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Marrietta F-22 Photos
page: 2share:
First Off,
Ignoring the primer, the Raptor's 'two schemes' are definitive because they are designed to operate at different altitude/Mach points.
The silvery 'teflon' topcoat is a refractor that scatters and the deeper blues and shifts IR energy towards a more readily absorbed specie during super cruise.
The 'Mod Eagle', if it's adopted outside the current test fleets is basically just the SOS of a brown grey (FS36251) and a blue slate (FS36176) to break up the aircrafts reflectance index against the mid-low (17-25K) height band where you find all the pollutants and dust make the horizon yellow. When you are in a target area performing OCA sweep or BARCAP roles you cannot typically afford to be (bull in china shop) supersonic covering the baselanes and if you are not supersonic, you are a sitting duck at (40-50K) altitude for most of the later generation SAMs.
What is interesting about the airframe itself is the large secondary 'cheek' arrays. At one time, because of the Raptor's largey autonomous design role hunting cruise missile shooters and SUAWACS 'behind Poland' as an ATF during WWIII; it was thought that it would have to have a largely independent sensor capability sufficient to cover a full 120-150 degrees around the nose so that it never lost 'global SA' in the headlong rush that is Supercruise. Hence the APG-77 had auxilliary coverage cheek antennas as part of it's baseline design.
For a long time, this capability, along with the EOSS IRST, was thought lost, even though the basics of cooling and power remained. The EOSS wingroot apertures were later replaced by elements of the NCTR/PCLS capabilities of the ALR-94. It remains to be seen whether the large array shown aft of the radome is also just a 'passive antenna farm' element of this nominal 'super RHAWS' suite.
Some element of an active stealth system.
Or perhaps just a painted-applique misinfo effort by the Air Force as the outline is not readily apparent in other shots.
Regarding the JSF, Hornet and F-111 miasma for the RAAFians; the question is not whether you can afford the F/A-22 but whether 100 JSF at 100 million each is going to be able to do the job any better.
For some damn reason the Aussies want to pretend they are 'the Super Power of SWAPR' and hence maintain a baseline bar capability of hitting Jakarta Indonesia some 800nm away.
That's probably 5-7hrs in a JSF. It's about 1.5 in a Raptor.
Furthermore the Raptor has a wide, flat, weapons bay which means it ca carry twice as many AMRAAM and has options on the HSARM/AARGM and MALD.
**In Addition To** X4 to X8 GBU-39 or X2 GBU-32/35.
This is something that the F-35 never will be able to do because of the stupid choice to go with the centerline lift post 'universality' option. As well as the dead certain fact that the deep JDAM well is not and never has been wired for AMRAAM.
What this means is that while the jets carry nominally the same amount of gas, the JSF can only fly 1.5-2 sorties in a typical 11-15hr 'flying day' while the Raptor can put out as many as 5. And the F-35's will always be mission-compromised (wingie carries SEAD, I carry hard target, we BOTH have to commit to 'forward defense' with all our AMRAAM to kill a Flanker division). So that what missions you do fly soak up more airframes as support to a principle iron-dropper. Which in turn means 'package tactics' requiring more tankers and more strictly coordinated support from AEW and EA etc.
POINT BEING: In 2003 the USAF, using a loophole in Congressional funding bought _One Extra F/A-22_ as a 'reward' to Lockmart for multiple line savings. This F/A-22 cost them about 117 million bucks.
A JSF will run /U.S./ at least 100 million because current numbers are looking like 1,263 F-35A/B instead of the 2,937 originally required.
Something that the CBO/GAO and Beltway have been predicting since 1997.
Under those conditions, export models will cost more and the RAAFies will be lucky to get 60 jets, total.
Whether they continue to insist on this fantasy of near-strategic power projection, or in fact simply want to create a viable approaches and continental air defense within such a limited force, they would be be vastly better off buying Raptors and 'co-participating' ($$$$) in a followon reliablity/maintainability and Air to Mud upgrade with the USAF than they would playing about with semi-stealthy F-16's with 600 gallon tanks and camel back CFT. Which is effectively all that the worthless F-35 comes down to being.
KPl.
LINK of Interest-
Death to JSF
www.defencetalk.com...
Ignoring the primer, the Raptor's 'two schemes' are definitive because they are designed to operate at different altitude/Mach points.
The silvery 'teflon' topcoat is a refractor that scatters and the deeper blues and shifts IR energy towards a more readily absorbed specie during super cruise.
The 'Mod Eagle', if it's adopted outside the current test fleets is basically just the SOS of a brown grey (FS36251) and a blue slate (FS36176) to break up the aircrafts reflectance index against the mid-low (17-25K) height band where you find all the pollutants and dust make the horizon yellow. When you are in a target area performing OCA sweep or BARCAP roles you cannot typically afford to be (bull in china shop) supersonic covering the baselanes and if you are not supersonic, you are a sitting duck at (40-50K) altitude for most of the later generation SAMs.
What is interesting about the airframe itself is the large secondary 'cheek' arrays. At one time, because of the Raptor's largey autonomous design role hunting cruise missile shooters and SUAWACS 'behind Poland' as an ATF during WWIII; it was thought that it would have to have a largely independent sensor capability sufficient to cover a full 120-150 degrees around the nose so that it never lost 'global SA' in the headlong rush that is Supercruise. Hence the APG-77 had auxilliary coverage cheek antennas as part of it's baseline design.
For a long time, this capability, along with the EOSS IRST, was thought lost, even though the basics of cooling and power remained. The EOSS wingroot apertures were later replaced by elements of the NCTR/PCLS capabilities of the ALR-94. It remains to be seen whether the large array shown aft of the radome is also just a 'passive antenna farm' element of this nominal 'super RHAWS' suite.
Some element of an active stealth system.
Or perhaps just a painted-applique misinfo effort by the Air Force as the outline is not readily apparent in other shots.
Regarding the JSF, Hornet and F-111 miasma for the RAAFians; the question is not whether you can afford the F/A-22 but whether 100 JSF at 100 million each is going to be able to do the job any better.
For some damn reason the Aussies want to pretend they are 'the Super Power of SWAPR' and hence maintain a baseline bar capability of hitting Jakarta Indonesia some 800nm away.
That's probably 5-7hrs in a JSF. It's about 1.5 in a Raptor.
Furthermore the Raptor has a wide, flat, weapons bay which means it ca carry twice as many AMRAAM and has options on the HSARM/AARGM and MALD.
**In Addition To** X4 to X8 GBU-39 or X2 GBU-32/35.
This is something that the F-35 never will be able to do because of the stupid choice to go with the centerline lift post 'universality' option. As well as the dead certain fact that the deep JDAM well is not and never has been wired for AMRAAM.
What this means is that while the jets carry nominally the same amount of gas, the JSF can only fly 1.5-2 sorties in a typical 11-15hr 'flying day' while the Raptor can put out as many as 5. And the F-35's will always be mission-compromised (wingie carries SEAD, I carry hard target, we BOTH have to commit to 'forward defense' with all our AMRAAM to kill a Flanker division). So that what missions you do fly soak up more airframes as support to a principle iron-dropper. Which in turn means 'package tactics' requiring more tankers and more strictly coordinated support from AEW and EA etc.
POINT BEING: In 2003 the USAF, using a loophole in Congressional funding bought _One Extra F/A-22_ as a 'reward' to Lockmart for multiple line savings. This F/A-22 cost them about 117 million bucks.
A JSF will run /U.S./ at least 100 million because current numbers are looking like 1,263 F-35A/B instead of the 2,937 originally required.
Something that the CBO/GAO and Beltway have been predicting since 1997.
Under those conditions, export models will cost more and the RAAFies will be lucky to get 60 jets, total.
Whether they continue to insist on this fantasy of near-strategic power projection, or in fact simply want to create a viable approaches and continental air defense within such a limited force, they would be be vastly better off buying Raptors and 'co-participating' ($$$$) in a followon reliablity/maintainability and Air to Mud upgrade with the USAF than they would playing about with semi-stealthy F-16's with 600 gallon tanks and camel back CFT. Which is effectively all that the worthless F-35 comes down to being.
KPl.
LINK of Interest-
Death to JSF
www.defencetalk.com...
Originally posted by FLYIN HIGH
Sweet It's good to see what our money has been spent on. The F-22 is going to be one heck of a surprize when it drop in on a Mig's 6. I would not like to be in the pilots seat of the Mig in a one-on-one.
You would be surprised.
First off because the FA-22 is still not qualified with the AIM-9X.
And even when it is, it will be inferior to other ISRM shooters (ASRAAM, Python 5, D/K-30, MICA-IR) which all have advantages in both motor burn and uplink potential to shoot what is not nominally seen.
Secondly, because all jets fight differently whether 'heavy' or 'combat' weighted and it's likely that the Raptor is going to come across the fence awfully damn flush with fuel so that it can dash to the target area and 'sit on' the baselanes when it gets there so that the enemy has no options to flush an GAI intercept team while the subsonic cruise cow bombers meander their way in. During this period, it will be subsonic both to reduce the pinball effect of bouncing around a radar-dense defensive environment. And to maintain the longest possible loiter.
An F-5E or a MiG-21 Lancer with a late model Python could kill you in such circumstances simply because the Raptor itself is has some serious low-medium altitde over-G stress limits. An incredibly primitive (all EXCM) defensie suite. And a LONG ways to go to get back out in terms of unwise burner useage to keep the fight energized.
F-86's have utterly humiliated F-15/16 jets in 'gunfights' where slow speed angle fighters don't have o worry about the mass of 40-50,000lb machine. It's just a lot less 'water retaining' mass-inertia'd in it's ability to point and click.
