Nied
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Posts posted by Nied
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I did notice a few posts about UFO intercepts.
Tom Coopers articles are pretty interesting though. -
Tom Cooper has a website! the Air Combat Information Group All sorts of interesting articles and there's a forum.
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Much as I'd like to see those high thrust 4th gen russian engines in a Tomcat (which should make the Iranian birds out accelerate the D), all reliable sources point to the Iranians still using the TF30.
I don't have any data on the dimensions but which Russian turbine could theoretically bolt onto the F14 without having to redesign half the airframe?
The AL-31s in an Su-27 are roughly the same size as the TF-30 and GE110, physically they would fit. Though as Knight26 pointed out a while back the Russian engines use completely different mount points than American ones and thus still would take some work to be made compatible (I could see the Chinese being convinced to license a custom version of the WS-10 for installation into the ALi-Cats).
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That was the rumor going around for a while, however Tom Cooper (author of Iranian F-14 Tomcat Units in Action) swears that no such modifications have been made. Honestly Were I Iran I would take Hugo Chavez up on his offer to give me Venezuela's old F-16As. Not to use them, but to get a hold of their F100 engines to either reverse engineer or install directly into my Tomcats.
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Yeah gun, no gun or gun that's there but can't be fired, the UK wins. IIRC they're the only ones getting Tranche 3.
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Yeah, it's good that Japan may be getting the F-22 to replace their F-15's for the years to come but due to high production and maintenance cost in the U.S, the Japanese may have to order a small number of F-22's to currently supplement their F-15's unless Lockheed grants them licensing and manufacturing rights to it. Like Nied stated many pages back in this thread, he had told us that the S. Korea was getting the F-15K for the sole purpose of trying to counter Japan's aging arsenal of F-15's, but it looks like Japan will be able to turn the tide to counter SK's F-15K with their F-22J's
Chew on that, fuggers.I'm trying not to go into politics about this but since it apparantely appears that S. Korea is hankering to go to war with Japan, I feel that that's the reason why they chose to buy the F-15K instead of the Rafale, Typhoon, or Zhuravlik Flankers; they knew we have F-15J's and decided to fight fire with fire and even though our F-15J's are at a a slight disadvantage against them since their F-15K has an advanced targeting system as well as updated avionics and A2G capabilties opposed to our's that don't have it. It also worth noting that as you guys know, S. Korea constantly copies everything my Japanese brethren do probably to insult us and to try to be like us. Whatever we make or get from the U.S, they copy and that's what they did with F-15K. Even though S. Korea hates Japan with a passion, I just find it downright ironic and hypocritical for them to copy us. Sure, it would've been good if JASDF had recieved permission from Boeing to update the avionics in their F-15J's to counter F-15KS's but that will never happen anytime soon.
Quickly going back to the fact of countering other countries fighter aircraft, by using the same type of aircraft you're fighting against is just downright retarded and the F-15K versus F-15J is perfect example of that. Why use the same type of aircfraft to fight agianst your opponent that has the same tye of aircraft you do, when the battle may result in equal kills in losses? Even if ROKAF is confident that their F-15K's can defeat JASDF's F-15J's due to the fact that they have updated avionics, that doesn't make their variant on the overall better than Japan's. Like Shin stated earlier, it's the pilot not the plane, that makes it the best. Even though F-15J's don't have updated avionics like the F-15K, it's still possible for the most experienced Japanese eagle pilots to shoot down Korea's F-15K's. If ROKAF is so obsessed with tryng to counter JASDF aircraft, they might as well buy SU-30's or SU-37's since they bost superior handling and dogfighting capabilites that would bring the JASDF's F-15J's to shame instead of buying the same type of aircraft we have. Note to S. Korea: You can stop copying my brethren in all aspects! And with ROKAF using F-15K's to counter JASDF's F-15J's, you're making it a fair fight. The U.S doesn't like to fight fair. We use technologically advanced aircraft to spar with other countries aircraft like the F-22 and JSF. ROKAF assumes that F-15K's will win just because of a small upgrade to their fighters. If I recall, if you want to win a war, you don't fight fair, you cheat and the U.S cheated and won wars by using stealth technology as well as other military technolgy against our adversaries.
