SlowMan1. Really?
Yes. If one of your customers junks the multi-million dollar jets half way through its life, that would be taken as the sign of dissatisfaction.
On the other hand, the ROKAF milked their twin engine jets past their due date, going 35 years and looking to hit 40 years of service.
The only reputation to be damaged would be that of the idiots who rejected it on irrational grounds.
The other air forces must not be so paranoia about their jets crashing into some densely populated area. The ROKAF is. Many pilots, including a number of USAF pilots, refused to bail out until the last minute to avoid crashing into populated areas. It is no accident that the F-35 got the lowest mark of three in the Korean F-X contest. Blame it on the single engine.
Japan too doesn’t like single engine jets; Japan originally wanted to do a twin engine version of F-16 as the F-2 program but gave in to the US pressure because the US was looking to create the Agile Falcon for free with Japanese footing the bill.
2. It’s not a state-owned product. It’s made by a private firm.
So you missed the news of the British prime minister touring the Middle East to market the private firm’s product(Typhoon jet) in person.
The lost revenue is small.
You make more money from maintenance service than the price of produce with military jets.
SlowManWhy would the British government care? You paid for ’em, they’re yours.
1. Loss of reputation.
2. Loss of service/maintenance revenue.
SlowManOK fine, I know little about South Korean politics so can we have some evidence that the F/A-18 was rejected due to bribes…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon_variants#KF-16
The F/A-18 Hornet had originally won the Korea Fighter Program (KFP) competition, but disputes over costs and accusations of bribery led the Korean government to withdraw the award and select the F-16 instead.
The bribery part is wrong. It was General Dynamics that spent some $200 million bribery including the dictator president to flip the decision, not McDonnell Douglas.
Doesn’t change the fact that they have inducted a serious number of single engine types without to much trouble.
And the ROKAF did not choose single engine jets when given a choice, and they did not choose the F-16.
If it was such a major issue why didn’t they go for a twin engine T-50?
T-50 was also twin-engined believe or not, until General Dynamics got involved. Supposedly less work was needed for single engine design than the twin engine design as they could recycle F-16 data and FBW. The ROKAF really really dislike single engine jets.
SlowManAlly??
That depends on how you define “ally”
India’s neutral toward everyone and has just two defined enemies; Pakistan and China.
SlowManDead against single engine jets? What about the Hawk they operate?
It was a temporary stop-gap measure until the arrival of T-50. All surviving Hawk jets are in the process of being scrapped and the UK government was actually protesting why the ROKAF was scrapping 15~17 year old jets. Of course the UK government didn’t understand the ROKAF’s dislike for single engine jets.
What about all those F-16 they operate?
The ROKAF chose the F/A-18C. The bribe-taking dictator president reversed the decision, and the F-16 remains the only single engine combat jet the ROKAF bought with its own money to date, and also the type with the highest loss rate. The other one is upcoming F/A-50, but this was “Take it or leave it” kind of deal with the MoD, and they took it because of all the retiring jets.
If given a choice, the ROKAF always goes with a twin-engine jet due to lack of space to crash the jets.
I think there is a flaw in your theory about their desire to purchase single engine jets…
Well, the current F-X contest originally REQUIRED twin engine, like previous two prior contests. It was only revised upon the US State Department’s protest to let the F-35 compete.
SlowManSouth Korean display team pilot killed in T-50B crash
CRAIG HOYLE LONDON 12:02 15 Nov 2012 Source:A South Korean air force pilot from the service’s Black Eagles aerobatic display team was killed when his Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) T-50B trainer crashed on 15 November.
The accident happened in the area of Hoengsong, about 48nm (90km) east of Seoul, with the aircraft having hit a mountainside, according to local media reports quoting the nation’s defence ministry. The Black Eagles aircraft had taken off from nearby Wonju air base.
The pilot reportedly stayed with his crippled jet until the last moment to avoid the civilian damages.
This T-50 crash has a consequence in the F-X, as the ROKAF is historically dead against single engine jets because of the population density, and serves as a reminder of why they cannot go with a single engine jet like the F-35.
SlowManRussian take on J-31.
http://english.pravda.ru/world/asia/14-11-2012/122803-stealth_technology_china-0/
China has recently tested its stealth fighter jet. The tests went well, although a question remains as to why Chinese engineers still use the previously popular technology. The stealth technology has been repeatedly proved ineffective experimentally.