Now throw in a threat wingman or outside shooter watching you go round and round. Plus a HOBS missile capability which can kill you across the circle no matter how tighly you turn and you will see why most pilots now consider WVR fighting to be a pyrhhic-biased coin toss in which they _cannot_ afford to risk a 120 million dollar platform for some bizarre notion of proving that one machine is better than another.
POINT BLANK:
The Raptor is not 'better' (performing) than any late-gen heat weapon.
Never was.
Never will be.
And WVR is all about fighting the arrow not the indian.
KPl.
Originally posted by FLYIN HIGH
Sweet It's good to see what our money has been spent on. The F-22 is going to be one heck of a surprize when it drop in on a Mig's 6. I would not like to be in the pilots seat of the Mig in a one-on-one.
Duno, it really depends...
The Mig 35 is pretty good, it could take on the f/a-22 no problems.
It has 3d thrust vectoring (something the fa22 doesnt have i believe), modern fly-by-wire, high precision weapons and improvements in airframe and pretty much....well it's a whole new plane, a very good plane.
Then there's the su30MK3s, and others...and so on.
Anyway, I think the f/a22 is a waste of money, the JSF is a much better investment
Could you please explain this part of your post to me;
I feel I must have misunderstood somewhere along the way as on the face of it that comment simply makes no sense.
I also feel that the Raptor is not, and never will be a viable option for Australia. In the event of the JSF becoming too expensive I feel Australia will look elsewhere and will, most likely, turn to France once again (They bought the Mirage III when the UK was unable to supply with a suitable fighter before). It would be nice to think of them buying the Typhoon, but if cost is the overriding factor then the Rafale will do the job, and for a fraction of the cost of the Raptor.
[edit on 21-11-2005 by waynos]
hitting Jakarta Indonesia some 800nm away.
That's probably 5-7hrs in a JSF. It's about 1.5 in a Raptor.
I feel I must have misunderstood somewhere along the way as on the face of it that comment simply makes no sense.
I also feel that the Raptor is not, and never will be a viable option for Australia. In the event of the JSF becoming too expensive I feel Australia will look elsewhere and will, most likely, turn to France once again (They bought the Mirage III when the UK was unable to supply with a suitable fighter before). It would be nice to think of them buying the Typhoon, but if cost is the overriding factor then the Rafale will do the job, and for a fraction of the cost of the Raptor.
[edit on 21-11-2005 by waynos]
Waynos,
>>
I feel I must have misunderstood somewhere along the way as on the face of it that comment simply makes no sense.
>>
No, it's perfectly true. USN strike packages flying from the IO to Kabul were in the air upwards of 10-12hrs (out and back). In a JSF which /nominally/ doesn't have the same drag or tanking requirements it's about 3.5. In the Raptor, it's 1.5. One way.
Throw in support missions which do not make the same trip in like time and the total mission evolution is easily 5hrs, one way.
The reality is that once you get going fast, it becomes easier to climb up to a point where the drag is so low that you tend to stay that way, particularly if you have almost 300sq ft more lifting area than the JSF and two engines which are high-fast tuned to the lope.
Given that the most fuel efficient way for the Raptor to get /anywhere/ is supersonic from the deck to cruise altitude and then a burn-up profile that probably starts at Mach 1.25-1.3 and 35K and finishes at Mach 1.43-1.57 and 50K, the fact is that a _one way_ trip (to a tanker orbit, prepositioned) is going to run the F/A-22 about an hour or hour and a half.
The 10-20 JSF's which are going to be 'dragged' all the way to the target thanks to poor lift at drag and /very poor/ parasitics with external stores will take a lot longer.
And they won't go as fast because the F135 has cheapened steel-not-titanium front end compression and so cannot do SSC.
FA-22 1.5 X 2 = 3hrs.
RTB____________________
>>
I feel I must have misunderstood somewhere along the way as on the face of it that comment simply makes no sense.
>>
hitting Jakarta Indonesia some 800nm away.
That's probably 5-7hrs in a JSF. It's about 1.5 in a Raptor.
No, it's perfectly true. USN strike packages flying from the IO to Kabul were in the air upwards of 10-12hrs (out and back). In a JSF which /nominally/ doesn't have the same drag or tanking requirements it's about 3.5. In the Raptor, it's 1.5. One way.
Throw in support missions which do not make the same trip in like time and the total mission evolution is easily 5hrs, one way.
The reality is that once you get going fast, it becomes easier to climb up to a point where the drag is so low that you tend to stay that way, particularly if you have almost 300sq ft more lifting area than the JSF and two engines which are high-fast tuned to the lope.
Given that the most fuel efficient way for the Raptor to get /anywhere/ is supersonic from the deck to cruise altitude and then a burn-up profile that probably starts at Mach 1.25-1.3 and 35K and finishes at Mach 1.43-1.57 and 50K, the fact is that a _one way_ trip (to a tanker orbit, prepositioned) is going to run the F/A-22 about an hour or hour and a half.
The 10-20 JSF's which are going to be 'dragged' all the way to the target thanks to poor lift at drag and /very poor/ parasitics with external stores will take a lot longer.
And they won't go as fast because the F135 has cheapened steel-not-titanium front end compression and so cannot do SSC.
FA-22 1.5 X 2 = 3hrs.
RTB____________________
Will the F/A-22 be exported to other NATO countries?, i mean 10ish years time. I know europe already have the Eurofighter but i was thinking the large
non european countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan?.
These would be the most suitable countries for the Raptor i suppose.
Joining the air force in the future wont be good anymore due to these stupid unmanned fighter planes. That means we will fly rc planes for a living
and the good old pilot days will be no more.
[edit on 21-11-2005 by Browno]
These would be the most suitable countries for the Raptor i suppose.
Joining the air force in the future wont be good anymore due to these stupid unmanned fighter planes. That means we will fly rc planes for a living
and the good old pilot days will be no more.
[edit on 21-11-2005 by Browno]
>>
Will the F/A-22 be exported to other NATO countries?, i mean 10ish years time.
>>
No. For a lot of reasons.
1. EU cooked it's goose when they failed to back us in Iraq. And 'NATO' is likely going to become a predominantly Franco-German equivalent to CENTCOM now that we have foolishly expanded the out-of-area authority for them. And they have a precedent inherent to force being the power behind global economic diplomacy.
2. As long as you face a conventionally signatured threat, a longer reach is from a walking pace is always better than a sprinting Ninja's invisible touch. And the BVRAAM/Eurofighter combination brings as many as 8 shots with TWICE the pole out of an F/A-22.
3. In 2015, DEWS like the Tactical High Energy Laser will begin field trials and these will take eyeblink killing radius' out to about 20-25km from a ground installation and 60-100km from a ground+relay mirror. At least in SWA. Within 5 years of our debuting such weapons, conventional (gutsack in cockpit) airframes will vanish like dinosaurs after the meteor. Laser and Maser weapons are literally the first /useful/ paradigm shift in machine-on-machine warfare since the gun. Nukes are useless. Beams are not.
4. Whether you like 'radio control airplanes' or not, the fact remains that they are superior at any type of warfare to manned aircraft. They have less than half the lift at drag for any given cruise point so they fly farther, taking them out of reach of TBMs and giving them oodles of time to SEE time critical targets before responding to them. They are utterly brave and take all of a couple weeks to build (or could, if properly 'Forded') at less than half the 'COO' or total cost of ownership that is R&D+Acquisition+Life Cycle on manned jets. This means that there can be more of them covering your butt and watching the enemy for the slightest move. Since again SEEING IS TO SHOOTING WHAT AWARENESS IS TO CHOICE in multiple target set, collaterals-mixed environment.
>>
I know europe already have the Eurofighter but i was thinking the large non european countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan?.
>>
The Raptor brings twin engine reliability and range to the remote and overwater mission set. However; if I designed a UCAV that looked more or less like an unmanned, stealthed 'aligned and chined' F-104 and cost 10-15 million each to carry four MRM class weapons /only/, it would be superior to the Raptor, even if you lost them at twice the rate due to accidents or (high level = wide DEW exposure horizoning) combat attrition.
>>
Joining the air force in the future wont be good anymore due to these stupid unmanned fighter planes. That means we will fly rc planes for a living
and the good old pilot days will be no more.
>>
The irony being that the reason fighter aircraft design is 'plateau'd' (flatlined for innovation) is because both the 20-30 year cyclical interval between generations and even /design to fielding/ instantly obsolesces component technologies.
Which leads to pedestrian attempt to cover all bases within a single, generic design.
Where training costs and 'bravery' are not factors in wafighter acquisition and building, it is in fact better to role optimize a platform than to try and justify it's cost based on 'multirole capabilities'.
Because you can then buy a lot of them and replace them just as rapidly.
Wars being often won by those who can afford to lose more rather than those whose strategic and tactical brilliance allows them to lose less.
(Sherman vs. Panther etc.)
If you come to understand the robotic UCAV (which is actually autonomous in it's direct flight control) as something between a chess piece and a servant, you begin to see how you can employ it in 'interesting' (dangerous to the platform but highly leveraging and thus tipping point exciting) ways.
Man has no role on the battlefield dominated by machine capabilities. Even less so when it is in the skies.
The only difference between a winner and a loser is the realization of this Paul Bunyon effector in time to make the deep force structure changes necessary to win to win the /prep phase/ of the next war.
Right now, we are losing.
And the reason we are losing is because we waste billions supporting an elitist community in which sky knights run roughshod over the backs of those they are supposed to protect. Put another way, if only 10-20% of the UPT inductees make it to graduation, but 50% of those who join UCAV 'training' (oh yes, there will still be a man in the loop) are able to fly a virtual sky alive with Star Wars like weapons; which would you rather be? A hump worshiping olympian 'heroes' who give not a rat's butt about your dreams while living theirs from afar.
Or 'over the frontlines' without worry over whether your jet is going to have a four foot wide hole flash vaporized in it's wing tank in the next half second? Because you're not in it and you have been given 5 others to play with after your step-on-snake mistake?
