Well over the last two decades the US & NATO countries have fought wars against out dated or non-existent operational air forces & there not much point discussing how easy it is for a huge advanced air force to with multiple force multipliers to take out an air force with old equipment often on it’s last legs & that is why the current real world history use % is not that relevant to a debate that assumes modern well flown aircraft on both sides.

This extends well past the last two decades. The last war where US control of the air was seriously contested was Korea.

US F-35 fighter drops first guided bomb against ground target

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jet dropped a 500-pound bomb this week, hitting a tank at Edwards Air Force Base in California and marking the first time the new warplane has fired a weapon, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

An F-35 B-model jet released the laser-guided Guided Bomb Unit-12 (GBU-12) Paveway II bomb from its internal weapons bay while flying at around 25,000 feet, successfully smashing into a tank parked on the ground, the Pentagon’s F-35 program office said in a statement. It took 35 seconds to hit the target.

“This guided weapons delivery test of a GBU-12 marks the first time the F-35 truly became a weapon system,” said Marine Corps Major Richard Rusnok, the pilot who flew the plane during the weapons test Tuesday. “It represents another step forward in development of this vital program.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-lockheed-fighter-weapon-20131030,0,5863835.story

Lockheed F-35 May Ramp Up With Foreign Orders Looming

Lockheed Martin (LMT) is poised to ramp up F-35 production in the next few years with international customers among the main recipients of the upcoming batches of planes.

The Pentagon gave the defense giant a conditional green light to increase production, following a review that found the program has made progress in development and controlling costs, which have ballooned from initial estimates.

Following the delivery of 36 planes in 2013, the government plans to order an eighth batch of 45 jets and a ninth of 70, with about half of the latter going to the U.K. and other foreign militaries, according to a Pentagon memo cited by Reuters.

http://news.investors.com/business/103013-677257-lockheed-seen-boosting-stealth-fighter-production.htm

Don’t be naieve. The technical evaluation is made by people, not machines. People can be bought.
Give me three arbitrary aircraft designs to compare/evaluate and I will make you a different set of evaluation criteria with different weighting, so that the resulting decision matrix provides a different winner each time.. It’s a no brainer, really.

We have already shown that Lockheed have found a contract for three C-130s worth mere $79mil tempting enough to bribe the Egyptian officials. Now, out of the sudden, when it comes to seven+ billions in Korean tender, they throw away all the methods using money, blackmail and pressure and put out powerpoint presentations… right.

Get a grip, really. The bribery scandals in the defense sector are as old as mankind itself.

http://articles.latimes.com/1995-01-28/business/fi-25231_1_egyptian-politician

Oh, well that proves it then I guess… bribery of course! Any result you don’t like, bribery. Any technical evaluation you don’t like, bribery. Any report by any person anywhere, bribery!

:stupid:

After the cold war ended Russia had 4 inactive kirov cruisers (1 incomplete 3 mothballed) and 3 inactive (all mothballed) kiev carriers. They sold all 3 carriers abroad; completed one kirov, currently refurbishing one, and want to (IDK if they will) recomission the other two, despite they are being more expensive than the carriers. They could have easily maintained their carriers and decommision their cruisers, but chose not to. Of course, Russians must be idiots; they don’t know about their ships survivability or capability, but you do? No, Simple conclusion is you are wrong, and if US Navy officials if think like you, they are plain wrong too.

The Kiev carriers were obsolete and relied on VTOL aircraft that were themselves obsolete. The Russians kept the one proper carrier they had in the inventory, the Kuznetsov. Exactly which ships Russia kept and why is not simply a product of one or the other being more useful for shooting at the US. Believe it or not like most navies the Russian navy undertakes a lot of missions, most of which don’t involve full scale war with the US/NATO.

Slava is not on par with arleigh burke;
For anti-shipping, 3 Slavas pack more anti-shiping capability than
the entire fleet of arleigh burkes.
For land strike, Slava has half the missiles a standard burke usually carries, but this is irrelevant to the scenario anyway.
As for air defense, Slava has 64 long range and 40 short range AD missiles which is more comperable to Ticonderogas, with the ability to direct 8 long and 4 short range missiles at once, they triple ticos and quadruple burkes in multi-target engagement capability.
With 6 point defenses, they triple the Ticos and burkes too.

