totoroI have a different question concerning a similar theme.
Imagine Argentina suddenly (magically) spends something like 2,5% of its GDP on the military, and its economy is fairly steady over the years. So we’re looking at something like 12-13 billion US dollars a year, throughout the end of this decade. That’s potentially a few tens of billions worth of equipment, perhaps equivalent of more if one looks at more bang-for-buck russian or chinese equipment.
all that is not the main point, it is just to illustrate the situation. My main question is what sort of forces would the UK realistically be upkeeping at Falklands at the end of this decade, in light of such events? Would UK defense budget grow? (respective to the GPD ratio of today’s budget) Would the UK keep 5000 Army men deployed there 24/7? 24 typhoons? a dozen apaches? two subs and two destoryers around the islands at any time? More? Less?
What would, keeping in mind politics and economics, be a realistic military stance from the british MoD by 2020?
totoroSo no active duty planes were ever reworked to be integrated with as25k? Missiles were never deployed and the whole project is dead?
I must say I don’t understand the military purpose (i could understand the political purpose, however) of such fleet of 54 AT63 planes in argentinean air force. It is way too high of a number for them to be just trainers, compared to the rest of the combat fleet. But what else can they do? They won’t have radar nor any sort of IR/optical sensor, right? They have very short range and tiny carrying capacity. Plus there doesn’t seem to be any sort of PGM planned for them, save for possibly dardo 2 bombs (even that’s a bit suspicios. what sort of range could one expect from a Pampa carrying two of those?) but that would just turn the plane into simplest of bomb trucks, not suitable for anything other than attacking fixed, predetermined targets.
If there was some sort of wider assortment of guided weapons for pampas, then i’d see the point. But this… they’re going to use freefall bombs and strafe targets with rockets? in 2020?
All that being said, how accurate are those figures being thrown around the internet about pampa’s fuel hold of 1388 liters? That actually seems a lot for such a small plane, especially considering usual ferry range is quoted as 1500 km. Or does that figure include two underwing tanks (which are supposedly 317 liters each?) so in reality internal fuel hold is some 750 liters?
I am a little bit curious about other missile capabilities of argentinean armed forces. I’ve read about this pcx2009 missile, which is allegedly an argentinean version of Aspide. What is that being developed for? Only user of Aspide is argentinean navy, right? It uses them on four of their ships. But why would argentina build their own missiles for those? Why not order new missiles from original manufacturer? Or do the plans include further use of aspide-like missiles? Perhaps the army plans to use them as air defense batteries?
Speaking of air defense, what sort of air defense missile systems does Argentina use nowadays? Is there anything other than a dozen of two rbs70 and several old roland systems? Old blowpipe and strela manpads have been retired?
What about ATGMs? Newest system is still TOW 1? Or does the army use something newer and with greater reach, even if it is just in smaller quantities?
totoroSo… weapons release tests? Isnt that a bit premature for a programme that hasn’t had its third plane fly? What else could the markers be for?
totoroThanks, but I didn’t know about as25k. How hard would it be to integrate such a system on a land based platform? Seems pretty doable, if one assumes government support and not just a half-assed improvization effort.
totoroIs it true that Voyager’s range (total possible distance travelled, not radius) in one direction, while carrying 30 tons of cargo, is 4800 nm? And since mtow is 238 tons and empty weight is 119 tons, for the said feat it requries some 90 tons of fuel?
Is is true that there are no plans to integrate refuelling probe on voyagers for the tankers themselves to be refuelled?
Is it true that so far no RAF C-17 have been integrated with a boom probe and are thus unable to be refuelled by voyagers? Are there concrete plans with concrete timetables for integration of such probes?
totoroDidn’t know about this one. Thanks for the heads up! IR version is really perhaps the most useful of all versions, at least when antishipping missions are concerned. IR should mean a fire and forget weapon, perhaps good enough to track larger targets on uniform background, as ships sailing the seas are. TV and laser guided ones may be necessary for decent air-to-ground missions, but they aren’t fire and forget.
Dardo II family of bombs/rocket assisted bombs is the only other aerial PGM i know of. It’s also been in development for quite some time, perhaps some basic version is already ready for service.
Is it true that fingers are all already retired and that ALL mirages will be retired within a year? However obsolete and badly maintained those planes were, they were only supersonic planes argentina had and they did have some sort of radar. Pampas can’t really replace them…
totoroIsraeli stuff, a lot from Elbit, Rafael, some local systems and also PT-6 engines. I don’t know about imported weapons, but local PGM are ready for it.
