I believe that BVR, one on one, the Raptor is top notch as of today.
In an open sky, no AWACs, no ground-based detection, it should rule.
The Rafale may be the better equiped plane operational to contend
but it will have to wait for AESA RBE2 and Meteor to play seriously.

There are two things that complete this view. First the Raptor has its
own problems accounting for the early production end. Second, the
Rafale can do it all. My prefered bit from ATLC was the 2 MICAs AND
three AASMs delivered in one pass. Much more useful!

Good day jackjack and all.

If the Raptor has access to AWACs and other third party info, it’s advantages will only increase, as it’s optimized for NCW.

Oh come on..!:mad:

I suggesting you folks should pick up a few books on Aviation history.
Reading Aviation books like F-15 engaged, those F-15 did economical subsonic speed while loitering Iraqi airspace, and when upon unknown contact, they would hit A/B and on many ocation drop their DT in order to reach the enemy(get fire solution).
And on some ocation they didn’t reach the enemy in time, so do anyone think ‘supercruise’ speed would be the right thing to do here?
Now if it where the F-22 on patrol, it would too go economical subsonic, and then hit A/B trying to reach those enemy contacts.
It is wery likely the F-22A will to this on future mission around the world too.
So for the trillion time.. all this supercruise speed is LM talking out of their @ss..
It is a nice capability to have, but will not be used very often.

This is a typical every day mission for F-22A who operates out from Alaska.
Do you really think the F-22 do supercruise in any duration of this mission?
Its carrying those DT for a very good reason, to stand a chance of identify/intercept/shaddow bombers like Tu-95/160..
It will be the same with the F-35, it will have to carry DT in a numbers of missions, so who’s talking giberish here..LM:rolleyes:

Dynamo is very much right here.

It wouldn’t make sense to supercruise if you’re shadowing a target that’s only travelling at M.85. They may very well supercruise in the initial scramble until they reach the target, and then pace them though. In wartime if they were trying to intercept as far from base as possible, before the bombers had time to launch their cruise missiles, I guarantee you the Raptors would be hauling butt to get there though.

Most of that will and the Russians have a very practical approach to that.

I don’t doubt they will work. The question remains as to what their capabilities turn out to be.

At terminal maneuvering range?

Who you trying to kid?

If a fighter size radar with considerably more power, antenna size, etc… has problems spotting a stealthy target, until very near the target, what do you suppose the maximum detection range is for a missile with an antenna of 7″ or less in diameter. It’ll likely be at terminal range by the time it can detect a VLO target. The VLO target will know about the inbound missile well before it’s detected, giving it greater opportunities to evade/employ countermeasures, than a more conventional aircraft.

It is known a development freeze of the F-35 does not match the F-16 in sustained turn rate.

In fact, it cannot match the F-4E.

Unsurprisingly, Lockheed lie and people believe them.

http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,186349,00.html

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=defense&id=news/F35-030509.xml

An F-16 will go from 0.8 to 1.2 in under 30 seconds at 30,000ft!

So the USAF is lying for LM too then eh?

No. There are not. Typically before finding yourself in the situation of having to dodge a missile you will have been maneuvering. If your aircraft bleeds off more energy, then you are in a more vulnerable energy state when it comes to trying to avoid the missile.

However if you are stealthy, you have a much greater chance of breaking a missile lock.

Care to provide the statements?

Here’s one from a LM press release-

http://www.f-16.net/news_article3063.html

The F-35 has the most powerful engine ever installed in a fighter, with thrust equivalent to both engines today in Eurofighter or F/A-18 aircraft. The conventional version of the F-35 has 9g capability and matches the turn rates of the F-16 and F/A-18. More importantly, in a combat load, with all fuel, targeting sensor pods and weapons carried internally, the F-35’s aerodynamic performance far exceeds all legacy aircraft equipped with a similar capability.

http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2009/July%202009/0709Fighter.aspx

Internal Vs. External

The F-35 was designed with an entire air campaign in mind. For “first day of the war” operations when stealth is of supreme importance, the F-35 can carry two 2,000-pound bombs (two 1,000-pound bombs for the F-35B) and two radar guided dogfight missiles internally. Critics of the F-35 have complained that this loadout is far too light for sustained combat. However, in stealth configuration, all F-35 fuel is internal, as are all sensor and targeting systems. On legacy aircraft such as the F-16, fuel, weapons, targeting pods, etc., are carried externally and their weight and drag severely hamper performance. With a full internal load of fuel and weapons, the F-35 is as agile as a “clean” F-16 carrying no weapons. In other words, in stealth mode, the F-35 gives up nothing in range or weaponry, but adds considerable ability to penetrate enemy air defenses.

Now, tell me about this cookie jar. 😎

It is about a working network of a capable adversary. When Serbia was more like a “training gound” in a limited conflict something like North Korea with some foreign support can be become a real challenge fot the F-35s. 😉

Serbia managed to shoot down an F-16 and an F-117(which had flown countless missions unscathed both there and in Iraq). The F-35 is a far more capable aircraft, and will be available in far greater numbers, with a far wider variety of weapons. I won’t argue that N. Korea, China, etc… would be a more challenging air defense to penetrate than Serbia, but having a large number of stealthy attackers linked in an NCW manner isn’t anything to sneeze at.

What about the wavelength of the radar your facing?

Lengthen that radar wave, and pretty shortly you’ll find those decibels rising, and rising damn sharply!

The types of radars which you’re speaking of are generally fixed sites, or are not highly mobile, which means they’d be very high priority targets for either kinetic strikes or stand off jamming. The fight is at the systems level, not the individual platforms.

I don’t think that missile development is quite so clear-cut nowadays.

A lot of development is now done using computer models and other simulations, including hardware-in-the loop (HWIL) testing of critical subsystems. On an expensive programme such as Meteor, flight testing comes at a relatively late stage and after a small number of shots uses what is virtually production hardware. So FMRAAM and ERAAM would have been more than just paper projects.

I’m not sure how far the Russians have gone along that route, but I know that Mercurius Cantabrigiensis has been briefed by the Russians on some of their air-to-air HWIL work. But one of our moderators p****d the old boy off by deleting one of his postings, so he no longer posts here. So I’ll try to ‘pick up the slack’ occasionally on missile subjects. Up till now I’ve made only a handful of postings.

He may still be ‘lurking’ without posting as do a number of other aerospace professionals who just don’t want to get into the sort of squabbling that so often takes place here. A wander around the listing of forum members sometimes reveals interesting (indiscreet might be a better word) usernames that rarely if ever appear on postings!

The point I was making to him though was that if anything, they had computer models of this variant of the R-77. I haven’t seen anything that demonstrates a working prototype that had reached flight testing stage, much less being anywhere near being fielded.