PL

Tak for that

So how many Gripens would you say at at F14 in any given week – and are they all there for training?

Is Halmstad being used to store any of the excess jets that are not on the squadrons?

Are the aircraft that have been earmarked for Hungary there, or somewhere else?

YS

As the AMRAAM has already been released to Singapore the RSAF has passed the biggest hurdle here.

US State Department export policy for weapons like AMRAAM hinges on whether or not a prospective customer nation has been cleared to acquire it. Singapore has – therefore the AMRAAM should be available to every rival platform in the NFRP competition. It’s already the baseline weapon for the F-15 and Eurofighter, so there is no issue there. While AMRAAM is not integrated on the Rafale, should Dassault win out in Singapore Raytheon has said there is no technical reason why the missile could not be made available for Rafale. They *have* thought about it before now.

And as for Python 4, that’s already in Singapore – isn’t it?

YS

The Iranians are very fond of re-using the same programme names over and over again and the Kosar tag has been associated with maybe four different possible systems. A quick look at the AIO website shows Kosar listed on the products page and a photo of an unidentifiable missile being fired from a patrol boat.

I’m not sure if Kosar is C-701 – I wonder what its links might be to FL-8 and FL-9?

YS

Folks I’m sorry, but I just don’t get the endless obsession on this Forum with these pointless debates about which hot plane is the best hot plane. It’s playground talk. Does anyone expect to come up with some stunning revelation here? It’s just such a waste of everyone’s time – there are no clear cut answers.

The best you can say is that some days you’ll win, some days you’ll loose. Perhaps the days that you win outnumber the days that you loose – but eventually you will loose (or win, or whatever).

Having said that, here’s an extract from a piece in today’s Defense Daily. It’s mostly a booster for the F/A-22 but it’s another indicator of what a bad time the USAF F-15s had out in India.

Because there are days when you *think* you’re going to win – but then you don’t…

Please don’t repost.

**
Cope India 04 Led Some In Air Force To Take a ‘Step Back’ Regarding F-15C Tactics

Lorenzo Cortes

TYNDALL AFB, Fla.–The Air Force’s recent experience in training with Indian air force crews flying Sukhoi Su-30 fighters is leading some in the service to take a “step back” and study its use of Boeing [BA] F-15C fighters and also assess whether it can continue to rely on superior training indefinitely in a world where it sees technological parity with regard to fighter aircraft, according to service officials.

F-15Cs and crews from the 19th Fighter Squadron (FS) based at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, participated in the Cope India 04 maneuvers earlier this year in India, where the aircraft flew against Indian Su-30s in various exercises, including dissimilar air combat exercises (Defense Daily, April 1). The Su-30 and the other numerous derivatives of the Russian Su-27 fighter family are the primary air-to-air threats the Air Force expects to combat in the future and in turn is one of the major selling points for acquiring Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] F/A-22 fighter. The Air Force expects F/A-22 to reach initial operational capability (IOC) in December 2005. The program is presently in initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E) (Defense Daily, May 3).

The crews came away from the exercise believing they had to implement changes to the way they use their F-15Cs in combat. The Air Force is still compiling the results of the entire Cope India 04 experience, but the service is trying to determine mainly why the exercise didn’t produce “the outcome we exactly expected,” Lt. Col. Mike Stapleton, operations officer for the 43rd FS, said Wednesday.

“Our superior training has won our wars lately,” Brig. Gen. Larry New, commander of the 325th Fighter Wing here, said during a media briefing with reporters here Wednesday. Stapleton added that he did not want to tell his pilots that with all of their training, the only thing they could hope for was to “fly to tie.”

Chaps

Can we stay focussed on what’s going on here – and what’s really at stake.

Blah, blah, blah – yeah every aircraft has problems. But this is a very specific problem for a very specific aircraft and it’s a VERY bad one.

There are lots of other serious issues with the JSF but sticking purely to the STOVL weight issue…

The STOVL F-35 is running out of time if it’s going to make it. As an aircraft that is ‘only’ for the Marines it’s already bottom of the list in terms of importance and top of the list when (OK, if) push comes to shove and cuts have to be made. That’s a fact.

More imminently, the UK is at a critical, critical point in its decision path. OK, so the UK has not actually ordered any JSFs yet but its entire carrier plan and therefore its entire concept for future expeditionary airpower is being built around the STOVL JSF which was never a cast-iron proposition and is now clearly in trouble.

This is a programme that should have passed its CDR already – instead, the EMD phase has been rescheduled by 12 months while LM has consistently said that the weight problem was solvable.

Now we are told that the jet is one and a half metric tonnes overweight – that means that as a carrier-borne aircraft it cannot function. It has no bring-back, insufficient combat reach, compromised operational utility.

In the UK they have to make a decision to move forward with the RN’s carrier building plan right now (it’s already late). How can they have any confidence that the JSF will be available as advertised?

It is possible (just) to say that this problem can still be fixed. But it’s very difficult to see how. Lifting that kind of weight out of a design will be hellish – especially when the fundamentals of your design (lift fan etc.) are what’s imposing the weight in the first place. Also, as the STOVL aircraft do go into service and gain weight, as all aircraft do during their lives, what happens then? It’s not going to be enough to knife-edge the weight into the spec – where will the future growth margin be?

We are NOT in the early stages of this programme, we are well into the EMD phase here and issues like this should be firmly behind us. Instead they are worse than anyone suspected.

It IS a big deal.

YS

FTD

Well, things have moved on and the problem has been solved – which is good, because you were defending the indefensible.

Anyone involved in a professional, commercial publishing venture has to pay attention to these *details* – which are not inconsequential, they will make or break you. If words are your trade then you’d better know how to use them.

For the record, a typo is not the same as a fundamental mis-understanding of the language. The correct use of the possessive apostrophe in AUTHORS (the plural of author) is AUTHORS’.

You only use S’S if it is a singular word ending in S.

So nul point there.

You make a lot of assumptions about who I might be or where I might be from. It doesn’t matter if I am Irish or not – your original point of ‘bejaysus it doesn’t matter’ (and I’m *paraphrasing* for you there) was not a particularly good defence of what was clearly an error. As Irish people are renowned as the most skilled users of the English language I expect much, much better from you all.

Taj
If you are onboard with this new magazine, as it seems you are, then good luck and I too will be looking for a copy.

Slan libh

YS

Well done whoever is behind this, it’s a tough nut to crack and I wish you well

BUT

a sound smack to whoever left the apostrophe out of IRELAND’S and decided to put one IN to An-124s.

Not a good start – perhaps this is only a dummy cover but it appears to have been produced by one.

YS

As for C-701, it’s not really a Chinese Maverick as it has no air-launched application. C-701 remains a weapon for smaller naval vessels and no aircraft integration is planned, for now. Quite what’s happening in Iran with it is anyone’s guess…

YS