pfcemIt not just about fitting. It’s also about being able to eject them safely and in an arbitrary way. Having to launch them in a sequence is something you want to avoid.
Still NO reason to need to study for just two Meteor per bay. There is nothing special/different that would cause issues vs AMRAAM + JDAM (or AMRAMM + AMRAAM).
I tried to fiddle with the images Arkali106 posted a while ago to see if four AMRAAMs would go in one bay. My conclusion was the same you suggested. Adding one on the door and one on the A2G station. The problems back then (for me) were the AMRAAM fins. They were constantly in the way of each other when opening the doors. This could perhaps have been avoided if the missiles were allowed to have different positions in the x-direction (longitudinal). The Meteor lacks the forward set of fins but has on the other hand the RAM air intake which could be a b!tch. Could the rear fins be smaller than the ones on AMRAAM? That would help…
The other problem I found was that you’d probably have to re-design the weapons bay in order to fit two missiles on the A2G station. I don’t think there’s enough room to fit a dual launcher on to the current station since it would add to much in the z-direction. And if you re-design the A2G station, will it still be able to carry 2000lbs class bombs?
Fitting six Meteors inside one bay would probably be more feasible. That would probably even allow you to eject them in an arbitrary sequence.
Disclaimer: These ‘calculations’ are based on the bay pictures above and might not be entirely accurate… 🙂
A dual AAM launcher for the A2G station has already been studied & found to be doable (& planned for Block 5). The only ‘issues’ with four AAMs per bay would be if the outer door is stressed enough to handle an AAM &/or fitting of such would reduce the launch envelope of one or more of the AAMs.
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First, it’s not about painting some stupid 2D diagram, where 4 Meteors are stuffed next to each other in the bay. The engineers will have to figure out the way how to safely eject the missiles without hitting each other even at high g or in the case one of them fails. Or do you want to restrict the firing on straight flight at 500 kts, zero bank angle and 0 deg AoA? Good luck with that!
Exactly. Such WOULD need to be studied for FOUR AAMs PER BAY but had already been done LONG ago for TWO AAMs PER BAY.
Another thing is that spending effort and money on a capability to carry long range missiles internally is as stupid and useless as it gets. A load of eight Meteors is desperately impractical, in real world outside of pfcemland even a Tomcat armed with six AIM-54s was a once in a lifetime opportunity (read press stunt).
So 4 AAMs is too few but 8 AAMs is too many…
Note that I have never said that the F-35 needed to be able to carry/use 8 AAMs internally (only that the SPACE is there to do so). HOWEVER, 4 AAMs + 8 SDB (2 + 4 per bay respectively) would be nice for self excorting F-35s…
pfcemHe doesn’t say “in each bay”, he says “in the bay”. I read that as 4 total internally carried.
Otherwise, I would like to see how 4 Meteors could fit in the bay below:
“In the bay” is SINGULAR. For him to have said what you ‘read’ he would have had to have said “in the bays“. There is absolutely NO reason to have studied if two Meteor would fit in each bay, it is a no-brainer that they can as the Meteor is MUCH smaller than a ‘2000 lb’ JDAM or even a ‘1000 lb’ JDAM.
There is PLENTY of room for four Meteor in EACH F-35 bay. One on the ‘trapeze/air-to-air’ station, two on the ‘air-to-ground’ station & one on the outer door. Keep in mind that the bays are long enough to stagger the missiles…
pfcemSTOVL Jet is Fifth Lockheed Martin F-35 to Enter Flight Testing
FORT WORTH, Texas, Feb. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — A Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) F-35B Lightning II short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) stealth fighter today became the fifth F-35 to begin flight operations.
The jet, known as BF-3, departed the runway near Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth plant at 4:02 p.m. CST for its first flight. During the one-hour sortie, F-35 Chief Test Pilot Jon Beesley tested the aircraft’s handling qualities, engine functionality, landing gear operation and basic subsystem performance.
BF-3 joins two other F-35Bs and one F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) aircraft currently undergoing active flight test. The first CTOL F-35, AA-1, is now preparing for live-fire testing. The F-35 program continues to accelerate the time from flight line arrival to first flight.
You can read the rest of the press release from the link provided if so desired but it is the 1st three paragraphs which are important.
pfcemThanks.. LOL
The May 2009 Program update had the Pre-SWAT numbers.
I noticed that the FY2011 F-35A budget docs has some pretty bad addition errors also.
Yep. Just look at program documents from ~2004-2006…
pfcemThe latest program doc has it at :
Length: 51.4 ft
Wing Area: 460 ft2
Weight (Empty): 29,036 lbs
Internal Fuel: 18,840 lbs
Range: 600 + nm
No, those are PRE-WEIGHT REDUCTION numbers.
