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LMFS

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  • in reply to: Franco-German next generation fighter #2116336
    LMFS
    Participant

    [USER=”71228″]garryA[/USER]
    Let me remind my original point once more: attack against an unaware enemy is and has always been the focus of air forces because it has a huge influence in success chances. It has been done and continues to be done with or without VLO, since it depends on many other factors and not only RCS, because the kill chain needs the use of radioelectric spectrum to detect / identify target and links for guidance, as well as moments during the attack where VLO is not guaranteed. Conversely, it is difficult that an advanced adversary will be caught unaware by a missile coming out of the blue and will therefore take action to counter the attack.

    I am not discussing the whole range of tactics and means of aerial warfare nor denying the advantages of reduced RCS so I will not extend myself in the off-topic much further

    Briefly to your points:
    1. Weapons bay: true, it can be hidden from a given aspect but not to the IADS. In normal conditions at that moment the attacker would be at least detected by surveillance stations and the plane under attack could be informed.
    2. Regarding ECCM: goal here is to fool the missile seeker at least during the end game, so burn-through distance not that relevant. Of course, the smaller the RCS the better, On a side note, it does not help if we use RCS data about LO/VLO planes which are not realistic and only represent claims in laboratory conditions at a very specific aspect and frequency.

    [USER=”43812″]moon_light[/USER]

    Modern radioelectric ESM/ECM suites can accurately locate source of incoming radiation and generate targeting data by single plane.

    in reply to: Franco-German next generation fighter #2116456
    LMFS
    Participant

    Why assume VLO airplanes operate alone? F-22 certainly does not and it has been known for years that F-35 was designed to fight as a 4-ship. ESM is the primary sensor and is capable of generating a weapons quality targeting solution. You can guess the detectable last chance IFF ping before the missile shot is not going to come from the shooter, but from a flight mate in a safe location and completely different bearing. Look right while getting sucker punched from the left.

    Don’t underestimate the ECCM of the missile, its ability to switch to HOJ and missile end game support from any of the flight members. That is why the latest AAMs have 2-way data links.

    Every move has well thought through counter moves. Don’t be that medieval knight who enters the battle expecting his shiny ECM armor to protect him from the long bow and musketoon. The best way to survive is to remain unseen until it is too late for an unwary opponent to react (a la Richtofen and Hartman).

    First of all allow me to point out that I don’t assume any plane operates alone, but that is the kind of scenario often represented on the internet and media where amateur comparisons between weapons systems take place and hence the starting point before talking about supporting assets and tactics.

    Some comments to your points:

    1. A partner plane in safe position will guide the missile and perform IFF interrogation. True. But what about radar flare when weapons bays are opened and missile is launched? Wouldn’t this give away the position of the attacking plane?
    2. ECCM exits… both sides. So as said, it is a matter of whose systems are better as a whole and how many weak spots each side has, not only about who is stealth and who is not. In any case, if a fighter gets to detect early the launch it can try to outrun the missile, destroy it, attack the guiding plane with a faster missile, jam the link or take a number of actions, fooling the seeker being only one of the options available. Kinematics matter here too, i.e. consider engagement envelope of a 4 M AMRAAM against an almost 3 M MiG-31 flying 5 km above a F-35 and then the opposite situation if a F-35 would need to evade a R-37M launched from a MiG-31. This is massively lopsided in favour of the faster plane with longer ranged missiles. Again, not the only factor but also an important one to be considered in the overall capability comparison
    3. Of course I agree attacking an unaware enemy is, by far, the absolute best way of succeeding and in fact responsible for the great majority of BVR kills. All I am saying is that also VLO planes will need to give away their position and intentions, if the rival is capable enough to monitor the radioelectric spectrum for communications and radar signals and to avoid being flanked
    4. Between RWR and radar detection, the advantage is always for the RWR side, at least in terms of intercepted energy. We can theorize about LPI as much as we want but in the end this is physics and not magic. So a non-VLO plane could potentially detect the VLO one by detecting its radar emissions and pass the coordinates or go for a kill, even before it has been detected itself.
    5. Going into a more complex scenario, now that you open the field: the defending side without VLO planes can keep them passive and relying on IADS data to get approximate positions of VLO assets in the area, launching LRAAM with active seekers that will be guided until being very close to the attackers, where its seeker can be used for the kill. That could degrade even further the advantage of VLO design to the point where it is not decisive at all.

