It’s funny isn’t it? All the years spent arguing over which aircraft was better and we have mostly concluded several years down the line that the argument was pointless. France needed everything up front so it could move to a mostly Rafale based fleet, whilst the Typhoon operators had less of a rush.

Hindsite is a wonderful thing. All those wasted years……

That’s why I won’t get involved in F35 arguments because there is no way of knowing how things will turn out, so why waste your breath.

Now, where is my pipe…..?

More than anything it illustrates how foolish it was for Europe to split its efforts into two competing efforts, neither of which is nearly as complete as it should be by this point.

Raising the bar for this thread…

If temp reached are records, it probably uses advanced cooling technologies. So you can’t draw a direct line from the claim from GE to any military performance regarding IR.

It’s not an hazard if those nasty looking things are flying:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]230206[/ATTACH]

Why on earth would you need such a thing? It would be much faster to just check the inlet temperature and assume that tells you everything you need to know… right? Right?
:angel:

The F135 holds the record in turbine inlet temperature (3600 deg F). In short, the engine is huge and runs extremely hot. Even if we don’t have exact data about all parameters, the real IR signature is likely even less in favor of the F-35.

For comparison, some TIT data:
P&W F135 – 3600 deg F
Lyulka Al-31F – 2570 deg F
Eurojet EJ200 – 2780 deg F
SNECMA M88-2 – 2870 deg F
Klimov RD-33 – 2560 deg F
GE F110 – 2750 deg F
P&W F100 – 2460 deg F

Add a line for bypass ratio…

Then lets talk about this info from the Norway briefing linked earlier:

Low Observable Asymetric Nozzle (LOAN)
–geometrical shaping
–an advanced cooling system
–special coatings on internal and external structures.

Results
–Reduced IR signature
–Increased life of the nozzle divergent flaps
–significant maintenance cost savings.

General

-Reduced IR signature
•No afterburner
•Longer exhaust pipe
-even out exhaust and reduce “hot spot”
•Masking by aircraft structure
•Mixing the exhaust with cold air before it exits the aircraft.
–From fan section
–Ambient cooling air

Or see this article : http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2012/November%202012/1112fighter.aspx/url

The classified “sawtooth” features that ring the nozzle help consolidate the exhaust into a so-called “spike” signature, while other secret techniques have been employed to combat and minimize the engine heat signature.

“We had to deal with that, and we dealt with that,” O’Bryan said, declining to offer details.

The F-35 meets or exceeds the services’ infrared signature specifications. Many of the standard fighter engine features such as a big afterburner spray bar assembly and related piping are missing from the F-35. The F135 power plant, built by Pratt & Whitney, is truly a “stealth engine,” he said.

So here is an idea, rather than subjecting us all to your clueless mental wanderings on subjects you don’t understand, why don’t you go and find an actual source or two.

:very_drunk:

Can you explain this comparison? Not only that, exhaust temperature depends on core temperature and pressure ratio, which is info we don’t know. So I frankly don’t know if your comparison is valid.

Just imagine the signature a Boeing 777 must generate!

What a waste of time…

Hardly a joke when the whole industry goes in this direction. If stealth was the all-embracing concept, then new manned designs would look like a RQ-180 with a canopy added. Except they don’t..

Here we go again with either a clumsy strawman or another example of you just not knowing what you are talking about.

Nobody has ever presented stealth as an “all-embracing concept.” Do you actually think there are people out there pushing that idea? Or do you just wish there were so that you would have something to say?

Agreed, the EF or Rafale, too, came too late for their time. In the ideal world they should have made it to complete on the market with F-16Cs in mid/late 90s. Anyway, the delay of the F-35 is even larger.

Again, it is the first aircraft of its type anywhere in the world. I really don’t know by what standard you could judge that it is late relative to its competition.

That is not true. The USAF decided they wanted to have a minimum of 339 Raptors, not 187. Hardly for A-A work only as they could have been upgraded for other roles like SEAD or strike/interdiction.

The USAF is not the final authority on what gets funded. The Pentagon itself chose to go with a lower number. It was obviously a controversial decision at the time and I personally would have liked to see another 60 or so produced, but it is hard to argue more are needed right now.

That the missiles do work is completely out of question. If you put a target flying in a line with predictable trajectory, single-target tracking, no ECM, no jamming, ideal firing conditions (range/distance, speed, altitude, angle), then the Pk could easily approach 100%. Except that doesn’t say anything useful for your next conflict with a potent enemy.

If we suppose that was actually what testing consisted of you might be right, but of course that isn’t how missiles are tested. Designers intentionally create extremely demanding scenarios intended to test the missile at its limits, both kinematically and in terms of its resistance to countermeasures.