It has long been known that the aircraft survivability in combat can be provided not only through armored plates installed on the body of the aircraft. It is possible to achieve the desired goal by duplicating its control systems, raising the speed and ensuring its invisibility – i.e. by masquerading aircraft against the earth and the sky. However, one can not say that it is the aviation industry that pays special attention to camouflage. For example, on the eve of World War II, Soviet fighter aircraft would be painted blue on the bottom, and green on the top. These colors used to be considered as camouflage.
However, the whole stealth technology was designed for the use of S-band enemy radars, for which these “invisible” aircraft are really hard to notice. However, Russia, and air defense forces of other countries now have VHF-band radars for which it does not matter whether it is a “stealth” or a normal plane.
The news of the invisibility of stealth planes for only one type of radar caused a scandal in the U.S. government. The development of stealth aircraft cost billions of dollars, and it turned out that their combat effectiveness could be even lower than that of older aircraft.
However, it seems that the problem has not reached military organizations of all countries. Recently, news agencies reported that a prototype of the Chinese J-31 fighter, developed by AVIC Shenyang Aircraft Corporation took off successfully. The flight took place on October 31, 2012, lasted for about 10 minutes and ended with a successful landing.
The J-31 (J-21/F-60) is a second Chinese fighter made with the use of stealth technology. It was developed in record time – in only 19 months. In contrast to J-20, the J-31 is smaller and probably cheaper than the J-20. It can become a very popular aircraft in the arms market. Chinese aircraft designers did not hesitate to borrow US design solutions that had been tested on F-22 and F-35 fifth-generation fighters.
Experts note that the wings, nose cone, air intakes and cockpit canopy of the J-31 almost completely reproduce the contours of similar parts of the aforementioned U.S. aircraft. This is probably the result of the work of Chinese intelligence. In particular, there was a scandal in the United States in 2009 connected with the theft of drawings from six American aerospace contractors, including those involved in the development of the F-35 fighter.
For the time being, it just so happens that the Chinese fighter will compete on the international arms market with more simple and cheap modifications of Russia’s Su-27 and MiG-29, rather than with the complex and expensive F-35. Currently, the Chinese have quite modern electronic equipment, including phased antenna array radar stations.
The situation with modern jet engines of Chinese development is more complicated, although China has some progress in building its own digital control engines. The J-31 has two of them, and most likely, they are either Russian RD-93 engines, which China bought from Russia, or their Chinese copy WS-13. The J-31 has a wingspan of about 11.5 meters, which means that the plane is smaller than the American F-22.
The “Chinese miracle” may have some commercial success in the arms market, but the real value of such military aircraft today is questionable. The growing number of satellites in Earth’s orbit makes it easy to detect any number of any type of aircraft from space to subsequently destroy them.
SlowManhttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/russia-stealth/
Russia’s Stealth Fighter Could Match U.S. Jets, Analyst Says
BY DAVID AXE11.16.126:30 AMRussia’s T-50 stealth fighter prototype, the first radar-evading warplane outside the U.S. when it debuted in January 2010, is slightly less stealthy than the American F-22 and about equal to the smaller F-35. But in several other respects the new warplane from the Russian Sukhoi design bureau is actually superior to the American models.
That’s the surprising conclusion of the first-ever public scientific analysis of the T-50′s Radar Cross-Section (RCS), completed this week by Dr. Carlo Kopp, an analyst with the independent think tank Air Power Australia.
“The shaping of the T-50 is inferior to that of the F-22 Raptor,” Kopp writes in his dense, jargon-heavy report. But the F-35 and T-50, he adds, exhibit “similar … RCS behavior.”
But Kopp’s assessment of the T-50 comes with caveats. Quite a few of them, actually. To match the stealthiness of the Lockheed Martin F-35 — to say nothing of the company’s F-22 — Sukhoi’s engineers will have to, among other changes, modify the T-50′s engines to a less obtrusive fitting and add a layer of radar-absorbing material to the plane’s skin.
With the revised engines and skin, the T-50′s “specular RCS performance will satisfy the Very Low Observable (VLO) requirement that strong specular returns are absent in the nose sector angular domain,” Kopp writes. Translated into plain English, Kopp’s saying that an optimized version of the Russian jet could be very, very difficult to detect by most radars as it’s bearing down on them.
