SchorschOne of the reasons the Mig-29 has twin engines is that Russian engines tend to be less reliable than Western engines. Since the Mig-29 was somewhat of a prestigious fighter high loss rates due to the engines would of been unacceptable.
The heritage of the MiG-29 is complex and goes back to the MiG-25 and the original requirements for a new fighter which was later splitted in MiG-29 and Su-27. The reliability thing was a reason, but not in the top two.
In general it is better to have engine than two, if the fighter is small enough. It is lighter and less expensive. If I demand a certain mission capability (range, payload, avionics), I will come to the point where my weight necessitates a second engine (and the costs justify the increased survibility). For very big aircraft the number of engines is not too improtant, but in the very tiny space of small fighters (6 to 10 tons) the single engine seems more appropriate.
Schorschhi i have found a A-10a shot down during the NATO capmpaingn in 1999. This plane was maybe shot down by a MIG 29 or a SAM but i also have the pictures to prove it.
The A10 lets of a flare. The part is something, can be anything, even a Serbian bath tube. The serial sign does show what? An external tank?
How exactly was this war, suppose to have been avoided???….by giving up without a fight?……it might be beyond your comprehension, but it’s pretty obvious that the seed of the next war has already been planted and is being watered as we speak.
For example an agreement on the Kosovo. Next war? Serbia attacking again or what? This time with 5 upgraded MiG-29?
SchorschWhat is so difficult on my nickname?
Shcorsh
Schorch
It is
S C H O R S C H.
I am not comparing Iraqi and Iranian air force, I just try to put the often very optimistic view on Iranian air force into perspective. I don’t know why (I guess because of the Tomcat) people project incredibile things in their very limited inventory. The whole AD-system may have a chance of defending some areas with reasonable effectiveness for a time, but the air force alone is not able
– to generate enough sorties (air defence normally means lots of pointless patrolling, which is very demanding for a little fleet)
– having enough intelligence and surveillance
– missiles are a problem
When we just talk of air force (no land based SAM systems), the IraAF will have the problem that US has always superior numbers. They can attack with a warning time of maybe 10 to 15 minutes. IraAF can hardly sustain a CAP pattern of 2×2 aircraft. Phantom with external fuel stays in the air for 2, maybe 3 hours, so 2×2 patrol aircraft would generate 24/3×4 = 32 sorties a day. 4 aircraft on CAP can control only a limited area. So they have to rely on scramble missions, which requires lots of airfields.
Who do you think a Tomcat will go into battle? It can sneak into the battle using terrain and make a surprise attack (against RWR and AWACS hardened Super Hornets).
SchorschAn-225… one flying, one more in parts.
There is talk of using those parts to complete the second.
Which is dumb talk, because it would be very costly and the market perspective is not too great.
Talked with a few C-5 crew guys in a pub a few months back, and they told me that the airplane is better than its numbers, and is built to fly safely even when checklists ground it for failing systems. They said the plane is incredibly redundant. They also seem to think the fleet still has plenty of flying time left. Not the best source in the world, but…
The C-5 have a little (not a big) problem with reliability. This of course only in peace-time service as in times of war or crises some safety restrictions are lifted. The AMC goal of 75% reliability is failed by the Galaxys, which only achieve 65 to 70%. However, the Galaxy is valuable because it is there. The airframe has a lot of hours left. Problematic are its engines. The 40 year old TF-39 are not the best turbo-fans, the Galaxy is seriously underpowered if flying with max peacetime MTOW (349t). I think the B-models will get an upgrade while the A-models will on the long be shifted to AMARC.
SchorschDidn’t the starlifter also have wing issues, I am sure I have seen more than one photo of one with a snapped wing that happened while loading or fuelling ?
I seriously did not suffer from similar problems like the Galaxy, which had a initial service life of only 7.500h (instead of planned 30.000h). Fatigue problems still may have occured as most 60era aircraft went beyond their originally envisaged life time and fatigue knowledge was still limited at that time.
SchorschJust a question : How about the cargo doors of the A380-800F ? are they similar to the 747’s ? Ie does the nose open like in 747 cargo ?
I like to see some A380-800F in europeans air forces to boost heavy lift capacities (no loan of An-124!)
