seb92100Paint and transonic speed
The paint of the 40s and 50s was not able to sustain transonic and supersonic speeds. Thus the aircraft were usually not painted …
Remember, the stories of WWII when the pilots says that in a deep dive they see the paint of the tips of their wings going out ? This is the point.
Camouflage can be used to see who has the air superiority. When you have it, identification is crucial and you go for flashy liveries has the american were doing at the end of WWII. If you have numerical inferiority, you try to hide in the sky !!!
seb92100Yes, she rides a Mirage 2000-5 and she is an international swimming competitor if I remember well …
There is at least one happy man on Earth …
Seeing those videos, I am impressed to see how much you can see of the difference of national cultures !
The french video is so french !!! It is difficult to explain, but when I see the people, I could instantly recognize they are french by their attitude, their hair cut, the way they behave, their physical look, etc …
The american and russian ones are also quite typical I think. For instance see the difference of attitude between the pilots and the ground personnal …
seb92100ASTER missile flight software is in Fortran.
Anyway, software developpers tends to protect the langage they know …
ADA is used a lot in french military and aeronautical projects, especially by Thales.
Railway software also use Ada.
seb92100It’s a joke …
Excuse me but putting the MICA after Derby and Skyflash is simply a joke …
Derby has no Datalink and as such a ridiculous effective range …
Skyflash has no active radar and as such is far beyond any active air-to_air missile …
Moreover, it seems to me that the seeker of the meteor will be directly derived from the one of the MICA …
One shall not be so impressed by the range … Don’t forget that those huge range in the 70-100 km are dependant of a “cooperative” target. That means a target that won’t manouver or change direction. The no-escape zone of the MICA is not ridiculous compared to the one of the AMRAAM, as it sounds here, even if the range is a bit less.
Moreover, the AMRAAM will be far less efficient at short range. The MICA being also a short range missile only comes from the fact that they use vanes inside the motors for the first part of the flight. The thrust vectoring vanes are eroding and dissapear when the missile has enough speed for efficient and violent aerodynamic control. An AMRAAM and all its counterparts will go nearly straight forward for the first part of its flight.
I do not believe to the end of the WVR fight. It has been announced from the 60s and has not happend yet …
During the first Gulf War (the second in reality, but CNN decided to reuse the name …), a lot of US kills were done with sidewinders and even Sparrows kills were never done at more than a few dozen kms where the theoritical range of the missile is 100 km. Radar detection, especially against lower flying target is not as efficient as in a video game. Moreover radar detection takes time and the plane is thus never able to shoot at the max range of the radar.
During the (now named) Iran-Irak war, the iranian used state of the art Phoenix. Nevertheless they never succeded in shooting at 200 km as phantasmatized by US navy fans. Against a fighter, there huge radar has not this range, especially when the target is flying lower. The time to find targets, to acquire them, to track them, to prepare gyros aboard the missiles, the target were shoot at less than 40 km in frontal encounters. Neverthess the target was desintegrated instantly and its collegues would flee for there lives … Most of F14 kills were also made with sidewinders …
Numbers are not the reality at all. I think MICA is a very good weapon, because it is very realistic on a tactical point of view. I think this is why the israelian did not put any datalink on the Derby. It is only usefull for very long range shot which in fact is only interceptor works. They already have AMRAAM on there F15 interceptors.
seb92100In fact, all the processor are working in parallell on different functionnalities. Software are conceived like that, by detailling functionnalities and data flows between them. So you just have to estimate the CPU needed for each functionnality and attribute one of your processor to it. With current processor CPU, you will need far fewer of them, if not only one … Latest generation planes contains hundreds of processors (main computer x 2 + radar + EW + CME + …). This produce so much heat that they have to use a form of water-cooling …
Moreover, I confirm the more CPU intensive functionnalities are generally handled with ASIC or FPGA. Also because the cost of writing quality software are climbing so high that manufacturer are trying to avoid it by using pseudo-hardware.
