TooCool_12factually, what sounds weird is that they may engage in BVR conrontations while at least oen side doesn’t want to use its radar.
Now, think about it for a second: (from french side) you go against an oponent who:
– doesn’t want to use its radar
– is stealthy
– has no passive means to detect you (unless you light your own radar alerting your oponent’s RWR system, that is)
– in BVR
You have at your disposal:
– your radar, becoming obsolete, and having little et no chance to get a lock from a distance
– a passive tool to scan the sky, detect, identify and lock targets unnoticed (OSF)
Now, knowing your oponent will never see you if you stay passive (simply because he won’t use his radar) and that you can see it in IR, why would you turn on your own radar which would only work against you until it’s too late? It just doesn’t make sense.
Providing you were stupid enough to do it and had your a$$ handed on a plate to you, would you come out publically and brag that you “only got in their sights once” out of 6 encouters?
Finally, on the USAF side: you don’t want anyone to spy on your radar, do you accept a confrontation in BVR against an oponent that can use passive detection and pass under your nose unnnoticed for as long as you don’t turn your radar on?
The more you think of it and the less that story makes sense…
TooCool_12fQouting from APA/Kopp ? No, thanks!
air force magazine sounds better for you?
like it or not, unless the things change soon, it may be very soon that Robert Gates may have to go in front of the congress to keep the program from cancellation
TooCool_12fOK, let’s reformulate it for you: do you know any military A/C program that remained within the initial price estimation and deadlines ?
thing is, the F-35 isn’t very far from getting sufficiently above initial price estimation as to be legally required to be cancelled (Nunn-McCurdy law requires to terminate any project going 25% above budget), not many did so and got into service anyway…
accirding to this article:
the initial cost overruns could be as high as 45%… meaning that, legally, it should have been terminated long ago…
TooCool_12fWow Thats good news – does this mean the JSF program has turned the corner and is now right on track..
no, it just means that they continue to work on it. It doesn’t make up for 90% non flown test flights from 2009 nor does it compensate the “still not built” prototypes that are late.
it’s just information about work in progress, if you like 😉
TooCool_12fthat’s what he said.. but as you take the energy (propellers driven by air), you need to provide that energy or your plane will slow down.. that’s why everybody talks about increased drag, which, in turn, brings increased need for thrust to maintain speed, and that means burn more fuel…
all in all, there’s no such thing as free lunch… the energy you get at one end has to come from somewhere else
TooCool_12fI don’t believe everything I read in french newspapers.. Here is an article from a french newspaper few years back .. In the end, we saw what the Saudis bought ….I am pretty sure that Kuwait will not acquire the RAFALE..
Saudis pledge to buy French jets in €6bn deal
By Jean-Pierre Neu in Paris
Published: April 15 2005 03:00 | Last updated: April 15 2005 03:00
Saudi Arabia has agreed in principle to acquire up to 96 Rafale combat aircraft from France’s Dassault Aviation for some €6bn, Les Echos, the FT’s French sister newspaper, has learnt.The agreement forms the cornerstone of a broader defence, security and industrial accord estimated to be worth up to €20bn ($26bn, £14bn) signed during a meeting in Paris yesterday between Jacques Chirac, French president, and Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler”
I don’t particularily believe newpapers either, and as far as “96 aircraft deal” is concerned, I’ve been working in britain during the period when T. Blair “suggested” the british justice not to look too closely over the Typhoon deal… was interesting listening to BBC2 while droning on the M1 😉
anyway, I don’t say Kuwait will buy Rafales, I just say that Kuwait has the ability to do as it wants… considering that it has what everybody wants (oil) and nobody can afford getting in bad relations with them for the time being (unless invading, in which case, it’s rather with the other countries wanting the oil that the invader would have to deal with)
TooCool_12fIt is still the US that protects Kuwait against possible future invaders and aggressors like IRAN for example not FRANCE. Even the UKs commitment is larger than that of France ..The survival of the familiy SABAH ,the emir of Kuwait depends on the US.. Americans might simply offer the F-35 just to block the RAFALE if they want to. as an indirect way of telling the Kuwaitis what to do! Even Typhoon would have better chances than Rafale in Kuwait since the Saudis have bought it and OMAN is planning to buy it too..
