crobatoI figure the book won’t be available in Amazon soon.
crobatoMore like search while track.
http://www.geocities.com/jetpics/radar.htm
STT mode is only one target of course.
From what I read on Code One, even the latest versions of APG 68 (V9) still has 10 targets on TWS. But Falcon 4 got TWS with a maximum of 16 targets. But most F4 players don’t really use TWS, preferring the RWS mode due to its greater range and azimuth.
The latest versions of APG-68 improves the range, adds more features and is more ECCM resistant but I never heard or seen of increasing the number of targets being “tracked”—in reference to SAM or SWT modes, or the maximum number of targets tracked in TWS.
crobatoThe Grifo 2000 would be a nice fit for a PAF J-10.
crobatoOriginally posted by PhantomII
If I’m not mistaken the UAE Mirage’sI think the Mirage 2000 fits that bill. I’d prefer it over the F-16. The points you make about F-16 wing cracks and whatnot I’ve read a lot about. I think it all stems from the fact that the F-16 was originally designed as a clear-weather day fighter armed with AIM-9’s, and now they’ve got it as mostly a mud-mover but with a very good air-to-air capability…..i.e. a multi-role jet with emphasis on A/G operations.
It’s really much more complex than that. Remember, the Mirage 2000 was also designed as an air to air fighter from the beginning. In fact the Mirage 2000 is not a multirole fighter in the same sense as the APG-68 equipped F-16C until the unsold yet M2000-5 Mk2; the M2000 is only a dual role fighter, with a dedicated version for air to air like the Dash 5, and a dedicated version for strike like the D model.
Now about the issues of airframe stress. The F-16 went to a true monoque design. In this design the airframe is designed like a tightly wounded skin around the engine and avionics. This skin also serves as the load points for stress.
The Mirage 2000 is based on a semi-monoque. It’s basically like a monoque, but it has the added spine on the back serving as a reinforcement. You can easily see from the looks alone which fighter might use a pure monoque approach and those that use a semi-monoque with a spine. Just because a fighter has a spine they sort of look outdated. but it really isn’t so. The spine provides a very effective structural element for its weight.
If your monoque airframe is the stress load bearing element, you would be forced to greatly reinforce all of the frame. and this considerable beefing up adds a lot of weight. The F-16 went from a mere 7,000kg empty of the F-16A to 8500kg of the F-16C with PW engines (8800kg for those with GE engines), and now over 9,000kg for the Block 60. The Japanese F-2 with 9,500kg tops the cake—over 2500kg over the original F-16A. The continous beefing shows that the stress problem is never fully licked even with the F-16C. As the weight increases, so does wing loading. and this affects the low speed handling of the plane, adding a greater measure of risk for the pilot for stalls and higher landing speeds. This explains the increased wing area of the Japanese F-2. Sadly the Block 60 with all its weight increases still has the same wing as the first F-16As.
With a spine, you merely have to beef this spine up, as this structure is a vital load bearing element. The weight increases won’t be as drastic. The Mirage 2000 went up from around 7,000kg of its orignal versions to 7700 or 7800kg for its latest. Its much larger wing area makes it safer to fly at lower speeds or landing. To add to this, the Mirage 2000 is a pure delta not like the F-16 and the straight triangular delta layout is the most rigid wing form possible. These elements combine to make a very tight ship out of the Mirage 2000.
Alas this may not be enough of a reason to pick the MIrage 2000. The F-16 is a better energy fighter. Not only does it have the better thrust to weight ratio, but it bleeds less energy and speed during turns. The Mirage 2000, with its lower wing loading may have better instantaneous turn rates, but after a few turns, its speed or energy state may slow down enough to make it vulnerable. The F-16 on the other hand has better sustained turn performance, and in a continous battle with equally skiled pilots the F-16 may come out on top.
crobatoReason why I ask is because it does not make sense for heavily water surrounded nations like Indonesia to order military aircraft without any meaningful antiship capability. They’re certainly not buying an SU-30 like this just for air superiority. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the MK2 is support for the Kh-31A.
As for now it looks like any generic MKK, but the difference between an MKK and an MK2 (which in Western lingo would more appropriately be an MKK block 2) is a mere few chips in the system, which can easily be added to the final phases of construction.
It is unlikely that the Indo SU-30MK may have the third MFD that a true MK2 might have, or support for the Kupon M400 pod or the SAPSAN-E pod or perhaps the new DSP that might slightly extend the radar ranges, but I suspect the Kh-31A antiship missile support might be in place. In case, the only way to surely confirm this is to find out the loadouts of the plane, or what missiles came with the contract. Or perhaps if new missile contracts were written.
crobatoIt’s as silly as the J-10 anime drawing, but deserves a place in my image collection no less, partly because of the excellent pan form drawing of the Ching Kuo. You can see here that while the body seems inspired from the F-16 and the F-17, the wings itself are not but are inspired from two other fighters that served with the ROCAF—the F-104 Starfighter and the F-5E Tiger.
This is a nice fighter. I was thinking that Taiwan should not have bought those F-16s and Mirages but rather bought an equal number of F-CK-1s, and for the extra change, bought even more.
The jet deserves a GE F404 engine rather than the two bizplane engines it got, which is said to take a while to spool.
crobatoThis is not J-10 thread so let’s keep it that way.
“As for the avionics and radars, the top-line Russian radar for the 29 would be some kind of Zhuk-MSF (? I am a bit confused now) with Pero passive phased array, which is absolutely comparable to slotted APG-68(V) and RDY-2 in terms of range, TWS, A-G modes, simultaneous tracking and emmiting power. The APG-80 AESA of UAE Block 60 might be the only exception, but it is an exception for $90 mil ($38 for MiG-29M-1).”
