll pass, but it is good to have them for defence. Our Air Corps is a joke.

Costly - maybe.

Worth it - I think yes.

What are your thoughts on this?

Ive taken entire credit hours at college exploring and researching and describing at great length how the F35 program is muck. Even went to Ft Worth to see the assembly. They’re basically the Kickstarter of fighter jets: hefty promises built on overselling hype for a product that even to date isn’t fully finished. The hardware has been done for a while (in short, it’s not the most efficient) but the software is still in development and is a mess in many respects. The F35 was wayyyy too ambitious, too big to fail, and extremely vulnerable to scope creep. It does nothing particularly well that wasn’t already handled by other previous generation fighters more dedicated to those roles. It was designed to fight a war that doesn’t exist. It’s seen so many production and development delays that it’s cuttinf steeply into its designed program lifespan and will be rendered obsolete relatively soon after it reaches its peak rollout, 7th generation programs are already in early development - and the F35 still isn’t *finished*

The F35B is fascinating for its innovation in STOVL but that’s about it for me. Users can PM me for a copy of our end of semester report on our findings from when I did the research in 2016.

Bob24 wrote: »

Dassault Rafale, although it would probably have been easier to get a good price a few years ago when they were struggling to export it and the French army was having to top-up the orders.

Or Gripen, not as nice but even cheaper.

The Rafale has had a surprisingly successful last few years. Particularly in the Middle East.



The Gripen has done decent enough. Compared to older Swedish jets. The South Africans seem to like their planes. Will be intrigued as to whether it gets any South American sales.

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

The Viet Cong didn't have modern jets, an they beat the mighty USA.

Irelands army cant compete with a world power on a military footing. Our army is trained to fight an asymmetric war within our borders if we are invaded.

The viet cong only won because those jets, in a stunning lack of imagination on the designers part, were not equipped or designed for close range dogfighting.

Anyone whoever watches top gun every time it’s on tv could have told you that! And they can do it in Michael Ironsides voice