SlowManIran isn’t getting anything thanks to the UN arms embargo.
As for PAK-FA, Russia has been extremely cautious as this is their F-22, so Russia will be pretty selective about its sales, conditions being that the buyer isn’t a US ally.
J-31, well this one is for the non-Asian 3rd world countries in Africa and South America. J-31’s sale in Asia is unlikely as China’s surrounded by enemies with few allies like Pakistan, Cambodia, and Burma. Europe is a possibility if there are buyers.
SlowManGiven that the ROKAF are only facing a handful of poorly maintained aircraft with an already significant technological disadvantage flown by poorly trained pilots, I don’t think that any advanced stealth types are really necessary.
They are meant for China, not North Korea.
Crushing North Korea is easy; it’s the Chinese intervention that could throw a wrench in the war scenario and they are preparing for the war with China.
After all, North Korea seized to exist as a functional military in just 5 months and it was the PLA that the Korean military battled for 2 years.
They need large numbers of ground attack aircraft with a few multi-role aircraft to win the skies. More KF-16s would do the job nicely.
CAS will be taken over by drones and F/A-50.
SlowManFrankly I cannot see from the pictures you kindly posted any evidence to controvert the Alenia’s statement about the capability of the M-346 to use also the boom method, implementing an UARRSI.
Regards
You have to see it from the boom operator’s perspective.
Which of three jets would present the toughest challenge for the boom operator trying to make the contact in the back?
You can tell the M-346 represents the toughest challenge for the boom operator at the 30 degree angle.
SlowManThe contract will also determine Korea’s de facto partner for KF-X. Industrial factors will make the difference (which is why F-35 is struggling) and EJ200 is a good fit for the project.
Actually EJ200 is not, the KFX requires more than 50,000 lbs thrust, and the offered EJ2X0, EJ230 is below what the ROKAF wants.
Of course similar factors were at play in Japan…
The differences being
1. Korea is more or less self-reliant on defense. Japan as a “pacifist” county has renounced offensive capability and has outsourced offense to the US. This is why Japan was susceptible to the US diplomatic pressure, while the Korean bid evaluators are immune to the US pressure because they have no direct contact with the US DoD and State Department.
2. The Korean government is more transparent than the Japanese government due to Korea having a real democracy 10 years longer than Japan did. This is why deals are closed on budget in Korea, while it is possible for deals to be closed at 250% of budget like the F-35(The budget was $4 billion, but the agreed value is $10 billion) in Japan due to less than transparent backdoor dealings.
This is why the F-35, the product of heavy US lobbying and pressures according to Wikileaks, is running dead last in the Korea contest and Lockheed is calling for the contest to be delayed by several years, because the evaluators evaluated bids strictly by the rule book.
Not sure why Super Hornet is bothering to show up. Denmark (and everyone else) needs an affordable multirole fighter, not a large striker/support aircraft.
The Super Hornet E/F is cheaper than the Gripen E/F.
SlowManPAK-FA kills J-31(Or J-20 for that matter) easily. PAK-FA not only has a kinetic advantage over even the likes of an F-22, it has counter-stealth radar too.
SlowManIf Typhoon and Silent Eagle are running neck to neck then the Boeing will I think. Why induct another type when they can adopt the F-15.
Col. Raymond O’Mara was the commander of the 1st Fighter Wing when F-22s first began operating in the Air Force. He said the service’s biggest limitation in its fifth generation fleet is that there aren’t enough of them.
“Because we cut down the buy on the F-22 so far, and all others are aging out, we built a situation where we are starting to run out of airplanes,” said O’Mara, who now is the chairman of the Air War College Strategy Department at Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.
The Navy is buying more planes than the Air Force because of the way the Navy planned its progression with the fourth generation F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The Air Force could address its gap by purchasing new F-16 Block 60s or a new F-15 such as the F-15K variant built for South Korea, O’Mara said
“If the Air Force wants to stay in the air power business with fighters, this is something that has to be seriously considered,” he said.
Well, you have a former USAF F-22 wing commander recommending F-15K or later(ie Silent Eagle) as a substitute when the F-22 isn’t available.
SlowMan
As you can see, putting a receptacle on the back of an M-346 is more challenging than the other two jets.
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