Schorschwith a payload that draggy and only 3000L of external fuel, how far can it fly :confused:
If cruising at optimum cruise speed at best altitude, being stingy with afterburner and throwing away the tanks when empty at least 650km. If low-level ingress is needed deduce 50%.
SchorschBut also the A-6.
You forgot one reason. The important one: range. The Tomcat’s better aerodynamycs enable a longer range. From what I read, during OEF, the Tomcat could do with 2 in flight refuellings, while the Hornet needed 3 (while greatly decreasing its combat load because of fuel tanks taking the heavy pylons) – The Tomcat has dedicated fuel tank pylons. Tankers are already an overstretched ressource, no need to put more strain on them. Plus, nowadays, a carrier isn’t independant anymore, as they need the airforce to fill up on gas. Basically, the actual carrier air wings remind me of the early 1950’s ones (with Demons).
The Navy was always intended to have limited inland strike capability. Most targets are close the water anyways. The Tomcat is outdated and the airframes reached their structural life time. If a refurbishment would have been possible is unknown. Addionally new engine were necessary. For comparable performance new avionics including new cockpit interior is necessary. What is the result?
A much too heavy, not really economic dinosaur without a real mission. The Tomcat offers less flexibility, still has its built-in disadvantages, it is huge (carrier isn’t too spacy).
Carrier aircraft are designed for a certain number of FH and especially cycles. If these are reached any refurbishment would call for a complete structural renewing without the garantee of success. Grumman proposed anything and some people even believed their projections.
BTW, the thread is about the F18 vs. F18, not the old “bring back my lovely Tomcat” discussion.
The Department of the Navy just needs to make “Top Gun II” with an F-18E this time. It would solve all publicity problems. Any suggestions for actors and plot are welcome.
SchorschSo, from what I read here, I guess it is better to throw a lot of money to develop what is virtually a *new* fighter, with a lesser performance degree than the one it replaces, instead of going the cheaper way of integrating the newer technologies in the existing, better airframe???
As for ordering the destruction of the tooling for a plane that is in service, I call that dirty politics (to stay polite).
Why don’t say it straight: You think the F-14 is the better airframe and its retrofit would have been the better way. The Navy, by the way the user of the Tomcat for 25 years, decided different. The Congress agreed. So, they are all wrong and frankvw is right?
I still don’t see the lesser performance. With the ordonance an F-18E carries on a normal mission the F-14
– is not faster (only if using A/B)
– is not more agile
– doesn’t have better acceleration
– does not have superior situational awareness
The role of a fleet defender was skipped in the mid 90s. The Bombcat was intended to get some useful performance of the otherwise useless airframe.
The serious transonic drag rise is of concern when you go over M0.85 to M0.9. That doesn’t happen on most missions.
SchorschAs USAF is buying a 250million dollar F-22 and retrofitted 747 should not be that costly and it can also double as a bomber.
The USAF cut its order to 179. That is close to the minimum useful number and a trade-off between unit-price and development cost.
Maybe they had a reason?
SchorschA SH compared to a A-6 does not even have the range to attack northern targets in Afghan territory From a carrier of pakistani shores.
No aircraft could do that. Keeping an appropriate aircraft in the arsenal would be stupid, because it is useless most of the time. The advantage of the carrier is that it can go close to its target. A 500nm combat range is normally sufficient and the SH offers that.
also, its combat ceiling is substantially lower, and its transonic drag rise is very high. An F/A-18E/F in maximum afterburner thrust cannot exceed Mach 1.0 in level flight below 10,000 feet even when it is in the clean configuration
Doesn’t matter. Even the normal Hornet could only exceed Mach 1 at sea level with full afterburner (as all contemporary fighters). This is a normally forbidden exercise. F-18A has a fuel flow of 35 tons/hour at M1.05 and MSL. Not acceptable.
Every fighter cruises with M0.7 to M0.9 to its target. Any afterburner usage is only marginally acceptable due to excessive fuel consumption. If aircraft flies into target area without external fuel and exspects “combat” (so a/b usage), it normally gets air-refueled before AND after attack.
The USN should have just upgraded the normal hornets and deployed some more F-14D and upgrade them, that should have solved the USN requirements to a lot of extent.
Bad idea, would have produced more USN-bashing threads.
The transonic drag-rise is a problem for the F-18A, too. As Sens stated the performance parameters like acceleration and maximum speed are misleading in evaluating an aircraft’s combat performance.
Most people today are 10 to 20 years late on their performance parameters. Also be aware that modern aircraft are in sevice for 30 years. AAMs can be replaced every 10 years. Retrofitting aircraft is much more complicated. A slated F-4E with updated engines and avionics would make a reasonable aircraft today (remember Phantom 2000), although the basic design is nearly 50 years old.
SchorschLo-Mac has settings on fuel like Full, Medium and Low which you can use to configure the mission. Even during a campaign, weight effects are included so as the fuel is consumed, your plane gets lighter. That is why there is a chart, among many others of the MiG-29 at 13000kg. Don’t insinuate that these people don’t know what they are doing, or that the planes come with single clean configuration. As a matter of fact, Lo-Mac has weapons settings like Gun Only, A2A Short Range, A2A Medium Range, A2A Long Range, and the plane does not perform the same under all settings. So yeah, if you go Full Fuel with A2A Long Range, the plane flies quite a bit more laden compared to Medium Fuel, Guns Only. .
