arquebusImpressive – how good is the artificial intelligence and missions?
The missions are pretty much similar to what you get in CFS3 or Forgotten Battles. I was really disappointed to see that to fly missions with german and late war aircraft you have to buy as an add-on to the game. The flight handling in this game has a more realistic feel, although Im not really that knowledgeable on flight sims, Im sure there are others here who could comment better on the quality of this sim.
arquebusI love low flying footage, here is a 747 doing a low pass:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgusXzo6omU&playnext=1&list=PL79A553CAC0CAB71D
and a spitfire that looks like it could be clipping the grass with its prop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvDDDKnNhuE
arquebusI think when the no-fly-zone began, the Libyan AF had about 300 mig-23s and 70 Mirage F-1s as the main strength of their AF of which very few were operational. Why was the Libyan AF in such a low state of readiness?
arquebusUAVs on the other hand cost on average $10 million if lost and $500 per hour to use, they have similar sensors and a respectable amount of weapons, but best of all they can loiter for up to day, so they can wait for an enemy to reveal itself and attack it, or at least pass on the intel to manned assets nearby
exactly which UAV with attack capability is able to loiter up to a day? The only UAV with that kind of endurance that I know of is the Global Hawk, which is recon only.
arquebusIt’s a pity that the F20 never went into production.
The US should have procured a few dozens of them for agressor duty and then propose it to small countries air force while the manufacturing line was open.
With an up to date radar and a HMD, it would be the master of all dogfights
This post is OT, I shouldnt respond, but I cant resist. The F-20 Tigershark was the worst idea, adding an F404 to a F-5 airframe. It was offered to the USAF for Aggressor duty, they rejected it and chose the F-16 instead. It was offered to small countries, they all rejected it as it cost the same as the F-16. The F-5 was aerodynamically very good at what it was designed for, very efficient performance using a low rated engine. F-20 specs were not significantly improved over the F-5E. If the F-5E were put back into production, I do believe a lot of AFs would buy it as it still provides very potent capabilities at an economical price and operating costs no current fighter can match.
arquebusIs the Hawk 200’s performance comparable to aircraft like the Hawker Hunter and Super Étendard?
The Super Etendard can supercruise at mach 1.3, pretty impressive for a non-afterburning jet. I personally think the Super Etendard was a very under-rated jet that could have done well as a land based strikefighter.
The Folland Gnat was aerodynamically superior to the the Hawker Hunter. If the size of the Gnat were increased to that of the Hunter, I think it could have been a very major player in air arms of its time.
arquebusI know KFX supposedly larger than F/A-50, but with F-15K on hand, F-16 still make large portion of ROKAF inventories and ROKAF also still looking for F-35 and in the meantime still want to developed KFX (with Indonesia as participant), then this many types of Fighters seems already more than enough for ROKAF.
And the Korean AF has 170 F-5E/Fs that they dont seem to want to get rid of, with only about 60 T-50s in service and 80 on order, the T-50 doesnt look like its economical to replace the F-5 in their own AF.
arquebusK-8 & Hawk same specs? Hawk is nearly twice as heavy, with three times the payload in armed versions, is significantly faster, & has a greater radius of action.
The Hawk is not significantly faster than the K-8, the speed is similar, and the K-8 achieves this speed with half the engine power of the Hawk. The range is about the same. The only advantage of the Hawk over the K-8 is its load carrying ability due to the Hawk being a much larger aircraft.
arquebusAgusta signed agreement with Grumman -The companies ‘American Aviation Grumman has chosen’ S 211 ‘s Agusta to participate in the race Jpats “program launched by the U.S. Defense to provide the’ Air Force and Navy a basic trainer. The plan provides for a potential order of 800 machines for a total program value of about $ 5 billion. “We chose the ‘S 211. the president said of Grumman. because it ‘s more that the aircraft ‘meets the requirements. ” Between Agusta and Grumman were signed agreements providing for the division to 50% of all activities’ related to the plan.