I doubt that South Korea is going to declare war on Japan. They're more worried about Japan declaring war on them. Most of the countries in the Pacific rim are quite afraid that Japan will some day give up the self defense clause in their constitution and go on the rampage again, and they buy military equipment to allay those fears.
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All right. Yesterday I promised some of my favorite aviation related links. I hope everyone else will join in (I want to know where some of you get your info).
Everything you wanted to know about the Viper and then some, their forum is a great wealth of info even if they do get downright paranoid about public information falling into the hands of "the enemy."
Like F-16.net but without the forum and focused entirely on the F-14 Tomcat. Probably the #1 resource on all things F-14. It's probably one of the #1 sources of all the Anti Super Hornet BS you see all over the internet.
The # 2 Tomcat source. Less technical detail but more pictures.
The most comprehensive resource on all things military, from WMDs to chaff and flare launchers. With such a vast array of subjects not everything has the most up to date info though. Watch out for those pop-up adds!
A pretty neat site. Their Aircraft museum isn't as comprehensive as Globalsecurity, but their "ask a rocket scientist" section is a wealth of hard to find information (including a good article on the F-35's armaments).
OK those are my best links, I'm sure I'm forgetting some. Antone else want to contribute? (David, Skull Leader I'm looking in your direction.
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Y'know, I'm getting more and more skeptical about whether the F-35 will ever get into service.
Seems like numbers to be purchased are constantly being cut and the US DoD is majorly pissing off partner counties in the project, especially UK, by refusing to authorise transfer of the necessary information and technology to allow partner countries to perform repair, maintenanince and upgrades. It's getting to the state now where the possibility of some member countries pulling out of the project is extremely high.
Graham
Most likely yeah.
The Brits are eyeing either the Rafale or Sea Typhoon as a Harrier replacement (good options). I've also heard them say they'd rather have the F-35C (also a good option).
If the Australians get a labour government, I'd say it's likely they would drop out of the JSF in favour of the F-22 (yay!).
The Dutch were just bought off by a work share agreement to build the F-35's flaperons in the Netherlands, but I'm not sure how long that will last.
Oddly enough I'd keep an eye on what fighter Japan goes for. What they do it could set up a chain of events that could kill or at the very least drastically scale back the JSF (or if they buy it ensure it's status as the most ubiquitous fighter of the 21st century).
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An SA-6 would be a sitting duck against an F-35, F-22 or B-2, and AAA wouldn't be able to hit an aircraft loitering at 10,000 ft (that's the point).
Have you seen the budget cuts? Do you really think the Air Force is going to commit its precious stealth aircraft to killing a few SAMs.
They were built from the start to do expressly that: kill or avoid the newest generation of SAMs. It would be ridiculous if we didn't use them for it.
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Which is excellent as long as we're not having to defend anything. If the enemy goes offensive against U.S. troops, he can bring Mobile AAA and Mobile SAMs (an SA-6 will fart up your day) if U.S. troops are in close contact you need an aircraft that can get down in the weeds and help our guys out.
An SA-6 would be a sitting duck against an F-35, F-22 or B-2, and AAA wouldn't be able to hit an aircraft loitering at 10,000 ft (that's the point).
You can sit up high and lob PGMs no matter how good a PGM is if the enemy gets close you can't use them. The Marines excel in this area, and the USAF tries real hard, but only the A-10 is real surevivable down in the dirt, an F-16 can drop the bombs but with a single engine a hit is much more catostophic.The Marines are doing the exact same thing the Air Force and Navy are: Sitting up high and dropping PGMs on the coordinates given to them by troops on the ground. It's just as accurate (if not more so) than dropping dumb weapons from low altitude, it has the same dangers for troops on the ground if the enemy gets too close (why would dropping a 500 lb dumb bomb from a A-10 at 100 ft be safer than dropping a 500 lb JDAM or paveway from 10,000 ft if they're going to land in the same place?) but it's significantly safer for the aircraft doing the dropping. Even with the A-10s ability to withstand damage it's still going to have to withdraw if hit, and it will be unable to fight for a significant amount of time while it's being repaired, which means it's not helping our guys on the ground.
