It wasn’t so much an accidental nuclear exchange i was commenting on but more the fact that there are numerous issues between China and America that could bubble over to boiling point in a very short space of time, weeks or even just a few days perhaps, diplomacy fails and the shooting games begin…

Oppost, was late when I reply and misread, I was refering to Mercurius’ post. My bad.

Just something to chew on, lets use the US as an example and disregard existing capabilities (for this example the US is playing the role of victim so please do not get upset).

Someone, hypothetically China or Russia, twenty years from now decides on a sudden and massive attack. They do this by launching a mass of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, they use a combination of conventional warheads and EMP (add as you like but no NCB) to destroy non hardened computers, power generation and distribution and points of major infrastructure (airports and ports). Simultaneously ASAT weapons takeout communications, early warning, recon and navigation satellites, just think of the economic damage, it would be epic in proportion. Sure the US could strike back but its war fighting capabilities would be massively reduced. This could all be done in a matter of hours.

Thoughts?

Ahd who in their right minds would ever consider such a thing? The world economy is so intergrated these days that in the event of war between the major powers, causing long-term economic devastation would be about the last thing anyone wants to see, since that would hurt your own economy and people as well as the opponents’. In your example, China or Russia would devastate their own economies along with America’s even if the Americans don’t respond at all. Seldomly before had there been a better example of a pyrrhic victory.

If there is a war, it will either be total, with every nuclear tipped missile able to lift off doing so and ending the world, or it will be a ultra-high intensity limited war with very clear and specific political objectives, where the object is to destroy the opposing side’s military forces, or cause sufficent military losses for the other side to want to call it quites. One of the main goals would be to minimise the overall economic disruption of the war, since none but the loonies really want to go back to the standard of living of WWII.

Another thing to consider would be the long term implications of such an attack. The Americans have shown that they will try to get even if they feel they been wronged by a sneak attack, and I don’t see the Chinese or Russians being in much of a forgiving mood if someone erased all the hard won economic development they had achieved in the last few decades. It would be all too easy to have many such wars over a course of years and decades as the wronged power try to get even and seek vengence/justice depending on your point of view. And it would not take a big leap of imagination to forecast a major ‘security breach’ at key nuclear installations and for some conveniently small nukes to go walkies from the defeated power, which just might end up in the hands of certain fanatical groups on a holy war against the victor.

Quite simply, the course of action you are suggestion would be a sure fire way of totally destroying the current world order and shatter the fragile peace between the major powers, and sweep away all the certainties, comforts and safety you and I have now become so accustomed to. And every world leader worth their salt will know that as they will have legions of advisors screaming this at them at the first meantion of such a course of action, and generals who would body tackle them to the ground to stop such madness from taking place.

It might be fine and dandy for second rate fictional writers to dream up such scenarios and only glamorise the shock and awe of devastation on such epic scale, but here in the real world, where people will have to live with the aftermath and the consequences, no-one in their right mind would consider this. And if someone mad enough to approve this manages to get into power somehow and tries to pull it off, there are checks and balances to prevent him from doing so, and plenty of generals willing to commit high treason to stop them, because the consequences are just that grave if it was allowed to happen.

A good example of how wars between the major world powers might be fought would be the Falkland’s war, where two ‘near peer’ powers came to blows. There was concious acknowledgement of the need to trade and cooperate with the opponent after the dispute has been settled, thus the British showed restraint and didn’t turn the conflict into a blood fued like it is in the Middle East now.

3. Anyone who thinks this was a simple ASAT modification and rogue sat kill is fooling themselves. Read this:

The interceptor destroyed the target at an altitude of 130 NM. The target was approaching the launch site at over 17,000 mph in a decaying orbit.

Now what does that really sound like to you?

I think you might be a little selective with your presentation of the information there mate ;), as far as I have gathered, this was a merge/tail chase hit, thus the ground speed of the sat is going to be substantually higher then the relative speeds between the missile and the sat at the point of intercept. The decaying orbit was also at a pretty low rate and at a steady rate, making it easy to predict. But then that was what the missile was designed to do to launching ICBMs, only ICBMs will be going in up not down.

It was an impressive feat of engineering, and the fact that this is a slight mod of an operational missile makes its impact much greater and immediate then a heavily moded ballistic missile that may or may not be entering active service, and I suspect one of the main objectives of this act was to make that clear. Americans just simply can’t stand the idea of ‘evil commies’ having one over them.

Just two question´s.

Do you really believe that the J-10 his nothing more than a point defence interceptor?