    So, again and for clarity: I am not negating the many advantages of VLO or LO designs. All I am trying to do is to address some overblown claims about its relevance that seem to forget that the whole fighting force and the tactics are responsible for a much bigger part of the result. Reductionism is easier to handle but that is not how things work.

    Why do you think it is a mystery? As long as your force have more than 1 VLO fighter, in combat they can guide one another through datalink like AEW&C guide conventional aircraft, only one aircraft need to have its radar on. If neither side have more than 1 fighter, the advantage is still in VLO fighter favor.Because, unlike radar it is very hard and time consumming for a single platform to generate firing solution with RWR/ESM, if your adversary is constantly moving at high speed, in unpredictable direction in 3D space, then it is even harder, almost impractical.

    See above regarding chances of the VLO planes of catching the enemy side unaware. Some additional comments:
    – I very much doubt the VLO plane will move erratically but on the contrary, keep its lowest RCS aspect towards the attacked plane. This restricts massively the space to be searched for. In any case I was arguing that the attacked plane would be aware of what is going on, as opposed to being caught off-guard by an incoming missile.
    – Don’t know how difficult or time consuming is to locate a source of radiation like the applicable ones in practical conditions, triangulation is rather obvious unless further sophistication of the source signal is used. And as said, with an active homing seeker you don’t need to have perfect targeting data, only to guide the missile to the proximity of the target. Also anti-radiation heads exist, that can lock onto you radar emissions.

    in reply to: Franco-German next generation fighter #2116563
    LMFS
    Participant

    Most of the recent victories in BVR combat are due to complete unawareness of the enemy till the last moment, due to the attacking planes remaining passive/outside the search cone of the enemie’s radars and being guided by AWACS. Now, how would a lonely fighter, VLO or not, manage to attack a modern adversary from far BVR without being noticed (by turning on its radar or providing mid-course guidance to its missiles) is a mystery to me. Any modern fighter would be aware by the moment of launch (bay opening) the latest that he is under attack, which would allow him to counter it and reduce drastically its effectiveness. Otherwise you have, as is usually the case, a third world adversary without RWR, or even functioning radars or any kind of ESM/ECM suit being flanked by modern fighters guided by the AWACS deployed to the theater in undisputed air superiority. So I feel much of the tactical superiority which is attributed to VLO is in reality a consequence of AWACS and utter numbers / technological air dominance in general. Sorry for the off-topic but I think the discussion is worth it…

    in reply to: Chinese air power thread 18 #2116666
    LMFS
    Participant

    Russia, with a GDP equivalent to South Korea or Australia, is coasting on the back of technology developed through massive unsustainable spending by the USSR. Nothing to do with Russian ingenuity or thrift.

    I am sure Russia is very happy with people like you in the West, sticking their heads so deep in the sand, reassuring their egos with delusion and half truths 30 years old and completely oblivious to reality. I guess 21 trillion dollar debt (and rising 1 trillion per year) is the proof of sustainable US spending :rolleyes:

    in reply to: Su-57 News and Discussion -version_we_lost_count!- #2116788
    LMFS
    Participant

    The problem is that if we ignore features like this then one could just as easily make an argument for a clean Typhoon or Rafale being VLO. It’s details like this that determine it.

    The problem is that you (or probably anybody here) are not going into the details, because you lack the knowledge needed for it. If you were in the know of the detailed physics, technologies, doctrine and roadmap involved in all of the design compromises of Su-57 you could only be a top program designer or manager and would better refrain from disclosing one single bit of all that here.

