Since we are resurrecting old threads, I will quote myself from a thread I’ve created;

basic aerodynamic calculations of F-16 vs F-35 with F-16 airfoil and all other generic drag values:

Hello to all, After reading comments about F-35’s performance compared to legacy aircraft, I have decided to make some *rough* analysis of F-35’s turn, acceleration and excess power, and compare it with the current F-16 (the F-35 was supposed to have same maneuverability of F-16 doesn’t it?). While the calculations themselves are precise, there are many unknowns so I had to use many assumptions (thats why I call it rough).

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I had to use generic data from fluid dynamics and advanced aerodynamics books and my own guesstimates to fill in the gaps:
-To be perfectly honest, this little “project” all started to answer “what if F-35 used same airfoil as F-16” question. So first and most obvious of my assumptions that I take F-35 uses same airfoil as F-16 (64A204).

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(In my original post I mistakenly compared F-35 at 50% with F-16 at 25% fuel, I merged it with corrected post later on that thread)
Clean F-16 and Clean F-35 both on 25% fuel:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]226026[/ATTACH]

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Comparing armed F-35 armed with 4x internal AIM-9s versus F-16 armed with 4 AIM-9Ms and 2 empty pylons. Both at 50% fuel payload. At sea level;

[ATTACH=CONFIG]225998[/ATTACH]

This was by far the most suprising result to me. I was expecting extra drag would degrade F-16’s performance a little, but not this much; At very slow speeds, F-16 still has slight advantage, but at above M0,6 F-35 actually sustains turns BETTER than F-16 blk50. On ITR part, F-35 gets advantage as the speed increases, topping out at 24,4 deg/s versus F-16’s 22,5 deg/s.

Same aircraft, at 30k feet:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]225999[/ATTACH]

On average; F-35 has 1,2 deg/s superiority to F-16’s Sustained turn performance at subsonic and transonic realm. While supersonic F-16 has better STR. Their ITR is mostly comperable, however at supersonic F-16 enters PhiMax state which degrades ITR performance. While F-35 looks better in theory, I don’t know if similar conditions would affect F-35 too.

Same aircraft SEP graph:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]226000[/ATTACH]

At sea level, they appear to be comperable, however at 30k feet, F-35 gets a clear advantage in terms of climb and acceleration performance.
To summerize; Clean F-35 is clearly inferior to clean F-16 Block 50 in overall performance, with the gap narrowing at higher altitudes. However when armed with 4 missiles, F-35 is equal or better than F-16 Block 50 over most of the flight envelope. With the payload increasing advantage should move to F-35. IMHO, no matter how lightly loaded F-35 is, it wont have enough maneuverability to do any nice tricks at the airshows. For spectators it will always be a flying brick. However it will have sufficient kinematic performance where it matters, at least when compared to legacy fighters.

Also this modelling calculates the maximum speed and acceleration of F-35 as follows;
At Sea level, its M1.1, translates to 1357 km/h
At 30000feet; its M1.67, translates to 1822 km/h

I had made an acceleration comparison graph some time ago for a topic in this forum by using FM datas. Putting my F-35 model’s acceleration into the graph gives;

[ATTACH=CONFIG]226001[/ATTACH]

Its M0,8 to M1,2 time is 34,95 seconds.

Obviously this is simple excel modelling, nothing more but I tried to be as objective and scientific as possible; I am from Turkey, we have a large F-16 fleet, and will have one of the largest F-35A fleet, so there is no reason for me to pimp up one aircraft’s performance. Though I will admit I really dont like F-35, that will not change whatever numbers it generates. Ugly is ugly. Here’s the raw data for further thoughts;
[ATTACH=CONFIG]225994[/ATTACH]

Of course, there are a lot of assumptions, but claiming F-35 to be more similar to F-117 than F-16 is plain idiotic. IF F-35 has same fixed inlet loses, and drag coefficients as generic data from fluid mechanics book, and assuming it doesn’t improve the NACA airfoil F-16 has by the slightest, it will still match F-16 with any meaningful armament. However off my calculation would be, one has to also consider F-35 is hardly a generic and 20 years of development should improve on these graphs as well.

Right. While the Russians are already building 2 frigate types (with the watered down 22356 as possible 3rd).
Lower cost due to Chinese mass production would be off-set by cost of shoehorning in Russians systems. Also, absent a comparable domestic diesel, it would make Russia dependent on inported Chinese diesels. The only other reason I could think of would be yard availability (i.e. faster delivery)

Last thing Russians need is yet another frigate class. But maybe they would be interested in Type 071 if Mistral deal is cancelled.