This is extremely simplistic. The Slavas do have a greater capability to conduct long-range anti surface warfare, but that is a reflection of the differences in doctrine between the US and the Soviets. In the US Navy the carrier air wing was responsible for that mission. As for counting missiles… that is incredibly simplistic and frankly this is quickly going far astray. You asked why the US retired its Tomahawk anti-ship missiles. The answer is because the threat was mostly tied up pier side rusting and there was simply no need for it any longer. Three hypothetically operational Slavas does not represent a meaningful threat to the US Navy.

Sure they are relatively old, but dismissing them as incapable platforms is utter stupidity.

I never said they were “incapable platforms.” I said that three 30+ year old cruisers is not exactly the sort of thing that keeps US admirals awake at night.

Russian navy is around 1/3 of the US Navy in terms of displacement, that is if they manage to activate all their commissioned ships at once. So as a complete navy in all out war, threat they present is nonexistant, and that is my point anyway. However as a platform, I dont think any US Navy captain would want a slava around in range of its P-500s, let alonge testing it out to find out how threatening they are.

Of course not, what is your point? I suppose you think a Slava captain would find it amusing to have Harpoons shot at him?

You are contradicting yourself.

Not at all. With that same reasoning one could argue that the F-111 was virtually untouchable as an interceptor because no enemy fighter was ever able to shoot down an EF-111, despite trying on several occasions. Think about it. Iraqi Mig-25s made multiple attempts to target EF-111s, but the EF-111s proved they were untouchable. Therefor the F-111 would be a dominating interceptor because not even a Mig-25 could threaten it.

See how this works? :very_drunk:

Seriously one more time in the hopes that you will get it… a reconnaissance aircraft will flee from threats even if that means aborting its mission. Just because it is hard to catch a fleeting Mig-25 does not mean that the Mig-25 is somehow untouchable while operating in an offensive role. Get it yet?

What number were lost actually? 2 IIRC, for over dozen kills? And again, I ask, out of how many attempts to shoot it down?

Numbers from the Iran/Iraq war are sketchy. Some sources credit Iranian F-14s with 10 Mig-25 kills, other totals are lower. (wikipedia cites one book at 10 and some webpage at 3-5) Certainly multiple Mig-25s were shot down.

Are you 6 years old? I dont say AIM-7/54/120 etc is incapable of hitting MiG-25. At right circumstances even a stinger can shoot down a MiG-25, or an F-22 or an B-1/2/52. However in the wrong circumstances, MiG-25 offers some very high degree of immunity to AIM-7/120.

“High degree of immunity” meaning that Mig-25s are hard to shoot down while they are running away, sure. If you are talking about Mig-25s that are trying to engage a target themselves, then no.

Of the 30+ AIM-7/120 missiles fired to MiG-25 in gulf war, only one shoot it down. In the video you posted you can clearly hear CAC tone of AIM-9.

Three kills, two with AIM-7s, one with an AIM-120. Go watch the video again if you must.

Like sheytanelkebir said, shooting down a ferrying aircraft is rather easy.

Except that it was not a ferry aircraft. :rolleyes:

Again you are contradicting yourself:

Because, they were recon aircraft, what a complete suprise. What were you expecting? Present an airshow to iranians? How come an aircraft is survivable to a missile if its on recon, but not if its on intercept mission? There is the aircraft, and there is the missile. Survivability is irrelevant to the mission at hand.

Actually, survivability has a great deal to do with the mission at hand. An interceptor has to close with its target to be effective while a recon aircraft will do everything it can to avoid any hostiles. It is completely different.

Refer to my point about the EF-111s proving they had a “high degree of immunity” to Mig-25s and would therefor have been great interceptors…

Are you admitting MiG-25 can actually survive missiles, but simply cant kill enemy planes?

