ELPThe hype of the Super Hornet or F-35 is more important than fact… :dev2:
As Gomes paused to add more meat to his bowl, I asked him the question I’d put to others in Plymouth. Setting aside local pride, why elevate the Pilgrims to iconic status and ignore all the others who came to America before them?
Gomes responded by telling me about his appearance, some years ago, in a television debate with the owner of Berkeley Plantation in Virginia. Not only had Jamestown preceded Plymouth, the Virginian observed; documents showed that in 1619, colonists landing at nearby Berkeley had designated their arrival date a day of annual thanksgiving.
“This man was energetically anti-Yankee,” Gomes recalled. “So I decided magnanimity was the best response. I said, ‘Of course, the gentleman from Virginia is quite correct. But it doesn’t matter. Americans love us.’ “
I wasn’t sure I followed his argument. “So you’re saying we should honor myth rather than fact?” I asked.
“Precisely.” The reverend smiled benignly, as I imagined he might at a bewildered parishioner. “Myth is more important than history. History is arbitrary, a collection of facts. Myth we choose, we create, we perpetuate.”
“The story here may not be correct, but it transcends truth. It’s like religion–beyond facts. Myth trumps fact, always does, always has, always will.”
-Tony Horwitz, A Voyage Long and Strange, pg 387, John Murray Publishers
ELPPictures 5, 6 and 11 tell an interesting story (although 11 is heavily edited). If ALR-67(v)3 gets interferrometers, it could give ALR-94 a run for the money. Adversaries will bow to the capability of mode 1 and GBU-40.
Block II is already claiming some good geo location…. 😮
ELPHere are some unclas briefing slides from a USN test brief on APG-79 AESA / Super Hornet Block II capability.
One thing AESA does even if it didn’t have more performance, is produce less work for the avionics maintenance troops that don’t have to fiddle with a mechanical set as much. The jet is a airframe performance dog, but the avionics for the Block II are really good. The back seat on the Block II F is pretty amazing too. Good because of all of the information that the jet is presenting. The gear also timeshares on the AESA to where the crew don’t notice it if the front seater is in A2A mode and the back seater is in A2G.
(doing links so as not to choke someone’s internet connection)
Interesting slides when you read between the lines….
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee54/warpigelp/Picture1.png
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee54/warpigelp/Picture2.png
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee54/warpigelp/Picture4.png
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee54/warpigelp/Picture5.png
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee54/warpigelp/Picture6.png
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee54/warpigelp/Picture7.png
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee54/warpigelp/Picture8.png
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee54/warpigelp/Picture11.png
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee54/warpigelp/Picture9.png
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee54/warpigelp/Picture10.png
ELPThere is an upgrade kit being marketed for the Harpoon that gives it some land attack ability vs. fixed land targets. One must assume that this would include all the software to fly those kinds of missions. This is one of the reasons Israel was complaining of more marketing efforts of the Harpoon to Egypt not too long ago.
In order for something like this to be truly effective over long range it would need datalinking to back up GPS updating of the INS not unlike JASSM or Tomahawk IV. If the GPS signal was inhibited somehow over such a long range there is a big risk of the INS not being refreshed enough and therefore not being able to give you a useful CEP. A problem brought forward in JASSM tests in 2007. Of course if money is of no object there is always the option of backing up GPS for cruise missiles by giving them back route-terrain matching like early cruise missiles, or even star trackers.
ELPNeither the F-22 nor the F-35 is intended to replace the F-15E.
Yes, and no.
The F-22 is pure air dominance. The F-35 is pure multi-role. What role does the F-15E fill? Either? No. The -15E was and is a maturation of the orginal design that can do all things a little better than the orginal A/D versions of the Eagle. It is not a dedicated medium tactical striker or an air superiority aircraft. It’s a mix with 1990s tech.
The F-22 is definitely intended to take the F-15’s place in front-line air defence. The F-35 is definitely intended to assume all tactical, manned roles within the USAF. The F-15E will take a back seat to them (and UCAVs) in the future even as it serves another 20 years in the ANG/Reserves in good numbers.
There is no direct manned repalcement for the F-15E which was, blasphemolously, labeled as F-111 replacement. It isn’t and never was. That job is now in the hands of drones and long range bombers.
Are things as bad as they seem? Heck no. We are seeing some sizeable and fascinating changes in the way that aerial warfare is being conducted and built. Having 600 1960s-era B-52s? Sounds great but in today’s environment they can’t be maintained or equipped or made survivable enough to match the battlefield they will encounter. OT, but look at the changes in computer tech in just the last 5 years. Apply that to aerospace and aerial warfare and combined operations…………
Both the F-22 and F-35 are multi-role aircraft. The F-22 geared mostly toward air dominance and SEAD/DEAD. The F-35 devoted toward mostly air-to-ground with some air-to-air ability.
ELPBest regards!
