SOCThe aircraft itself was great. The aircraft/missile combo. . .well, I’ve yet to hear anybody saying great things about the AIM-4.
That’s because all the stories come from F-4D pilots using the AIM-4D missile outside its envelope over Vietnam. That’s no different from SAM battery commanders complaining that the Tor-M1 is a piece of crap because they tried to shoot down an ICBM with it and failed.
Find the old Airtime “Wings of Fame” issue with the F-106 feature. There’s an interview in there with a pilot who speaks rather fondly of the AIM-4F/G and F-106 combo. Apparently the AIM-4G’s seeker was pretty damn good for its day.
Most of the AIM-4’s anti-fighter problems were being fixed by Hughes in the form of the XAIM-4H, which would have introduced a proximity fuze (all AIM-4 series AAMs had contact fuzes…they were designed to hit lumbering gigantoid bombers, remember), but further development of the AIM-9 made the missile unneeded and it was axed.
SOCNo, now you’re being silly:
for the CVN-78, the Russians have the ‘Sizzler’
Now you’re being silly. The SIZZLER doesn’t have the warhead to seriously damage a massively compartmentalized, gigantoid CVN. What it can do, however, is penetrate air defenses and potentially take out the AEGIS ships, paving the way for heavy cruise missiles and the like to actually take down the carrier.
SOCI got the Su-27 FRA book in the mail today (a pleasant suprise, I wasn’t expecting it until this weekend or next week). Very well done. There are a whole mess of new images I’d never seen before for starters, and there are a lot of the obligatory line drawings and color profiles. Some of them were in Gordon’s Airlife Su-27 book, but there are a whole host of new ones as well. Some of the suprises were in-flight photos of the T10M-12, the T10M-10 with AL-41F-1A engines, and a lot of weapons-release photos (including one which appears to show a Moskit air launch). There’s a lot of new material here, and it covers everything right up to the first RusAF Su-34 delivery, the Venezuelan Su-30MK2 delivery and the Malaysian Su-30MKM program. There’s some info on the Su-35BM project as well. This one stands up rather well when compared to the previous benchmark, Andrei Fomin’s Su-27 FLANKER Story. Fomin went into a little more detail regarding the development process and the early flight test days, but Gordon has actually come up with a well executed overall look at the program, from the first variant to the latest.
Ignore his worthless WarbirdTECH FLANKER book, stop trying to find the old Airlife volume, and get this one instead. At almost 600 pages it’ll run you about $60 USD or 35 Pounds Sterling, but it’s worth it. The only major omission is an index, and apart from that the only thing I would have liked to see for ease of reference would have been a chart showing Russian Air Force FLANKER units (the data is in the text, however).
SOCA choice they made. Without the F-117 and without tomahawk carrying ships and subs they could easily fit cruise missiles to the B-1B and the B-52. The formers internal weapons bays were designed for cruise missiles were they not?
Kinda sorta…they were designed to fit the AGM-86A. The AGM-86B was longer and necessitated the B-1B’s moving bulkhead between the forward bays to allow a CSRL with 8 missiles to be fitted. That capability (to move the bulkhead) has since been deleted, along with the external carriage capability, save for allowing a targeting pod (Sniper?) to be carried now.
Let the U.S venture with F-22 from Alaska to Russian airspace just around Kamchaka peninsular to see if they could not be
tracked with their vacuum-tube systems.
Good luck with that one. There’s a FOXHOUND regiment at Petropavlovsk, as well as three operational S-300PM batteries. No vacuum tubes there. I’d expect a Raptor to be able to get a lot closer than, say, an F-15, but it’s still not something I’d want to be in charge of trying.
SOCNewsflash Sferrin, the B-1B has a much longer range than the F-117 and it could carry quite a few cruise missiles and be much safer near enemy territory than tanker aircraft.
Newsflash Garry, the B-1B is not equipped to carry any sort of cruise missiles. The AGM-86B software, as I understand it, was never even installed into operational aircraft.
