From the top of my head, Argentina, Nigeria, Portugal, Turkey, Greece, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have ordered MeKo vessels over the past two decades.

Cherrios,

King Jester

oops forgot about the South Africans. Also the Malaysians have signed for A-100s.

Daniel

As for FBW, I am not aware of any Japanese designed one

Um the F-2 FBW was developed indigenously after the US refused to release the F-16 codes. The system used a modified T-2 as the development aircraft.

Daniel

I could make these graphs. They look good, but they can be as wrong as anything else. Just give the wing area, weight and engine setting. Additionally a drag model (either generic or derived from manual) and a lift model. The rest is simple physics and static analysis. They still don’t have a clue about dynamic performance, they can just try to come close to reality by “flight testing” their simulator.

However, if available data and some educated guesses are put together by people who are dedicated to reality rather than arcade-mode performance, the result may be very powerful. As long as you don’t take it too serious on details (don’t check for high AoA behaviour or post departure characteristics).

Well this data could very well be from the manufacturer. After all in the interests of marketing all sorts of stuff gets put out in the public domain. But the thing is it might be only for a clean aircraft and mean nothing for an aircraft conducting operations. It could be with stores but only a single loadout. Anything beyond that one situation represented by that one curve and the guesses start coming in. From that point things become subjective and people prejudices start to come into play. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve wanted to tell people to go test out their theories in Harpoon but unfortunately until we have the actual manufacturers and operators build the database for us then it would still be pointless because there is very little un-biased data out there in the un-classified realm. Even things like pilot interveiws, de-briefs etc have to be taken with a grain of salt. Consider the comments of folks in the justice system about the reliabilty of “eye-witnesses” and then tell me just how objective a pilot can be about the aircraft that he just flew into a turning and burning air battle. I’m not saying they would be lying or just un-observant but when it comes to generating PoKs and other numbers that can be crunched by sims its just not going to be there. How often have we had a media release from a manufacturer or operator about how well their product/platform did in a sim or exercise and then had pages long discussions about why the result was invalid 🙂

Incidently the pop-up attack maneuvre exhibit by your Kh-31A is not a new thing, the maneuvre is intended to throw off CIWS’s and is employed by other systems as well. A quick google for “Kh-31 pop up” will produce a number of results. The use of ARMs to clear the way for other plaforms/weapons is also a well established tactic, it being the purpose for which the weapon class was designed.

Daniel

Using the mission builder on Lock-On 1.12, I made an interesting experiment. Remember this is a game, results may not reflect real life. But interesting nonetheless.

I set up two flights of fighters, one flight of F-16C and another one of F-18C/D, all setup for SEAD.

Against them is an S-300 battery. I set the distance at far.

As the fighters head to the battery, the S-300 radar managed to pick up them. Before the fighters can even approach AGM-88 launch range, the S-300 battery is unloading every missile into the air, and a swarm of 5V55 missiles is already heading to the fighters just as the fighters began dropping their HARMs.

The missles would nail a few of the fighters, though most of them would escape doing all sorts of barrel rolls and other maneuvers will throwing chaff and flares into the air.

The HARMs would nail the S-300 FCS radar, Flap Lid or Tombstone, although the S-300 search radar would escape because it would have long shut itself off once it’s purpose was done and all the missiles were spent. Useless to use HARMs on the TELs with empty cannisters as these have no radar to guide on, the surviving planes would use Mavericks on them, or even try to strafe them with gunfire.

Tried another variation. This time I ring the S-300 battery with Tors, Iglas, Strelas, Shilkas and Tunguskas. I wanted to see which point defense system would nail the most fighters.

Once again, the pattern repeated itself. A few fighters lost in exchange for a Flap Lid. The point defense systems don’t seem to intercept enough of the HARMs anyway to stop the Flap Lid from getting blown up. As the surviving fighters rush to finish off the rest of the battery with Mavericks, they were greeted by the Tors suddenly lighting up their radars and a bunch of 9M330s vertically launching then arching towards the attacking fighters. The air was lit up with small SAMs and AA fire. Suffice to say, while a few more vehicles were destroyed, it was a torrid exchange for a few more dead fighters. I have to add that the Tors are pretty lethal, and killed more of the attackers than any other system, once I tallied the results from the debriefment.

I think thats a bit of a stretch as far as useful eveidence. I mean I have seen similar results in harpoon 3 but then again I know and work with the guy who has created the adatbase that the results are based on and so I know how many assumptions are in there. Unfortunately all commercial games (even the militarys own simulators etc) are based on what someone thinks the enemy’s system is capable of. Hell systems are developed based on what we think the enemy can do. Sure espionage and our own science can help establish performance expectations etc but come on how often are we wrong. ( “We” being a collective type of we from the us (not U.S.) v them line of thought and not being any particular nation or grouping of nations 🙂 ) The US claims the B-2, F-117A, F-22A, JSF fleet etc can penetrate heavily defended airspace and employ an array of weaponary to take down enemy defences and other targets. Various other folks claim to have developed various countermeasures to these systems. We won’t really know who is right until we have a really big nasty war and even then there will likely be mixed results depending on local differences that proponents of one side or the other will happily ignore to make their little points.

Daniel

Interesting, under the terms of the Naval ships and establishment naming commity, HMAS Australia is to go to a major fighting unit, and one would have thought that the new LHD’s were just that., this only leaves me to susspect that we will soon also have a propper carrier with said name and carrying F-35B’s.

Any comments Dan?

We may simply be choosing not to create a huge psychological target. The US has from time to time mooted the naming of a vessel (usually a carrier) the United States but its generally been decided against since the loss of the USS US would be a great blow to national morale. Plus the history of the United States name is probably not to popular with the last two vessels slated to carry the name cancelled mid build 🙂

Daniel

Forgive me 😮 , this may sound stupid 😮 , but what about a customized version of the Raptor for Japan. Airframe and F119-PW-100 of the Raptor, but RADAR, FBW, Weapons etc, etc be Japanese. Raptor which can fire AAM-4, AAM-5, ASM-#??

Given the integrated nature of many of the F-22As system I imagine such a course would be pretty much akin to reinventing the wheel. It would cost great hulking piles of money, re-introduce a great deal of risk and take a long time. Frankly I hope that the Japanese have learnt better from the F-2 debacle and that they hold out for some other quid pro quo to balance the ledger rather than screwing up a perfectly good aircraft.

Daniel

I’d be surprised if there was so much as a single ROOM in the world sitting 2km under ground let alone a friggin’ FACTORY. You going to have roads and rail lines going 2km underground too to supply this thing or were you going to dig a tunnel and use submarines? :rolleyes:

Well given that is not uncommon to site this sort of facility in mountainous terrain it is quite possible to have 2km of rock overhead without even tunnelling down 🙂 I don’t suppose we could avoid this becoming another episode of the Garry and Sferrin show?

Daniel