    There are two ways of interpreting issues in the design that are striking to you:
    1. You don’t understand the decision taken but suppose the guys in charge are professionals and either rationally decided it was worth compromising there, or have a solution for the potential issue that you just don’t imagine.
    2. You don’t understand the decision but suppose the Sukhoi guys and behind them, the whole Russian scientific bodies, including the institutions where modern comprehension of radar scattering was born, are clueless copycats, clumsily trying to emulate US stealth designs without quite managing to understand the principles and hence screwing the whole effort with a couple of flare spots here and there that any armchair expert would have avoided.

    Just tell me, from the options above, which one is reasonable to you and which is simply insane.

    BTW, nobody will claim Typhoon is VLO, for example comparable to F-22. Unlike the Su-57, that was not a requirement during its development, and consistently it is devoid of almost any of the shaping considerations for VLO design, which indeed are all over the Su-57.

    in reply to: Su-57 News and Discussion -version_we_lost_count!- #2116798
    LMFS
    Participant

    From the low-look angle the nacelles are its downfall. With that rear-end it could only hope for frontal stealth but the IRST scuppered that too.

    Are we never going to stop this absurd? You suddenly all know more about radar scattering than the inventors of PTD, it is ludicrous.

    in reply to: Chinese air power thread 18 #2116801
    LMFS
    Participant

    Well, get ready for a big surprise because it is coming…..;)

    Sure, I am waiting! :eagerness:

    As a matter of fact don’t be surprised to see Russia buying Chinese Military Hardware in the coming years! Why??? Because it just doesn’t have the resources like it did back in the glory days of the Soviet Union. As a matter of fact Russia’s GDP is in the range of Australia and Canada. In short it can’t afford to keep up with the “Big Dogs” anymore.

    A big secret for you: GDP of Western nations is a “bit” overblown. National capability is not a direct translation of GDP, and much less under Western standards. Russia gets deterrence and in fact a strategic capability on par or even better than US with 1/10 of the budget. Their fighters cost like one third or less than the equivalent plane in US. They are right at the top in space exploration, nuclear energy, aviation engines and many other strategic technologies, ahead of US in fact in some of them despite the $ difference. But why should I insist, this is all well known to anybody wanting to see. Russia cooperates with China and I can well imagine both developing together some military HW as they do with the CR929 airliner or even buying non-critical stuff directly from China, why not. But buying J-31 to substitute Su-57… you went too far with that one man!

    in reply to: 2019 F-35 News and Discussion #2117443
    LMFS
    Participant

    [USER=”58228″]mig-31bm[/USER]
    These A2G profiles are 2 x JDAM + 2 x AMRAAM true? Hi-Lo-Hi or rather Hi-Hi-Hi? Ranges and combat radius in real operation are depending on a number of issues and it is not always clear how all these have been chosen and how they would translate to other set of circumstances. That is why I am not going to discuss about 50 nm more or less. We have scarce information as it is logical due to nature of these matters. I prefer looking at the broad capabilities of the different systems, assuming I am not going to know every detail.

    Regarding radar horizon: Tu will not be targeting the carrier with its own radar most probably, but based on naval surveillance data. Both China and Russia have space based assets for this and many other sources of data.
    Intangible barrier: I get your point, mine is the bigger the range of the attacking weapon, the bigger the area to be covered. F-35 is not extremely fast, long ranged (though range is more than decent) and its missiles are not long ranged, much less against planes flying higher and faster than itself. So it is difficult to make this barrier tight, even when the anti-ship missiles would need the carrier going some km inside the defence bubble of the carrier, which is not necessarily the case as seen. But of course this is a very complicated matter and also very case-specific. You may allow the carrier to come closer to shore or not, attack the carrier itself or just the air wing, with SAMs or interceptors. Or maybe down the CMs launched, since they are only subsonic targets. Not considering complexities like subs, other vessels etc etc etc. Only for military professionals and with reserves due to lack of info about the true capabilities and intentions of the opposing side. For me it is enough to make a point: land based assets have big advantages because they are not constrained in number or size as carrier borne or in general naval ones are. And hence carriers are better used against lower level militaries than against peer countries. Not writing them off yet but the level of threat is very high for them right now.

