hopsalotVietnamese boats made from American drop tanks:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]249947[/ATTACH]
I have seen that picture before. They look like they make pretty good boats actually.
Vietnam was roughly 50 years ago though so it doesn’t have a lot of relevance to what we are talking about.
hopsalotKuwait plans to buy 28 Boeing F-18 jets, official says
Kuwait plans to buy 28 Boeing F-18 Super Hornets, a military official said on Monday, reaffirming plans to buy the warplanes 10 days after the U.S. State Department notified Congress of the possible sale of 40 of the jets to the Gulf state.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-kuwait-jets-idUSKBN13N1FC?il=0
Looks like the Kuwaiti order will be for 28 jets.
hopsalotIntroducing standoff jamming capability. Most likely Elta L-8251, though the Rafael SkyShield is also a possibility.
Other F-35 operators will also probably have the opportunity to invest in the Israeli solution.
The Israelis are always happy to let others “invest” in their weapons.
New internal missiles and an external jamming pod… interesting.
hopsalotIf a large country like Canada should consider a fighter like Gripen (purely hypothetical in the case of Canada) then the solution would be to have a sufficient number of bases scattered around the country.
Certainly this is one possible approach, but bases are expensive and this undermines any possible cost advantage the Gripen might otherwise have.
Brazil is a quite large country (8.615 million km2) and did choose Gripen E. Presumably they will have more than one air base in Brazil…
It is interesting to note that although Canada is of course larger than Brazil, it is not that much more larger (9.985 million km2).
It is also interesting to note that Switzerland, which concluded that Gripen E was barely able to meet their requirements in terms of range and persistence, is much much smaller than either of them.
So the conclusion could perhaps be that the requirements depends on a large number of factors, and whether a light fighter is considered to have “adequate” range is highly dependent on the various scenarios a specific air force needs to consider, and not just the size of the country.
Of course. There are numerous factors and trade-offs that must be considered but in general an aircraft like the Gripen is best suited to small countries because that is how its design is optimized. The Swiss were dissatisfied with the Gripen’s range, but they did ultimately decide it was sufficient for their needs. Similarly, I am sure with some adjustments Canada could find a way to make do with Gripens, but it would require a lot of compromises and the cost/benefit analysis would almost certainly not support buying Gripens.
hopsalotMeeh.. these comparison are so fraking boring.
In 99.8% of the service time both F-16, Gripen, Rafale and EF(could even throw in F-15C as well) fly with one, two or three wet bags, depending on mission.
Now the real question is this, do they drop their wet bags during exercises, air patroling during peace time condition? Retorical Q, no they don’t!
So those range table are utterly teoretical for everyone of them.
If you find aviation discussions boring maybe you have come to the wrong forum?
Read the RAND study for extensive discussion using real-world examples. (though perhaps you will find it boring…)
Hell, even in war time Libya conflict, they all flew with wet bags, and did not jettison them.
So much for those range figures..
Again, you aren’t paying attention. Even in wartime modern fighters will typically only drop their tanks in an emergency.
hopsalotStill one more input into the discussion:
Discussing maximum mission radius, Mazanowski presented an air-to-air mission profile in which
all the aircraft: took off with a weapon load, remained at high altitude and returned after about a
minute of combat. All but the F-35 and Su-30MKI were carrying three external fuel tanks.
Under this scenario, the Rafale had a maximum mission radius of 896 n miles, the F/A-18 816 n
miles, the F-35 751 n miles, the Eurofighter 747 n miles, the Su-30MKI 728 n miles and the Gripen
502 n miles.
If anything this scenario is very generous to the Gripen because its performance while carrying three tanks is going to be extremely limited. (meanwhile an Su-30 or F-35 are flying clean and have their full performance available, to say nothing of 50% greater range)
hopsalotIt’s something fighters only do in an emergency in peacetime. Bombing Daesh or the like is pretty much peacetime conditions, i.e. no air-air threat or effective ground based air defence, so they can afford to keep the tanks, & thus save the cost of replacements. But in a war against an enemy with a realistic chance of shooting down your aircraft, they’ll be littering the countryside with empty tanks.
DJ already picked this one up, and he is correct. You aren’t going to be littering the countryside with tanks for long…
hopsalotIt is as much about drag and consumption that it is about fuel.
