SchorschI can’t see any vantage of F-111F from the combat radius data you given compare with Su-24. The 42000lbs bombs comes from that famous photo all we have seen ever before, but what the base will tell us F-111 can load 42000lbs bombs and achieve 330nm combat radius simultaneously?
It is not 42000lbs but 4 times 2000lbs, typical F-111F load-out.
And with 8000lbs (or roughly 3500kg) it will achieve 330nm and more.
Honestly, to carry 8000lbs of payload over 330nm in lo-lo-lo one can aim for a smaller aircraft.
SchorschNo i dont have any real idea about fighter aircraft and drag, ok thats that out the way.
With all due respect your opinion does not equal fact, are you just basing the fact of the Raptor having more drag then an Eagle on your opinion or is there some hard facts, data that we can mull over, if not i’m gonna have to take my gut instinct which is the Raptor has less drag then an Eagle.
I am not guessing drag coefficients, I am just saying, that the conclusion “newer aircraft equals less drag” is not granted, especially not when the design criteria were completely different.
Hard facts for you?
Sorry, even if I had, I don’t see a point in wasting them for someone who not even cares to get down to the technical level. I have enough facts to know what I am talking about.
You good instinct (as a an armchair aircraft engineer, or what?) isn’t worth a penny when it comes to those details.
SchorschActually I would say the opposite… as a fleet defender with helmet mounted high offboresight missiles widely deployed being a heavy slightly less manouverable fighter is really not that big a problem for the F-14. New engines in the F-14D greatly improved performance. Putting in even higher thrust 5th gen engines from the F-22 would make it even better. The low drag design of the swept wing means very high speeds should be achievable and supercruise should be easily attainable.
Not really. Engines are not plug’n play.
Between the design of the F-14 (mid sixties) and modern supercruisy aircraft (end 80ies, early 90ies) something happenend, and you cannot retrofit that into an existing aircraft. strange that you say the F-18E is a failure, but you assume that modifying the less prosperous airframe (F-14, with more crashs, more maintenance, higher costs) will come out better. Wishful thinking.
Why would you scratch speed from an interceptor and strike aircraft?
Put the question right, Garry, if you want an answer. The correct question is:
Why would you scratch speed in excess of Mach 1.6 from an interceptor and strike aircraft?
Because they are not needed.
There is plenty of scope for adding weapon pylons and making them able to carry more AAMs and at the same time heavier ordinance. The biggest problem I can see is the amount of weight it can return to the carrier safely. A large multirole radar… make it an AESA and who needs an ESM pod?
No problem, a pylon here, some ECM there, Über-engines and some composites, a bit aerodynamic enhacement there and – yes – use this AESA-thing. Dada! Ready is our 1960ies vintage fighter that can do everything at once, just better, cheaper, quicker.
Having two crew is always useful for some missions.
And useless for all the rest.
The reality is that the electronic shoehorned into the Hornet could as easily have been put in the Tomcat with room to spare. More powerful and more fuel efficient engines, new radar, new avionics… who cares if it doesn’t carry 12 tons of weapons… 2 x 1,000kg LGBs and a couple of AMRAAMs and some AIM-9xs. With the added flight efficiency of a swing wing optimising lift throughout the entire flight profile why was time with the mediocre stealth improvement with the Subpar WhoreNet upgrade. The extra cost of making a smaller aircraft bigger, when there was already a bigger aircraft available to do the job is silly. The minor reductions in RCS were really not operationally significant… SHs aren’t so stealthy they will be appearing on Flanker radars at 10km range…
Aha. Your reality differs from mine, and from those who made the decisions and decided about the money and specifications. I guess that makes your reality less believable.
SchorschFor if the United States (USAF and USN) had the advantage of 10-years grace, I think the F-111 would have been a very different aircraft as to what we know!
For a start it would have been designated A-111 and built in far greater numbers than the F-111 we know today
I guess it would be smaller and without internal weapons bay (which is great, but only useful for nuclear strike) and more reliance on external fuel. On the end of the day, it would look like a Tornado (tandem seating) with a bit more length& volume, possibly with fixed conical inlets. And hopefully someone had corrected the afterbody engine exhaust integration.
The key advantage of the F-111 is its engine and the higher internal fuel volume (which comes with a price in complexity).
Aerodynamic shortcomings on the Suchoi 24 (wing fences, no leading edge devices) surely had its share, too.
SchorschI still can’t believe the Raptor has more drag then an Eagle, do you have any figures to back it up or is it just speculation from looking at and comparing the two ? :confused:
Do you have any idea about fighter aircraft drag and its causes?
Apart from that, I said that the Raptor will surely have less drag in relevant configurations.
SchorschWhat if France remained in the Eurofighter programme?
What would the “united Eurofighter” be today?