No, and I even specifically said otherwise. However, when being designed, the J10 was almost certainly designed as a fighter first and foremost, just like the F16A. It has multi-role capabilities because it has advanced radar and avonics, but its struture is unlikely to have been beefed up as much as dedicated multi-role figthers like the F16E. The F2 is a even more obserd comparision as it was designed principly as a naval striker, designed to carry very heavy AShMs, and lots of them, which required an even stronger and heavy structure.

Do you really believe that the clean weight of the J-10 is a bit more than seven tonnes?

I’m assuming you mean ‘little more than seven tonnes’. But no, I am not sure what the weight of the J10 is because there are confliction reports. Personally I think its in the 8t range, but I will not rule out 7 or 9t without more evidence.

However, what I am saying is that it is a flawed comparision to compare the weight of planes based soley on their physical size, and to compare and principly air superiority type that was designed as such against swing role designs that are going to be inharently more heavy because of the need to carry large ordinance as well as tanks and AAMs (which requires more pylons to be rated for heavier loads which equates to more weight).

Is just me, or the idea of the J-10 being something like 5% heavier than the IAI Lavi is just unbelievable…

More unbelievable then the J8 being longer then a flanker? Would you beleive that going just by the weight of the two?

In such cases, applying some -10 dB RAM on the first-stage fan blades can do wonders for a fighter’s overall RCS. It’s interesting that the Chinese and Russians (with the Su-35BM) have opted for RAM on the engine itself for retrofits while the Americans have opted for radar blockers. The tradeoffs may be somewhat different, and I’m not sure which method is better overall (due to lack of hard data).

No doubt, especially in developing RAM that can be applied to moving engine parts–I wasn’t questioning anybody’s capabilities. 🙂

I question a lot of things, including the levels of RCS reduction of the Typhoon and Super Hornet, so it is reassuring when I can actually see some visible features, that’s all. By the way, Sukhoi has explicitly acknowledged the issue of external stores, and claim to be working on reducing the RCS of the stores themselves and the pylons; it’ll be interesting to see whether anything tangible comes out of this for Russian fighters (aside from weapon bays on the PAK-FA). So far, there’s the R-77 redesign (conventional instead of lattice fins), although that could be for other reasons, as well.

That’s a good observation (albeit the Super Hornet only has four if you count the wingtip rails), although it’s just one factor. I still wonder about the Typhoon’s intakes, which may or may not hide the engines well.

On a side note regarding semi-recessed missiles, I couldn’t help but smile when I read a website that said or implied that the Su-27 hid missiles from radar in the “tunnel” between its nacelles like the F-14. 🙂 I’m sure this was done just because it was convenient and good for drag–sure enough, the F-4, F-15, and other older fighters also have semi-recessed carriage of some sort (the F-106 even had internal bays just to reduce drag)–but these days, the hot topic is RCS.

Yes, “probably” in the sense that the measures are more visible to the eye–that’s what I was originally getting at. Official statements that are more specific than the ones we usually get would also suffice, but these are rare.

Well, their overall configurations may be pretty conventional, but their stealth is still quite visible, especially on the F-22. If you look at the attached image of the F-22’s unusual canopy, you can clearly see how it is aligned with the slope and contour of the fuselage, which is not something you’d likely see on a non-VLO fighter. The second attached image shows the strange shaping that is present on the seams of all of its flaps. We all may have a different idea of what “stealthy” looks like aesthetically, but if you’re familiar enough with the actual principles involved, the F-22 and F-35 do indeed look stealthy, and quite completely so (which is key). Of course, only computer calculations, actual RCS testing, and ultimately combat can reveal the truth, as my SR-71 example showed.

Right, that’s pretty much what I said in the first paragraph of my last post. Perhaps I appeared to contradict myself later on, but that’s just poor writing on my part–there are a lot of factors at play here.

Good point–however the J-10’s RCS turns out now, it can still get better.

For “reduced-RCS” fighters, anyway–an uncoated canopy would destroy the F-22’s stealth. 😉

Agreed, I was just pointing out something that was missing that raised some questions. Even the YF-23, for example, is not above criticism–in another thread, I showed a picture indicating that contrary to popular belief, its intake S-ducts do not hide its engines from all frontal angles, and another that showed that this issue was addressed in the production F-23. And do you want to know about a visible flaw in the F-22’s stealth? Two of its air data probes protrude from either side of the forward fuselage near the nose (one of which is visible in the first attached image). They were all supposed to be flush with the skin, but there was not enough time to get these two working right in conjunction with all of the flight testing that needed to be done, so they were left this way, and are now the largest single contributor to the F-22’s frontal RCS (the F-35 has the same issue–maybe it’s just extremely difficult to solve). I guess this leaves some room for improvement in the future.

