Cola1973“Thanks to its excellent FCS” to be more precise. A square dance is four 9 G turn in a row at each corner of the square with a roll on each side. The square dance is very requiring in terms of sustain maneuvrability. So if your air flow is not laminar you will quickly lose your energy despite a high trust to weight ratio.
Ok the typhoon has also its own tricks…It was just to higlight a specificity of the rafale. I know that some one is going to shout here now !
True, but the guy swallowed half and the rest spoke as one word. My French is a bit rusty. 😮
Now as for square dance, it’s actually less demanding than sustained 9g turn, being broken into 4x9g turns. Each roll off between the turns recovers some of the energy.
However, if not already, I’m quite sure the Rafale will be able pull sustained 9g turn with new engines.
As for EF, well both planes have their pros and cons, BUT they together are a league of their own, compared to other planes in the air. 🙂
Cola1973Fair enough. Of course seeing as how the F-22 isn’t currently available for export, and the others are, one would think that major selling points would be highlighted in their case. If the EF can supercruise at M1.5 or faster(combat loaded), that would be something I’d think would be capitalized on. Same with the Rafale, Gripen, and Flanker.
As far as I can tell by many EF brochures given to potential customers (PDF), SC has always been highlighted among the first 3 prominent features. I guess reduced range of M1.5 and just 4 missiles, are the main reasons why EADS prefers ~M1.3 figure with full load of missiles and a tank.
OTOH, numerous tests (and combat practice) in the last 40 years showed that overcoming transonic drag threshold to about M1.2 is sufficient to give the missile enough energy to extend its envelope significantly. Everything over M1.2 is nice to have, but not essential and comparative range increase is marginal, mainly due the missile’s drag limit.
Now to be honest, at first I wasn’t sure what does the EF need SC for, in the first place. Supersonic turn radius is enormous and turn rate low, even at high g loadings and is of a much more use for an interceptor then a fighter. However, EF is a curious hybrid of those two and it’s flying capabilities will cause more than one problem for the enemy, not because it is essentially better in each and every given figure than those other planes, but because EF combines those figures in an unusual way and most AFs aren’t prepared to cope with such a highly irregular threat.
In F22’s case SC makes much more sense. If it was supposed to escort B2s into Russian space, as I believe it did and I may be wrong!, it had to have the ability to accelerate from escort position and intercept enemy fighters threatening B2s. In order to maintain LO qualities while intercepting, it was necessary to do it without afterburner.
One example from Balkan war 199x.
SR71, though been stealth in shaping aspect for ground based radars, got regularly tracked on by that very same radars due its afterburner signature. So, although the radar couldn’t track the airframe itself, it was still able to track its afterburner trail.
So, the USAF recognizing the A/B issue, gave the F22 maximum SC capability to prevent such tracking, while giving fighter the ability to reach interception speed necessary to defend subsonic B2.
Cola1973If you can understand french I invite you to listen to the pilot comment from 2’32 to 2’39 precisely (about the square dance). But shhhht ! it’s a secret !;)
don’t tell anybody !
If I understood correctly, “Rafale handles magnificent during the square dance maneuver compared to Typhoon”.
But what is the square dance?
Cola1973I don’t think it’s so much a matter of discovery, as what is cleared for release. You can bet that whatever has been cleared for release doesn’t necessarily reflect the maximum capability(especially on a relatively new to service aircraft).
Even the SR-71’s max figures have never been released, and that’s not even in service any longer.
Agreed.
My point, the same thing goes for EF and other planes.
Cola1973Cola,
http://www.dassault-aviation.com/fr/aviation/salon-du-bourget-2009/videos.html
just have to listen to pilot comment…It is in french though.
(it is just under the neuron video on this page)
Thx, arthuro (no problem with the French > mostly :o).
You’re right, but Rafale does it so easy that it seems 3/4g lower, than actual loading. I forgot how canard planes fly, watching all this elevator-ed c**p. Anyway, great show, thumbs up.
Cola1973Since when the EF can do 1.5M in SC ??????
Well, I guess since entering the service, or in fact earlier. You have a post by Satorian on official EF site. Use translator and translate the paragraph with Mach 1.5 statement. Then translate the following paragraph that mentions acceleration to Mach 1.8 (now that would be with A/B) to give missiles best energy level, which will give you the context of the Mach 1.5 expression. EF can achieve this envelope with 4*AAMs (otherwise it’d have noting to accelerate for, to Mach 1.8 for, right?) in recessed body pylons and nothing else. Not full load, but meets the requirements, though.
Now, as for your aerodynamically illiterate comments on my 2 and 3 point, I’d suggest you go on Rafale News thread and check a film from Rafale demo on LeBourget 2009, posted by arthuro (with pilot’s comments on maneuver and g loading) and I’d suggest finding a EF demo from Perth 2009, although this one has no comment in terms of flight program.
Then, take a stop watch and off you go. After that do the same for F22.
