ijozicNo it isn’t. First off, safety wise it is better for them to get new planes rather than sitting on the old ones for ever. Secondly, unlike F-22, Su-30MKI family has been exported and sold all over the world. The display team isn’t just for show, it is an advertisement too.
In that regard, a better analogy would be the F-35A then as it’s in production and being offered for export (although, for airshows alone, perhaps the F-35B could add some extra touch to its moves, too bad the Marines don’t have their own team 🙂 )..
ijozicI don’t know why the Coalition is striking around Der ez-Zor anyway as those strikes are:
a) directly helping the regime who they are nominally against (it is against IS in this case, but still it reaffirms the already incoherent policy in Syria)
b) thus, not coordinated with the regime (meaning they don’t have their own FAC’s there or the regime army advisors in their intelligence centers helping them identify IS targets and positions) which just increases a chance for a “friendly-fire” incident.
I guess this strike must have been part of that peace deal package where joint strikes with the Russians against IS and Nusra were agreed.
ijozicWhy wouldn’t it be recognized?
How would you suggest the target RWR can distinguish it from the normal PD search mode?
OTOH, they were forced to be used at fairly short ranges because the IFF capability of the F-14As sucked hard compared to USAF F-15s.
It’s not the IFF capability per se, but rather restricted ROE’s (due to many allied flights present over Iraq) and the AWG-9’s lack of NCTR capability which caused the F-14A’s to be restricted to fleet CAP missions only.
ijozicAll I know is that the space was needed for Sparrow-related hardware. According to Bill Gunston, a lot of work had to be done to make the missile compatible with the fighter’s NASARR radar.
The amount of work probably depends on the selected radar and it’s supported features. For these earlier Sparrow missiles, I’d presume a CW-illuminator antenna is a must, plus at least some interface with the missile to provide the target offset data to the seeker (presumably through the upgraded WCS). But, that’s OT, so I’ll try to dig around for some more info.
ijozicF-104S? If my memory is correct, the 20mm cannon was removed to make space for the additional avionics needed to allow the use of Sparrow missiles.
That would mainly be the CW-illuminator I’d presume?
ijozicRWR detects radio emissions of all possible radar systems. If your database contains the required info about the AWG-9, your RWR will not only tell you it is painting you but also when it has locked you and switched over to the targeting mode – which is a pre-requisite for any Phoenix shot..
The Phoenix can be launched in TWS mode which supposedly would not be recognized as being tracked by the target’s RWR or at least not by those older RWR systems.
ijozicIt was widely reported over 25 years ago that British & possibly some other intelligence services had expressed disquiet to the USA about it accepting what the ISI told it uncritically & backing the crazies & religious extremists the ISI favoured, instead of more reasonable (& sometimes more militarily competent) groups like that led by Massoud, but their reservations had been brushed aside. The ISI was the USA’s friend & those European liberal softies were just imagining they still knew something because of their colonial past. Outdated romantic fantasies: the CIA knew better. Doh!
True, but to be fair, the Afghani side forced their hand by supporting the Pashtun militants as part of the Pashtunistan idea to which Pakistan eventually retaliated by supporting the Islamist opposition in Afghanistan (of which Massoud was also part of). If the Afghanis didn’t start the whole proxy war thing, perhaps the Pakistani side wouldn’t have been so obsessed by the need to control Afghanistan (as a matter of national security among other things) which eventually led to Taliban taking over as their proxy force. The US joined in with funding and then weapons as well only when the communists (PDPA) brought Daoud down in a coup and pretty much lost interest the moment the Soviets left and their allied regime was brought down.
These are all pretty complex issues and blaming such conflicts squarely on the apparently all-powerful and united US administration which knows what it’s doing seems like a gross disregard of other factors at play and underestimation of the limits of the US power. Yes, they did inadvertently trigger the current events in Iraq and Syria by dismantling the Saddam regime, but the forces at play were already there waiting for such an opportunity to fill in the resulting power void.
Then again, it might also be said that the stage was partly set already long ago by the British, French, Russia, etc. drawing their interest lines across ethnic areas as they saw fit (like in the Middle East with e.g. Syria and Iraq, support for Israeli immigration to Palestine, etc.) and more so often empowering the minority groups (which would much less likely rebel against them).