Dropping wing tangs would not help slightly, it would help enormously for supersonic drag. Also, the CF-18s are equipped with the large 480g tanks instead of the regular ones for more range, the gripen could also carry larger tanks.
If the fighter is trying to intercept a high value target like a bomber that can wipe out an entire airbase, you bet they don’t give a crap about fuel tanks.
For a boatload of real-world discussion…
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/documented_briefings/2007/DB102.pdf
This paper is comparing the F-16 and F-15E’s ability to deliver bombs to different ranges, but the same fundamentals apply. (Only when comparing a Gripen to its larger cousins they are obviously the “F-15E” with twice the thrust, etc, of the Gripen)
hopsalotIt is as much about drag and consumption that it is about fuel.
You are misunderstanding… when I said it was about the fuel I meant it is about the external fuel and its drag. Air to air missiles aren’t that draggy and carrying 2-4 of them doesn’t result in that large of a drag penalty. Fuel tanks are a totally different story.
Dropping wing tangs would not help slightly, it would help enormously for supersonic drag. Also, the CF-18s are equipped with the large 480g tanks instead of the regular ones for more range, the gripen could also carry larger tanks.
Yes, dropping external fuel tanks would have a big impact on drag, but you need fuel to get home. That means that if a Gripen were operating near its base and was forced to drop its tanks it would have essentially its entire internal fuel capacity for use.
If a Gripen were to fly out 500 miles and was then forced to drop its tanks… it will be capable of flying like a fighter again… but it will also be forced to return home almost immediately and will thus have essentially zero endurance.
As you say, you can put bigger tanks on a fighter, but that comes at the cost of still greater weight and drag. When your light weight fighter starts to resemble a space shuttle what you have is a fighter in name only. What you have to understand is that a bigger aircraft has a greater capacity to carry that load and still offer acceptable performance.
If the fighter is trying to intercept a high value target like a bomber that can wipe out an entire airbase, you bet they don’t give a crap about fuel tanks.
Yes, in a true life or death situation you would expect a fighter to drop its tanks, but that doesn’t allow a fighter like a Gripen to have range performance equivalent to a larger fighter. (again, once a Gripen drops its tanks its fuel fraction is very poor and it will need to return to base almost immediately)
hopsalotLol, look at these glass half full, half empty comments
Someone around here has a Doobie Brothers quote in their sig…
“What a fool believes, he sees…”
hopsalotits all about fuel consumption, hopes a lot is hoping gripen consumes as much as f-35,
and fly at the same speed at a given throttle setting, but it just isnt happening.if a muscle car has twice the fuel tank of a small car, but consumes more than twice per mile,
then the small car out-ranges the muscle car, specially if it on top of that cruises at higher speed.only ever if you bolt on a caravan / heavy loads can the muscle car change that fact
I am “hoping” nothing.
I am explaining to you in a clearly misguided attempt to improve your level of understand. (and providing sources…)
hopsalotExtremely limited? It carries a bit more fuel than an F-16 in a smaller airframe. That’s not what I call extremely limited. The F-16 is known for its good range and I expect the Gripen E to perform similarly.
I hate to break it to you, but the F-16 isn’t a particularly long-ranged fighter either, certainly not on internal fuel.
It is possible to outfit an F-16 with a lot of external fuel relative to its size, including 600 gallon wing tanks and conformal fuel tanks, which does result in an aircraft with an impressive fuel fraction/range… but it also results in an aircraft that is purely subsonic and a fighter in name only. It is the same fundamental problem that the Gripen has.
hopsalotIsraeli cabinet approves additional F-35 purchase
http://defense-watch.com/2016/11/27/israeli-cabinet-approves-additional-f-35-purchase/
This brings their total order to 50.
hopsalotCan someone summarize how EPAWSS is different than the corresponding systems installed on the Saudi Arabian F-15SA’s?
They haven’t announced much other than that EPAWSS has GaN elements and a towed decoy, and given that it is a US domestic system I don’t expect them to in the future either. DEWS is a brand new and very capable system. I think it is safe to assume that EPAWSS takes its capabilities and expands on them.
hopsalotGaN on F3-R standard SPECTRA antennas. (2018). Launched decoy also (LEA) and towed decoy on Indian Rafale.
It is good to see France trying to get into the game, but there is only so much that can be done in the way of upgrades to an older system like Spectra. It will be interesting to see if they can keep to their schedule or if this ends up like the AESA equipped Rafales.
Sign In
