totoroIs it or is it not okay to call anyone (and i mean ANYONE) a terrorist? After all, it is one’s personal opinion and different people will give out different definitions of what a terrorist is. Dictionary definition is rather broad, too.
Of course, most forums are private and can be moderated in any way moderators may choose, for example banning use of curse words. That too limits freedom of speech. But it’s legal to delete it, ban any members, etc. What may be the problem there is hypocrisy, if on one hand terms of the site advocate freedom of speech when in fact that freedom is being moderated.
In those cases it would be much better to be honest and simply warn beforehand: People who swear will be banned. Or, people who write posts seen as spam will be banned. Or, people who talk kindly of Hitler will be banned. Or, people who’re calling Bush a terrorist will be banned. Etc.
totoroIs it or is it not okay to call anyone (and i mean ANYONE) a terrorist? After all, it is one’s personal opinion and different people will give out different definitions of what a terrorist is. Dictionary definition is rather broad, too.
Of course, most forums are private and can be moderated in any way moderators may choose, for example banning use of curse words. That too limits freedom of speech. But it’s legal to delete it, ban any members, etc. What may be the problem there is hypocrisy, if on one hand terms of the site advocate freedom of speech when in fact that freedom is being moderated.
In those cases it would be much better to be honest and simply warn beforehand: People who swear will be banned. Or, people who write posts seen as spam will be banned. Or, people who talk kindly of Hitler will be banned. Or, people who’re calling Bush a terrorist will be banned. Etc.
totoroIts meant to be more manuverable then the F-16 in almost all aspect even though its almost in the F-15C class weight vise.
Just how does one justify these claims? While it’s perhaps possible that instantenous turn rate matches that of f16, sheer mass of the f35 makes it harder to sustain a turn. Sure, one can increase the size of control surfaces (and i am guessing they did just that) to somewhat compensate for that but that causes even more drag and kills even more speed fast. And once f-35 does deccelerate to make that fast 180 deg turn, it still has less thrust per unit of mass than a f-16 to regain that lost speed.
I believe that was a deliberate choice of designers/funders. Unlike Vietnam era blunder, BVR combat has finally come and is here to stay. Sustaining a decent turn rate is just not seen as important as it once was.
totoroI would think that small piece of picture of a model with LS-6 is better indicator of its use than the (in my opinion) probably PSed pic on the j8II. Can anyone tell from that little piece which plane that is on? Better yet, does anyone have a wider angle pic? If i had to pick one plane, that wide, flat bottom would indicate a jh7/A to me. Makes perfect sense to advertise it on a strike airplane, instead of testing it on a relatively short legged pure interceptor which to date has had zero integration history with any kind of PGMs.
totorothat 2010 deployment timetable must’ve been a typo. 2015-2020 seems much more realistic, given the list of customers and current project schedule.
totoroSo, to be clear, that is production cost? Since its broken down into pieces. LM integrates all the pieces and then sells the whole plane to usaf at flyaway cost. which is 130 million? Thats a pretty low profit margin i must say. And then usaf adds system costs (spares, parts, training, NOT weapons, they’re extra) and it gets to 150 million per system unit.
totoroWell, if you’re doing an attack on a non fixed target, like the mentioned aircraft (on the ground i presume, as you said you’d kill ’em with SDB) then it might be good to have a persistent battlefield surveillance radar platform around. Which means additional fighter cover. Perhaps even increasing overall tanker number needed.
totoroJust a question, haven’t the czechs also lowered their initial desires to get 24 gripens to 14 planes, like the the hungarians? Cause all the 05/06 articles talking about the deal mention 14 units for czech republic, it is only old articles that talk about 24 pieces.
Also, for hungary, i thought gripens were replacemnt for all the mig29s. Not an addition to those planes, which would then later be replaced by usef f16s like you said. It just seems like an awfully lot of planes for a country like hungary, to operate both 14 gripens and 20+ f16s. I do believe they will stick to just gripens and that will be that.
totoroWhy do you guys think that is a bad thing? Isn’t it more likely that Airbus did their homework and calculated that while all the shipping of the parts to china and initial infrastructure investment would add some cost, overal cost would still be lower because of long term benefit of cheaper labour? I would think the decision to have a assembly line in china is a pure profit one. It will allow them to build the same plane as they would be able to in europe but for less money. That either means higher profit margins or same margins but with cheaper end price for the customer, therefore making it a more attractive purchase. In the end, it seems to be a win-win deal for both airbus and chinese industry.
totoroI think what they’re trying to say is that mix that usaf is planning with f22 and f35 is not so much hi and low mix as it is hi and medium mix. I agree and i do believe that low end should be at least 3 times cheaper than hi end. If system unit price of f22 ends up 140 million, then low end plane should not cost more than 45 or so. That means flyaway price of at most 30 million dollars. Yes, that would undermine the capabilities of plane itself but thats why all the nifty weapons and force multipliers are for.
