SU-35S Unreal Maneuverability

originally posted by: moebius
a reply to: Wayfarer

And after that "unreal" maneuver you are a sitting duck, having bled all your speed.

Especially true when our aircraft in the near future will be armed with Laser defense against missiles that can also be used to slice into aircraft they have trailing or passed them.

Think the jet with the most kills in the last half century has been the F15 missile truck...Missiles have improved a lot since Vietnam..
Boelkas rules still hold true but are modified to suit todays tech..
Low and slow is bad in a gun fight..Can see the Face off now SU-35S vs Stearman or Tigermoth..

Or F16 vs Ov10 Bronco

Wouldn't extreme off aspect missile shots and guns still be dangerous as long as the plane can point its nose at the enemy? I understand the speed/energy advantages as they hold true from the end of the 20th century, but if a missile can hit a target head on or weapons computer can calculate gunsight offset super accurately it kinda feels like with the SU-35S you've got a high speed fighter that can (when need arises) operate like a point stationary helicopter and just keep pointing its nose/guns at the target even at stall.

I guess in that vein it's asking can the high speed/energy combatant close/fire/outrun opposing missiles as it gets away....

a reply to: Wayfarer

Many aircraft are capable of high alpha, and nose pointing now. The F-18 and F-35 are capable of something like 50 degrees nose up. The HMCS/AIM-9X are also capable of shooting at targets behind the launching aircraft, as are several foreign missiles.

a reply to: Zaphod58

So is that in effect a 'luck of the draw' scenario for whomever gets the first successful shot off then (since as you've intimated even the craft with lesser thrust vectoring can achieve almost the same degree of off angle shooting)?

a reply to: Wayfarer

It's about energy consumption. The faster you can recover energy, the faster you can recover your ability to maneuver. With TVC, in theory at least, you can recover energy faster than without it. In a WVR fight, energy is life, especially if you're facing more than one aircraft.

Move dammitt..Speed is life in dogfights.
For flight sims but some good reading in here..
ACM (Aerial Combat Manouvers)

a reply to: Wayfarer

An amazing feat of engineering and pilot skill, however, the human occupant is the limiting factor really where aerobatic manoeuvres are concerned.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: Wayfarer

An amazing feat of engineering and pilot skill, however, the human occupant is the limiting factor really where aerobatic manoeuvres are concerned.

Not so much any more, since the new fly by wire fighters are software limited to plus 6 and they don't teach anything requiring negative Gs now. A civilian unlimited competition pilot will routinely pull 10 positive and push 10 negative. The positive can put you to sleep (G-loc) but the negative just hurts and makes your eyes really red from burst capillaries.

You try to avoid pulling g's if possible because you lose so much energy as the drag and load factor goes up. I wrote a long list about this semi-recently, and I'm too lazy to type out another.

Long story short is as you pull g's your drag increases exponentially, and your load factor increases so your stall speed increases. So you need more speed to simply stay in the air, and are getting a lot more drag all at the same time. The math gets ugly quickly. That's why thrust is so important for modern fighters. Not for top speeds. It's for sustained maneuvering capability. If you can turn 9 g instantaneous and have only 3g sustained, but I can turn 4g sustained and only 6g instantaneous, I will likely eat your lunch if I know what I'm doing. You have a very brief window with an advantage and then it is all down hill for you.

a reply to: F4guy

The point is without a human pilot the only thing pulling the Gs is the airframe, engine, and other associated hardware, all of which are a hell of a lot less susceptible to gravitational force than we are.

That being said im not sure we could remotely achieve the skills demonstrated by the pilot in that aircraft just yet.

We're not really at a point where the pilot's ability to withstand g is the weakest link in performance for combat aircraft. It's the other math.

a reply to: RadioRobert

I would say aside from Man its materials that are holding us back more than anything else aviation wise, especially where hypersonic velocities and aircraft are concerned, where tolerances and temperatures push our material science to the limit of whats possible with today technologies.

Not so i suppose for combat fighter aircraft but Man is a limiting factor as to what manoeuvres can be performed and recovered from. The aircraft can take more Gs than the pilot that's a given.

a reply to: andy06shake

Again, there's really no point in turning 20g's if it leaves you outside the envelope of controlled flight. So even if the aircraft was strength rated for higher stresses than +/- 15 (extremely implausible material-wise), and without a pilot, there is little reason to use that strength to pull g's because of where it leaves you afterward. The biggest practical limiter is thrust right now.

a reply to: RadioRobert

Well with better materials we will be able to build superior engines that generate greater thrust, that's a given also.

End of the day given enough power you could make a brick fly aerodynamics be darned.

Im wondering how a human body can survive high G if it was contained in a sphere of liquid.Would inertia still play a part?

Yes, you would still feel acceleration.

How much depends on how big the sphere was, density differences, and how long the acceleration lasted. The higher the acceleration and longer it lasts the less damping you can get from that. Think of it like buoyancy. When the g's go up the fluid will result in a gradient. If you are the same density, nothing really helps you. If you are more dense your acceleration will be slowed by drag -- until you meet equilibrium in the gradient, and then you will be accelerated just like normal. Or with a large enough acceleration, you hit the wall of the sphere. In which case you will start being accelerated just like normal. Or you, if less dense, will "float" to the low pressure gradient and experience even more acceleration, not less.

So for a large or sustained force of multiple g's you need a large enough tank to slow you gradually as you pass through the gradient until the acceleration passes. And then you float back up when it's over. The only loss is to drag.

a reply to: RadioRobert
Thanks..Food for thought though

a reply to: Blackfinger

Think of it this way. If a pilot is yanking in a hard circle, he's pulling g's, right? It's just a measure of acceleration. It's inertial, not a "real" force. Just his frame, right? We can simulate that with a swinging-head centrifuge.



Pilot is inertially accelerated "down" in his orientation related to the center for the circle.


What happens if we put an object suspended in a liquid in the centrifuge? Well, it so happens we do this all the time for different applications. Let's use blood. Heavier cells get "accelerated" to the outside through the plasma. The plasma slows the acceleration through buoyancy -- only until the cells but the tube walls (or other cells touching the wall transmitting the fic force). After they hit the wall, they aren't getting any damping from buoyancy. There's nothing under them to "push" "up". So while settling through the water, their acceleration would be relatively slowed (but still existent), and once there was no buoyant force below them, they'd experience the same acceleration as the system.

Since air is a liquid, we can easily see what happens when something less dense is accelerated, too. Like a helium balloon where the inertial acceleration pushes heavier air to the "outside" and the balloon goes "up". If we had an accelerometer on the balloon, it'd measure higher acceleration, just in a different direction.




This is actually a useful idea to reduce small accelerations like vibrations, but a sustained acceleration quickly overcomes the room available to you. You'd need a huge tank to avoid the walls.

And since every ounce of weight counts on a combat airplane to keep the whole flying aspect working (especially under g), I think you're hunting at bullsnip.