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What would be detectable is the inside of the Raptor's weapons bay as the doors open for the shot, those doors stay open just long enough to launch a weapon (which depending on the weapon could be as long as two seconds). Incidentally that's how that F-117 got shot down over Kosovo, the Serbs got wise to the route our Nighthawks were taking into the area (lazy mission planning on our part) set up a SAM site along the the route, and when the F-117 opened it's bay doors to drop a bomb they were able to lock it up and fire off a missile.
Doesnt the missile lose track of the stealth craft once the doors close though? So how did the Serbs track the Nighthawk long enough for the missile to reach the target? I don't suppose the pilot kept the bay doors open that long?
Funny that you mention that RTHTT, because why is the F-117's missle bays been configured to be opened manually just to launch the missles it has stored in it's bays? Since I play flight sims alot, I just honestly assumed that the missle bays of stealth aircraft immediatley close once a missle or bomb is released. I don't understand why Lockheed would cconfigure stealth aircraft to have a manual missle bay door release when they could have an automatic door closing system or something. For that matter, when firing bombs or missles from stealth aircraft, do the pilots have to remember to close the missle bays manually? If you ask me, I think that epitomizes why that F-117 got blasted out of the sky over Kosovo sevn years ago as Nied stated that the pilot must have forgotten to close his missle bay as it was left open and as a result of that, those troops on the ground that had manned those SAM launchers manage to lock on the Nighthawk and blow it out the sky. Unless there was slight malfunction with the missle bay door?
Also, RTHTT, when you say that the Serbs managed to obtain a missle lock on the F-117, since the missle won't be a to track the stealth fighter once it's doors are closed, I think the pilot closed them at the last minute and as a result of that, it was struck. In addition to that, the Serbs may have been using nightvision to spot the F-117 in the air and that may have also played a key role in the downing of the F-117. So in the end, I think that stealth is effective at preventing missles from homing into stealth aircraft only if the missle is still far away from the aircraft and if the missle bays are still closed. I also think it's on par with ECM jamming pods in which they're only effective at preventing missles as long as they're far awy from you. So stealth is a passive ECM missle defense system and using actual ECM pods are active missle defense systems.
The Nighthawk's doors are computer controlled, the pilot doesn't have much say in it. In fact the pilot doesn't even decide when to drop a bomb, he just presses a "commit" button on his control column, and the aircraft's on board computer decides on the ideal time to drop the weapon out of the bay.
What happened to the aircraft over Kosovo was a combination of things. As Apollo Leader and I mentioned it was partly bad mission planning (the Serbs knew where we'd be). Then they caught the F-117 with it's weapons doors open long enough to get a lock on the aircraft. Even after it's doors are closed the F-117 isn't invisible and if you paint it with radar energy you will get a return, the problem is that to get enough of a return you need to get a pretty focused radar beam, and you can only do that if you know where the plane is already. That's not the end of it though, my understanding is that the pilot was able to evade the missile, but in the process he dove under the cloud layer that night and because of his black paint job became quite visible to the Serbian AAA crews.
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"Overweight being fixed". For every pound they drop off, I hear of another pound needing to be added on. I have yet to see an actual weight decrease. It's more like:
"Plus 1000, minus 800, plus 700, minus 500, plus 50, minus 30..."
Of course, IMHO it's all for naught if it's the next budget target after the F-22 and production is drastically cut. Instead of replacing the Viper/Hornet/Warthog it'll replace Hill, Mountain Home, and Shaw's planes, and that's about it...
That IMHO would be ideal. Cut the A and B models, sell the C model to everyone (maybe put the gun back in if possible), and use it as sort of a super A-7 with decent air-to-air capabilities.
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With it's ability to go low and slow, loiter over the battlefield for long periods of time, ability to carry an extremely large amount of munitions, absorb great amounts of damage and still make it safely back home and be repaired quickly the A-10 is still an extremely useful plane to keep in the US inventory IMO.
You could hang drop tanks under the wings of an F-35 get plenty of loiter time and still have a devastating warload. You'd lose stealth, but if you're performing CAS you've already achieved air superiority, stealth is superfluous.