And he’s right sferrin, the Shillelagh was a real, grade-A POS.
SOCYep you’re right.
Why people haven’t gotten used to that by now is beynd me 😀
(hyperinflated ego mode /off)
SOCAt least one was launched from an A-3D.
You’re thinking of either the AIM-54 or the AGM-76 air-to-ground derivative of the AIM-47 I think. From what I’ve been able to figure out, all the air launches of the AIM-47 were conducted either by the B-58 testbed or the YF-12A fleet.
SOCHow many Sparrow missiles hit in testing?
No idea, but I might be able to find out.
Regarding the 6/7 AIM-47 stat, that is only talking about the initial series of guided launches from the YF-12A. When the F-12B program was cancelled Hughes and Lockheed were in the process of developing a more robust firing trials program to take place at Eglin AFB involving more realistic firings with ECM presence and things of that nature. 6/7 is outstanding, especially considering that the only miss was because an internal component decided to fail, but the trials were relatively benign as they had just started to conduct firings from the YF-12A fleet. They apparently never got into any range envelope expansion as a result, with the launch ranges for the initial series being in the order of 30-40 NM, a far cry from the advertised 100 NM range of the AIM-47. So the program was getting great results and the AIM-47 was looking like an absurdly accurate AAM (one shot actually went right through the vertical tail of a B-47 target) for a proximity-fuzed weapon, but one has to remember that the real robust test program never took place as the F-12B was canned.
There were other ground launches as well as test firings from the B-58 testbed (that might be where 12/13 comes from actually, I’ll look into that as well).
SOC6 hits out of 7 firings from the YF-12A (the miss was due to a failure in an internal component of the missile).
SOCI am not sure, but was really YF12A – a long range mach 3 interceptor supposed to be based on SR-71 Blackbird design? No way to be a real interceptor, no way.
– where to put the huge radar needed? – the nose cone is quite small
– difficult/long maintenance before taking off
– where to put the weapons? – there is not enough space even for two big range missiles inside, hanging outside would affect badly the aerodynamics
– bad maneuverability..and maybe more shortcomings….
-A large radome was fitted to the F-12 for the AN/ASG-18 radar set resulting in the cut-back chine appearance unique to the variant
-They figured that part out
-There were three internal bays in the chines which each held an AIM-47 long-range AAM. Production F-12Bs would’ve used a fourth bay as well, it was filled with test instrumentation on the YF-12As.
-Not important for a high-speed interceptor designed to hit bombers, not mix it up with fighters
SOCSelling all that titanium would have made the Soviets rich 😀
Actually a lot of the titanium was in fact sourced from the Soviet Union, bought by CIA front companies :diablo:
SOCNo. The SKunk Works never mentioned the SR-71 being stealthy till stealthy became popular. Now everything they made was stealthy including the U-2. Stealth is a marketting ploy for them now.
Well, back in the 1980’s stealth was still hush-hush. Once the A-12 was declassified, some of the details could come out regarding the design history.
U-2 being stealthy? Not hardly.
And there is no RAM on F-16s? That gold cockpit canopy is just for show?
Dunno if there’s RAM or not. But the gold canopy is there to reduce RCS by not allowing radar waves to enter the cockpit and reflect off of all the crap in there.
China detected SR-71 flights from takeoff to landing and passed that information to Vietnam. Vietnam just didn’t have anything that could intercept them.
There were a few A-12 flights over North Korea where the pilots reported absolutely no radars tracking the aircraft.
The whole branch of mathematics to calculate EM wave propagation was based on a paper submitted by a Russian mathmatition.
Pyotr Ufimtsev. Lockheed engineers read his paper and realized they could use his concepts to predict how radar waves scatter after hitting a flat surface. Hence, faceting. Plug that crap into a computer and you can model yourself a VLO platform.
