danrhThe Virginia class always looked lightly armed with all that empty deck space fore and aft, but really had a very good weapons capability.
I think the Aegis equipped variant was going to be called the Typhon?
Virginia class info and not very good pics here http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/cgn-38.htm
The Typhoon was an earlier TVM SAM that was abandoned on cost grounds in favour of the “safer” Standard missile.
Daniel
danrhOh no, they actually did very well. Yet their days are practically over.. Who knows what might happen to stealth aircraft or other concepts by 2050.
Um so what was your point then? Why bring up these aircraft and a design philosophy that was very successful as an analogy aimed at denigrating a current design philosophy? Were you trying to say that eventually “stealth” designs will be compromised by the the progress of the aeronautical state of the art? Thats something of a given. We aren’t, after all, still getting around in Sopwith Camels or Fokker DR.1s. However the F/A-22 is not supposed to be a one trick pony. LPI radar, powerful active ECM, IR signature reduction, supercruise, extreme maneuverability, US weapons range and it all fits into the US network of force multipliers (AWACS, EW support, JSTARS, AAR). The aircraft should remain useful and even a dangerous opponent even should “stealth” prove to be a paper tiger.
Daniel
DISCLAIMER – Okay, I have been reading this thread. Don’t feel compelled to trot out all the stuff from previous posts about how Raptor is not maneuverable, has no radar advantage etc etc. Basically I’m just saying what the USAF and Lockheed say the Raptor should do. Obviously a lot of folks don’t beleive it can and that is your right. I can’t prove it can do all this stuff (I’m also not so naive to beleive its does everything as well as they say either), but also don’t believe that there is the information available in the public arena to disprove it. We are left with our opinions/prejudices. Cheers 🙂
danrhIt is a different approach in the first place, its roots going deep into early 80s.
Stealth ain’t necessarily a definitely sound concept, as well. It is an approach that might turn out well, or might not, as long as new target detection systems are being developed.
Look at the 70s where everyone was eager to build anything with swept wings. Russkies, Yanks, French, Euros, they all went crazy in seeing the swept angles as ultimate solution for all flight regimes. F-111, F-14, Su-24, MiG-23, Su-17, Mirage G-8, Tornado, B-1, Tu-22M, Tu-160, where are they all now?
Um what are you saying? That all these aircraft didn’t give long term sterling service to their operators?
F-111 entered service in the lates sixties. Had a rocky start but matured into one the USAF’s most important strike aircraft. Finally retired by the US in the late ninties, still in RAAF service.
F-14 entered service in the early seventies was the protector of the fleet for thirty plus years, only just being pulled from service after spending the last ten years as a long range striker.
Su-24 the best of the Soviets strike aircraft to see service. Proved popular with export customers. Still in service and receiving upgrades with some operators.
MiG-23 finally gave the Soviets a realistically sized and costed aircraft with decent payload range figures and a powerful radar. Still in service but would have to be considered as generally past it although there are upgrades out there that would restore it to adequate comparitive standard in temrs of paper capability (probabaly not a justifiable expense though as the longevity of the overall engine/airframe system is questionable)
Su-17 not a bad aircraft. Certainly lifted the Su-7 design from a waste of ramp space to something that could be used in a meaningful manner. Still in limited service.
Mirage G-8 okay this one didn’t go anywhere.
Tornado what exactly is wrong with this one? Entered service in 1979 and will still be serving for many years to come.
B-1. Okay well this B-1 MKII. The VG high speed high altitude penetrator became the VG high speed low altitude penetrator. A very capable aircraft with many years of service ahead of it.
Tu-22M a powerful foe. The long portrayed as the major foe of the US CVBG (at least by all those who prefer to fight wars at 500kts rather than 5kts and underwater 🙂 ) Both India and China are still interested in getting thier hands on this one.
Well the Tu-160 just suffered a case of bad timing. The collapse of the Soviet Union killed its funding. Remains the heaviest bomber ever and is a truly awesome machine.
Sure the aerospace world has moved on from VG but a technology that contributed to the aircraft employing it being the most effective in the world for 30 years is no failure. Sure sensors tecnologies will eventually surpass “stealth” but in the meantime its a useful boost. The design of such aircraft as the F/A-22 and F-35 just goes to show that the US recongnises that stealth is not everything. These aircraft are intended to have advantages in many different areas and not just rely on the power of reduced RCS to get them through.
Daniel
danrhWeapons – only AIM-120C-5 so far, not vastly superior to MICA or R-77. Inferior to R-37, Meteor and RVV-AE-PD not counted now.
Um not quite sure what you’re saying here. R-37, Meteor and RVV-AE-PD can’t be considered because they are not inservice and by the time they are so will the AIM-120D?