Thats insane. The S-211 is really a low end jet trainer that tries to match the cost of a turboprop trainer and does not have much more to offer as far as speed. There is no way the S-211 will win when the USAF already has the T-6 in service. They should have gone with the MB-339, that is a top notch airframe performance-wise, but still very cheap to buy and operate.
arquebusNowadays we are seeing a similar concept, light attack/advanced training aircraft which are also expensive but far more capable than these aircraft such as the KAI T-50, the Alenia Aermacchi M-346, Hongdu L-15 and Yak-130, will thse aircraft fall into the same mistakes these earlier aircraft fell into?
The 2 seat AMX has the same specs as the M-346 and fill the exact same role, they are both just too expensive to attract any buyers.
Comparing the K-8 to the Hawk 200 we see they have the same specs, the K-8 has the same capabilities as the Hawk 200 for half the price, which is why its selling like hot cakes all over the world. The Hawk 200 doesnt even give better range for being a single seater, lacking a second seat just means it loses its second role as trainer.
Unless the K-50 can get its price down near to the K-8, it will never catch on as the F-5 of the 21st century considering its still up near the same price range as the F-16. I dont think that is possible to lower the price unless they can de-rate the engine of the T-50 down the level of the F-5, but then the T-50 would be too feable for use. So the T-50 is really too much of an expenditure that offers too little.
arquebusWere these jets used in the movie “Hot Shots”?
no, that was the Folland Gnat
arquebustsz52- Overall your points are valid and I agree with you, making recoverable tomahawks would probably end up being more trouble than they are worth for a navy. But the point remains that tomahawks should only be used for “real wars”, ie against targets of high tactical value, and not in a sustained ground attack role that should be handled by UCAVs dedicated to that role. I guess Im just surprised that something like the X-45 hasnt already entered service for these kind of attacks rather than continuing to use rather expesnive TLAMs.
arquebustsz52- I cant figure how youre calculating the economics. Yes what you say it true…to a point, that there is increased costs by making a tomahawk recoverable, but those costs pay for themselves immediately, and only improve over longer use. Lets take the current Libyan no-fly-zone as an example. The US and UK navies fired 100 or so tomahawks in the first day of action. At $1M a piece they expended $100 million dollars just on hardware, this money is just gone, its not sustaining operation of anything, just down the drain. If the tomahawks were recoverable there would be huge savings, it would be simply a matter of rearming the missle and reloading into the ships, no money lost at all, just normal operating costs of ship crew that would be spent anyway. Range would hardly be a factor at all in the Libyan operation, Im sure these ships were just a couple of hundred miles off shore, the tomahawks could have been flown all the way back to Italy for land recovery.
Distiller- Your UCAV in flight refueling links look interesting, but I honestly cant see the need for in flight recovery at all. It would be a needless added expense to have manned aircraft whos only purpose is to launch and recover UCAVs when it would be so much simpler to just let the UCAVs take off and land on their own.
arquebusIn flight recovery as in vertical ejector rack (= pylon) that not only drops things but is also capable to take them aboard again. Without any other action by the pilot than pressing the right button.
How to actually do it? Probably some kind of miniature robot grappling device which pulls in the object over the last foot or so. It needs precise 4D awareness and near-field communication to get the robot/UAV to fly into the right position. Basically it’s the same system as for automated aerial refueling or other automated formation flying projects, as done by NASA, AFRL, Boeing, or Sikorsky.
I cant see that happening, especially not a full size UCAV. In flight refueling is difficult enough flying for trained pilots, but for a UCAV, no way. If the UCAV weight 1000 lbs or less, then maybe, but even then it would be a dangerous operation with the danger of in flight collision or the UCAV becoming dangerously unstable . The only plausible in flight recovery I could see is a tomahawk size UCAV falling by parachute and then have a heavy lift helicopter swoop down with a line and hook to catch the parachute cables. Even then that would be pretty squirrely.
arquebusDistiller- what exactly do you mean by “in flight” recovery? I take that to mean the UCAV lands itself like a normal airplane. Current UCAVs in service are pretty much all surveillance, most are so small they dont need a runway. In fact a lot of these surveillance drones are so small that they are not designed by engineers but rather by expert model airplane designers. If you want to talk about full size UCAVs that are meant for strike role, I think it is best to keep the size down to that of the tomahawk. A larger UCAV will need a runway, and considering that there are hundreds of military air crashes every month all over the world by highly trained personal, then I think we will see a lot more crashes when you try to mix UCAVs in airspace and airfields with manned military aircraft.
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