Well not exactly, the studies conducted post war showed 90% of the casualties were made by Rifle fire at range. Both sides would get into line and trade fire until one side or the other broke. After that cannon was the next most significant cause of casualties, cavalry and eventually the bayonet were way down. In the second half of the American civil war most units considered to be cavalry were effectively mounted infantry using the mobility of the horse to get them into position before dismounting and fighting as infantry with rifles. Most famously at Gettysburg when Buford dismounted his cavalry to hold the low ridges to the north-west of the town.

Still love this scene in the film:

Sorry guys to bring a debate about the American Civil war into the F35 debate, it is a personal hobby of mine…

While at the topic:

However, there are good points on both sides.

* The F35, no matter how awesome it is, will still be limited by missile load and Pk of the missiles.
* Radars will always be vulnerable to jamming. This will make fighting ranges shorter than advertised, even in the future. In a jammed environment, will the forces see eachother with passive systems first or will it be radar?
* Density of the air (ie flying low) will always have a very negative effect on missile range, not as much on say the Meteor as on a rocket propelled missile, but it will still make ranges a lot shorter than advertised.
* Expensive airplanes with many man hours per flight hour will give you fewer airplanes in the air, ie where the battle for air superiority is won.
* Low cost airplanes gives you the oportunity to saturate the enemy capability to physically take your forces down.

Lets just for sh!ts and giggles say that Lockheed makes a new F16 version. It can carry 4 MRAAMs close to the fuselage and in Pak FA like underving “pockets” it can carry 2 Aim9x. Additionally it will use IRST, PAWS-2 with panoramic view and DIRCM integration, new AESA and use the new datalinks (either from Super Hornet, F22 or F35). On top of this they will improve shaping and making it a little bit lighter. The only things they focus on are survivability and costs.

Personally I think this would be very attractive, it would relatively cheap because of weight etc.. A further improvement of the demonstratior below with a little bit wider under carriage to fit a few missiles. Maybe carrying a missile pod.

And basically that is what the F35 was supposed to be. And then it was also a STOVL aircraft with bombs internally. And then it was a carrier version added with even larger payload requirements. And then they wanted it to have longer range. And then they wanted it to still be very short because… costs and size req on assault ships? The F35 fits perfectly to all requirements except costs. That is the truth. Within those size requirements it is impossible to make a fighter with the same range and internal payload capability… and space for a STOVL engine that performs any better than the F35.

Boeing tried and came up with pretty much the same flight performance.

So in the end, would one prefer to have a good enough fighter at a low cost or a high tech marvel that costs 3 times more while maybe not offering any advantage in needed areas? We see this in Austria now. They got the Typhoons basically for free, but cant afford to operate them. This is a country that is richer than several (like Denmark, Greece, Israel) countries that will get the F35. Now a country with 1/3rd the size of the economy will take over the air force role for them because they can afford to operate their fighters. http://kurier.at/chronik/oesterreich/ungarische-gripen-sollen-wien-sichern/71.253.890

So even though many dont like to admit this, costs still matter. Maintenance/flight hour matter. And a Gripen C with gun only is better than a Typhoon on the ground. Same goes for the F35 (which costs more than Taffy), will airforces really afford it? After all, it is 20% heavier than the Eurofighter with a lot more costly integrated stuff in it, not to mention coatings.

I often wonder the reason for these intercepts.
So the Russians are trying to gauge our response times? Why don’t we just track them and ignore them.
Then they won’t have any data. It’s unlikely they would actually overfly the UK.
During WW2 not all incursions into our airspace were contended. Some where feints and ignored.
These incursions are not even during hostilities.

Now, if we had a few Lightnings that would make an interesting intercept, and keep the Ruskies guessing 🙂

The reason is first of all to identify what is happening. Is it a hijacked plane like 9/11, is it an enemy recce mission and so on. So first of all, identification.

Second is, deterrence. Show what ever target you are intercepting that they are detected, identified and will encounter resistance if they try anything.

In the event of the russian easter where they performed EW-attacks against sweden they encountered no intercept. At the time it seemed embarassing for the Swedes but later it was confirmed that it was a SIGINT operation. The Swedish Army wanted to see what EW-capabilities the Russians currently have and record the way their systems operate. An intercept would likely have disrupted that mission.