I guess specifications like the present Eurofighter, but engine and some major components from France. I think the French had done compromises in the specifications if they got more work share for it.
Compared to the F-18?
Initial design between the two wasn’t that far apart… the super hornet essentially scaled it up (and ran into aerodynamic problems of it’s own).
The F-18 A or E is aerodynamic-wise up-to-date. It is not supercruisy, but at least high-AOA approved. The F-14 had its own share of problems, easily conceivable when one looks at the impressive lists of write-offs.
SchorschAt 29 tonnes typical take-off weight, the F-22A’s thrust/weight ratio would be really bad, even when assuming, that the engines do more than 155kN in afterburner. Which wouldn’t do any good either, since then the fuel/thrust ratio would suffer. Anything over ~27 tonnes would be a freak.
That might be exactly the problem: With the F-22A’s and F-15C’s internal fuel fraction and internal fuel/thrust ratio more or less identical, BUT the F-15 by default flying with 2(+) external fuel tanks, vs F-22 flying naked, the F-22 doesn’t have the ability to fly a F-15 air superiority mission profile. ONLY if it uses the two ext 600gal tanks (which is the configuration we’ve seen during the Guam excercise, and over the Bering Strait).
Seems like, for a F-15 air superiority mission profile on internal fuel only the ATF’s required fuel fraction would have been much closer to 0.40 than the F-22A’s actual 0.30. Wonder how those numbers looked on the YF-23.
The F-15 will have (warning: guesstimate!) 30 to 50% more drag at typical cruise speeds/altitudes (data transferred from F-4F with similar config (4x AIM9, 4x AIM7, 3 external tanks)). The fuel fraction doesn’t tell the whole story. The F-22 can have much better endurance and range with less fuel in general. Remember the rule of thumb, that only half of the external fuel really counts as the rest is expended to lift and move the external fuel.
The TWR is about 1.1 for 35klbs engine and 28.8t weight. But that is static sea level. Again, at relevant speeds and altitudes the F-22 will have lower drag (as it is clean) and by that have much better thrust/drag ratio.
The misleading info comes when people compare a clean F-15A versus a clean F-22A.
The F-15 wins.
But what for?
The clean F-15A cannot win a fight except with the gun.
The F-15A cannot exceed Mach 1.8 with a2a payload (roughly the same for the Phantom).
The clean F-22A does have missiles!
BTW:
If I was a commander in peacetime, I would always stuff my aircraft with the maximum possible fuel and the lowest possible payload. Just for added safety. I guess that is what the F-22 does at the moment.
BTW2:
Fuel fractions substantially below .28ish are not desirable (the F-14A actually has one of ~.27 and is hailed for range, still nobody knows the range). Fuel fractions above .35 don’t make much sense, either, at least not for an air superiority fighter. I never understood why the Soviets stuffed their Suchoi 27 with 10 missiles (when even 8 are a lot) and gave it a fuel fraction of .35ish, instead of just hanging a pair of drop tanks under the wings.
SchorschOr instead of wasting a large amount of money making the F-18 first a strike replacement for the intruder, and then the fighter replacement for the F-14 with the JSF to take over the strike role, something like the Tomcat-21 with an F-14 shell and new other bits might be in service and the JSF would only be used for an AV-8 replacement.
Looking at what Mig did with the Mig-29… ripped out all the obsolete bits out and replaced them with more modern up to date bits with new computers and radars and engine types, adding new weapons… that could certainly have been done to the F-14 too. With new engines and new radar and new weapons like AMRAAM the F-14 would always have had the potential to have been better than the Hornet in every way. New onboard testing and diagnostic systems, all digital databuses, with it being a two seat aircraft it would have been ideal for the mixed air to air and air to ground role.
The F-14D could have had BVR capability every bit as good as the Hornet, simply by adding the AMRAAM to its weapon inventory. There were replacement AAMs for the Phoenix and the F-14 would have been the ideal platform to launch them from.
Interesting you think there is no longer a long range fleet defence role.
You still cannot delete the 1960s requirements out of the aircraft. The MiG-29 had potential while the F-14 had not. Aerodynamic-wise the F-14 was not 21st century at all. Too much weight for Mach 2 performance. If you scratch it from the requirements, you quickly ask why in the world we need a swing wing at all (with lots of weight, complexity and lifetime limitations).
You would further ask how one can increase the pathetic flexibility of the F-14 stores, or increase external fuel, where to put all the ECM and mission specific pods. And why in the world accommodation for a huge radar dish nobody needs any more? And the second crew member, what for?
By the way: I think a limited force of A-6F – deployed to a carrier if needed – used for ground attack into undefended airspace would have served the USN well.
But considering the administration and public opinion in the early 1990s, there is hardly a way around the Super Hornet.