1x Kirov – S-300FM – 48N6 – 200 km
3x Slava – S-300F – 5V55U – 150 km
5x Sovremenny – Buk – 9M38M1/9M317 – 35/50 km

Thats the list of currently available RuN ships with area air defense capability and sufficent endurance for blue water capability. 9 ships. With current composition, Russian Navy can deploy 3 in North sea, 2 in baltic, 1 in Black Sea and 3 in Pacific. That is assuming all these ships will be active at sea. (No flamebait to Russians here, any ship will need to go maintenence some time).

To avoid unnecessary discussion with some obvious users, I will not go into country by country comparsion to show the opposition, but suffice it to say, these 2-3 ships are simply not enough by far.

In the ideal circumstances, Admiral Gorshkov frigates are excellent ships. They are a necessary step for larger Russian ships (even if it takes 9 years to build one); all new hull design, new radars, new CIWS, new ASW system, modern missiles etc.

Admiral Grigorovich class, on the other hand, is -relatively- unimpressive ship built on a modernised krivak hull by using modernised incarnations of older systems. It adds nothing to Russian know-how, its just there to fill the numbers. Unfortunately its not filling numbers if it takes 5 years to build one.

Now imagine a Type-54/54A hybrid: Type-54A already uses HQ-16, a buk derivative, so Shtil-1 should be a bolt-on modification. Same goes for replacing quad C-803 with Kh-35. Type-54 already uses 4xAK-630 so no modification necessary there. Type-54 uses licence-built MAN diesels, so Russia can buy from Germans, Shaanxi built copies, or put their own. Important thing is, such ships will be built 2 per year, -instead of 1 per 5 years- and will have similar specifications to Grigorovich class. If they are cheaper it will be a bonus.

Another advantage is, it will free up the Yantar shipyard. Considering modification of Krivak-III -> Grigorovich, I would really love to see what would they do with Udaloy-I hull (which they also built in the past). Redut in place of SA-N-9, S-400 in place of rear AK-100 gun, Onix in place of SS-N-14s etc etc. 5 year for construction would be acceptable for such a ship.

It shouldn’t need structural, just avoinics. M3 airframe has everything a good bomber needs. I had much simpler things in mind, similar to adding Sniper XR to B-1B. Russians can bolt on something underside, change some avionics to support it and they will be done with it. Pylons/MERs/adapters are already present on Tu-22M3 to support most A-G munitions.

In fact such configuration would be both simpler and effective than B-1B upgrades, due to existance of (operational) external hardpoints, so that any munition could be used; no need to modify each PGM for internal bay usage.

And since then 21 tonnes have been some sort of limit. Very few have gotten close (F-14, F-22, Flankers and MiG 31 are the others for the past 50 or so years). This upper bound has not changed so I feel prtty good about keeping it.

Tu-28 had 24,5 ton weight. MiG-31 has 21,8 tons weight which exceeds F-111A by 1,3 ton. If had been produced, F-12 would have 27,6 ton weight.

Next up is the light category where the bottom has been MiG 21 style supersonic fighters. That weight class doesnt exist anymore. The lightest is the JF17 at some 6’500kg. Similar to Tejas and Gripen A. So that is the natural bottom line for current aircraft. If you would make a diagram of fighter aircraft weights you would see that there are distinctive groups around 7300kg (+/- 1000kg), 10500kg (+/-1000kg), 14000kg (+/-1500kg) and 19’000 (+/-2000kg)

MiG-21 and MiG-23 technically belong to the same class. Its not that soviets thought “hey lets build a new class of airplane”. Necessities of 2rd gen aircraft, MiG-21, required a bigger engine, a radar and stronger airframe for stronger electronics. Thus MiG-21 was 30% larger than (light) MiG-17, with later variants easily exceeding(heavy) Mig-19. Necessities of 3rd gen aircraft required way bigger radar for BVR, and and airframe that can lift rather big BVR missiles; 4 of them.

In essence, MiG-21 was the smallest possible aircraft for its role in 50s, MiG-23 was the smallest possible aircraft for SAME role in 60s. And MiG-29 is still the smallest possible aircraft for SAME role in 70s. Looking more at Soviet/Russian aircraft weights:

1st gen: Light= MiG-17: 3,9 tons. Heavy = MiG-19: 5,6 tons.
2nd gen: Light = MiG-21: 5,6 tons. Heavy = Su-7: 8,9 tons Su-9: 8,6 tons.
3rd gen: Light = MiG-23: 9,2 tons, Heavy = Su-15 10,7 tons, MiG-25: 20 tons, Tu-28: 24 tons,
4th gen: Light = MiG-29: 11 tons, Yak-141: 11,4 tons. Heavy = Su-27: 16,3 tons, MiG-31 21,8 tons.
5th gen: Light = LFI = ??? Heavy = PAK-FA: ~19 tons.

