eagleThe option of keeping typhoons would entail getting 3 more 2 seater tranche1 typhoons while still having to get a replacement for the saab 105OE.
The Saab 105 will be retired without direct replacement. Those 3 twin seaters are the partial replacement.
I don’t know if austrians still have non-white man product allergies as the TA/FA-50 is built by small-eyed yellow skinned asians…
What the hell is this BS. Clearly the Gripen is the favourite no matter what. Has been from the start due to the strong connections of Swedish and Austrian social parties. F-16’s role is mainly to lower price I guess. The Korean jet on the other hand is not compatible with Austria’s IRIS-T, has no BVR capability and Austria would be the sole user in Europe thousands of km away from support. And Austrian socialists are not best buddies with Korean politicians. Please, no reason to bring the racist card.
Re KT-1. Same. Do you really think a happy PC-7 (and PC-6) user, a direct neighbour to Switzerland nonetheless, would buy a Korean derivate? Come on.
eagleRealistic options are:
1. JAS 39C/D
2. F-16C/D
3. Typhoon. Yes keeping them is still an option… I think. I need to read the report first. Tranche unknown, but probably T1 at full spec.
Here is the link to the official report (in German): http://www.bundesheer.at/download_archiv/pdfs/bericht_der_sonderkommission_aktive_luftraumueberwachung.pdf
(wtf, they used Calibri? Fail… :highly_amused: )
eagleThey would have been better off looking for some low mileage F-5 and having them upgraded by the Swiss. There were still examples around that were available with plenty of hours on them!
The Swiss don’t have an upgrade program for the F-5. They had and still have airframes with many hours left though, that’s true. But what Austria wanted was a modern fighter, that’s why F-16, EF and Gripen were shortlisted.
Re. M-346, Austrian defence minister made it clear a jet with supersonic performance is required. Although technically, the M-346 is supersonic in a dive and the level of stupidity in Austrian politics knows no boundaries, so you never know. Announcement is apparently due tomorrow.
eagleI don’t quite get your point, first you said F-35 need bigger wing, now you said adding more wing is bad ?
It doesn’t need a bigger wing but would be better imho if designed differently including a bigger wing. I’m saying simply adding a bigger wing to an existing design is not ideal.
eagleIf I’m to trust Google Translate, there’s part of the interview that caught my attention, where Mr. Song says the FA-50 in it’s current state, would be inferior to refurbished MiG-29SMT fighters in beyond visual range combat. Now this caught me by surprise, I would have thought the combination of the Israeli EL/M-2032 and Derby missile would be superior to the MiG-29SMTs Zhuk-ME and R-27, but then again, could this indicate that the Derby still has not been successfully integrated into the FA-50 yet as was originally planned?
As far as I know, only the AIM-9 Sidewinder is integrated and available on the FA-50 currently. So anything with some sort of BVR capability is superior to the WVR only FA-50 in BVR combat.
Edit: too late…
This should be accurate as to what’s available today:
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eagleF-35A has no size constraint like C, if it needed bigger wing they would have put the wing of the C version on it
No, as stated simply adding more wing is bad. See the C-models poor performance. A design needs to be balanced. If anything, the B-model could have gotten smaller wings, with the A being the baseline model. That’s what they planned with the F-32.
no, which is why i don’t practice pointless exercise like comparing pure wing area.
I prefer the ceteris paribus assumption i.e. all (fighter jet) wings are about the same. Also, other designs give a hint to what the optimum is regarding wing loading.
eagleThere is no doubt an F-35A (free of constrains posed by commonality) would have been longer. I’m not sold on your theory that the wing would have been larger, that would have a cascade effect on design. I do think wingtips would be shaped differently, probably adding some area. The wing shape is very similar to the YF-22’s with reduced sweep. The F-35C certainly shows why simply adding wing area isn’t ideal from a performance standpoint.
Not simply more wing area, but also more sweep. Something like 40 (F-16) or 42 (F-22) degrees would be my guess. Of course, adding a bigger wing to an existing design can’t be right.
Anyway it is what it is. The users are happy with the current performance, oddly in spite of forum commentary and YouTube analysis.
Sure. I’m not saying performance is bad, but it could have been better.
eagleI disagree the A version will have the same wing as the C version if that is the case
You really think a clean sheet design withouth constraints would look like the F-35C. Seriously? Never.
If you counting the wing area without the fuselage then without a doubt aircraft with wide body like F-35 , F-22 , PAK-FA will have much higher wing loading than aircraft with thin fusalage like Mirage. But i don’t understand the point of doing this. As soon as aircraft fly at positive AoA the body will generate a certain amount of lift, and CL curve is based on reference wing area not pure wing area. So what the point ?.