Fair points all round, and I think its safe to say that we are broadly in agreement across the board, thus there is little left to say. 🙂

I don’t doubt that Chinese engineers can develop effective RCS-reduction measures, just how much was ordered to be done (research, implementation, and maintenance all cost money). First of all, 15 m² for the unmodified Su-27/J-11 is huge! 😮 If the reduction to 5 m² includes the entire system (with external stores), then they did a pretty good job, although that’s still kind of large for a fighter. This level of reduction is typically the result of treating most every radar hotspot with RAM. The resulting reduction in detection range against enemy radars in this case would theoretically be 24% (i.e. if another fighter could previously detect it from a range of 100 km, the detection range will only be 76 km now).

There was no meantion of stores and the description seems to be focused on the how they worked on intake and treated the exposed engine blades with RAm etc. The 15m RCS was most likely the result of the Russians not doing anything to try and reduce RCS in the orginial flanker, so a lot of fairly simple measures were likely to have yielded much higher the usual gains.

But it still shows a lot of capabilities in that regard, which makes it seem unlikely that this was the first attempt made by the Chinese at RCS reduction. Since much of the technology used to modify the baseline Su27 into the J11B came from the J10, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to suggest a very high probability that RCS reduction techniques were also transfered.

I don’t know, just looking at them, none of the “Generation 4.5” fighters, including the J-10, look like they’re designed with reduced RCS in mind at all, save perhaps for the canopies of the Typhoon and Super Hornet (more on this below) in addition to the Super Hornet’s intake radar blockers. For comparison, an example of an aircraft that was deliberately designed for reduced RCS but still did not achieve what we now call “stealth” is the SR-71, which certainly looks the part.

Yet the typhoon and superbug both boasts of having very small RCS. I’m not talking about F22 level RCS reduction, but certainly a lot smaller then most 3rd gen figthers. Although one important think both those planes hold over the J10 is semi-recessed body hardpoints that allow them to carry at least 4 AAMs without having to suffer much RCS increases as would be the case when using pylons. That means those two planes probably has a more practical advantage to their RCS reduction measures.

Also, I would be wary of judging a plane’s stealthiness just on appearences. Aside from the sawtooth doors, the F22 and F35 don’t really strike anyone as having a ‘distinctively stealthy’ appearence, but there is no doubting that they are ghosts on the radar.

Well, the F-16 similarly has a naturally low RCS, although I doubt this was originally by design (correct me if I’m wrong). Later on, some RCS-reduction measures were taken on the F-16, which includes the visible metallic film on its canopy (hence the gold tint). While some aircraft have such a feature in order to shield the crew from strong electromagnetic radiation, in the case of the F-16 it trades the high RCS of the cockpit area (due to the pilot, ejection seat, HUD, etc.) for the relatively low RCS of the canopy’s otherwise radar-transparent form. Although this is one of the most obvious RCS-reduction measures, it apparently was not applied to the J-10 for some reason (it doesn’t have to be gold-tinted, but the J-10’s canopy looks totally clear). The fact that evidently more could have been done naturally makes me question how much effort was put into reducing the J-10’s RCS.

Well there is actually pictures of the PLAAF experienting with tinted canopies some time ago, as can be seen with this J11 pic.

So the PLAAF likely rejected the idea either because it was not deemed to be effective enough to justify the cost, or it could be that the material was not up to standard. Although the later is not very likely was it would never have been tested on an actual jet if it was not deemed strong enough to start with.

It is also possible that they only just developed the tech, and it will be applied in the future.

However, tinted canopies is just a minor issue when it comes to stealthiness, there are many other factors that will effect the plane’s RCS and judging a plane’s RCS just on tinted windows is not very sensible.

Certainly not true, this has clearly unbalanced you a bit.

I see you are letting your own feelings cloud your judegment as usual then.

I was under the imprresion from reading on many other boards that the Chinese shootdown of a Sat was seriously stupid in that it left debris in orbit thats a hazard for other stuff up there (including the martians!), now as i understand it or have been led to understand the US shootdown will be differant in that the Sat is almost re-entering therefore the debris itself should basically all burn up therefore not making a huge debris cloud thats lethal to anything it might encounter. Someone please chip in and correct me if i’m wrong!

You are going to be leaving a lot of debris in space even if the target is in low orbit because the force of the strike, be it explosive or kenetic, is going to send bits flying in all directions and some of that will no longer be re-entering the atomosphere immediately.

Past US and Russian/USSR ASAT tests were carried out in low orbit, but the last piece of orbiting debris did not come down until 1994 iirc.