Adrian_44RE: BEST WAY TO BUILD A FIGHTER?
The USAF chose a very high risk program for they knew when the Soviet Union did develope a counter to the F-14 and F-15, the USAF wanted to be able to soon introduce an aircraft that had the technical edge over the opposition the way F-15 had over the MiG-21, -23, & -25 for many years.
The USAF also had to deal with the reality that the Congress would not fund a new super fighter 10-15 years after the introduction of the F-15 in 1975.
DARPA, the CIA and, “air intelligence” did a study of what would be needed in the time period of 1990 to 2010 for the USAF to have true air superiority over the Soviet AF. Then take into account what the technical advantage to USA would have over the USSR.
With these items facing them a high risk program like the F-22 was the only real option.
The real problem arose after spending $35B on the project the Cold War ended. The USAF told the contractors to adjust their pricing and schedules for the eventual reality of production numbers and production rate being cut plus, the finanacial situation would be greatly reduced. This took over a year and a half in the middle of the design process. This mess of a program the F-22 is in now is not the fault of those in design, development or, manucturing…. it falls squarely at the feet of those who lack vision and control the budget!
The best way to build a fighter is the way the YF-16 and YF-17 were designed into fighters, a degree of urgency but, not wasteful. A well defined purpose for the new fighter. To be able to call on a variety of technologies recently developed but still considered state of the art.
Adrian
Adrian_44FYI -F-22’s Stablators
I found this posting on F-16.Net
http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-6130.html
>> Raptor_claw <<
>> It just drives me nuts when people compare wing loading numbers for an F-22 and F-15. Why? In short, because of the lift distribution for unstable vs stable airframes. Conventional (stable) airframes require downforce from the horizontal stabs to maintain trim. Relaxed-stability (unstable) airplanes do not (at least not in the portions of their envelopes where they are likely to approach Clmax). In other words, the F-15 wing has to not only support the weight of the structure, it has to generate additional lift to balance the downforce from the tail. An F-22 gets the opposite effect – the wing can actually generate less lift than weight because the tail is helping, creating positive lift. (This, by the way, is a significant portion of the drag savings, as all lift (up or down) generates drag.) <<
The F-22 maneuvers like previous aircraft. It will be the benchmark in performance for many years to come, as was the F-15 Eagle.
True the F-22 has no canards but, canards are not a cureall. It greatly depends on the overall design and what the designers are trying to accomplish. The F-35 had canards until the design was taken to the NASA wind tunnel at Aims Research Center, Mt. View, Cal. After 160 hours of wind tunnel testing, it was decided the design was better off without the canards. It was not just stealth that lead to that decision.
The F-22 is designed to excel and fight in an area of the performance envelope no other aircraft. It can come down and mix it up if it ‘has to’ but why should it….. it can fight and maneuver effectively where no other aircraft can -high speed and high altitude.
In the conclusion of the Austrailian Air Force’s evaluation for the next aircraft to replace the F-111 they made the following statement about the Typhoon in comparison to the F-22;
Austrailian Air Force Evaluation of New Fighters
http://www.ausairpower.net/typhoon.html
“What conclusions can we draw about the Typhoon? The notion that the aircraft is “almost as good as an F-22″ is not supportable, indeed upgrading the F-15 with engines and a radar/IRS&T/AAM package of the same generation as that of the Typhoon would equalise almost all advantages held by the Typhoon over older F-15C/E variants. By the same token, no upgrades performed on the F/A-18A/C would equalise the performance advantages of the Typhoon over these aircraft.”
Adrian
Adrian_44RE: The Balance of Iranian Air Forces
You are correct my mistake, the Iranians had F-4’s and F-5’s. They tried and almost recieved 46 A-4’s, 18 F-4’s, 2,000+ TOW Missiles, 235 kits for MIM-23 Hawk Missiles, etc. from Israel. This was all uncovered during the “Iran Contra” scandal! This information was released by the US Congress during their investigation. The London based periodical “London Observer” estimated that Tel Aviv sold $500M worth of US weapons annually to Tehran during the mid-1980’s! I can not believe that Israel was selling that much American equipment and US Intell did not know anything about it. Early in the war in a news brief AW&ST made mention of the efforts of Iran to obtain military equipment from Israel.
Adrian
Adrian_44RE: The Balance of Iranian Air Forces
one has to mention religious cleansing in the armed forces. Many skilled Shah’s riders were ‘deleted’ due to their past
I don’t know the criteria for the purge but, many Tomcat crews did survive. Some of whom are currently retiring.
