HotshotThis was week ago in Oulu…its been much warmer since…for a week.
US ambassodor to Finland speaks here; http://www.istv.fi/kotimaa/vid-1424870954935.html
Bicycle season starts in a week if it keeps going like this.
Here is the week forecast in Oulu; http://www.foreca.fi/Finland/Oulu
I checked the forecast, the temperature is not bad but it’s raining. It sounds like southern Quebec but darker in the winter time. Do you get a lot of rain? With the sea close by I would think so.
HotshotSo there is like 25 deg C of difference with Iqaluit ( w/o taking into account the wind ) for the same latitude!
It is not that cold in Finland, I would have thought it would have been colder. I imagine the temperature must increase very quickly at this time of year because of the increased solar input. The sea is still frozen I guess?
HotshotAre you predicting a major conflict involving the entirety of US air power between 2016 and 2018 (such that 2 AMRAAMs will fall short)?
More lame excuses to defend the F-35…
I am not predicting anything. And we are talking about the period until block 4 which is not 2018, but 2021+.
What is the point of building this plane if its capabilities are not needed? The US want 2500 of those so it is probably not for nothing.
I would also point out that the F-22 has been cancelled in 2009 so one would expect the USAF to try and compensate for the much reduced number of F-22s with more air to air capabilities on the F-35s.
Just putting its age next to it doesn’t not make the munition dated. JDAMs, SDB-Is and JSOWs are still far from needing replacement. And in 2018, the UK and France will have only a handful of Meteors with the bulk of their inventories consisting of Aim-120Cs and MICAs. And the Aim-120C7 will still remain competitive against anything fielded in rest of the world.
They are decent weapons but the SDB 2 is very much needed to increase the F-35’s payload against moving targets in stealth mode.
Why did they build the 120D if it is not significantly better? The 120D brings interesting capabilities to the table. Even one F-22 pilot ( Dozer I believe ) said the 120D was a big improvement over the C for the F-22. One cannot naively expect the AMRAAM to have a high pk against advanced threats, so the missile has to be as good as possible.
If CAS/interdiction is called for before 2022, its highly unlikely that the aircraft will be required to perform it in ‘stealth’ mode.
So the argument that the USAF needs a stealth plane so much for CAS for survivability reasons is BS… and the A-10 can do the trick until 2022, right?
Oh and I saw one more ridiculous argument of yours:
The Eurofighter and Rafale were operational for a full TEN YEARS before they received proper precision strike capability (not including the T1’s ‘Austere’ mod). And I wouldn’t be surprised if the SDB-II integration on the Gripen E happened only after 2020.
You do realize that the amount of money poured into the F-35 is much larger than what has been spent on the european fighters, don’t you? It is disingenious to try and compare the 2 without taking this obvious fact into account.
Also of course the F-35 needs the SDB II much more than european fighters, because it needs many miniaturized weapons for its internal bays. The eurocanards can make do with larger weapons on external pylons. And the SDB II is american, the european countries don’t want it on their planes that much.
As for the rafale, it entered service in 2004 for the Aeronavale with the F1 standard. It couldn’t carry a/g guided munitions because it was very urgent to field it to replace the crusader. The F2 entered service 2 years later in 2006 and the F3 in 2009. The F2 does have precision strike capabilities, and the F3 carries the SCALP-EG, AASM and exocet. The AASM has proved to be an effective weapon, it is powered so it has more range than an SDB at low altitude and is twice the size. Not bad for a country that spends a tiny fraction of what the F-35 consortium spends. Wadayathink, fanboy?
HotshotPOT KETTLE BLACK
Draw your own conclusions
Hum well actually I did change my mind to some extent on the F-35. Because I am capable of critical thinking. Are you?
HotshotFor those interested in reality it is interesting to note the difference between the vague assertions made on one hand by those inclined to a favourable view of the F35 and the hard facts presented by those with less favourable views.
Thanks Hotshot and hoppy.
The F-35 fanboys behave pretty much like a sect. If they were to stop following the dogma of the sect they would be immediately rejected by their little friends, which would destroy their little ego.
Being able to change one’s mind or at least to trying to nuance one’s point of view is more a sign of intelligence and honesty than a sign of weakness. That’s what they don’t seem to grasp.
