Yes… and no. 😉

The F-16 is clearly the better choice as a MULTIROLE air superiority and close air support fighter. Comparing their performance charts, it climbs ~50% faster, accelerates twice as fast, and has a sustained turn advantage of at least 5 degrees/second. In the close air support role, it burns 15 to 25% less fuel at low speeds (Mach 0.5-0.85), hence its legendary long legs. And all those pylons are very handy for air-to-ground stores.

(Numbers above obviously will vary somewhat by block and by speed/altitude)

BUT… the Mirage F1 remains competitive if you play to its strengths. Or rather to the Atar’s inherent strengths as a turbojet. 😉 Namely, TRANSONIC and SUPERSONIC performance.

Why? Well, remember the F100’s thrust and fuel burn advantage? This comes straight out of its turbofan design. The slower you go, the more bypass air contributes to thrust, and the more efficient your engine. But, this advantage diminishes as speed increases, and vanishes entirely somewhere around Mach 0.95-1.05. At that point, the Atar’s and F100’s dry thrust and fuel consumption curves crossover: not only is the Atar producing MORE dry thrust (than the F100-PW-200), it’s also burning less fuel for each pound of thrust created.

So this explains why the Mirage F1 can supercruise quite nicely (~Mach 1.15), despite its “underpowered” turbojet. This transonic efficiency is also useful for high-speed low-level penetration missions, like anti-ship strike.

Furthermore, the Atar’s transonic/supersonic fuel-burn advantage extends into most afterburner regimes. And the higher you go, the more thrust it produces relative to the F100 (also thanks to the shock cones). This could be useful for high-altitude supersonic penetration missions, like reconnaissance or offensive fighter sweeps.

To sum up, the Mirage F1 still has some interesting niche uses, which can be especially attractive for air forces that need to penetrate heavily defended airspace. Give it any mission that requires a high-speed ingress/egress, down low or at very high altitude, and it will shine. But give it a more run-of-the-mill defensive CAP or loitering CAS mission, and you’ll regret not sending an F-16!

Excellent post.

Need some thumbs-up emoticon here.

via Foreign Policy magazine and the Pulp-o-Mizer

PLAAF Su-27s need replacing; as China’s first modern combat aircraft they’ve been thrashed since induction getting legions of pilots up to speed. Shenyang has its hands full with J-11B, J-15 and J-16 and can’t keep up with demand. Russia likes foreign exchange. Simple enough really.

Access to 117S for J-20 flight testing is no doubt a welcome bonus. As for espionage issues, it’s a calculated risk. Russia knows that China will be competitive soon enough with or without it, and this order likely represents their last chance for a major arms deal with China before the latter achieves full independence, joint projects such as heavy-lift chopper notwithstanding.

Gun acts as structure, so removal was an issue. It doesn’t carry ammunition nor do pilots qualify with it.

Why remove it in any case? Gun could be useful against bombers, cruise missiles, UAVs…

Just a heads up, AF-23 left Lubbock after 4 hours.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/F-35-Forced-to-Land-in-Lubbock-Texas-After-Internal-Caution-Warning-336368.shtml

Pfft, Gripen would’ve left after 2 hours. :p

The only way the Penatgon could get a new jet past Clinton was if it addressed the needs of all three services. And all 3 services actively lobbied Congress for funding. JSF was born.

And this right here is the problem: Congress — and the Pentagon — being unwilling to make the hard choices about which requirements are more important than others. JSF was an abdication of governmental responsibility.

What should’ve happened is for it to be made clear that USMC’s requirements are not compatible with those of USAF and USN and that the former should be sacrificed for the latter, not least of all because the USAF/USN order book is ten times the size of USMC’s.

But course responsible governance doesn’t stop with telling USMC to STFU; next USAF is required to accept USN-dictated design, and USN is instructed to decide on a platform powered either by F119* or dual F414. Or perhaps this choice could be made by USAF in order to pacify their whining. 😉

But if all this had happened, what would’ve become of poor USMC left out in the cold? Well if the Europeans hadn’t scraped something together themselves for USMC to poach, a dedicated VTOL program probably would’ve been established under the Bush administration!

* And of course if F119 had been chosen then the improved economies of scale on the most expensive component of F-22 would’ve made that program far more resistant to cancellation also. Instead of contributing in this manner, JSF was actively complicit in assassination of F-22.

Inability to achieve cost targets is a byproduct of the acquisition process.

Every program office weighs cost versus risk. To keep prices low, the PO often makes assumption that everything will happen as planned and all activities meet requirements, are on time and on budget. In other words, every program starts as a success-oriented program. But the reality is many activities do not go to plan. If there is not enough schedule margin and budget reserved to address those issues, the program falls behind.

Government proposal evaluators are allowed to “risk up” a contractor’s proposal, adding cost and schedule to a contractor’s proposal to address activities they deem to be overly optimistic.

All of this is proscribed in DODI 5000.02, the FARs and other acquisition regulations.

Which is where you come to the disconnect between the ostensible objectives of the program — to deliver an affordable aircraft — and the actual interest of the services in making no sacrifices whatsoever to achieve this.

JSF should’ve been rejected at the conceptual level as an unacceptably risky proposition. That a workable aircraft may eventually emerge from the process, drastically over budget and following many delays, is testament to the power of perseverance. But it was and remains a terrible idea. It could well be that the wealth and technological leadership of the United States will enable it to weather such a major misjudgement without catastrophic results, but that doesn’t mean one should celebrate it.

Here’s another way of looking at it: If F-35 was a SAAB or Dassault or Eurofighter Consortium or MiG or SAC project, it would be long-dead and so would they and the repercussions for the parent nations in terms of future development, national sovereignty, etc. would be profound if they did not wipe out such prospects entirely. Only the United States can afford a ‘success’ like F-35.

F-35 — The Omnishambles Fighter

According to Google, although ‘F-35’ has been paired with ‘omnishambles’ on a variety of occasions, I am the first person to use this exact phrase evoking Dassault’s sales tag for Rafale as ‘The Omnirole Fighter’. All royalties via PayPal, etc. :p