SOCThey fully understand stealth and its technologies and have the kh-102, a stealthy cruise missile ready for production as well as other projects. The only thing stopping the contruction of stealthy aircraft in Russia has been the money. This is compounded by a real lack of need. Su-27s are still able to do the job. The problem of money has now gone…
And they fully understand what happens when you design an aircraft to be LO first, hence the development of the Keldysh system.
The long range AAM will likely be the KS-172 because of Sukhois ties to Novator, but may end up being the R-37M. The long range surface to surface might be the land attack model of the Yakhont and that may be the anti radar/anti ship missile as well.
The R-37M should not be discounted, especially if it is in fact incorporated into the upgraded FOXHOUNDs. But if India does in fact procure the KS-172 for the MKI, then it may have an upper hand as it will already be a FLANKER-integrated weapon.
In service programs are still considered secret… particularly the ones that are not for export.
Too true, hence why we have yet to see an image of an R-33S!
The F-117 is a bomber, and a very limited bomber at that… that is why it is being withdrawn already.
The F-117A was never going to overwhelm Soviet air defenses, but for what it was, it was very effective. It’s being withdrawn due to escalating operating and maintenance costs and because it is believed that its role can be
The SR-71 is not LO. Chinese radars tracked them from takeoff to landing when they operated over Vietnam. Soviet radars tracked them from takeoff to landing in operations in Europe.
The A-12 was designed (and redesigned from the A-11 variant) specifically with the intention of reducing the radar cross section. Due to the reflectivity of the afterburner plume, and a change in Soviet radar signal procesing architecture, their efforts really did not end up amounting to much. But it was most certainly intended to be the first stealthy aircraft, that was why the redesign was directed. The chine fairings, the canted tails, the RAM treatments, all of these had to do with the low RCS requirement and the redesign into the definitive A-12 operational variant, which was in turn developed into the YF-12A and the SR-71.
It was its speed and height that made it difficult to intercept.
Yeah, and the idea was to incorporate a low RCS to make the reaction time of any SAM systems or GCI-directed interceptors absurdly small. But like I said, the Soviets altered the signal-processing techniques in newer radar sets, and that tossed most of the LO work right out the window as it was configured to give problems to the early radar sets and any derivatives thereof using the same signal proceeeing technology (I think the old one was blip-scan, but I’d have to go look it up, hence the generic terminology).
SOCHe also likes putting intakes above the LERX or wings, a tradition carried on to the YF-23 and the B-2.
Dude, the only way a YF-23 has intakes above the wings is if it’s flying inverted 😀
SOCIn fact, the idea of a mass order of A-12’s in their various versions and adaptions, caused a good but of concern among the Skunkworks management. The U-2 project had been their largest amount of work yet, and they were looking at building ten times the number of a airplane ten times as complex.
They were looking at a 93 aircraft order; about 50 Blackbirds of all variants were produced anyway, and that only took a decade or so.
The role that interests me more, however, is as a nuclear bomber and cruise missle carrier. I wonder how far you could loft a gravity nuke from eighty thousand feet and mach three? :diablo:
Well, the SR-71B(x) study showed that they could get an AGM-69 to travel 514 NM downrange :diablo:
Anyhow, one of the overlooked bottlenecks to a large Blackbird fleet is a lack of suitable types and numbers of tanker aircraft. IIRC, each squadron of Blackbirds required a tanker unit to support normal training and operations, I hate to think how much $$$ in planes, men, and oil would be needed for a full on surge.
More when I get home.
Matt
There was one KC-135Q unit which supported the SR-71 fleet I think. Tanker support for an interceptor flying out and back is a lot less intensive than support for a recon jet flying thousands of miles, though.
It would have been a terrible interceptor due to the extraordinary maintenance required to prepare it for flight – requiring several clock hours.
Actually that was pretty much worked out. The USAF even considered having armed SR-71As sitting alert to take out Soviet AWACS platforms in the event of nuclear war, the idea being that they shoot them down before the bombers got within their range, making intercepts harder.
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