hopsalotYou are mistaken. The chase for speed has not started with the XB-70, nor it has ended there. It has started somewhere around Wright Flyer and ended in 1976 with SR-71, embracing dozens of designs.
What does 1976 have to do with the SR-71? The A-12 first flew in 1962, and the SR-71 first flew in 1964.
That means from the first flight of the first US supersonic fighter, the F-100, which first flew in 1953 to the fastest aircraft ever produced was a period of less than 10 years. 50+ years later the A-12/SR-71 is still the fastest aircraft ever built.
LOL, no. I am talking about the fact that a simple IR guided missile is virtually immune against stealth and can kill an F-35 with the same ease and precision as it can do a MiG or an F-18. Techniques to counter stealth existed before stealth was even born and they are still viable today.
I am not sure what you are trying to argue here. Yes, IR guided missiles pre-date stealth aircraft. (just like low frequency radars) That is one reason why all stealth aircraft today incorporate IR reduction technologies in addition to RCS reduction. Even so, under the right circumstances they are detectable. (as they are with radar)
This is your standard fanboy retort honestly. IR signatures are well understood and that hasn’t stopped essentially everyone designing combat aircraft today from focusing on RCS reduction.
With the announced operating cost, the F-35 is hardly a practical aircraft. I won’t comment on others as I have no data.
Practical for who? For what? Compared to what? Even if there were an accepted operating cost number available for the F-35, any meaningful comparison would have to take into account what the available alternatives are. The F-35 can simply do things its predecessors can’t, so an apples to apples comparison is difficult.
You have concluded it isn’t “practical,” but a whole list of forces have concluded the opposite.
The mentioned problem is yours rather than mine. You are forever stuck in 1vs1 comparisons and fail to see a bigger picture of xx$bil fighter force vs. another xx$bil force.
Not at all. There are cheaper alternatives available. Any one of the F-35’s customers could have decided to buy something cheaper, and yet they didn’t. Meanwhile the cheapest Western fighters available, the Gripen and the F-16, are in trickle production at this point.
Once again, you have reached a conclusion that is wildly divergent with that of the professionals.
I think we will be surprised the same way. Likewise, extreme RCS reduction will likely never be really useful in the real world. Granted, stealth will never be completely abandoned rather than set to a reasonable level, much closer to performance vs cost optimum than the F-22 or F-35 have it.
So essentially you have no idea what the “right” level of RCS reduction is, but you are pretty sure it is less than that of the F-22 and F-35. :eagerness:
Which only confirms my claim that the real Pk of current missiles is pretty much unknown…
To you perhaps, and it seems you are happy to take your ignorance as an invitation to simply believe what you want. You don’t like the idea of missiles working reliably, and so they won’t. Just don’t confuse your wishful thinking for analysis. The same forces who are rolling out the latest countermeasures are themselves betting on radar guided BVR missiles and stealth…
How does that favor missiles vs. countermeasures? It could easily be vice versa..
It doesn’t need to be one or the other. Countermeasures can “work” in that they may be capable of lowering the success rate of missiles even while missiles “work” in that they remain effective in combat.
That ain’t necessarily true. Granted, we are seeing basic stealth shaping features like aligned angles, serrated edges or canted fins on most new designs. At the same time, no one seems to bother with all aspect stealth – exhaust nozzles are mostly round, canopies still have frames, canards are everything but extinct, despite internal bays external ordnance carriage is still a valid concept and Russians don’t even lose time with S-ducts. There are some clever folks designing these things and they obviously are able to prioritize what is useful and affordable and what not.
Perhaps you haven’t been keeping up. Which of the below do you consider to have “basic” stealth shaping:
F-35
J-20
J-31
PAK FA
Taranis
Neuron
Skat
X-47
You could fairly argue that of the above the PAK FA has put the least priority on stealth shaping, but even so it is clearly fundamental to the design.
hopsalotSince it is a more or less monthly occurrence that someone shows up here having “discovered” that air to air missiles, particularly radar guided missiles, are terribly unreliable and have failed to perform in essentially every war in which they have been used… and that therefor such missiles will continue to be worthless in real combat leaving fighters to duel it out with IR missiles/guns… etc etc.
