hopsalotRAF excitement builds as they understand what they will be able to do with the F35B/Typhoon package:
http://www.codeonemagazine.com/article.html?item_id=182
If ever there was an argument for a Typhoon laden with MBDA SPEAR 3 this sort of scenario is it?
If the UK is going to have the F35 handing off target sets to Typhoons to do the dirty work, then the more standoff range the better! Forget SDBII and let MBDA get their weapon up to spec.
One more pilot testimony for the critics to dismiss…
The system is clearly impressing Beck, who is a former Tornado pilot. “I simply cannot explain to you how good this sensor suite is,” he said. “It is mind-blowing. We don’t actually even need to carry a weapon, albeit we can. I can track targets, identify them all, after having turned [nose] cold [away from the targets], then datalink that information to my Typhoons. The Typhoon pilots can then carry their ordnance to bear against the targets.
“So, I’ve identified everything at distances that no one thought previously possible,” Beck continued. “I’ve shared that data with other assets. I can lead them all into the fight. We are very focused on getting value for money and we can do a lot more by blending our assets.
“This jet isn’t just about the weapons — it’s a game-changing capability. The Tornado GR.4 can’t just stroll into a double digit SAM MEZ [Missile Engagement Zone]. In the F-35 I can generate a wormhole in the airspace and lead everyone through it. There isn’t another platform around that can do that. This isn’t all about height and supercruise speed — it’s the ability to not be seen,” added Beck.
Waterfall added: “The F-35 is providing the pilot with all the needed information; it is largely irrelevant where that information has come from because the aircraft is manipulating all of the sensors available and taking the best of those sensors, correlating the information and presenting it to the pilot.”
Beck noted: “We can never be explicit about the true capabilities of this jet, we’ve got to hold our cards close because otherwise people will try to reverse engineer it. This aircraft is so sophisticated that no pilot who has actually flown it says a bad thing about it. That tells you a lot about what this can do.”
http://www.codeonemagazine.com/article.html?item_id=182
The Eurofighter makes an awfully expensive mule. I suspect what after a few initial years of Eurofighters supporting the F-35 we will see it retire to air policing with a stealthy UCAV taking over real-world combat ops.
hopsalotnot sure if posted yet
They would have considered that sloppy bombing in WWII…
hopsaloto rly, can you please show us some statistics of operational rates of an air force using both western HELOS and Russian ones in desert conditions?
i can’t find it, but maybe you know since its a well known fact.
You have to remember that around here a “well known fact” is usually whatever a fanboy wants to believe.
hopsalotWhat kind of tactic could be used to optimize stealth fighters with SAM launchers? If the stealth fighters have the proper datalink they can send the order to fire a salvoe of SAMs well before they are in AMRAAMs range. The USN wants to do that with the F-35C using the NIFC-CA network, but it could be generalized.
As an example of tactic, the stealth planes could loiter 50km apart 75km behind the SAM launchers. When they detect enemy targets coming in at low altitude, they turn towards the target flying at minimal speed to reduce the closing speed and their IR signature, and order the launch of a salvoe of SAMs, 2 missiles per target. They might have enough time to launch a second salvoe of SAMs. After the missiles have reached their targets, they can engage the survivors with their own AMRAAMs and quickly escape.
If the stealth plane doesn’t use its own missile, it doesn’t have to open its bays so it keeps its stealth at all times. Also it doesn’t take the risk of disclosing his position with the IR signature of its missiles at launch.
The SAM needs to be network enabled and ideally the stealth plane would not have to use his link-16 directly. Like there could be a MADL/link-16 Gateway on a ground station. The missiles would be guided by link-16.
Another situation where a fighter can use SAMs would be when the enemy plane is fleeing at high speed and the fighter’s missile don’t have enough range to catch up with it. In that case the fighter can launch a SAM from a launcher in front of the target if one is available.
The technology seems to be available to do that. With the high cost of stealth planes and their limited missile capacity it would make sense to invest in that kind of networked engagement. An AWACS could be used to guide SAMs, but they are vulnerable to long range missiles ( SAMs and AAMs ) and have a very high cost.
