I guess it would be smaller and without internal weapons bay (which is great, but only useful for nuclear strike) and more reliance on external fuel. On the end of the day, it would look like a Tornado (tandem seating) with a bit more length& volume, possibly with fixed conical inlets. And hopefully someone had corrected the afterbody engine exhaust integration.
The key advantage of the F-111 is its engine and the higher internal fuel volume (which comes with a price in complexity).
Aerodynamic shortcomings on the Suchoi 24 (wing fences, no leading edge devices) surely had its share, too.
It has leading edge devices, see them
some variants had no wing fences
The Tornado was not a design better than the F-111, probably equal to the Su-24 in some flight envelopes and in performance parameters slightly superior, but in producibility still not as good as the Su-24, the Su-24 still outproduced the Tornado 2:1
in fact besides range and speed these three aircraft are basicly the same concept without any real advantage over each other beyond range and payload
If you want a superior design only the Su-34 is a generation ahead followed by the Su-30 and F-15E, but only the Su-34 is a superior machine.
in fact the Europeans made the same mistake the american did with the F-111 they made a strike aircraft a fighter in the Tornado ADV, it was not a Su-30 niether a F-15E it is just a strike aircraft with air to air missiles, in fact a MiG-23/MiG-27 concept with better payload but less agility
I am working my way down towards the validity of your statements.
The mentioned aircraft all have look-down radars and can easily follow the aircraft in some altitude. Besides, at deck the Suchoi will hardly hit Mach 1. A continued run at Mach 1 on the deck will let it die on fuel exhaustion.
The main reason why no Suchoi 24 was ever lost in combat was that it never saw combat comparable to the F-111 (Lybia, Iraq) or Tornado (Iraq, Serbia).
With the little disadvantage that their aircraft needed ages to maturity, the Suchoi 24 entered service over 10 years after design was begun.
That the mainstay of the Soviet air force attack aircraft (Su-17/22) ist “basically the same model” as the first generation supersonic Suchoi 7 is surprising.
Stuff your F-117 story. It doesn’t fit here.
The Suchoi 24 was surely no “simple aircraft”. Although I agree that Western aircraft are often over-sophisticated for particular missions, the Suchoi 24 was a complex and expensive bird. Good indicator of its complexity is the long time needed to make it operational. Would be interesting though to compare the avionics capability of a 1975 Fencer “A” versus an F-111F or F-111D.In general the Suchoi 24 was the F-111 minus advanced engines and about 8 to 10 years later.
The German air force have not procured any American fighter aircraft after the F-4F. Maybe you see a pattern that led from Starfighter over VAK-191 over NKF to Tornado.
Actually, the Australian bought their F-111 in the 1960ies (that is 40 years ago!). And you compare that with the present discount offer to Algeria? Man, you are really twisting reality.
The Su-24 as the F-111 suffered from low maintainability, the Su-24 Fencer A flew six year after the F-111, true but the F-111 was not ready when it was introduced in Vietnam and several were lost due to ” design problems” later to be redesigned and put into production much later remember the F-111 flew in 1964 as a fighter, in a role in which it failed miserably .
http://www.f-111.net/t_no_A.htm
Iraq bought its Su-24s in the 1980s.
in fact the F-111 became operational in reality only a year after the Su-24 made its first flight, in fact it flew exactly 38 years ago when the T6-2I performed its initial flight on 17 January 1970.http://www.vectorsite.net/avsu24.html
See this specifications sign for a Su-24 the weight is 39700kg and the max speed is 1400km/h and says it became operational only three years after the F-111 really did it in 1974
The trick with variable geometry intakes is the control of the shockwaves. An intake that works best at Mach 1.3 may encounter severe difficulties at higher Mach numbers. All aircraft that started with variable geometry intakes and later got those fixed lost their Mach 2 capability, so for example the Tornado, the F-14 and the Starfighter, all with similar or more installed static thrust. The Tornado hardly makes it over M1.3 with the inlets fixed.
I am inclined to think the Su-24 has a max speed of Mach 1.35 since the vast majority of sources have that speed quoted as the max speed.
in fact i think most likely it is the max speed and i am 99% sure the speed is Mach 1.35 however the 1% i am not sure i think it is possible the speed is around 2100km/h and think there is a small probability the Ukranian air force meant the Su-24 can fly that speed and the reason is as you said it might encounter problems we do not know really if the inlet will not work well or simply sukhoi recommends that speed to increase the operational life of the Su-24.
The Range is something that still baffles me because i think it is a fact it wil fly 2775km with two external fuel tanks.
If it flies 3800km well i do not know if it is true or not but i do not think is not possible.
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