I’m lost after several pages of argument, please spuman could you link again what you are talking about? TY

Sure.

Start HERE at the 2010-2011 Australian review of their defence issues.

The F-35 info is in the last two days (16 & 20 March of 2012). Here are the PDF links
PDF from the 16th of March
PDF from the 20th of March

Just search through them for the sections where they start talking about the F-35.

Here is a big chunk of it from page 54-55 (as printed on the PDF) of the 16 March PDF

CHAIR: Thank you, Air Vice Marshal. Submissions were provided in the briefing by APA and RepSim, and you have gone to some lengths to explain their evidence with respect to a simulated exercise. Are you suggesting that that exercise is flawed because they do not have all the information or material from the States about the JSF to make the simulation complete? Is that what you are suggesting here?

Air Vice Marshal Osley: In essence, yes. To make a valid assessment of F35 versus opposing aircraft you need access to the classified capabilities of the aeroplane itself. Also, the structure of the scenario needs to be a realistic one. The aim behind the Pacific Vision exercise was actually for Pacific air forces to look at the vulnerability of their bases. Essentially, they wanted a scenario where their bases were being threatened so they could then look at how they might respond and see what risks they had. The scenario was structured around that.

If you wanted to assess the effectiveness of an F35 versus other air combat capabilities then you would need to have a scenario that enabled you to take into account all the support aircraft and other capabilities that would be in the area. You would need to take into account the transfer of information using datalinks, the situational awareness that you would have and the tactics that you would use in flying those aeroplanes. The tactics for using a fifth generation fighter are significantly different from the tactics used for a fourth generation fighter. Also, you would need to take into account detailed analysis of weapons and other things, including electronic attack.

CHAIR: I wonder whether there is possibly a simulated exercise available to demonstrate to the committee at some stage the success of the F35.

Air Vice Marshal Osley: I could take that on notice. We do regular exercises with the partners where we tie together simulators. They are done at the classified level. I will have a look through what we have done in the past to see whether we can come up with some data that we may be able to share with you.

Dr JENSEN: You seem to be pretty derogatory about Air Power Australia and RepSim. When you look at it, you will see that some of the criticisms were made nearly a decade ago in terms of their ability to talk about cost and schedule as well. However, when you look at the record—and I will not go through the entire record again; it is on Hansard—quite frankly, Defence ain’t looking too good. APA in particular has been far more accurate than Defence, both in terms of cost and schedule.

Have you done simulations against the Su-35 with different varieties of mixed missile loadouts against the F35? What simulation software was used and how many simulations were done?

Air Vice Marshal Osley: Regrettably, I cannot go into the detail of exactly the types of threats we had—they were top-end, high-end threats—and exactly how we structured that. I will take on notice to see what we can share at the unclassified level.

Dr JENSEN: I would not have thought what simulation software and what threats were analysed would have been a problem. Details of your knowledge of those threats clearly would be classified, but I do not think ‘Hey, we did a run against a Su-35 would have been a problem.’ On notice, if you cannot answer it here, have you done differential simulations of, once again, Su-35, 2V2, 4V4, 8V8, 4V2 and 2V4, for instance?

Air Vice Marshal Osley: The short answer is that the fighting unit for a F35 is four aircraft or more. The simulations will cover multiaircraft versus multithreats. So all of what you have mentioned would be within the realms of what has been tested in our simulations.

Dr JENSEN: I would like as much detail as you can give me on that. Have you done that using widely different engagement geometries and sensor weapon mixes—in other words, not head-to-head co-altitude? If so, what sort of runs have you conducted in that regard? Have you done simulations of F35s versus any aircraft that have HF over-the-horizon radar, working with your threat group in terms of their integrated air defence system? Have you done any simulations, using adversary HF over-the-horizon radar equipped naval surface vessels as a component of IADS? Have you done any simulations using current generation passive detection systems, incorporated as additional constructive elements of an adversary IADS against the F35 scenarios?

Air Vice Marshal Osley: I will take the detailed questions there on the sensors on notice. What I would like to say is that the simulation that has been done was actually done using highly trained fighter pilots, acting as Red Air, using to the best of their knowledge, the best capability they could to defeat the F35. The point I would like to make here is that if you use the F35 and play to its strengths, not its weaknesses, you can prevail in air combat. Winning in air combat late in this decade and into the 2020s is not going to be easy. I am not saying that the F35 will answer all our prayers. If you use the F35 incorrectly and do not play to its strengths, you will probably lose. But the same could be said for the F18 and the F16. If we play to the F35’s strengths, and it has a lot of strengths of stealth, good sensors and exceptional situation awareness. For instance, the situational awareness is linked to the capacity of the software. It has roughly three times the software of the F22. That gives you an indication of its capability. It has a datalink capability that is exceptional for talking to not only other F35s but the rest of the system out there. If you have the right weapons on board, and they will need to be upgraded, if you have good training, good tactics and good supporting capabilities, the F35 will prevail.