I don’t think everything is bad about the F-35 but taking always its defense like it’s the best thing since sliced bread is really stupid and childish. pfff…
HotshotThe SDB II was originally intended for block 3F but has been pushed back to block 4 due to problems with the plane:
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/raytheon-wins-usas-gbu-53-small-diameter-bomb-competition-06510/
“As a result of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) (F-35) programs restructure, SDB II integration was moved from the JSF Operational Flight Plan (OFP) Block 3 to Block 4. IOC is FY2020.”
As for the 120D, it only makes sense to field a weapon that is up to date. Following your logic, if the F-35 was 20 years late it would have to enter service with 20 year old missiles, nonsensical.
Also, some people involved with the F-35 have stated that it would benefit greatly from a weapon with longer range. The 120D has more range than the C, but won’t be available before block 4. And by then it will be relatively old ( about 10 years ).
In 2015 the eurocanards will start fielding the meteor, which is MUCH Superior than the 120C, and even better than the D which will be available 7 years later.
HotshotDarn good selection of weapons with 12 year old AIM-120C7s at best, 20 year old JDAMs, 13 year old SDB1s, old LGBs, 15 year old JSOW? Against mobile targets in stealth mode it will have 2 weapons ( GBU-12s ) until 2022. That’s darn impressive, isn’t it?
HotshotNice animation.
Here is the tempetaure in Iqaluit:
http://www.meteomedia.com/meteo/canada/nunavut/Iqaluit
Temperature felt, -38. At the beginning of march. I have lived in Montreal, we used to get that rarely maybe once in January with the wind.
What’s the temperature in Oulu now?
HotshotI wouldn’t have though that palm trees were growing in middle of England, but indeed Europe gets its warm climate from the gulf Stream.
There is speculation as to what might happen in the future with the gulf Stream wrt global warming. Some scientists think the melting of the Greenland ice cap will make it slow down. That would cool Europe but that cooling effect would be compensated by the warming due to GHGs.
However these things are hard to predict. The Greenland ice cap may melt much faster than expected because the arctic warming is happening quickly ( in fact it is already melting much faster than expected ). Some scientists even say that an abrupt climate change is happening right now in the arctic.
HotshotWell of course they did that on the F-15. My point is that the plane should be designed from the start with the CFTs/FAST packs in mind. For instance the F-22 could have been designed in such a way that it could carry CFT/FASTs to turn it to a strike plane. Could CFT/FAST packs have been designed to be stealthy? Possibly.
HotshotThey’re focusing too much on the software and not enough on the weapons. Block 2B sould have had 4 AIM-120Cs, and block 3F 4 AIM-120Ds and SDB2s together with the SDB1. The other planes will be able to use the 120D and the SDB2 effectively without that kind of software whizzbang.
HotshotThere is an FOL Base here in Iqaluit, which was built sometime in mid 1980s, which was for the CF-18s. After the Cold War was over, the FOL Base was then used as for local events, like when the New Nunavut Territory came into effect back in 1999. Also, it was used for concerts, too, for a while. But nowadays, it’s hardly used at all.
As for us Inuit people, yes, we still live the traditional way by going out on land and go hunting or fishing. I haven’t gone out hunting though, for 10 years now, except a few day trips. We had one of the coldest years and every year is different nowadays, never know what to expect what it will be the next time. We had a mild winter one time and the ice didn’t form until after the New Year. Then the next winter was different, same within the rest of the other seasons, every year is different…MAAKUSIMI.
So the base is not even used for resupplying? Do you receive all the supplies by sea?
I read quite a bit on global warming and climate change, what is happening now in the arctic has surprised scientists a lot. The arctic is warming very quickly and the sea ice is disappearing much faster than expected, and this has important unexpected effects on the jet Stream. There is a scientist called Dr Jennifer Frencis who has worked on that subject and it is quite worrying for the future. The eastern part of North America will become colder and colder in the winter with more and more snow storms and the western part of NA will become warmer and warmer with more and more droughts. You live in the east so it might not affect you as much as if you were say in the Yukon where you would see a very large warming effect due to the jet Stream’s abnormal behavior.
HotshotHow about replacing the 8 engines with 2 very large, and using the unused pylons for more weapons? And add winglets.
