You could hardly be more wrong. The Super Hornet is very inexpensive compared to other Western 4.5 generation fighters and matches or exceeds their performance in almost all areas. (Sensors, networking, weapons, carrying capacity, operating costs, etc)
The only real area where the Super Hornet is a relatively poor performer is in pure speed and acceleration.
It has 11 pylons/stations, same as Gripen E, which is less than both Rafale and Su35.
Price in purchase is slightly lower than Rafale, but it has higher TCO.
And it is interesting that you have information, that is classified, about how good sensors are. What radarbands are the anennas listening to? What is the angular accuracy of the emission detection? Does it have real time sensor fusion between all aircraft in the formation? Does it have beamed datalinks? Does it have “guidance handoff”, meaning one jet can take over the guidance of any missile or precision bomb released by another jet in the formation? Does it have the best missiles (Meteor and Iris-T)?
Unless your answers are “VHF-Ka”, “<1%”, “yes” (with link 16 it is a definitive no), “yes” (but it hasnt), “yes” (but it hasn’t), “yes” (which it hasnt), then the Super Hornet in fact is not ahead of the competition in networking, or weapons. When it comes to the actual sensors the performance is classified so I wont bother going there.
What do you mean a higher price it performs worse? A Super Hornet cost 60,000,000 dollars and how can it perform worse?
The Hornet already has that great thrust 0.96 of thrust but an armed Legacy Hornet ain’t that maneuverable. Only a clean Hornet is maneuverable with those high AOA? But anyway But of course a CFT might be nice on a legacy hornet for any of the Costumers who own a hornet or the Navy. It would put a same range like the Super Hornet which the Rhino has 2,346 miles of range and the hornet would receive about 2,089 range right?
I will NOT reaspond complaints or argues.
The more thrust you have the faster can you get airborne with more payload. The Super Hornet is very close to the FA18C when it comes to agility.
I am really interested in how you got the unrefueled range to 2’346 miles (3’900 km) on internal fuel + CFT!
These are my numbers on ferry range:
Super Hornet: 1,660 nautical miles (3,054 kilometers), two AIM-9s, three 480 gallon tanks retained.
Old Hornet: 1,546 nautical miles (1777.9 miles/2,844 km), two AIM-9s plus three 330 gallon tanks.
This is my source: http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=1100&tid=1200&ct=1
As you can see a Super Hornet with 1 drop tank is just marginally better at turning than the FA18C with 3 drop tanks. With the same load I think the margin is pretty negligible.
Not that it is very related to topic. But that said I think more thrust in the engines would be good (to improve sustained turn performance).
All upgrades however are good. So its hard to pick a favourite without determining who it is for.
I think we are still missing the crucial parts of the argumentation here. Missile performance.
Hitting a target further out than 30km @ 30k ft is borderline impossible if they have semi decent IRST systems in a head on engagement.
And this is because at 40-60km they will track you and they will see the missile release indicated on the HUD. Pulling a 9G turn in m1,2 takes 10 seconds (the missile has now travelled 12km) and it will now be a tail chase against a super sonic and accelerating target with an average closing speed of mach 2,2. The missile has only got fuel to chase the target for ~20km, meaning it will need to chase the target for 33 seconds, about 2x what it has fuel for.
This is from another post I made (check scale on left vs right)
At 10km/30 kft the Aim120A/B can get a tail chase kill on a subsonic (m0,8-0,9) target as far out as 16km if it isnt maneuvering.
To get a kill, in a head on engagement against a turning target, you would need to engage them at 14 km because of their turn (8 seconds in 9G speed < mach 1) + their displacement in range in the tail chase.
But thats the old Aim120A/B. The Aim120C (that at best has 15% more fuel, but it hasnt) may because of flight profile extent range by 50% (in the advertising). This makes the maximum engagement range, on a target with decent situational awereness that makes one counter move, a staggering 21km with a likely hit distance of 24km.
The Aim120D is supposedly able to extend this by another 50% so if the advertisement is true we get a maximum engagement range of 31,5km against a subsonic, but situationaly aware, target that makes one turn. And again the range where the kill occurs will be further out, in this case 36km.
The problem is that flight profile changes really only work at very high altitude, like 50k ft if the target is at 40k ft. So in reality the 50% range increases are way lower at lower altitudes.