The point is, wing generates lift and drag, fuselage drag and lift, in that order. Everything generates lift with enough AoA. The wing is the primary lift creating device so in my book it makes sense comparing wings. It’s just an approximation of course. But stating F-35 wings are the right size “because body lift” is frankly BS. If that were true, LM made a huge mistake in the F-22. I’d like to think the F-22 is way more closer to the optimum wing size for a fighter. Btw, @ 14.5 t empty as originally hoped for, we get 330 kg/m2…
Moreover, compare wing loading without the CL curve is pointless
Sure, you got the CL curves?
eagleIn fact, The pilot said that it flew with a “combat representative” load
and didn’t answer further on when asked what amount of fuel was onboard.
Yeah but combat representative load in this case obviously means neither full fuel load nor weapons.
It simply means unlike 4th gen jets, the F-35 carries targeting, ecm pods, pylons and drop tanks internally or doesn’t need them.
eagleAnd an high wing loading is a good thing for a strike plane as it made it a more stable platform.
So, for what it is intended to do, its performances would be more than sufficient but pretending that it can not just cover the role of all kinds of military planes actually in service but to being better than any of them in their own home turf it’s just not realistic.
High wing loading is good primarily for low level attack. Not the highest priority F-35 mission.
IMHO, if size (length, span, height, weight) wouldn’t have been dictated by the requirement to fit in a box, F-35 would have different wings, and by different I mean bigger. To clarify: If we compare wing area, we compare reference wing area. But the F-35 has a very wide fuselage. What if we compare the wing loading without counting the fuselage?
Result: (“true” wing area in m2 / empty weight in kg / wing loading)
F-35A: 24.5 / 13200 / 538
F-35C: 36 / 15800 / 440
F-22: 43.9 / 19700 / 448
F-16A: 20.5 / 7200 / 351
F-16C: 20.5 / 8600 / 420
F-15C: 36.5 / 13300 / 364
F-15E: 36.5 / 16200 / 444
Pretty obvious, F-35A has the highest wing loading. But even F-22’s is higher than I thought actually… Interestingly, F-16A and F-15A are the same at around 350 kg/m2. Needless to say, this is not an exact science, everything is based on drawings found on the interweb. Btw, according to the pilot, the F-35 wasn’t fully fueled in Paris. And unarmed obviously. This makes it very much comparable to a “legacy” jet demo with full internal fuel. He did say though they could fly the same routine @ 100% fuel.
… now for something completely different: As we all know, according to lukos, modern IIR missiles are immune to flares. So what’s the latest from lukos re the flare hungry AIM-9X over Syria? Or has he decided to take a break (again)? :very_drunk:
eagleIf we stick a Gripen E with every single bit of internal fuel, we´ll get 5.1 tons of external load till MTOW, thats plenty enough to get something like three external fuel tanks, a pair of Taurus LFK and two AAM´s. More than enough for almost everyone. And the Gripen has some quite obvious advantages over the Viper and the SH (just like they have their own strenghts).
How do you figure?
A Taurus is 1400 kg. Even if they went with the lighter 1060 kg Taurus 150, which hasn’t been sold afaik, that’s still to heavy for the outer wing pylons. They’re rated under 1000 kg I think.
Doesn’t matter though as even 2 lighter Taurus, 3 tanks and 2 AAMs would be more than 5100 kg. You’re looking at 2 tanks and 2 cruise missiles maximum, if those missiles can be carried under the fuselage.
eagleI must admit to be puzzled with the BAT 120 NG initiative though .
When intially announced ,I thought it was just an attempt at preserving the general physical shape and release mechanism of a BAT 120 , to produce a new weapon still . However the model looks 100 % identical to the original, with the same stabilizing winglets which I doubt were intended for maneouvring .
Hence I am now wondering how such a dragged bomb ,initially intended for low level release in cluster for staturation effect can transform now into a laser guided( homing ?) precision low collateral bomb for high to mediam altitude release against static or mobile target . Are they substituting the chute with a thrust vectoring booster or something ?
It looks like the front fins are new, as shown in the first pic. Movable I guess with the design keeping the same fixed rear fins.
The bombs loaded under the Mirage look like they don’t have the front fins.
eagleThey told me for E, roughly empty weiht 8000, MTOW around 16500
We already knew the rough numbers long time ago.
Yes but I was kinda hoping for an empty weight a bit under 8 t and/or an MTOW a bit over 16.5 t.
Because this means some loadouts are rather impossible, like the 2x 1000 kg bomb and 2x large fuel tank load.
eagleeagleAAMs are mounted on wing tip pylons and on 1 cheek station – no pylon “wasted”. Targeting pod on the other cheek station, nothing else can be carried there.
Seeing pics like the one below I was wondering about the 3 AAMs recently. I think they used to carry a single Sidewinder in the past. (photo is from 2017-06-07)
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