Here is some actual data that didn’t originate on some agenda-driven blog:
http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2011gunmissile/Proctor_Awards.pdfSoutheast Asia:
Bonafide AIM-7 Attempts : 560
Successful (fireball or guided to fireball) : 94 (17%)
Out of Envelope Launches : 204 (47%)
Successful in-envelope : 94 (41%)
Desert Storm:
Bonafide AIM-7 Attempts : 67
Successful (fireball or guided to fireball) : 29 (48%)
Out of Envelope Launches : 13 (24%)
Successful in-envelope : 29 (83%)
So what does this tell us. (wait wait, let me guess… OMG conspiracy! The USAF Lies!!1one1 )
By Desert Storm not only had the USAF made huge improvements in training resulting in fewer out of envelope shots, but the AIM-7 had become an awfully lethal weapon guiding successfully to a kill or a fireball in better than four of five valid shots.
Naturally the conspiracy types can feel free to just ignore this and continue pursuing their little crusade. :eagerness:
I find it amusing that after endless round and round discussions about missile lethality that when I post some useful data all we hear is crickets chirping.
hopsalotIt’s pretty much an analogy with stealth. First, the challenges associated with ever better RCS reduction, too, do not scale linearly with effort made and money invested.
No, it isn’t at all similar. You are talking about an approach that was recognized as obsolete before prototypes had even been completed and that in 50+ years has not be revived. Stealth aircraft have been in service for decades and confidence in the advantages it conveys has only grown.
Second, sensor technology (be it radar in various bands, IR or something different) will have demonstrated that even the most stealthy design can be detected and intercepted at reasonable ranges.
Oh really? When? If you are referring to the one F-117 shootdown you can spare us…
Stealth is not invisibility, but it doesn’t need to be to convey huge advantages.
In the end, future designs will most likely have incorporated reasonable level of RCS reduction measures. That means they might be less stealthy than B-2 or F-22, but also much more affordable to make and maintain.
A “reasonable” level of stealth is exactly what aircraft like the F-35, X-47, J-20, PAK FA, NGB, Taranis, Neuron, etc are all shooting for. I guarantee you not one of those efforts is seeking to develop an impractical aircraft. :very_drunk:
Your problem is that you don’t have a good enough grasp of the technology to recognize what the professionals already have. Stealth is not incompatible with making an aircraft that is affordable to make and maintain.
You are surely laughing now but I bet people in the 60s were laughing at the idea that a super-fighter built 50 years later would barely be able to crawl over M1.6.
Perhaps they would be surprised… but the top speeds of those aircraft were almost never really useable in the real world anyway. Most M2.2 F-4s were replaced by M2 F-16s and M1.8 F-18s. M2.3 F-14s were replaced by M1.8 Super Hornets. M2.2 Mirage2000s were replaced by M1.8 Rafales. M2.2 F-4s and Tornados were replaced by M2 Eurofighters, etc. What happened was not some kind of a rejection of speed, but a recognition that maximum speed in a clean or nearly clean configuration wasn’t a useful performance metric to prioritize. The F-35’s real world performance while loaded will be quite competitive with that of the aircraft it is replacing, while similarly loaded.
The XB-70 was just one project of many. Almost every major design from that time on both sides of the ocean called for M2.0 and beyond.
There is a very big difference between M2 and M3. I assumed that was obvious but I guess that is relative.
We are talking about two different things. Operating some odd 50 stealth strikers out of fleet worth few thousand units lets you oversee most of the effects connected with all-aspect stealth. An abysmal readiness rate of F-117 would only have a marginal effect on the operability of the US forces.. but the same problem with F-35 would have a rather catastrophic effect..
I don’t know if you have noticed this, but the F-35 isn’t the F-117.
Thus far the US have not learned what does it mean being satisfied with half of the number of originally required airframes due to high acquisition and operating cost… but they will get this lesson rather soon… in 20 years there won’t be myriads of legacy fighters available to cover the potential gap.. then we can get together and talk about whether stealth really was worth it or not.
Sure, says you. :eagerness:
” FAIRFORD AIR BASE, England– Lockheed Martin Corp. and its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter industrial partners will spend $170 million over two years to help reduce the cost of each of the combat jets to below $80 million by the end of the decade.
Cost reductions will be achieved a year faster than planned, said Lorraine Martin, the Lockheed executive who heads the F-35 program. “This is really something novel,” she said of the investment that is shared by others, including Northrop Grumman Corp. and BAE Systems PLC.”
