Not only is the AA-5 “Ash” ancient, it was only ever deployed on two main fighters, the TU-128 “Fiddler” (a favourite Soviet fighter of mine, due to its HUGE size) and the Mig-25 “Foxbat”. Not ony this, but it appears to be a MASSIVE weapon. Think AA-6 “Acrid” (which looks similar), or AA-9 “Amos” and you get the idea.

Hanging even two of these on a fighter the size of a JF-17 will lead to massive drag. A bit like hanging a couple of AIM-54’s on an F-16C.

The US experimented with laser guided CBU’s in the 80’s. Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t think they entered service.

I do not exspect F-15s. But a defecting F-15 is no longer a security problem really.

Maybe not if technology is the major concern. It would still be an embarressment. Imagine photo’s of Iranian technitians swarming all over an, albeit 30 year old F-15B and stripping it down. Remember the Iranians have their own fledgling aerospace industry. An F-15 could teach them a lot I would have thought…

Something that big should not be as agile….mind you it carried no weapons and prob had min fuel. Mind you, very polished performance. The noewheel seemed to take a pounding on landing though. Anyone care to join me and go up against that monster in a Tornado F.3….????????? 😉

So wot if the F-15 can reach M2.5 in clean config only…it was still designed do it, albeit very rarely.

The Su-15 was rated at M2.5 in an military aviation book I once had…maybe they were too generous.

Two questions about mthat YB40….

First, would’nt the performance be a lot worse than the B-17? Lower speed due to increased drag from all those turrets and lower altitude due to extra gun weight, gun mountings, ammo and gunner crew. (a bit like gun equipped UH-1’s in Vietnam which although designed to escort troop carrying Heuy’s, could not keep up. Which sort of defeated the object of having an escort in the 1st place..)

Secondly, would there not have been a danger of freindly fire incidents with all those guns at various angles…

That is an awkward topic for the manufacturers of fighter jet avionic. The F-22 for example has an Intel 80960, which is about as powerful as a vintage i80286 and isn’t any more manufactured since 10 years. Same goes for the Eurofighter, which uses a Motorola 68000. And those are “modern” systems. There are still lots of a/c flying around with something like a 8086 or Z80 CPU. Your PDA propably has more power than the whole F-22. That’s why there is a move towards COTS hardware.

So the F-22 is a flying PC…and the Eurofighter is a winged Mac…

…just as I thought… 😉