I just said that the photos showing Tomcats with red stars are fake
I did not see any ground level photographs just two that were taken by satellite.
There was no flame out and Powers was up at 70,000ft when the SAM took him out.
Thank you for the correct information! I had never read of this before.
bearing in mind that Soviet-Iranian relations weren’t that good in the 1980s, would the Iranians really allow the Soviets to compromise the technology and learn the secrets of what is after all – the leading air defence fighter in the Iran’s own air force?
Tehran danced with the devil more than once! Israel helped provide spare parts for Iranian A-4’s and F-4’s. If they would deal with a Jewish state, dealing with an aetheist state certainly isn’t any worst!
If the Soviets had been allowed to have a look at an F-14 it seems the Americans didn’t know or didn’t care
the Soviets responded by almost completely replacing the radar and missile guidance electronics of the now compromised interceptor. What did the Americans do to the F-14?
American ‘hubris’! At that time the US semiconductor industry was about fifthteen years ahead of the Soviet semiconductor industry. So the Soviets having the knowledge of what we did was not all that bad because they would have to take a totally different approach to accomplish the same thing. The Soviet was not using microcircuits in their aircraft at that time! Belenko’s MiG-25 used analog circuits with vacuum tubes in their avionics.
The US Navy constantly improved the F-14, it was the first defense against airborne attacks. The F-14B was introduced and the F-14C was planned but dropped in favor of waiting a little longer and adding those changes to some others and creating the F-14D.
Adrian
Adrian_44RE: The Balance of Iranian Air Forces
There is also on the Internet pictures of an F-14 at a Soviet airbase!!
Those are fake.
Actually there are real, long before the photos reached the public sector, information about them and the reasons for the for the Tomcats being in the Soviet Union were well known. The Soviet AF wanted a good look at a fourth generation American aircraft and primary weapon system, the F-14 and Phoenix Missile. The Iranians wanted technical assistance in maintenance, reverse engineering and, help in building an indigenous aviation industry.
The thermal batteries for the Phoenix missile were exausted by 1987, guess how the Iranians were able to keep the Phoenix Missiles currently operational? New wiring, rocket motors, and cooling systems for the Phoenix Missile have also been built. Assistance with reverse engineering has helped but, updating Iran’s technical infra-structure to a large extent has been a big factor.
Also, have you wondered why the IRIAF has only accepted a few MiG-29’s even though Russia keeps pushing for a major purchase of over one hundred MiG-29’s. Without a sizeable number of MiG-29’s, if the F-14A is not operational then, the most modern fighter the IRIAF has is the F-4 Phantom 2!
A lot of Soviet assistance came with the price of exchange of technical information. Guess what information the Iranian AF had that the Soviet AF really wanted?
the 60s where the US assumed the Soviets probably couldn’t even detect U-2 flights because they assumed their radars were still WWII sets the US had delivered.
They could detect the U-2, they just could not do anything about it as long as the U-2 stayed at altitude (except diplomatic protest). The USA had been flying over the Soviet Union for four years before Powers was shot down. Many of the flight were from Turkey to Norway. Powers was shot down due to a flame-out and he decended from seventy to fifty thousand feet to restart the engine. That is where the U-2 was shot down by the SAM. US air intelligence knew the Soviet defenses were getting better. Kelly Johnson kept tabs of what was going on and on his own intiative started the process which started the SR-71 in developement back in 1958.
The fighters assigned to protect the AWACS will likely have jammers
The importance of the AWACS would dictate an dedicated jammer for protection not just the fighter’s jammers. Jammers on fighters are not designed to blanket area with protection but, rather just the local vacinity to protect the individual fighter.
One of the upgrades the S-3 Sentry will recieve soon will be a towed decoy jammer that it can deploy. The newest of anti RF-missile counter measures. Other counter-measure of which the S-3 might have are seldom mentioned.
The Iranian ability to obtain ‘black market’ parts for US aircraft involved the cooperation between Jerusalem and Tehran in keeping the latter’s Phantoms flying was one of the most unusual partnerships in aviation history.
Right after the Iran-Iraq War broke out in 1980, the number of spares for the A-4 Skyhawks to Israel increased by 25% even though the IAF was phasing out that aircraft. It was one of those “open secrets”, Time Magazine, AW&ST, West Germany’s Stern Magazine, etc. had articles about this topic.
R-73s are a reality. After all, integrating an IR-guided missile is an relatively easy task.
True, the issue of May 2006 Combat Aircraft mentions the integration of the R-73 to the F-14. The reason is simple, the R-73 is an improvement over the other IR missiles the non-MiG-29 fighters in the IRIAF.