This is already being done.
The Navy and Lockheed Martin are planning to demonstrate a beyond-the-horizon anti-ship missile detection and defense technology using an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
The system, referred to as Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air, or NIFC-CA, uses Aegis radar, an airborne sensor and SM-6 missile to find, track and destroy approaching threats such as cruise missiles at ranges well beyond the typical radar horizon, Navy officials said.
Alongside Aegis radar and an SM-6 missile, NIFC-CA uses an E-2D Hawkeye aircraft as an airborne sensor to help relay threat information to the ship from beyond its normal radar range.
Lockheed is working closely with Naval Sea Systems Command, or NAVSEA, to plan a NIFC-CA demonstration at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., sometime this year or next year, a Lockheed executive said.
“We are looking at alternative airborne sensors,” the executive said.
The idea with a demonstration, sources indicate, would be to use the F-35 as an airborne relay node or sensor in place of the E-2D Hawkeye. This could allow NIFC-CA to operate against an increasingly complex set of targets such as stealthy targets, the Lockheed executive explained.
http://defensetech.org/2015/01/22/navy-to-integrate-f-35-with-beyond-the-horizon-technology/
hopsalotpretty much nobody uses jamming in exercise. And jamming can also work against the missile and not only aircraft’s radar
all in all, one can even wonder if radar guided BVR missiles have any real chance between modern fighters
Really? I honestly have trouble telling when people here are trying to be serious and when they are trolling.
Google “Northern Edge Jamming.”
A few first and second page hits:
“The contested airspace that we are provided with at Northern Edge is a major benefit in multiple ways, not the least of which, is there’s many flavors of jamming which attempt to defeat several of our capabilities, sometimes individually, sometimes simultaneously, and it lets us know how robust our systems are to those jamming techniques,” Cook said. “Another is the fact there are so many players it allows us to see what happens when our systems get saturated with symbols.”
http://www.jber.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123451941
The Pentagon is jamming GPS signals – which are used by pilots, drivers and hikers to navigate – in parts of Alaska during a military exercise this week, a move that has some pilots and backcountry tourism officials worried about people getting lost.
…
Worried that enemies can jam or interfere with those signals, the military has set up GPS jamming transmitters in Alaska to test anti-jamming equipment.
The tests are part of a larger annual military exercise that involves Navy and Marine Corps aircraft from San Diego, along with the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis and its escorts. The exercise, called Northern Edge 2004, ends June 16.
http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040610/news_7m10jamming.html
The ACaP is a compact electronic countermeasures (ECM) system used by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and U.S. Navy (USN) on various tactical aircraft to support USAF Aggressor and USN Adversary training. The system has flown in various training exercises including Red Flags and Northern Edge and is the USAF Aggressor’s pod of choice.
ELTA, which originally designed the pod, has teamed with Exelis to provide the ACaP to the U.S. and international markets. More than 100 jamming pods are operational worldwide on more than 10 different aircraft types in more than six different countries.
ACaP provides Forward and Aft simultaneous receive and jamming coverage against a number of concurrent threats. The ECM system sorts threats by priority and reacts against them automatically while allowing for man-in-the-loop intervention.
http://www.exelisinc.com/solutions/ACaP/Pages/default.aspx
During the exercise civilian contractors onboard the USCG Long Island have used various experimental electronic jamming equipment to mask the ship’s position from blue force surveillance aircraft, explained Commander Christensen, a native of Sunapee, N.H.
http://www.cpf.navy.mil/news.aspx/000545
The U.S. Naval Research Lab and Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) have demonstrated successful captive flights of a modular, rapid replacement architecture for electronic warfare (EW) payloads on the Miniature Air Launched Decoy-Jammer (MALD-J). The testing occurred during the biannual Northern Edge exercise in Alaska.
