Yes Mig-31bm…sorry I did not see your post earlier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_X-47B

Imagine this with less AAMs and 8 of those LM new missiles ..you might be able to carry some fuel and landing gear here as well.

I had to check what Mig-31BM was; http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/mig-31bm.htm

look quite similar to F-117

I have to agree with others on this one.

In simplest example, are you SURE about what MiG-35 will use for ordnance? IMHO, if RuAF wants MiG-35 to fill numbers or simply keep MiG company in business, MiG-35 will use pretty much what legacy MiG-29S uses; R-27R/T/RE/TE for BVR, R-73 for WVR, and Kh-31P for SEAD. If however, RuAF wants MiG-35 for a long term lightweight aircraft until they field their own F-35 in 2030 or so, MiG-35 will (eventually) use what is developed for PAK-FA; RVV-SD and RVV-BD for BVR, RVV-MD for WVR, and Kh-58UShKe for SEAD.

All else being equal, a theoratical MiG-35 armed with 2x RVV-BD, 4xRVV-SD and 2xRVV-MD is simply not comperable to the same MiG-35 with 2xR-27RE and 6xR-73 (I don’t think R-77 will ever enter service with RuAF when its replacement is already in trials).

Same apply to LCA which is still on the drawing board. and one can argue how F-16E would be developed by the time MiG-35 or LCA-2 finally enters service. All these would be too much speculation with too little information; leads to nothing.

Fair enough how about compare LCA mk I vs mig-29 smt vs f-16E?
btw why Ruaf dont buy R-77? , is it really that bad?

So we have an aircraft that entered service a decade ago, an aircraft of uncertain configuration and development status, and an aircraft that exists as drawings alone. Even by ‘vs.’ standards this is rather questionable.

i know but there are still things that are known for these fighter such as their weapons load out, engine they will use, F-16 block 60 is similar to previous F-16, LCA mk II use a stronger radar and engine but have same aerodynamic as previous LCA, Mig-35 is same as Mig-29 SMT in aerodynamic but use AESA radar + heavier +”have TVC engine so i think we can somewhat compare them

What kind of threads are the worst threads possible ? The “vs threads”.

well to be fair, most of the time we try to compare different aircraft to other in their own thread, so why not make a ” vs thread” to compare them , after all weapon such as fighter is designed to fight again other

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.

oh 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 ”

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.

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

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.

F-35 was meant to carry less weapon, fly slower, less agile compared to F-22, but i dont think it have much bigger RCS than F-22 unless from directly behind, from most angle the 2 aircraft will have quite similar RCS

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

i dont think AESA will perform much better than PESA to close the gap of size and power between CAESAR and Ibis-e, and as i explained before even if it does it still have to try to find something that can hide from SAM radar that is 10-20 times bigger and more powerful

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.

F-35 was mean to detect the typhoon by APG-81 not EOTS

Mmh… better be careful there is no other typhoon searching. The typhoons will know that the F-35s will try to do that.

if you are talking about many vs many situations then i can have another F-35 or EA-18G doing support jamming by NGJ, that thing have significantly more power than MALD-J, APG-81, ALE-70, with the combination of very high power jamming and very low RCS it
likely that EF-2000 will be totally blind and unable to lock F-35 at all even at 4-5 km

It still complicates the interception a lot. The stealth plane cannot fire head on in bvr at long range as it would usually.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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
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

Mmmh I kind of doubt that the Irbis-e would detect the F-35 at only 40km, even from the front. And I was talking about 4.5 Gen planes, meaning reduced RCS planed, unlike the Flanker. Say a plane with 0.5sqm RCS fully loaded, like a typhoon with 6 AAMs and 6 MSDMs.

The F-35 would shoot first but they don’t carry many missiles, and their missiles would probably not have a high pk against an advanced 4.5 gens to begin with. If the F-35 itself carries MSDMs, the number of missiles it carries is even less.

I don’t think intercepting a missile coming from behind would be that much of a problem because the MSDM has thrust vectoring. Of course you need the sensors to detect the incoming missile.

The stealthy plane woud still have the advantage, but not by much.