The IRIAF’s Self-Sufficiency Group of engineers was also reported to have carried out a modification to its inventory of HAWK surface-to-air Missiles (SAMs) permitting them to be fired by their remaining F-14 fighters.
Yes the IRIAF did mate the two weapons but, they did not get the results they were hoping for and discontiued the program. They were trying to develope another SEAD weapon.
there is a tendancy to over-estimate the capability of the Iranian armed forces in some quarters
I don’t feel there is much over estimation but, there is a good deal of under estimation due to anti-Iranian bias by America and anti-Islamic bias by the West in general. The pilots under the Shah were well thought of. Then when the religeous leaders took over the country, suddenly these same pilots and technicians were no longer as competent! B.S.!!
Adrian
Adrian_44Liar
A very strong charge against a person’s integrity, especially not knowing the person’s intent! The person ‘could’ simply have a different opinion…. reguardless of who is right or wrong.
If that were true then what would the performance of the F-22 against the E-3 mean? How likely is an F-22 actually to engage an E-3
In an exercise earlier this year, an AWACS was killed then the two F-15C’s that were the escort! The F-22 was able to get within Slammer range of the AWACS without being detected.
Now let us speculate, if the AWACS was patrolling at around 30,000 feet and in its normal scanning the beam scans upward at 15° to 20°. By the time the F-22 would be close enough to be detectible, it would be in the AWACS’s “cone of silence.” From that position the F-22 could do what it wanted without concern of being detected.
There is little likelyhood the F-22 would face the S-3 Sentry but, there are several other AWACS that should be concerned.
Flankers are probably tested against all sorts of radars too to test both the flankers RCS and the radars performance against different aircraft types. Doesn’t mean that the F-22 is undetectable.
Not to the same extent, since it doesn’t depend on stealth as a prime factor in its combat performance.
Adrian
Adrian_44RE: AWACS Type Aircraft in Danger?
Aerospace Daily & Defense Report (10/03/2006)
STEALTHY AWACS: The F-22’s operational debut is winning fans and the stealthy fighter is shaking off its reputation as a Cold War anachronism. In the recent Northern Watch exercises in Alaska, less-advanced fighters received situational awareness and targeting information from F-22 intelligence-gathering systems and long-range radar. Once the F-22s had expended their missiles, “they remained in the middle of the battle acting as [a stealthy] AWACS,” says a Washington-based observer. The F-22 was able to gather and dispense intelligence from the center of the battle.
In the Exercise Northern Watch the F-22 scored a kill ratio of 108:0 and as an AWACS it enabled legacy fighters to scored 42:1 kill ratio.
An F-14D was part of the exercise, it died just like all other oponents did.
In another exercise an AWACS was killed then the two F-15C’s that were the escort!
how about an F-14 with a phoenix being locked on then u would sh*#.
oh not so much these days
The F-14 has to detect the F-22 first. In the Exercise Northern Watch the F-22 evidently was able to avoid detection by the F-14D’s -IR, optical and, radar systems.
the Raptor is a huge high flying IR target if the AWACS is equipped with IR sensors
Actually it is not. The most effective frequencies for IR detection are the 3µ to 5µ and 9µ to 12µ, the F-22 is designed so the heat it emmits are not in these frequencies.
The more you learn of the F-22 the more you realize the F-22 is a well thought out fighter!
The AWACS did not see the F 22 until after the Raptor pilot called the kill!!
The pilot did not call the kill, the ACMI system registered the kills.
there is no question about this US test of E-3s and F-22s being staged to justify these expensive fighters.
Your perspective is off, the stealth aircraft is tested against all known radars, IR and other detection systems. Work is done to study what is in all possible oponent’s systems in operation, developement or, design processes to insure that the information is known about how far and under what circumstances the F-22 can be detected. What possible passive counters the F-22 can use to avoid detection. That is why the stealth aircraft are so expensive!
Adrian
Adrian_44RE: Best Naval aircraft for STOL
Apart from the Harrier derivatives and the F35, which Naval aircraft requires the shortest decks for take off? The French Rafaele, the US F18’s, any other US planes, or a Russian plane?
It is difficult to say since the Rafale requires the same catapults the F/A-18E/F does. The MiG-29K and Su-33 use the ski-ramp to take off of a carrier. They all require assistance of one form or another to take-off a ship.
I guess what you have to find out which aircraft requires the shortest take-off run on land.
Adrian
Adrian_44RE: F-15N Sea Eagle
The CFTs were usually not carried in USAF service, except of course by Strike Eagles and Iceland Eagles.