That doesn’t help much unless you are testing the missiles in the hostile environment. I have serious doubts that US have access to latest Russian, Chinese or even European ECM gear to simulate such conditions.
Is that supposed to be clever? The Russians/Chinese/etc don’t have access to US missiles/radars/etc to test their jammers against. Russian and Chinese designers don’t have US jammers to test their missiles against, etc.
Physics is physics… there is no way to completely eliminate the possibility of surprises but at a similar technology level you can make reasonable assumptions about what an opponent is capable of.
There is nothing truly mysterious about RCS reduction. And there is even less conspiracy. It’s all about a decision to invest into a so called VLO design or to save half of the funds and only get something less-VLO..
…and it is a decision essentially every design team on earth has embraced. :stupid:
True. They were damn good.. But that didn’t prevent them from working on what you call a flawed concept.. Remember, when ten thousand people are working on something, it does not mean they are necessarily right.
Yes, for a few years they worked on a project that was ultimately cancelled before the first prototype flew. That is totally similar to a dozen different design teams on three continents working independently over a period of decades.
We have the materials because we have devoted decades of development looking for them. If the same effort was put to hypersonics, cloaking or say supermaneuvrability, the results would, too, have been entirely different.
Again, this was never a case of either/or. The US and others have invested great resources in hypersonic flight and the materials that could enable it, but to date there has been no breakthrough sufficient to enable practical hypersonic aircraft. Sometimes physics is physics…. you can’t just decree that scientists develop cold fusion, or hypersonic flight, etc etc. It isn’t simply a question of resources.
hopsalotI am glad that even you recognize that just because the whole industry has been following an idea (in this case speed), it doesn’t automatically mean it was the right idea to follow.
:very_drunk:
What you are erroneously attributing to some kind of fashion or fad was in fact a product of changes in enabling technologies and inaccurate assumptions about what the future of air combat would hold. Like you and many others populating internet messageboards, some designers from the late 1950s through the 1960s felt that the key to survivability lay in speed. This was undermined by two things. First, that the challenges associated with ever higher top speeds did not scale linearly with speed (leaving us today with aircraft whose top speeds are generally no faster than those first achieved by aircraft 50+ years ago), and second, missile technology demonstrated that it would be more than capable of intercepting targets flying at any reasonably achievable speed.
The XB-70 hardly represented the “whole industry,” and though it could have been built, it was apparent that it would have been neither practical nor combat effective. In contrast the US has been operating stealth aircraft for just about 30 years at this point, and has only become more confident in the approach.
US have only operated few dozens of stealth aircraft until F-22 came, a small fraction of the overall numbers. Even they have no experience in operating an all-stealth force. They will be learning the pros and cons of it now. And along with them, the F-35 operators.
Yes, most of the US’s fleet of aircraft have not been stealthy, but enough of the fleet has been stealthy that the US is more than a little familiar with how stealth performs both in combat and in exercises. This is hardly some untested theory…
Technology has evolved in both measures and counter-measures. How does it affect the overall Pk of the missiles remains unknown.
Unknown… seems rather a strong word to me. Of course it is not completely known, but given that the US has been firing hundreds of missiles per year for decades I think it is reasonable to assume that they have had time to develop a fairly robust understanding of what its missiles are capable of…
For me it’s a fashion tad just like speed once was.
Am I expelled from here now or what are you trying to say?
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” -Arthur C Clark
I get that you don’t understand the technologies here, and so attribute what you are observing to fads/fashion, or various conspiracy theories, etc. It is perfectly understandable, but I do find it somewhat odd that you would choose to hang out here given how little of what is discussed here seems to hold any real meaning for you.
Those having designed the XB-70 were engineers, too..
We have spent five decades and one trillion plus smoothening rivets and aligning angles. That we know nothing about hypersonics is hardly surprising…
Yes, they were engineers, and good ones…
…but the concept proved flawed and was cancelled with only two prototypes ever built. How you equate this to stealth aircraft given that stealth aircraft have already been in service for decades, in combat on multiple occasions, and are now in advanced development in at least a half a dozen countries is more than a little baffling.
