SOCTrue, Concorde was the only truly successful commercial jet of the three. But politics killed the Tu-144D, not capability. As for flight routes…there were agreements between the USSR and the West for a lot of reciprocal routes to be shared by Concorde and the Tu-144, but these plans fell through when Aeroflot started to back off of the Tu-144 program as the Tu-144D wasn’t ready soon enough. Had the Tu-144D come along earlier and not been dumped by Aeroflot there is no reason to assume it wouldn’t have been jetting about all over the place.
Only one SST capable in regular service? No, only one that enjoyed enough government support to stay in service. History ignores the Tu-144 and regards it as a failure for no good reason. French shenanigans at the Paris airshow aside, it was every bit the SST Concorde was, and in some respects more of one, and does not deserve to be relegated to a footnote in history.
SOCFor a close-in fight though I’ll take an F-4E with four AIM-9’s and a gun compared to an F-106A with a gun and four AIM-4’s though. The AIM-9’s better capability against fighters combined with the second crew member are two things I think would be going in my favor in that situation.
Find the Wings of Fame issue that covers the F-106. Apparently the AIM-4G had a far better seeker than the legacy AIM-9s and Six pilots loved the advantage it gave them in DACT over the rest of the USAF until the newer all-aspect AIM-9L arrived beginning in 1978. The interview in that issue with the former Six pilot goes into a lot of that in pretty good detail. The Falcon gets crapped on because pilots in Vietnam did not understand how to employ it properly and often fired the weapon outside normal launch envelopes. Put it in the hands of a Six pilot who is well versed in the system and it killed in DACT.
SOCNon US.. Concorde , its like Moon landing, ahead of its time in its life, not surpassed or even matched yet… only Concorde was not staged at Area 51 like moon landing :D:D:D (kidding)
Second SST to fly, second to reach Mach 1, second to earn revenue, #2 in terms of passenger capacity, #2 in terms of range…
The only word I can think of to accurately describe the historical context people put Concorde in is overrated.
SOCEven if the didn’t fall for it I can assure you 100% that the west is not going to risk getting flatted beyond recognition over Georgia.
Unless they can deliver a nuclear warhead within 30 seconds of launch the result will be the flattening of both Russia and the West. One wing of Minuteman III missiles is probably enough to do the job.
Putin will tell the west what they want to hear and then proceed to do whatever the hell he wants.
If what he is doing is in the best interest for Russia regardless of Western opinion, then he isn’t doing anything wrong.
SOCthere shouldnt be any surprize with Mach 6 with R-33/R-37 since they have much larger motor, fuel and larger FOV of seeker thats why i can pick up stealthy crusie missiles.
You have it backwards. The high-powered phased-array radar in the FOXHOUND is what can track the low RCS targets. It then guides the missiles to a point where their seekers will be able to acquire the targets. Take away the Zaslon and the effectiveness of the missiles against such targets is reduced.
SOCThose assets are not required, they’re employed in places like the former Yugoslavia and Iraq to help mask the signature from prying eyes. The B-2 flys with a radar reflector for long-wavelength ATC/EW radars in peacetime for a reason.
SOCThat I couldn’t tell you. How big are those? They do mention the size of the hole it made. A few of the documents listed photos as attachments but they are rarely if ever included as their quality is absurdly bad being black and white. One theory is that the missile was fired at a strike package (at considerably lower altitude, the incident was over North Vietnam) and that the OXCART’s EW system threw the missile for a loop and it basically went nuts. The EW system was designed to implant false guidance commands into the SA-2. I get the impression that they didn’t consider what would happen if the missile being spoofed wasn’t actually targeted on the OXCART.
SOCI’ve just been digging around the CIA’s FOIA website, and there is a lot of stuff in there on the OXCART flight, BX6734, when they found the SA-2 fragment.
SOCWe evaluated the S-300P in mid 90’s in a major exercise held at Rajasthan.
Any idea what the actual problems were?
Yeah read that they use it as part of Red Flag exercise , any idea where did they get that from ?
No idea. If I had to guess, I’d say the Ukraine or Belarus. They have enough of them on hand to have let one go. Or who knows, maybe we managed to buy the damn thing from the Russians somehow.
But seriously speaking some one in US did gave some figures of frontal RCS of F-22 and it was about the size of marble , or as Toan puts it at 0.0001m2.
Its been nearly 3 decades that US is operation VLO RCS aircraft and so far Russia does not have any adequate “known” response to it.
Most of the Top Notch double digit SAM seems good against 4+ gen fighter , but to deal with the likes of B-2 , F-22 and JSF we will have to wait and watch , if ever SAM catches up with it.
Part of the problem is that a VLO aircraft has never had to face a double digit SAM in combat before. The latest SAM systems would be the most likely candidates to be able to deal with such aircraft, but unless somebody gets it in their head to test that theory we’ll never know for certain.
Another question is how does Russia maintains the integrity of its modern sam sold to export customers ? is it just the frequency or modes which is adequate or even there are different bands and power output do the home variant operates on.
For eg even for export customer like India and China operating similar SAM like Shtil-1 system , and India and china are not exactly close friends 😉
I think the software re-programmable stuff would have made the job easier , but any insight into it ?
