SOCAn overview of the RSVN:
http://geimint.blogspot.com/2009/02/nuclear-rain-rsvn.html
I didn’t go into too much detail with the individual weapons, as in breaking down just what characteristics each specific weapon posessed (range, warheads, etc), or I’d still be writing and still be irritated that I wasn’t done yet 😀
SOCIt’s been mentioned in a few places, most recently in the book The Archangel and the OXCART by Remak and Ventolo in 2008. Most books on the Blackbird that have been published since around 2000 or so make mention of this fact if they go into any detail regarding the A-12’s development. The book I mentioned above deals solely with the CIA’s A-12 program so it’s a good place to start, and it’s the most recent publication so it makes use of the most recently declassified information as well.
SOCFor several types we have to add some additional time as they flew at first as a technology demonstrator :
Rafale A 1986 = 14 years
EAP 1986 = 17 years
YF-22 1990 = 13 yearsAnd now – even with the severe circumstances in Russia between collapse of the SU, …
Su-34
first flight 1990
service introduction 2006
= 16 years
That first flying “Su-34” was really the Su-27IB aerodynamic demonstrator, closer in purpose to the Rafale A or EAP. The 16 year figure then matches up well with the three examples you mentioned above, and that is including delays due to post-USSR funding issues.
SOCMight want to figure out just where your pliers came from. A lot of the stuff labeled Made In China actually originates from Taiwan… Also, who cares what they eat (anything Szechuan is good by me)? Koreans also eat certain breeds of dog, why is that relevant to anything? Most people around the globe eat purposely aborted chicken fetuses as well, including me 😀 As for the toxicity of some Chinese products, which were suitably recalled, where did Mad Cow tainted beef originate from again?
SOCYou have somehow ‘forgotten’ about the fact that espionage went both ways. :rolleyes: USA has fed a whole espionage apparatus for decades, transported whole container ships of documents from Germany, later they were sending satellites over the mailand, paying spies from all fields of Russian industry and infrastructure, buying off Russian aircraft from other countries (Egypt, Israel etc.) but no, they of course never copied anything, the whole mess was just for fun 😉 I guess you , too, will have to live with it that US have copied and stolen exactly as much as others have copied and stolen from them. Get used to that..
They were buying Soviet aircraft (and Chinese J-7s, for that matter) for evaluation and the development of effective countertactics. Espionage, in both directions, was also often directed at evaluating the adversary’s strength to develop a sizeable counterforce. Germany after WWII? Oh yeah, we imported, exploited, and in a lot of cases copied the hell out of that stuff, no argument there. But then again, the USSR did the exact same thing.
Nothing but pathetic claims, if you ask me..
Funny, in most places, given the absence of hard evidence and the sources of those claims, they’d usually have been labeled as “educated guesses” or “assessments”. The pathetic aspect must derive from the fact that they were made by non-Communist authors…
What a load of drivel especially the part I have quoted, utter tosh that shows how little you know about the US military. Pretty much an epic fail.
Perhaps a little misstated, but essentially true when it pertains to post-war Iraq. Any person with a serious idea of the cultural issues in that nation would’ve told you that the American plan for a unified Iraq was not a very bright way to go about rebuilding the place post-Saddam.
SOCI seem to remember that the YF-23 test team could not believe that their aircraft has lost in the end, their belief mainly based on test results. That would indicate that the YF-23 was indeed a better design (faster, more stealthy etc.)
It is more accurate to state that in terms of supercruise and stealth the YF-23 exceeded the USAF requirement to a greater degree than the YF-22. The YF-22 did the same with the agility requirement. Both jets met the requirements, and when that happens other considerations are taken into account, such as the perceived ability of the manufacturer to deliver on time and on budget. Was the YF-23 the better performing design? Yes. Did the USAF pick an aircraft that didn’t meet its requirements? No.
OTOH, it’s true that the YF-22 was much further developed as YF-23 needed a major redesign of the engine nacelles (reason escaped me) as well as of the fuselage due to additional weapon bay required.
