TooCool_12fback to the rafale stuff…
While it seems obvious that the amount of weapons it could carry in that “silent” version is limited, I’d say that they probably made it easy to remove the “coffins” so that once that reduced RCS is less important it can have again full carrying capabilities.
As far as vertical fin is involved, again, it’s not the fact that it’s vertical, but the fact of having 90° angles that would reflect the radar signal straight back to the emitter. as rafale’s wings have negative dihedral which makes little to no surface at a right angle with the tail. Besides, the tail is, from what’s been claimed by a dassault representative (don’t ask me for a source, I’ve read it quite some time ago), made from radar transparent materials, which would as such reduce greatly the reflections it may suffer from
TooCool_12fFBW is ok for managing mass (controlling instable aircraft as we have them today), which it is designed for btw… the problem with lateral stability is in the aerodynamic forces involved at high supersonic speeds, and if your controls are too small to be effective, you can move them all you like, you won’t be able to get the needed results
TooCool_12fIt took a while to become aware of inertia coupling effects in high speed flight and many early designs needed redesign , for example F-100 of wich several hundreds had been delivered to USAF before the design flaw had been discovered. Yeager almost killed himself in the X-1A when he took it to M 2.5 , X-2 and X-3 had the same problem.
actually, if you read yeager’s book, the flaw was underlined by flight test pilots from the prototype of the F-100 and it took heavy lobbying from the manufacturer to get it into production as such… it is after several pilots got killed (including the manufacturer’s chief test pilot) during high speed dives in it, that USAF required that all delivered aircraft be modified by the manufacturer at their own expense, almost bankrupting the company
TooCool_12fLateral stability has to do with the size (surface) of the vertical surfaces, be it tail or underneath fins… the F-106 has a BIG tail (it’s something like 1m taller than the typhoon and its tail has a huuge chord, and the mirage G also has a significant tail AND a ventral fin as well… not to speak that both of these were much longer and sleeker, which, as such, improves directional stability, while todays aircraft tend to be more compact
at some point, you always get to the limit of controls authority and if you want to get faster, you need more surface to keep the airflow as you want it
If dassault wanted to make the rafale going at something like M2.5, you can be sure they’d modify much more than just air intakes (increased chord and possibly height of the vertical fin, lengthening of the fuselage…)
TooCool_12fone should add that most single tail aircraft are either limited to speeds below M2.0 or have fins as well (F-16 has them, while, for example, the Rafale is limited to M1.8 and Eurofighter M2.0). Pretty much all designs that are made to go faster than M2 usually have twin tails, increasing their influence on stability
TooCool_12f“Today’s platforms” will constitute the core of USAF/USN at least 10 years from now on, until F 35 will be fielded in numbers.
We agree on that, except that it may be much longer than 10 years, considering the pace at which things advance and the price to be paid for it
I am tired of posters quoting Carlo with its F 35 = F105 stupidity. First, if someone picks up F 105 as a bad airplane, he is ignorant. Used in totally different ways than its original goal (flying low to deliver 1 nuke), and being far from a true dogfighter, he got its share of MiGs kills in Vietnam.
BTW, the fact that, for the same weight, the F 35 engine has twice the thrust of an F 105 did not give APA “experts” a clue about the perfomances of the F 35.
I never said that the F-105 was a bad aircraft… in fact, I quite love that beast, but while it was very good at what it was supposed to do (and even things it wasn’t initially designed for like going downtown all the way to Hanoi), it was by no means a multirole aircraft. Comparing the F-35 and the F-105 is no insult to the F-105, but rather a reminder that the F-35 is a strike aircraft, made to carry bombs, with the air to air performance waaaay behind in the list of priorities
Putting an AESA radar, an advanced IRST and a digital EW systems (as Boeing and LM already did on F 15 SG/SA or F 16 blk. 60) is for sure, a big step. How about integrating all of those systems (sensor fusion) and putting them on a VLO platform ? What would you pick?
simple: the one I can pay for in sufficient numbers, that performs in a suitable way for the use I’ll have for it, the one I can maintain myself so I keep my independence, and the one that I can afford to make fly for a sufficient number of flight hours so my pilots are perfectly capable of using it in the most efficient possible way…
For now, I still have to see a VLO platform that does all that
TooCool_12f@ aurcov
“should at least” is far from being a step forward, especially when one takes into account how all these today’s platforms are considered useless by the F-35 defenders
djcross just said that it is about delivering a bomb load on some remote bad guy, but months ago when others pointed out that it was basically a modern version of the F-105 (meaning, a bombtruck), all fanboys were out there explaining that it was a modern version of what the F-22 was supposed to be: doing absolutely everything better than today’s platforms.
