tell that to the USAF

Hard to say which COIN plane was the best, since some of them saw more action than others, while potentially better planes did not saw that action..

I think , IMO, the Pucara was the best COIN design ever, twin turboprop, properly designed, two seater, decently armored, and simple to operate, decent cockpit vision, not exaggerated glass bubble, and it had the right size/weight, not that heavy, not that light, and a well proven aerodynamic and structure.

This is one of these airplanes that deserve to be resurrected, although they are still operative, i think the production line is closed.

Wonder when people talk about noise levels of submarines, are they talking about a specific level at certain Hz or total noise regardless frequency.

This whole noise management can be interesting, because they are basically mechanical waves, and in different mediums , mechanical waves shift frequencies, so a certain quantity of dbs at a frequency change to other quantity of dbs at other frequency, changing transmitted medium, this thing is actually more complex than the EM stealth thing 🙂

I don’t understand either the great advantage of the pump jet concept, sure it does not seems noisy, but the immense propelled stream that would need such device to move a big massive submarine must be a immense source of LF noise, an i mean…damn immense, while it MF noise (most human perceptible) should be low…should be…

This is interesting, i can understand some of the industrial high power pumps operate at high pressure, but is because they operate in a closed circuit, i find hard to believe the local pressure of a opened axial (it seems to be axial) pump will achieve significantly better local pressure on the impeller to avoid cavitation.

Now, they could be centrifugal pumps, (but i think the cavitation for a centrifugal pump, in a open circuit should be actually worse than in a axial impeller.)

EDIT: i went wrong here, did confuse a bit the things, centrifugal should be actually good enough, although i don’t think the pump jets are based on centrifugal impeller.

In other matter, i would like to know if there are phased array sonars?

Wonder if there are news for that russian Kilo submarine with a small nuclear reactor, wonder if that reactor is used for auxiliar systems or for propullsion itself, i find a bit hard to believe is for propulsion, because it would need a decent turbine, and a complex gearing system, but then , who knows.

Not really Witcha. Read the Article again.
The B2 is a product from the Cold war.
It capability is not really needed any more, altough nice to have.
But a what price?
Just the operation cost is sky high.

USAF want a new bomber, which is smaller, two engines perhaps..
This has to do with cost, and most of all operational cost.

The days for the solo ‘Deep penetration bomber’ is gone, has been for quite some while.
Different requirement but the same story, look what happed to the F-22A.

I understand that for some people this comes quite shoking, but really.. try to keep up with the requirement of the future not the past.

Thanks

I must disagree

First, the B-2 was not a creation of the Cold War

Was a creation of bad engineering, wrong concepts, a political mess and the US ‘power projecting’ doctrine, is not really my interest to criticize this, I’m not a US citizen, so is not really important for me, what is important for me is the political, technological , military projected international charade…

The B-2 born as a replacement of the B1 program, the B1 main goal was to replace the B-52, bad engineering that resulted on lack of funds killed the B-1, then it was resurrected in a castrated B1B program, God knows why…

Then the B-2 born, and did not fared well, then it failed to replace the B-52, and some wise guy in Northrop or in the pentagon invented the ‘mobile ICBM hunting task’ charade to keep it alive, the b-2 was such horrible failure that even the Navy was trolling to get funds, trying to do a testing between the B-2 and the AEGIS (yes an X band radar), while Northrop did not want 🙂

But political lobbing kept it alive, and the USAF did end with 2 half-assed products (the B1B and the B2) instead of the real and original goal (B52s replacement).

Then came the nice pictures, the magazines, the powerpoint meetings and the video games, and made the B2 the most awesome bomber in the history…

The USAF still need a B52s replacement, is just that there is no money, the ‘cold war is over, we are just fighting some cavemen’ is an argument that have 2 faces and sources,

1-first the people that want resources for other programs (US civil infrastructure, education, etc), on this I don’t really care because is natural and happens everywhere

2-second, people saying the B2 is not needed anymore, but hiding the facts that the B2 is a big failure that needs to be removed, but for face saving and industrial ‘power projecting’ that people are saying the ‘fighting against cavemen’ and ‘end of cold war’ argument.

The truth, is that with or without Soviet Union, a real B52 replacement is need, because is part of the US nuclear doctrine, they need a lot of bombers because most of their nuclear force is based on submarines, bombers are the natural complement , were always the SLBMs complement for the US nuclear warfare doctrine, I won’t go deeper on this..because a bunch of kids will spam holy super accurate CEP of SLBMs that they found in the internet…

The US just ran out of resources, and they need a patch solution for their bomber fleet, these are the facts, but the USAF sis still on need for a B52 replacement.

The F-117 also had a huge grill across the intakes. Are you suggesting this would be a good solution for the T-50? Radar blocker + intake grills = reduced engine air flow.

Blockers are ‘next generation’ grills, only blockers should be required, is basically the X32 solution

I would not disagree. It just shows that the current prototype is just an YF-PAK if you want to say so.

I’m sorry, but this is not true, I’m sorry for the pro west/east fanboys eating fanboy books, confusing real RCS requirements with obsolete technology.

The state of this program is already advanced, this is not a YT-50, this is clearly a operative prototype, and IMO is not the only one there.

Russians did consider the whole S-duct thing, as you can see in the flateric pictures.

What they are doing with this PAKFA will be great, basically they will troll the ‘stealth’ industry and a bunch of fanboys with good engineering, the only thing that really matters, and they will achieve the same performance in the RCS field.

They won’t go with the S duct thing, they already studied it, and laughed over it, the S duct is a source of radar return, it shows more surface on exposed angles than a conventional duct, they will screen the whole thing, will they use blockers? or a grill? we don’t really know

They could even go with the same intake type of the F-23, don’t say that redesigning the intake would require a immense airframe redesign, look at the J-10B or even the F-16 with the DSI thingie.

But i really think this is the final airframe’s design.