Realistically speaking ,DASSAULT has no chance in Kuwait.
the major point being, the US can’t afford let kuwait fall to iran, no matter what (too much oil under its soil)
so, they could buy sukhois, rafales, J-10s and anything else, if they want, US will still stay in the area because they need that oil and won’t let anyone threaten it, no matter what.
TooCool_12factually, if you quote him:
“i understood that russia had won the libyan deal. This from the BBC yesterday:
“Mr Putin gave no details of the arms covered by the contract. Russian media speculated earlier that it might include fighter planes”
speculation about what might be in it… there’s nothing certain about it… for sure, the one thing libyans could be interested from russia are SAMs and that kind of equipment…
about fighters, they’re still negotiating with the french (and having a mix isn’t unimaginable either, as it’s not really a good idea to depend on only one weapons provider for your defense)
TooCool_12fabout americans not permitting it, well, they’ll certainly put up a strong political pressure, but I don’t really see how they could manage to “not permit it”.. unless they decide to invade kuwait, that is. For now, t’s still a sovereign nation… and and can’t imagine the US telling them “we won’t buy your oil anymore”… after all, if kuwait was freed from iraqui invasion, it was because of oil…
TooCool_12fthing is, they can’t get these planes out of nowhere. They have to build them first… so, for now, they’re still far behind.
Of course, once the orders are readapted to what they believe is manageable, one can always claim that the prpojet is “on schedule”, but only the last revised one.. compared to the schedule it was supposed to follow from the beginning it’s way behind, and won’t come close (orders have still been reduced to put more financing into testing rather than production and try to advance a bit in that field
TooCool_12fThe effective range when fired towards retreating target falls down miserably in aspect to missile’s maximum kinetic range. For instance, R-27ET, which is to my knowledge longest-ranged thermal missile with 120 km kinematics, goes down to within visual range Rmax if the target is retracting fast.
In fact, it’s quite possible that MiG-31 can be more effective than Su-27 in that kind of scenario. R-40TD has shorter range but MiG would be flying somewhere near Mach 2.5.
I know that the range comes down, but todays fighters are all pretty difficult to lock from in front, and nobody can turn instantly 180°, especially if going fast… the time to shoot a radar guided missile, you may already have to face an IR shot yourself head on, and even if it doesn’t happen, by the time you’d turn around, the other guy may be pretty close alerady.
All that just to say that LO won’t do it all, in A2A you need to be able to do something else than run and hope nobody sees you
TooCool_12fThat’s exactly what I said myself. How do you know that MICA/R 77/R 27 would perform better? In fact, considering that few countries can test missiles as exhaustively as US, one can be sure that non-US missiles would do worst. And the AMRAAM D (now fielded on F 22 and F 18E) or future JDRAM are not the same as AMRAAM “A” or “B” that have been used in anger so far. So judging the Pk of these new missiles based on Pk of earlier variants is childish.
you’re the one comparing PKs, I simply stated that missiles PKs are low… US or any other for all we may know (or not know)
US planes vs. Euros is not a very plausible scenario. However, as unlikely it may seem, let’s fantasize about: if you consider that the VLO and sensors of F 22/F35 are matched by EF/Rafale, yes “it can work either way too”…
I don’t consider anything… nobody outside the french (the ones that do work with or on it) knows exactly how capable the Rafale really is. Nobody outside the US (same) knows how capable the F-22 really is.. and the same goes for the eurofighter
And, for now, nobody, not even LM, knows how capable the F-35 may be in the end…
But betting your future on an aircraft claming “we’ll just shoot missiles from long range and turn back” sounds awfully similar to ideas of “all missiles fighters of the ’60s… and before you say “the technology was in its infance then”, it was top notch technology at that time… same as the F-35 hopes to be today
F 105 was not a bomber with 10 machine guns spreaded along the fuselage. It’s a fighter bomber, less maneuvrable than a MiG; still this didn’t stop the 105 to shot down MiGs.