Called CERBERUS, four separately developed EW payloads were used in 12 operationally relevant missions. The interchangeable payloads, each customized for a specific mission and threat, were swapped onto the captive carry vehicle in less than one minute. The payloads were designed to be used on a MALD® vehicle.
hopsalotYou got this from where? Those 12 production air-frames have been explicitly named as “serial”.
Yes, very early serial production aircraft.
For example the first “serial” production F-35 was AF-6, which first flew in 2011. (The aircraft was later re-directed to the test program.)
The point is that those first serial air frames aren’t going to go straight to an operational unit. It will take several years for enough planes to be produced to fill out an operational squadron and allow time for sufficient training.
hopsalotGood links hops, so basically all T-50 are factory pre-production machines ?
InitialOperationalCapability means some sort of VVS acceptance , right ?
Yes, no PAK FA airframes exist in their intended form.
Unless there are further slips there should be ~12 very early production copies available in 2020. Hypothetically Russia could announce IOC with such aircraft but it would be pretty meaningless. Those initial airframes will be devoted to testing/development and there won’t be an operational squadron’s worth of fighters until sometime well into the 2020s.
hopsalotI read left and right about delays in Pak Fa project but, does someone has a matrix regarding this development ?
I mean where it should be and where it is now etc
I smell BS on ll this delays thing, to me the program advances at a rapid pace
There was plenty of press back in 2010-2013 where the usual Russian sources and fanboys claimed it would be either delivered/operational in the 2015-2016 time frame.
FARNBOROUGH — Sukhoi’s T-50 PAK-FA fighter will be delivered to the customer in 2015, Sukhoi Director General Mikhail Pogosyan said in an interview at the Farnborough International Airshow here on July 20, notwithstanding Western skeptics who compare that timescale to other fighter programs. “It’s a matter of the experience that we have, the level of preparation and the solution that we have chosen,” he said. “We did not wait for a new engine, but modernized an existing engine, and we have a lot of bench testing. Combined, that gives us a chance to succeed…
http://aviationweek.com/aerospace-daily-defense-report/2010-07-22
Russia’s fifth-generation jet fighter, the T-50, will start a standard flight test program in April, a source at the Sukhoi aircraft maker said on Monday.
He said it would take “several years” to complete the testing program.
A prototype of the fighter made a 47-minute maiden flight in Russia’s Far East on January 29.
Russia has been developing its newest fighter since the 1990s. The current prototype was designed by the Sukhoi design bureau and built at a plant in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in Russia’s Far East.
It will be delivered to the Russian Air Force from 2015 onwards.
http://sputniknews.com/russia/20100301/158054167.html
Demonstrating his trademark expertise on fighter development programs…
The first state acceptance trials are due to start in 2014, United Aircraft Corporation President Mikhail Pogosyan said earlier this year, and production should start in 2015.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that production aircraft will enter service in 2016. However, since the aircraft has yet to fly with its definitive engine, this most likely indicates that the Russian air force is reverting to Soviet-era practice by equipping an operational test unit with interim-standard aircraft while development of the objective system is completed.
http://aviationweek.com/awin/sukhoi-t-50-shows-flight-control-innovations
Putin himself claimed a 2016 IOC…
MOSCOW, April 25 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s fifth-generation T-50 fighter jet will enter service with the country’s armed forces in 2016, and not 2015 as was previously announced, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.
“The T-50 fifth generation jet should go into serial production and enter service in 2016,” Putin said at a live Q&A session with the Russian public.
The Defense Ministry had earlier said the jet would be ready in 2015.
Russia will start state flight tests of the T-50 in 2014, United Aircraft Corporation’s President Mikhail Pogosyan said on Tuesday.
And of course lets not forget the particularly lol-worthy analysis of Air Power Australia…
The available evidence demonstrates at this time that a mature production PAK-FA design has the potential to compete with the F-22A Raptor in VLO performance from key aspects, and will outperform the F-22A Raptor aerodynamically and kinematically. Therefore, from a technological strategy perspective, the PAK-FA renders all legacy US fighter aircraft, and the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, strategically irrelevant and non-viable after the PAK-FA achieves IOC in 2015.
