Ozairlower frequency radar or more powerful radar have ability to detect stealth aircraft from greater distance. No doubt about that.That why they are bought in the first place. However, as stated earlier the point of stealth is to give you ability to attack adversary before being attacked. So while more modern radar ( especially SAM radar) can detect stealth aircraft from greater distance. Stealth aircraft’s sensor and weapons also improve overtime, so they can detect/ attack those target from longer distance too.Then there are jammer on those stealthaircraft too. Unless, those radar can out range both sensor and weapons of F-22, I dont see they negate the point of stealth.
This is really simple to understand and Marcellogo is choosing to ignore facts. Stealth provides an advantage across the radar spectrum and whether a VHF or HF radar can detect the aircraft is reasonably worthless. It can tell the stealth aircraft is there, almost certainly at a reduced range to a non stealth aircraft, but it cannot be used for targeting purposes. After that, every single targeting sensor requires either a higher frequency radar, at which the RCS stealth is more effective, or a different EM frequency for detection such as IR which the F-22 and F-35 have been designed to reduce. Western Stealth is not just RCS, it is the whole spectrum of signature reduction (excepting probably aural).
To back up the above, read this published and peer reviewed journal article I have posted multiple times previously… http://www.scienpress.com/Upload/JCM/Vol%204_1_9.pdf
Using the worst open source assessment of F-35 RCS (provided by APA) the study found significant reductions in detecting an F-35 compared to higher RCS targets, including between 50% and 75% reduction for S and L band radars. There is not an air force on the planet that would not gladly take a 50 to 75% reduction in detection by radar!
OzairLM has shareholders that might ask why the leading company in the business manufacturing the most advanced product on the fighter market sells it yet as the cheapest when there are still none scale effects to justify for it.
Eying at alternate reality deals like the Rafale ones doesn’t help much here. But yet, this is election year and a cost increase could have been even more detrimental for both sides.*
Have you seen LM’s share price lately, looking at a 5 yearly chart the stock is up 208%…
There is absolutely nothing the shareholders have a problem with. The F-35 is a program that will keep giving guaranteed revenue and profit for at least the next 20 years and probably for 25 after that. They also knew winning the contract was always going to be at a fixed and relatively low margin of profit from the US Government. As with the F-16, the potential for continued export sales and after market support make the contract more than worth the investment.
OzairAustralia collects fiascos with helicopters, so much so that you’ve got to wonder whether it’s not more about the Australian forces than about the helicopters themselves.
Nothing to do with the Australian Forces and everything to do with Australian Political interference. In the case of both the Battlefield Attack and Transport selections, the Aus DoD and DMO selected the Apache and Blackhawk respectively. Both selection decisions were overruled by the Government of the day who wanted to improve relations with Europe.
The ANAO has published excellent reports on the decisions.
Just looking forward to the next French procurement failure for Australia, being the Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A. A high risk modification of a nuclear design to conventional, built in Australia and fitting a US made combat system and weapons, what could go wrong…
But if you want to quote an australian fiasco, the SH-2 is right up there.
While it was a great theory in the mid 90s the decision to integrate a completely different avionics fit was the downfall. The irony of the whole decision is that NZ purchased at the same time for the same requirement but took the aircraft essentially off the shelf and operated them successfully for 15 years. NZ subsequently purchased the retired Australian SH-2Gs and now have eight of the aircraft in service.
Ozairthanks, i think the sm-6 seeker took over targeting once within striking range, i dont think aegis ever had to lit up,
if it had, there would be no use of any other sensor to provide info
It really just depends on the tactical situation and in the case of the above linked test event it was because the target was OTH and the SM-6 could have flown on inertial guidance until the seeker is activated. The data link to the SM-6 is via the SPY-1 so if the target moves this can be sent to the missile, thereby requiring some RF emission from the ship while it is LOS.
The ideal situation is as you mention where an F-35 could potentially provide cueing without the target being aware it is being tracked. Missile is fired and the first indication the target receives is the SM-6 terminal radar seeker head on it’s RWR. The SM-6 also likely has the dual seeker used in some SM-2s and therefore could finish the engagement via IR homing.
OzairThere has actually been two tests of SM-6 with the F-35, one where the F-35 provided mid-course guidance and one where they provided the initial GPS of the target (and likely also mid-course).
Certainly in the test I referenced the F-35 was not talking directly to the SM-6 but linking back via MADL to the host AEGIS site. I don’t know about the test you are referencing, would appreciate a link if you have it, but would expect it to be similar but perhaps conducted via Link 16.
I am not aware of a mechanism for F-35 to talk directly to the SM-6.