2007 program documents provided POST WEIGHT REDUCTION numbers
PRE-WEIGHT REDUCTION (2006 program documents)
F-35A
empty weight: 29,036 lbs
fuel capcity: 18,480 lbs
combat radius: 590+nm (KPP THRESHOLD)
F-35B
empty weight: 32,161 lbs
fuel capcity: 14,003 lbs
combat radius: 450+nm (KPP THRESHOLD)
F-35C
empty weight: 32,072 lbs
fuel capcity: 20,085 lbs
combat radius: 600+nm (KPP THRESHOLD)
POST WEIGHT REDUCTION (2007 program documents)
F-35A
empty weight: 26,664 lbs
fuel capcity: 18,307 lbs
combat radius: 625nm
F-35B
empty weight: 29,695 lbs
fuel capcity: 13,400 lbs
combat radius: 498nm
F-35C
empty weight: 29,996 lbs
fuel capcity: 19,145 lbs
combat radius: 642nm
***
Good point — how much is the weight penalty?
‘Just’ ~2414 lbs vs the Eurofighter Typhoon for two orders of magnitude lower RCS, reduced IR signature, ~83% more internal fuel capacity, internal weapons carriage, AESA radar, EODAS, Sniper, et cetera…
pfcemDrag isn’t the be all and end all, the F35 may have a constant drag on internal only missions but it starts out with a weight penalty of over 3 tons Vs typhoon and 4 tons Vs Block 52 F-16, which means higher wing loading and bigger problems with inertia and momentum.
And lets not forget that Drop tanks can do just that, DROP and then the drag of those aircraft drops real quick
The F-35A weight is ‘just’ ~2400 lbs more than the Eurofighter Typhoon [26,664 lbs vs ~24,250 lbs OEW]. BUT has a bit more thrust…and before you go on with wing loading nonsense note that IT IS NOT AN ACCURATE REPRISENTATION OF ACTUAL LIFT – the quite different wing loadings of the F-16 vs the Mirage 2000 result in VERY CLOSE agility with each having a slight edge over the other in different areas of the flight envelope.
The F-35A’s wing area (more importantly ACTUAL LIFT) & thrust vs weight (empty) is GREATER than a Block 50 (or Block 52) F-16C.
F-16C Block 52
empty weight: ~ 18,335 lbs (note that the Block 50 is nearly 1,000 lbs heavier)
engine: F100-PW-229 ~ 17,000 lbs dry & 29,000 lbs with afterburning
wing area: 300 sq ft
F-35A
empty weight: ~ 26,664 lbs
engine: F135-PW-100 ~ 28,000 lbs dry & 43,000 lbs with afterburning
wing area: 460 sq ft
change
empty weight: ~8,329 lbs (45.4%)
engine: ~ 11,000 lbs dry & 14,000 lbs with afterburning (64.7% & 48.3%)
wing area: 460 sq ft (53.3%)
Sorry but 18,000+ of fuel adds drag to even a F-35A, just not as much as an equivalent amount of fuel (for the same combat radius/range) for ‘comparable’ legacy fighters. But again note that it is not JUST drag or JUST weight but BOTH drag & weight. And before you continue with the F-35 drag penalty note that the F-35A’s frontal area & wetted area are about the same as that of a Rafale…
pfcemThat pretty much supports my claim – 6x AMRAAM + 2x Winder make together some 1090kg of weight – that is maybe 4% of the fueled aircraft’s weight in total. That pretty much renders your emphasis on “combat loaded” F-22 vs “clean” F-16 useless, because the difference between “clean” and “combat loaded” F-22 is very marginal. BTW, pretty much the same goes for Typhoon with 2x SRAAM and 4x AMRAAM.
What claim?
For the F-22 & F-35 COMBAT LOADED is clean! THAT IS THE POINT. That includes their “standard” weapons load & an internal fuel capacity for a combat radius/range that legacy fighters require 2-3 external tanks to obtain.
Load up ‘comparable’ legacy fighters with the same/similar weapons load & enough fuel for similar combat radius/range of the F-22 &/or F-35 and those legacy fighters aren’t clean. And while the weight & drag of the weapons is comparatively small, that of all that fuel is not.
A ‘clean’ Block 50 F-16C carries ~7,000 lbs of internal fuel + no more than a pair of wingtip Sidewinders = ~7,380 lbs of weapons & fuel. A COMBAT LOADED F-35A carries ~18,000 lbs of internal fuel + two AMRAAM + two ‘2,000 lbs’ JDAM = ~23,000 lbs of weapons & fuel – thats ~3 times that of the Block 50 F-16C.
pfcemWell, define ‘combat loaded’. The most I have seen hanging under the F-22 was three AMRAAMs, two Winders and few SDBs. Makes some 850-950kg added weight, compared to 29 tons that is less than 3%.This won’t make much difference on any fighter of this weight class, especially when carried as semi-recessed (Typhoon)
For the F-22 & F-35 ‘combat loaded’ means with a full internal load.
