Nied

this got me thinking, why the heck does the vf-0 use the later model vf-1 controls, if it suposed made before the vf-1? Different planes have different controll schemes. THe F-16 has a side stick controller but the newer F/A-18 has a center stick (and the even newer Super Hornet does too). If I had to come up with an in-story explanation I would say that the VF-0 was testing out a more refined controll scheme that didn't make it into the first blocks of VF-1s. The VF-0 was a technology demonstrator that was pressed into service, it's concievable that stuff tried out in it might not have made it into the ostensibly newer VF-1. It's like saying the Air Force is crazy for trying to make us beilieve that the F-22 is such an advanced plane whit its traditional rearward-swept wings despite the fact that the much older X-29 had Forward swept wings.

No self respecting pilot calls it a "joystick" on real aircraft it's a control colum (or flightstick). And yes the TV Valkyrie uses a between the legs configuration fer the flightstick while the late block models depicted in DYRL (and later VFs for that matter) have the newer F-16 style sidestick.

Kids online use a creative code This has got to be the most un-intentionally funny thing I've read in years. What a bunch of n00bs.

Actually I believe that this was one of Lockheed's proposals for the AF/X program, which was a search for a replacement for teh failed A-12 program. It was based heavily off the F-22N (hence teh resemblance to the NATF) but it was larger and used non-afterburning versions of the F119.

To expand on my last post (from last year wow). While the VF-1 Skull squadron Valkyries have some markings in common with the Jolly Rodgers we know and love (the color scheme and the big skull and crossbones on the tails) it also has alot in common with the real VF-1 Wolfpack (the big horizontal stripe on the nose with the modex in it being the most obvious). That and the fact that they're VF-1 and not VF-84 made me think that at some point VF-1 Wolfpack adopted the bones and the name but hung on to some of their own markings in the transition.

Seems like everyone is mounting FAST packs on the shoulders lately (I've even seen some concept paintings of Eurofighters with shoulder mounted packs). Best looking award goes to the Rafale (and it's pretty good looking already) and the ugliest is definetly those bricks they glued to the back of the Viper.

Well I'm pissed. Due to a last minute schedule change at work I can't make it to the Andrews show again (which is hard as it is since I'm on the oposite end of the country now). And this year they're actually going to have a flying Raptor! Hopefully they might do the same thing for Fleet week here in SF come October.

I'm of two minds when it came to that episode. On the one hand I thought it was just a little too cute how they tied two (counte 'em) TOS episodes together in one show. On the other it was really cool to see the bridge of the Defiant come to life after Archer and company power her up, and to see what a Tholian looks like from the shoulders down, and the clever use of stock footage from First Contact, and the different mirror universe opening. In the end it was kind of like geek candy, full of fun little things that only a true trekkie would catch but with little else to offer beyond that.

Screw F-15T (or rather as hellohikaru pointed out F-15F) why not F/A-22F? Other than the pissing off China factor I've never really understood the recent trend towards not wanting to sell Taiwan good equipment, the standard fear is that equipment falling into Chinese hands if or when reunification happens, but that would only happen if A) the Chinese overun Taiwan and take it by force in whice case we would probably be in a full scale war with China (possibly nuclear which would really make the point moot), or B) China and Taiwan re-unify peacfully. If it were situation B then It's extremely likely that some signifigant reforms would have taken place within the CHinese govt. which would make them signifigantly less antagonistic towards us, and situation A is less likely to happen if the Taiwanese have a sophisticated military force to repel the PLA (and like I said if it were to take place we have bigger concerns than the Chinese getting their hands on a few Raptors).

My fiance and I were given a nice 34" Panasonic CRT as a house warming preasent from my (future) Father-in-Law. I can't get HD programming for it right now (my satelite provider gave me a choice between HD or a DVR and I figured we'd use the DVR more), but most SD stuff still looks increadible. It does have a special viewing mode which stretches out 4:3 images on the edges so that it fits on the 16:9 screen, I've only seen this mode on Panasonic TVs and I gotta say it is by far the best way to watch 4:3 TV on a widescreen (this applies to TV shows on DVD too) in most cases it is unoticeable (you can only see it in wide panning shots and diagonal lines or movement which go across the screeen) and is IMO vastly superior to squishing the image into 16:9 or reverse letterboxing with black bars on the sides of the screen.

