aurcovThey are only questionable for official press releases of LockMart and ‘trustworthy pilot’ reports readers.. Which pilot was it who claimed that the 35 is almost as good as the 22? LOL, not even LockMart dares to claim that anymore.
It’s not the first time that you mention Beesley interview and each time you missquote him: Beelsely said that the F 35 is close to F 22 in subsonic. A paragraph later, he adds that it would be unfair to compare the F 35 with the F 22 in supersonic.
aurcovWhere F-35, Rafale and Typhoon are concerned, I have always thought the through life cost estimates on export F-35’s to be so unrealistic as to threaten the defence budgets of countries signing up to it. In contrast the nearest alternatives – Rafale and Typhoon – are extremely unlikely to leave ordering governments with unanticipated black holes in their defence budgets.
Yeah the Rafale and EF are sooo cheap….:p The only difference is that when you decide to buy a Rafale/EF you already know that you’ll have a black hole. But you are right, that would be an anticipated black hole…
aurcovCold logic does tell you, that the technology at hand will be incorporated, when the the design phase is frozen. The pace of the avionic-development jumps ahead in month or years. Here the NG will have an advantage of some years, just the later design phase limit in mind. Modern fighters are weapon-systems and a mixture of technologies of different years.
Just to give an idea about that.
The F-16A is a design of the 70s. Israel did receive Block 10 examples to start with and that were updated and upgraded every year to get a Block 10****.
In the 90s Israel got ex. USAF Block 10 examples for free nearly, which were not updated and upgraded in a similar sequence. After a time-slip of some years it is impossible bring that up to a similar Block 10**** standard for economical reasons. The other way is an expensive MLU upgrade to bring it to a F-16C Block ** level. In reality most fighters will get the related updates to their Block and were not upgraded to a higher Block because it is not worthwile after some time.
Similiar thing with Rafale F1-F3, when the F1 were retired from service not worth the cost for a higher upgrade.
Similar thing with Typhoon Tranche 1-3.
To cut that longer story short, do it compare with your PC. After some time the basic architecture had changed so much, that some possible upgrades are no longer economical compared to a new one and state of the present art.
I am sure that your 2008 top-end example will be surpassed by an ordinary one from 2011. Just the difference of 3 years in development. 😉
You didn’t get it: the guy said
The avionics in Gripen NG is more modern and advanced than those in F-35 for many years before the F-35 is updated.
-in this moment here is no such thing as grippen NG’ avioncs!
-SAAB depends of what bigger boys (from US or Europe) are willing (or allowed for that matter) to sell them;
-there is no guarantee that the NG will ever see production SAAB is the most export dependent of all producers. With liliputan orders of around 12 (Hungary, Thailand, Czech rep.) you can’t sustain an aerospace industry. Probably the S African order (28) will remain the largest.
Or, if a big order won’t come, the grippen NG will join the gallery of “what if”s: Arrow, Lavi, Mirage 4000 etc.
I think that the destiny of grippen is to be used as a blackmail tool for potential buyers of F 35 in order to make LM lower the price.
I think that it would be fair that SAAB receives a fee ar something for this:p
aurcovIt would be a lot more serious to compare to the number of F-16 crashes during its first 100’000 hours. There is a reason it was called the lawn dart. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
For the Gripen crashes I found a list of them on Wiki, one can se for one self if those had anything to do with quality of aircraft in operational service.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_JAS_39_Gripen
Of course more F 16 were lost, but only because > 4400 were built, compared with ~230 grippens. And yes, the overall F 16 figure is higher, because many older F 16A are still in use. The true measure is incidents/100,000 hours and to compare similar planes (i.e. F 16 built from the moment the grippen was operational, so both types have similar flying time). BTW F16 tend to crash more as they get older, not in the first 100,000 hours.
aurcov=signatory;1364950]:D
The avionics in Gripen NG is more modern and advanced than those in F-35 for many years before the F-35 is updated.
:p:p:p:p The thing barelly flew! How on earth can you know what will be inside? Moreover, how can you be so sure that it will see production, in the first place?
If you’re otoh not interested in national defense and CAS but instead look for a strike aircraft that need to hide to avoid enemy sensors just because it can’t fight then the F-35 is for you.
I always wonder why US invested zillions in stealth planes. Signatory enlighten me: astealth plane, let’s say the F22, must hide from enemy because it can’t fight ! :p:p:p:p
aurcov“Cheaper quality”?!
Way smaller, less range/payload, with a bigger RCS, yep, that´s the Gripen… But “Cheaper” has in “cheap”?!
In the aviation world there are two words that dont combine “SAAB” and “cheap”. The construction quality of SAAB produts his breathtaking, and i dont mean cars.
Cheers
Breathtaking quality of SAAB products ? Let’s see…The grippen A was operational in 1996. Let’s compare it with the similar LM product:
-F 16 (blk. 50/52, operational in 1991). At 100,000 hours, 2.3 class a incidents.