no, it didn’t and I even pointed out teh way it managed to do so, if you read my post completely you’ll find out
you do realise that the meteor is going to be fitted to the f-35 dont you ?
and if indeed it is a better weapon, a lot of countries will use it
so? my post was in reply to “no other A2A missile has a PK than the AMRAAM”. it only meant that not having a PK doesn’t mean the missile is worthless
TooCool_12fAt least, AMRAAM does have a Pk !!!! Since it’s the only active-guided, datalinked missile that ever scored !
so? how many MICAs were fired on real targets? nad when F-35 comes to service, thingies like the meteor would have been in se’rvice for several years already, much better weapon.
Except that most of them are short-raged ones…So, turning after firing an AMRAAM “D” it wouldn’t stress to much an F 35 driver…
And you’ll fire the AMRAAM D against what? even the eurocanards present sufficiently low observable targets that you may have trouble radar locking at a long range. And if you count on an AWACS doing the job for you (finding your target and giving coordinates for shoooting), that can work either way too, unless you consider all future wars will be “communications tools” like the last ones: picking some remote, small, pretty much defensless country and blow it to stone age with overwhelming numbers… but for that, you can do as well with current fighters and need neither the F-22 nor the F-35…
I don’t understand why use F 105 as a yardstick for bad fighters. After all, he downed ~ 30 MiGs in Vietnam, while travelling loaded to their ground targets ! Or, you didn’t know this little detail ?
Well, B-17s downed loads of messerschmitts in WWII, were they good fighters? The F-105 is a strike aircraft. If a Mig presents itself in front of it and doesn’t pay attention enough, a good pilot can line it up and score a kill… if the Mig starts turning to fight it, the F-105 had only one way to deal with it: run. They simply were made for another type of job.
TooCool_12fHow about a reality check really. There is no shortage of pilot reports about AAM engagement in real encounters. The main problem of all were IFF and by that real BVR-engagement were the exception, when the longer flight-time of BVR-AAMs did allow to engage the opponent at all. Even at a modest 900 km/h the closing speed can be higher than 1800 km/h in a typical head-on encounter. (1800000:3600= 500 m/sec) The correct positioning of a pilot does allow to start or end an encounter in less than a minute, because the distances and related vectors do prevent most firing opportunities at all, when the own EW-suit does deal with that fired already.
Just in exercises pilots are forced to stay in a restricted air-space at a given time and be informed about a threat, when all had to stick to given rules.
Claimed as combat, but nothing more than to train the related procedures under real g-forces at least.
The F-35 pilots will stick to their superior SA, AAMs and EW-suit in the worst case. War-time statistics do show, that just 10% of combat missions had a chance to view a hostile fighter at all and the ratio of real encounters was even smaller. The main threat to all fighters is still from surface to air defences. Just a fighter with some useful A2G capability does pose a real threat in air-power. A2A fighters are passive items most of the time.
thing is, if you discount air-air threat, you don’t even need anything remotely close to a “strike fighter”, just send in big bombers, with long loiter times and loads of bombs and dispense them as needed..
in such scenario, a thing like an F-22 is purely useless, for example, just as any fighter that made possible the air dominance in all recent conflicts which permitted to draw statistics saying “you have almost no chance to meet A2A opposition”
TooCool_12fHow about M1.6-1.8 with a combat load. What fighters are you speaking of that will be going faster than this with a combat load?
any interceptor with its combat load will do as well… and, in any case, the missile he shoot will outrun any fighter today
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