If that is, I rest my case about MiG-25, as we are talking about MiG-31. And will make a new case; if one aircraft posses higher survivability to enemy missiles than the enemy and can carry a) missiles with better ranges b) more numerous comperable missiles, with sufficient avionics to fully utilize them, doesn’t that equate to better BVR performance; as long as we stick to 4/4+ gen?

Admitting Mig-25 can survive missiles? What on earth are you talking about? Of course it can survive missiles if it keeps to the fringes of an opponent’s maximum range and runs away if they try to engage it.

A Mig-31 flown the same way would also prove survivable, but totally ineffective as an interceptor. Certainly the Mig-31 is more capable than the Mig-25, but it remains a specialized aircraft intended to go after bombers and cruise missiles, not fighters. It would be unwise for a Mig-31 to attempt to fight it out with a true fighter as that simply isn’t what they are intended to do.

The GCI gave them the command to turn into the F15s too early. so instead of being behind them, they were facing them and were closing in… a bad situation to be in. Completely a GCI mistake (from the Iraqi perspective).

The F-15s were receiving updates from the AWACS and were themselves moving to engage the Mig-25s. There was no way the Mig-25s were going to get behind the F-15s in that scenario.

lol reality hit them hard.
it’ll end up basically being a stealthified F-16.

They are going to end up dealing with the same fundamentals that shaped the F-35. Due to the necessity of internal weapons and greater internal fuel capacity 5th generation aircraft are more voluminous and heavy than 4th generation aircraft.

This most recent design includes neither a large fuel capacity nor internal weapons. At this point I wonder why they would bother. They are designing a Lavi competitor twenty years too late. It could be a solid performer and would perhaps not be a terrible match for SKorea’s requirements but it will inevitably take 15+ years to get it operational. Will it still be relevant by then? I think not.

My personal favorite approach to a very light weight 5th generation fighter would be something similar to the “YF-24” described on the DEW blog a little while back:
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2013/02/was-there-ever-a-yf-24/

[ATTACH=CONFIG]222370[/ATTACH]

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This aircraft makes some pretty extreme sacrifices in terms of payload and range… one bomb and two missiles internal and only 8,700lbs of fuel, but would have been a fairly fast and maneuverable aircraft in a small/light package. (putting a single air to ground weapon in a bay on the aircraft’s centerline should help it maintain a more ideal fineness ratio) When people around here talk about what a minimalist 5th generation fighter might have looked like this is probably pretty close to what you would have ended up with. This aircraft or something similar to it could have carried 1 x 1,000 bomb or 2 x AMRAAM or 4 x SDB and two more air to air missiles, likely AIM-9x. It would be a sort of a 5th generation F-5.

anyway, hopsalot. having checked back. you are indeed right. Iraqi AF did indeed lose 2 MiG25s due to the GCI giving them bad vectors and instead of turning in behind the F15s the GCI turned them in Before them, with disastrous consequences.

I am glad you now agree that those aircraft were shot down, but given that the US AWACS was tracking the Mig-25s and relaying the information to the F-15s you can’t really attribute the outcome to a GCI error as there was never any chance those Mig-25s would have been able to get behind the F-15s.

Look at the first video I linked to again… the AWACS first passed the location of the Mig-25s to the F-15s when they were “60-80 miles out.”

Perhaps the Migs really were seeking to approach the F-15s from behind, that is a reasonable enough thing to attempt, but with the F-15s themselves turning to face the Migs there wasn’t any chance of that happening.

what didn’t happen? missile shot by F15 and exploded? no problems. Iraqi MiG25 fell out of the sky? show it… 😉
little missile exploding in proximity to fighter jet does not equal kill 😉 especially not a MiG25.

anyway. lets not derail this thread. the MiG31 is a worthy successor to the 25… if the R77 is integrated onto it, as well as the R37M it is a FORMIDABLE interceptor even against 5th Generation attackers.

Facts don’t derail threads. It is important to refute false claims, that the US did not shoot down those two Mig-25s for instance, otherwise someone may find themselves misinformed in the future.