    [USER=”40269″]FBW[/USER]
    1. I do hope a fleet commander knows more than myself about CSG operations, I am no expert in the matter. But I would not be discussing latest tactics and capabilities online if I were, would I? Can you please explain where is the fault in my understanding that is relevant to the issue at hand?
    2. As said, combat radius is a complex issue, but 100 nm more or less wont cut the case since we don’t know them in detail for other involved weapons systems and there are significant additional tactical complexities to take into account. You surely are aware that when handling data, precision and significance are enemies.

    in reply to: 2019 F-35 News and Discussion #2117468
    LMFS
    Participant

    [USER=”58228″]mig-31bm[/USER]

    1) Please see the attached photo in my previous post for source

    That is dated 2010. See my source attached.
    [ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:”none”,”data-size”:”full”,”title”:”KPPs FY2019 PB F-35 SAR TIF.gif”,”data-attachmentid”:3850563}[/ATTACH]

    2) You mistaken between nautical miles and miles (should be 610 nm instead of 610 miles

    True, my bad! I am well aware of the difference but missed it this time.

    and you also confuse between range and combat radius and your number is for F-35A in A2G mission while it should be F-35C in A2A profile, F-35C carry significantly more fuel than F-35A and A2A missions require lighter load also.

    I am using the data from SAR for C version. Have not looked profile but also are other things to consider like reserve fuel for carrier landing, I am not aware of how this was accounted for. There is a limit to the data I can find and to the detail we can go into.

    As to your points below those ones, I will not go in detail though I disagree in several aspects: intercepting supersonic planes at 1000 km from the carrier is not trivial, simply because area to cover is huge and on-station times increasingly small. You need to now the attack vector, you need to detect the carrier precisely, but due to long range of the Tu-22 / IFR of MiG-31, speed of the carriers and radar horizon this is not easy for a CSG, they don’t need to come from one predictable direction only for you to wait them there and you cannot have the whole air wing flying to be where needed to intercept. We still don’t know what is the exact range of the involved weapons so a bit more or less range for F-35 will not solve the discussion (for instance it is stated 2000 km for Kinzhal from MiG-31K, which would render your whole effort to calculate the interception pointless). You also seem to count on LPI radar of a F-35 being undetectable for a bomber-sized and accordingly protected plane? Many many details to address and not every and each one of them will be in favour of the carrier all of the time.

    Will not discuss much further rest of points, I laid some info clearly enough IMO so you can check if you want. Have no issue with you having an opinion different to mine.

    in reply to: Su-57 News and Discussion -version_we_lost_count!- #2117490
    LMFS
    Participant

    What if the glass and mirror used in the IRST are transparent to radar frequencies and just get that small amount of incidental energy dissipated at the RAM on the back side? Thoughts?

    in reply to: 2019 F-35 News and Discussion #2117494
    LMFS
    Participant

    [USER=”58228″]mig-31bm[/USER]

    F-35C in strike profile have combat radius of 768 nautical miles, that is 1422 km for one way (2844 km for both way)

    Care indicating your source? Not that the difference is extremely relevant to the case but maybe mine is outdated.

    Secondly, instead of making F-35 dash to Tu-22 location, you can set some of them patroling at 800-900 km ahead of the carrier, their engagement range with AIM-120 create a bubble that Tu-22 have to past through if it want to launch Kh-32

    That means patrolling a perimeter of 5600 km against a plane faster than them and with much longer range, how many planes would you need for that considering the engagement range of AMRAAMS? How long can the F-35 remain on station at those distances, today? Easy to bypass I would say, but still we don’t have exact ranges of Kh-32 or Kh-47M2 from Tu-22, so there is much uncertainty here in regards of exact numbers. Add some MiG-31K to the mix if you want. Defending those attacks it is not as trivial as you put it.

