Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcus H.
It's not just Alt V I was talking about. The part where US is developing their TSFs as if they are more interested in fighting against other humans than against BETA.
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Well, they're just taking the long view, that's all. Since it's not like everything is going to be sunshine and roses between nations after the BETA are gone, they might as well make sure to get an edge over everyone else ahead of time. It's not as if the F-22 doesn't already do pretty damn well against BETA anyway, and there's also the excuse that the YF-23's design focus tried to do too many radical design innovations like having four pylons instead of two to carry up to six guns at once, altered ammo ratios in the XAMWS-24 swapping a buttload of 36mm rounds for a few extra 120mm rounds plus a bayonet, a sword etc., which ended up being completely contrary to standard US TSF combat doctrine of focusing on longer range engagements as opposed to close combat, making it less suitable for adoption (since you'd probably be spending a lot to retrain your pilots and redraw plans to suit use of a close combat type TSF). The YF-23's design was something more suited to, say, European or Soviet tactical doctrine. Sort of mirrors all the crazy stuff the real-life YF-23 tried to do with its IR signature-hiding heat ablating tiles, unconventional diamond-shaped wings with fancy all-moving V-tail etc, compared to the YF-22 being more grounded in existing stuff.
That is to say, it's not so much that they're more interested in fighting BETA, as it is that they're taking into consideration both the need to fight the BETA now as well as the possibility of the threat of other humans once the BETA are gone, and the YF-22 fit both these requirements while the YF-23 went a bit off the rails in trying to do too many new things.
If I remember correctly the US Marines do still pull their weight with frequent anti-BETA ops in the European/Taiwan areas alongside Euro/Warsaw/Soviet etc. forces, so it's not as though they're just sitting back and letting everyone else do the work with their exported TSFs.