It should be the Zhuk-ME, but it does not use Pero, which belongs to a different Russian company. There is a proposal fir a Sokol-X or a mini-Sokol (Zhuk-MSF) which I think is putting a phase array to a Zhuk ME. It only makes sense if there is a phase array high end (Zhuk-MSF e.g. Sokol) and a phase array low end (Kopyo-F e.g. Super Komar), there should be a middle somehow. But I gather the middle child is a little fallen behind in development compard to its bigger and smaller brothers.
The current best radar for the MiG-29 is the Zhuk-ME aka. Zhemchug (Pearl), which is a lightened version of the former. I think it’s fairly equivalent to a late model APG-68 but has better multiple targeting (Zhuk handles 4 targets while the APG-68 handles two). Both radars appear to track while scan about 10 targets, although the Zhuk can simultaneously detect 20 targets. I probably give the RDY-2 the edge in multiple targeting over these two however. I believe that radar may target 6 simultaneously while tracking 24. I must add that the Gripen’s Ericsson radar is probably the best of the lot when it comes to SAR capabilities, and the Gripen probably has the best datalinks as well.
When it comes to LGB targeting, the new Fulcrum can do it on its nose. Plus it has the only A to A IRST in the game, which can be a factor in combat if passive no radar modes are used. The array of missiles the new MiG can handle is indeed formidable, along the lines of:
KH-29T and L TV and laser guided ground attack missiles
KH-31P antiradiation missile
Kh-31A supersonic antiship missile
KAB 500 bombs (comes with laser guided and tv guided versions)
It will probably take a little effort to integrate SAPSAN-E pod to the Fulcrum is a customer wants it, which will give the Fulcrum its Litening equivalent.
crobatoThat is one of the best camo jobs I’ve seen.
The Vietnamese style camo I’ve seen so far are more like the Russian style with the white nose and light blue-blue camo. I figure the Vietnamese MKKs would look a lot more like the way the original MKK 501 prototype used to be.
crobatoThx for the pix. I had (and misplaced) the MKK one on the ground and the SK one without the radome but I didn’t have the ones flying in particular.
I’m not sure if the Indo SK is in the SKM standard or if the Indo MK is in the MKK2 level.
crobatoNo much really not much. Not until you have a Prime Minister with a real backbone, not with a funny hair do, Koizumi is still a poodle. Not until you have a politician with a real spine that can challenge the corrupt way the LDP does things, Japan will always be in a muck.
Tremendous deficits are bad for this country. Bad, bad. Credit is not bottomless. It will only lead to the inevitable—more taxes in the long run. More than anyone, it was Clinton who had the right idea, that it was important to balance the budget and have fiscal responsibility.
crobatoActually the JH-7 seems agile enough to be able to fend itself with IR AAMs. The JH-7A goes a step further by mounting four AAMs.
crobatoActually the Japanese government has a very high public debt sector ratio in relation to GDP, much higher than the US. They spend a lot of worthless infrastructure projects to artificially speed up tepid growth and subsidize massive Halliburton like construction companies with strong links to the politicians and quite likely, the organized gangs (the -yumis or Yakuza). This is not to mention its ratio of national bad debt to GDP is higher than Argentina’s or Botswana’s.
crobatoI sort of misplaced my pics of the Indo SU-30s, sort of like SU-30MKKs with a light blue camo pattern. Can anyone be kind enough to post any pics they have if they have any?
crobatoI guess the rumors or reports that the DF-41 ceased development are plain wrong. That’s not a modded DF-31. It’s considerably bigger, the container housing is quite different and it uses a different design and considerably bigger TEL. The DF-31 uses a Chinese TEL, not a Belorrussian design like this. If it’s an ‘enhanced’ DF-31, it’s only a DF-31 by name only. This is a new missile.
crobatoIn many cases, twin engined designs are choosen because of the non availability of a single larger engine, not because of the merits of reliability or redundancy. Ideally a single engine should be choosen, but for the lack of a powerful single engine, a dual engine setup is choosen. Some examples:
MiG-19/J-6
F-5 series
F-CK-1 Ching Kuo (which can’t get the GE F404)
J-8II Finback (Lack of any 26,000lbs class engine; Not successful in reverse engineering the MiG-23 engine)
When it comes to turn around I would go for a single engined fighter. True, you have redundancy with dual engines, but you will need twice the maintenance, twice the checkups, not to mention the possibility of twice as many things going wrong. Single engined fighters have shown to have the best turn around times and sortie generation rate.
Now for Col. Toon, the guy simply does not exist. Try checking the list of Vietnamese aces, and there is no Toon there. As a matter of fact, most of the Vietnamese aces survived the war including the top scoring ones. There is no doubt that Randy Cunningham met one hot NVAF pilot one day, but the personage of Mr. Toon is a fabrication of the media. Toon is probably a collage of different Vietanamese aces.
Why go Alaska?
Mainly it’s shorter to fly over Alaska than to fly across the Pacific. If you fly from Tokyo to London it’s faster and shorter over the Artic too.
People still view geography like the flat map sticking on the wall, despite that the world is really round. Go over to a globe, then measure via circumference using a string, the distance of one city over another, then see where the string fly over. It’s much much different than tracing routes with a straight line between cities.
The new long distance jets only fly OVER Alaska, not land on it.
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