Most of the info I posted came direct form Globalsecurity. I've also re-discovered an article in Air FOrces monthly today that covers most of the same ground (it does mis-identify the Azarakhsh as an exact F-5 copy, which it obviously is not). I skipped over thier indeginous helicopters and non-combat aircraft. Something I realized going over Iran's aircraft manufacturing efforts is how much effort they are putting into training. Most of their designs or modifications have been for training purposes. They've modified most of their F-5s into two seat trainers, they were working on building a knock off of a Pilatus PC-7 before Pilatus sued the Iranian government over it (having normalized relations has it's advantages), they're about to fly a prototype for their new jet trainer called the Ra'd, they've built several kinds of UAVs for training purposes (mostly target practice), and finnally they have put considerable effort into building training rounds for all of thier air launched weapons. Given how much effort Iran is putting into bilding implements for training their pilots, I can't see how they wouldn't be expected to use them. I doubt we'd be facing un-trained pilots who fly only once a year. Well that's more of a critisism of manned aircraft in general and not just the F/A-22. What's at question here is wether we need an air dominance platform to clear the skies for whatever maned (or un-maned) strike platforms we see fit to send into a conflict, or if we can rely on our strike planes to defend themselves.

This is the Azarakhsh as near as I can tell it's a replacement for the IRIAF's older F-4s. It looks like nothing more than a giant two seat F-5 with F-4 intakes. It aparently has a indeginous radar with a few odd Russian components in the rest of the avionics fit. According to Globalsecurity the IRIAF should have 30 of these in service by now. The Seaqeh-80 is the much famed F-5 sith twin tails that we saw on these boards a while back. It's unclear wether it's still in the prototype stage or has gone into production or even what it's exact capabilities are. I would imagine it would have performance at least on par with the F-5 and may be designed to fill a similar role. Finnally the Shafaq is a lightwieght strike fighter/trainer that apears to be designed along the same lines as the Mig-AT and Yak-130 (it suposedly was developed with Russian assitance). Given it's design I'd say it the Iranians have done quite a bit of work on RCS reduction.

You're forgetting one thing though, once you fire a cruise missile it's gone, an aircraft (either manned or un manned) can be used over and over again. I think one of the lessons of Iraq is that "Shock and Awe" will do just that but it leaves you without options for an uncomfortably long period of time (we're still replenishing our stocks two years later). When you consider that you can send a strike plane in day after day after day, the costs of lobbing cruise missiles from afar get higher. The F-35 is agreat way for hitting the types of targets we want to hit, but it is only one component in a package. It is still a strike plane, one with impressive self defence capabilities, but not something that can be used to establish air superiority. If you wan't to protect theose F-35s from the IRIAF's F-14s (or the NKAF's Mig-29s or the PLAAF's Su-30s, or the RSAF's F-15s) you're still going to need the F-22. I think that's the falacy that you (and RUmsfled) are making, that one aircraft is interchangealbe for the other. THe F-35 is an extremely effective strike plane, the F-22 is an extremely effective fighter, just because one is extremely effective at it's job doesn't necesarily mean it can do the other's job.

