SchorschThe Russians usually defined their requirements more focussed on a single role. Additionally did they always use larger numbers. The Western air forces were dominated by American fighters which evolved from the thinking of World War II.
After all, designs like the MiG-29 were not designed as multi-role fighters. The change in weapons load is rather simple: Adapt the pylons and eventually enhance the landing gear (normally not necessary, if MTOW stays constant). The drawbacks are worse field performance, less range (for example if the aircraft is weight-limited and needs to take-off with reduced fuel) and less allowed agility as long the bombs are under the wing.
In the American inventory we find designs like the F-4, A-7 and A-4 with high payload capability. Both As were attack aircraft, hence bomb load was required. the Phantom has a very special history and actually was originally proposed as heavy attack aircraft. The Navy also had always an eye on multi-role capability.
When it comes to real combat performance, the huge payloads shrink to much lower figure. High payloads in Vietnam or other operations were normally only possible with excessive air refueling, a capability the Soviets lacked for tactical aircraft.
The Soviet doctrine focussed more on short range missions, which explains the focus on good field performance (Su-17, MiG-23, Su-24). Especially the Su-17 will have effective combat ranges of 200nm with normal bomb load in low-low-profile, comparable to that of a Starfighter (which has worse field performance).
SchorschAnybody who ever read some lines about aircraft design, especially for strange or new mission requirements (fits for lots of military aircraft), the design decision requires extensive studies of different configurations. The evaluation of such configurations requires time and ressources and sometimes analytical results are not sufficient to prove the superiority of a design (see early MiG-21/Je-7).
If you havea requirement that resembles that of competitor’s aircraft, then you should closely look how he did it. Normally that eases the task of finding the right design.
For the Su-24 for example the Russians built both the F-111-Version and the TSR.2-Version. They took the 111.
That does not mean it is acopy in the classical way. It is a similar design. However, the true origin of some designs is not known, people tend to think that only aircraft on airliners.net are designs, they don’t see the billions of paper aircraft in the design offices around the world.
If someone finally produces a design hte knowledge grows exponantially. Hence if somebody else has similar requirements he is wise if he takes advantage of that.
So, the F-35 is not a copy. I would even expect that Lockheed Martin made the design themself. They propably came to the conclusion that the Yakolev design was the best compromise and finally were lucky to benefit from their experience. That’s it. Full stop.
SchorschDoes anyone know why the Tornado drop tanks are called ‘Hindenburger’?
I guess it is because they remind one of the big Zeppelins, particularly of the LZ-129 Hindenburg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster
Does anyone know how the fuel consumption for US and European airplanes is calculated in?
There are several possibilities. Normally you get the fuel flow in kg/hr, kg/min, lb/hr or lb/min. These are easy to convert and you get a good impression on how long an aircraft can go.
More technical is the specific fuel comsuption given in lb/(hr*lb) or kg/(daN*hr). The conversion factor is 1, so pretty easy. These numbers indicate, how much fuel is burned per hour to produce one pound or one daN (deka-Newton = 1 kg of force). Multiply it with the engine thrust and you have the fuel flow.
For the performance impact of drop tanks: Normally they add a cross-section proportional zero-lift drag. Additional drag is due to added lift (lift-induced drag). These both are for strict subsonic regime (~M0.75 for supersonic aircraft). In transonic and supersonic the interference and wave drag are considerable and normally would prevent any externally loaden aircraft from being supersonic.
SchorschThey could have used the roof rack on top of the AN225 for the larger pieces 🙂
A225HVY
Just needed an AN-225 for it, and maybe that was the problem. I think to come up with such an ugly solution like the 747LCF, they ruled lots of other ugly solutions, for example the Beluga.
SchorschMaybe just a “Poke” at Airbus then… 😀
Whereas Airbus outdone Boeing with the A380, so Boeing retaliate with a freighter that’s bigger than the Beluga. :p
“Anything you can do we can do better……….” 😀
Actually Boeing seriously considered the Beluga for the B787 transport. But for “political” reasons this was discontinueed.
SchorschSo if Boeing want to cart large pieces of aircraft about, why not use the C-17?
Or even dig out some of them old C-5’s (although not Boeing) out of mothballs?
Surely these types are plenty large enough, rather than going to the expense of redesigning the 747 for the purpose.
I don’t think the 5.6m fuselage would fit in either of the transports, otherwise the would have done it. The 747LCA is another risk in the program and costs money, two things managers are scared of 24h a day.
SchorschOh I’m sure this project will have its fair share of headaches. I mean, you can’t chop a plane half to bits and then put it back together with additional bits and expect it all to run smoothly.
The design was made by Russian engineers. Like so many things on the B787 it is as American as a Toyota Corolla.
SchorschReally? See the problems of the former SU to catch unaware ‘KAL 007’ in time. In the last attempt the Su-15 was subsonic as well as the climbing MiG-23s. Except from 9/11 such airliners are no real threat and airliner crews will start no race against an armed fighter normally.
Especially as they are unaware of them. A tricky airliner can maybe listen to military frequencies and get away unharmed.