Irbis-e can detect target with RCS =0.01 m2 from 90 km, so according to radar equation even without any loss it will detect target with RCS =0.001 m2 ( f-35) from around 45 km, tracking range of radar ( where you got info for weapon solution such asrange, heading, speed) is around 60-70% of detection range, so Irbis-e can track F-35 from 27-31 km and that range is only achieved when look up( no ground clutter) , and without any jamming, if you factor in noise jamming from APG-81, ALE-70, MALD-J and the F-35 fly closer to ground ( lower RCS make jamming more effective, reducing power required and burn-through range significantly) it really easy to see the realistic detection – tracking range of Irbis-e again F-35 is only around 10-15km or even less (i know that sounds very low, but remember stealth fighter like F-22,F-35 was designed to hide from SAM radar such as the 64N6 BIG BIRD which is enormous compared to any fighter radar both in term of size, power, processing speed) F-35 can easily creeping up behind 4, 4.5 gen fighter before open fire with it’s missiles
Typhoon, Rafale may do better than Flanker due to their smaller RCS, however their RCS still many times bigger than F-35 especially if they carry weapon
APG-81 can detect target with RCS = 1 m2 from 150 km, and target with RCS = 0.1m2 from 90 km http://www.deagel.com/Aircraft-Warners-and-Sensors/ANAPG-81_a001381001.aspx
http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view.jsp?req_newsidx=97236
so with RCS =0.5 m2 when loaded with missiles then EF-2000, RAfale, F-18E will probably be detected from around 120 km, obviously they can also use jamming and different tactic to reduce APG-81 detection range, however F-35 will still have considerable advantage in detection- tracking range due to :
1) all 4.5 gen have radar quite similar in size and power with APG-81 ( Rafale and gripen actually have smaller, less powerful radar) but F-35 have much smaller RCS
2) according to radar equation, 50% reduction in RCS will make jamming 50% more effective and reduce burn through range by 25%, so even if same kind of jamming was put on both normal fighter and stealth fighter, the one on stealth fighter will do it’s job better

( recently according to general Mike Hostage F-35 is even more Stealthy than F-22, and F-22 RCS was claimed to be close to 0.0001 m2 so probably F-35′ RCS is closer to 0.0001 m2 than 0.001 m2 so the detection range of fighter radar again F-35 will be even less, and if F-35 was to have support from very powerful jamming such as NGJ then the Ibis-e may not be able to detect it at all)
to sum up F-35/22 can easily creeping up behind 4, 4.5 gen fighter before open fire with it’s missiles ( since they open fire from very close they can use CUDA instead of Aim-120)

intercept missile launched at you from behind will be harder because :
1) missiles take valuable time to turn
2) most aircraft dont have tail radar and even if they do their tail radar wont have the range and processing power of nose radar ( inferior in term of range, jamming resistance and number of target they can track and guide missiles to at once
3) MSDM is very small missile thus have very little burn times = very limited range => if intercept enemy missile from behind = even less range =>less window of opportunity

The MSDMs might be usefull against long range sams indeed. I can imagine a few aircraft being loaded with MSDMs instead of their normal number of AMRAAMs to protect a strike package, if the formation is flying close enough.

MSDM may required the launching aircraft to have very advanced radar that can track and attack many target at once

You don’t have to send me pictures, I think I have seen 250000 pictures of those planes ahah! But yes indeed there seems to be to types of carriage intended to be used for it, although it is only a concept for now.

Could this revive 4.5 gen aircraft? They can carry many of those on external stations.

Btw these missiles are so accurate, if they were to attack an aircraft instead, they could target a very precise part of it, like the cockpit. That would me them even more lethal.

i think Stealth fighter would still have advantage in air to air engagement again normal fighter, because they can choose to creep up behind 4.5 gen aircraft instead of going head on

Even very powerful aircraft radar such as Irbis-e can only detect F-35 from around 40 km in optimum conditions ( look up, no jamming, focus search) , that is around 30 km for tracking range, if the F-35, F-22 fly close to ground to take advantage of clutter or do jamming by their radar, ALE-70, MALD-J or have support jamming from NGJ then the detection, tracking range of enemy’s radar will be significantly shorter probably around 10-15 km http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?133536-RWR-ECM-vs-FCR-AAM , IRST can be easily defeated by flying in or bellow cloud, it would be quite simple for stealth fighter to dive down the deck when they detect enemy and circle behind 4, 4.5 gen fighter before launching their missiles, it would be hard to intercept missiles launched from behind you with very high speed unless you have something like a turret
another choice for stealth fighter is just to avoid engagement altogether ( it would be similar to WW II when fast fighter can dictate the term of engagement, stealth will be able to do the same )
on the other hand, i think MSDM will be super useful again SAM, if your aircraft fly at around 40-50k ft then only long or medium range SAM can reach and shot you down ( which mean they still have to use big missiles ) , with 30-40 MSDM a single aircraft will be able to deplete the whole SAM battery , and the advantage of MSDM again cruise decoy such as MALD or ITALD is that they are much smaller, lighter, affect aircraft aerodynamic much less, Not to mention you won’t waste any MSDM if enemy decide not to attack
the disadvantage is that : a single ITALD or MALD may be able to attract more than 1 enemy’s missiles while 1 MSDM can only intercept 1 projectile but with load out of 30-40 missiles that isnot really a big problem