I would think Spey is more fuel efficient at cruising speed. And frankly, I don’t know what exactly is the internal fuel JH-7A.

The internal fuel of the F-14 is 9000 litres, while the JH-7’s would be around 6500 litres according to Raygun from his post here: http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=55768&page=4. With 2 280 gallon drop tanks the F-14’s fuel capacity jumps to 11000 litres. Even if the figure for the JH-7A’s fuel load is short by 1000 litres, attaining that kind of range with that kind of load just doesn’t seem plausible at all, even with more fuel efficient engines. In fact, the more one looks at the figures, the more ridiculous the 1650km combat radius with 6500 kg payload claim sounds.

A F-14A Tomcat with 8 Mk83s and 2 280Gallon drop tanks (about 4500kg total payload) has a combat radius of only 405nm, but a JH-7A has a combat radius of 890nm with a 6500kg payload? Doesn’t smell quite right.

Several SAMs are designed with the F-22 and F-117 in mind, the F-117 has proven it is not the thing advertized that is the reason they will retire it because if that aircraft were so good it could be kept flying another 20 years more.

Do you not know how to read? The F-117 was retired because of cost reasons. It is an old aircraft with 1st generation stealth. meaning that maintenace costs are too high to justify when a very capable replacement exists in the F-22.

RAM is what perhaps is the most promising materials however energy in one way or other will be reflected, RAM can not allow you to be stealthy to all frecuencies, in fact RAM is limited too, so at the end an stealth aircraft still reflects radiation and can not absorb 100% all radiation because in one way or other quantum mechanics will betray it in other ways.

Nobody said a Lo aircraft is Lo in all frequencies. But if you know the limitations that low frequency radars have, then you’d not be so quick to deride ‘stealth’. It is evident that you do not.

This means there is no thing called stealth, what the americans call stealth is what they think the enemy has and what the enemy can detect with their radars and that was proven wrong when the Serbs detected their F-117 with old radars and destroyed it with an old missile

:rolleyes: Still trying hide from the fact that all other missions taken by the F-117, a first generation stealth aircraft, were successful huh?

I don’t really see why bistatic or multistatic would cost so much. You are already putting in a network of monostatic arrays. True, the location of each array in the multistatic network needs to be very precise, but that can be dealt with satellite position. Of course this is far from a mature technology, but it is a very promising one, and we will leave that with the actual researchers. Studies like the one you quoted, may have a political motivation—you certainly don’t want to have the Congress know about the vulnerability of your baby, that won’t make you look good when it comes to lobbying for budgets. Thus I want to leave USAF studies out of it in the meantime, because there is a conflict of interest. China has looked both at metric radars and multistatic ones and fair to say, it has implemented the former, and starting to apply the latter, and for certain, they are giving the latter much serious study and development.

So just because the studies may be politically motivated they are to be disregarded? When you have no proof to suggest so? If their studies proved instead that they were vulnerable would you have then taken it as an attempt to squeeze more money out of congress instead of using it as proof to support your position?

Both fiberoptics or high speed datalinks to link stations should not be a problem, given today’s technology. ECM is always a problem but that’s the same if you have monostatic radars. It’s a constant.

There are other technologies. For example, AESA allows for sharper beam and this can allow for a brute ‘death ray’ solution to a low RCS target. I mean hit it with such focus and intensity that a reflection is inescable. VLO is never perfect, which is why at closer ranges it is detectable. All it does is greatly reduce detection by range, which means there is always some radiation that escaped design intentions and head back to the reciever’s position. But what if we focus the beam so that the radiant energy is equivalent to that of the radar in shorter ranges? Solid state emitters can also scan on a much wider variety of frequencies, and it’s hard to counter for all the frequencies bcause essentially, VLO is trying to optimize against certain wavelengths, and you cannot have a jack of all trades, master of none design against all wavelengths.

There is also large jumps in the way thermal and optical imaging have improved too. Nowadays, thermal CCDs are so good, you can make out photographic images of objects in a cold environment like the dead of winter.

Detractors of stealth are often as taken in with the stealth hype as stealth’s most ardent supporters. Stealth is but one of a whole bag of measures used to increase survivability. It is not used in isolation. Fans of anti-stealth technology often cite PCL, low freq and Bistatic radars etc as their holy grail. They may, or may not work against stealth. But what do they achieve even if they do work? Mere detection without fire control track quality? Stealth isn’t ‘neutralised’ just because stealthy platforms can be detected. If it reduces the system reaction time by delaying detection, then it has worked.

More importantly than that, these concepts can be neutralised by other means. As BDF said, jamming is one of them. Network invasion is the refined form that has now come into play. The USAF has been been forthright about having this capability for some time, though details are very little. These will stand beside stealth as just one among many inside the bag of tricks available to the US in defeating an enemy defense system.

The same argument can be said about your sweeping comment that China must loose in the race toward mastery of Space As anything else defense is directly related to economy Yes US still has the largest defense budget in the world but to assume that China will fight to the strength of US military is a fallacy If you are weaker you try to exploit your opponent vulnerability

America has both the expertise and the resources to dominate space as they do the sea. All they needed was the resolve. Which the recent Chinese test helped them get. You think that with China’s budget and current technical expertise China can win America in a race to dominate space?

Yeah secret weapon

What. You thought China’s the only one which develops systems secretly? :rolleyes: How long was it before the F-117’s existence was brought to light?

Don’t give me experimental weapon They never worked as advertised

Oh ho? The JSTARs worked very well even though it was still pretty experimental in ODS. Heck, even the chinese shootdown of the satellite was conducted by an experimental weapon.

If China attacks US the Japanese way, then at the end of it all there won’t be a China left to talk about. This incident will likely see America accelerate a couple of programs.

1. The TACSAT program
2. Near-space lighter than air platform developments
3. The SLIRBM to give a rapid strike capability to take out the radars which plot the satellite’s path.
4. Other satellite defenses which are not publicly mentioned.

China has started a space-based arms race which it won’t win.