SchorschOn the other hand there is more blending with the F-22. It’d be interesting to know the differences in wet area. Also the F-22 has a bigger wing but is it as thick as the Eagles? (thick wing = drag) Also the F-15 was optimized for combat at Mach 0.9 while the F-22 was optimized for flight at supersonic speeds. That alone suggests the F-22 has a lower drag coefficient (yes, I know that doesn’t automatically translate to lower absolute drag). The short answer is it’s all armchair quarterbacking.
The problem the F-22 designers had are stealth and volume. Given the huge wing root I think the relative thickness is similar. Drag in transonic regime is only partly dependent on wing thickness. A major problem would be the limited effectiveness of area ruling as stealth requirements prohibit it. It is interesting to see how the YF-23 apparently overcome this problem.
Let’s put it this way: The F-22 (given current guesses on weight and thrust) will have similar or better performance than an F-15 or F-16A in nearly all areas, and at the same time incorporate stealth. The F-22’s predecessor as stealthy tactical aircraft (the F-117) was considered a success when it demonstrated it can fly at all.
The weight penalty of stealth becomes clearly apparent, when we see that a Eurofighter has roughly similar range and similar weapons load, in general similar performance characteristics, but weights loaded less an F-22 empty.
But it doesn’t have stealth.
By the way: what would be the loaded weight of the F-22? I always thought this was OEW + internal fuel + standard a2a weapons load? Wikipedia uses 25.1t, I would rather put it at 28.8t.
SchorschNot to mention, compare how many of each aircraft were built – compare their cost of production.
I think in relative terms (cost per unit in relation to domestic gross product), the F-111 was cheaper, not because it was so economical but because the USA was so much more wealthy. It was by the way a huge technology program and introduced turbo-fan engines and swing wings.
Not to be misunderstood: I think the F-111 was a failure in the beginning due to the USAF’s tendency to oversophisticate the aircraft (esp. in terms of Mach number/Airspeed requirements). Electronics were unreliable (not an F-111 specific or an USA specific or a West specific problem), some lessons on the production and material section were learned the hard way (again: that happened in Soviet development programs, too).
But: when the biggest problems were finally ironed out, the F-111 evolved as the superior aircraft due to better design and better technology.
SchorschNo Tornado ADV variant would’ve probably meant an F-15 buy. The RAF sent a team to conduct a short evaluation of the aircraft in the mid to late 70s and they were favourably impressed.
Result would probably have been some arrangement similar to the Phantom buy with a proportion of parts (and possibly final assembly) being carried out in British factories.
While the British industry had no engine that could live up with the airframe. The F-15 also lacked the independence the RAF sought. A rather odd buy for the job, although the Eagle prevails as fighter. An F-14 might have been more useful, with British engines, … how about F-14K?
would the F-15 buy have affected the development of the Typhoon as well?
Yes, as without Britain in the Tornado, a participation in the Eurofighter seems less likely. Results are possibly:
– remaining European nations (call them the aviation underdogs) team up and build a fighter. Tough job however.
– Germany joins forces with France, splits the bill and even gets a very small and limited technology transfer from France (you cannot put a toilet in a fighter)
– Germany and the other buy USA. No Eurofighter and secured American dominance over coming decades.
1) what if the Soviets opted for the MiG-29K over the Su-33
Nobody cared?
2) what if the Soviets went ahead and ordered production of the Yak-144
After a protracted and lengthy development period of more than 10 years, several major iterations in engine and airframe, it would finally enter service in very small numbers as an aircraft that lost its mission. A huge waste of money and resource.
SchorschIt would characterize flying actual combat mission into the toughest airspace at that time (North Vietnam) as “operational”. No doubt the F-111A (but also other versions) had design deficiencies, some the result of over-specification of the TFX, some of the very ambitious avionics suite, some just because the F-111 stretched the state-of-the-art.
SchorschIt is. Size does matter. Wing-area 56,5 m³ versus 77,1 m³ alone! F-15 was with top drag reduction considerations in mind, when the F-22 has to be stealth at first.
Resulting in some dubious decisions in case of the F-15, for example designing a huge wing without slats instead of a smaller with them.
SchorschThe UK built Phantoms with turbofan engines.
I know.
Still, the UK could not built its own Phantom but needed MDD to built it.
SchorschThe Buccaneer to my Knowledge has had no combat losses. This includes against some pretty stiff Soviet systems manned by East Germans and Russians in Angola, as well as the Gulf War that resulted in Tornado losses.:diablo:
The Buccaneers did not attack targets like the Tornados.
They worked at medium altitude, anything else doesn’t make sense for laser guided bombs.
Taking Angola as example is a bit remote.
If it was so much better, why did the RAF initially leave it at home when heading for the Gulf?
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