The A-10 is not just a tank hunter, which some people tend to forget. It's capable of a wide variety of missions such as day and night Close Air Support (CAS), Forward Air Controller (FAC) and certain types of interdiction missions as shown in the Gulf war.Doctrine has changed significantly since then. During OIF A-10s stayed up high and dropped PGMS just like the fast jets, only they couldn't get to troops in need as fast as other platforms and weren't as accurate once they were there (that last part will be fixed once the A-10C enters service though).
I think in a situation with enemy troops in the wire, I'd rather have an A-10 come along to save my bacon than a UAV or fast mover with PGMs.The A-10 will just get there slower and drop the same PGMs.
As for the F-35, in all it's variations, so far I'm not impressed with what I've read. It seems to be overbudget, overweight, underarmed with only internal weapons (or if it does carry extra external weapons, looses stealth). Not particulaly fast, agile or long range. In the STOVL version especially, is likely to be extremely maintenance intensive.Over budget I'll give you. Overweight is being fixed. Under armed hardly. As I've said before it carries internally the same armament that F-16s and F/A18s take into war externally (two big PGMs three drop tanks and two AMRAAMs, the JSF loses the sidewinders but gains comprehensive sensor stealth, not to mention the 8 SDBs it could carry instead of the PGMs). When stealthy it carries more than enough weaponry to beat down SAMs and put big holes in runways. Once it's done doing that (and once our B-2s and F-22s have cleared out the big SAMs and any air threat still able to operate) you can dirty it up and carry A-10 like loads in support of ground operations, because stealth isn't necessary anymore. It doesn't need to get low to be accurate, some private with a laptop can say "I want an explosion here" and a few seconds later a JDAM or SDB will make that happen.
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Fast jet damage? SAM. F-18's took SAM's in the Gulf War and came home. Every Harrier hit with a SAM went down. And there's always AAA. Mach 2 capability didn't help any of the Strike Eagles or Tornados lost since they couldn't use it. Attack aircraft are still forced to fly low and slow a lot of the time. I've yet to hear of somebody dropping a JDAM from Mach 2 and 40,000ft. (And I know you simply can't go very fast with a Paveway due to seeker issues) Damage survivability of any kind, and especially when low and slow is still worth something.
Current US doctrine has land assaults (and the CAS missions they require) preformed only after air superiority is achieved, which means that large and medium SAMs are dead. That leaves small arms AAA, and Manpads which can be avoided by staying over 10,000 ft. From that altitude any aircraft can orbit the area and rain PGMs down with impunity, the only real difference in airframes is payload and how fast they can get to the troops in need. In that area the F-35B beats the A-10, it can launch from the same marginally prepared airfields as the Hog, get to the troops in need faster, rain down the same JDAMs or SDBs that the A-10 would, and then RTB faster than the A-10 so it can turn around and do it again that much sooner. Except for the Avenger (which is surprisingly effective at 10,000 ft) there's not much the A-10 brings to the table that doesn't come better from a fast jet or even a B-52!
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how many F-35s will you hear of comming hoime with massive amounst of damage?
How many fast Jets do you hear about taking damage in the first place?
Correct me if I'm wrong here guys, but slow is actually good for CAS missions. Allows the pilot to see more of what's on the ground.Graham
In this day and age when a guy on the ground can point a laser or upload the coordinates of what he wants killed? No.
With those technologies the pilot never needs to see the target. All he has to do is be told when to drop the bomb and the JDAM or SDB will do the rest.
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Just like with the F-16, people make the mistake of judging the F-35 on what it's predecessor can do rather than what it does do. The A-10 can go down low and absorb lots of damage while blasting tanks with it's 30mm Avenger cannon and 1,000s of pounds of ordinance hanging from the wings, what it does do at this point is hang up above the battlefield at 10,000 feet (modern MANPADS can dish out more damage than even the A-10 can take) with a targeting pod, a jamming pod, a pair of sidewinders and 2-4 PGMs under the wings. It's main advantage at this point is that it can take off from relatively unprepared airfields, that would give faster airframes allot of trouble. An F-35B can do the things the A-10 is doing but get there as fast as an F-16 or F/A-18, can climb higher if need be, and doesn't need all those ECM and targeting pods. Seems like a good call to me.