Right now, what is going to happen is price of f35 will continue to rise, usaf will get its way and order less f35s than said 1700, and order some 1200 pieces. To compensate they will get more f22 but not 500*f35 price worth, it’d be a more symbollic figure, maybe 2 more squadrons.
Such logic was already used for stovl variant for usaf, when that was getting the spotlight. It was said that some 300 f35s might be stovls, but the overall number of planes were like 1200 A model and 300 B model for a combined worth less than what 1700 A models would be. I see both usaf and usn getting less f35s than what is currently said they’ll get, and i mean by 30% less. I see only USMC getting more or less the same number of planes.
totoroSens, why did you qoute my post before going on with yours? You’re not saying anything that’s not in accordance with what my post said. You were just going over the basics of flight. I’m sure some of the less informed members had some use for it, good job.
Now to get back on topic, the way i understood the issue you and crobato had is that you said drag is a huge factor while we said that thrust to mass ratio is a bigger factor in acceleration of planes in dogfight like flying. Somehow, out of that you included loss of lift into equation, which is just completely beside the point. Unless the plane is doing its run at 200 kts at low altitude or doing its run at very high altitudes, lift should never even be problematic. Especially with computer assistance, which doesn’t even let you do anything stupid that’d make the plane stall.
So once we’re beyond that… we can get to drag/thrust versus mass/thrust. You cited gripen versus mig29 as an example. Sure, yeah, gripen’s small size and arguably better management of various draggy control surfaces does add up to less drag than mig29. no one refutes that. But that advantage is relatively small when compared to advantage of mass/thrust that a plane may have, especially when we’re discussing dogfight speeds.
gripen can match mig29 cause its so damn lighter than mig29. Roughly half the mass of mig29, with roughly half the thrust. (illustration purpose only, no need to use exact figures) So its same thing. IF it had same kind of mass, for half the thrust, it would accelerate exactly at half the rate. (in vacuum) Yes, there’s drag too, but for that to make the same kind of effect – half the acceleration rate – itd have to be high supersonic speeds.
totoroLift should not even come into question here. When fully loaded, with max fuel, planes achieve greater lift than their weight at rather low speeds. By the time they do battle, they’re usually a ton or two lighter already.
True, with higher altitudes air density falls but full lift/weight curve is always something of a bell shaped one, lift does not come into account in most normal flight regimes, unless we’re talking really high altitudes.
Sure, if one keeps going vertical, there’ll be no lift, but lets face it, air combat, even in dogfight ranges, is still much more horizontal than vertical. Vertical is usually just a matter of quick dash trying to get a superior position. (t/w most important there, really) And as crobato pointed out, at dogfight speeds drag/thrust will be less of a factor than mass/thrust. In BVR fights drag will get bigger but BVR fights are not really vertical either.
totoroI did some quick measurements, here are the results:
If we use figures cited on this site for israeli weapons of 295/80/15 cm for length/wingspan/diameter
we get the following pl12 dimensions: 386.7/64.3/18.7 cm
If we use figures cited for pl8 on sinodefense site of 299/81/16 cm
we get these pl12 dimensions: 392/65.2/19.9 cm.
I have to note that wingspan on pl12 was calculated based on front wings, as the rear ones were obstructed. (and pl8s ones were obstructed on the other wing) Also, while i do vouch for precision, there is always a margin of error included, in this case it shouldn’t be more than 1%.
anyway, it would appear that pl12 has body diameter close to r-77, but is elongated. Control surfaces seem to be close to aim120 a/b in dimensions.
totoroThat was merely for illustration purposes. I guess aim9 would have smaller rcs than aim120, but increase would still be substantial. Anyhow, i also think it’d be easier to clear amraams for wingtips than to cram 3 of them in each jsf bay.
As for eurofighter, if we assume 0.5 sq. meter rcs for awacs like, 10cm wavelength, 200 kw radar clean plane could be detected from some 155 Nm. 2 pylon amraam class weapons plus 4 semirecessed ones would add some 0.3 sq. m for little over 170 Nm. If EF has bigger rcs to begin with, payload added rcs would have even smaller influence on overall detection range, to little under 200 Nm for 1.3 sq. meter RCS for plane and aams combined.
totoroI did some calculations of marble sized jsf and amraams and jsf with just two wingtip amraams seems to be detected at more or less twice the range than completely clean jsf. When talking about big, powerful radars like awacs, that can be a difference of 100 km. Better to go stealthy then.
Two aim-c side to side with just 1 cm of clearance between them take up 65 cm of width. 2000 lbs jdam is 63 cm wide. staggering the amraams would make their combined width less though it’d make the duo some 4.05 m long, 16-17 cm longer than the jdam. Might be enough, might be not, depending on for what the weapons bay was designed.
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