That is incorrect, it was standard on the F-15C’s. Every photo of any F-15 that went to Iraq (either time) had CFT’s. The F-15’s in Alaska, Hawaii, Okinawa, etc. all have them. The F-15’s launched the morning of 09-11-01 had CFT’s.
The CFT was one of the first upgrades identified to be needed by the F-15A’s. This was part of the “Production Eagle Package (PEP 2000) improvements” program, and this was made starting in the “C” variant in 1979! In aerial combat the F-15A’s worked the verticle far greater than any previous aircraft. This consumed fuel at a greater rate than the designers had planned. The CFTs were originally known as “Fuel And Sensor, Tactical (FAST)” packs as there were schemes to use them to carry defense-suppression or reconnaissance payloads as well, but these schemes didn’t pan out. The CFTs were initially put through flight trials in 1974 with the second TF-15A. The USAF did not select the F-15E as its deep interdiction fighter-bomber until March 1984 (AW&ST 03/05/84 Pg 18 & 19).
This of course changed with the advent of the later model F-14B/D’s with GE F-110-400’s engines. Which, were rated around 27,000-29,000lbs depending on the source…..
The real problem was that the replacement for the TF-30 engines arrived so late. True, it wasn’t the Navy’s fault (the B-1A Lancer was cancelled by President Carter) and the F-101, re-designated F-110. President Regan re-started the B-1 program (now B-1B), and one byproduct was the F-14 got an engine that was designed for a fighter.
It is true that there appears to be a debate as to the afterburner thrust rating of the F-110-GE-400 actual thrust.
Adrian
Adrian_44RE: What determine the radar’s range?
Why is Amraam has shorter ranger than the Aim-7M,L that it was replaced? So as the russian missiles, the active guided missile have shorter range than semi-one. and the french too.
The US Military did more study during the 1980’s at their aircombat laboratories into a more usefull means to measure the effectiveness of a missile. Range was less important than once thought. One measure that came out of this is the “no escape zone.” To the heart of your question, absolute range is not as valuable as “usable range.” So the AMRAAM has a shorter overall range but, the flexibility of the missile in being able to launch and then launch aircraft maneuver makes it a far better weapon than a missile which has more range but forces the launch aircraft to retain radar contact on the target. Many times during the Iran/Iraq War, many Iraqi pilots would fire a Super 530 missile (which is SARH) at a distant target. If the Iraqi pilot felt he was in combat with an F-14A he would have to be very careful. If under attack by the F-14A/Phoenix Missile combination, the Iraqi pilot would have to break radar lock-on in order to evade the possible incomming Phoenix Missile. Now if the Iraqi pilot had fired an ARH missile, he could maneuver and have greater confidence that his missile will still make the kill.
Range information for comparison purposes only obtained from a single source tends to have less conflicts than from various sources. But, as crobato stated, you don’t know the conditions of the test. Is the test a real world scenario of best case scenario?? Not just the missile but the condition of the detecting airborne radar.
Does it have to do with radar tracking range?
Partly….. the ARH and SARH missile have different requirements. The ARH missiles have a shorter range but, the missile’s flexibility is far greater. Updates by way of data link are good but, they increase the probability of a kill. While doing that it is not mandatory.
The ARH missile must get close enough for their radar to detect the target. Against LO targets like the F-22 the missile has to get even closer in order to detect it. Having to be two to three kilometers from the F-22 for the Adder Missile seeker head to detect and kill versus being near twenty kilometers away in order to detect and kill say an F-15 or Su-27, means the Adder would require a later update to insure an high probability of kill, provided the launch aircraft could provide that data.
Can you possibly elaborate on this?
See my previous posting.
Adrian
Adrian_44RE: Video – Gulf War Viper evading SAMs over Baghdad
Thank you Mike for the reference to the video. It looks similar to some video of some F-16’s which attacked some SAM sites in Kuwait. The thought of F-16’s using dumb bombs to take out SAM sights sounds scary. This group was an ANG squadron from North Carolina.
Adrian
Adrian_44RE: F-15N Sea Eagle
The F-14’s had a very good record against F-15’s in ACM………….both were approximate equals! Had more to do with the quality of there respect of pilots than the capabilities of either mount.
Don’t forget the ROE’s! The only exercise I know of where the F-14 Tomcat was allowed to use the Phoenix Missile was an exercise where B-1 Lancers were escorted by F-15C’s were attack a fleet, simulating Blackjack bombers and Flanker escorts.