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Actually the A-10C is just a stopgap to give the old Hog better capabilities while the F-35 comes online, and to supplement the JSF once it does. Curent planning has the A-10 being replaced by STOVL F-35Bs
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I thought I might ask some of the regulars here what aviation related sites they visit regularly. We are getting a few new posters here who might like to know where we get this stuff from, but also people bring in plenty of info I haven't seen anywhere and I'd love to know where some of it is coming from. Any one have some good links that they'd like to share?
(PS Once I get home from work I'll post some of my own favorite sites)
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Sort of. The heat from the missile launch wouldn't be detected on Radar since InfraRed radiation is on a completely different spectrum than radar waves (though anyone with a good IRST might be able to see the missile itself. What would be detectable is the inside of the Raptor's weapons bay as the doors open for the shot, those doors stay open just long enough to launch a weapon (which depending on the weapon could be as long as two seconds). Incidentally that's how that F-117 got shot down over Kosovo, the Serbs got wise to the route our Nighthawks were taking into the area (lazy mission planning on our part) set up a SAM site along the the route, and when the F-117 opened it's bay doors to drop a bomb they were able to lock it up and fire off a missile.
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Actually Phalanx I don't think anyone here is an actual pilot (I've got a few hours of instruction in Cesnas though).
The Raptor does indeed have chaff and flare launchers, Graham will have to wait until I get home from work so I can pour over my reference books to find out where they're located.
As for re-building jump-jet F-16s, alot of that has been covered by other members here, but I'll just add that the Air Force will mostly be buying the CTOL F-35A (with maybe a few squadrons of B models for flexibility). There are "super" F-16 variants out there that could be adapted for use should the JSF be cancelled (US built F-2s with the F-16E's APG-80 radar and conformal fuel tanks would IMHO be ideal), but nothing that would have anything close to the range of capabilities the JSF brings to the table.
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Thus the "cheap" F-35, which is supposed to fill the gap in our "stealth fighter procurement". That's about the most screwed-up program since the F-111. Not surprising, they had pretty much the same design goals. Plus stealth and hovering.
Who wants to bet F-35's end up costing more than F-22's?
Phalanx beat me to it but I'm a taker too. I'm still an advocate of axing all but the F-35C and selling that to everyone, the RN is keen on the idea, and I've read reports that the RAF would love to use it as a Jaguar replacement. The C model seems the perfect replacement for the A-7 which is what the vast majority of our F-16s and F/A-18s are doing anyway. Other than STOVL there's nothing we really need the F-35A or B for that couldn't be accomplished by a combo of the F-35C and new build legacy designs.
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AFAIK the F-22 cost 110 to 120 million when we were buying 240 to 360 planes, after the cut to 183 the price has gone up to 130 to 140 million.
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I believe Oceania is NAS, not AFB, so likely no F-22.
I have heard that funding is really hard to come by for -22, and USAF is buying planes by parts at a time, and then assembling them later (last week's business week) and raising a fuss in Congress.
The cost on this plane is extreme. It is in my opinion shameful to have such an expensive program to develop a plane and then have only so few planes. B-2 program was outrageously expensive, and there will only be 20 units. The number of -22 is poor too, 183 planes... Jesus. I recall the original USAF order for -15 was at 729 units, but went eventually to well over 1000 units.
At some point, quality just can't make up for quantity. Would you rather have 1000 upgraded F-15 or 200 F-22.... hmmmm, I'd pick the -15s. The only question is cost of maintanence.
I know there are people in the world who keeps thinking peace is breaking out... but let's not kid ourselves, there is a new cold war going on... the only problem is there is no clear cut enemy this time.
Actually the fly away cost of the F-22 isn't much more than the cost of new or upgraded F-15s. Most of the complaints heard about the F-22's cost include the development costs which were indeed quite high, but are also already spent. At this point cutting the F-22's numbers doesn't save much money, as most of the money has already been spent and can't be gotten back. My vote would be to continue buying a handful of Raptors every year over the next few decades until they've replaced all our F-15s.
Aircraft Vs Super Thread! 2
in Hall Of The Super Topics
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It does. What's more it was supposed to eventually received WS-10s instead of the AL-31, but after disappointing performance in the J-11 (a license built Su-27) it was switched back to AL-31s for the time being. AFAIK China is continuing to work out the bugs in the WS-10 in the hopes of introducing it later.