KPl.
Will the F/A-22 be exported to other NATO countries?, i mean 10ish years time.
>>
No. For a lot of reasons.
1. EU cooked it's goose when they failed to back us in Iraq. And 'NATO' is likely going to become a predominantly Franco-German equivalent to CENTCOM now that we have foolishly expanded the out-of-area authority for them. And they have a precedent inherent to force being the power behind global economic diplomacy.
2. As long as you face a conventionally signatured threat, a longer reach is from a walking pace is always better than a sprinting Ninja's invisible touch. And the BVRAAM/Eurofighter combination brings as many as 8 shots with TWICE the pole out of an F/A-22.
3. In 2015, DEWS like the Tactical High Energy Laser will begin field trials and these will take eyeblink killing radius' out to about 20-25km from a ground installation and 60-100km from a ground+relay mirror. At least in SWA. Within 5 years of our debuting such weapons, conventional (gutsack in cockpit) airframes will vanish like dinosaurs after the meteor. Laser and Maser weapons are literally the first /useful/ paradigm shift in machine-on-machine warfare since the gun. Nukes are useless. Beams are not.
4. Whether you like 'radio control airplanes' or not, the fact remains that they are superior at any type of warfare to manned aircraft. They have less than half the lift at drag for any given cruise point so they fly farther, taking them out of reach of TBMs and giving them oodles of time to SEE time critical targets before responding to them. They are utterly brave and take all of a couple weeks to build (or could, if properly 'Forded') at less than half the 'COO' or total cost of ownership that is R&D+Acquisition+Life Cycle on manned jets. This means that there can be more of them covering your butt and watching the enemy for the slightest move. Since again SEEING IS TO SHOOTING WHAT AWARENESS IS TO CHOICE in multiple target set, collaterals-mixed environment.
>>
I know europe already have the Eurofighter but i was thinking the large non european countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan?.
>>
The Raptor brings twin engine reliability and range to the remote and overwater mission set. However; if I designed a UCAV that looked more or less like an unmanned, stealthed 'aligned and chined' F-104 and cost 10-15 million each to carry four MRM class weapons /only/, it would be superior to the Raptor, even if you lost them at twice the rate due to accidents or (high level = wide DEW exposure horizoning) combat attrition.
>>
Joining the air force in the future wont be good anymore due to these stupid unmanned fighter planes. That means we will fly rc planes for a living
and the good old pilot days will be no more.
>>
The irony being that the reason fighter aircraft design is 'plateau'd' (flatlined for innovation) is because both the 20-30 year cyclical interval between generations and even /design to fielding/ instantly obsolesces component technologies.
Which leads to pedestrian attempt to cover all bases within a single, generic design.
Where training costs and 'bravery' are not factors in wafighter acquisition and building, it is in fact better to role optimize a platform than to try and justify it's cost based on 'multirole capabilities'.
Because you can then buy a lot of them and replace them just as rapidly.
Wars being often won by those who can afford to lose more rather than those whose strategic and tactical brilliance allows them to lose less.
(Sherman vs. Panther etc.)
If you come to understand the robotic UCAV (which is actually autonomous in it's direct flight control) as something between a chess piece and a servant, you begin to see how you can employ it in 'interesting' (dangerous to the platform but highly leveraging and thus tipping point exciting) ways.
Man has no role on the battlefield dominated by machine capabilities. Even less so when it is in the skies.
The only difference between a winner and a loser is the realization of this Paul Bunyon effector in time to make the deep force structure changes necessary to win to win the /prep phase/ of the next war.
Right now, we are losing.
And the reason we are losing is because we waste billions supporting an elitist community in which sky knights run roughshod over the backs of those they are supposed to protect. Put another way, if only 10-20% of the UPT inductees make it to graduation, but 50% of those who join UCAV 'training' (oh yes, there will still be a man in the loop) are able to fly a virtual sky alive with Star Wars like weapons; which would you rather be? A hump worshiping olympian 'heroes' who give not a rat's butt about your dreams while living theirs from afar.
Or 'over the frontlines' without worry over whether your jet is going to have a four foot wide hole flash vaporized in it's wing tank in the next half second? Because you're not in it and you have been given 5 others to play with after your step-on-snake mistake?
KPl.
Thanks for your earlier detailed reply to me, I suspect you have made one or two hefty assumptions in there but I am currently engaged on checking my
facts. If I don't come back to this then my facts will have simply proved you right on the couple of areas I am in doubt over
Regarding the mission time with Raptor V F-35, yes, I wasn't thinking it through properly and I get it now.
I am a bit concerned over your view of the EU having cooked its goose, there does seem to be some perception evident that the EU should somehow be punished and not trusted again, this is a quite wrong view to take as it seems to ignore two salient points; 1 Britain is part of the EU and 2 France and Germany are sovereign states and entitled to act as they see fit, not come running when America whistles. The 'you are with us or against us' line takes no account that someone might not agree with you but can still be your freind.
It reminds me of the Falklands War, tell me which US forces were rushed to aid Britain at that time? Yet I don't see us bearing any sort of grudge over the fact. Get over it.
[edit on 22-11-2005 by waynos]
Regarding the mission time with Raptor V F-35, yes, I wasn't thinking it through properly and I get it now.
I am a bit concerned over your view of the EU having cooked its goose, there does seem to be some perception evident that the EU should somehow be punished and not trusted again, this is a quite wrong view to take as it seems to ignore two salient points; 1 Britain is part of the EU and 2 France and Germany are sovereign states and entitled to act as they see fit, not come running when America whistles. The 'you are with us or against us' line takes no account that someone might not agree with you but can still be your freind.
It reminds me of the Falklands War, tell me which US forces were rushed to aid Britain at that time? Yet I don't see us bearing any sort of grudge over the fact. Get over it.
[edit on 22-11-2005 by waynos]
Waynos,
It's one thing to disagree with a friend and even to let him catch his come uppance when from someone you believe is right.
BUT. The entire EU (as 'separate govenrmental bodies' dominated by France and Germany) went over the line when they allowed their populaces to complain and then jumped on the bandwagon themselves without a little government rhetoric to the contrary.
Namely: "Sure they are a bit pissed and hysterical but so would you be if this had happened to you during a nominally peacetime mission. Settle down, let /them/ settle down and in five years we will have a more definite referendum as to the consequences and potential alternatives to the war in Iraq. We can't stop them but maybe we can advise them if we don't embarrass or anger them."
As for the Falklands, you must not do much reading because in 1982 we were before the OAS on an almost daily basis fighting for Britain's rights as an 'old colonial power whose bully time was long gone'. Among other things, keeping CANA from getting any more Flying Fish.
WE DID THIS because the _FALKLANDS PEOPLE_ were largely Brit in ethnic origin and /they/ had said they did not want 'warmer relations' (settlement) by Argentina. A nation perennially on the brink of financial default among /many/ other junta'd troubles even before the cultural disconnect.
To which I would also add that the U.S. offered to reflag an LHD to the RN 'for the duration' and was turned down. While, if you had lost your thrudeck toy carriers dicking about like you did, it would have been under the cover of a U.S. 'real' CVBG that the USMC bailed your sorry asses off those islands.
The reality is that everyone thinks the Brits are the lapdogs of the U.S. anyway and thus our 'special relationship' is probably a very bad thing for you (even as the influence of The City ownership on our companies surely is) because you are a helluva lot more likely to be 'influenced' by Continental politics and economics than ours.
EU vs. U.S. is a given. They, more than the Chinese or Russians are the most technologically advanced and competitively driven (say uppity) of the current 'free world' powers. It only remains for NATO to collapse to 'justify' an independent military branch (E-RDF was only a start) around whose militant 'patriots shared pride' another throw of the Constitutional dice will finally see happen what should have occured back in Kaiser Willy's day.
The only real question is whether the Russians (who will likely lose their Far Eastern holdings before 2100) will be accepted into a pan-EU-rals confederacy or if the Euros will remain snooty and isolative and thus deny themselves physical resources as much as population mass by which to swing the pendulum of consumerist 'democracy as capitalism' (gaping maw economics) power politick.
KPl.
It's one thing to disagree with a friend and even to let him catch his come uppance when from someone you believe is right.
BUT. The entire EU (as 'separate govenrmental bodies' dominated by France and Germany) went over the line when they allowed their populaces to complain and then jumped on the bandwagon themselves without a little government rhetoric to the contrary.
Namely: "Sure they are a bit pissed and hysterical but so would you be if this had happened to you during a nominally peacetime mission. Settle down, let /them/ settle down and in five years we will have a more definite referendum as to the consequences and potential alternatives to the war in Iraq. We can't stop them but maybe we can advise them if we don't embarrass or anger them."
As for the Falklands, you must not do much reading because in 1982 we were before the OAS on an almost daily basis fighting for Britain's rights as an 'old colonial power whose bully time was long gone'. Among other things, keeping CANA from getting any more Flying Fish.
WE DID THIS because the _FALKLANDS PEOPLE_ were largely Brit in ethnic origin and /they/ had said they did not want 'warmer relations' (settlement) by Argentina. A nation perennially on the brink of financial default among /many/ other junta'd troubles even before the cultural disconnect.
To which I would also add that the U.S. offered to reflag an LHD to the RN 'for the duration' and was turned down. While, if you had lost your thrudeck toy carriers dicking about like you did, it would have been under the cover of a U.S. 'real' CVBG that the USMC bailed your sorry asses off those islands.
The reality is that everyone thinks the Brits are the lapdogs of the U.S. anyway and thus our 'special relationship' is probably a very bad thing for you (even as the influence of The City ownership on our companies surely is) because you are a helluva lot more likely to be 'influenced' by Continental politics and economics than ours.