Ozairi dont know where i read it, but bio linked a test where an aegis destroyer launched a missile vs an OTH target
that was fed coordinates by an awac & an F-35 i think.
that procedure, if you can find it, should explain how its done
Not quite the same. In the case you are referring to it was an SM-6 and the F-35 provided targeting information via MADL to the AEGIS site which used that information for more precise targeting of the missile over longer range. Likely it allowed the AEGIS site to remain in passive mode until final intercept.
OzairI think that for a 4th gen asset to effectively serve as a “deep magazine”, it needs to have a longer ranged weapon than the AMRAAM. When you add the range that the 4th gen has to stay behind the F-35/22 in order for the enemy not to see it, the AMRAAM will have a significantly shorter range after it passes the F-35/22 in order to still have a satisfactory pK.
Tactically, you don’t need the 4th gen to be invisible/not seen. Seeing 4th gen jets cruise into the battlespace with the knowledge 5th gen jets are around would be enough to off put many adversaries. Also this is where EA-18s will play a key role, protecting the 4th gen while 5th gen range far and wide designating targets.
Question becomes, who gets awarded the A2A kill for an engagement designated by a 5th gen but launched by a 4th gen?
OzairYes, it’s the same conversation where you failed to address the points I made. No F-35 does not come with a “spares load”, the report states that in JSF model, customer only owns the actual aircraft.
This is the only potential reference to what you are claiming,
Joint Strike Fighter-the supplier has offered a globally based logistic solution, which is characterised by a close collaboration with other users, and where the national noterskab is limited to the actual aircraft. Components and support equipment with more is part of a global pool solution, which is handled by the Joint Strike Fighter program. The concept of a global pool solution is prepared in order to minimize the cost of that oneGE users can be shared on a relatively small number of components and relatively small equipment. The lower capital bonding in the inventory of spare parts and equipment has among other things been reflected in lower acquisition costs.
If noterskab means ownership then the paragraph clearly indicates that the Danes are liable for a spares pool, just a smaller holding than would ordinarily be the case.
Even if we said that the F-35 price would increase by 25% or even 50% per frame with an initial spares load, which would be an exorbitant sum for an initial spares load, that doesn’t significantly change the cost equation.
It is also obviously clear from shown acquisition costs:
“28 F-35’s 15.4 billion krona (1 USD = 0.15 Krona) equals to 82.5 million USD per plane. 38 Super Hornets 30.9 billion krona, 121.9 million USD per plane.”As can be seen, F-35 unit price is exactly same/lower than unit recurring flyaway cost as estimated in F-35 SAR’s, whereas Super Hornet acquisition cost is over 50% higher than the SAR URF price. Thus showing that F-35 acquisition cost did not include any spares.
You are not comparing like numbers. For a start, you do not know the URF price as table 4.4 is clearly blacked out in the document. Hence dividing by the SAR price is not 100% certain to be the URF. When we look at the SAR price for the USAF we also have a figure that moves approx 20% over a 5 year period. First, the price varies greatly and we have no information to indicate what is varying that price, especially given all three versions are in full production at that point. Second, the F-35 SAR total price for both the airframe and engine include a total support number and non recurring items which provides a weapon system cost, not a straight URF. It we looked at the URF cost, the airframe plus engine is significantly less at US$68 million.
Second, looking at URF numbers ignores the much higher percentage the SH requires to reach the weapon system cost, as provided here,
the weapons system cost is the cost of buying the aircraft. Weapons systems costs may include ancillary equipment costs, one time non-recurring contract costs, and airframe, engine and avionics support costs. For example, the flyaway cost for the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet up to 2009 (for the 449 units built) was US$ 57.5 million per unit, but the weapons system cost was 39.8% higher, at US$ 80.4 million per unit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyaway_cost
Add FMS fees, a small production run on a low rate line and it becomes far more realistic that the Danes would pay above what the RAAF paid.
But the report in it’s “openess” did not disclose any of the actual rationalizations behind the dramatically lower F-35 maintenance costs. It just flat out stated that “enormous savings will be made” and left it to that.
The report also did not disclose the Eurofighter and SH maintenance programs in any detail either. As for the F-35, there is plenty of publically available information, so much so I am sure the Danes felt if you needed more info you could find it. An example is this, http://www.sae.org/events/dod/presentations/2012/f35_logistics_and_sustainment_overview.pdf
This is pretty fishy given that USAF expects F-35 to cost signifantly more to operate than F-16.