So as a response to you. All options are on the table, but normally the choice is intercept, identify and escort for a while and then return home.

I kind of agree with Tu22m. The Yanks would be better off sending those planes and the military support they planned to send to the al-Maliki regime to the Kurds. The Kurdish Peshmerga seem to be the only disciplined military force in Iraq that doesn’t run away from a buch of thugs driving techincals. It was amazing to see the kind of gear the Iraqi army just abandoned as it ran away. They had armored cars, APCs and even Tanks and they just abandoned that equipment and their arsenals and ran away. You could drive a T-72 up to one of those ISIS technicals and crush it without having too much to fear from an RPG-2 or even an RPG-7. If the new citizens militia really manages to beat off the ISIS the abject humilitaion of al-Maliki and of the Iraqi army will be complete.

The worst warriors in the history of mankind are the Arabs. Unless they fear for their lives or believe god has sent them they wont fight.

The Soviets saw that in Afghanistan (from wiki)

On December 27, 1979, 700 Soviet troops dressed in Afghan uniforms, including KGB and GRU special forces officers from the Alpha Group and Zenith Group, occupied major governmental, military and media buildings in Kabul, including their primary target – the Tajbeg Presidential Palace.

That operation began at 19:00 hr., when the KGB-led Soviet Zenith Group destroyed Kabul’s communications hub, paralyzing Afghan military command. At 19:15, the assault on Tajbeg Palace began; as planned, president Hafizullah Amin was killed. Simultaneously, other objectives were occupied (e.g., the Ministry of Interior at 19:15). The operation was fully complete by the morning of December 28, 1979.

Then they met the Mujahedins who, contrary to the Afghan Army, actually put up a fight. After some 9 years the Mujahedins where decimated, attacks where rare and the Soviets hade trained over 300’000 Afghan soldiers as well as given them the same military equipment they had used for all years. (The Soviets where on average <120’000 soldiers stationed at any given time).

The Soviets left and within <1,5 years the almost decimated Mujahedins, just like ISIS in Iraq, overthrew the leaders. Despite losing 75% of the strength (to deaths and combat wounds) the Mujahedins beat an army 3 times larger than the soviet army previosly on site and subsequently took over all military equipment. Some of it still used to fight UN troops.

We see similar things happening now in Iraq. When they feared for they lives (Saddam in power vs the Persians) they put up a fight, when they feared the enemy more than their leader (US invasion) they deserted, and now, when they have no fear for their leaders and dont believe they are chosen by god they surrender even if they outnumber the enemy (ISIS) with a factor of 40:1. We have seen this in Libya as well (MB and Al Qaeda took over the country… at least they didnt get Rafales first), we saw a similar development in Eqypt (even though they depend more on US aid and thus easier to control). So unless the US can control the country (Iraq has to much oil so they have to be physically on site or have a mean dictator that controls the country).

Ofc this is in general terms but historically this is how it has ended in the ME. Without dictatorship it will end up with fanaticism. (Pakistan MAY be called an exception) Who, in their right minds, would sell modern weapons to anyone in that region after invading said country?

I hope they send as few aircrafts as possible to the Iraqis. They will just end up in the hands of ISIS anyway.

Yes, more on the APG-81 with the same general here:
http://breakingdefense.com/2014/06/a-gods-eye-view-of-the-battlefield-gen-hostage-on-the-f-35/

Love this one:
“And you’re right, the AESA radar has tremendous capacity to play in that game. Boil all that down and it comes to this. Gen. Hostage is saying that the F-35′s cyber capabilities are so effective — combined with space assets, which are often difficult to distinguish in effect from cyber capabilities — that the planes have to stop using them so the pilots can shoot at each other.”

Good info in those articles!

Very good read. But, as with most features, its nothing new.

I do remember Dassault claiming “virtual stealth” capabilities in SPECTRA, I know that EWS-39 has some pretty awesome features (and has had it for quite some time), Growlers hade very impressive jammers etc.

What they dont talk about however is that since these have been around some time others have not only tried the features out but also adopted countermeasures. At least for the high end systems.

Lets take the virtual stealth/fake targets for instance.