It was pointed out that its sensor suite will make it a whole league above the others.. but what prevents you from strapping the same electronics into fighters like the F-15 or the F/A -18? electrical power? come on, unless you need a nuclear powerplant onboard, you can either implement new generating system on existing engines or upgrade these (less costly to upgrade an engine than to build a whole new fighter).
TooCool_12fit’s not an impression, methinks
TooCool_12fFedaykin, you’re right about the systems, but they are developed by other companies and could be fitted to other platforms..
TooCool_12fdepends on the material the probe is made of…. if it’s transparent to radar, it can be external without any problem. What’s more, the size of the probe reflection on radar screen may pretty much be negligible anyway
TooCool_12fBut F-35, given nearby basing privileges from friendly countries, is best used to find and destroy Iranian Shahab 3 TELs using CCD (or allows the JSDF to destroy North Korean Nodong TELs) before friendly cities come under attack. This is a capability which is beyond the capability of Gen 4 (lesson learned from the F-15E/F-16C/A-10 hunts for Saddam’s Scuds).
which is:
a/ matter of electronics, all of which can find their way into a Gen4 platform just as well as in the F-35
b/ matter of speed in which domain most Gen4 platofrms are better than the F-35..
try again
TooCool_12fthey do it so that after you operate them for 20 years from dirt fields, you still can say: “look ma! good as new!”
😀
TooCool_12fWe are talking about a contest where only the F-35 was surrounded by a technical disqualification scandal, and the DAPA’s repeated threats to ban Lockheed as a vendor for its past conducts.
That should tell you that these guys don’t like the F-35 very much.
ROKAF : Hates the F-35 because it is a single engine jet. A big no no in Korea. So they made external armament mandatory and internal armament optional to put the F-35 at a disadvantage.
DAPA : Had many issues with Lockheed in the past, threatened to ban Lockheed from bidding over past bribery allegations.
Parliament : Wants the F-35 disqualified immediately because the Parliament’s annual $175 million noise compensation payment to residents nearby airbases more than double should the “noisy” F-35 be deployed.
President : Basically the only supporter of F-35 because he valued relations with the US. Unfortunately, the president has no decision right, only the approval/disapproval right, but he cannot disapprove this time because that means having to start the contest all over and the air force is begging for new jets to be delivered by 2016.
er, if ROKAF wants no single jet fighter, why bother talking about external loadouts? just put a contest where you require a twin jet fighter, and the F-35 is out for good…. you rargument seems just made up, there
DAPA: if they had problems with lockheed, could be considered normal they don’t want to deal with them again, no?
Parliament, well, it is their appreciation, can’t comment on that one
President: what you say is that they need a fighter for 2016.. that obviously disqualifies the F-35 which will be nowhere near the “operational availability status” by that time for the Koreans
TooCool_12feventually, it may be needed to have sufficiently high thrust in order to be able to maintain high G’s for a longer period during maneuvering, but today there are engines that can do so without afterburner if the airframe is sufficiently light (which a trainer should be)
TooCool_12fSorry to react but the UK is planning to use the F35 as an a2a platform off of its carriers (which is why we are buying the F35 rather than sticking to a Typhoon fleet).
er, but on the other hand, what other choice do they have? No typhoon will ever be capable to land on a carrier more than once… so, unless they have somebody else doing A2A for them, they’ll have to use the F-35 that way…
They also did it with the harrier, which is far from being the hottest A2A fighter out there, but they couldn’t do anything else once they retired their Phantoms from naval operations
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