Sintra@sintra
” Saying an advanced military aircraft is like a dinosaur usually isn’t a good thing, but Marine Lt. Gen. Jon Davis meant it as the highest compliment.
The Marine Corps recently put the F-35B Lightning II through its paces in a highly-contested airspace combat scenario. The result?
The joint strike fighters were able to destroy all 24 enemy targets without taking any losses.”
Thanks 🙂
Sintra24-0 kill ratio during recent Red Flag good enough for you?
Were did that Kill ratio come from?
SintraHey … I received a fine review for my latest book on my latest book “Flashpoint China” in “The Journal of JAPCC”, Ed. 22, Spring/Summer 2016
http://www.harpia-publishing.com/files/reviews/2016_JAPCC22p95.PDF
Congrats Deino.
Noticed that the JAPCC chaps made a mistake, that book was not made by Pyotr Butowski.
Cheers
Sintrait is the TRUTH
http://sputniknews.com/military/20160810/1044125253/turkey-russia-nato-cavusoglu.htmlHe explained that Ankara’s move to seek defense cooperation outside the Western military bloc stemmed from its dissatisfaction from exclusive work with NATO member states to date.
And then it starts to snow in Ougadougou…
Can someone move this topic from the military aviation section, to the general one? SCI FI or alternate history should be treated in there, not here.
SintraAs said, I am correct.. and always was.. back in 2007 I (and some other guys) have predicted the flying abilities of the F-35 to be between an F-16 and F-18 and were labeled heretics and haters, because Beesley the Almighty said it was like F-22.. but it was you, pro-F35 fanboys who was forced to shift goalposts, not me..
MS, i dont think that anyone in this board might call me a “F-35 fanboy” 🙂 (well, there´s alway´s a first time for everything), i have been critic of the program more than once, but something that flies somewhere between a F-16 and a F-18, has a LO airframe and fields cutting edge sensors, well, even you might agree thats a bloody dangerous proposition to whatever OPFOR that it might engage. Wouldnt you agree?
Cheers
SintraThe F-35 will be replacing the remaining F-15s, sooner or later.. Unless you tell me the mysterious third type you got there for that..
No it almost certainly wont. To the surprise of a lot of aviation journos and industry chaps, the USAF is throwing an awful lot of money into the “C/D” and “E” Eagle fleets, the idea its to maintain those F-15´s flying into 2040!
It would have been a lot cheaper to maintain for longer severall sqn´s of ATG Viper´s (they are much younger than the C/D Eagles) and replace the air defense variants of the F-15 with the F-35A.
SintraHowever, I found the polling of the pilot’s impressions interesting and worth a read (with one caveat, there were only two former F-15C pilots among those polled. Most likely the USAF is transitioning few pilots from F-15C to the F-35).
Particularly:
Agree. On the overall i think that the opinions of the pilots are more or less what we were expecting. That this particular bird excels in the ATG scenario should be no surprise, and being a mach 1.6, 9g´s (or even 7g´s), with a LO airframe and equiped with cutting edge avionics… thats a very, very dangerous adversary for virtualy everything that flies today (or in the foreseable future).
SintraDid you read the footnotes? Which ones are ridiculous? They are in 2014 dollars, obviously th F-35 costs are estimated as it has not reached frp.
(Euro exchange rate was higher in 2014)
Yes, i have read the footnotes. The idea of comparing the contract of the last batch of Gripen C/D´s for the Flygvapnet then do “an inflation to 2014” sum, a contract that included an awfull lot more than just the aircraft´s with the “Recurring Fly Away Unit cost”, something that doesnt even cover the construction of one single airframe, nevermind things like concurrency, for 2019/20 (and those “80 to 85 million US$” might, or not, be atainable) is out of this world!
It seems like one of those posts of every chap who comes here and starts comparing the costs of aircrafts taken from multiple sources, from diferent years, with vastly diferent contracts like it was a car comparison (“no, the Ford Focus is slightly cheaper than the Opel Astra, magazine says so”).
SpudmanWP (by example) would have done a vastly better job comparing costs than the Heritage chaps.
SintraHeritage foundation research on f-35
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/08/operational-assessment-of-the-f-35a-argues-for-full-program-procurement-and-concurrent-development-processPolled 31 pilots on f-35 compared to their current fighters on maneuverability, bvr, etc. interesting read considering the F-35 is still limited to 7g and claw restrictions.
Edit- was posted over @ f-16.net.
The cost comparison on that document is ridiculous. Love how they compared the “we might get there in 2019/20” “Recurring Fly Away Unit Cost” for the F-35A, with todays “Fly Away Unit Cost” of the Super Bug or with the full contract (signed in 1998! they´ve added inflation) for the last 64 Gripen C/D Airframes for the Flygvapnet!