As for what could have been achieved in resources were devoted to other projects… resources were never simply allocated 100% to one thing or another. Achieving reliable hypersonic flight has been a dream for a long time and more than a few talented individuals have devoted their lives to its pursuit. Most of the fundamental problems preventing it are fundamentally limitations in materials. Stealth aircraft are challenging to build, but at least we have the materials to build them with… the same can’t be said for hypersonics at the present time.
hopsalotAnd this little snippet is worrying for us trying to draw any conclusion out of Desert Storm (IF TRUE)!
“An additional factor improving the performance of radar-guided
missiles was that Iraqi pilots did not take any evasive action once radar lock occurred.
This indicates a training failure, an equipment failure (of the radar warning receiver), or a
combination of both.”
As promised, here is a source showing that it is not true:
http://youtu.be/fwIEClh4hwU?t=2m49s
This account clearly shows that at least some Iraqi pilots were appropriately employing both counter radar and counter IR tactics in combat.
hopsalotYour direct link isn’t working, but was able to access it through dtic. Not sure whats up there.
Its nice to note the BQM-167 is “capable of 9g near sea level at near bingo fuel”.
The QF-4 supposedly doesn’t even manage that, topping out around 6g for whatever reason. Maybe the QF-16 will rectify that.
A QF-16 will most certainly be capable of pulling 9Gs and really there isn’t anything magical about 9Gs given the gross over match between missile and aircraft maneuverability.
Furthermore, not once does the presentation address the issue of the AIM-7 not actually being launched WVR! Which was less than 60 launches.
http://www.vmi.edu/uploadedFiles/Archives/Adams_Center/EssayContest/20042005/HigbyP_0405.pdf
I suppose that really depends what we are talking about. This most recent recurrence of this same tired old topic hasn’t been centered on BVR specifically but missile lethality in general.
Besides, just because most AIM-7 shots were taken “WVR” does not mean they weren’t enabling a useful new capability. Many of these shots were taken at what might technically be considered WVR, but were at the very edge of visual range and were certainly not taken in the midst of a “dogfight.” People around here have a tendency to call an 8-10 mile shot WVR because you might plausibly see the speck you are shooting at, but it is still a shot that wasn’t possible with the IR guided missiles of the day and an important capability.
See this example and note the missile’s time of flight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ5N58z9UUM
Another significant factor is the already much discussed issue of ROE. In Vietnam the ROE generally ruled out BVR shots, which was not a technical limitation of the missile.
And this little snippet is worrying for us trying to draw any conclusion out of Desert Storm (IF TRUE)!
“An additional factor improving the performance of radar-guided
missiles was that Iraqi pilots did not take any evasive action once radar lock occurred.
This indicates a training failure, an equipment failure (of the radar warning receiver), or a
combination of both.”
As you say, if true, which it isn’t.
Later when I have time I will dig up an example of Iraqi pilots both maneuvering to defeat radar locks and IR guided missiles, and not without some success I might add. (This is the F-15C vs Mig-25 engagement that resulted in the shoot-down of both Mig-25s. )
Yet the fact remains in terms of missile Pk for a given launch, the figures continue to be abysmal. Especially given the limited loadout of certain aircraft (I’m looking at you F-35).
The widely dispersed figures is of between 24-26 kills for 80something launches.
AMRAAM in Kosovo was around 10% Pk!
Actually, the point of that slide was that “the fact remains” that the statistics on missile lethality some around here like to throw out don’t show what they think they show. Seriously, how on earth do you figure AMRAAM’s lethality over Kosovo was 10%? How many of those shots were redundant given that an earlier missile killed the target? How many of those shots were taken outside of launch parameters?
hopsalotSince it is a more or less monthly occurrence that someone shows up here having “discovered” that air to air missiles, particularly radar guided missiles, are terribly unreliable and have failed to perform in essentially every war in which they have been used… and that therefor such missiles will continue to be worthless in real combat leaving fighters to duel it out with IR missiles/guns… etc etc.