    MQ-25 had been tested, eventually it will come to the fleet, just like JASSM-XR, neither system really use some super innovative technology
    We can also consider Russian hypersonic weapons but then we shouldn’t ignore US hypersonic counterpart such as ARRW, TBG, HAWC, HSSW ,HCSW …etc it is a constant arm race after all.

    No, either we stick to deployed weapons or this is simply pointless.

    I don’t think AEGIS had never been tested against hypersonic maneuvering target, as we know Raytheon made Blue / black / silver Sparrow series

    What were the results? How accurately does that correlate to DF-21/26?

    On the flip size, how many timw had DF-26 been tested against the jamming of USN fleet? Zero

    Of course I hope it is zero. My point here is that calculating interception probability here with certainty is almost impossible and no serious expert would like to be responsible for an action that will put a whole CSG at risk. That gives the threat its deterrent value.

    how many time had it been tested against a moving target? Zero ,

    Sorry you don’t know.
    eratic maneuver is one thing, eratic maneuver while acquiring target at flew to target is an order of magnitude harder[/QUOTE]
    That number is wild speculation, you don’t know the geometry of the manoeuvring and the characteristics of the seeker (or seekers) to start with. Please consider that at the speeds considered, just varying the trajectory few degrees would change many km the interception point.

    I also remember USN claim anti ship ballistic missiles aren’t very useful

    Why? Then why to spend billions on ABM systems and targets to test them? Why to increase the range of carrier air wing and their weapons, this was your point from the beginning.

    and it is a very big deal to produce 1000 ballistic missiles,

    BMs are dirt cheap compared to a CSG and its air wing. Even third world countries can allow themselves to have hundreds of them, then imagine China. If what they need is a saturation attack then they will go for it, you can bet your last cent on that. For instance IIRC, Soviets scrapped 620 RSD-10 Pioneer (>5000 km range, with three RVs each) because of INF treaty, and that was only one type of nuclear missile, conventional versions could be done way cheaper and more numerous.

    A satellite have predictable trajectogy so their flight path can be evaded, radar guided satellite can be jammed as well, very easy in fact.
    OTH radars are for early warning rather than firing solution, because they have terrible accuracy and ID capability, and they are vulnerable big stationary target
    Long range patrol aircraft can detect carrier if they aren’t downed by the carrier air wing

    To suggest a CSG can be in the middle of the sea or even jam radars unnoticed is absurd.

    SACM will allow each F-35 to carry 2 CM and 4 A2A missiles each,

    No weapon fiction please.

    it is harder to deal with a group of 10 F-35 than a group of 5 F-35

    But also a better target and more interesting to shoot down.

    Short range weapons have their own niches

    Yes of course

    I don’t believe that Israel don’t dare to enter Syrian air space or that they only hide behind the mountain terrain after Syrian AD was modernized either

    Inform yourself. For Israel it does not make sense to risk their prestige, it is more valuable than their whole armed forces. Why to risk in any case? As they are doing now, they can attack Syria without fear of their planes being downed.

    But on April 2018, Israel still fly inside Syria to drop SDB, they sure can’t fly nap of the earth and hide behind mountains because SDB is a glider bombs and need high altitude release otherwise it is visual range

    In the Il-20 incident they used those bombs too, from stand-off ranges (almost 100 km) and hiding behind another plane. They repeated hiding behind planes (civilian) more recently. In case of attacks from Lebanon they can climb and release the bombs and stay just very shortly visible to Syrian AD, then egressing or hiding fast behind mountains again. Without Syria having a proper air force to run after them and without wanting to retaliate heavily with BMs, this is a safe approach for Israel, as much as is irrelevant to the Syrian military capabilities is profitable as PR stunt. (on a side note, this may change if they attack too heavily as the last time though, Syria and Hezbollah have already warned)

    in reply to: 2019 F-35 News and Discussion #2117615
    LMFS
    Participant

    [USER=”58228″]mig-31bm[/USER]

    however Kh-32 range is 1000 km, that is deep within the combat radius of F-35, and therefore, Tu-22M can be shot down if they want to get inside strike distance with that missile.