This is an empirical approach to the problem, but should suffice. However, if you at some point feel compelled to learn as why is it so, then I’ll be the first to bid you welcome to the wonderful world of aeronautics. 🙂
As for the F22’s data, I can’t help but wonder, how does the LM manage to “discover” different SC speed every now and then.
First, it was M1.5, then M1.7, then M1.72, then M1.78 and now we’re on M1.82. I guess at the same time next year, it’ll be what M2?? Finally LM may even surpass F22’s A/B speed with its SC speed. I mean what’s their problem. Got broken pitot tubes, or what? How hard is it to measure a speed in 5th gen fighter?!, ROFLMAO.
Cola1973There are 12 nine G turns in the demo and 1 turn where the pilot pull as much as he can on the hard limit (a brief 10.5G peak can certainly be reached on this one).
Most of 9G turns (10) are performed during the first part of the demo (before the low speed high alpha fly by)
The -3G turn is also worth noting. Even though it looks less impressive than the negative “half loop” of the mirage 2000 demo imho
Where? In the film from arthuro’s post #57?
Cola1973It was quite damp one day at Le Bourget, though……
Yes, I saw. Just the day the EF flew. Well, that’s bad luck…Quite nice day on Rafale’s show, though.
Cola1973True. The trouble is the Rafale has such a neat laminar flow that vortex are barely visible, especially when passing with sun refection on the wing, or with a cloud in the background. 🙂
Cola1973I wasn’t on this LeBourget, but I saw a demo flight of Rafale on YouTube.
From what it could be seen though, I’d say there was no maneuver harder than ~6g.
As for the corner velocity, it’s rather about 330 knots for Rafale (11g) and 390 kts for EF (15g).
Cola1973The times of classical escorts are gone. Today they are restricted to some strike packages to force a penetration or related to some high value items like AWACS, which do have escorts in the widest sense. In reality that are CAPs, which deny a given airspace for the opponent. High performance strike fighters were “selfescorting” always. In Vietnam the USAF did learn that just a small number of F-4s had to drop its bomb-load to prevent a mission kill when challenged by a few MiGs.
Even the Russians did change their behavior in the 80s.
Perhaps, but remember that F22 has been conceived in 80s, while the “Iron Curtain” was still alive and kicking…
Cola1973I would of thought straight through the canopy, most ejector seats have a hardened head rest to allow it to go straight through if the canopy jettison system fails.
IIRC the common practice for that kind of ejecting is to have explosive bolts on the canopy glass, like this Harrier for example has. However, Harrier has sliding canopy and can’t exactly jettison it. OTOH, the F35 has a hinged canopy…
Way more efficient is to have a mechanical “tooth” which you can just switch manually (has long leverage and so the speed doesn’t affect it) and the canopy pops up. The rest gets done by air pressure. Very simple and very effective.
Cola1973The different results also come from different requirements. TF90/TKF was meant to defend firendly airspace from enemy intruders.
ATF was meant to fly into enemy airspace and attack enemy fighters there.Imagine the cold war stayed hot for another decade. So in the middle 90ies NATO would have fielded EF and F-22 to face an ever growing fleet of MiG-29 and SU-27 (upgraded versions). Then F-22 and EF would have perfectly worked together.
Well, an interceptor is defensive, by definition, while attack/bomber is offensive.
Raptor is some sort of hybrid in that sense. However, I think having the stealth bomber like B2, was the main trigger for F22 development. After all, what’s the use of a fighter, if it can’t escort the bomber. NonLO fighters most certainly couldn’t escort B2, because their nonLO would alert the enemy and thus deny the bomber uninterrupted execution of the attack plan. With the F22, the situation is different and it can, like its predecessors P51 and B17, escort B2 to the target and back.
On return to allied space, Eurofighters would most certainly move to cover LO teams, retreating from the enemy airspace and dispatch possible enemy’s pursuit.
Cola1973Not exactly sure where I dismissed it, but I say that fidelity is limited. One can scale thrust data and land within 5-10% of a given somehow similar engine. That is a reasonable guess, but when we talk about very detailed stuff like top speed or detailed fuel consumption, even such data becomes close to useless. You can use it to identify some qualities, and I repeatedly did that on this forum to show the ups and downs of supercruise.
As I recall, you dismissed Stevenson’s acceleration table for F22. As the matter of fact the fuel consumption diagram, you used in your last post, is just 9 pages behind. Now, I did some cross checks and the fuel consumption diagram matches the official numbers (100SC+310nm; 50SC+405nm; etc…).
That certainly adds credibility to Stevenson’s F22 briefing, where the same disputed acceleration chart is.
Cola1973Well, in pursuit it won’t be of much good, since you can’t envision the distance and aspect, so that rules gunfights out.
But then again, how much time will you spend in the pursuit of the enemy (especially if you fly gunless F35), if you have SRMs?
For such snapshot kind of combat, the 360° IIR system is good enough, or at least it should be, if it proves to work as advertised. This is especially true, if the opposing side doesn’t have such system installed and will not fly as aggressively as during the daytime.
Ok, I agree, you can’t compare that to the MkI daytime eyeball, but I think it’s quite good for squeezing off a few missile snapshots.
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