pppFake.
If they wanted such an aircraft, it would be more logical to get some more experience from the J20 first, so lessons learnt can be incorporated into a cheaper fighter. This would be very similar to the F22/F35 situation. I see no reason why this second aircraft would not be “full stealth”, since the stealth should not require it to be significantly more expensive, as much of the infrastructure for a stealth type in J20 already exists. The investment is made, why would they not capitalise on that? To intentionally keep themselves from having lots of shiny stealth fighters like the US? That would be more the hope of the American patriot, rather than the aim of the Chinese officer!
pppThere’s only a few of them. Integration is very expensive. Not really worth doing.
pppManned CAS is coming to an end, long range manned interdiction is already dead, the only thing which requires a manned aircraft is A2A operations (and always will due to the sensitive politics surrounding peacetime intercepts).
As for only looking where it is told to look, the UAV does quite the opposite, it scans over everything, it doesn’t blink, it doesn’t get tired and it can see in a far greater spectrum than a human can, satcom bandwidth may be an issue but that can be solved.
It will just require a real time video feed for airliner intercepts. Obviously this is quite bandwidth intensive, but its only going to need to be active for certain missions like airliner intercepts. Other missions the facility could still be there, but it would only be needed for extremely short periods, if at all (e.g in strike). There is also no doubt about comparison between humans and computers in finding targets, the latter is far more capable and can’t find patterns and shapes that might appear hidden to a human.
Given the gain in capabilities provided by Typhoon and future F35, 6 squadrons are more than enough. We’ve been living so long in a Cold War mindset that we have forgotten what it is not to be constantly at each other throats.
The truth is European countries can no longer afford such expensive equipments, certainly not the UK which has specialized itself making very expensive hardwares in order to fight dust and decay in very menacing and dangerous hangars.
Each of our submarines can destroy this world 10 times over, which state would be stupid enough to attack us ? NONE.
What we need is better intelligence agencies working with special forces to take care of terrorist groups, that cannot be destroy by any amount of Typhoons, Rafales, F35s, Death stars etc.
We need to invest in social policies that are going to make this world better by helping people, not killing them.The secret to win a invasion has been known since the begining of times. Kill most of the population, enslave the rest, then settle your own people into their land. Exept today ressources are in the form of oil and other raw ressources, no longer in agriculture. I see no or very little Iraqui or Afghani enterprises taking care of reconstructing their own country, or producing oils etc.
Kill thousand of people in one day, and you are doing a genocide, kill thousand of people over 10 years and you are making democracy! Well seems to me like nobody is eager to help Sommali with their democracy… Pathetic
So its takes 4 warheads to destroy the world? LOL! The Trident submarines may have a physical capacity of 198 warheads, but they only carry around 40.
As for your other comments, I notice China is tooling up, or are saying they need to defend themselves and we don’t? :rolleyes:
pppThe Israelis should demonstrate they have a working nuclear bomb by underground detonation preceded by a public announcement. All other nuclear powers; U.S., France, UK, Russia, China, India, Pakistan have detonate a live bomb. If Israel does possess a working nuclear bomb, then Iran would leave Israel alone. The detonation can be verified by seismograph.
Then Israel would be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the ME, making it easy for Iran to say its “just responding”. Iran would love Israel to do that though, and so Israel will not be doing it!
but Israeli Nukes are US weapon no. Whats there to prove?
No, more French than anything.
Because its more like 4+ sites, or the whole mission will not be a long lasting effect. Its probably more that 4-5 sites that Iranians made sure are potent to their nuclear program. They are not stupid. They are not going to make two targets only for Israel.
now how many aircraft is needed to destroy lets say 4 sites spread over Iran?
They do NOT need to hit all targets, just the Natanz. Other targets are secondary. In any case, there is nothing stopping them hitting other targets at a later date.
1 or 2 cruise missiles for each sites, you get 8 F15’s and 1 or 2 F16’s for jamming (Max 20 planes, else you just get the enemy’s radars crowded).
100 aircrafts ??? And how would they protect their air space during that time ?