If thinking about interception one needs to think 4-dimensional. As 3D-thinking is difficult for most people, it stops completely at 4D. The limited range of a supersonic aircraft makes it necessary to fly most of the time subsonic, often with a still undesirable fuel burn (really bl00dy lift/drag-ratios). When it kicks in afterburner without external fuel, it has max 5 minutes before BINGO is achieved. If external fuel is there, the speed gain is limited. Most fighters will stay at M1.3 to 1.5, if they brake sound barrier at all with external fuel.
An A380 cruises with M0.86, can fly M0.89 and actually will achieve more if pushed a little (and only in direct law 😀 ). In 5 minutes it flies 90km, the M1.3 fighter pursuing him will fly 120km, so 30km advantage. With some paper and a calculator you can easily see, how small Chrom’s disabled supersonic sportscar advantage in pursuing is.
SchorschWith aircraft droptanks there is a law of diminishing returns which means a certain percentage of fuel carried in the drop tank is spent to carry the droptank itself. In other words drag….typically 20 to 30% fuel is wasted (droptanks) to carry itself…so range will reduce….
Depends on the mission profile. A 490 litre tank is emptied after take-off and half climb if A/B is used for some parts, after that the aircraft is clean again. If I talk about range I need tpo talk about mission profile. If I do a CAP mission and always stay on combat speed (=max MIL thrust), than I’ll burn 20 to 40% fuel than staying at optimum cruise (which itself is funtion of weight, altitude and external storages).
Under these circumstances I can believe the 20 minute figure, when it includes:
– the drag disadvantage
– the more weight I carried for take-off
– is for true CAP and not optimum-cruise loiter
I once read a figure that 50% of the external fuel is really useful. But one can easily reason differencies in calculation. All the people happy with supersonic performance and dash speed should be aware about the enormous drag impact of external fuel (esp. in transonic/supersonic regime) and ridiculous fuel burn with A/B (in all height and all speeds). A MiG-21 can usually use full A/B for 4 to 7 minutes (full internal fuel) before fuel is empty (not Bingo, empty)
SchorschAround 240 km or 20 minutes at height.
At medium height ~13 minutes or 160 km.
At low level ~7 minutes or 80 km.
But the centreline is capable of a 1000 litre tank, so add close to 20% to the datas given above.
Are you sure?
24 minutes extra cruise at height with 1.000l would mean a fuel flow of 42l/min. That is 2500l/h = 2025kg/h.
For a typical M0.9@30.000ft SFC of 1 kg/(daN*h) it means 2025daN (=~4500lb) of thrust. A rather bad lift over ratio ratio of 3 or 4.
Schorschyeah it can be outflown by an airbus but whos got the missile armed.
A missile is faster than an airliner, but an Airbus cruises at 38.000ft and M0.85 (A380), able to speed up to M0.89 and go to 43.000ft (depends on weight). To get there you need a while. And normally you don’t want to shoot it down but to accompany it a few miles. If it doesn’t brake for you, you have 3 to 4 minutes, before he leaves the range of your SRAAM.
SchorschWhy would they want to???
Presumably they had an aircraft that could do short take off, it could fly supersonically and it could land vertically.
It was only Lockheed-Martin’s publicity machine that spotted the fact that no-one had done all three in a single flight – so they went for it and claimed a world’s first – big deal. :confused:
I would assume that Yakovlev were too busy with flight development (and fighting for funds) to go for such a record – especially if it were fairly meaningless in the great scheme of things…
Fair play to LockMart – they have something in the record books – but so what ?
Ken
Hmm, normally the Russians rather cut short on development programs to score anothe record, so done on MiG-25 and other programs. There prototypes were taken out of strongly needed test series to prepare them for a record flight and to have some amazing news for the Prawda.
SchorschYou want me to repeat as a dogma the Western accounts and the only base to believe those accounts is the so called liberty the western media enjoys I will give credit to the Russians simply because they are a great nation and no nation is inhabitated by saints who can not lie, and that includes any nation either from the West or the East.
Hmm, since when has Flogger changed (or upgraded) to MiG-23MLD? Maybe we should give him a dedicated forum, just to be able to finish those topics without repeating the same issues over and over again:
– F-117 in Serbia
– Lebanon 1982
– Angola or “The least important conflict ever.”
– Iraq-Iran or: “Did the TOMCAT rule?”
– “evil” western media
– “truth-loving” Russian pre-1991 publications
– “truth-loving” websites quoting those sources
I am impressed Sens that you still answer to it. Maybe one day our bias will melt and we will accept THE truth.
After all we are still at a single-digit number for the 29, with all of those being actually friendly designs.
SchorschIf I remeber correctly, the YAK141 program was stopped before the test of all this 3 tests in same mission. 🙁
When the orginal program of yak 141 was stopped, I belive the YAk-141 had not gone supersonic… can someone confirm this?
If they made 204 flights, why did they not demonstrate it? Was there a technical issue, were the prototypes of different standards (for example #1 for normal mode testing and #2 for VTOL)?
Did the avionics suite ever come close to finish or was everything just of the (Russian) shelve?
SchorschWhich of the mentioned features was ever demonstrated? For example did the JSF claim to be the first to achieve short take-off, supersonic flight and vertical landing in one mission.
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