…PAK-FA Low Rate Initial Production is planned for 2013, and Full Rate Production for 2015, with initial deliveries of the Indian dual seat variant planned for 2017.
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2010-01.html
So bottom line, with only 12 aircraft delivered by 2020 the program has slipped at least 5 years from its claimed original schedule.
hopsalot2016 – Т-50-9, Т-50-10, Т-50-11.
2017 – Т-50-12 (повторная статика), Т-50С-1,2.
2018 – Т-50С-3,4
2019 – Т-50С-5,6,7,8, ПМИ-1,2.
2020 – Т-50С-9,10,11,12, ПМИ-3,4.Long term plans.
PMI= FGFA.
So basically no meaningful quantities until sometime well after 2020.
hopsalot“”he company stressed that “it’s definitely not an Orlan” present in the pictures being published on social media. It qualified this, saying that “Russia doesn’t make UAVs with such gliders.”””
i dont think this UAV was shot down by a plane, nothing would have been left over if it had been engaged by an f16 (via missle or cannon)
some good reading about this https://www.rt.com/news/318904-russia-drone-turkey-syria/
Next they will announce that it is actually a Ukrainian drone and it was responsible for shooting down MH17…
hopsalotWell either way, the Ukrainians had both versions in operation and they’re no stranger to shooting down civilian airliners, even in peace time. They’re also the only party that benefited politically from the shoot down and hence the only party likely to have done in deliberately. So any criminal investigation would have to focus on them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia_Airlines_Flight_1812
But this time geopolitics has raised its ugly head and the lives lost were Western Europeans, which are worth more than other lives:rolleyes:, so there’s a major stromp about it.
Seems the Russians have something of a track record for downing airliners themselves, so that isn’t unique to Ukraine.
Without resorting to idiotic conspiracy theories, why on earth would Ukraine be firing SAMs? The Russians hadn’t given the rebels and aircraft. It was the Ukrainians that were regularly losing aircraft to SAMs.
hopsalotThankyou for your constructive criticism. I might be cocky because I have at least the experience. Andraxxus is on the other hand, not cocky, he is down-right arrogant. What he does is to inundate with minutae, expecting everyone to be snowed under his encyclopedic knowledge. I seem to recall a foul-mouthed bigot from Austria used that technique in the ’30’s & ’40’s.
Really? :stupid:
His approach is clearly off base in some cases, but he is a heck of a lot closer to the mark than most of the fankiddies here that spend all day trying to sling mud at the F-35. Andraxxus is correct that whatever the finer details of the F-35’s performance may be its measurables place it well within normal “fighter” ranges.
The counter arguments the fanboys have presented have amounted to nothing more than ignorant name calling.
hopsalotMay not be as simple as you think due to very low tolerances.
Imagine how you would have responded if we were talking about the F-35…
hopsalotAll this is just looking for excuses. The point is not whether the F-35 equals a Hornet, as it was trumpeted to being almost a Raptor.
The point is not whether it can win against an F-16 in DACT, the question is: can it survive the T-50 or J-31?
Everything else is just details…
Actually, no.
The question is not whether the F-35 can beat the T-50 or J-31 in DACT. The question is how F-35s would fare against those aircraft in actual combat, which isn’t likely to include a whole lot of neutral set-ups followed by someone saying “fights on.” This is what fanboys everywhere seem unable to comprehend.
DACT is not synonymous with “air combat.”
Recent wars and a heck of a lot of exercises and simulations have shown that these types of close maneuvering scenarios are rare, short, and often decided by a third party. You simply can’t gain much of a real world advantage through WVR combat. Even if you could consistently win in a “fair” fight with only two participants and good situational awareness, in actual combat all bets are off.
hopsalotThat’s just crazy. There is no guarantee or likelihood that that they will stay out of terrorist hands.
Its not like they gave them an Sa-11 and hundreds of tanks and other armored vehicles or anything…
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