Except as we know it doesn’t cost significantly more but 19% more as I have already posted here previously. Given the F-35 flies more than 19% further, carries more than 119% of the payload of the F-16 and is an all aspect stealth airframe with a host of additional sensors the USAF themselves are happy with the slight increased cost.
…or they wanted to cook the numbers for F-35’s favour.
That makes zero sense. Why would providing comparisons against the single seat model and reversing hours allow them to cook the books?
Ozairbeats me what scenario you are referring to, and no, that MTBF isnt going anywhere, i’m guessing maintenance is on scheduled depot maintenance,
scheduled 8 times per lifetime.
No, fighter maintenance changes depending on how the airframe is used.
those operators that had room for a swashplate used it, those that didnt didnt.
No, only the Gripen and Eurofighter have gone for swashplates with neither radar yet in operational service or even completed their testing. Plenty of other fighter AESA radars could have gone this way, the technology is not new, but they didn’t.
if you got it, you will use it, if you dont got it, you obviously will figure out how to accomplish the mission without,
if you came to a gunfight with a knife you should probably try to close distance and so on,
i cant think of a single scenario where more FoV isnt valued.
Again with the scenarios, why a gunfight, why a knife, what does all of that even mean…
lastly some elements can be expected to stop functioning on an aesa, the team on f-35 decided a degradation over life is acceptable
/ better than having to re-apply RAM material for each inspection
No, FBW explained one side of it. The other side is that TR modules have a life expectancy beyond the airframe. If one or a dozen or even 50 of the TR modules on the APG-81 fails, the total performance degradation will be minimal. That is one of the significant factors of AESAs and even SAAB advertises that fact for the Gripen radar,
Since the AESA antenna is built up from a large number of active transmit/receive modules, the failure of some of these modules has no noticeable effect on the system’s overall performance and reliability. Consequently, a radar with an AESA requires less maintenance than a conventional mechanically scanned radar system. This significantly increases the aircraft availability and reduces in-service costs.
OzairThat’s why you have scheduled maintenance. Hell, a jet engine is far more liable to failure than a swash-plate if you look at it that way.
It adds to the maintenance burden on a deployed unit. Just like an engine issue would result in the airframe RTB an issue with the swash plate would also result in a RTB due system failure.
Sure the likelihood is very small but fixed arrays remove that possibility altogether.
Ozairare you uncertain if 220 degree is more than 120 ?
its roughly double FoV
the swash plate has a MTBF of >1000 flight hours, ergo its going to be inspected on occasion,
if it does happen in flight, guess they will be stuck with measly 120 degree like anyone else, but its highly unlikely
You are creating a scenario to suit your ideal, not the norm.
Straight away we see there is the potential for the swash plate to fail potentially 6 times in the life of the jet. Once you introduce combat flying that MTBF the figure will drop drastically and the maintenance burden will rise. Maintenance that would likely be conducted at a deployed location.
Moving radar heads are not new so the decision by all current operators of fighter AESA to have a fixed array is clear. The benefits of lower maintenance, consistent RCS, greater number of TR modules and improved reliability are clearly more valued than increasing the FOV for a small segment of mission scenarios.
As for being stuck at 120 degrees, if the swash plate failed it would almost certainly result in a mission RTB. The potential to cause damage from maneuvering would force the airframe to be grounded until the mechanism was inspected.
OzairThat’s so obvious that nobody ever feel the need to implement such an esoteric feature until now.
There must be a reason.
Maintenance and reliability. The move to fixed AESA saw a benefit in both maintenance and reliability. Moving from one TWT to many provided the radar head with graceful degradation over time. The other benefit was moving away from a radar head that was reliable on mechanical movement for its scanning. For example the F-35 radar head is essentially sealed within the nose cone. There is no current planned need for maintenance and the APG-81 is expected to outlast the airframe.
By going for a moving head, irrespective of its perceived mechanical simplicity, the Captor E fit introduces a potential point of failure. It may have FOV advantages but at some point the swash plate mechanism will break.
OzairThen you haven’t been paying attention very well, I have detailed them many times. F-35 acquisition cost did not include any spares or associated equipment, only planes. By contrast, Super Hornet acquisition costs included spares etc, thus they were substantially higher. You’d then think that Super Hornet maintenance costs would have been cheaper? No, it was other way around – basically Danish report assumed that they could make enormous savings by F-35 spares pool system but how those savings were actually calculated or realised, was not detailed in any way and smelled fishy, especially given that the raport SPECIFICALLY mentioned that maintenance cost of Super Hornet was lower than F-35’s.