Switching from 1st to 2nd, 2nd to 3rd, light aircraft was always heavier than the previous types heavy. Excluding interceptors, MiG-29 was heavier than the heaviest fighter of 3rd gen.

Compared to Russians, US actually had smaller difference between generations in terms of weight increase:
1st gen: Light= F-84: 5,2 tons F-86: 6,1 tons. Heavy = F-89: 11,4 tons
2nd gen: Light = F-104: 6,3 tons. Heavy = F-101: 12,9 tons, F-105: 12,4 tons F-106: 11 tons
3rd gen: Light = F-5A: 4,3 tons, A-4: 4,7 tons. Heavy = F-4: 13,4 tons, A-6: 11,6 tons. F-111: 20,5 tons
4th gen: Light = F-16: 7,3 tons. F-18: 10,4 tons. Heavy = F-15: 12,7 tons, F-18E: 14,5 tons, F-14 19,8 tons.
5th gen: Light = F-35: 13,2 tons. Heavy = F-22 19,7 tons.

Ie, a weight class system should revolve around a current norm and the numbers above are the norm. You dont have to like it.

What I like is irrelevant. Your assumption of distinctive groups easily puts MiG-19 MiG-17 in the same class. MiG-19 was twin engined, had twice thrust, twice payload, of MiG-17. MiG-17 was the Mig-29 of its time, and MiG-19 was the Su-27 of its time. Its simple as that. Looking at grippen and calling both “light” is as laughable as saying MiG-29 and Su-27 belong to the same weight class.

In order to avoid this, suddenly there pops up additional groups, which only adds to the error. If air force requirements change, and 6th gen fighters revolve around 60 and 80 tons weight, then according to new criteria of “current norm” will you say Su-27 belong to a ultralight weight? Or if they all become drones and weigh between 3 and 5 tons, Grippen suddenly becomes a ultraheavy aircraft?

In an analogy; you are claiming Volkswagen Passat B1 is a super mini comperable to Ford Ka and Fiat 500, on the basis that its lighter than those cars.

You could however say that because the F35 is a 5th gen it can’t be compared to anything else but the F22 (despite not living up to Lockheeds own standard when they sold the F22). But then one could also say that 4,5th gen is so much better than 4th gen so you cant compare them either…

Looking from airframe design POV, there is no such thing as 4.5 gen. Rafale, Eurofighter, Su-35 etc are all 4th gen still.

Wouldnt be better to classify fighters by their range? Seems much fairer since it reflects capability rather than some arbitrary differences

If you ask my opinion, definately not; If range was the defining factor, MiG-29 would belong to the smallest aircraft class, and MiG-25 would belong to smaller class than Grippen. Speaking of internal range, Su-27 would be a class by its own above anything else, and heaviest operational fighter the MiG-31, would be around medium class.

I think mk1 eyeball is sufficently good indicator of which aircraft belongs to which size class.

You are right; I did saw F-16 with 6xMk-82 + fuel tanks, but not with GBU-12s. Did a quick google search and didn’t found one either.

Curious though. F-16 has way more room than Rafale; how does Rafale carry 6 without puncturing its own tanks?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]237013[/ATTACH]

er, if half of what you claim there is true, one has to wonder why the US make the F-35… they should just buy a few silent eagles more, they’d spare a huge amount if cash

In analogy, you are comparing F-4E with F-16. F-35 adds unique features absent on F-15/16.

what’s more, in real operations, like in Libya, they were nowhere near carrying anything comparable in terms of ordnance. considering the distances flown, it might have been interesting to have more bombs to drop, as there certainly would be a lot of targets underneath

Ok, 6 or 8 bombs on images haavarla posted. Its roughly equal with Rafale in terms of payload and range, how about kinematics?

F-15E retains kinematics to outturn (and outrun) an armed F-4E or MiG-21 while carrying quite heavy (12 Mk-82s or 6 CBU-89s or 4 Mk-84s) A-G payloads.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]236945[/ATTACH]

Of course, it is not expected to fight with them, but kinematics can always be an advantage. SAMs, terrain following, evading threats… Ignoring the costs, F-15E performs better than F-16 or Rafale or other smaller types in this area.