Basically one needs to do an advanced DRFM-attack where false echoes are sent simulating different dopplershifts and differende target ranges. Against older systems it may even be possible to have horizontal/vertical displacement. But todays radars have exceptional angular accuracy so against AESAs and modern PESAs one might manipulate range readings making it rather difficult to obtain a radar lock on.

A way to counter this is radarsamverkan, or radar cooperation over datalinks. Currently in use with PS-05 in Gripen C. That means you only need bearing from two systems to get a 2D positioning of the target or three radars to get a 3D position with high resolution. Even if the target is jamming. Radars that arent emitting may also be listening to get bearings.

And that has been fielded for quite some time now.

In order to foil a modern radar one needs to break the randomization keys, and considering how good todays hashing and randomization algorithms are Id say good luck breaking it in real time… In other words, one needs to know when the pulses will come from the enemy jet.

Now, if you quickly look at the competitors you will see that… everyone else will use GaN-based directional jammers, towed decoys (with DRFM-AESA jammers) as well as in some cases airborne multistatic radar systems and/or lower band radars as well as top of the line IRST-systems.

Gripen pilots had an excercise in the UK a few weeks ago where they went up one Gripen vs 2 Eurofighters. http://blogg.forsvarsmakten.se/flygvapenbloggen/2014/06/06/verklighetsnara-taktikutveckling-av-jas-39-i-england-meatball-ur-en-pilots-perspektiv/
It showed that obtaining a radat lock was really hard, even at WVR ranges! In tis scenario the range started at 25 miles with closing speeds above 1100knots. Roughly 7,5 s before merge. And neither one could get a radar lock so both moved over to IR. The fight didnt end until the fighter was on the tail of the target to get a clean kill.

This is just one example on why a fighter needs to be able to handle WVR. The Typhoon couldnt get radar locks on Gripen, Gripen couldnt get radar lock on Eurofighter, both went over to IR and then it was a matter of getting into position (wasnt dog fights over according to LM?) to get a solid killshot.

This is still congruent with all other excersices. Jamming today is so darn good that radar lock is almost impossible against a modern fighter.

What are the protrusions on the inboard missiles?

From Wiki:

In many respects the Kh-31 is a miniaturised version of the P-270 Moskit (SS-N-22 ‘Sunburn’) and was reportedly designed by the same man.[5] The missile is conventionally shaped, with cruciform wings and control surfaces made from titanium.[3] The two-stage propulsion is notable. On launch, a solid-fuel booster in the tail accelerates the missile to Mach 1.8[5] and the motor is discarded. Then four air intakes open up and as in the Franco-German ANS/ANF the empty rocket case becomes the combustion chamber of a kerosene-fuelled ramjet, which takes it beyond Mach 4

Pretty awesome

Fredaykin, this might be of interest for you: http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?128354-will-stealth-become-irrelevant&p=2109855#post2109855

From that post:

On 24 March at 19:00 UTC NATO started the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

At about 8:15 pm local time march 27, with a range of about 8 miles (13 km) several missiles were launched. According to Sergeant Dragan Matić, who was identified in 2009 as the soldier who fired the missiles, they detected the F-117 at a range of about 50 to 60 kilometres (31 to 37 mi), operating their equipment for no more than 17 seconds to avoid being locked on to by NATO anti-air suppression.

It was shoot down on the fourth night. Hardly a long time to learn its “regular patterns”, but from a mission planning perspective the lesson was that 4 days may be enough for the enemy to learn your routines.

Also: http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?123991-F-35-News-amp-Multimedia-thread&p=2066880#post2066880

Another fun thing is that according to GWAP the F16 was more effective in actually hitting the targets. Night time losses can be summed up as follows from Desert Storm + Allied force.
F117 – 1 damaged, 1 lost (8:15 in march is night as it is dark in Serbia at that time…)
F-16 – 0 damaged, 1 lost
A-10 – 0 damaged, 0 lost

Those are the actual numbers.

Sintra, Tu22m you should visit F-16.net, there they all agree that F-35 is as cheap as Gripen E 😉

http://www.f-16.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=25426&sid=d62593586dbb54479ba85d3b11b254a9

Wow.. or we just go with real world numbers…

OTOH it is a proven fact that bias impairs ones ability to do simple calculus. I wonder if the F16.net fanboyism is worse than in the F35 thread.