The plant at Natanz is buried underground, it needs bunker buster boms to be dropped on it. Other targets could be hit at a later with cruise missiles though.
pppIf Israel could effectively jam S-300 sam sites they wouldn’t be so opposed to Iran getting them. Why all the big fuss if they claim they have all technical data on the system? I believe only when Israel gets their f-35’s will a strike on Iran be feasible. Currently the risks are to high and they cant pull of a 1-2 strike that will completely disable the Iranian nuclear program. Thats my two cents.
Of course Israel would oppose Iran procuring advanced weaponry, regardless of whether Israel has a counter for it or not.
Iran very possibly does have a limited number of S-300s –
http://defensetech.org/2010/08/04/iran-claims-it-has-obtained-s-300-air-defense-missile-system/
Guess which pal of Iran got the S-300s Iran was supposed to buy?
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/17/hugo_chavez_picks_up_irans_s_300_missiles_0
That doesn’t prove anything, its just more speculation. The only S300 Iran has are mockups for internal consumption.
pppI think you’ve misunderstood “stealth”. These aircraft give a lower radar return in a certain frequency range (X band). To perform anti-stealth, there are already several options, and have been for a very long time:
1. IRST systems
2. Different radar frequency
3. Passive detection (sensing the aircrafts radar/comms)
(3) is unlikely to be useful alone, but can be combined with (1) to make searching the space efficient. (2) will involve tradeoffs such as range, accuracy ect.
pppI am still trying t work out what Israel would have to gain for launching an attack against Iran. Very little is all I can surmise with a lot more to lose. Even though Iran is rules by a man who is generally accepted as being unstable when it come to anything Isreali, There is simply no way Iran will launch a first strike against Isreal. If they did every major city in Iran would vanish and the country would be effectively destroyed. What would Iran gain by that. Even if provoked they have little to gain as using nukes with the excuse of “They started it”, won’t win any friends.
I have to also state that the Iranian Armed forces are for from battle hardened, any more than the Iraqi Armed Forces were in GW1 or GW2. Yes they have the fanatical Revolutionary Guard, but in a conventional war this really means nothing. They do have suntantial amounts of SAMs but the vast majority of these are around Tehran and major ports and industrial sites, and are visible to satalite. The small number of SA-15 are not enough to deter an determined attack and countermeasures already exist. Iran is in a vary similar position to Iraq pre GW1. They have a large Armed Forces and a limited number of good equipment but the bulk is outdated.
The only benefit Iran gets from having a nuke is the prestige it will give them in the Arab world and a means to scare their neighbours in to not allowing foreing troops to operate from them against Iran.
The gain would be to prevent Iran getting nuclear arms, thats good for most of the planet I think 🙂
pppFunny, on how nobody has come up with any viable soultions….;)
The viable solution is to can the F35B and use the assault ships for assault and helicopters and the carriers for strike.
pppIran is noted to have a few S-300s from alternative sources as well. These may be placed at the most important sites like Natanz, etc. That is perhaps something to consider in your analysis Wanderlei. Not to mention upgraded Hawk SAMs and a ton of other weapons many of them probably not known to the international community; chinese sams, bits-and-pieces sams cobbled together from various sub-systems sneaked in from a wide variety of places, NK variants of older sams and more. They are packing everything into those high value targets specially in the western regions of Iran.
PS: Iran is not Syria, they are a completely different ball game. They are far more professional, serious, battle hardened and simply competent than the Syrians who were so lazy that they would place their sams in valleys rather than on the top of hills simply because they hated digging latrines. Fact to remember, Iran trains Hezbollah, the lightly armed and numerically few force that recently sent 30,000 of Israel’s best soldiers packing.
PPS: Also, Natanz is not the only fuel enrichment plant. Smaller pilot plants are available. For all that is known, there may be “many” small ones. We are talking abou uranium-based weapons here and not plutonium based. Uranium based systems can be built in small distributed buildings spread throughout the country without a large plant. A plutonium based system like Pakistan however can’t do the same. The tradeoff however is the uranium based systems can never be as powerful, small and well, “usable” as plutonium based systems.
PPPS: Some Muslims are expecting a nuclear attack. It’s in some of our revelations: The Prophet (peace be upon him) talks about a “Blast” with a “devastating sound” that will “awaken the one who is asleep and knock down the standing” and which will appear as a “sign in the sky, a bright pillar of light”. see here. Conventional bunker busters may be of limited effect against the class of bunkers used and Israel may use “tactical nukes”. Even with conventional weapons the radiation spread would be significant.