No, the A380 has side doors. 90% of the cargo transported fits in a B747 or A380. It is just that normally the runway ACN doesn’t fit well or they are just too expensive. It is rarely the case that a Galaxy hauls tanks. They are not the main asset of modern war fighting anyways.
SchorschEven at 30% lightspeed a piece of dirt hitting your spacecraft would produce so much energy that it effectively melts away.
A possible way would be a travel through space. We understand space as 3D, so that range from point A to Point B is fixed. But there are theories saying that this might be untrue. Then you could achieve light speed by using such a “short-cut”, while the light speed would effectively only being achieved on paper.
SchorschWith the computing power at hand now as you rightly say, and improving every year, it would seem likely that the path towards progress is much more clear currently. I believe most of the belligerent noises of “any day now” was more cold war propaganda than anything else. It would seem from press reports that NASA has internal problems…mostly management issues? and could this likely be stymieing creativity?
I don’t think so. In the 60s people were so optmistic. Finally there were some technical difficulties and finally the budget was cut. Today it si no different. Sometims it looks strange when somebody is talking enthusiastic of something that was no newety in the late 60s.
The problem today is at first akllocation of resources and its approval by the public.
Well, I’d consider the space elevator to be an integral part of mankinds space exploration. I expect it to be up and running before 2020.
All the main technological obstacles have been overcome already, its just a case of refining manufacturing techniques and its sorted
After one invents a material offering at least twice the strength and half the weight, effectively quadrupling its efficiency. If that is achieved there are so many problems solved (A380 weights only 100 tons empty, Dodge Suburban has 600kg empty weight).
SchorschMaybe in the clashes between North Vietnam and China? MiG-17/21 against MiG-17/21 (unlicensed copy).
SchorschLet’s assume for a second it might be possible under extreme investments to do this. What for?
The sound barrier is today no problem? It still is. Except for some military fighters and missiles (which actually broke the sound barrier before Chuck Yeager) nothing is going supersonic. The average human being has no advantage from it. Or have we?
Same would apply for the light barrier: With light speed one can go to Mars pretty fast and arrive at Pluto in a reasonable time, but there is nothing to find. The Arctic is more attractive than anything you’ll find out there, still nobody spends billions on “manned exploration and of the arctic”. Why?
For real exploration in Star Trek style light speed is inadequatly slow, needing 4 years to reach the next star. Saying it is not possible is one thing, I say it is not worth it. Not in the next 100 years. Let’s first concetrate on replacing oil and gas to end this fu**ing Middle East bloodshed and have the Osamas stay in Mogadischu.
SchorschIf my memory doesn’t fail me, the airplane we now call 747 was the Boeing contender for the C-X job back in the 1960s, wich ultimately went to the Lookheed C-5 Galaxy.
Does anyone have any diagrams on how that pre 747 looked? I don’t think there was a prototype ever built, but diagrams/schematics/artist interpretations could have existed.
Cheers,
Moe
The B747 was no contender in that set-up. The Boeing proposal for the CX-HLS also had high-mounted wings. I think the Boeing proposal had low horizontal tail and no complete second deck but the “747-hump”. However, the Boeing proposal was considered more advanced as Lockheed’s but still was not chosen. The proposal for the CX-HLS was just a design study. No metal was cut. So all claim about commonality between that proposal and the first 747 are academic.
Still would love to see a picture.
SchorschActually, the Galaxy was designed to and can operate from rough airstrips, and land in a very short distance. The only problem is that it hasn’t got the thrust to make a short take-off run with a reasonable payload, a problem which could have easily been solved if it was fitted with more powerful engines than those 1960s-vintage-turbofans. A C-5D with a strengthened wing spar and souped-up engines (Trents or so) would have made the C-17 completely irrelevant.
Partly right. “Rough” is a very wide word. It vwas designed to operate from supply area air strips. Considering the fact that 8.000ft airstrips can be anticipated to be in place (esp. Europe), it was more a problem with ACN. The thrust is also sufficient for most missions. Of course, full payload jumps from 6.000ft strips are unrealistic, but it can bring out a 30 ton payload to a 1.000nm distant airstrip from a 6.000ft runway.
It can also perform longe-range strategic missions, for example haul 80 to 90 tons from US East Coast to Ramstein AFB. The performance is – compared to normal cargo aircraft – of course limited. The initial 25.000ft ICA and M0.7 cruise speed are not up-to-date.
