So what is the conspiracy theory behind this report? Maybe Lockheed has bought everyone off before their aircraft is even available for export? That would be pretty pro-active of them. :highly_amused:

Gulf buyers are nearing decisions to buy more current generation fighter jets, but the buzz at the Dubai Airshow was about Lockheed Martin Corp’s (LMT.N) radar-evading F-35 fighter – a plane not yet operational and not even on display there.

The U.S. government sent a big delegation to this year’s show, eager to reassure Gulf leaders about their continued commitment to the region despite policy differences over Syria and Iran and signs that Egypt is looking at buying Russian weapons after a slowdown in U.S. military aid.

For the first time, U.S. government and industry officials also spoke about the process under way to allow the sale of the Lockheed jet to the Gulf – probably about five years after Israel receives its first F-35 fighter jets in 2016.

One Gulf source familiar with the region’s defense market said the F-35 was generating a degree of excitement even before any U.S. decision to allow its sale to Gulf buyers.

The possibility that the F-35 aircraft might become available could explain why Gulf countries are taking their time with decisions on purchases of other fighters, the source said.

Heidi Grant, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for international programs, said Gulf buyers were focused on buying additional fourth-generation jets but were clearly interested in the F-35 – a so-called “fifth-generation” warplane that is designed to be nearly invisible to enemy radar.

“They’re just asking me to monitor it, and when it becomes available let (them) know,” Grant told Reuters in an interview. “They understand that we haven’t made a policy decision to open up in this region right now.”

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/awx_11_21_2013_p0-639503.xml&p=1

Seems like high-end buyers all over the world who have been pitched the very best the 4th generation has to offer just don’t know what they are talking about either. :p Maybe one of our resident experts could shoot them an email or something and let them know they have it all wrong.

The evidence about that is inconclusive. Just because US or any other country decide upon a trend, it does not automaticlly mean the path is right. It takes a surprisingly small number of individuals who decide upon the future, only to be followed by the whole administration. Stealth has obviously been a matter of preferrence of some people who were/are in charge..

I don’t know what you mean by “a surprisingly small number of individuals.” I have no idea what you consider surprising.

I will say that the US’s pursuit of stealth is not the product of a single set of individuals in a single administration. Consider that stealth has been a focus of US development efforts for 30+ years now…

I personally see stealth as a kind of fashionable parameter – just like there was a hunt for maximum speed from late 40s to late 70s. The advantage of stealth is just like any other advantage… of speed, or agility or maneuvrability or simplicity of production. The more, the better… no exception.. but one also needs to count in the trade-offs.. And these are huge, especially in unit price (reduction of numbers), reduction of other vital parameters etc.

Regarding the partners.. well, they want the next “affordable” US made aircraft..

Sure, stealth is just a fashion. :stupid: Here we are 30 years after the F-117 entered service and every meaningful new combat aircraft design has stealth as a primary requirement, and that is because it is in fashion.

Yes, there is not enough statistical data to draw any definitive conclusions in either direction. That is why I dont draw any far fetched conclusions (other than that stealth isnt the only factor decisive for survival). We have 2 hit stealth aircrafts and about 7 hit F16s in a sample of over 20’000 sorties.

The big difference is that the F16s flew more dangerous missions (like Package Q), sead sorties and low alt bombings while the F117 stayed in the safer medium alt, night time strikes.

Again, there is no way to evaluate which missions were “more dangerous” in any independent way. The F-117 may well have fared worse than the F-16 if assigned the same mission as the F-16, flown in daylight, etc. On the other hand, the same may be true of the reverse and F-16s flown over Baghdad during the opening hours of the war even at night might have fared poorly.

It is almost as if mission planners would want to take into account each platform’s capabilities when assigning targets and designing missions… :rolleyes:

Crazy concept I know, but maybe, just maybe, you can’t simply throw out some numbers and try to draw overly broad conclusions from them. 😀

The bottom line is that drawing from all available information in 1991 the US concluded that stealth was an incredibly powerful enabler and sought to incorporate it into their next generation aircraft. They weren’t alone in drawing this conclusion as seen by the wide participation in the JSF program, and the desire of many forces around the world to incorporate low-observable strike aircraft into their forces.(whether as UCAVs or manned aircraft)

Thats your conclusion, this is what I said..

And what do we see in the picture? We see a maintained lead. We dont see it changing after burnout.

But I have to admit that I didnt expect you to use any sources, even though I could have dismissed it as you do by touting “practice isnt real war!%!%!!!”. Well done. Next time I hope you will prove a point.