Here is an exchange from page 5-6 (as printed on the PDF) from the 20 March PDF)

Mr Liberson: Our current assessment that we speak of is: greater than six to one relative loss exchange ratio against in four versus eight engagement scenarios—four blue at 35s versus eight advanced red threats in the 2015 to 2020 time frame.

ACTING CHAIR: What are those advanced threats?

Mr Liberson: I cannot get into the specifics of those advanced threats. They are classified.

ACTING CHAIR: This says Su27. My concern with that is that Su27 is an old aeroplane. You could be analysing it against camels. How are we supposed to take this when you are saying, ‘We’re not going to tell you what threats we’re analysing’?

Air Cdre Bentley: Doctor, I think I have already answered that. We have provided that analysis to all the participating nations and to all their officials. They have all of the details of those threats and all of the details of those analyses. Each of those nations, each of those experts in those nations, have taken that analysis and have done analysis of their own and have come up with an agreed position, that the F35 is the best aeroplane for them.

ACTING CHAIR: The point that I am making is that here you have obviously reported, as has the United States Air Force, when you were wanting to sell a story. You have said what the threats were; you have said it is Su27 and MiG29. We are not asking for details of the exact geometry of the analysis, what assumptions were made about ECM or anything else. All we are asking is, for instance: was the MIG29 analysed; was the PAC FA analysed; was the J20 analysed? We do not want to know the specifics.

Air Cdre Bentley: Dr Jensen, if you were to receive a classified briefing, you would be able to understand what those threats were and how that analysis was done.

ACTING CHAIR: I am just asking for an aircraft type.
Mr Liberson: That is classified. I apologise.

Air Cdre Bentley: We are bound by the security regulations of both this country and the United States. Unless you have received—

ACTING CHAIR: That is really silly, isn’t it?

Air Cdre Bentley: No, Sir, it is not really silly. We have a lot of international agreements with a lot of countries that enable this defence force to operate effectively. If we were to provide secrets openly—

ACTING CHAIR: That is saying: ‘We have evaluated this sort of aircraft against ours.’ Surely—

Air Cdre Bentley: then we provide the enemy with an understanding of what our capabilities are. Nobody does that, Doctor.

ACTING CHAIR: How is you saying ‘We analysed this threat’ secret?

Mr Burbage: To turn it around, do you think that all the first-tier air forces in the world would look at that analysis against an inferior threat? I do not think so. That is not why they are buying the airplane.

ACTING CHAIR: Let me put it this way: I have it on very good authority, for example, that in the UK—

Mr Adams interjecting—

ACTING CHAIR: No. I do not want to name the person.

Mr ADAMS: It was your source.

ACTING CHAIR: It was a retired air marshal in the RAF. In terms of analysis that was conducted by DERA on the Typhoon versus advanced Sukhoi Flankers, they set the thing up so that in the initial exchange the exchange ratio for the Typhoon was a good exchange ratio, but they shut down the simulation at the time that the Typhoons that were Winchesters and were running from the Sukhois were about to get shot down by the Sukhois chasing.

Mr Burbage: We do not do those kinds of simulations. That is not the way we do simulations—we do not give one side an advantage or a disadvantage; we put the real data from the airplanes in the simulation and they run up many, many runs to get the numbers we are talking about.

Mr Liberson: And it is very important to note that our constructive simulations that Mr Burbage talks about without the pilot in the loop are the lowest number that we talk about—the greater than six to one. When we include the pilot in the loop activities, they even do better when we include all of that in our partner manned tactical simulation facility.

Mr Burbage: We actually have a fifth-gen airplane flying today. The F22 has been in many exercises. We have one of the pilots here who flew it and they can tell you that in any real-world event it is much better than the simulations forecast. We have F35 flying today; it has not been put into that scenario yet, but we have very high quality information on the capability of the sensors and the capability of the airplane, and we have represented the airplane fairly and appropriately in these large-scale campaign models that we are using. But it is not just us—it is our air force; it is your air force; it is all the other participating nations that do this; it is our navy and our marine corps that do these exercises. It is not Lockheed in a closet genning up some sort of result.