EU vs. U.S. is a given. They, more than the Chinese or Russians are the most technologically advanced and competitively driven (say uppity) of the current 'free world' powers. It only remains for NATO to collapse to 'justify' an independent military branch (E-RDF was only a start) around whose militant 'patriots shared pride' another throw of the Constitutional dice will finally see happen what should have occured back in Kaiser Willy's day.
The only real question is whether the Russians (who will likely lose their Far Eastern holdings before 2100) will be accepted into a pan-EU-rals confederacy or if the Euros will remain snooty and isolative and thus deny themselves physical resources as much as population mass by which to swing the pendulum of consumerist 'democracy as capitalism' (gaping maw economics) power politick.
KPl.
I'm sorry, you are a clearly inmtelligent and articulate guy but I cannot take the viewpoints you have posted seriously.
You appear to have a particularly jaundiced view of the EU, not to mention Britains place within it, and how it works and this detrimentally colours your whole rhetoric on this subject. Reading your post I have clearly no hope of convincing you otherwise so I will not try. You don't seem to grasp at all that we are democratic free countries (your statement about being 'allowed' to protest and complain shows that).
You seem to dismiss everything anyone uses as 'toy', whether it be the RN Carriers or Mirages or, I suspect, almost anything so I don't see how a meaningful discussion can emerge from this viewpoint. "F-16?" "Bah! Its a toy!" ad nauseum?
I also have trouble even understanding a lot of your phraseology, which I will put down to being my problem to save another argument, but even after reading some sentences several times I am none the wiser.
IF we had lost our carriers? Dicking about? What are you on about? There were no US forces involved in the Falkands war, there was no USN carrier group 'covering our asses, no 'sorry asses' wasn't it? This is fantasy.
You say that ' US V EU is a given' Is it? Only to someone who is looking for a fight surely? I don't get that impression at all. I'm afraid I find the whole tone of this offensive and no longer wish to continue here. I could say you are wrong, you will say 'no Im not' and so on. there's no point.
[edit on 22-11-2005 by waynos]
You appear to have a particularly jaundiced view of the EU, not to mention Britains place within it, and how it works and this detrimentally colours your whole rhetoric on this subject. Reading your post I have clearly no hope of convincing you otherwise so I will not try. You don't seem to grasp at all that we are democratic free countries (your statement about being 'allowed' to protest and complain shows that).
You seem to dismiss everything anyone uses as 'toy', whether it be the RN Carriers or Mirages or, I suspect, almost anything so I don't see how a meaningful discussion can emerge from this viewpoint. "F-16?" "Bah! Its a toy!" ad nauseum?
I also have trouble even understanding a lot of your phraseology, which I will put down to being my problem to save another argument, but even after reading some sentences several times I am none the wiser.
IF we had lost our carriers? Dicking about? What are you on about? There were no US forces involved in the Falkands war, there was no USN carrier group 'covering our asses, no 'sorry asses' wasn't it? This is fantasy.
You say that ' US V EU is a given' Is it? Only to someone who is looking for a fight surely? I don't get that impression at all. I'm afraid I find the whole tone of this offensive and no longer wish to continue here. I could say you are wrong, you will say 'no Im not' and so on. there's no point.
[edit on 22-11-2005 by waynos]
Originally posted by FLYIN HIGH
Sweet It's good to see what our money has been spent on. The F-22 is going to be one heck of a surprize when it drop in on a Mig's 6. I would not like to be in the pilots seat of the Mig in a one-on-one.
Yeah, but what happends when they put their Su-47 after the F/A-22...??
Originally posted by Figher Master FIN
Yeah, but what happends when they put their Su-47 after the F/A-22...??
Nothing happens, Figher Master FIN.
The Su-47 is not a serial production aircraft, it is a technology demonstrator. Hence, it will not see the light of day at the end of a Russian or Sukhoi production line. I thought you knew this? Even Sukhoi has stated such on numerous occasions.
Is your comment one based on hypotheticals and 'what-ifs'?
seekerof
Originally posted by ch1466
>>
I know europe already have the Eurofighter but i was thinking the large non european countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan?.
>>
The Raptor brings twin engine reliability and range to the remote and overwater mission set. However; if I designed a UCAV that looked more or less like an unmanned, stealthed 'aligned and chined' F-104 and cost 10-15 million each to carry four MRM class weapons /only/, it would be superior to the Raptor, even if you lost them at twice the rate due to accidents or (high level = wide DEW exposure horizoning) combat attrition.
KPl.
In another thread earlier I posted a website that I dont believe to be extremely reliable but interesting none the less.
www.strategypage.com...
this page says that should UCAV's truly become profisent at A2A combat that Canada is considering buying them. I think its an interesting option considering the facts that you stated in this post. I would be interested in hearing further your thoughts on what YOU think personally Can and Aus or the countries that i think have supported the US within reason. I would love to have the F-22 flying out of CFB Cold Lake but i doubt that would happen due to cost and the US keepin their tech.
All weapons are toys. Just as all warriors are secretly angry children.
The difference is that those holding their hands (or their leashes) both
1. Buy enough toys to win /despite/ losses.
2. Employ their forces at the time and place where said Attrition is least likely to be crippling and thust tactical skill can prevail.
The UK went South during the worst time of the year without such basic niceties as the Sea King AEW. Why? Hysteria and political fear of losing public support for the war I guess.
They failed to kill the 2 Chancha tankers or the Escadron Phoenix pathfinders which were all that the enemy had to extend their radius and find the islands in the absence or deleterious condition of their fighter's equipment suite.
Nor did they attack the Port Stanley TPS-44 and Skyguard radars to destory the ability to raid-track the enemy back out to the Task Group.
Nor did they attack the Super Etendards at their likeliest (CANA-shifts-South) bases.
Nor did they go ashore and make connections with the locals to determine the available command and control kills (NGS), mining levels or the presence of the Garbage Truck Exocet.
The ONE thing that the Brits did well was to set up a missile trap off Elephant's Head and even in this, they failed miserable. Because the surface Navy decided not to let the SHAR that were FORCAPing overhead attack the inbounds before they hit the Sea Dart middle zone. And the cruiser (I'm sorry, I don't recall the name but it was one of but three SD capable ships) wouldn't STAY the hell out of the way when it's systems went TU and let the Sea Wolf goal keeper do it's damn job. Hell, they even forgot RULE #1 about forward emplaced SAMbushes.
You never stay in one bloody damn place so that the enemy can pin you and hit you or go around.
And for all of the above, /even before/ you got your boots muddy, you proved that you were incompetent children who did not understand the lethal nature of your toys.
The rest I won't comment upon because it's not relevant to this thread (my fault) and you didn't use specific details indicating a general owie response at being called a spade rather than having specific, defensible position of your own (yours).
KPl.
Wars are won in the WILL. To own what you conquer and thereby profit from the blood. Whatever tools or toys you use to get there are only relevant indicators of how much you are willing to risk to get what you want.
The difference is that those holding their hands (or their leashes) both
1. Buy enough toys to win /despite/ losses.
2. Employ their forces at the time and place where said Attrition is least likely to be crippling and thust tactical skill can prevail.
The UK went South during the worst time of the year without such basic niceties as the Sea King AEW. Why? Hysteria and political fear of losing public support for the war I guess.
They failed to kill the 2 Chancha tankers or the Escadron Phoenix pathfinders which were all that the enemy had to extend their radius and find the islands in the absence or deleterious condition of their fighter's equipment suite.
Nor did they attack the Port Stanley TPS-44 and Skyguard radars to destory the ability to raid-track the enemy back out to the Task Group.
Nor did they attack the Super Etendards at their likeliest (CANA-shifts-South) bases.
Nor did they go ashore and make connections with the locals to determine the available command and control kills (NGS), mining levels or the presence of the Garbage Truck Exocet.
The ONE thing that the Brits did well was to set up a missile trap off Elephant's Head and even in this, they failed miserable. Because the surface Navy decided not to let the SHAR that were FORCAPing overhead attack the inbounds before they hit the Sea Dart middle zone. And the cruiser (I'm sorry, I don't recall the name but it was one of but three SD capable ships) wouldn't STAY the hell out of the way when it's systems went TU and let the Sea Wolf goal keeper do it's damn job. Hell, they even forgot RULE #1 about forward emplaced SAMbushes.
You never stay in one bloody damn place so that the enemy can pin you and hit you or go around.
And for all of the above, /even before/ you got your boots muddy, you proved that you were incompetent children who did not understand the lethal nature of your toys.
The rest I won't comment upon because it's not relevant to this thread (my fault) and you didn't use specific details indicating a general owie response at being called a spade rather than having specific, defensible position of your own (yours).
KPl.
Wars are won in the WILL. To own what you conquer and thereby profit from the blood. Whatever tools or toys you use to get there are only relevant indicators of how much you are willing to risk to get what you want.
Originally posted by ch1466
The UK went South during the worst time of the year without such basic niceties as the Sea King AEW. Why? Hysteria and political fear of losing public support for the war I guess.
Why? Nothing more than political ineptitude. The Sea King AEW did not actually exist, so they would have had a hard time taking any with them. The RN AEW platform had been the Gannet AEW.3 but this could not be flown from the through deck cruisers and had been retired in 1978 along with the Ark Royal. The stupidity of this (somehow???) only became apparent when HMS Sheffield was lost and the radars from the retired Gannets were quickly attached to Sea King airframes to create an ad hoc platform that the RN later upgraded and adopted as standard. Hysteria never came into it.
They failed to kill the 2 Chancha tankers or the Escadron Phoenix pathfinders which were all that the enemy had to extend their radius and find the islands in the absence or deleterious condition of their fighter's equipment suite.
they were never in range to be killed, there was no failure as you put it.
Nor did they attack the Port Stanley TPS-44 and Skyguard radars to destory the ability to raid-track the enemy back out to the Task Group.
Yes they did, as soon as they were able. Vulcans were equipped with Shrike ARM's for the task.