F-22
6 AMRAAM @ 335 lb = 2010 lbs
2 Sidewinder @ 190 lbs = 380 lbs
internal fuel capacity = 20,649 lbs
total = 23,039 lbs
F-35
2 AMRAAM @ 335 lbs = 670 lbs
2 ‘2000 lb’ JDAM @ 2015 lbs = 4030 lbs
internal fuel capacity = 18,307 lbs
total = 23,007 lbs
Note that for air-to-air a F-35 with say 4 AMRAAM + 2 Sidewinder would be 20,027 lbs…
LO and VLO works both ways. AMRAAMs were hardly performers even against legacy aircraft, now add intense jamming and LO and you can switch back to your guns and Winders.
Thats funny, for years & years now all we hear from naysayers like you is how the F-22s &/or F-35s stealth isn’t all that & that in fact they can be detected, tracked & (somehow) targeted to such a degree that all the effort towards stealth is a HUGE waist & that they could/would have been better without the compromises made making them so stealthy. Now all of a sudden there is a new Russian stealth fighter & magically its stealth [which too me doesn’t look to even be on par with the F-35, although the production aircraft may see significant enough changes from the prototype to end up in the ballpark of the F-35 assuming Russian RAM technology is advanced enough] WILL work against the F-22 & F-35.
BTW, you should finally quit the bad habit of laughing like an idiot constantly..
I am laughing AT idiots.
pfcemThat means that not only F-35, but even Raptor are not meaningfully better than a clean F-16 Block 50. Given the fact that today’s Vipers lag behind early models due to weight, it could be that F-22 is actually inferior to F-16A in turning at higher gs ? Well, at least sounds pretty much like that…
No, that means COMBAT LOADED (~23,000 lbs of weapons & fuel – note that this refears to at take-off, it is quite possible that the ‘point of reference’ for flight performance is with ~1/3 of their fuel burned – all three; F-16, F-22 & F-35) F-22 & F-35 have agility similar (or better) than a CLEAN Block 50 F-16. Lets see a Flanker, Fulcrum, Rafale or Typhoon do that…
What missiles? If we talk about fighting adversary LO and VLO designs, then you can basically forget AMRAAM and BVR. Suddenly maneuverability becomes very relevant.
Well, unless you want to tell me that F-35 is only suitable for fighting against legacy threats..
LOL…
So LO & VLO works for our adversaries but not for us?
But you are correct, current generation radar-guided MRAAMs are likely to have quite lo pk vs LO and VLO designs…That is why the US’s next AAM (DRADM) will have a muti-mode seeker. 😉
***
but the carrier version C with bigger wing area would be the most agile of the 3, i guess and no one is ordering that over the A so they can get more maneuverability
Instantaneous agility; yes
Sustained agility; no
pfcemThere are no 2000 lb class weapons integrated on the F-22 at all, so the answer is zero, not 8. You probabley accounted 2 for each pylon as these pylons are rated for 5000 lb each. There are no such weapons integrated however and even those graphics showing bombs on the wing hardpoints just show ONE 1000 lb class bomb on each pylon.
Note the smilie…
The question was how many the F-22 could CARRY, not how many it could use in battle. And it is not as if the USAF couldn’t integrate any such weapons IF there were ever a need to do so…
Although, I do not believe there is any current dual launcher for two ‘2000 lb’ class weapons…so IF any such weapons were to ever be integrated to/with the F-22 it is doubtful it would be more than one weapon per wing pylon for a total of four.
pfcemAgain, I hate responding to this troll but…
LOL, wrightwing. A single F22 costs anywhere between $330m and $350m.
BS. The 60 FY2007-2009 Lot 7-9 (#124-183, ACTUALLY operational #120-175) cost an average of $140 million flyaway. Even IF you prefer to use weapons sytems cost instead they were ‘just’ $167 million each.
How many Mk84 class weapons can F22 carry, again?
Up to eight extrrnally. 🙂
But why would a F-22 need to carry Mk84 class weapons?
…and even if you fill it with SDBs, how many AAMs can it carry, as well?
2 AMRAAM + 2 Sidewinder internally & up to 8 more AAMs externally.
…
As for the rest, it is not worth feeding the troll.
pfcemNext generation do away with stealth altogether, well at least the high end.
I still se a use of cheap LO UCAV, and stand off missiles.
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?p=1403751
Quite the opposite. The ‘signs’ are than ‘next generation’ combat aircraft will seek to EXPAND stealth to cover a wider bandwith.