THe APG-79 is a good pice of equipment and will most likely hold the title for the best fighter radar in US service for the next 9 months. But it doesn't have the sheer brute power of the AWG-9, it makes up for that with it's AESA antena but in my opinion it does not make it clearly superior (at least in terms of tracking and detecting targets). The APG-63(V)2 is only mounted on one squadron of F-15s and while it does teach the Eagle's old radar some new tricks it doesn't do anything to increase it's range. THe AWG-9 isn't exactly an easy radar to jam, the Russians, the French and the Iraqis all had little to no success jamming IRanian F-14s. A Prowler probably could overwhelm an F-14 one on one, but it would still have to deal with A-50s, An-140s and whatever surface radars the Chinese have sold them. F/A-22s would be able to pull it off but then that's been my point all along hasn't it? Despite our best efforts, and despite our air superiority the IrAF was able to get quite a few aircraft airborne and intact, fortunetly for us their mission wasn't to strike coalition aircraft but instead to send them to Iran. Now those planes have inflated the size of a much better trained air force (remember the IRIAF gave the IrAF a good drubbing in the Iran Iraq war) that doesn't seem willing to just give up it's airspace to a foreign strike. In both of those operations the US had un-contested controll of the sky (seriously a pair of barely operational Mig-17s and a few ancient SAMs were going to give NATO and US forces trouble?) I can't say for sure how much damage the Iranians or North Koreans could do to our air forces but saying we'll always have air dominance becasue our past few foes couldn't or wouldn't put up a fighte is folly. We haven't faced an effectively planned or equiped air defence since Vietnam, and frankly that's a big unknown. I'd rather not plan for the best case scenario (that after all is what has made Iraq so hard).

Actually the USAF tracked 14 Tomcats at the Iraqi border during Iraqi Freedom far more than half of thier fleet (if they have only 25). I still haven't seen you produce any evidence for your assumption that the Iranians would chose not to contest US air superiority like IrAF did. Or if you disagree with teh premise of my argument, that the IrAF put up anything more than a token resistance during the Gulf War.

Well part of the problem with some of the estimates out there is that they make no sense. They assume that Iran has very little ability to support it's own aircraft, when in fact it has an entire aerospace industry manufacturing new aircraft. You also seem to think we would attack with our entire Air Force. I'd like to know the last time we've been able to send our entire complement of combat aircraft into battle. That's not to say I don't think that we couldn't marshall a force capable of overwhelming the IRIAF, however our numbers would be our only clear advantage, making any potential conflict with them much costlier than previous ones.

But then Cooper goes on to fret over the fact that Iran could put up a good fight if the US employs other types of aircraft and weapons.(Here's the link.) Well...so what? You fight to your strength and the enemy's weakness. Cooper might as well worry about the lack of well-trained poison-dart blowgunners in the US Army, should we decide to invade the Amazon. In a war with Iran, the US would of course begin the fight by using cruise missiles and B-2's to destroy the most urgent targets (in the current circumstances, that would be whatever Iranian nuclear facilities we could identify) as well as neutralize Iranian air defense assets. As the latter are degraded, non-stealth aircraft could be brought increasingly into the mix. Iranian Tomcats aren't going to be a threat in the air if their runways are holed, their fuel and weapons stores destroyed, and the aircraft themselves wrecked on the ground. (And that's even assuming we take all of Cooper's claims about Iran's airforce at face value.) I have no doubt Iran would not have the capability to defend itself form a "shock and awe" 200+ cruise missile strike. The problem is we can't mount such a strike at the moment, our stocks are still depleted from the last time we did that. It may be our strength when we can do it but we can't do it right now. I would guess we could sustain something like it for maybe one night, after which we'd be forced to rely on our conventional forces (B-2s could still be used though).

THat's all well and good except. A) the Iranians have thier own AWACs birds to catch us before we enter thier airspace and B) They have longer ranged weapons and thus can hit our planes before we hit them. Ironicaly I think the best counter for Iranian F-14s might be the Super Hornet, it's stealthy enough that it might be able to cut down the range at which a Tomcat could get a lock on it to within range of an AMRAAM.