Nor did they attack the Super Etendards at their likeliest (CANA-shifts-South) bases.
You should be aware that no mainland targets were permitted to be attacked, UK forces were only permitted to push the Argentine forces off the islands for fear of outraging compliant South American countries.
The rest of it is a bit of a rant with little real point it seems. You also seem oblivious to the fact that Britains over extended forces actually WON. You appear to be merely baiting now so I wont go any further.
Originally posted by waynos
The rest of it is a bit of a rant with little real point it seems. You also seem oblivious to the fact that Britains over extended forces actually WON. You appear to be merely baiting now so I wont go any further.
Good on you waynos personally i doubt i would of even bothered to answer to his post at all.
[edit on 24-11-2005 by Canada_EH]
Here is a site about US Aircraft paint schemes. What is the silvery paint sceme used on the F/A-22/
www.jpsmodell.de...
www.jpsmodell.de...
The standard paint scheme for the USAF now is an all over grey with black lettering. The VIP planes, and a few others are painted differently, but
99% of the USAF planes are painted grety.
Here are a couple of examples.
There are exceptions, but the majority of the planes in the Inventory have been painted grey now.
[edit on 11/24/2005 by Zaphod58]
[edit on 11/24/2005 by Zaphod58]
Here are a couple of examples.
There are exceptions, but the majority of the planes in the Inventory have been painted grey now.
[edit on 11/24/2005 by Zaphod58]
[edit on 11/24/2005 by Zaphod58]
>>
Why? Nothing more than political ineptitude. The Sea King AEW did not actually exist, so they would have had a hard time taking any with them.
>>
It was in testing and would have within the six months needed for 'High Summer in the South Atlantic'. You also would have had another carrier and a fully vetted (and onboard, the ascenscion flyout being another marvel of risked asset insanity) Harrier force ready for deck ops and quite possibly possesed of LGB and working MULE or similar ground designators.
Even /Maverick/ would have been better on bright day than cluster laydown thru the heart of a flak trap.
>>
The RN AEW platform had been the Gannet AEW.3 but this could not be flown from the through deck cruisers and had been retired in 1978 along with the Ark Royal. The stupidity of this (somehow???) only became apparent when HMS Sheffield was lost and the radars from the retired Gannets were quickly attached to Sea King airframes to create an ad hoc platform that the RN later upgraded and adopted as standard. Hysteria never came into it.
>>
Yes it did. The Falklands were not going to do an Atlantis Impression. Any new settlements could have been kicked off the island upon recapture. And the Marines and Infantry did Zip Squat All to secure the Brit Civillians when they finally came so the notion that there was some 'rush' in the intervening MONTH it took to get there and get ashore as a function of keep the Argies from staging a defacto massacre is also questionable.
>>
they were never in range to be killed, there was no failure as you put it.
>>
Bullcrap. _Falklands, The Air War_ has quotes from Argie pilots who state that they came within visual range of the islands to give their pilots that much more chance to make target with enough gas to egress AND that they drew contrails to help heavily battledamaged Scooters and Daggers find them on the way back out.
Now keep in mind that the geography of the island, the 'shortest route between two points' range from the mainland and the nature of the amphib anchorage basically reduced the available approaches to an /entirely/ predictable set of ingress canyons and you end up with the dead certainty that if the Royals had been willing to spend a SHAR rather than /wasting them/ on DEFCAP with pathetic radars, no gas and no air battle coordination, you could have dunked one or both KC-130s and ended the frickin' air war RIGHT THERE.
I don't care whether you set up a stealth strip FOL with matting or put them on an FFG. You get those bloody buggers out where they can actually EARN THEIR MONEY.
Because the RN never secured the Falklands airspace and as a result the entire operation was put in jeopardy with hundreds lost to lolo attacks which should never have had the gas to get there.
>>
Yes they did, as soon as they were able. Vulcans were equipped with Shrike ARM's for the task.
>>
No. I'm talking six men, a mortar tube and a little black boat. I'm talking six men, an SPR and a little black helicopter. I'm talking six men, a Milan and a bloody long walk. NGS. MAJOR tactical attack.
ANYTHING to basically pop the bubble of secure airspace over Stanley so that you can _work the will_ by which the 'firey latina' sense of outrage and bluster becomes depression and despair at 'once again being humiliated by the Anglos'.
BUTCHER YOUR ENEMY and leave him to be found by his underlings. Give him no ground to stand on. Drive him constantly using whatever elements of hard psyops and leadership/enabler kills are necessary to AVOID mainforce engagements.
You knew this in Malaysia in 1950. By 1982, you'd lost all of it.
>>
You should be aware that no mainland targets were permitted to be attacked, UK forces were only permitted to push the Argentine forces off the islands for fear of outraging compliant South American countries.
>>
Which is why 'threatened' RAF attacks and even nuclear ceiling breach on Buenos Aires lead to the withdrawal of the only radar equipped OCA force in the region to defend the capital.
Which is why _raid warning_ was coming from IN COUNTRY SOURCES at a time when all of Argentina was suffering Desert Storm disease.
Which is why a 'little black Sea King' was stripped, flown and torched on the beaches of Punto Arenas recovering that raid warning (sacrificial gas cow).
Christ, do you even understand the relevance of the term of 'unacknowledged operations'?
>>
The rest of it is a bit of a rant with little real point it seems. You also seem oblivious to the fact that Britains over extended forces actually WON. You appear to be merely baiting now so I wont go any further.
>>
And you are a blithely ignorant of your own military history. The fact being that the Brits won, as usual, because the other guys made more mistakes than you did. Such is NOT the 'proper way' to win a damn war. It begs the instance or event where they fight SMARTER than you do and you end up slaughtered because you come to the battle halfassed and waste opportunities and assets attacking the wrong targets.
Every fool and his brother George knowing that you don't defeat a thief by reaching for the gun in your nightstand as he comes through your bedroom door. You fight him at the front gate and across the yard and at the front door. When you failed to fight, in depth, against the key mission enablers, expending your assets in careful gambits before commiting to an all-or-nothing shorelanding op with the rest of you force. Instead, you bent over and asked for it. As such, it's not YOURS TO CROW that the Argies were not killers enough to make you scream.
KPl.
Why? Nothing more than political ineptitude. The Sea King AEW did not actually exist, so they would have had a hard time taking any with them.
>>
It was in testing and would have within the six months needed for 'High Summer in the South Atlantic'. You also would have had another carrier and a fully vetted (and onboard, the ascenscion flyout being another marvel of risked asset insanity) Harrier force ready for deck ops and quite possibly possesed of LGB and working MULE or similar ground designators.
Even /Maverick/ would have been better on bright day than cluster laydown thru the heart of a flak trap.
>>
The RN AEW platform had been the Gannet AEW.3 but this could not be flown from the through deck cruisers and had been retired in 1978 along with the Ark Royal. The stupidity of this (somehow???) only became apparent when HMS Sheffield was lost and the radars from the retired Gannets were quickly attached to Sea King airframes to create an ad hoc platform that the RN later upgraded and adopted as standard. Hysteria never came into it.
>>
Yes it did. The Falklands were not going to do an Atlantis Impression. Any new settlements could have been kicked off the island upon recapture. And the Marines and Infantry did Zip Squat All to secure the Brit Civillians when they finally came so the notion that there was some 'rush' in the intervening MONTH it took to get there and get ashore as a function of keep the Argies from staging a defacto massacre is also questionable.
>>
they were never in range to be killed, there was no failure as you put it.
>>
Bullcrap. _Falklands, The Air War_ has quotes from Argie pilots who state that they came within visual range of the islands to give their pilots that much more chance to make target with enough gas to egress AND that they drew contrails to help heavily battledamaged Scooters and Daggers find them on the way back out.
Now keep in mind that the geography of the island, the 'shortest route between two points' range from the mainland and the nature of the amphib anchorage basically reduced the available approaches to an /entirely/ predictable set of ingress canyons and you end up with the dead certainty that if the Royals had been willing to spend a SHAR rather than /wasting them/ on DEFCAP with pathetic radars, no gas and no air battle coordination, you could have dunked one or both KC-130s and ended the frickin' air war RIGHT THERE.
I don't care whether you set up a stealth strip FOL with matting or put them on an FFG. You get those bloody buggers out where they can actually EARN THEIR MONEY.
Because the RN never secured the Falklands airspace and as a result the entire operation was put in jeopardy with hundreds lost to lolo attacks which should never have had the gas to get there.
>>
Yes they did, as soon as they were able. Vulcans were equipped with Shrike ARM's for the task.
>>
No. I'm talking six men, a mortar tube and a little black boat. I'm talking six men, an SPR and a little black helicopter. I'm talking six men, a Milan and a bloody long walk. NGS. MAJOR tactical attack.
ANYTHING to basically pop the bubble of secure airspace over Stanley so that you can _work the will_ by which the 'firey latina' sense of outrage and bluster becomes depression and despair at 'once again being humiliated by the Anglos'.
BUTCHER YOUR ENEMY and leave him to be found by his underlings. Give him no ground to stand on. Drive him constantly using whatever elements of hard psyops and leadership/enabler kills are necessary to AVOID mainforce engagements.
You knew this in Malaysia in 1950. By 1982, you'd lost all of it.
>>
You should be aware that no mainland targets were permitted to be attacked, UK forces were only permitted to push the Argentine forces off the islands for fear of outraging compliant South American countries.
>>
Which is why 'threatened' RAF attacks and even nuclear ceiling breach on Buenos Aires lead to the withdrawal of the only radar equipped OCA force in the region to defend the capital.
Which is why _raid warning_ was coming from IN COUNTRY SOURCES at a time when all of Argentina was suffering Desert Storm disease.
Which is why a 'little black Sea King' was stripped, flown and torched on the beaches of Punto Arenas recovering that raid warning (sacrificial gas cow).
