seahawkYet it took NATO what 5 years to get the runway at Kandahar into a fit state to operate conventional types?. Runway repair, to acceptable tolerance, is not a 5 minute job.
As for burning holes in the runway cast your minds back and remember what STOVL means. Short Take Off Vertical Landing. The takeoff, under max thrust at max weight, is not vertical it is just the same as any other jet with the efflux direct aft….its just shorter than most. With SRL techniques spalling can even be minimised on landing.
The point, as Swerve has patiently explained, is to enable the use of hard strips unsuitable for conventional aircraft like Port Stanley airport or Kandahar International. Perhaps using a suitable length of taxiway if the main strip is unuseable. Seeing you are on an airfield that needs to have its main strip relaid I’d not think a bit of surface scorching on a taxiway, IF VL had to be used, would be such a issue would it?!.
But even for a STO the F-35B turns the exhaust of the main engine down to face the tarmac directly. For expeditionary use, it might be easier to get local lower quality concrete to patch up existing holes in a runway, than it could be to built an operational area of high quality concrete for the F-35Bs.
seahawkGeometry tells you everything, IF you know how to read it.
Lockeed guys corroborate that and there is no in point arguing that, really.
You can use diffraction, dispersion and adsorption to handle incoming radar waves in theory, but not in the context of the aircraft skin, in the amounts you’re suggesting.Again, if that was so simple, Mig21 would have been covered in Zimmerit, making it a LO plane.
To diffract radio wave in cm wavelength you need a prism of at least one half period length across (or an AESA T/R module), which means, you’ll get a skin made of chestnut sized elements and that plane would have immense troubles with heating, boundary flow, not to mention performance, etc…
So theoretically that works, but in reality it doesn’t and so engineers devised a flat surface to control the reflection AND to make an aircraft actually fly.
You can used carefully curved surfaces for a similar effect.
seahawkIt’s not really a “True” STOVL aircraft then is it.
In theory, any one of us can drive a Formula 1 car to it’s max performance…But we can’t really when it comes to actually having a go at it.
It is no Harrier. On the right surface F-35B is a STOVL, it is just not a “operate anywhere aircraft” that is suited for operating from unprepared airstrips.
seahawkWell, geometry tells us different.
Again, you can either have a low average RCS and high peaks (a reflecting plane), or you can have high average RCS and low peaks (a reflecting sphere), or a combination of those two.
Now, RAM and even RAS is nice, but if it worked in the amounts you’re suggesting, the F16 and Mig21 would have it, long time ago.
Last time I checked, Lockeed’s LO engineers put shaping at some 80% of overall RCS contribution.
Geometry tells us nothing. You can use diffraction, dispersion and adsorption to handle incoming radar waves. Under certain circumstances you can even have radar waves travelling along the airframe. The main solution is dispersion. Meaning that incoming radar energy is dispersed into many different directions, just not back to the emitter. Careful design (in combination with using diffraction and RAM) allows the stealth aircraft to disperse much of the incoming radar energy.
seahawkWw, Jessmo and the rest of the crew…it’s really simple.
In LO design, you get to have a few peaks and low average RCS, as opposed to most non LO designs (low peaks/high average RCS), OR something in between that doesn’t peak as much as B2, but isn’t all aspect radiating as conventional fighter (F15) neither and then you get F22, F35 and such, depending on requirements…Why do you think some guy in LM found a way to beat the Conservation of energy law?
We call the solution RAM and radar wave do not simply reflect towards the emitter in any case. They also can undergo diffraction, dispersion and be adsorbed. In addition you can also have travelling waves along long sleek and slightly rounded surfaces. Facetting alone was the first solution as it requires the least computing power. Today computers should allow the designers to use all possible solutions to hide the return from the emitter. Obviously there will always be peaks when the radar hits the aircraft at a certain angle and frequency, but they won´t be bigger than on a conventional aircraft. It is not impossible that underside of the F-22 for example could use travelling waves to guide the radar energy to a point in the airframe where the energy would dispersed and not reflected. They could also use diffraction or RAM. And most likely they use a combination of all techniques.
seahawkAnd F-35B has a higher exhaust temprature and a stronger downwash, so that it won´t be able to operate from gras fields, paking lots or unpreprared aristrips with out spcial high performance concrete being laid.
seahawkHow’s that possible?