ACTING CHAIR: Post 2015 and 2020 you have stealth on stealth. How are you going to kill either PAC FA or J20?
Air Cdre Bentley: We cannot answer that question, just as we cannot answer the threat question, because we get into classified areas very, very quickly.

ACTING CHAIR: It seems to be a very convenient excuse.

Air Cdre Bentley: No, it is not an excuse. All of the defence officials who are appropriately cleared in all of the nations that are participating in this country know exactly what we have briefed, what those briefings entail and what the analysis entails, and they have chosen F35. If you are purporting to be a huge—

ACTING CHAIR: So what you are saying is, ‘Believe us; we’ve got all the classified data in a brown paper bag’—

Air Cdre Bentley: Believe the nine best air forces in the world as far as their operators and their analysts are concerned and I think that you will come to realise that it is not us telling the story; it is them telling the story to their governments and their governments making a decision to go forward with this aeroplane.

Research Fail

in which famed aircraft designer Pierre Sprey

Um…. he never designed anything.

@MSphere: Boeing’s “Advanced Super Hornet” has not officially been part of the Canadian CF-18 replacement project. That last “Official” numbers provided to the Canadian Govt were for the USN Standard Blk2 Super Hornet, not the Advanced model.

@Spitfire9: I was not being misleading, but rather gracious in my only looking at Flyaway prices. If you had called them claiming 3:1 numbers which includes “10 years of support” as misleading, you would have been kind as they outright lied.

Here are the direct costs, across all three cost categories (REC Flyaway, Total Flyaway, and Gross Weapon System). These numbers come directly from the FY2014 USAF & FY2014 USN Budgets and I used this Inflation Calculator to adjust the F-18 prices.

The first thing that you should notice is that there is no way, even using today’s LRIP pricing, that you can buy 3 F-18s for each F-35. Even if you use the cheapest category of REC you could only buy 2.2 F-18s today for a single F-35. Throw in their claim of “10 years of support” and that would drop below 2. However, Canada is not buying planes today, but several years from now.

Now look at 2018 when the F-35 goes into FRP and Canada will be buying most of its F-35s in or after. That is where you see that you would get 3 F-18s for every 2 F-35s.

However, there are a few things that will affect the price of both the F-18 and F-35 in that timeframe:
1. Currently the F-18 is being built at a rate of 26 per year. Canada will NOT be maintaining that build rate. This will cause their F-18s to cost MORE.
2. If Boeing wins the Brazilian contest it will offset some of the increases from #1.
3. If Boeing pitches the Advanced Super Hornet to Canada, it will conservatively drive the cost up $8-10 million each.
6. South Korea’s order of F-35 is a virtual certainty and will drive the prices down.
7. Israel is also looking at additional orders.
8. Singapore is showing strong interest which would drive down prices in the same timeframe that Canada would be ordering jets.

The point is that you assume the steps leading up to that decision are the same.

The F-35 will be able to complete more missions due to it avoiding being detected in the first place.

There is so much stress on a missile body & fins in flight that a laser causing structural weaknesses would likely cause the missile to lose control long before the laser burns through the casing.

I wouldn’t hold my breath, any more than I would for all the miraculous AIM-120D technologies that have been talked about. The improved motor is in ONR, and for the time being the US can’t even make the existing motor.

ATK has had a contract to develop the new motor tech since September of 2009 and it’s due to be done withing the year.

The existing motor issues were traced back to changes mandated for “environmental” reasons, damn tree-huggers 🙂

btw, ATK and Raytheon are suing each other over the issue.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/raytheon-resolves-amraam-production-issues-379611/

http://www.law360.com/articles/480698

Besides the fact that the mfg’s page on the OLS-35 only went up in 2011 (so no, it is not out of date info), KNAAPO is likely just giving a vague reference range (notice the lack of a target class in their info) while the mfg specifies a SU-30 class target.

Besides, it’s not like KNAAPO would exaggerate the SU-35’s performance to promote a sale or anything :dev2:

http://www.sukhoi.org/files/su_news_29-08-07_eng.pdf

That is not a Sukhoi doc, but a magazine article from 2007.

Here is the actual manufacture’s page for the OLS-35

http://www.npk-spp.ru/deyatelnost/avionika/166-ols-35.html

Here is the Google Translated text:

Basic information:
Automatic tracking area + / -90 0 azimuth – 15 0 … 60 0 in elevation.
Detection Range EC (aircraft such as Su-30):
in the LPP to 90 km, PPP – up to 35 km.
Measurement distance to the VC from 0.2 to 20 km, SC – up to 30 km.