The Iranians have been denied the S300.
http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=178178
All the other weapons you mention are purely speculation, we can only consider what they are known to actually have. Of course if we consider the unknown and speculative, them we must recognise Israeli ECMs can probably jam the S300.
pppyes but at low level they have Tor-M1 systems, and plenty of them.
If SA-2s and SA-6, SA-3s could down western aircraft in 1999, why S-200 would be any less dangerous! believe it was SA-3 system that saw and hit F-117 despite all the countermeasures.
S-200 is way more dangerous, and long range radars are only going to help.
The short range SAMs are small in number, Iran does not have countrywide coverage at low level, only around critical targets. An interesting feature of aircraft is that they can move to higher or lower altitudes, as well as change direction, using the first property we can see how an aircraft could enter low, and then go high when it approaches the target zone. As for the SAM effectiveness, the Israeli aircraft have state of the art ECMs, not really comparable to the sort of kit on F16s in Yugoslavia. If the ECM were as ineffective as you suggest, such that they can’t even handle pretty much obsolete SAMs, they would’t be fitted. You also have to consider the roles being carried out by the aircraft, the Israelis will be picking off easy ground targets, not trying to flying anti-armour, anti-runway or SEAD missions.
It’s not pointless. Concidering Air war-and that’s the topic, things are very much the same, like the first strike on Serbia (it was A planned to last only few days, not B months).
On one side you have strike jets in the air, with dedicated fighter jet support, they are entering hostile airspace (defended by SAMs, manpads, AAA, fighters), they have to perform bombing mission, … that’s a scenario.
Only, Serbia was much easier. And NATO led by USA had much much more powerful force than Israel has today.No need for political details, we are talking about Air war, comparison is there to notice real consequences and problems…
Its not similar. Here only a single target is being attacked, in single sortie, not to be compared with any war. It would be better to compare to something like the Black Buck raid on the Falklands, or the nuking of Hiroshima, albeit they were in wars, they were similar types of strikes.
Worst case scenario after successful Israel air strike:
1. Iran now has a legitimate reason to destroy Israel
2. Iran purchase a working 35 KT nuclear weapon from fellow Muslim country, Pakistan (A. Q. Khan)
3. It mount the weapon on 1 of the 100 Shehab-3 IRBM to be fire in salvo at Tel Aviv. Only one of the incoming Shehab missiles carry the nuke, the other 99 just carried a conventional bomb to act as decoys.
4. Iran orders Hezbollah to launch its 40,000 rockets at Israel’s northern cities.
5. Syria joins in and launches its 500 IRBMs targeted mainly at Israeli air bases destroying its Air Force.
6. World is horrified at mushroom cloud rising over Tel Aviv. But Iran justifies its actions by proclaiming Israel struck first.
Wow thats a lot of assumptions! In any case, as has been mentioned, the Iranians are not suicidal, so don’t expect them to be throwing nukes at a neighbour that has loads of nukes just because their centrifuge plant got wiped out. They can rebuild the centrifuge plant, they can’t do that if they are all dead.
pppIts unrealistic to think the US will maintain the same relative strength as before if China continues its present growth.
pppWe could still make a profit, just like we did/or still do with the Gripen. Just because we don’t operate a particular “thing” doesn’t mean we’re not going to benefit from it. If we dropped the F-35, I think the Americans would still want us to have something to do with producing it. I very much doubt they’d want to dish out more money for the F-35, don’t you?
OMG those evil Frenchies, I think you better write a letter to David Cameron warning him…
…I think the UK are quite well aware of this & I think they know what they’re doing. Like I say, I don’t think they want to p*$$ eachother off for the next 50 years.
And like I say, they have screwed us over before, and will do what is in their best interests. One meeting later and you seem to think they’ve given up all self-interest. You can argue the same for the US, but the US doesn’t really gain anything from screwing us over, where as French gets proportionately a lot more from it. As I said, the French will milk it to harm Typhoon, it doesn’t matter about F35, its going to be going for a different market and long after Typhoon finishes production. Rafale is competing right now for Typhoon contracts.