The F-15’s were not on a fighter sweep, they were dedicated escorts close to the bombers. The F-14’s were able to engage the bombers without being hasseled by the fighter escort.
If the F-14’s were allowed to simulate a Phoenix Missile launch and the F-15’s were forced to honor the shot, they would have to honor that shot, maneuver hard thus losing energy and giving up their altitude advantage.
Another factor is which models are being compared AND….. what time period in history. When the F-14A and F-15A were introduced, the F-14 did quite well but, a year or so after becomming operational the F-15 probably did its best against the F-14. After that the F-15 did good against the F-14. That is before the CFT’s and the reduction in thrust of the engines.
As my ‘late’ friend Art (a Tomcat pilot) said, how do they expect us to beat these guys when their aircraft weighs 10,000 pounds less than our aircraft and each of their engines produce 10,000 pounds of thrust more than our engines! He made that statement when he was forced to encounter two F-15A’s by himself (1V2).
Due to reliability problems the F-100 engines were later “detuned” from 30,000 pounds of thrust each down to 25,000 pounds of thrust. The CFT’s also added weight to the F-15’s.
Adrian
Adrian_44RE: What determine the radar’s range?
some stated that F16’s radar has even longer range than Rafale.
The current F-16 AN/APG-68 radar has a shorter range than the Rafale’s RBE2 radar. The upgrade of the F-16’s radar the AN/APG-80 to be installed in the Block 60 F-16’s will have less range (versus the RBE2) but, better resolution against small potential targets at extreme ranges. The specs I have seen on the RBE2 is spec’d against a 5m² RCS while the specs for the AN/APG-80 is against a 1m² RCS.
What the capability of the radar of the Rafale’s major upgrade around 2010, I have seen very little information.
USAF did not allow GD to discuss AIM-7 or CW illuminators for APG-66 because Jimmy Carter would have killed the “expensive” F-15A. Everybody at GD knew it could be done as it was part of the F-16N proposal that lost to MDD’s F-18.
The F-16A as djcross stated, the USAF would not allow GD nor Northrop to incorporate into the designs of the YF-16 and YF-17. All the screamming about the price of the F-15A, congress nor the administration would have been smart enough to see the need for the F-15A had the F-16A been able to fire the Sparrow Missile. (The USAF was correct, in my opinion.) The F-16C did not get the ability to fire the Sparrow Missile until the USSR desolved and the USAF found how badly it would be needed against the MiG-29.
The US Navy’s version of the LWF competition was required to be able to fire the Sparrow Missile. So, had the YF-16 been selected and, GD been able to make the changes that would be required to make the F-16 carrier capable, the Westinghouse AN/APG-66 would have been modified to operate with the Sparrow Missile.
The USAF did equip a few squadrons of F-16’s with Sparrow Missiles but, they were only stationed in the USA, none overseas. This was before the F-16’s were equipt with Slammer Missiles in the early 1990’s.
Some F-16 units of NORAD and ANG/AFR (were) equipt with Sparrow Missiles. Bahrain, Egypt, and Taiwan also have F-16’s equipt with Sparrow Missiles.
YF-16/F-16 Firing a Sparrow Missile URL;
http://www.f-16.net/f-16_armament_article6.html
http://www.f-16.net/gallery_item16728.html
Adrian
Adrian_44RE: Why all MiG #’s odd?
The USAF ordered the A-7D Corsair II on November 5, 1965… THREE years AFTER the redesignation. Until that time, there were no USAF Corsairs… especially in 1962, like I said!
I am not disputing your point about the time in which the B-66 served the USAF. The thrust of my point was the aircraft that served both the USAF and USN, reguardless of designations or time periods. I had forgottened about the F-5, F-16 (Navy aggressor), T-37, etc. Once you stop thinking of just combat fighters, there are many other aircraft that come to mind.
Please tell me more about the F-1, F-86, A-3 & B-66
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/rb-66.htm
Or Google….. “FJ-2 Fury” OR, “A-3D Skywarrior” + “B-66”
Adrian
Adrian_44RE: Why all MiG #’s odd?
The FJ-2 is a bit of an oddity. The designation would imply that it was the second variant of the first fighter from North American, but as the FJ-1 was a straight-winged jet and the FJ-2 was a navalized Sabre with swept wings
Remember, the F-86 was a by-product or development of the FJ-1 Fury program! The FJ-2 Fury was as you stated a ‘navalized’ F-86 Sabre.
The only aircraft in both Navy and USAF service in 1962 was the Phantom…
Don’t forget the A-7 Corsair 2 and many different models of helicopters.
Adrian
Sign In