Christ, do you even understand the relevance of the term of 'unacknowledged operations'?
>>
The rest of it is a bit of a rant with little real point it seems. You also seem oblivious to the fact that Britains over extended forces actually WON. You appear to be merely baiting now so I wont go any further.
>>
And you are a blithely ignorant of your own military history. The fact being that the Brits won, as usual, because the other guys made more mistakes than you did. Such is NOT the 'proper way' to win a damn war. It begs the instance or event where they fight SMARTER than you do and you end up slaughtered because you come to the battle halfassed and waste opportunities and assets attacking the wrong targets.
Every fool and his brother George knowing that you don't defeat a thief by reaching for the gun in your nightstand as he comes through your bedroom door. You fight him at the front gate and across the yard and at the front door. When you failed to fight, in depth, against the key mission enablers, expending your assets in careful gambits before commiting to an all-or-nothing shorelanding op with the rest of you force. Instead, you bent over and asked for it. As such, it's not YOURS TO CROW that the Argies were not killers enough to make you scream.
KPl.
Canada EH,
>>
In another thread earlier I posted a website that I dont believe to be extremely reliable but interesting none the less.
www.strategypage.com...
this page says that should UCAV's truly become profisent at A2A combat
>>
First, off, given your current, relatively neutral, position on the international front, I doubt seriously if Canada has much need for a true 'fighter' in more than the odd lost-zombie, drug interdiction or airliner hijacking.
To adequately provide such cover across the broad expanse of your Frontiers is itself probably impossible with the 60 or so F/A-18s you have but selective (trans-oceanic routes) coverage is more than a doable mission 'forever' with the Hornet. Or at least as long as the center barrels hold out.
I doubt seriously if the X-45 is good for fighter missioning as anything more than a weapons-cabinet approach to either multiplying a limited fighter presence or preenergizing the individual weapons poles via forward positioning.
i.e. The 'missileer' type profile for which the F404 T/Wr of only around .2:1 allows for. Whereas a penetrating approach would need both a fast onset to 'pin' the baselanes and the ability to maneuver rapidly against several targets (or threat shots, especially S2A) which is quite simply beyond the X-45's propulsion path (limited inlet mass flow) -or- G capabilities. J-UCAS is rated to 5.5G (which is about 7-8dps vs. the Hornets 13-16 sustained and 30-40 instantaneous) and cannot sustain this for control effectors as as much as airframe stress reasons.
Obviously, the defensive mission is less stressful in terms of overlapping hostile IADS problems on sensor:shooter aspects and evasive energy reserves but quite frankly, most commuter level/business jets and nearly all airliners should be able to flat out-run the X-45, denying the option to 'come up along side and fire guns across the nose'. If there is no flexibility in the external platforms ability to 'determine intent', even a 15-25 million dollar UCAV starts to pale (as a pure BVR shooter) in comparison to say secure cabin cameras and an encrypted 'range safe' protocol. Both on acceptability-to-public (Terminator psychology) and sheer gross-economics, the UCAV, /as J-UCAS/ profiled, is not a player in the DCA game either.
For these reasons the LINK poster's suggestion that the X-45 is more agile than the F/A-18 and certainly that it is capable of a 'fighter mission' is grossly overstated.
>>
...that Canada is considering buying them. I think its an interesting option considering the facts that you stated in this post. I would be interested in hearing further your thoughts on what YOU think personally Can and Aus or the countries that I think have supported the US within reason. I would love to have the F-22 flying out of CFB Cold Lake but i doubt that would happen due to cost and the US keepin their tech.
>>
First off, I would prefer Canada over Saudi or Israel or Japan which are the only likely nations to have either the special priveleges or the fiscal power to afford such a status symbol weapons system. However, you are correct that he most likely presence of Raptors is either in Maple Flag conditions (wherein we could gain valuable experience against ARH/BVR 'with IRST, 2-way tether and Ramjet legs' bonus dangers experience against the Luftwaffe and RAF Typhoons.).
Now, if you want a fighter you need three things:
Decisive Engagement Decisioning.
Dominant Shot Counts.
Freedom Of Operations.
DED basically comes down to speed and signature control to get to a position whereby you can score with missiles BEFORE an opfor weapon/platform combination can achieve similar Single Shot Kill Probabilities on you. If you take an F-104 high-fast profile (Mach 2 @ 70K for 500nm) you WILL basically be able to shoot-first anything you can see before it can do the same to you. At least with rocket propulsion AAMs. If you give your missile a sophisticated datalink so that it can take midcourse updates from a second flight 40-60 miles behind you while you turn and extend away at launch, even 'seeing' is optional. If you put ram propulsion on the missile and let it fly out to a point in space where an IRST or (ground) range tracking camera. Or long wave 'stealth defeating' radar says there is a target (and the two way datalink confirms all this) in theory the balance can switch the other way again. If the enemy says "Okay, I've got 40 tier-1 capable fighters in my arsenal and he's got 400, I can either die valiantly fighting for ONE target. Be bombed where my air force sits. Go into (dispersal) hiding in the hopes he doesn't invade. Or pick ONE target against which I will expend my assets in the hopes of distrupting his game plan and embarrassing him politically", theoretically he can still score major victory with as little as a MiG-21 one way mission against an AWACS or Tanker that has wandered too far forward. Decisive Engagement then meaning /decisive refusal/ (or 'COE' Contempt Of Engagement) to duel for no reason.
OTOH, DSC is basically a balance between the ability to loiter in a given area /before/ the threat becomes visible. And the ability to see and sort and kill him within an 'optimum envelope' combination of own performance and weapon once he arrives. This is the first of many cost trades in which you have to balance things like wingloading and thrust trust reserves against numbers of jets purchased and their ability to act as cooperative hunting packs in reducing things like sensorizatin costs and the physical size and total count of shots carried. As regards weapons, it may well come down to a choice- "Is it a Phenix level capability because I can't beat his airframe or combined IADS (S2A) and must never cross the line into his briar patch? Or is it a Sidewinder++ because high end RFLO means I can't shoot him until I literally SEE the whites of his eyes and decisively finishing him at close range means having the numbers of shooters to survive a fight from which nobody can run away?" In terms of numbers, basically Air Dominance is a mission flown 70% of the time. Intimidation Manuevered 20% of the time and fought maybe 5-10% of the time.
As such, there are a LOT of 'tooling about, boring holes in the sky' non-encounter combat intervals and a further period of indecisive engagements in which the enemy turns and runs and you either cannot follow (Missile Traps etc.) or cannot generate the overtake or cutoff to chop his vector and reopen missile envelope once ROE rules for hostility have reached response threshold.
FOO is a correlation of the above with training time, total fleet size, deployment footprint and standup interval, basing mode and availability signature vs. robotic gambitability and basic RANGE. If the enemy has many of the above described tease and trap gambit plays underway, you have to be able to match each one to ensure they do not break through and start slaughtering HVA sensor/EA platforms and the strike platforms. That means not just training for more pilots but also gas in-air and lifetime spares support on the ground. In regards to risk especially, we are approaching an age whereby, simply passing within range of an optics head positions you (with no warning and regardless of RF LO) to be killed in a flash of light. While the ability to sustain supersonic cruise at 50,000 feet must be set against the ability to stay in the fight wherein an enemy is launching SAMs that orbit on a turbine like a minefield before sweeping forward to kill ANYTHING below Mach 1 by the simple process of formating up alongside. If need be through multiple evasion and reengagement cycles.
This is where effective persistence in the combat area means the ability to kill, not just platforms but quite possibly /missiles/ without having to make a 1,000nm RTB. And particularly in offensive fighter warfare the ability to BE THERE where and when the enemy comes, regardless of the danger to you or the interval while the rest of the (cheap, slow, big payload) bomber force catches up. You must literally be able to stand in the door so that you can catch an opponent at this most predictable startpoint association with his base. Even as you must be able to attack an enemy that thinks HE is stalking the onrushing herd, from a roadbase or truck-catapult launch mechanism that has NOTHING to do with a 'SAM Site' because the weapon carries the sensors and it is the pack which moves forward in sanitizing the volume of empty airspace to find a threat, in depth, before attacking as a ravening horde. 'Anything else being rubbish'.
But you also want the ability to DICTATE TERMS on that engagement. This is less about individual platform strengths and weaknesses than it is the predictability-of-repetition by which you simply don't have enough platforms to cover all _ground_ targets and so must come back the next day. Where traditional fighter missioning soaks so much of your total force of multirole capable platforms and _particularly_ where even a 'conventional' enemy is increasingly able to sling salvos of BVR weapons (many kills from 1 risked system) without commiting himself to a standup fight, you must balance the ability to cover all approaches (close escort, TARCAP/Sweep plus BARCAP blocking force and delouse/HVA 'recovery' systems) with the ability to either buy-cheap.
Or succumb to 'multirole fever' (more capability=more cost) in which the ability to swing roles within a mission means that you are not effective at either.
In meeting all these sometimes conflicting demands, there are some unique UCAV advantages and proviso's you can work with to simply your development choices:
1. If you are escorting UCAV cow bombers, you WANT the enemy to come out in his Su-30 and try hunting these threats to his base with IRST. Because by the time he pays for his 50 million dollar fighter in 15-20 million dollar robots he will have shown you his tail long enough to blow it off with an F-22 from almost any point along the penetration corridor. This being one of the advantages of LO + Subsonic entrance in a small presented frontal area (no canopy, supersonic inlets or tails) that a threat must waste precious time and cannot count on optical (IRST heat) to get close to a threat which itself doesn't gain as much 'coprotection' from clustering as it does TIME from the interval between search-reach-kill encounters on it's widely dispersed fellows. Furthermore, there is only limited need to penetrate /beyond/ (over and thru) the target area which means less hassle escorting manned DEAD/EA assets. Again because the Raptor or a similar Fighter UCAV _wants_ the fight to happen. So long as we have more fighters aloft than they do, total.