I was under the impression the entire show was a FLCL reference.

finnally got back into making these. THis one is probalby the most detailed color scheme I've done. I know hellohikaru made a Sundowners VF-11 (which if you can't tell by now are one of my favorite squadrons) but I've had an idea for one myself since I made the VF-11 blank. After transitioning to the VF-11 the Sundowners were stationed aboard the UNS Pioneer on a deep space exploration mission. Pictured here is the squadron leader's mecha, the 11th mecha was given to her in place of the traditional first because it's modex happened to coinside with the squadron's. It is finished in an overal dark grey scheme common among squadrons assigned to deep space, with the traditional red highlights and setting sun pattern on the tail. Of special note is the rainbow pattern in the sun, it was added after the captain of the Pioneer expressed his distaste for the mostly monochrome red and white motif of the Sundowner's mecha. Due to the nature of it's mission the Pioneer and her air group saw a great deal of combat against Zentradi and Supervision Army remnants, as a result this mecha shows a great deal of wear despite the best efforts of her maintnence crew.

Th IrAF is the Iraqi Air Force, the IRIAF is the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force. the fact of the matter is that our stealth aircraft are not invisible. Their flight plans are carefully plotted so that they avoid radar sites and detection, however if one of those radar sites is mounted in the nose of a plane it's alot harder to route your flight plan around it. So while stealth is a decided advantage becasue it opens up gaps in your enemy's detection network, it does not mean your enemy can't find you.

Oh yeah what do you guys think of pinning thes topic?

The IRIAF has two AWACs planes (based on the AN-140 regional airliner) with ten more on the way, that and they've gotten quite good at using thier Tomcats as mini-AWACs planes. Training wise they do maintain a farily high training tempo compared to most nations (especially the IrAF or the YuAF) so we only have a slight edge. I do think our defensive systems woudl be devastating to the IRIAF if they decided to go on the offensive (which wouldn't be advisable). I doubt that's going to happen though, so while it's an advantage for us I don't think it would come into play. Our long range strike capabilities are obivously better, but that only allows us to strike them while they can't strike us (at least conventionally), again I don't see how much of an advantage that is. As Tom Cooper pointed out in the thread I posted, the YuAF was able to keep us from finding their Mig-29s pretty easily during Allied Force, I think he's forggeting how much local weather conditions obscured their activites, but it is food for thought. Fortunetly for us the YuAF was decimated by their civil war long before we had to face them, the IRIAF isn't in the same condition. Our GPS based munitions are good, but they have to be hauled to their target first, considering how hard it might be to establish air superiority over Iran that's an iffy prospect. Our cruise missiles would be an advantage, but we're still re-plenishing our stocks from the shock and awe campaign in Iraq. We'd have to rely more on our convetnional assets than we did there. I think our biggest advantage is stealth. We have assets that can attack with near impunity. Considering the integration of the Iranian air defense network that's a good thing. Of course even that advantage would be compromised if a IRIAF F-14 or Mig-29 were to come across one of our B-2s

Yes we should be buying newer fighters because right now our airforce is made up of 25-30 year old fighters upgraded with digital electronics, we're looking at facing airforces with similar equipment, where our only advantage is numerical. I'd like you to back up your claim that the IRIAF is weaker today than the IrAF was in '91. In '91 the IrAF had just finished fighting a long war of atrition in which they had had massive amounts of aid from both the West and the Comunist bloc but were still fought to a standstill, they were depleted, they had no real aircraft industry to re-build with, and thier training wasn't up to snuff to begin with (not to mention thier leader thought of them as little more than a toy with no real strategic value). The modern IRIAF on the other hand has had 17 years to recover from that same war (in which it fought a superior force to a standstill with close to no international aid), it has a comparatively advanced aircraft industry (so far it has only one original design though), and it uses a much more advanced warfighting doctrine. Now I do beilieve that we could overwhelm such a force (stealth and numerical superiority still give us an edge) but not without the type of mauling that we haven't seen since Vietnam. Well desinged attack aircraft aren't going to help even if we hang a few AMRAAMs off them.

OK Now I'm pretty much convinced that the Iranians are more of a threat than most people think. Here's a thread over at F-15Estrikeeagle.com where Tom Cooper (co-author of "Iranian Tomcats in Action") gives an assessment of the current capabilities of the IRIAF. If he's even half right (and I take many of his claims with a grain of salt) it's still awfully scary. Definetly a good argument for building more Raptors. USAF playing cat and mouse game over Iran, !! page 2