ELPBest regards!
ELPAlso I wouldn’t crow about the Growler too much. Not until it gets the next gen jammer….
http://worldwidewarpigs.blogspot.com/2008/05/not-much-grrrrrr-for-growler.html
ELPDepends what you are shooting. Most destroyer sized targets would be mission killed by a 500lb er PGM… for example HART-JDAM from a Super Hornet with support jamming or what will probably happen HART-JDAM for F-35.
And if the radar on the warship doesn’t reach down into S-band for guidance help…. the F-35 may get close enough. SDBs in the form of SDB II or SDB I datalinked with the GMTI on JSF would also mission kill a fair variety of warships. Just because something is a warship doesn’t mean it can only be killed with only traditional anti-ship missiles. Especially today with the thin-tin warships. One hit would give you a mission-kill for most targets. Shake the computers enough, cut the electricity and that’s it. Enough to stop it from being a threat.
ELPHe was a good guy. Battleground and Cain Mutiny also…
ELPHe was a good guy. Battleground and Cain Mutiny also…
ELP“C- As soon as you started hanging all of the jamming pods on the F-35, it’d defeat the purpose of being VLO”
Why would you need to carry jamming pods on a stealth aircraft (the F-35), SAM radars would only see a “metal golf ball”, and they would be dead before they had time to react.
The best you can hope for in a pure stealth aircraft design not counting science fiction is to make an aircraft that is good for between 1~20 GHz frequency range. Inside that range covers just about every fire control radar there is…the radars that are trying to kill you by guiding weapons to you, but not lower freq. search radars. Fire control radars have to get more than a few returns to lock up a target. Stealth designs help to break up the consistency of those returns and keep the enemy from having a solid fire control solution. This is getting worse for stealth with some SAM systems as VHF tries its best to be a fire control solution to get a multi-seeker family of missiles close enough. Of course VHF is way below the Gigahertz line…
Something like a tailless design can give you the best near-all aspect stealth. But usually these designs don’t have good energy performance for the aircraft. (B-2, X-47 etc)
Add vertical tails to the aircraft and you get more of a bow tie coverage. Good on the front and the rear(F-22) and weaker stealth on the sides.
Add the fact that as LM stated in the F-117 shoot down that even a simple turn can reduce your radar cross section by 100 or more and you should be able to see that stealth is helpful but not everything. In the case of the F-22 they went for outrageous performance (height and speed) to help as a backup to adverse stealth events where you are naked.
As someone mentioned already, off board jamming is helpful for stealth aircraft. If a fire control radar is already getting beat down by jamming, trying to lock up a stealth aircraft is even more difficult.
Of course if the weather cooperates you have infra red search and track that can pick up a stealth aircraft after the aircraft that has IR search is guided to the general location by low band radars.
That is the simplistic explanation but it is a start.
Dr. Rebecca Grant, The Radar Game
http://www.irisresearch.com/radargame.html
Dr. Benjamin S. Lambeth, Kosovo and the Continuing SEAD Challenge
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj02/sum02/lambeth.html#lambeth
Doug Richardson, Stealth, Deception, Evasion and concealment in the air, 1989, First Edition, ISBN 0-517-57343-1
Tirpak, John, Where Next With Electronic Attack?, Air Force Magazine Online, October 2006, Vol. 89, No. 10 (last access Sep 2007 but seems to be a dead link now…)
Flachsbart, Brian M., A Robust Methodology to Evaluate Aircraft Survivability Enhancement Due to Combined Signature Reduction and Onboard Electronic Attack, Adobe Acrobat file, June 1997,Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA329367
ELPThe USN is not & has not been “so-so” in regards to the F-35C.
No they have just had a huge albatross hanging around their neck in the form of a corrupt and dysfunctional shipbuilding industry. Meanwhile they can fill in the aged legacy Hornets with something with a new car smell that is good enough if you aren’t fighting the Chicoms ( most scenarios ) in the form of the F-18E/F/G that is still pretty “cheap”, and about the safest, easy to fly jet to ever reach the flying squadrons. And well the USN has put off their F-35C schedule another year. Not really their fault when you think of all the stuff they have to pay for.
ELPIs this why the USN has been “so-so” in regards to the F-35C?
Because the feeding trough for the whoring politicos starts over in the shipbuilding isle. :diablo:
ELPGiven the budget climate, no one in the MOD is up for spending money on a high maintenance, manhour per flight hour aircraft. Assuming the F-35 proves itself the claim is good for low maintenance. Don’t know how that applies when you add the STOVL features into the mix. Probably wouldn’t be bad to have some CTOL F-35s also. The good old Tornado family comes from a different era. And if you can brief low operating cost on the future UK fighter roadmap, well… there you go.
Typhoon getting qualified with dual mode Enhanced Paveways and Paveway IV, a good proven pod, and ROVER and well a gun means it is ready to go for Operation: USELESS DIRT.
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