Hotshotoh come on, if he was talking about physical size then his sentence would be meaning less, it would be the same as saying
“oh F-16 is smaller than F-15 but it doesn’t mean it superior ” that would make no sense because most of the time people will consider bigger is better not the other way round
also he was talking about stealth in the previous sentence as well so it would make more sense if he still talking about radar cross section instead of randomly jumping to physical size, the sentence will also have more meaning, can be paraphrase as ” even though F-35 have smaller RCS, it doesn’t mean it will be superior to f-22 when we go to war “
Almost everyone finds it very hard to believe that the F-35 would have a lower RCS than the F-22. That makes absolutely no sense because the JSF was meant to be less capable – and stealthy – than the F-22 to be exportable. Program officials had also disclosed several years ago that the F-22’s RCS is equivalent to a metal marble and the F-35’s RCS is equivalent to a metal golf ball.
Stealth for fighter have always mean VLO in radio frequency , i have never heard any aircraft producer use the word “stealth” to describe reduce IR signature
, even though both F-22 and F-35 have topcoat and special nozzle to reduce IR signature they will still have significant more IR signature than a helicopter or a piston aircraft, no way they can claim that they are stealth in IR wavelength
BS. It’s always been about full spectral stealth. Even the F-117 had special exhausts to lower the RCS.
i think the only situation when stealth fighter would want to launch their AAM from very long range is when intercepting something fly high and fast ( eg : Mig-31, Mig-25, SR-71, KH-21… etc) because it would be hard to chased these things and as they fly fast and high they can hardly maneuver thus missiles dont have to maneuver alot
on the other hand again agile fighter, stealth fighter would prefer to get into best possible position before launching their missiles
Nonsense, the pilots would try to shoot from high altitude and high speed head on to give as much range to their BVR missiles as possible. We are not talking about WVR here.
1 seconds is actually alot when you think about it, a mach 4 missiles will close 3km distance in just over 2 seconds
, DAS wont be effective , because missiles are very fast and small you need the exactly heading, speed, and distant to target to intercept them => you need a radar
I don’t think the problem is the second it would take to make a u turn. The problem is that the DAS probably cannot detect the missile when its motor is not turned on. Even if it does detect it it might not have accurate enough targetting information for the MSDM. A radar might indeed be required.
i prefer MALD-J instead of just APG-81 because of 2 reasons :
1- it dont required F-35 to turn it’s head towards enemy aircraft to be able to jam their radar, that will allow many different tactic, there will still be jamming head on even when F-35 circle and creeping behind enemy
2- if F-35 was to jam by APG-81, enemy will know there is something in a general direction even though they don’t know information such as heading, speed, altitude, distance or number
3- enemy may throw a few AAM in HOJ mode to shut down the jammer, 3 different jammer source : APG-81, ALE-70, MALD-J working together can easily confused enemy’s HOJ missiles and cause them to miss ( turn on-off in turn making missile wasting energy to correct the course
4- MALD-J also work as a decoy, enemy may think that it is F-35 and try to engage it
I think the APG-81 will be a lot more powerful as a jammer than the MALD-J, and the MALD-J will be shot down. Also, if you want the MALD-J to jam in the direction of the enemy plane, you need to control the MALD-J from the F-35. This might be quite complicated, and you need to know the exact position of the enemy planes, which means you need to use your long range sensors, possibly the radar so you have to turn towards the target.
Moreover, if the jamming comes from one direction, maybe the radar will be able to see clearly in another direction. AESA radars can be used directionaly.
i explained above in post #9, remember MSDM is even smaller than CUDA space for 1 Aim-120 launcher can be replaced with launcher that carry 3 MSDM => F-35 can carry 14 MSDM internally, externally it have 4 pylon that can carry 2 aim-120 launcher each ( just like F-18E) so it will be able to carry 24 MSDM externally => total of 38 MSDM, the PK wont be 100% but missiles despite have very high speed, actually have very predictable flight path thus PK likely very high
It’s hard to say for sure how many it would carry, and it is not what matters. Having no internal AMRAAMs to carry just a few more makes no sense. If you want to carry 30+ missiles or whatever, that means you expect 30+ missiles being launched at you ( many of them not from the front btw ), so you expect a pk of like 97% to be able to survive, which is very unrealistic.
Btw F-35 do have internal cruise missiles :
Spear III => range = 114 km, can carry 8 of them internally
JSM => range = 300-400 km, can carry 2 of them internally
Thanks I know that.
But it is not sure anymore that the JSM will be carried internally. US officials have said recently that the only cruise missile that the F-35 was supposed to carry internally won’t be carried anymore. So not sure.
Anyways using stand off missiles with a relatively long range is the way to go.