Ww, here’s a formula for calculating an antenna’s gain (which a target, esentialy is):
G(ain) = n*(4*Pi/Lambda^2)*A(rea)
So obviously, the reflecting ability is directly dependent on the size of the reflector (a plane in this case).
The plane that has aligned surfaces (F117, F22, B2) has also immense reflecting area at certain angles (at which is designed to reflect), since the surfaces are in the same plane and act as a giant antenna.
And it will still be less than for a similar sized conventional plane, due to coatings and carefully avoiding radar waves travelling along the surface or hitting spike areas.
seahawkHmm. Lockheed Martin which designed and built three out of those four aircraft say it is. Those who have never built a single Low Observable fighter aircraft say it isn’t. Whom to believe? Those who have RCS testing data to support their assertions or those who’ve a look at a few photographs and made their own minds up?
Just to support that L-M IS saying this, I quickly found a promo brief to support my claim.
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/data/assets/aeronautics/products/f35/A07-20536AF-35Broc.pdf
Specifically under the ‘revolutionary manufacturing’ section and that was found after a 2 minute Google search. I’m sure there is plenty more out there.
Afaik they also claim that The F-35 is not designed to the same high specification as F-22when it comes to all aspect stealth. Especially the rear side makes me agree with it.
seahawkWhat a stupid discussion. The side on radar signature of a conventional fighter is also much bigger than the head-on. It is not different for stealth fighters, yet compared to a RCS reduced plane the convetional has much larger signature, relative to the angle it presents to the emitter.
F-22, F-117 and B-2 are very close to all aspect stealth imho. F-35 is not.
seahawkJunior partners?. Germany and Spain are working on the EADS Barracuda.The second protoype has flown this fall.
seahawkAnother project with unrealistic goals that will waste money and never deliver a working aircraft. Money would be better spent on more C-130J or/and C-27J.
seahawkOr more realistically, Redina can´t pay for all the weapons it would need. So to buy them the government would have to turn into a strong dictatorship which would be occupied with removing internal resistance for quite some time and who most likely would face serious arms embargoes.
If we can given Redina all those shiny toys, I can easily say the Bluetan will get the support of 6 US carrier strike groups.
seahawkT-38 or what ever repalces it for the USAF, Goshawks for the Blues.
seahawkI think thats widely accepted Buitreaux certainly I don’t believe that anyone is attempting to portray Argentina as an aggressor these days or…..for that measure going back a good many years.
The issue is more one of whether its prudent for a nation, with the responsibilities the UK has, to rely absolutely on the continued civility of ‘potential’ adversaries to define the level of military capability necessary to meet those responsibilities. After all a foreign government could change much faster than we could reconstitute a carrier strike capability couldn’t it?!.
That depends. If tomorrow Argentina turns hostile, they also need to acquire ships, aircraft, SAMs, AShMs, etc.
In that case the UK would be free to keep the Harriers flying, Get more Typhoons, Deploy more troops to MPA, built auxiliary airfields and station Lynx helicopters and AH-64 there together with a Type 45 and more surface ships as well as subs. In historic conflict the invasion only was possible because the local and regional forces committed were too small to deter aggression. Would MPA have had 20 F-4s and a few Bucs and the island have seen a sizeable garrison with a few Scorpions or other light tanks, it is doubtful Argentina would have tried in the first place.
seahawkThe articel in AFM is quite good actually. It reduces the “confirmed” stinger kills given in western media and compares it to Russian sources and by doing this reduces the number of Stinger kills to 1/10. However the impact of the Stinger should not be underestiminated. It forced the Soviets to change tactics and in a time when CAS was mostly being done with dumb bombs and unguided rockets, it forced the Soivets to fly at higher alltitudes and releases the weapons at higher alltitudes. Which obviusly reduces the accuracy of said weapons.
At the same time, and that is the real reason the Soviets left, it helped to make the war increasingly costly for them up to the point that it was no longer worth it.
If Russia would supply manpads to the freedom fighters in Afghanistan today, the occupational forces from the west would be running home even quicker.
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