The nacelles were to be resized due to the rescinding of the thrust vectoring/short field requirement. The way the jet was built, they couldn’t easily modify the airframes to the new configuration. But they did have to submit test data during the final phase to prove that the demonstrated performance was still indicative of how the actual production vehicle would perform.
Futhermore, YF-23 was not more than a hastily assembled prototype with numerous F-15 and F-18 parts, equipped with just a basic F-15E front office (compared to newly developed MMI for the 22). YF-22 team did a step further by having conducted basic weapon trials (even if not required).
If you’re referring to the landing gear, you should figure out where the B-2’s main struts come from 😀 From what I recall, Northrop did fly a testbed BAe 1-11 or something with the cockpit and avionics for the YF-23.
For the ATF competition, Northrop proposed to use the same technical approach to achieve low RCS that was being used on B-2. While that approach works well in theory and on non-flying RCS pole models, it simply isn’t robust to the flight environment. USAF realized this during the ATF competition based on dismal RCS performance of flying B-2s at that time and this counted heavily against the F-23 proposal.
The B-2 surface treatments simply could not withstand the rigors of a single flight.
The B-2’s RCS problems, while they did deal in part with the surface configuration (fixed during Block 30 upgrades, by the way), were not necessarily applicable to the YF-23. The YF-23 did prove the validity of its RCS approach during flight testing, an approach which differed in a few aspects from that used by the B-2. The aircraft were designed for different environments. Surface discontinutities on a large scale with the B-2 presented issues that the same kind of problems, had they been present on the YF-23 (and I don’t believe they were), would not have resulted in the same type of negative RCS impact. It had to do with the intended operating environment. If you think about it, you’ll figure out what I’m getting at.
B-2 never conducted combat operations (Serbia and Iraq) without the presence of heavy jamming.
Not true over Iraq, and over Serbia a lot of the jamming had to do with preventing accurate signature data from being recorded, I’d assume. Plus, they operated with other aircraft in the area as well performing other tasks. Jamming in the area wasn’t necessarily there to support or hide the B-2.
SOCWhat’s completely hilarious is that the titanium used to build the Blackbird was sourced from the USSR through a CIA front company 😀
SOCIt’s also not an officially binding teaty, more of a gentlemen’s agreement. And I think it doesn’t apply if the customer already has the ability to develop and produce the technology being sold. I.E. if China wanted to, it wouldn’t be an MTCR violation to sell the DF-31A to Russia.
SOCThis is the first smart idea I’ve heard out of Boeing since the F-14 was retired :diablo:
Seriously, interesting concept, and far more useful to the USAF than the F-35 will ever be. Fit it with a Longbow radar, MMW Hellfires, AIM-9X, JHMCS, and go to town.
SOCIndia isn’t an MTCR signatory…
SOCEvery time I see one of these I expect to see a posse of clowns inside.
Every time I see one of those I want to run it off the road. There’re two different ones, the Scion and one by somebody else, that just look plain retarded. If I wanted to drive a box I’d put wheels on the huge crate my TV came in.
SOCI liked Future Fighters and Space Weapons. Never could figure out why they had an XFV-12A on the cover though given that even at that time it was an old airplane.
Maybe because it still hadn’t managed to become airborne 😀
SOCI think my favorite is the Soviet Military Forces guide, which collected the individual Land Forces, Air Forces, and Naval Forces volumes into one thick guide.
SOCI have a few out of this series as well incuding the one shown, it was another of the great little reference guide series:
http://www.abe.pl/html/english/details.php?id=1854880020
And of course, no discussion would be complete without remembering those Salamander books like the one shown here:
I’ve still got a load of those!
SOCIt’s not quite as small but the Jane’s aircraft recognition guide is about the only counterpart I can think of that is published on a regular basis. I’ve found some small pocket guides over the years that are comparable to Observer’s but they appeared to have been one-off publications. Observer’s was a great little reference work, I have three or four of them on the shelf myself. It was always interesting to see the three views of an aircraft like the Su-27 or Tu-160 become more accurate with each edition as more information became known.
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