Hotshotit most certainly he talked about radar cross section , neither F-35 or F-22 was ever credited to have infrared stealth, in fact no fighter aircraft was ever claimed to be steath in infrared
because he said ” f-35 can beat f-22 in stealth ” , i believe that f-35 RCS will be very close to F-22
He most certainly is NOT talking about ‘radar’ cross section. He was probably simply talking about the physical size of the planes. The F-35 physical cross section is smaller, but that doesn’t mean.
Every stealth fighter is designed to reduced its IR signature, and they use several techniques for that, i.e. special exhaust, paints etc… When he says that the F-35 beats the F-22 in stealth he probably means that a subsonic F-35 has a significantly lower IR signature than the F-22, which is rather obvious. The question regarding stealth is, is it better to fly faster and have a higher IR or not? You gain on speed so the defenses have less time to intercept the plane but you’re more likely to be detected in IR.
Also, again the JSF was not meant to be as stealthy as the F-22. My guess is that its frontal RCS is almost the same as the F-22, which is good for the first shot, but from the other angles it is significantly worse ( less facetting of the fuselage in particular, less stealthy nozzles probably ), even though it still qualifies as VLO.
Typhoon radar is inferior to irbis-e both in terms of size and power so it very unlikely that it will have compatible range, and even if it does, even the Irbis-e is around 1/10 as powerful as SAM radar such as 64N6E that F-35 was designed to hide from, and as i explained before the impressive detection range of fighter radar will shrink significantly if enemy taking advantage of clutter or if there was jamming, and tracking range is only 60-70% of detection range
Irbis-e is a PESA, the CAESAR is an AESA, so that will probably compensate. It can look 90 degrees off center.
http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/defense/2014-07-16/eurofighter-lifts-veil-e-scan-radar
there are cloud on the sky most of the time regardless of weather, very rarely you have a sky without any cloud so in real life it not very hard to hide from IRST
Depends where. And btw, if the PIRATE can’t see the F-35 because of the clouds, the F-35 can’t see the typhoons with its EOTS.
once get behind typhoon the F-35 can turn on it’s afterburner to chased typhoon
Mmh… better be careful there is no other typhoon searching. The typhoons will know that the F-35s will try to do that.
they can but most fighter dont have tail radar, let alone a powerful tail radar that can lock and guide missile to many target at the same time that why i suggest stealth fighter to creeping up from behind
It still complicates the interception a lot. The stealth plane cannot fire head on in bvr at long range as it would usually.
still take more time, have less range than intercept missile coming from head on, and without guider from fire control radar their ability to intercept many target simultaneously is questionable
With side thrusters it wouldn’t take much time, maybe even less than one second. Could a DAS like system be used for that I don’t know.
in air to air mission, i wouldn’t really want to carry MSDM, my optimum load for f-35 would be
1 MALD-J : for support jamming, drop when detect enemy, the jamming power is weak compared to NGJ but F-35 have very tiny RCS so it doesn’t need high power jamming
2 Meteor : ramjet = very good kinetic = high PK
4 CUDA : creep from behind and launched from short range so you dont need very long range AAM, high number also mean more problems for enemy if they try to intercept missiles launched at them
If you use the APG-81 for jamming, you can carry 1 more meteor or 4 more CUDAs. I would try to see if it is possible to program the meteor to fly around the enemy plane, outside the NEZ of its MSDMs. The meteor would be launched right before the F-35 is detected, say at 50-60km to give as much terminal propulsion to the missile to make a u-turn. As soon as the meteors are launched, I use the APG-81 for jamming, I continue to to fly straight ahead and I launched one CUDA per target. So the enemy has 2 missiles to counter at the same time coming from different directions. Each F-35 would have 2 meteors, 6 CUDAs, and 2 MSDMs ( on 2 internal BRU-61s ). The MSDMs can still save the plane and more than 8 AAMs is probably not needed.
in SEAD-DEAD mission again powerful low band radar that can detect stealth fighter from long range, i probably prefer full load of 38 MSDM to intercept enemy’s missiles + 2 Aim-9x, since aim-9 can attack ground target, they are probably useful to destroy enemy’s radar post
I am not sure it could carry 38… with 6 BRU-61, that would be 24.
In that config you lose whole your stealth and anything can shoot at you. and it is still very dangerous, the MSDMs will not have a 100% pk. I think I would still attack in stealth mode flying NOTE with popu up tactics and ARMs or some sort of stand off missile with a terminal seeker. The F-35 needs stealthy cruise missiles that can fit in its bays.
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