And to top it all, you just assume the Americans will be happy with the situation, and won’t feel at all screwed by us on the F35. And there all the other points I’ve made already about why F35 is a better choice. Anyway, its all irrelevant as there is absolutely zero chance of Rafale being procured, because as I’ve already said in this and other threads as have several others, the government wants to avoid the cost right now and would rather push costs into the future when the ecomomy is better, which makes Rafale a very unattractive option as this is incomparible with the Rafale production.
BTW, I’ve still got that bridge for sale if you’re interested? 😎
pppDirty tactics against the Typhoon? What, like doing them silly videos showing the Typhoon getting “owned”? Well guess what, the Americans are doing the exact same thing against us even though they want us to buy their toy and guess what we’re doing? Yes, we’re dong that too. And we’re far too trusting the Americans with this F-35, even if we are “allies”.
If we managed to operate the Rafale and they started to use that as extra ammo, it’d be like Germany saying to India; “Ha! Ze Englander uze ze Typhoon ze same as uz! Dunk-ov!”…It really wouldn’t go down that well, would it? Besides, if they wanted to use extra ammo, they’d use it against the F-35, not the Typhoon.
C’mon, the French aren’t stupid. I don’t think the want to p*$$ us off in the next 50 years, like wise for the UK, too.
We profit from the F35 though, theres no way we will get the same benefit from a Rafale procurement, = massive UK job losses. As for the French screwing us over, oh yes they will, they aren’t really going to lose out by doing so.
pppThere are at least 7 other major sites to hit according to the IAEA, and lots of suspected secondary sites, including some university laboratories, so it is not straight forward.
None of the Arab countries want Iran to have nukes but their population for the most part have at best a low opinion of the US and Israel and some elements could be described as rabid, as Swerve says any active support of Israel would like lead to an uprising in the country who supported them and possibly the overthrow of the government.
China may not particularly like Iran, but considering that there is plenty of evidence that Iran is receiving assistance from North Korea, I can see a situation that if Iran is attacked it would benefit China to support Iran, if only so the west continues to worry about Iran nuclear ambitions instead of switching the focus to North Korea.
Oh sure, theres lots of sites, but the programme is still stalled unless it has all of them. Naranz houses the enrichment facility and is a key point of contention, rather than some small labs.
pppAre you sure?
IFF F35b folds then USMC, Spain, Italy, Australia, India, Brazil, Argentina, S Korea (united Korea? One can but hope that the poor *******s avoid starvation/thermonuclear annihilation), Japan would all be candidates for the RIGHT carrier-capable light attacker. Also the things which would make such a STOVL warplane suitable for light carrier ops make it suitable for other nations wanting to get in or get back in to strike*
One of the problems with such a diverse range of (except for USMC) small customers is getting the right mix of bells and whistles with austerity and affordability
* in the general rather than historic RN defintion
Yes I’m sure. Firstly, if the USMC isn’t buying F35B, then any other STOVL aircraft is also going to be out of the question. The US isnt going to cut one, only to replace with another, clean sheet, long lead time option. If it wanted to get the STOVLs for the USMC, it would just go with the F35B as it would still be by far the most suitable opton. India, Mig29k will be in service long before the paper STOVL planes first flight. Brazil is CATOBAR and has plenty of alternative aircraft to choose from much cheaper than a new build STOVL. The others either want the low tens of aircraft or just helicopter carriers. With such low numbers, its just not economical.
Fair enough points…
…Still, (call me stubborn) I’d be seriously considering talking with the French about operating the Rafale with them. If the UK/France partnership wasn’t to be, I’d think they’d charge the UK quite a bit if we were to order them, but since we’re, or soon to be partners, I think some sort of deal can be thought up, after all, we’ll be sharing Aircraft Carriers amonst other things so why not front line fighters, too?
This F-35 business, I just do not feel comfortable with it…IMO theres not much of a plus side. But lets see, eh.
Or more likely the French will screw us over on the aircraft, the use it as marketing to attack Typhoon. Don’t think they would? They already use dirty tactics against Typhoon, so don’t think they wouldn’t welcome the extra ammo, and they would use it. You’re far too trusting of the French, even if we are “partners”.
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