… somehow I am not surprised that you are once again seeking to avoid acknowledge your errors. Let me repeat, a missile need not match its target’s turn radius in order to successfully intercept it. In the case above the target was turning hard and the missile made only minor adjustments.

Yes, hypothetically the target could have attempted an evasive maneuver after the missile lined up its intercept, forcing the missile to correct its course in a more meaningful way, but manned aircraft can not simply pull Gs in whichever direction they wish at any moment. A fighter needs to roll first if it wishes to execute a hard course change in a new direction, and even once a pilot pulls back on the stick G onset is not instantaneous. It is possible to dodge a missile of course… but modern missiles are sufficiently maneuverable that actually doing so within a missile’s NEZ is unlikely.

Just the fact that you attribute the F35 to be designed for effectiveness in WVR combat as well just show how serious you are.

The F-35 is designed to be effective WVR, the fact that you would even question that shows that you still don’t understand the basic outline of what we are discussing.

Let me start by pointing out that WVR stands for “within visual range.” Often people on this message board use WVR interchangeably with BFM/dogfighting/furball/etc. These terms are not interchangeable.

WVR means simply that a target is within visual range, not that a merge has taken place nor the sort of sustained turning fight that people around here put such a great emphasis on in their various X vs Y discussions.

Stepping back for a moment to discuss air combat in general, the trend has been toward longer engagement ranges. In the early days guns were only viable means for one aircraft to engage another and ranges were necessarily short, though even from the earliest days of air to air combat not all engagements were actually turning fights. Many were always a case of one aircraft jumping another and/or engaging in hit and run tactics.

Early IR guided air to air missiles when they arrived were only effective from the rear and so also tended to require close range engagements.

By the Vietnam war radar guided missiles had enabled at least a theoretical BVR capability, but in actual practice were quite unreliable and rules of engagement often ruled out BVR shots entirely… but that does not mean that nothing had changed. With the AIM-7 fighters were able to take shots that while technically WVR, because they could visually ID their target, were nonetheless longer ranged that had been possible with earlier missiles.

Continuing forward to today, there is a recurring discussion on message boards about the effectiveness of the AMRAAM in BVR shots. Often you will see someone go combing through the history of AMRAAM shots trying to determine which of them were “really” BVR using one definition or another. These sorts of exercises are to a large extent missing the point. Just because a target was engaged “WVR” does not mean that it was a “dogfight.”

A shot taken at 10nm, a range at which the AMRAAM is extremely lethal using even your unrealistically pessimistic assumptions, is in almost all cases BVR. A fighter might be visible at that range, but only if it was an unusually large/smokey target and only if conditions were good. Even at 5-7 miles, a range most around here automatically consider “WVR,” many fighters are barely detectable, and again, only when conditions are good. (daylight for instance…)

The point of all of this is to make clear that while data is limited, the overall trend is clearly toward increasing range. Gun kills have fallen dramatically and radar guided missile kills in general have increased with BVR kills increasing as well. Even engagements that took place WVR have increasingly been at ranges well beyond where one would start talking about the merge or BFM. For a perfect example see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ5N58z9UUM

In this case the F-15 was able to acquire his target visually and so the fight was WVR, but he was not close enough to ID it definitively as a Mig-25 or a friendly F-15. (but he could see that his target was in burners which is why he told everyone to get out of burners) He ultimately destroys the target with an AIM-7 with a time of flight of about 20 seconds… a WVR shot, but certainly not a dogfight.

So bringing this all back around to the F-35 and WVR…

The F-35 is most certainly designed to be effective WVR, and it will be. F-35s will be armed with AMRAAM (or better), which even using your unrealistically pessimistic assumptions, is highly capable out beyond the edge of visual range. An F-35 will also have top quality sensors in the form of its radar, IRST, and DAS, and of course a sophisticated new helmet mounted display to deliver this information. (and datalinks to share it…)

Most WVR fights involving an F-35 (or Eurofighter, etc) will not reach the merge simply because the pilot would take a shot well before that point. By the time the F-35/Eurofighter pilot sees his target it is already well within an AMRAAM’s NEZ. Should a turning fight actually take place the F-35, though not optimized for this fight, will be far from helpless. As a 9G capable aircraft with good high AoA capabilities, a helmet mounted sight, and HOBS missiles it will be an extremely dangerous foe.

BFM remains relevant and certainly should be trained for, but steadily improving missiles and sensors ensures that dogfights will continue to make up an ever smaller portion of air combat.

As I said, they are designed to be able to win the fight in a merge. Otherwise they wouldnt have been designed for extreme maneuverability. I know that superiority in BFM was one key requirement for at least two of the three fighters. Does this mean that they wherent designed to be good at BVR? No, only in your world of sqewing facts.