I wanted to say that these guys did comparisons of aircraft. They obtained the data from manuals or did some educated guesses. These comparisons are most likely to be in clean configuration, because precise data on the influence of stores especially in transonic regime are hard to obtain. In the simulation you can use some guesses and still have reasonable performance. The problem is the modelling of the interference drag of external stores, because data is scarce and different airframes and stores behave not similar.
SchorschWith 4 AAMs (2*R27+2*R73) it is just ~40% of internal fuel (data of 29-12) or ~60% with no AAMs. Zero fuel and zero weapons weight is 10800-10900 kg. 4300 l = ~3354 kg fuel weight.
Hohoho, what an impressive guess by myself :D. Only was wrong a few hundred kilos!
I think all charts are “clean”. The determination of additional drag is quite difficult, especially when speed goes beyond M0.8. External stores produce sometimes excessive wave-drag (this ugly transonic stuff), so performance with external stores is sometimes surprisingly bad for modern and old aircraft. 4 AAMs with pylons are a real show-stopper for the MiG, like they are for an F-something. Therefore all claims like “my MiG/F-1x goes Mach 2.x with missiles” are doubious. Most people only know the corners of the clean flight envelope of an aircraft and just add some payload “in their fantasy”.
SchorschThere are weights attached with the graphs. At 13000kg, that is not a clean configuration for a MiG-29. Both MiG and Sukhoi do have recommended combat weights which are the basis for these graphs.
Empty weight for MiG-29 is around 10.500kg. So 13.000kg is clean, approx half internal fuel. F-16 and F-18 are normally with wing-tip missiles.
SchorschThe performance sheets of a flight manual give you at least some understanding of static behaviour (lift, drag). For dynamic stuff it is normally sufficient to have one simulation and cross-read the data to the other aircraft. As most modern fighters are control-configured and basic performance data (thrust-to-weight, turn-rate,etc) mostly depends on static derivatives, one can have a reasonable performance.
When it comes about the performance of systems like radar, ECM or stealth, the pure guessing starts. And honestly, that is what “the others” always want to know.
SchorschI just surfed through the posted site. These are cool guys. The simulation seems to be quite good.
But still above statement applies.
SchorschI am more than aware of the flaws and limitations of simulations, especially with games that are intended to sell commercially.
For a game like Lock-On, the enemy really isn’t the Russians, but the US. After all, despite a company named called Eagle Dynamics, the programmers are in Moscow. The assumptions are likely to be made on the Western systems based on open source material. Which makes their assumptions and insights on their own country’s weapons systems quite interesting.
Some information on the rate of turn between the MiG-29 and Su-27.
http://www.lockon.ru/index.php?end_pos=574&scr=default&lang=en
http://www.lockon.ru/img/devjournal/MiG29at200m.gif
http://www.lockon.ru/img/devjournal/MiG29at3000m.gif
Interesting thing about the Kh-31A, something I never saw in any open source material. In the game, the Kh-31A rushes low as if aiming for the waterline of the ship. only to go vertical right at the last seconds before hitting the target, then dive right into the deck of the ship. The other Russian AshMs don’t do this. Against ships, the Kh-31As and other antiship misisles are preceded by an attack of Kh-31Ps (ARMs) which attack with no warning against ship radars—the SPY-1 draws them like a magnet. I kind of speculated that that such a thing might be done though I have never read anything about this; yet the AI in the game actually does it.
I could make these graphs. They look good, but they can be as wrong as anything else. Just give the wing area, weight and engine setting. Additionally a drag model (either generic or derived from manual) and a lift model. The rest is simple physics and static analysis. They still don’t have a clue about dynamic performance, they can just try to come close to reality by “flight testing” their simulator.
However, if available data and some educated guesses are put together by people who are dedicated to reality rather than arcade-mode performance, the result may be very powerful. As long as you don’t take it too serious on details (don’t check for high AoA behaviour or post departure characteristics).
SchorschActually, a carrier can launch one aircraft every fifthteen seconds, one aircraft per minute per catapult.
That is or may be right. I meant Iran. They have a limited fleet of fighters and all US built models have problems with spare parts. So flight hours are restricted and a constant alert status with occasional flights/scrambles would get very expensive over time.
They might have a duo always on short notice alert (5 minutes). Many countries have that. But if 50 cruise missiles are closing in and two fighters (normally lightly armed because they don’t carry around their expensive missiles for fun) take-off, there is not much you can do.
GarryB’s remarks are all theoretically right, but I miss the practical approach: What kind of forces has a country fielded and how good is their alertness? If the alertness is very high it normally leads to a high number of wrong alarms.
As ‘Sens’ wrote, the capabilities of AD-systems are limited due to range and detection altitude. The 200km of S-300 (what a stupid BS!) are only valid if your target goes at 50.000ft in your direction, preferrably supersonic. Than you launch the missile at 200km distance, it reaches the target after it flew 150km (the other 50km have been flown by the target).
