Of course, and perhaps to a lesser extent however, it applies to the NG aswell. The funny thing is a lot of the negative predictions with regard to the F-35s technical merits come from people who really don’t know the first thing about the design of aircraft, and its related aspects such as aerodyanmics. I believe the F-35 is going to become the David Beckham of aircraft… Overestimated by the general public and underestimated by its analysts and observers.

Cheers.

So we agree that manufacturer’s promises rarely survive contact with reality. What you are describing there sounds (at first glance at least) pretty much like a description of a relatively mediocre aircraft. Judging from all the descriptions on the JSF that I have read (and not just in this thread) the biggest single advantage the JSF has is it’s LO/Stealth. If it wasn’t for that one feature it probably wouldn’t be a particularly special aircraft, especially if unit costs have increased significantly. Still, I can understand why the Norwegians would pick the JSF over the Gripen. Stealth is a powerful advantage. Driving the EF Typhoon out of the contest is, however, a bit harder to fathom. The Typhoon isn’t especially stealthy but other than that it is much more capable than the JSF and for that reason would be worth considering. The Norwegians have achieved nothing with this farce other than thoroughly pissing off the entire European defence industry. I wonder why they even bothered unless this contest is what it looks like, a feeble and badly camouflaged attempt to get a better deal form the USA on the JSF.

P.S. Philip II burned Sparta after they sent him that reply. 😀

Japan was clearly in the wrong, as I said in my first post on this topic. Japan initiated the whole thing by its invasion of China.

With it’s predatory war on China Japan wasn’t doing anything that various European nations hadn’t done before it when they attacked less advanced or smaller nations or peoples and carved their territory up into colonies. Even the USA did this when it all but exterminated the Native American population, when it annexed Mexican territory after the 1846 war with Mexico and finally with the “Manifest Destiny” trip known as the Spanish-American war that resulted in the annexation of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. The list of these predatory wars of the 19th and early 20th centuries is very long and includes many nations. Not that this excuses Japanese actions in China but it has to be admitted the Japanese had excellent role models. It was only natural for them to question why they should be denied the chance of building a colonial empire when all those European nations and the USA had grown fat on their predatory wars.

That being said doesn’t this discussion belong on the WWII forum?

I wonder how mouch the Chineese ever paid MiG for this… :rolleyes:

I’d say the Chinese paid Russians about as much for the privilege of churning out all those F-7s as the Russians them selves paid the Americans for all those Sidewinder clones that Soviet industry churned out. :rolleyes:

Now let’s stop hijacking this very interesting Hawker Hunter thread for a discussion on IP violations…

There quite simply was never much of a selection. The dedicated AT copter – outside the US Army, and, to a very limited extent the Soviet Union – is a post-Cold-War implementation.

The “AT copters” of the 80s in Europe, other than the Apache and Cobra, were all “multi-role” systems. Lynx, Gazelle, Bo-105, Hueys of various kinds in the West; Hoplite, Hip and Hind in the East.

Those countries that actually developed AT copters post-cold-war use them as much in an armed recon and general fire support role.
An AT copter by itself is next to useless in peacetime. If you can finance and support less than 20 helicopters, you’d want to actually be able to use every single one of them. The only country out of the named ones with more helos is Sweden really (Norway has more, but not for the Army).

Let’s not forget the costs. The AH-64 is very expensive to buy and even more expensive to operate. IIRC the Greeks bought 12 AH-64D and paid a total of $675 million for the package which presumably included weapons and support costs. That works out to of $56.25 million for one AH-64D. A chopper that is very useful in wartime but essentially useless for anything other than looking mean during peace time. For the US this is isn’t anything to think about but a smaller country will start thinking about how many “multi role” utility choppers like the ones you listed they can get for those $56.25 million and update them when needed to take missile/sensor packages for tank hunting when needed? Those multi-role choppers won’t be equivalent to big mean “don’t bother to run, just lay down and prepare to be killed when I show up” AH-64s but they will be useful for a variety of peacetime duties the AH-64 is useless for. Another point is how many Leo IIs can you get for $56.25 million? Somewhere I heard the unit price of a Leo II goes from $3 million to $9 million (accurate numbers anybody?) depending on whether you buy second hand or new built and how thoroughly you upgrade if you buy used ones. If you are a smaller army you will probably get a lot more out of sinking your $56.25 million into a few missile carrying utility choppers or some used Leo IIs than sinking it into a single state-of-the-art Apache. It is always amusing to see the total disconnect between the way smaller armies think and the way juggernauts like the US armed forces think.