In order to fly Mach 6, such scramjets fly a VERY HIGH altitude making them exceedingly easy to detect & track (targeting however would remain a problem without system specifically meant to deal with such high atlitude/speed threats – aka ABMs).
pfcemAnybody who’s been following his “articles” on Ares over the last three or four YEARS could tell you that he has been consistently right in the development timeline… How many flights were there in 2009? Now go and read Bill´s texts from late 2008…
No he hasn’t. It is not worth the time to go through every single event but PLENTY of events in the F-35 program have occured EARLIER than he implied (or outright prognosticated) would. Anyone/everyone reasonably well informed on the F-35 program knew full well in late 2008 that the program was not going to meet all scheduled events for 2009. BUT Sweetman has contsantly made it out to be that each & every event that did not occure on schedule was a sign of a ‘death spiral’ leading to the ultimate failure of the program. It did not matter if the event occured one week late, if it did not occure when it was scheduled Sweetman was shouting from the mountain top that the program was in shambles & on the verge of complete failure.
It was particularly sad to see/read during the last quarter of 2009 Sweetman come out with article after article spouting how little time the program had left to meet all scheduled events by the end of the year as if the program did not some how ‘pull a rabbit out of its hat’ & complete the ENTIRE 2009 schedule by the end of the year that midnight on Dec 31, 2009 marked the End of Days for the entire program.
IF he had any objectivity he would have rather pointed out that the program was running 4-6 months behind schedule AND that that is nothing out of the ordinary NOR is it anything to be alarmed about.
pfcemThe current CVN’s of the USN are being needlessly overworked supporting asymmetrical warfare when they were designed to fight a much different battle. The raw power and cost are overkill for much of the current work loads. Why would a smaller carrier suitable for three dozen 500mph-capable propeller driver COIN warbirds in the 2000hp range not largely work for combatting terrorists?
The US military is overkill for much of the current work loads. PERIOD. But overkill for such ‘low-intensity’ conflicts is better than ‘under-kill’ for ‘high-intensity’ conflicts…This whole ‘low-intensity’/counter-insurgency conflict strikes me as what the NATIONAL GUARD (at least in part) should be oriented towards rather than as secondary/reserve army.
At any rate, if the conflict is ‘low-intensity’ enough that “three dozen 500mph-capable propeller driver COIN warbirds in the 2000hp range” is suitable then more than likely there are airfields from which they could operate from.
BUT if you simple MUST have a carrier for such operations, it should be possible to refit some LHA/LHD for such. Spending ~$2 billion on a carrier to operate “three dozen 500mph-capable propeller driver COIN warbirds in the 2000hp range” is a rather poor use of limited resources. You are basically taking a WWII-era CVL (& its air group) & ‘time warping’ it into the 21st century…
pfcemThe sad reality is the loudest voices in this thread carry the least data. Cola is doing his homework which the kids ridiculing him cannot say they’ve done. It’s obvious who is winning and the few that haven’t made any attempt to compete other than spam priceless treasures. Really, a lot of rebuttals have been truly worthless….er… priceless.
I don’t know what thread YOU are reading but if you actually believe that about THIS thread then that makes YOU even MORE of a fool than Cola1973.
***
LOL SPUDMAN, OF COURSE IT DOESN’T!
IT ISN’T USAF’S FAULT, LM MANAGED TO PRODUCE ONLY 7 INSTEAD OF 8 PLANES FOR WHICH USAF ALLOCATED FUNDS ACCORDING TO PROJECTIONS, IS IT?????!!!!!!
Good God!
The point is that it is NOT LM’s fault that the per unit cost to built 7 F-35s is higher than it is to build 8. It isn’t ANYBODY’S fault, simply reality.
LM is building the number of airframes CONGRESS authorizes. LM nor the USAF/DOD aren’t the final arbiters as to how many F-35s are built…CONGRESS IS!
***
What you don’t understand is, that nobody was pretending it wasn’t.
BS.
Cola1973 even TRIED to get away with quoting F-35C costs to ‘show’ how the cost of the F-35A is higher than it ACTUALLY is.
It’s exactly the thing that people have been telling you fanboys when you ran to the forums pretending there will be a price tag of some $58 mill or whatever when there will be over 6’000 units built.
Excuse me…
The $58.7 million was a PUBLICLY RELEASED price for a multi-nation deal the US & partner nations were negotiating (a deal which fell through last year so now partner nations are/will be paying ‘full’ flyaway cost). The people pretending are/were those who discount/ignore it.
And don’t be such an ignorant fool as to think that the current/recent (more or less) world-wide economic issues will last forever. Given all the aircraft the F-35 is expected/likely to replace in so many nations all over the world in the next 30+ years, a total production run of 5000-6000 IS NOT out of the question. Note that NOBODY is saying it WILL BE that many but rather that it COULD BE that many.
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