How is it so hard for you to get? it a chess game, Both Russian and US are taking advantage of current situations for their benefit , but that doesn’t mean they started the situation in the first place nor it is all their fault for the current situation ( if a lion fought with another lion, both get hurt badly and some vultures come to eat them, would that really the vultures fault that they get hurt in the first place?)
It should also be noted that the Assad regime, fearing that it might be next in line, played an important part in supporting the radical Sunni Islamist insurgents against the US forces in Iraq by channeling their volunteers from all over (and also those from its prisons) in a similar way that Turkey indirectly supported IS in Syria. It boomeranged back at them, but also provided a lifeline during the unrest as the Syrian middle class in the major cities probably prefers the regime to being under these mostly foreign Islamist thugs which took over the uprising eventually (with the financial and weapon support of the Saudis, Qatar, etc.).
ijozicThis is not because the Israelis had better aircrafts than the Arabs. This is not because the Israelis were better pilots than the Arabs.
Sure, the Israelis had E-2C Hawkeye support and they jammed or destroyed the Syrian GCI stations covering the conflict area, but both of these statements are completely untrue. A better air force than the Syrian one might have put on a better show against those odds, but Israeli Air Force was regularly mauling various Arab air forces even with inferior or roughly equal airplanes, so little wonder it was a slaughterhouse with the hi-tech F-15s and F-16s.
ijozicThe M was never exported.
The MF was and it’s a slightly downgraded M.
ijozicIt’s top speed is also restricted to M1.5 due to the cockpit glazing.
What does this have to do with the topic? The limit was there since some point after the breakup of the SU due to a lack of spare parts. It’s like saying MiG-29 and F-15 can’t dogfight as their vertical tails break off.
ijozicI’m almost sure that the MiG-21 was originally developed as a PVO ‘bomber interceptor’ in the 1950s as well.
Given its short range and lack of radar initially, it would be surprising. Wasn’t it used almost exclusively as a Frontal Aviation point-defense fighter (except a bis variant which saw some service in the PVO)?
ijozicBut neither of these aircraft were very manoeuvrable, less so than the MiG-21 and the F-4 that people criticised as a pig. I don’t see how they would have changed the dog-fight game.
I was not getting into that. I’m just responding to your MiG-21 comparison and pointing out that the Su-11 was a bomber interceptor so it had a different set of requirements to fulfill compared to the contemporary MiG-21 (like longer range, bigger radar set, longer ranged BVR weapons, etc.).
But, why are you putting the emphasis on the dogfight? The MiG-21 was not that useful as a dogfighter to the Vietnamese (as their pilots were not that trained and they used MiGs 17/19 for that), but as a GCI guided interceptor which would sneak in behind the large USAF formations, close up, launch IR guided missiles and quickly disengage. AFAIK, this is how the most of the losses to the 21’s went.
ijozicThe Su-11 had worse raw stats than the MiG-21 anyway.
All raw stats including radar range and BVR weapons? Su-11 was developed as an interceptor for the PVO so they were not meant to be directly comparable IMHO. Its problem was that it was noticeably inferior to another PVO interceptor, the Su-15.
ijozicFrom the same article: Sure.:rolleyes:
Yeah, I’ve seen that, hence why I wrote the news as “rumors”. I only posted it because it mentions the Su-33 upgrade with Gefest systems (which is news for me) and that only 4 MiG-29K would be part of the Syria deployment.
And why only four new Mig-29K? Are they being retrofittet or something, =>i’m thinking of the problems IN run into with their Mig-29K.
Since they’ve only recently started training on the carrier, they probably don’t have that many fully qualified pilots experienced pilots. Besides, the carrier deployment is more like an operational test deployment to test the new systems and weapons rather than a meaningful combat deployment.
ijozicMeanwhile in Syria..
http://sputniknews.com/military/20160902/1044898945/su33-guided-bombs-syria.html
It seems there are some more rumors about Su-33’s being upgraded with Gefest.
http://defence-blog.com/news/russia-to-modernize-sukhoi-su-33-carrier-based-aircraft.html
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