If we applied the same standards of skepticism to other weapon systems we would find few provide “proven” performance against a top-tier threat. How do we know for sure how the latest tank armor matches up against the latest anti-armor threats? How do we know for sure whether modern torpedoes can overcome countermeasures? We could go on and on and it would be just as much of a waste of time as this discussion of missiles has been.

Excellent, you’re getting it. That is why such claim makes little practical difference unless we know the specifics. LM is well known for providing intiguingly vague claims based on some hypothetical conditions only they know of.

Errrrr… what is the last time you have seen one?

Ah yes, “getting it.”

What I “get” is that you have once against proven yourself either ignorant or disengenuous. The above picture is of an early pre-production test aircraft that was not production representative.

Compare your photo to that of a later F-35:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]230108[/ATTACH]

Notice any differences? :stupid:

If you are actually interested in educating yourself, which I sincerely doubt, review this briefing (from Norway no less!) which clearly states on slide 24 and slide 26 that the F135’s nozzle is designed to reduce its radar and IR signatures.

http://forskning.tekna.no/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Norway-and-F-35-7-nov-2013.pdf

But I am not arguing, at all. I am simply talking about how I see it. The only one trying to argue is you..

Excellent, we finally agree. And that weakness is the reason why IMO it can’t be an approach to depend upon for the future.

Surely this is a joke or something. :stupid:

You could say the exact same thing about any other survivability enhancing feature. ECM won’t protect against IR guided missiles. Flares are ineffective against radar guided missiles… blah blah blah.

Nobody is suggesting stealth is some kind of perfect defense against everything all the time. It is one of number of features incorporated into 5th generation aircraft…

Not quite. At the time the F-16 was entering service, MiG-21s were unable to perform multirole missions, attack multiple aerial targets and/or generally use PGM. That was quite a leap, IMO.

When the F-16 entered service it didn’t have those capabilities either.

The problem with the F-35 is that should have come ten-fifteen years ago. Its development took/is taking way too long. By that time it has reached IOC/OC, the “4th gen” designs (I hate that stupid chronology, BTW, but whatever) will have gone through several waves of updates/upgrades/tranches bringing their capabilities very close to the “5th gen”. Kinda like F-16 entering service when MiG-21UPG Bisons are already flying.

The F-35 is a few years late, but it will nonetheless be the world’s first truly multi-role 5th generation aircraft. It is pretty hard to argue that it is “late” when it is the first of its kind. The last of the 4th generation aircraft are the ones arriving late to the party… and the sales show it in no uncertain terms.

So you claim that the plane was so good and unrivaled in A-A that it simply ceased making sense to continue its production and embarass the rivals.. 🙂
That was a very generous gesture from LM, then..

No, I am saying that the USAF decided that they had plenty of them given the threat they anticipated facing. Lockheed would have loved to continue producing F-22 of course.

I don’t think there was anyone here seriously suggesting the experts to suddenly lay down the arms, close the factories and stop the development and procurement or radar-guided AAMs. I think you simply have a huge problem to admit that I am right and that we indeed have no clue about the actual Pk.

Not at all. We don’t need some kind of percentage accurate to XX decimal points to have a fair idea that they “work.” There are people on this messageboard that would like to pretend that radar guided missiles are some kind of totally unknown quantity and that nobody anywhere has any idea if or how they will work in combat… meanwhile the large majority of SAMs and BVR missiles are radar guided, just as they have been for decades.

That is a dangerous statement because without further elaboration (frontal aspect or all aspect?, which angles? discrete angles or integral?) it can lead to a very misleading outcome.

“Stealth” is never a single number, but the fact that we have some solid confirmation that the F-35 is stealthier than the F-22 we can assume it is under circumstances that are relevant at least enough of the time for someone to make note of it.

Anyway, if that is indeed true for all-aspect stealth, then we need to get back and reconsider all basics that we have learned about RCS reduced designs thus far. If a design with complex surfaces on the belly, cylindrical motor cowling and a round exhaust nozzle still is able to beat the careful all-aspect shaping of the F-22 merely by using more advanced materials or more refined RAM, then you need to take into account that even other designs like J-31, J-20 or T-50 can achieve the same. Make of that what you want.

First off the F-35’s nozzle is not “round.” Go look at a picture sometime. Second off the F-22 was never a true all-aspect stealth design. As for the J-31, J-20, etc… I don’t doubt they are shooting for as small a signature as they can reasonable achieve given their technology level and experience.

Quite on the contrary. The Japanese thing is yet another design which seems to follow the approach which I have suggested. Stealthier than F-16/F-18 but less aimed on stealth than F-35/F-22, that is exactly the “right” affordable level of RCS reduction I have been talking about.

…and you base this on what?