Here is some actual data that didn’t originate on some agenda-driven blog:
http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2011gunmissile/Proctor_Awards.pdf
Southeast Asia:
Bonafide AIM-7 Attempts : 560
Successful (fireball or guided to fireball) : 94 (17%)
Out of Envelope Launches : 204 (47%)
Successful in-envelope : 94 (41%)
Desert Storm:
Bonafide AIM-7 Attempts : 67
Successful (fireball or guided to fireball) : 29 (48%)
Out of Envelope Launches : 13 (24%)
Successful in-envelope : 29 (83%)
So what does this tell us. (wait wait, let me guess… OMG conspiracy! The USAF Lies!!1one1 )
By Desert Storm not only had the USAF made huge improvements in training resulting in fewer out of envelope shots, but the AIM-7 had become an awfully lethal weapon guiding successfully to a kill or a fireball in better than four of five valid shots.
Naturally the conspiracy types can feel free to just ignore this and continue pursuing their little crusade. :eagerness:
hopsalotThat is somewhat flawed logic. In the history of aerial warfare we have seen designers going after this and that.. first speed, then agility, then maneuvrability, then high-altitude, then low-altitude penetration.. you name it.. I guess the N.A. team must have been full of idiots working on Mach 3 bombers when they could simply have made a subsonic flying wing with internal bays, instead..
You do know that the Mach 3 bomber was cancelled because it became apparent that it was a terrible idea, right? The US has been flying stealth aircraft operationally since the 1980s and confidence in the value of stealth has only grown. At this point all new clean slate designs worldwide have adopted RCS reduction as a fundamental requirement.
Technology marches forward and aerial combat has always evolved. That is why it is so amusing to me that some around here cling to a vision of air combat that dates to the 1950s and 1960s, despite 50+ years of technological advancement since those days.
Today’s features are not about supremacy in aerial combat, that’s Cold War era thinking. Today’s features are all about selling points. Want a fighter? Great.. Here is one.. But wait, it can supercruise, just add $10mil.. it also has AESA.. just add another $5mil. cheek arrays.. $9mil.. towed decoys.. HOTAS… holographic HUD.. another $10mil.. and now, wait.. it’s stealthy… it will cost you another 30% more but trust me, you can’t live without it..
That is fairly insulting to the professionals that define requirements and doctrine, to say nothing of actually operating these aircraft. Do you really think stealth is some kind of a fashion fad? If so, what on earth are you doing on a message board devoted to aviation enthusiasts?
I personally think that if the same money and effort had been put into development of propulsion technology instead of flattening every protruding rivet, then we would be having designs at least one league more formiddable than F-35. In a stealth aircraft, the only thing you can do is to fly a pre-programmed route and pray that there is no damn forgotten rivet protruding over the RAM coating, that the air defense radars work in the right band, that your emissions weren’t somehow intercepted by cold electronic ears or that the damn SAM somehow doesn’t have an IR-guided cousin standing nearby. That’s kinda pathetic if you ask me.. In a Mach 8 aircraft throwing precise munition from the very edge of space you could simply show all SAMs a middle finger and open a can with Baked Beans, that is what I call supremacy.
My 0.02..
I guess this is why we send people to school to become engineers rather than ask random guys on the internet what they think sounds cool. :confused:
A Mach 8 aircraft throwing precise weapons from the edge of space? Great… tell us all how exactly you would go about building such a thing. Bear in mind that our current grasp of hypersonics is barely sufficient to keep sub-scale drones without weapons, sensors, or much of anything else useful from burning up on roughly every other flight…
hopsalotEverytime they get into an aircraft they risk their lives to some degree. If the pilot is not willing to take on the risk to ensure their weapons are effective, then what are they doing in the forces?
What about the test pilots that step into any machine with risks similar in magnitude to what is proposed.
Its not as if in WW2 infantry drills were not done with live ammo!!
This is one of those classic internet moments when someone proposes an absolutely ludicrous solution to a non-existent problem.
The US already has by-far the world’s most robust missile effectiveness verification/test program. It is called Combat Archer, and guess what, it features hundreds of launches per year by real operational units against sophisticated threat-representative targets. (In most tests missiles have warheads removed and intentional “drone saving” maneuvers are executed at endgame to avoid needlessly wasting drones.)
Read here: http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2011gunmissile/Proctor_Awards.pdf
(note in particular the stats on missile lethality on slide 6, which are to put it mildly somewhat less alarmist than various bloggers have calculated. :dev2: )
and here: http://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_te/publication/afi99-108/afi99-108.pdf
Still. Cheaper to waste a few missiles finding out if the supposed silver bullet is actually made of cheap tin in a controlled environment rather than in a hot war when it could mean your sparkling new 3 billion pound aircraft carrier is essentially without air cover.