OTOH, if the attack force is manned and remains sub-cruise and/or conventionally signatured in it's vulnerabilities, then the more Raptors you cut from the buy, the more vulnerable to sling-and-away BVR spear chucking your team becomes to a properly handled DCA intercept force (one which say lofts from X and recovers to Y without ever slowing below Mach 1 in a sustained Super Sprint). This can be particularly critical when the enemy has the brains to sort out specific enablers like the standoff targeting/suppression platforms whose absence from the battle can open up the whole field to S2A or even less capable defensive intercept as detection ranges open up and hardkill worry (ARM) goes away.
2. Most A2A kills are frighteningly easy. You see, you point and you click. There being actually _very_ litle aggressive maneuvering. And relatively low requirements for the defensive side in sorting the scope. The reason is that large scale maneuvering eats your gas, flashes your planform to all kinds of sensors and wastes carefully builtup energy reserves that may take minutes to regain, throwing you out of position with the rest of your team-Chainsaw, Post Hole or Grinder based tactical game. If you fly a comparitively careful vectored approach, rolling out at the last second into HOE firing position, you should rarely need to use more than 3-4G on the airframe. Nominally, this argues /against/ the UCAV at least from our side of the equation. But it doesn't pay heed to the need to have presence over the battlefield to force the engagemet within a strictly cost limitered force structure (many lo, very few hi) on riskable assets. What it does condemn from the human-in-loop 'cunning beats good' angle is the notion that flying skill is a factor in warfare where WVR Is a mistake and HOBS weapons remove even most of the 'point' part of clicking.
3. Coordination at the external fight level is also overrated as a function of human communication and perception. Because while a a good datalink can present info on a 'global' level of S/A. And a good pilot can see a maneuvering (planview presented) target at over 20 miles. Nose on he is lucky if he can tally at 5-7. And if the target is small or spatially displaced from an associate signature (or he is busy with an existing threat and doesn't have time to scan for the ouside shooter or or or) this distance can go down to 'raindrop on canopy' 2nm or less. Such being typical for the F-16 and MiG-21 for instance.
Now throw in threat-LO in 10 years and threat ability to track supersonic targets at a minimum 30km with PIRATE and OSF and things get tricky.
In these conitions, particularly for the Raptor whose NCTR and groundtrack rapidity within the combat area leads to a tendency to impale, it becomes CRITICAL to redevelop a 'shooter eyeball' system whereby, even vs. a stealthed threat, you can literally run a skirmish line of hunting-dog drones out 20-50nm ahead of your principal leashholder and let THEM 'trip over' the threat. With a system like TCS which as roughly ten times the optical acuity of the human eye.
Once you push off the threat compression (imagine, LO vs. LO in a Supercruise+Supercruise closure environment!), you can have robo doberman X 'ping' the threat with a limited (Flight Lead only) count of airborne intercept radars in a highpower spot mode sure to gain range-rate tracking. A radar which INTENTIONALLY causes the threat RWR to go off the scales in terms of "Danger Will Robinson!" pilot indication.
Even as the ALR-94 on the F/A-22 can listen to and analyze the targets response. And you have 1-eye-2-ears on target to confirm that the optical silouhette matches the a thumbprinted threat aperture. And everybody is free to shoot.
4. Which is where cost comes in. Because if I can buy 3 UCAV for the price of one Su-30, I can kill a section pair of Super Flankers with 6 UCAVs and _24_ missile shots. Even before decisive agility advantages come into play. And never doubt, that said UCAV is a pirannha on a wounded capiberra at short range. Having not only a decisive energy advantage (imagine at 2.5:1 T/Wr at combat weight) but the ability to engage in so-called 'Superman' (Post Stall) maneuvers from speeds in the 400-500 knot instead of 170-250 knot range which is all that a human can stand. NOW, by dango, that 60dps nose hose becomes useful. Because I can have the robot begin it's 'excursion' from the normal envelope while it is effectively performing an accelerative stall. Solve for the weathercock problem on the HOBS ISRM it is carrying. And _recover_ to normal flight. Before it is effectively down to zero knots and thus '15 seconds away from being a player again'. Which is effectively what every manned platform is reduced to by it's pilot's onset limits (15-17G at 30-50G/sec).
AHAH!
Now you are looking at a system of sstems whereby Decisive Engagement Decisioning comes down to taking a straight up (40nm pole) shot from that Raptor as the robots sweep on by the threat without it ever knowing it's been tagged.
Using left-right/up-down pinch and heart attack method to turn the threat vector (away from the strike package) into an MRM shot from the UCAV teams as A-bandit tries to stave off a flanking rollup by B-element UCAVs which promptly turn turn away and fade from the HOE/signature threshold tracking conditions. Even as C-element robots turn in behind and kill A from as much as 20 miles detached support separation from B to speed the process of a tailpipe kill.).
Or you can force the threat to accept a _robotically visual_ combat (no radar, sub-20nm confirmed visual silouhette ID) in which you literally swarm it's aspects and kill it with as many shots as it takes.
5. THE KEY to understanding all of the above as 'human level sophisticated interpolative reasoning is eyes on target and...football.
www.flag-football.jp...
www.flag-football.jp...
Because this is how an F-whatever (or E-whatever) combat controller will in fact drive his hunting dogs into play. GIving them preset formation commands via simple diagrammatic outlines of how the two formations (enemy and friend) will meet.
And once they /get there/, they are still running a simple 'pattern' recognitive system of shot optimization based on the following rule set:
i. If (Target) A reaches a fixed (70%) SSPK before Target B. Maneuver to dominant positioining for the shot.
ii. If (IFDL) A is /already/ target list shared by 2 or more UCAVs and there are more targets in the list, shift to B and recheck.
iii. If (Threat) X exceeds _his_ SSPK before you reach yours on A (or BCD etc.) then let X be the target you maneuver against.
iv. If the sum of your maneuver against X does not redue SSPK below 50% in the next 3-10 seconds before his likely Fox call, ask for help.
v. Obey all prioritization commands from above regarding high value targets (WMD equipped etc.) and the protection of friendlies. As well as hammered authorization for engagement in general.
UCAVs are nothing but autonomous mission computers that self-integrate data from multiple sensor sources into plans of action. BUT there is no reason for them to be anything but autopilots until you tell them otherwise (off the leash you go). And to again borrow from the Red Baron, "Let them fly about as they please..." does not mean that they cannot be /directed/ to a target area of interest, either by a human remote CC or on their own DTM set of waypoints. In which they can kill as they like, outside of which they are completely 'moated' (physical interlock prevented) from using their weapons systems.
It's once they _get to_ combat that all the advantages of agility, price, and signature/sacrificiality come into play for a UCAV. And we all know computers run vector math /vastly/ better than humans do, as proven by their total dominance over of the flight control system, the radar signal and dataprocessors and the EW suite.
i.e. they can SEE the above football play diagrams at any point in their progression and run time-lapse predictive routines on the top 10 most likely outcomes (point and clike through the shortest possible vector path at the easiest target) INSTANTLY. Something that even Ace/Sniper grade pilots cannot match under the stress of multiple G forces and multiple opponents.
Yet all the tactical logic ability to 'think a better fight' don't mean nothin' unless you can see and integrate new data, autonomously. Which is why,
THIS-
Small IR imager cameras
www.northropgrumman.com...
Dotted about the airframe (see flank and top windows, ignore the big one on the bottom)
www.deagel.com...
Leading to an 'SAIRST' or _Situational Awarenes_ Infrared Search and Track via 'DAS' or Distributed Aperture Sensors
www.jsf.mil...
Is what really spells the doom of manned fighters.
Because now we have 360` 'bugeye' tracking of targets, inbound missiles and friends. At 10-12nm distances which still exceed the best human vision 90% of the time. And which will never be 'locked in place' as the pilot strains to hold a 9G maneuver and sightline on his target. Such that he literally cannot twist his neck to look anywhere else. Perhaps even more importantly, the absence of a pilot and a cockpit means that you can FINALLY begin to use DIRCM. Which is nothing more or less than laser countermeasures to attack the most common (heat) 'dogfight' weapons in flight. You do that with today's platforms and the first target somebody is going to point at is going to be the 10 foot bubble of plexiglass around the pathetic meatbag since his blinding will effectively kill the mission, no matter what happens next to the airframe. You do that against a drone and it has 5-10 other (6X6 inch) cameras to look thru AND can get 'new eyeballs back at base' when it returns home. Indeed, with JPALS it can land completely blind. Literally.
6. Leading From Behind.
Aside from 'mad dog' scenarios in which mistaken ID is made (something I think is /vastly/ unlikely since the drone can afford to formate alongside the enemy if need be for a 'closer look' and if the threat even sees him there, his response will most likely be too late to save him from the 10 other jets which are just /waiting/ for a sign of hostility); the big question for most people is 'how do you flight it over datalink without becoming vulnerable to jamming/spoofing/hijack of signal?
The answer is, again, multifold:
A. You don't. No human on earth, I don't care how speedy his reflexes or skilled his X-Box larnin' is, can match the drone's reflexes OR the comms lag delay in sending video+control movements back and forth. Nor is it necessary because _just like all manned platforms_ the jet is fully capable of flying A-to-B and does so better than the human in terms of level flight and time-optimized turns etc. The only thing you need to do is be able to set where 'B' is. And that can be done with a digital terrain map and inertial/GPS coordinate update. Via digital datalink.
B. Modern Day voice radio (secure, scrambled, hopping or spread spectrum) is an order of magnitude more vulnerable to jamming than any digital signal, simply because the length of (in seconds of direct transmit time or synching + burst compression lag) vocalization vs. the detail data presentation sent as 'bits and bytes' is HUGE. We are talking the difference between several thousand bytes of jammable signal vs. maybe a couple hundred spread over 10 channels before the total-burst is over.
