Kilcoo316

Man facts are shown in real life and in that the Su-27 and MiG-29 have done it, i will give you a few real and hard facts:

Again Mig – go take an aircraft in a sustained high g turn (which usually occur in dogfights), draw yourself a force diagram and tell me which one will bleed the most energy.

You cannot argue with physics, however many examples of post-stall manouvres you want to throw up.

One thing that should be made clear – TVC is no substitute for good aerodynamic control.

When in a turning dogfight, you want all the thrust you have pushing you forward (high energy states), you don’t want to bleed it off with a 20 deg thrust vector manouvre.

Alot of people in here are disregarding canards on the basis of TVC – whereas a canard equipped aircaft will still have a better sustained turn performance than an elevator equipped one (all other things being equal).

(Note that similar results can be achieved in a relaxed stability tailed airplane).

Agreed – until you get to manouvering, then you need to produce that downward force to pitch nose up again.

I’m not so sure a canard would improve your range though (compared with a RSS aircraft) – it will have a bigger wing for manouvering = more fuel volume, a lower cruise wing loading = less induced drag (assuming consistent aspect ratio).

[Note, I’m reasonably certain the use of the canard to produce lift in steady level flight is absolutely minimal]

Since there was some chit-chat about nozzles having IR suppression, this bumped into my mind.

From the documentary: WEB of SECRECY YF-23 BLACK WIDOW II DECLASSIFIED

Erm, all very nice, but them tiles aren’t gonna do a thing for reducing the IR signature out the back.

The YF-23 tries to mix as much of the hot exhaust with cool ambient flow above the aircraft – to reduce the IR signature as seen from the ground.

Normally sweeping curves etc are good, however, sometimes the straight edge and brute ignorance look cannot be beaten.

Case in point – Spitfire – looked great, but took ages to build (due to all those lovely curves) and was inferior in many ways to the much more straighforward FW-190.

As distiller mentions, supersonics are a different realm altogether – but even with experience, shock interactions are nigh-on impossible to predict accurately without detailed work. 🙂

Why not? A flight of 4 Raptors carries 32 SDBs. That would require at least 4 Tunguskas, assuming each has the time to engage the SDBs in sequence, which would not be the case. This also assumes no jamming by the Raptor/any other asset.

So, if the ZSU can engage any target within 5 miles (quite conservative), that gives it around 2 1/2 mins (see my earlier estimation) to deal with 8 fixed path gliders each.

I’d take those odds. (around 20 seconds a SDB, or going at 4,000 rds/min approx 1,000 rds per SDB – thats alot of lead in the air).

because the F-22 is far more survivable, silly. And there aren’t that many targets that can be afforded so heavy protection, not without stripping protection from other targets to an unacceptable level.

4 ZSUs with each S-400 battery sounds pretty realistic to me.

Besides, if the airspace is blanketed with jamming and covered in support aircraft, I don’t see how the F-22 is more survivable than an F-15E.

F-22s carry 8 SDBs each, are capable of self escort

What, with 2 sidewinders each? 4 aircraft = 8 SDBs and 8 sidewinders… hardly significant self escort. 🙂

and are capable of jamming with their AESA radars.

True, wonder what an anti radiation missile would make of their jammers though… 😉

Not as many platforms are needed as with non-stealthy aircraft, which require fighter sweep escorts and heavy jamming for them all, as well as additional tanking assets for the rest of the aircraft.

Again, broadly correct, if 2 factors are true:

1. The stealth aircraft can get close enough to launch their weapons without being detected

2. The stuff they launch can actually get to the target and neutralise it

Tomahawks may be used against a VERY heavily defended site in order to saturate its defenses, since the Tomahawk’s low flight altitude cuts the engagement zones for SAMs drastically, claims made by S-400 proponents notwithstanding. (Oh its true, but what they don’t say is just how badly the S-400 engagement zones vs cruise missiles are cut)

I have no trouble believing that (SAM reaction time/engagement zones decimated by cruise missiles) – its even worse than sea-skimmers due to topology.

Again, how many sites can you afford to have these kind of defenses put up for?

Very much a question that would depend on the situation, I can’t even begin to answer that one.

i’m sorry, but you were the one who implied that the ZSU alone effectively made the SDB useless, not me.

:rolleyes:

No, it was crystal clear that this entire thread has been F-22 acting against S-300/S-400 type systems as a strike aircraft.

Thus, it was pretty obvious (at least, to me it was anyway) I was talking in the context of using SDBs against a point target defended by S-3/400s, and defending it with a multi-layered defence with a point defence system for shooting down close in targets.

And by any standard, an SDB is a damn easy target – slow, straight and at easy altitude.

The only thing it has going for it is small size.

As you have since acknowledged, the requirement support from other systems is required, otherwise they are effectively useless by themselves. Those systems, even if protected by Tunguskas themselves, can still be saturated.

Not by a SDB only strike unless you are talking massive amounts of aircraft within the strike package to get massive amounts of bombs in the air, as well as EW aircraft to beat back the radars somewhat etc etc.

Who is yammering on about needing support systems again?

Why not just do the strike with F-15Es and their attending jammers then?

In effect, no, they are not made invulnerable just because they have a ZSU covering them as you seem to foolishly believe.

Nothing is invunerable. Ever. Not even the F-22. No matter how much some on here would like that to be true.

Bottom line is this, a low-profile F-22 strike consisting of a few aircraft, launching a handful of SDBs at max range against a target with S-3/400 and ZSU defenses is much more likely to fail than it is to succeed.

If you need jammers – F22 is no addition to the strike package.
If you need overwhelming numbers and jammers – F22 is no addition to the strike package.
If you need Tommahawks – F22 is no addition to the strike package.

See what I’m getting at now?