Gee, you think? :eagerness:
Maybe that is why the US has been firing 300+ missiles a year for decades now… 😀
hopsalotHave you seen the report on the F3R uprgrade…I found it quite interesting as we have new pieces of info regarding this new rafale “tranche”:
We have Spectra with GaN & other improvements, higher processing power….And, and…Quite a scoop (or not) regarding everlasting debates which took place a few years ago : the rafale has indeed an operational active cancellation capability.
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?137433-Rafale-News/page379 (post 5676)
[ATTACH=CONFIG]229895[/ATTACH]
Other upgrades also reported from combat aircraft monthly for the current batch 4 is an improved cockpit :
[ATTACH=CONFIG]229894[/ATTACH]
That certainly doesn’t sound like active cancellation…
There are plenty of ways that a jammer can work to prevent a radar from recognizing a target. The part about “there are other strategies, such as generating signals that will encompass or be higher than the echo from the aircraft ” is telling. If this were active cancellation the goal is to cancel out the signal reflecting from the aircraft being protected. The last thing you would want to do is generate a signal more powerful than the original.
I suspect what they are doing here is seeking ways to generate noise in such a manner as to leave the Rafale’s already fairly small return undetectable in some cases.
hopsalotThere is a good reason to believe that they don’t work extremely well. The reason being various EW/ECM systems being in operation with their true capabilities and limits carefully concealed. Frankly, even if their specs were released, I have serious doubts many of us here would understand what they really mean.
If systems like Spectra, DASS, ALR-94, Khibiny or EWS are capable to confuse, disturb or neutralize even large shipborne radars, we can only imagine what mess they can do with the tiny missile seekers.. I would not be surprised to learn that three of four modern BVR missiles miss their target (unless you’re firing at late 60s MiG-23MF, that is).
I am not sure how you define “work extremely well.” Clearly the makers of the various self protection jammers must believe they can degrade the efficacy of radar guided missiles, but it is worth noting that the countries/engineers that designed the world’s best jammers/countermeasures are the same ones that continue to bet heavily on radar guided missiles in the future. That certainly implies that they believe jammers can be overcome enough of the time…
This is a lot like saying that just because soldiers are now routinely equipped with modern body armor that there is a good reason to believe small arms “don’t work extremely well.” Body armor may be better than nothing, but its existence does not imply that bullets don’t work.
We are never going to hash out exactly where the balance lies here of course, but the world consensus seems to be radar guided long-range missiles, Meteor, AMRAAM, AA-12, PL-12, backed up by newer generation IR guided missiles that now also offer a meaningful, though shorter ranged, BVR capability.
If we start seeing first-rate forces abandoning radar guided missiles completely I think that would be telling. Right now most fighters are flying with 2-3 radar guided missiles for every IR guided missile…
At the same time I believe that the Pk of IR-guided missiles must have been increased considerably. Given the intensive development of IR seekers in recent years (both resolution and sensitivity) I don’t think that the development of counter-measures could have continued at comparable pace. At least I cannot imagine techniques to counter that.
In the end these technologies will all come together. There are already examples of missiles with multi-mode seekers either in service or under development.
hopsalot…
I find it amusing that every few months some kid with a physics textbook in their backpack determines that BVR missiles “don’t work,” and that essentially the entirety of the engineers and military officers of the world’s air and air defense forces have got it all wrong. :very_drunk:
Some healthy skepticism is just that… but when you find yourself reaching a conclusion greatly at odds with essentially the entire community of experts with access to the real-world specifications and test information… it is probably time to question whether you are on the right path. (and no, the effectiveness demonstrated by long retired missile designs in a conflict 50 years ago in SE Asia is not predictive of the effectiveness of modern designs in battles not yet fought)
There are differences of opinion about exactly how 21st century air to air combat would play out between technologically advanced forces, but all meaningful players recognize that BVR missiles, stealth, radar, and networking will be major drivers of outcomes.
hopsalotThere’s nothing foolish in being wrong. There was hardly anyone who could have foreseen such development – not even Indian officials.
The price figure of ~$20bn for 126 Rafales is indeed very disappointing. The facts are facts and have to be accepted, there is nothing more I can add..
