A bad aircraft that does fly is far better than a good aircraft that doesn’t… and not only is the F-35 inadequate for anything other than bombing static targets, but it will also be a chore to keep in the air.

Oh course!

Now if only you could convince the USAF, USN, USMC, UK, Australia, Japan, Korea, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Israel, Turkey, and Canada!

:highly_amused:

:very_drunk:

I think that a F-18 purchase would be considered as a semi-victory by other contenders as it would break the F-35 hegemonic system.

Your English is normally very good, but in this case you missed…

The word/phrase you are looking for is “winning streak.”

The fact that the F-35 continues to win export orders while most of its competitors are contemplating shutting down their production lines is a simple product of the fact that the F-35 is a far more competitive aircraft, as one might expect given the vastly greater resources devoted to it and the fact that it is a full generation (and 20 years) newer design than aircraft like the Rafale.

I disagree on all points, firstly those criticizing Sprey are those who are stuck in the early 50’s,
thinking that cruising subsonic in hostile environment is perfectly OK for as long as it is possible to accelerate from mach 0.6 to 0.95,
somehow and for some reason that is hidden from me, this is coupled with fantasies of plinking down fighters 100 km away,
“over the shoulder” and what-not,
tho i suspect the slogan ‘first look/shot/kill’ may be behind the misconception
along with misinterpretation on stated missile range, lacking parameters.
F-22 got it right on all points except sortie rate, cost, and operational cost, Sprey foresaw this before F-22 was even conceived.

You quite simply have no clue what you are talking about. You need to try reading some of what Sprey has actually written.

He wanted to make the ultimate dogfighter, a small light jet that would have relied primarily on guns with a secondary armament of IR guided missiles. His idea of stealth was being small. His idea of situational awareness was good visibility. Go back and read the links I provided. He criticized the F-22 for poor rearward visibility, poor thrust to weight ratio, poor wing loading… he claimed the F-5 was the world’s only twin engined “first rate fighter.”

There literally isn’t a single modern air force in the world today that takes his ideas seriously. Look at the PAK FA, F-22, J-20, J-31, F-35, etc. Which of these jets conforms to what Sprey advocated? (none, not even close)

The one parameter where radar are more accurate than passive sensors is range,
and btw ‘BVR’ constitute distances of ~5 nm, depending how big the fighter is,
the missile seeker itself can pick up at this distance.

You are also wrong about the advantages of active versus passive sensors. An active radar allows a jet to reliably detect threats in all weather conditions at long ranges. It also provides range and velocity information. There is simply no passive sensor that will do the same. RWRs can provide a some of the above information, but only if the enemy does you the favor of emitting. IRSTs have also made big strides in recent years, but are subject to weather, and range restrictions and are limited in their ability to provide range and speed information. (they are also sharply limited in the number of targets they can track)

Finally, take a look at this quote from Harry Hillaker:

If we had stayed with the original lightweight fighter concept, that is, a simple day fighter, we would have produced only 300 F-16s, the same number of F-104s that were built. This is not to say that their complaints are unreasonable. When you load up an F-16 with external fuel tanks, bombs, and an electronic countermeasures pod on the centerline, you’ve doubled its drag. For someone who’s worked all his life to achieve minimum drag, that’s sacrilegious. Nonetheless, it speaks well for the airplane.

The F -16 has far exceeded my expectations. However, if I had realized at the time that the airplane would have been used as a multimission, primarily an air-to-surface airplane as it is used now, I would have designed it differently.

http://www.codeonemagazine.com/article.html?item_id=37

That should tell you about all you need to know…

He stated the facts: short range weapons are more lethal, effective, and cost less,
but he still wanted a long range aam for certain applications.
quote me where he lobby against AMRAAM

Yes, “facts,” while ignoring the fact that in order to use a short range weapon you have to survive until you reach short range. I would be willing to bet that in the US Civil War the percentage of kills per stab of bayonets greatly exceeded the percentage of kills per shot of a rifle. Using his logic it would be advisable to discard the rifle itself and focus on making spears… (don’t go thinking I am making a ridiculous analogy, there was a school of thought in the day that advocated exactly that, watch the video here if you are curious: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/200301A32.html )

He also seems to struggle with the fact of the F-15’s incredible success as a fighter despite being exactly the type of aircraft he has spent his whole life campaigning against…

Times and technology change. Sprey is the equivalent of those advocating the production of spears in the day of rifles. He is correct about the attributes that created an effective dogfighter in the 50s and 60s, but just doesn’t seem to grasp that we have long since moved on from that era. Recent conflicts have demonstrated beyond any doubt that modern missiles are more than sufficiently lethal and now make up the vast majority of air to air kills.

No, he had an A2A ARM in mind,
and i believe i’e read the old Viggen had the targeting capability based on passive reception of radar signals in the 80’s

Attempting to develop such a weapon in the 1970s would have resulted in something hopelessly unwieldy.

The most obvious flaw is that it would require its target to not only be emitting, but to continue to emit predictably for the length of its flight. Due to the inherently limited accuracy of such a missile it would also need a very large warhead to achieve acceptable lethality.

Because of the inability of such a missile to determine its range to target it would be limited to flying fairly “dumb” `trajectories, reducing its efficiency and thus range.

It would also be essentially useless in anything other than a more or less head-on BVR scenario. An attack from behind, or in many maneuvering scenarios, would be impossible.

Modern technology allows the possibility of a multi-mode seeker that includes an anti-radiation homing capability. (as seen in some missiles’ HOJ mode, or the RIM-116 RAM)

Sprey is right on the mark, only the mission is no longer to combat the mighty red air, but to bomb Iran,
and in this new context, F-35 fit like a glove#, and this is why ‘capability’ shouldnt be a throw away attribute unless said capability is specified
#ed: well, except for the bill :rolleyes:

Sprey is a nit wit, always has been.

He had some good ideas back in the day but was a zealot and advocated an approach that if followed would have been a disaster. The F-16 became the incredible success it did not because of him, but in spite of him. He wanted a stripped down WVR only dogfighter with no meaningful multi-role capabilities. (lacking a modern radar even) If the F-16 had been built as he wished it would have gone out of production 30 years ago.

He was a huge critic of the F-15. He has been a huge critic of the F-22. Philosophically he would be opposed to essentially every fighter in production today. Eurofighter… twin engined, complex, expensive, optimized for BVR combat. Rafale… twin engined, multirole, complex, expensive, emphasis on BVR combat. Su-27/30/35… heavy weight, twin engined, multirole, complex, expensive. etc etc.

We are talking about a guy that still thinks the F-86 was the finest fighter ever made and that guns are where it is at…

http://www.slideshare.net/Picard578/sprey-quarter-century

He also concluded that the F-22 was a performance dog because guess what… higher wing loading and lower thrust to weight ratio than an F-15A.

http://defensetech.org/2006/08/16/raptor-or-turkey-part-four/

How did that work out btw? Are there lots of F-22 pilots wishing they were flying F-15As? (or F-86s?)

What I think is clear, is you have no idea of what is going on, to make such a silly statement. I don’t blame you, it is hard to get an idea of the situation from the drivel that is English-language coverage of the conflict.

Putin has made his intentions towards the opposition clear.

You think he expected the fight?

I think if he did he would have supplied the heavy weapons right from the start and not waited until recently.