What is this domestic PGM you are talking about? What sort of PGMs is argentinean air force using these days?
totoroMass is very hard to guesstimate by sight alone, true. Volume can be guesstimated, albeit with much less precision than when it comes to dimensions. it is just my personal opinion j20 is more volumenous than most fighters and interceptors out there while not being the most volumenous one.
If i was a designer of a 5th gen plane and i had to cram all the subsystems, weapon bays, tons of fuel and leave room for growth over the decades, i too would make j20 volumenous, on purpose.
totoroIf i had to guess, i would also guess it is length without pitot tube, as some (less credible sources) do tend to use 22.5 or so meters of length for flankers which may be the total length with pitot.
That still doesn’t explain why is su35 claimed to be as long as su27, IF su35 has a shorter sting. DOES it have a shorter sting?
Not to be fully off topic, these sat photos are nice but aren’t telling us anything new. Much higher res pics of j20 next to objects of known dimensions, taken from the same angle are abundant and they are all suggesting similar figures. 20.3 meters is the figure i’ve most often gotten from my calculations based on half a dozen different images.
J20 certainly is longish, but not excessively so. It is quite volumenous, though.
totoroUm, where is a clear statement of length with/without pitot tube on that website? Knaapo’s website has the same figures and they too, like sukhoi, don’t specify the details. If they’ve been careless with su35 figures they (any everyone else) might’ve been careless with figures concerning other planes as well.
totoroDo we have a source which clearly states if length of su33 applies to length with or without pitot tube?
I ask this because knaapo’s own website has funny figures. su27 and su35 are both cited with the same length of 21.9 meters, even though su35 doesn’t have a pitot tube and has a supposedly a bit shorter tail sting.
So if the other figures aren’t really precise and don’t mesh well, how can we be certain that 21.19 is a precise figure refering to the length from tip of nose (without pitot) to end of sting?
totoroit actually isn’t improbable that we will see next 3-4 prototypes fly within much shorter time period than first 3-4 prototypes flew. All development programmes of new fighters followed such a schedule. If all goes well with testing of all those, first preproduction batch may get produced in second half 2014/ first half of 2015. If all goes well with verification of performance from those planes, first actual serial batch may go into production by the end of 2015. or in first half of 2016, thus getting everything ready for introduction in service in 2017/2018. So far, the programme seems mostly on track.
totoroil76 doesn’t have to be the standard here. C17 has fuselage width of 6,86 meters and cabin width of 5,5 meters. Using that factor, the 5.5 wide fuselage might yield cabin width of close to 4,5 meters.
of course, both an70 and a400m are around 5,5 meters wide externally and internally their cabin is some 4 meters wide so the number of examples do seem to point towards 4 meters. Still, one can’t be certain of that…
totoroIs there an official source (manufacturer or end user) out there confirming these su35s have L-band radars in the wings?
totoroamraam’s motor is some 1,6 meters long, according to cutouts of the missile. C5 and above version have that lengthened to 1,75 meters. fuze and warhead take 15-16 cm of length. Whole front section – the radome, radar, batteries, electronics, etc took some 1,45 meters in A model. By C5 that was shrunk to 1,3 meters and reporedly by D model (which has even larger motor area) that was further shrunk down to some 1,15-1,2 meters.
Judging by the images, diameter of cuda doesnt exceed 135mm. That is less that amraam’s but we could imagine electronics are a bit worse or there was some further minituarization. Whatever it is, it doesn’t look there is more than some 0,8 meters left for engine. perhaps a full meter but that would requiore the missile to be 2,2 meters long. it certainly doesnt look that way in the images where two are fit into f35s bay.
while cuda is certainly not point defense missile, the volume of the rocket motor is not likely to exceed 0.022 cubic meters but may be 0.017 cubic meters if it is 80 cm long. amraam A seems to have 0.034 cubic meters, amraam C5 around 0.37 m3, and amraam D around 0.39 m3.
sidewinder M, on the other hand, seems to have around 0.016 cubic meters of engine area, according to cutout images.
Cuda has more than sidewinder to add drag, but less induced drag from fins… It’s total drag might be somewhere between M and X version. All in all, depending on how large that motor is, I guesstimate its range might be between 25-40 km.
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