I respect that you aren’t trying to move the goalposts.
I still don’t think the price increase in India says much of anything useful about the price of a Rafale relative to an F-35. There are just too many variables between different deals for such comparisons to be meaningful.
What the Rafale price increase does show is that these sorts of massive budgetary/planning failures are a relatively routine occurrence.
For another example:
(Reuters) – The German defense ministry has no overview of the costs it is incurring for Airbus Group’s (AIR.PA) Eurofighter jets and will spend twice as much as it originally planned on the country’s most expensive defense project, federal auditors said.
The German Federal Court of Auditors, which oversees the government’s financial management, said in a report the costs for the Eurofighter jets over their life cycle would climb to around 60 billion euros ($83 billion) from an originally planned 30 billion, despite the number of jets having been reduced.
The auditors said operating expenses, especially maintenance costs, had increased particularly strongly.
They also said the budget of 11.8 billion euros the defense ministry had calculated in 1997 for the purchase of 180 Eurofighter jets would only be enough to buy 140 of the planes.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/30/us-germany-eurofighter-airbus-group-idUSBREA3T06C20140430
I think we can all agree that these types of failures are a major problem in the industry, and not some kind of F-35 (or Rafale, or Eurofighter) specific phenomenon.
hopsalotIt’s not just raw processing power, it’s also every sensor interconnected with Fiber-optic (FO) datalinks, every weapon station having a FO datalink, the ability to the sensors to work together, rather than through the ICP. A good example of this is the relationship and connections between the ESM and AESA radar which has been said to work together on a “pulse for pule” basis.
Since they are not used today for this purpose means that EODAS is unique. The F-22 has similar sensors yet theirs also do not provide anything beyond MLD/MAW capability.
I find it amusing how our normally hyper skeptical anti F-35 crowd here will blissfully assume that their favorite jet needs only a quick software patch to vault up to the F-35’s level. (They say this just before expressing their extreme skepticism that the F-35’s incredibly complex software will be ready in time… :eagerness: )
In short, it is all just software and no big deal to add capability not yet even discussed to aircraft with canards.
If it is an F-35 however it likely won’t work period, even though the systems were designed from the start to include said capability, plus there is that nasty nasty software, certain to take too long and cost too much. :very_drunk:
I was speaking of single-ship, weapons grade GeoLoacation. The Super Hornet, often referred to as the best (4th Gen) when it comes to its ESM does not even have it (which is why “Single-Ship GeoLoacation” appears in the SH’s “future” upgrade path).
Why are you giving me a very ambiguous term in a foreign language instead of naming a system so it can be researched?
Just to make myself clear, I am not saying that these features of the F-35 will “always” be unique, just that today and for the foreseeable future they are unique.
As you say, the Navy hasn’t yet consulted the right experts to learn that “the physics are against” single ship geolocation… they seem to be pursuing the idea. :highly_amused:
The Navy deferred several enhancements that it intended to deliver with SCS H8E to later software builds. These enhancements included integrated electronic support, integrated high-gain electronic support measures, specific emitter identification, single-ship geolocation, integration of the ALQ-214(V)4 jammer, and RNAV (Area Navigation).
http://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports/FY2013/pdf/navy/2013fa18ef.pdf
hopsalotPot, Kettle, Black… much?
Not at all, I just find it amusing how foolish this makes some of the fanboy crowd around here look. In fact it was only last year that we had people saying hilarious stuff like the following:
Both Indian and Norwegian deals are OPUC, incl. spares, support and training (no weapons as far as I am aware). I am quite sure we would find subtle differences in details (we would find these even between two deals of the same type), but I don’t see how could these magically make Indians to pay $21bn instead of reserved $10bn. Because you would need that much to declare Rafale comparable to F-35 in terms of acquisition cost.
We are not talking about 10% or 20% difference here, we are talking about a double price tag. The day we can see $21bn instead of $10bn on the Indian deal or the Norwegians magically get 50% discount from the proposal they got on the table, I will be the first one to admit I was wrong. Until that happens, I am right, sorry.
:very_drunk:
So here we are just about 13 months later and surprise surprise… someone is discovering that the F-35 they dedicated some many hours to railing against is by their own calculation, just about on target for price. (and without accounting for the fact that the F-35 is a generation/couple decades newer)
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