And now we get to the supersonic targets. The missile needs 30 seconds of flight to reach 36km, the jet will fly for 10 sec (turn @9G in mach 1,2) and then 20sec while accelerating away with average speed of mach 1,65 or 500m/s. This moves the jet 10km away. So the maximum engagement range (according to marketing claims of the missile manufacturer) against modern 4,5th gen fighters will be 36-10 = 26km with the Aim120D.
At this range the F35 has no advantage over a legacy jets. For instance the OLS 35M is stated to have a target acquisition range of 50 km head on against non afterburning targets, Pirate and the ball on Rafale even more.
The only way to extend the reach is new missiles, missiles that dont fit in the bays of the F35 (at the moment).
So claiming that one or the other definitely will win is just stupid. The ranges are short enough to make it an open playing field as long as both have decent situational awareness. The next argument will likely be that MAWs have short range, but they are supposed to give a 360 degree awareness while IRST search and tacks in +/-120 degree horizontal and +90/-40 degree azimuth. It is likely that any threat will be within that search area. After all is “only” 240 degrees to the front, and to sneak past this with a slower jet is physically very close to impossible.
Oh, and pay attention to the assumption that the jets can perform a 9G turn… the F35A is limited to 4,6G so the turning would take longer and the escape speed would be lower (it takes the F35 ~60 seconds to reach mach 1,2 from mach 0,8).
So from a purely kinematic perspective it looks as if the F35 will struggle to escape. For instance the turn will take 20-22 seconds in 4,6G and speed around 300m/s, and average escape speed will also be around 300m/s which moes the F35 around 2,7-3km.
This makes maximum engagement range against EF2000, Gripen, F16 etc ~26km (when using Aim120D) while the maximum engagement range against the F35 is 33km using the same missiles. Assumption 2 is that the missiles are fired at subsonic speeds… If you use afterburner it sort of gives away your position a liiiiiittle bit further than the gain from it. The 3rd assumption is altitude ~30kft.
And thats all. The winner of a fight is determined by more than the gadgets brought to it. A future FA18E/F with excellent IRST may very well prove to be superior to the F35 in dogfights, but more likely the Eurocanards will. At least untill the F35 can carry Meteor internally, at that time the engagement ranges may very likely increase to somewhere close to 50km.
I think anyone can spot that it is photoshoped. And the biggest giveaway that it isnt the real concept (apart from the brush strokes) is that showes a potential Gripen F model that isnt even in development.
There has been a lot of Gripen photoshops out there showing DSI.
Here is the original (without nametag)
Here is another with dsi…
And here is tha model they (SAAB) actually show.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]215903[/ATTACH]
Found a picture that was so pretty I couldnt make it better myself…
Amraamski performance
Note that they changed the scale for the Amraam on left side. From http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-13506-start-120.html
Basically, if you want to kill someone in a tail chase (subsonic non maneuvering target) the Amraam A/B (stated ~60km “effective” range) will officially help you out up to ~15km…
From X-plane http://www.x-plane.org/home/urf/aviation/text/missiles/aam.html :
To take one example, the Vympel R-77 has a stated range of 100 km against a head-on target at high altitude, but only 25 km in a stern chase. At low altitude it can fire at head-on targets at 20 km, from which we can guess range in a stern chase is 5 km. (See the above diagram.)
And this is presumably against targets that don’t try to evade.Range varies similarily for AIM-7C.
Target and shooter both at M 0.9
altitude head on tail chase
50.000’/16km 14.000-37.000 feet/4.5-12km 8.200-25.000 feet/3-8km
30.000’/10km 9.500-34.000 feet/3-11km 4.200-20.000 feet/1.6-6km
sea level 9.500-19.000 feet/3-6.5km 2.000- 5.700 feet/0.6-1.9km
The improvements planned for, but at the time of writing (2000) cancelled, future versions of AMRAAM include the ability to engage 9G manouevring targets at 30 km, which will let it engage non-agile targets at more than 60 km, which gives a good idea of the range difference depending on type of target.This is what the Swedish air force says are typical ranges for some missiles
Low altitude High altitude
Rb 24J Sidewinder about 1000 m slightly more than 3000 m (AIM-9P)
Rb 71 SkyFlash a couple of km well over 10 km
Rb 74 Sidewinder, AIM-9L
I think this makes a strong argument that BVR likely is the future but that it will take some time and that the 100km 1 shot 1 kill is still a dream.
Now consider the range for a target that makes a 180 turn, goes for full ab and accelerates to m1,6 at 20’000 ft.
Lots of love etc :love-struck:
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