The Winter War is not in any respects a fair comparison and I would have hoped that would have been obvious. While Finland may not have been ‘prepared’ the Red Army was in arguably its worst ever state. This was just after Stalin’s purges – their officer corps had been almost annihilated, so they had virtually no competent leadership, only the most basic form of training, and their armaments were among the most outdated in Europe until World War II got well under way (and even for some time afterwards). Couple this with the fact that they were fighting with no motivation and terrible logistical support, and it should be clear why they did so shockingly poorly. Any Russian army which would attack Scandinavian countries in a (hypothetical and obviously ridiculously implausible) modern setting would not suffer anything like the scale of drawbacks as their predecessors. They would enjoy rough technological parity, a far more efficient modus operandi, a higher standard of training and tactics, and all the benefits of modern aviation and mechanised warfare. While they would still face the massive challenges of terrain and a hugely motivated, equally well-equipped enemy, I think that to imply they would do worse in a modern Winter War is unrealistic to say the least.

Have you ever even been in one of those countries? Any Russian force operating in this area would probably not today suffer as badly as during the winter war, but the winter war is still a good example of what happens when you send massive amounts of tanks into terrain like that. The very idea that you are going to conduct a classic Soviet/Russian style blitzkrieg campaign using vast amounts of armour in the forests of Sweden or Finland, never mind the Norwegian fjord country is patently ridiculous. Technological parity or not the very idea that overrunning these countries would be a one week affair for the Russians, accomplished with a sigh and a yawn, is a misconception. It wold take the Russians longer and it would hurt in terms of casualties. Any Scandinavian weaknesses back in 1939-40 are balanced out by the fact that today unlike 1939-40 their armies are in a better shape, plus unlike back then they now have a collection of allies who would quickly come to their aid. Particularly in the air and on the seas. How long do you imagine it would take after a hypothetical Russian invasion (silly an idea as that seems at the moment) before airbases in the area wold be swelling with EF Typhoons, F-22s, Apaches and EC Tiger assault helicopters and a couple of US carrier groups would be cruising off the coast ringed by a NATO naval task force and several squadrons of subs?

It’s a Sidewinder, AGM-122 Sidearm looks like this (it’s based on the C-Sidewinder):

A Sidewinder based anti radiation missile.. I didn’t know about it. Seems the AGM-122 is no longer in service. A light weight anti radiation missile is an interesting capability for assault helicopters to have, especially if you can produce it by re-using an existing missile design.

You’re missing the point of LPI radar/datalink. It’s entire purpose is to not betray the location of the aircraft using it(i.e. very narrow beams, only the minimum amount of power necessary, extreme frequency agility). In terms of radars, this means that they don’t stand out from background noise. In terms of datalinks, it means that no radiation is sent out omni-directional, that could be detected, far ahead of the aircraft.

Frequency hopping isn’t exactly a new idea, it was pioneered during WWII. Of course the F-22’s radar for one goes way beyond that with frequency shifting/hopping, variable amplitude, pencil beaming etc… Even so, if you want to have an F-22 merrily exchange data with, say, an AWACS aircraft or a ground based battlefield network hub several hundred kilometres away never mind a satellite you are going to need a pretty powerful transmitter. LPI techniques will only make tracking more challenging, they won’t by any stretch of the imagination make your F-22’s electronically invisible. En-masse tracking LPI signals may not necessarily be a practical proposition at the moment under battlefield conditions. You can, however, expect that a lot of money and brain power either is already being thrown at that problem or it will be in the very near future. The war between the trackers and the tracked has been going on for a long time and I don’t expect the F-22 to be the final word in that conflict, the F-22’s may fans notwithstanding :-).