Limiting frequencies and operating modes is probably the simplest way to do it. Russia’s main problem is the relocation of strategic SAM R&D to Kapustin Yar. I’d like to know if an RC-135 flying over the Black Sea could sniff out TOMB STONE or GRAVE STONE emissions from either there or Ashuluk.
SOCIf the MiG-31 is operating using GCI control it won’t have to radiate, and the Blackbird probably won’t know it’s there to try and avoid it.
SOCF-15E1 Technology Demonstrator Aircraft? Eh? Might that be the variant shown in the Boeing presentation above?
SOCIs there any proof of the intercept? Lots of claims but very little evidence. The Foxhound’s lack of performance superiority over the SR-71 makes a successful intercept extraordinarily hard to achieve.
Mach 2.83 at around 70,000 feet…you can visually acquire a jet flying 10,000 feet above you no problem, especially if you’re vectored in on the right intercept by GCI.
Actually, looking at the flight manual, it seems that at around 20,000lbs of fuel remaining and provided the conditions are optimal, the SR-71 can travel at 93~94,000 ft while at M3.3, without the need for a zoom climb. 😮
Being able to step up your altitude as the airframe lightens and if the conditions are nominal is a far cry from being able to use a max power zoom climb to 95,000 feet as a SAM countertactic.
SOCYeah no. But they did get high enough and close enough to visually acquire them. And a pop-up to 95K feet? Not sure if I buy that one.
SOCWith the age of Software programmable ECCM and Radar Seekers , future EW/ECM will be a more challenging task for both the East and West
That I can agree with!
Agreed , but India experience with S-300 system was disappointing , there was frequent failure with system when they were test in Rajasthan and finally it did not live up to its brochure expectation as some one associated with it told me.
Yeah, but I thought they were evaluating the S-300V, not the S-300P?
I mean the way it operated with other system in the dense AD environment and in full auto mode was really nice. granted Iraq was not exactly a Top Notch enemy that PAC-3 was designed for , but it has many success to its credit including shooting of many SRBM
True, but I don’t put much stock in Iraq as a real example. No mass attacks, no advanced aircraft or EW systems to deal with…they may as well have been at a shooting range.
Decades of research and claims yes , proven combat capability no ( you cant blame the Russians here for not going to war , although kosovo was an excellent opportunity to test some weapon system on the sly ).
S-300P components were in the process of being delivered apparently, but they weren’t able to get all of them and get the system set up.
On the contrary you will find selective leaks from professional magazine where Israel and US have claimed capability to defeat double digit SAM of S-300 types.
The US has evaluated the S-300PS or S-300PMU, I can show you a satellite photo of the system set up in Nevada. Assuming that we haven’t gotten a look at Greece’s S-300PMU-1 would be a bit asinine. But if we looked at the PMU and PMU-1, we don’t know what modes or systems the PS and PM native versions might have. So claiming that we can arbitrarily defeat all the variants is a bit premature I think. Towed decoys aren’t going to work, the PS and PM use a guidance method more advanced than PATRIOT’s TVM and TVM was cited as able to defeat towed decoys, hence the delay of SAM-D (the PATRIOT project) until TVM had been demonstrated as a workable system.
Could be against a lesser capable enemy , but against the might of US , I would doubt.
I meant that in the US DoD, we give a lot of credit to the double-digit SAM systems.
Any ways what do you think about F-22 ability ( minus any supporting jammers ) to penetrate a S-400/300 network with all the types of radar it operates ?
Many professional magazine around have claimed F-22 was designed for such task and its hardly a problem for F-22 to deal with such system.
Penetrating the network will depend on the RCS of the Raptor and its aspect angle to the various sites and radars involved. Long wavelength EW radars will probably have an idea that something is coming, but not quite exactly where. The question is whether the FLAP LID or TOMB STONE are capable of looking at a piece of airspace and picking up a VLO target at range. They claim to be able to find targets such as cruise missiles and PGMs, so it’s not out of the question that the range against a Raptor may be long enough to deny it a shot at the battery. However, one would assume that the designers took the capabilities of the S-300 and S-400 SAMs into account and the Raptor should be able to get far closer than a legacy fighter like the F-15 or F-16, but I can’t make any serious assessment unless they declassify the RCS of the F-22 and the exact radar parameters of the FLAP LID or TOMB STONE/GRAVE STONE. Give me the RCS figure, the power coming out of the array, and the frequency and waveform it uses and I’ll tell you exactly how close the F-22 can get.
Anyone out there with former DDR contacts? Maybe someone has a manual or something from the Retschow S-300PMU still lying around 😀
SOCAlso, I’d love to know what sort of design lay in the variable shockcone inlets – bearing in mind the problems the Soviets had developing variable inlets for the slower Tu-144 – didn’t they want to buy such a system from the British?
It wasn’t the inlets they had an issue with, it was the engines. They wanted to buy some sort of fuel system component, but the sale was denied as it was believed that it could also be applied to the BACKFIRE to give it better range.
no aircraft ever got in position to take a successful shot aa an SR-71
Except for at the very least the FOXHOUND crews who had visual contact with the Blackbird. If they were that close, they could kill it.
the SR would detect it and could take evasive action
At cruise speed and altitude it had something like an 80 mile turn radius. EW systems were one thing, but evasive maneuvers? Not in a Blackbird. It relied on speed and altitude to minimize the engagement window of land-based SAMs to a ludicrously small envelope, not maneuvering.
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