“designed to be able to get into a merge (by using low RCS and superior EW suites).”

Those are your words…

Obviously they were designed to be effective in WVR combat, as is the F-35, but that isn’t what you said. Of course if you want to correct yourself that would be a welcome change from your usual routine…

Pls read about energy concentration and how that effects the radars. Jammers today are already good enough, but future jammers will be even better. Beamed jamming will, according to the radar formula, be a huge bummer for radars.

There is a lot more to jamming than power output. There are already AESA based jammers operational today and while they offer some impressive capabilities they are not magic. GaN will offer improved capabilities in both radars and jammers, but there is no reason to think they will make 4th generation jets any more viable.

You think the Indians used their jammers as if it was wartime?

You are starting to get it… keep at it though…

If the US was using its radar in a training mode, and the Indians were doing the same with their jammers, what do the exercise results say about how these systems would interact in wartime?

Got it yet?

The answer is “not much.”

Well, according to you we cant use real world data as if it is representative of real life either. Or can we attribute a Pk of <20% for radar guided missiles now (as has been the historical number), or can we say that the F117 was less survivable than F16 or A-10 (also demonstrated in two wars). Oh, i forgot… that doesnt support your fanatic point of view so lets dismiss the real world data with any type of excuse (lets go for “this stime is different” and point to a marketing vid).

“Real world data” isn’t helpful if it is misapplied. People have taken the time to explain to you over and over again that you can’t approach aircraft survivability as an accounting exercise. These aircraft were not being used in the same manner or against the same targets. Your theories of air combat have only a passing resemblance to the real world. Professionals around the world regard the F-117 has a revolutionary aircraft, and the same is true of the AMRAAM. Now here you are, decades later, reaching the complete opposite conclusion… :stupid:

EDIT: In all of the claims I make I have either sources or a clear methodology that supports my claims. You have never pointed out where either of these are wrong but rather went on woth an authoritorian style of arguing. Instead of being vague, show me mathematically where the claims or methods are wrong and I will even grant you a smileyface from the bottom of my heart as well as backing down from my claims.

You have a clear methodology, it consists of picking a set of conclusions that you wish were true, and devising simplistic and fundamentally flawed approaches that will allow you to argue in favor of your fantasy world.

You have had numerous people debunk your conclusions in a wide variety of ways, and yet you persist in them stubbornly.

If you want to believe that stealth is a passing fad or that BVR missiles aren’t effective beyond visual range… go right ahead… just don’t expect to be taken seriously.

I will happily admit that stealth offers advantages, but that is just one of many features. Kinematic performance (where the F35 barely keeps up with the F16) is way behind the eurocanards. And the reason is simple. The Eurocanards are designed to be able to get into a merge (by using low RCS and superior EW suites).

This simply isn’t accurate. The Eurocanards are looking to avoid going to the merge just like every other modern air force. They certainly will use jammers to enhance survivability, but then so will 5th generation aircraft. (who will generally rely on off-board jamming)

By using GaN based AESA jammers this will be possible even in the future. (Consider detection threshold vs noise level)

There is really no reason to believe GaN will shift the balance of radars vs jammers in favor of the jammers. People around here talk about GaN like it is magic pixie dust or something… it has advantages but it does not enable anything fundamentally different and it will certainly be incorporated into radars in the coming years.

Targeting stuff at long range is near impossible if they have modern jammers. Just ask the F15 pilots who faced off against against indian Su30MKIs. They couldnt even get a lock on at WVR. So the range of the Aim120 might just be adequate.

:rolleyes: Exercises… do you think the F-15s were using their radars as if it was wartime? It is standard operating procedure to limit radar (and jammer) capability during exercises to avoid giving anything away. You can’t take result from an exercise as representative of the real world.

I give a sources, you didn’t give me anything…
IRST scan the sky like radar, I give you a numbers from real sources ( including targets asspect, speed), but you don’t like it and you said it’s not true without giving any sources…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRkpFsXz9yk

Pay attention to the time elapsed, the number of targets, and the fact that the radar is collecting not only the targets’ bearing relative to the radar, but their speed, heading, and altitude.

An IRST can track only a handful of targets because it has to slew a mechanical sensor to look at each target. While there are ways to do ranging with an IRST they are less precise and require multiple observations(time) and velocity/heading can only be calculated, not measured.

This means that while an IRST can “search the sky like a radar” it can only keep track of a handful of targets and can only really provide radar-like data on perhaps one group of closely spaced targets.

Again, an IRST is a useful sensor, but you have to understand what it is and isn’t.