-the grippen thing totals a little over 100,000 hours. IIRC 5 were lost.
I wonder what’s the reason for this: the “breathtaking quality of SAAB products”, or crappy pilots … :diablo:
aurcovDoesn’t suggest ‘it can barely make Mach 1 clean’ to me. Rather:
And given that’s a full seven kilometres below its operational ceiling… well, it takes some doing to say that it will never properly supercruise even with its current engines.
Sergei Bogdan selected his words carefully, but did state: “At medium altitudes and with military power, the airplane was making a moderate supersonic speed and still accelerating. In one of the flights, I achieved Mach 1.1, and while the aircraft could accelerate further, I had to slow down because I was approaching the end of our supersonic flight zone.”
In this testing stage, no plane would carry external stores. If would be the case, be sure that the Russians would mention it, because this is what it counts.
And yes, in the future it is possible to achieve supercruise with weapons, as I already said
aurcovThe strategy of the F-35 is to produce it in huge numbers over a long period of time. If it turns out that it can’t get a confident kill in BVR on PAK-FA or J-XX and isn’t competetive against them in WVR that plan wont work. Instead you would have to cut the production short and build more F-22 instead or develop a new aircraft. Those who already has bought early F-35’s at high prices would then be losers.
Eurofighter, Gripen and Rafale on the other hand can be upgraded with better RAM coatings, jammers and decoys to prevent the opponent a BVR kill and force a merge. As they are more balanced designs that isnt so dependant on on BVR I would rather be a pilot in a eurocanard in that situation than an F-35.
You can put 10 layers of RAM on any eurocanard and still failing in effectivelly reducing their RCS. External weapons and EFT won’t help either. So stop worring about how a F 35 will perform vs a PAK FA (if ever produced). Because a Rafale/EF/Grippen would be dead meat.
aurcovOn an air-to-air mission with a radius of 200 n miles, no external fuel tanks but the same missile load and a requirement to accelerate from Mach 0.8 to Mach 1.8 at 30,000 ft, the F-35 was shown coming second last. With a requirement involving the same acceleration and the aircraft tasked for a 600 n mile ‘out and back’ mission, Mazanowski said the F-35 was “nothing stellar but certainly not an underperformer in this category”.
I missed this one in the first place! So it’s 1.8 M? I wonder what LordAssap/GlobalPress/Sampaix/Fonk has to say…:diablo::p:D
aurcovAccording to him huh? Really? Where?
aurcovSo what will happen if, some time after 2020, the F-35 meets a stealthy PAK FA? If Russia (heavily supported by India) manage to build a stealth a/c then isn’t there a good chance that those rare WVR can become more common again?
An F-35 cannot shoot down a PAK FA if the F-35 cannot detect, then track the PAK-FA. And the PAK FA would have the same issues with the F-35.
As others have pointed out, whereas the U.S has F-22 to handle future threats like PAK FA, the rest of the world does not… and F-35 is the only game in town. Hopefully it will perform well against the PAK FA also in VWR.
L
Really?
So a f 35 wont’t be able to shot down a PAK FA? Then, what are the chances of EF/Rafale/Grippen to do the same? :diablo:
aurcovMy point is that unless the F-35 somehow spectacularly outperforms everyone else in WVR it’s not going to get 2 kills with the gun to the enemy’s one. Which it doesn’t and won’t.
Why does that matter? A 6-to-one ratio tells me that if I put 1 F-35 against 6 competitors then the fight is even. It also means a fight by 10 F-35s is going to be balanced by 60 enemies. You can take adjust the numbers any way you like but if each F-35 can only down four aircraft in one sitting how do they end up with six? You can stick around all day but if you expend all your bombs or missiles then it’s not going to help an awful lot. As far as I’m concerned, in order for the F-35 to be considered swing-role it must be able to switch from an air-to-air role to an air-to-ground role on one loadout and maintain a competitive amount of combat ability in either. Even allowing for the fact that a pair of two quadruple SDB packs gives you a credible air-to-ground capability two AMRAAMs do not give you a credible air dominance capability, which is a fact acknowledged by highly placed US military officials. If you then take into account a possible extra pair of AMRAAMs in an expanded rack the situation brightens, but they will in all likelihood not be around until there is a fighter on the market that has that many or more internal hardpoints from the outset.
As I already acknowledged, they’re unlikely to do so in combat. I’ll admit I was unaware that Falcons and Eagles could supercruise when clean as well. Nevertheless, as a threat the ‘supercruising Flanker’ could, if requested, possibly appear sooner than the F-35. It’s simply a matter of will, albeit an unlikely one.
-the simulation conclusion is that ~ 7 % of the combats will end in WVR. And even in this case (WVR) the F 35 can confront the best (MKI, EF, rafale) with even chances.
-a “6:1 relative loss exchange ratio” in the simulation doesn’t mean that there will be 1 F 35 against 6 whatever A/C!