    Today, the F-35C could fly 670 miles (like 1080 km, correct if I am wrong and the flight profile that apply is different) and launch AMRAAM against a Tu-22M3 which could dash to Mach 1.8+ and launch from ca. 1000 for Kh-32, probably more for Kh-47M2. To do that he would need to detect the Tu and do it with enough time to intercept at those extreme distances. Not an easy feat as far as I know.

    JASSM-XR max range is 1852 km
    F-35C combat radius is 650 nm, can be extended by 52% with MQ-25 refueling so it can fly 1829 km from the carrier then came back
    => max strike range of a carrier is 3618 km from its location.

    AFAIK this version of JASSM is expected for 2023, and MQ-25 is also not operational. As said, let us concentrate in existing weapons systems. If you want to consider prospective weapons then you should consider Russian hypersonic missiles and ballistic missiles not any more banned by INF. My point is that it is easier and cheaper for the defending side.

    It is correct that DF-26 can fly longer, but the fewer weapons that can reach your carrier, the less Aegis defense have to work and the safer you will be.

    How many of those manoeuvring hypersonic targets can AEGIS reliably defeat? Considering that it has been tested zero times against it? You will have trouble finding someone wanting to take the responsibility for ensuring that there would be no leakers. From what I remember USN has said they have no defences against such missiles. And of course China can produce 1, 100 or 1000 missiles, this is no big deal.

    You sure understand that it is is safer to park the carrier 2000 km from the shores than parking it 10 km from the shores, same concept.

    Yes of course. But if you have park your carrier 3000 or 4000 km away from the target you can expect your capability to degrade the enemy´s defences will be simply negligible and you will have much better options than carrier based aviation, like long range bombers from land bases, LACM armed submarines etc.

    Last but not least, enemy don’t automatic know where the carrier will be and the further its air wing can strike and fly, the bigger the area enemy will have to search for, and jamming work better at distance.

    The last part is of course true, but CSGs are constantly monitored and cannot vanish in the sea. Both Russia and China have naval surveillance satellites for this and also OTH radars, long range patrol aircraft etc. Plus electromagnetic, logistic footprint of CSG being simply huge. I would not count on detection and targeting being a very big problem today, but stand to be corrected

    You don’t send a single F-35 in deep strike mission. You can have several F-35 and the total number of missiles are much higher than 2, secondly, long range missiles give the benefit that the whole squadron can stay close together and strike targets several hundreds or thounsand km apart, instead of assigning 1 F-35 to fly to X, 1 F-35 fly to Y and 1 F-35 fly to Z , you can have them stay close together and strike all 3 locations while still able to protect each others if they got bounced

    Yes of course, fighters don’t normally do strike missions alone, but you have to consider your mission effectiveness too and there, F-35s with internally carried ordnance are not the most capable bomber in terms of warhead kg delivered to the target. In other words, you don’t want to send a whole squadron to eliminate a target. I would expect some A2A armed planes to be a escort for a strike group. Don’t think it is the best to send many, scarcely A2A armed strike planes together deep into enemy air space since they only would have 2 AMRAAM per plane to defend themselves. Also to consider, attack vectors are normally optimized for each target. So your scenario is a possibility but I am not sure this would work like that most of the time. On the contrary, striking with stand-off weapons makes sense all of the time since it shortens your flight time and your exposure to enemy AD decisively. Modern fighters and crews are very expensive and not easily replaceable to risk them just to save some $ on a longer ranged missile, it simply doesn’t make sense today anymore IMO.