BVR IR guided missiles totally lacking.
Well it would be interesting to see just how effective such systems will be in a real war. The theory certainly looks good but hey this thread is full of folks rubbishing theoretical capabilities without proof to back the theory up 🙂
AIM-9X are only a catch up onto Python and R-73/R-74 family. Weapons are actually a BIG drawback of the whole F/A-22 system, being inadequate to its overall superiority concept.
Well talking about theory again but as we all know the reduced RCS and other masking technologies of the F/A-22 design is supposed to erode the capabilities of the oppositions weapons systems so if that works then the F/A-22 does and its wepaons do have a significant level of superiority.
Daniel
danrhOne must congratulate Lockheed for having an extremely good PR-department. Normally, you would start a tender and buy the cheapest and best solution according to the outcome of that tender. But Lockheed has managed to twist this by telling everyone that they’ll have this ultra-super-duper-fighter on the market if you just wait a little bit more. And oh, they want you to pay a little amount to be able to participate in the program.
This is absolutely brilliant. The danes might end up with a down-graded export variant of an overweight, overpriced and delayed JSF. And there is nothing they can do about it since they’ve put a lot of money into it already.
The funny thing is that they don’t really understand that just as superior JSF will be in 15 years, the UCAV will be in 30 years.
The amount invested is not really all that much. IIRC Australia’s contribution has been $A100million while the Government is projecting a budget of $A6BILLION for the eventual new fighter. Given that Australian companies have already done pretty well out of the SDD phase contracts it worth it even if the Government should decide not to buy the F-35 (unlikely).
Daniel
danrhThe F-16 went from level flight, to past 100 degrees AOA, then returned to level flight. How is that NOT a Cobra?
No you had it right in your previous post, American pilot, American plane. 😉
Daniel
danrhMy sentiments exactly but apparently they’ve got them. My first thought when I read it (AW&ST and a couple other place) was “well how come I can still see the fire then? Which means it’s most likely upstream of the afterburner.
They would be intended to mask the turbine blades just as the shaped intakes mask the compressor blades so upstream of the afterburners for sure.
Daniel
danrhI’v read that the Virginia class CGNs had a helicopter hanger built into their sterns. Was this a success? I’v never seen pictures of these ships operating helos………and it’s allways been my opinion that these ships were retired too early………I would have loved to have seen these ships rebuilt/modernized with AEGIS and VLS………
Yes they did but apparently the hangar leaked and was largely unusable. Hence they rarely(if ever) embarked helos.
We had a discussion of this class earlier in the year on the Harpooners Point Forum
They really were nice ships but I like the Kidds myself. All the same systems but actually affordable 😉 .
Daniel
danrhBut perhaps Turkey can bring back the competition, since russian and western types are seen as equally good options.
The A-129 has good chances this time, it has matured into a more capable helicopter from the previous early models and now Italy has upgraded the old airframes into the more fearsome looking A-129 Mangusta International standards.
Once i read that the Mi-28N already is in production for the Russian air force
so perhaps the Mi-28N and the AUgusta will be face each other to win the Turkish order
Hmm is production for Russian orders actually confirmed? has the money been allocated. All I can find are statements like this
In mid-September, Russia announced that the Mi-28N attack helicopter was ready for series production and that first metal would be cut at the Rostov-on-Don plant very soon. The first production model helicopter will be flown in mid 2005 and, in the second half of that year, will be delivered to the Russian Air Force. By 2008 (2010 by some estimates), 50 Mi-28N helicopters are expected to be in service. Ultimately, the Russian Air Force wants 300 Mi-28Ns by 2012, at which point the current force of modernized Mi-24PN helicopters will gradually be withdrawn from service.
and
The Russian Air Force has plans to procure up to 50 of this variant, to be delivered by 2010.
These all talk about plans. According to the first quote the first aircraft should delivered in the next months or so. Any word on progress?
As I said, unless the Russians buy these aircraft in sufficient numbers to support the productioneffort and establish a strong support base then other nations are unlikely to risk purchasing a platfrom that may end up as an orphan with poor aftermarket support.
The Tiger seems perhaps more limited to achieve export sales than the A-129 Mangusta
Well the Tiger does already have export orders from Australia and Spain.
The Mangusta does however appear to have lent quite a bit of its design to the Chinese WZ-10 effort if most of the speculative images doing the rounds are anything to go by.
Daniel
danrhReposting the link to Su-30MKI owns the Raptor and everyone knows it!!!!! video.
Way to prove me right, merrikan dictator.
Oh I’m convinced. 🙂 The quality of the arguments around here is just skyrocketing. Not, of course, that we can really make any concrete argruments because unfortunately Governments and Militaries have this annoying habit of not been open and clear about thier latest and greatest toys.