Highly scientific, clap, clap, clap…
SintraThe Vipers that are being replaced were built in the nineties, and updating those airframes would be expensive, yes, things like the AN/APG-83, an almost entire new cockpit, a new mission computer, etc, are not “cheap”.
And i would agree that the program to replace the A-10 with something cheaper to acquire and maintain than a stealth, supersonic, 9g´s, Tornado sized, strike fighter, should have started a long time ago. The reason why it didnt went forward (IMO) was because it would take money directly away from the JSF program. Well, the Warthog is a sturdy plane, its probably going to be around for a long time.
SintraIn the current budgetary environment they’d be very lucky to get the T-X fully funded through its planned requirement. There is no money for a new start multi-year aircraft program. They can take another look at it if the budget caps are lifted, and if there is support for increasing the top line. Otherwise, they will have to make do with using the A-10s and the existing fleet of fighters and bombers for the CAS or strike missions that the COCOM’s demand. The only way to fit such a multi-year requirement (development, test and evaluation, and acquisition) is to take away from other programs and even there it means shedding and loosing capability. Take money from the F-35 and you’ll have F-16 squadrons that would have to be extended or let go without a replacement (the program is already way behind in terms of deliveries due to development delays and reduction in the ramp up as a result of that), take away from the nuclear-modernization and that comes with political consequences as well in addition to a diminished deterrence. There is really no good option to get a new aircraft to the fleet from a budgetary_impact perspective so it may jut be wise to keep the A-10’s and make the F-16’s, F-15s and eventually the F-35s better at CAS and Strike. That is achievable within the current budgets.
There´s something that needs to be mentioned, the last F-16 was delivered to the USAF in 2005, the last A-10 was delivered in 1984. The USAF active Viper fleet is typically a decade and a half younger, so in a way it makes a lot more sense to replace the warthogs first with a much cheaper aircraft.
SintraA baseline JDAM can only hit a static target, for moving targets you need the PLG (Precision Laser Guidance) set, for instance KMU-572 as an addition to DSU-38A/B, which is ~$25,000. For increased accuracy you need an upgraded tail kit with the ultra-tightly coupled (UTC) capability which takes into account data from the bomb’s INS to track both the host aircraft and the targets speed, acceleration, and direction. Bang, another $30,000. Makes $55,000 added price for the guidance kit alone to the bomb’s price which is some $11-13k for an Mk83 and $15-17k for an Mk84. Are you still claiming they are so cheap?
Yes, they are, the APKWS that i´ve mentioned before will do the job nicely and its even cheaper than the JDAM, and adding mobility to a target and trying to destroy it with guns and iron bombs sents whatever airforce into “multiple sorties” or “multiple aircrafts” to actually destroy one single target. The sortie/number of targets destroyed with iron bombs and guns its a bleeding disaster, it always was, the pendulum has firmly moved to PGM´s, they are actually cheaper to employ.
SintraAll this PGM-only approach leads to complete inability of the Western forces to provide any meaningful operation without the PGM stocks being depleted fast. As we have seen several times in recent times.. Slowly, the pilots are getting too dumb to go into any fight which does not look like a videogame.. Should I hit that Toyota without getting connected to my server? No automatic trajectory computation, no pre-defined target coordinates, no netcentric bull****, just using an unguided bomb or a cannon round? You’re kidding, right?
The thing is that the most basic PGM´s are getting so cheap to acquire that its starting to get cheaper (actually way cheaper) to use them to hit a target instead of using iron bombs or cannon rounds. A JDAM or a APKWS round, today costs less than the CPFH of a Viper.
Sintraalso the fact that some successive planes (mainly Eurocanards) were said to show some good performances in that field was more the result of favourable unrelated design solutions than a determined effort.
This is entirely incorrect. The three Eurocanards were deliberately designed with a reduced frontal RCS by comparison with their forebearers. The “S” ducts, the RAM on the leading edges, the canopy covers and the dieletric radar redomes, the Gripen radar blocker, etc, were deliberate design choices, there´s nothing of “unrelated design solutions” about this. The frontal RCS of the Typhoon was on the contract, the Rafale A prototype was entirely redesigned to the Rafale D standard, the “D” means “Discrete”, etc. In the nineties publications like Air International and “Air&Couscous” described in some detail the work done by the European teams on their designs.
SintraNo Sidewinders are carried internally. They are carried on external pylons in the non-stealthy “bomb truck” mode.
Eventually, there will be two ASRAAMs carried internally, probably using LOAL.
?
If i remember correctly the ASRAAM contracted integration only covers the external pylons. Initialy, the idea was to carry four AIM-132 internaly, that died in 2008, the plan was changed to two external and two internal, then (circa 2009) it ended up with only two carried externaly. At least thats what i remember (i might be wrong).
Cheers
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