If the target is doing anything different the range drops like a rock. If your target flies supersonic alongside (through your range-circle) it gets tricky, it might even use ECM or be a little bit stealthy. I would guess that anything beyond 40km horizontal distance even for high flying targets is non-sense, it might hit but would be waste of missiles.
Clever fighters would try do trick the AD-system. The normally don’t have 100 missiles on storage, so every missile fired without effect is good. Second best tactic may be saturation.
SchorschI’d love to know how they think they can neutralize a developmental SAM system that has never been exported.
Nothing is really new. Especially in Russia (but actually all over the world) it is usual to carefully develop your system out of the existing one. There are surely some unique new features, which if known can be outsmarted or at least reduced in effectiveness. As Israel is know to have sometimes very good intelligence contacts and maybe came around with some Schekels they got some information on the system. In addition with their own experiences they surely can launch a course on that, even if success in combat is not proven (the money cannot be claimed back, I guess).
SchorschWell, lets see: every individual S-300 SAM launcher have its separate fire control radar, plus every SAM site (4-6 launchers) have AEW radar and command post. Plus, all SAM sites and radars are networked, meaning what most of them turned on only to fire missile. And what have an AEGIS cruiser? Single fire control radar? Moreover, AEGIS cruiser is a shiny big target in the ASM guidance channel, and you can only try to jam or shot down ASM. SAM launcher is invisible untill it turn its fire control radar on (plus, of course, the very some possibilites to protect it with jamming/decoys/smaller SAM’s/etc). And aftrer firing sequence S-300 launcher can relocate in 3-5 mins, making it very hard to detect & destroy.
What i mean by “double thinking”: when you speak about ASM vs CBG scenario, you have a couple of AWACS, dozens F-14, tens of networked AEGIS, decoys, jamming, sattelites and B-2 roaming around. On the opposite side you suspect only a several “blind” Tu-22 at best… Now, when you speak about ground AD network vs cruise missiles, you have again a nacked single S-300 battery vs couple of AWACS, dozens F-14, F15, B-2, tomahawks, usw. Ground clutter suddently starts to give a more noise on the radar screen than sea clutters (althought its useally a other way around). Thats what i call “double standarts”.
It is about the signifcance of the target. An aircraft carrier is 5 billion asset. Hard to find any target on land of that value. Therefore tight defense was never attempted. Redundancy is more appropriate. Systems like S-300 were designed to deny the airspace.
Actually, who can mighty S-300 detect a cruise missile going at 800ft through a valley? Can it look through mountains, can it look over the horizon? If not, it can detect such a target several miles ahead of the position. Total waste of valuable SAM missiles. A Tomahawk cost 1 to 2 million, a Patriot missile 750.000$. If Russians would for example use simple “cruise missiles”, the SAM costs more than the target (tactic used in Iraq 1991).
An AEGIS cruiser still has some advantages: It concentrates multible means of defense. Against a coordinated attack of the quoted 4 B-52 with 12 Harpoons each he would be overwhelmed, too. Acyually, if 6 B-52 carry 72 Harpoons it gets a pretty narrow game. How bad defense can work was demomstrated in the Falklands (or “how to sink your own ship by using ECM”).
The discrepancy of theoretical ability and final success is always big, may it be in aviation or in usage of SAM networks.
If the Russians really have 33% of their SAM systems manned and ready, the are either paranoid or have too much money.
SchorschThe first likely reaction from the Iranians would be to launch some Tomcats or Phantoms or whatever they have. A flight of only 4 Tomcats launched from a land base might have 4 Phoenix or similar missiles plus maybe 2-4 Sparrows/Sidewinders. That would in one stroke confirm that the targets are cruise missiles and probably immediately lead to at least 20 of the incoming missiles getting shot down through missiles and cannon fire. Obviously the ID will alert all ground forces and probably get another flight of aircraft airborne.
They are out of Phoenix. Sparrow very doubtful, too. Tomcats are surely not on constant alert, they can bring a dozen in the air but not in five minutes. There are some interesting targets, where are the F-14s? All close, one per target? What if the missiles come from north instead of south? I only listed contries US can easily overfly (Afghanistan, Iraq, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean). Didn’t count Turkey.
They can sent 6 missiles from north, just to confuse them. If they intrude Iranian airspace how long before an interceptor reaches them? How many Iranian fighters are on 5 minute alert?
GarryB, you are comparing theoretical figures to practical ones. Sure, they have interceptors and the mighty mighty S-300/Tor combination. But how are they located, what is the state of alert, how early can they aqcuire the target? My point: You cannot defend by SAM or interceptor! You can’t even stop bombers bombing your country (just increase the price tag).
Besides, considering the theme of this thread you could have the most super attacking force with a million cruise missiles… :Rolleyes:
If your opponent is nice enough to build sufficient targets that can be striked with 500kg warheads, sure. Some country once built the Maginot Line, that became an excellent example of wasted effort.
Sometimes the arsenal becomes useless over night. Spent 2 billion on S-300 and the other guy comes by car. You can try to “vaporize” him with the radar illuminator.
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