A real problem was the bad structural design, mostly due to unrealistic planning and too high requirements.
I worked on the C5 wing structure design back in 1966, and we were told that if the aircraft stood for too long at dispersal with a full fuel load then a quarter of it’s fatigue life would be used up. Also we had to design the wing 10% under-strength in order to have the stress engineers tell us exactly what was acceptable strengthwise.
Very interesting! Who gave the order to do so? the wing design was so understrenghened that it can hardly be called an error.
SchorschAnother thing is to watch about what is being said. People who are persuaded about supremacy of their product are not afraid to talk about possible problems or limitations because they know that even these figures will be impressive anyway. But look at official reports about the Raptor – absolutely strictly positive and praising from all sides, the thing is simply unbeatable, perfect. My experienced nose says to me that something stinks here, buddy.. 😎 And when I once become suspicious, I usually filter every information I get. Just like in the case of F-22A.
You write wisdom, flex. But don’t overshoot.
It is a little bit American culture to be positive to a sometimes annoying extent. Take this in consideration. If a German press release sounds like an American, the “Spiegel” would smell lie and the need to cover something. In US you have sometimes to read between the lines or just filter it.
When it comes to reasoning a program in front of officials all program officials become “nicetalkers”, no matter if they are from Russia, Germany or the USA. The Americans are just more used to it, so that it sounds normally more convincing.
Schorsch1) Can you name one IRST that can locate a target at 90 km (other than an aircraft in AB)?
2) The Raptor will cruise at 1.5-1.6, but will do this at 18,000 feet. At this altitude the air is thinner and the friction is considerably less than lower altitudes. I won’t mention dedicated IR reduction measures, since there is nothing official;
I’ll doubt it will reach M1.5 in 18.000ft. That would be a little bit outrageous. Let’s agree on 30.000ft for that speed, I would accept supercruise above 20.000ft, below it is rather unrealistic. But tell me if I’m wrong.
If travelling M1.3 to M1.5 the heat won’t be comparable to a exhaust pipe. The Blackbird heated up to more than 200 degress on the trailing edges, but that at Mach 3. I would suppose that the heating by drag is less than 50 degrees. If the engineers were clever, they thought of this problems and included some measures to reduce IR signature (however, it will be visible at some Mach number at some distance).
If an IRST tracks a target does not necessarily mean that the missile tracks it, too. So it might be “a bullet”, like ‘soyuz1917’described very good.
In an engagement in which both sides have AWACS support and good radars, are aware of the situation and have BVR weapons, the encounter is very likely to be a pointless waste of very expensive missiles. But the line is very thin, as at 60km the AMRAAM will miss, while at 40km it might hit. This 20km are 25 seconds if both aircraft travel at M1.3 at 30.000ft.
SchorschI KNOW its the same for all aircraft evacuations, but I just wonder what would happen without the yoga-esk antics, and the strict selection based on agaility and health?! Perhaps to make it represenative of a flight with EK to OZ via DXB they should throw in 20% of the cabin as over 65s off to visit the grandchildren in Brisbane, and a further 5% as under 5, and a few more under 16s splattered around the cabin.
Whilst I know that they have to use the fit and able to prevent unnecessary injury, I think the truth is, and based on past experience (although not always), there has to be a realisation that in some accidents not everybody WILL get out, and so perhaps such tests are to see how many fit and able bodied people could be likely to evacuate safely, rather than how many would evacuate full stop. I think the AF A340 at YYZ is interesting though in this respect, and I’d be interested to know the demographic breakdown of passengers on that flight.
The most unrealistic issue is the lack of real panic! That speeds up the whole issue normally and will lead also to some unsdesirable results. I must say that for the unlikely case of an evacuation necessary in 90 seconds the requirements are as hard as can practically be proved. Of course, in a real emergency with a high percentage of old people (and overweight) there will be some left behind. Sorry, life’s a bitch.
There are thousands of buildings with more than 5 levels in the world with require every “passenger” to walk down in case of emergency, which may be an issue if you have to travel 40 levels down and are not an athlete.
Was there ever an evacuation test for the World Trade Center? How good do evacuation procedures work for trains, public buildings, busses, underground train stations. Experience shows that if those catch fire, the death toll is much higher than for an aircraft evacuation with realistic chances of survival.
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