-the F 35 weapon load is enough to be considered swing role! 2.7 ton internal (A-G +2 AA missiles) are more than enough for deepstrike in VLO configuration. Is not less than what an F 16 could carry for 600 Nmiles, but without stealth. When the need for VLO drops (CAS mission), the F 35 can carry far more A-G ordonance than an F 16. That’s quite flexible IMHO.
aurcovI would just like to point out once again that the AMRAAM is not a magical weapon, as far as I remember they had 3 or 4 of them fired against MiG-29s in Serbia in order to bring down one airplane. And this happened given the fact that the opponent had no ECM whatsoever, no radar, almost no GCI support, and RWR that was not always functioning => no chaff. All that against an attack from multiple directions (the attackers having the advantage of high altitude and thus more energy for the missiles) with AWACS support. I can’t imagine an easier target.
In any large-scale engagement between F-35 and Su-35BM/Rafale/Typhoon on relatively equal terms, I would not rely on 4 AMRAAMs only. Given that you will probably have to fire 2 missiles per target or go for single missile/single target, the success rate won’t be high. You should consider the fact that once you are left with 1 missile or no missiles at all, you need to get out of the situation fast. This means that the BVR engagement (we assume that the F-35s will have the first shot, given better stealth) will not start at close ranges, as the F-35s would have to risk running into a dogfight with the surviving enemy planes without having anything to shoot at them. One should mind the fact that once detected, the F-35 will be chased by the enemy, and supercruising won’t help that much at short dashes when the enemy uses their afterburners and his radar is scanning the back of your aircraft (no stealth). This means that the AMRAAMs will have to fly further, which increases time for detection/reaction/countermeasures. The opponent’s airplanes will have time to try and outmanuever/bleed the energy out of the missiles. Also, complex ECM could be employed easily within a formation of aircraft. I know how great “home on JAM” sounds like, but the opposing aircaft could use a relatively loose formation while constantly changing the number and position of aircraft that are activating their ECM (could be done on automatically). For example, if you are effectively jamming the incoming AMRAAMs from the left of your formation, the missiles will turn towards it. Then you switch to employing ECM from the right of the formation, forcing the missiles to make a turn and so on. Here I do not even count the possibility that some of the enemy fighters have dedicated ECM pods or that there are dedicated aircraft trailing the fighter formation and providing additional ECM support.
Thus, I can’t see how an F-35 with 4 AMRAAMs could score more than one kill against a relatively sophisticated enemy, and this is done given the fact that the enemy airplanes are twice or four times cheaper than yours. Also, they carry more missiles, so even a few survivors with R-73/4 or ASRAAMs could mangle your F-35s when they have ran out of missiles.
-The AMRAAMs used in Kosovo were “A”. Now the “D” version is in LRIP (low rate initial production);
-In recent conflicts, not even the (A-A dedicated) F 15 flew with its full load of 8 missile. Usual they had 4 BVR and 2 WVR. Pictures of Flankers with 10 A-A missiles (I remember a Superhornet picture with 14 !) are no more than marketing BS. Yes, they are capable to carry them. No, it won’t be the usual load;
-If you consider that the Pk of AMRAAM is not stellar, what do you think the Pk of Russain missilea would be? Better or worst than US missiles? :p…
aurcovPerhaps ‘unimpressive’ was too harsh, but according to LM it’s nothing special:
In a WVR engagement, the differences in the capabilities of the various aircraft were barely measurable.
So, you have some top fighters such the MKI, EF, Rafale; LM said that in WVR there is no notable difference between those and F 35. In your opinion, the EF, the MKI, the Rafale are “unimpressive”?
Compared with something that can carry enough weapons to allow it to use that fuel, i.e. genuinely patrol airspace or perform CAS. As far as I know the SBD is not a CAS weapon, and nor are 2000lb JDAMs.
You said persistence not weapons, remember? And for CAS as Jason already mentioned, the F 35 can hang 6.5 tons externally. Adding the 2.7 ton weapon bay it’s ~9.2 ton. We are in F 15 E region. And, if the F 35 is doing CAS, it no longer needs stealth. CAS comes from close.
It’s a Flanker. It supercruises. In my mind that’s actually enough to make it qualify for the tag of ‘supercruising Flanker’. It probably won’t do it in combat no, but they could if they wanted to with a slight engine upgrade.
Nope. Until now, the Su 35 doesn’t supercruise more than a clean F 16 or F 15E (without CFTs). I don’t know in the future when they will tune those big Saturn-Lyulka engines. But for now it doesn’t. A clean supecruising fighter is a useless fighter.
aurcov2 AAMs does not make it swing-role. Given we’ve already had US generals stating they wake up in a cold sweat thinking about the F-35 trying to go air-to-air with two air dominance weapons, I don’t think it’s too much of a credible capability to fire two shots and go home if that’s what you’re expecting to do.
F 16 flew countless combat missions in A-G with 2 Sidewinders, and yet no one doubt it’s multirole capacity. In GW two F 18 shot down 2 MiG 21 (without dropping their A-G load). Guess what? They had also only 2 Sidewinders…
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