You can read all of that in any decent history of the Blackbird.
Ah but that would be a history written by one of those American types right? We all know you can’t trust a word they say. Give me some open and honest Europeans, Russians or Chinese anyday 😉
As I already said I don’t think we can prove much in this debate short of a war happening(not that combat ever seems to quiet the true faithful either). I’d just like to make a few small musings.
1) The F/A-22 is claimed to be an all aspect reduced RCS (stealth) design.
2) The F-35, it has been admited, will concentrate on frontal RCS reduction with all aspect being a case of whatever we can manage in the budget.
3) The has been quite a bit of speculation about the a second tier F-35 with less RCS reduction for export customers. There has been some roundabout confirmation that this may be case from some of those export customers (Australian ministers have been questioned about it and the UK has apparently made a bit of noise on the subject)
4) Despite the above the F-35 looks set to be chosen ahead of the Typhoon and Rafale for a large block of nations. Now part of the reason for this pure economics, who wouldn’t want a part of a program to produce 2000+ high tech aircraft. Still most of the airforces involved seem very positive about the aircraft, although once again the word interoperability often features highly. Still the Typhoon would likely be sufficiently interoperable with the US with all of the prime operators hold large stores of US weapons that will likely be cleared for the aircraft and all the operators are NATO members. Similarly amongst the nations signed up to the SDD phase there has been quite some whinging and whinnig about lack of workshare etc and threats to leave the program but as yet no one has. Obviously the carrot worksahre in the actual production program is still a big carrot but one must still wonder if there is something that perhaps we don’t know about the capabilities of these aircraft. Then again maybe we do “know” but just can’t prove it.
Daniel
danrhOK with me..
Actaully it’s called bricks, not cubes. Bricks are already a bit obsolete, they are basically 8-node elements of lower order and later 20-node for higher order elements (Higher order means you got one mode between the *corners* of the *cube* so that you can copy the shape a bit more accurately without the need to refine your mesh.)
Tetrahedrons have conquered the world since several years. Bricks had one serious drawback, they required the mesh to be set as sweep or at least mapped, that was a serious flaw after IGES imports from CAD started to replace FEA-internal geometry. Tetras are well suited for irregular meshes which (even if some hard core fanatics find it hard to swallow) are fit for almost all 3D applications.
Aaaarrghh. make it stop. 😉 All this talk of finite elements is taking me back to Uni. Not my happy place.
You last sentence says it all. Turbojets cannot handle supersonic flow, ramjets can, so there is no way to compare these two.. So the ASALM argument is useless this time. I am still not aware of any air-breathing machine wiith fixed intake that is able to go over M 2.0.
Well ramjets have to slow the intake air to below supersonic speeds for combustion. That why the SCRamjet (Supersonic Combustion Ramjet) is such a big deal.
Daniel
danrhApart from the hot gas ingestion problem, I think the seperate lift jet is better than a shaft driven lift fan. I would have thought that a lift jet would be cheaper, lighter, more powerful and easier to maintain than a shaft driven lift fan installation, but the JSF program seems to think otherwise.
Anyway, lets get back to talking about aircraft carriers.
Although the proposed Chinese ultra large aircraft carrier might not be a match for a USN carrier battle group in combat, it could still sail the worlds oceans at leisure showing the world the future potential of China. It would be a powerful political and diplomatic weapon at least.
But not an actual military weapon 😉 And rather overkill for the sort of humanitarian type work the harrier carriers get used for.
Daniel
danrhOK, nobody seems that impressed by the advanced STOVL Yak fighter idea so far, but have a think about this possibility.
China and Russia get together to develop the STOVL Yak, it is armed with the latest weapons they can produce and has decent performance and capabilities.
China begins building a fleet of low cost, basic design aircraft carriers based on ultra large cargo ships capable of operating 100+ Yaks.
Although still not a match for the full capabilities of the USN, China has dramatically shifted the balance of power in the Pacific with relatively little effort.
Well unless they build a lot more Type 052C/Ds and build up thier ASW capabilities these carriers will be just so many deepwater reef’s 😀
Daniel
danrhLMAO@U!!!!!!!!!!!.
F-22 pulling the cobra? F-15 doing the same? Puh-leeeeeeese. :rolleyes:
Anybody ever google this particular thing. Looks like every aviation related forum on the planet has its own “can the F-22 do the Cobra” thread. So much time wasted on something of such little consequence 🙂
Daniel
danrhNo chance the Electra could EVER approach the Bear. The difference in speed is too obvious this time 😉
But the spear could be a somewhat unexpected surprise for any attacker.
Actually its an Orion (Mighty Hunter 😉 ) But yeah you’re right of course the Bear has a significant performance advantage.
Daniel
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