You are welcome to forgot the conversation we had on this exact same topic here http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?137788-F-35-News-and-discussion-(2016)-take-III/page56
but stating it again doesn’t make what you say true. It isn’t. The document clearly states that the F-35 comes with a spares load. It also clearly states that the F-35 uses a different maintenance philosophy to manage its spares. As I asked you at the time why should the F-35, which has a more advanced diagnostic and spare management system as well as an expected global pool of operators and airframes four times the size of either of the other contenders, be graded on the same scale as its fellow contenders who have an antiquated logistics management and spares system?
Also, there was the issue of comparing twin-seated Super Hornet to single-seated Eurofighter and F-35, which obviously drove up lifespan cost.
Except the Danes clearly asked for two seat airframes, probably based on the RAAF experience. Even so, they specifically compared changing from twin seat F models to single seat E models. It is on page 92 of the report. It reduces the total SH airframes by 3 and the lifecycle cost by US$4.6 billion but still works out more expensive than the F-35A overall, for a less capable aircraft.
OzairInteresting, i remember quite the oposite, severall of us stuck a bucket load of examples of cherry picking, or downright obvious mistakes by the Danish report and your answers/opinions were quite puerile.
No, there were not a bucket load of examples, there were a couple of fringe points that didn’t address the main criteria. As for being puerile, I challenge you to find a single post I have made on this or any other forum that is of that nature. On this discussion we start at page 55 of this thread here, http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?137788-F-35-News-and-discussion-(2016)-take-III/page55 Let me know where I acted or posted in a puerile way.
I make a point of being civil, sometimes to the extreme. Doesn’t mean I have to agree with you though and if that is what you interpret puerile to be you are wrong.
I do remember how you´ve dismissed the fact that the Danes used the “Fly Away Unit Cost” (actually they seem to use the very best “FAUC” in the midle of the next decade) in order to calculate the acquisition costs for the F-35A (thats not disputable, its directly written in the report) and then didnt do the same for the Super Hornet.
In fact I was the one that provided the reference to the SAR and showed where they had found that pricing information from… As I said at the time, did the Danes use the lowest number, yes they did. Did the Danes use a number that won’t occur, doubtful, the pricing trend is looking to track nearly exactly as predicted. The number used in the SAR from 2023 is the number the USAF expects to pay for the jet. That is before additional non US buyers have been factored in the production equation thereby reducing the price further through bulk and multi-year buys (which the SAR does not provide pricing for).
I do remember that you´ve mentioned the SH FMS deal with Australia to suport the Danish report, the obvious answer would be “then why the hell didnt they use the numbers of the three F-35A FMS deals?”.
With the obvious response made at the time that the Danes do not acquire the F-35A via FMS. They are an SDD partner and subsequently in any year purchase the jet at the same cost as the rest of the SDD partners. That is a significant cost saving for the SDD partners and, besides the industry benefits, was a major attraction for a number of them.
[QUOTE=Sintra;2339216]
And so on, i could make with ease an entire A4 page with some very questionable assertions on that report. The thing is that it has so many holes in it, that Boeing went to the tribunals with it, something that they didnt do in Japan, Korea or Norway.
So do it. Provide it to me and I will answer your concerns to the best of my ability.
[QUOTE=Sintra;2339216]
By the way, the Danish Defence Minister himself, on the last three months, after the parliament approved the acquisition of the F-35A, made two public comments that destroyed the entire report, a) that the 27 F-35A airframes wouldnt be enough to cover the Danish mission done today by two sqn´s of Vipers and b) that the budget earmarked to acquire those 27 airframes wouldnt be enough… He even tweeted the dam thing (the last one he took it out). Thats a pair of bullets right through that report.
[quote]
Sorry no. That 27 airframes is not enough is not a surprise as the Danes keep changing their mind on what they want the future fighter fleet to do. Once they actually decide on that then they can be clear about the numbers required. Of course, of the three contenders only the F-35 would be in production past 2025 and allow the Danes to acquire additional new aircraft. Seems a sound acquisition strategy to purchase the aircraft that will be in production until 2040.
Budget is also no surprise. No matter which contender was chosen funding the acquisition was always going to be difficult. When the Danes purchased the F-16 in the 80s their Defence budget as a percentage of GDP was above 2.5%. Today it is below 1%. Sourcing for that info is here
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/belgium/military-expenditure-percent-of-gdp-wb-data.html
Why should we be surprised then that Denmark is struggling to fund this acquisition, especially given they are have to fund AFV replacement, SP gun replacement, upgrade MBTs, frigates and shortly replace the OPVs to name a few.
Ozairnumbers were tampered
So provide an example? When I asked for this same claim to be validated 4 months ago no one could provide a single credible example.
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