    I have to disagree
    https://southfront.org/israeli-air-f…rike-on-syria/

    What is SDB but a stand-off weapon? This is Israeli MO ever since Syrian AD was modernized to less than prehistoric stand and cannot be fooled and jammed trivially. They don’t enter Syrian air space, just hide behind mountainous terrain in Lebanon, pop up to launch and return. Now imagine if Syria had something similar to an air force, how difficult and risky it would be for Israel to attack. Most of instances of attack we see from Western nations are based in terribly lopsided situations like this, where the defending side is missing most of the defensive elements a capable military would count on.

    and if you focus on fact, USA are developing short range mininature weapons as well, such as SACM small advanced capability missile and SiAW stand in attack weapons

    Yes of course. My point is that certain weapons are simply not intended for first phase of conflict against peer rivals. And that applies to big parts of US arsenal actually, because their military has rather focused in more profitable colonial wars.

    in reply to: 2019 F-35 News and Discussion #2117665
    LMFS
    Participant

    You mean CEP? It is said to be 20 m, but who knows? It has to hit a moving target amongst heavy countermeasures, so it is not the same kind of task as hitting a stationary target but on the other hand a carrier is not a stealthy target in any way. There seem to be some images of tests against stationary target of the size of a carrier:

    [ATTACH=JSON]{“alt”:”Click image for larger version Name:tchina%2Bdf-21d%2B2.jpg Views:t0 Size:t69.7 KB ID:t3850392″,”data-align”:”none”,”data-attachmentid”:”3850392″,”data-size”:”full”,”title”:”china%2Bdf-21d%2B2.jpg”}[/ATTACH]

    in reply to: 2019 F-35 News and Discussion #2117685
    LMFS
    Participant

    [USER=”41059″]halloweene[/USER]

    How do you know it is not an effective design? From what I have been told, a CSG can move freakin’ fast, actually much more than publicised… for a ship. That is, essentially motionless compared to a 10 or 15 M ballistic missile. Nevertheless, what is your point, that the RV will not find its target or something? How much distance can a CSG cover in 15 minutes? How do you hide a 300 m vessel and escort in the middle of the sea??

    in reply to: 2019 F-35 News and Discussion #2117718
    LMFS
    Participant

    [USER=”58228″]mig-31bm[/USER]

    Regarding carrier operations:
    > Russia fields Tu-22M3 with range of almost 7000 km carrying Kh-32 and Kh-47M2 with range in excess of 1000 km. Now with US withdrawing from INF treaty, they will be free to create M/IRBMs (by simply adding stages to a Iskander for instance) with the ranges they consider appropriate, manoeuvring RVs and extremely short flight times in the anti-ship role.
    > China has already the DF-21 with 1700 km range but also the DF-26 with estimated 5400 km range.

    Now tell me how a 400 km range CM changes anything in regards of carriers being massively outranged and therefore essentially unusable against those countries. If you had kept your claim limited to less capable militaries you would have a point, but the way you put it your statement is simply not accurate IMO

    Besides: USAF has already JASSM planned for F-35, so it is not only in naval warfare that stand-off missiles are available for the plane. JSOW-ER by now only requested by Navy but compatible with F-35A. We will see whether this and JSM will be ordered by USAF in the future or not.

    Regarding deep strike:
    F-35 has a very limited internal payload capability, so I do not quite understand how many targets you need to meet in one sortie. At most you will release 2 big weapons. Maybe mixed carriage of SDB and one bigger ranged CM could be possible too but of little value in my opinion due to the very small amount of ordnance per target and the adverse effects of countermeasures in their terminal accuracy.

    All recent attacks where something remotely close to a modern IADS is present (Syria due to Russian presence and new hardware deployed there) have been done with stand-off weapons, both by FUKUS or by IAF and despite the presence in their air forces of VLO planes. As said I try to focus on facts and they talk loud and clear.

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