Even if you don’t use machine code any more, if you want to do really efficient and bug-prone software, you must be aware of the machine code that will be generated by your compiler. Choice of data structure can be very important for CPU and memory efficiency, for instance.
I wonder if someone knows about the processor used in missile … I would be curious to know what there is in Sidewinder, AMRAAM, Mica, Exocet, Harpoon, …
I have read that the software of the F18-E is in Ada, as is the software of the SM3. Does anyone use C++ for an embedded aeronautical software ? Java ?
seb92100Use emule !!!
Complete one hour films can be found !!!
seb92100Think Doppler radar !
Modern radar use the doppler effect to detect low altitude planes.
The frequency of radar waves is changed by the radial speed of the target. As the ground is not moving, you extract the frequency you emit and what is left are the moving objects, low flyers included.
Therefore, main tactics against a threat is going in a perpendicular direction at low altitude ! Your radial speed is null, so you are not detected.
Being maniable permits brutal change of direction so you are suddenly facing your adversary and firing missile then invisible !
Maniability is also important for BVR !
seb92100EF2000 canards …
I was not clear on the EF2000 canards …
The current canards do not diminish visibility.
But it is evident that horizontal canards would be better. They HAD to be pointed to the ground not to diminish the pilot’s visibility. Moreover, the EF2000 canards are to far away from the wings. So they were obliged to add strakes on the fuselage closer to the wing to increase vortex on the wing … exactly as the now old M2000 …
On stealth it is evident that EF2000 is not stealthy at all :
The fuselage is mostly tubular with large vertical sides and discontinuities …
The air intakes was made rounder as an afterthought …
The oblique canards are adding wonderful reflexion angles…
The big Captor radar …
I had never seen the occurrences of triangular shapes as on F22, F35 and Rafale, that caracterize the existence of dump direction for radar waves reflexions.
So if stealth is reduced, I think it won’t be enough to gain any real advantage …
seb92100Personal Rafle Vs EF2000 …
At sea level, any aircraft will have difficulties to fly at supersonic speed …
I doubt Rafale can fly at Mach 2 without using afterburners, even in a clean configuration. Maybe it was in a dive ? or the journalist misunderstood. Moreover I think the max speed of the structure is Mach 1.8
My comparison of EF2000 and Rafale :
– Aerodynamics : Rafale is far better. The canard and the wings interacts at maximum wich shows the trust of Dassault in its FBW.
Rafale is sculpturally shaped ! The canards don’t interfere with pilot visibility. The EF2000 had to point to the ground for the pilot to see something !!!
– Steath : RCS reduction was taken into account from the start in the Rafale. Some pathetic RCS reduction were made on EF2000 after the shape was chosen. I think the Rafale is really stealthy from the front, but in clean configuration nonetheless …
Rafale can really do stealth attack using Optronics, EW, Modern radar and IR long range missile.
– Power : M88 is more modern and require less maintenance but EF2000 reactors are more powerfull, which counts more for an interceptor as it was seen at conception
– Maniability : to the pilots limits, so maybe the same …
– Radar : Passive electronic for Rafale and Active mecanical for EF2000. The new technology has great adavantages but also many disadvantages. In particular, it is times more agile but lacks range and field of view. It is perfect for a multirole fighter but not optimized for interception. The Captor is the end of line of a technology. Very long range but not discrete at all and nearly one mode at a time … It depends on the mission.
– EW : Rafale up to date with US technology but adapted to low altitude flying also. EF2000 is not clear as everyone tries to use its own upgraded system if I remember well.
– Missiles : Independent from the US for Rafale. It is important in case of exportation … US AMRAAM shall be better but exported one I don’t know … Meteor is a long way and shall be on both. MICA is good and really multirole, maybe a little short legged compared to AMRAAM.
– Anti-Radar missile : no one for Rafale for the moment …
seb92100Good site !
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