C. Voice Comms, as a function of 'human superior' directive and informative radio discipline in the 3-1 system of flight corporate awareness is equally /terribly/ vulnerable to data obsolescence, even as it is spoken: "Bluejay 2, Threat at your 4 lagging, continue left turn, Bluejay 1 your high right, saddling.". Nominally sounds pretty tight for
WHO DO WHAT WHEN WHY FROM WHOM critical information.
But the fact remains, that the entire speech took about 5 seconds to get off, with maybe another 1-2 seconds to clear through the secure mode radio net (the only way to beat jamming on vocomms) and another 1/2 second at least for Bluejay 2 to 'get' and respond to.
Compare this to a digital presentation which showed Bluejay 2 a second-to-second /streaming/ graphical presentation of the fight on a SAD (Situational Awareness Display). And then further imagine pulling the cost, heads-down lag/vertigo risks and datastream (hundreds vs. thousands of bytes) which is relative to having a human glance at an MFD instead of staying heads up and outside the cockpit.
Of course the REAL problem here remains the certain fact that, with a 60-90` HOBS missile, Bluejay 2 is gonna eat steel buckshot _TWENTY_ SECONDS AGO. Because the weapon can come off the rail and, even if it doesn't see the target immediately (LOBL), turn on it's last-known-vector input (from the parent weapons system prelaunch input) until it does (LOAL). Indeed, the threat may well launch attacks at -both- BlueJay1 /and/ 2. Without having it's nose pointed at either.
Under such conditions, the time problem becomes so tight that even with a datalink, only a robot's reflexes and G ability may be able to save it from destruction.
And the Air Forces of the world KNOW THIS.
D. Okay, so 'shortrange' (within 20-50nm using Intra Flight Data Links or IFDL) comms are digital to avoid jamming and increase discreteness, even on manned platforms today. What about long range stuff? Here the problem is directionality, power and bandwidth as well as encryption. Basically, your best signal lamp is going to be a fighter's radar. Where you are already looking at upwards of a Megawatt in effective power and systems like the APG-77 have TWICE the total transmitting spectrum as previous radars. Keeping in mind that the distance to which the radar can be heard is 1/4th power that which it will generate a return (and the F/A-22 pilots have been quoted as seeing targets at 320nm). And that the UCAVs can transmit straight UP to a satellite, contributing their own (GPS or Star Tracker or Terrain Database registered) position to a netcentric 'theater wide' command and control architecture without giving away their position to threats or while 'invisible' (VLO) to the Raptor, it is entirely possible to sweep your very tight AESA lobe across where they /should be/ and have them hear your data traffic with the same RWR that they sort threats on.
E. Keeping It Just Between Us.
Now /theoretically/ high end 'hunting' ELS/ESM systems like Tamara and some forms of PCLS can still hear the chitter and squelch as a disruption in the local either. It is a /very/ tiny (sidelobe and radiated power controlled) source that is all the more difficult to hear because it is linear-directional and many thousands of feet above their sightline on the horizon (anything flying being itself subject to attack). But it can be done. Which is where some people start to worry about having these 'mindless killers' getting turned and coming back to eat the hand that unleashed them.
And they shouldn't.
Because there is another fourstep process to beat.
i. My Arc Lamp, Your Penlight.
ERPwise, the Raptor and certainly an E-10 is going to win most jammer battles, simply because the signal is again, both directional; and 1 way. So too is the jammer but it is trying to defeat a guarded antenna complex (buried stripline dipoles in the skin) on the UCAV which only listen for signals from certain elevation angles and directions. This means the signal coming is likely to be fairly clean, especially if the UCAV is not being directly strobed itself. Because it is RFLO'd 'invisible'.
ii. Needle In Haystack.
SDSKJDFSISFJKHJFHUDSRUIRYSDKLSJDJSLEOWIWIOIAADSFWRDSFDGDGDGD
ASFSDOIFUIFISFUOIFOIOISFOISIOFUOISUFISOFUOISSSDFJKFDJFUIEURFFFFSS
SOFIOSFKJKJKDFOPPOOIXCV
>>
In another thread earlier I posted a website that I dont believe to be extremely reliable but interesting none the less.
www.strategypage.com...
this page says that should UCAV's truly become profisent at A2A combat
>>
First, off, given your current, relatively neutral, position on the international front, I doubt seriously if Canada has much need for a true 'fighter' in more than the odd lost-zombie, drug interdiction or airliner hijacking.
To adequately provide such cover across the broad expanse of your Frontiers is itself probably impossible with the 60 or so F/A-18s you have but selective (trans-oceanic routes) coverage is more than a doable mission 'forever' with the Hornet. Or at least as long as the center barrels hold out.
I doubt seriously if the X-45 is good for fighter missioning as anything more than a weapons-cabinet approach to either multiplying a limited fighter presence or preenergizing the individual weapons poles via forward positioning.
i.e. The 'missileer' type profile for which the F404 T/Wr of only around .2:1 allows for. Whereas a penetrating approach would need both a fast onset to 'pin' the baselanes and the ability to maneuver rapidly against several targets (or threat shots, especially S2A) which is quite simply beyond the X-45's propulsion path (limited inlet mass flow) -or- G capabilities. J-UCAS is rated to 5.5G (which is about 7-8dps vs. the Hornets 13-16 sustained and 30-40 instantaneous) and cannot sustain this for control effectors as as much as airframe stress reasons.
Obviously, the defensive mission is less stressful in terms of overlapping hostile IADS problems on sensor:shooter aspects and evasive energy reserves but quite frankly, most commuter level/business jets and nearly all airliners should be able to flat out-run the X-45, denying the option to 'come up along side and fire guns across the nose'. If there is no flexibility in the external platforms ability to 'determine intent', even a 15-25 million dollar UCAV starts to pale (as a pure BVR shooter) in comparison to say secure cabin cameras and an encrypted 'range safe' protocol. Both on acceptability-to-public (Terminator psychology) and sheer gross-economics, the UCAV, /as J-UCAS/ profiled, is not a player in the DCA game either.
For these reasons the LINK poster's suggestion that the X-45 is more agile than the F/A-18 and certainly that it is capable of a 'fighter mission' is grossly overstated.
>>
...that Canada is considering buying them. I think its an interesting option considering the facts that you stated in this post. I would be interested in hearing further your thoughts on what YOU think personally Can and Aus or the countries that I think have supported the US within reason. I would love to have the F-22 flying out of CFB Cold Lake but i doubt that would happen due to cost and the US keepin their tech.
>>
First off, I would prefer Canada over Saudi or Israel or Japan which are the only likely nations to have either the special priveleges or the fiscal power to afford such a status symbol weapons system. However, you are correct that he most likely presence of Raptors is either in Maple Flag conditions (wherein we could gain valuable experience against ARH/BVR 'with IRST, 2-way tether and Ramjet legs' bonus dangers experience against the Luftwaffe and RAF Typhoons.).
Now, if you want a fighter you need three things:
Decisive Engagement Decisioning.
Dominant Shot Counts.
Freedom Of Operations.
DED basically comes down to speed and signature control to get to a position whereby you can score with missiles BEFORE an opfor weapon/platform combination can achieve similar Single Shot Kill Probabilities on you. If you take an F-104 high-fast profile (Mach 2 @ 70K for 500nm) you WILL basically be able to shoot-first anything you can see before it can do the same to you. At least with rocket propulsion AAMs. If you give your missile a sophisticated datalink so that it can take midcourse updates from a second flight 40-60 miles behind you while you turn and extend away at launch, even 'seeing' is optional. If you put ram propulsion on the missile and let it fly out to a point in space where an IRST or (ground) range tracking camera. Or long wave 'stealth defeating' radar says there is a target (and the two way datalink confirms all this) in theory the balance can switch the other way again. If the enemy says "Okay, I've got 40 tier-1 capable fighters in my arsenal and he's got 400, I can either die valiantly fighting for ONE target. Be bombed where my air force sits. Go into (dispersal) hiding in the hopes he doesn't invade. Or pick ONE target against which I will expend my assets in the hopes of distrupting his game plan and embarrassing him politically", theoretically he can still score major victory with as little as a MiG-21 one way mission against an AWACS or Tanker that has wandered too far forward. Decisive Engagement then meaning /decisive refusal/ (or 'COE' Contempt Of Engagement) to duel for no reason.
OTOH, DSC is basically a balance between the ability to loiter in a given area /before/ the threat becomes visible. And the ability to see and sort and kill him within an 'optimum envelope' combination of own performance and weapon once he arrives. This is the first of many cost trades in which you have to balance things like wingloading and thrust trust reserves against numbers of jets purchased and their ability to act as cooperative hunting packs in reducing things like sensorizatin costs and the physical size and total count of shots carried. As regards weapons, it may well come down to a choice- "Is it a Phenix level capability because I can't beat his airframe or combined IADS (S2A) and must never cross the line into his briar patch? Or is it a Sidewinder++ because high end RFLO means I can't shoot him until I literally SEE the whites of his eyes and decisively finishing him at close range means having the numbers of shooters to survive a fight from which nobody can run away?" In terms of numbers, basically Air Dominance is a mission flown 70% of the time. Intimidation Manuevered 20% of the time and fought maybe 5-10% of the time.
As such, there are a LOT of 'tooling about, boring holes in the sky' non-encounter combat intervals and a further period of indecisive engagements in which the enemy turns and runs and you either cannot follow (Missile Traps etc.) or cannot generate the overtake or cutoff to chop his vector and reopen missile envelope once ROE rules for hostility have reached response threshold.
FOO is a correlation of the above with training time, total fleet size, deployment footprint and standup interval, basing mode and availability signature vs. robotic gambitability and basic RANGE. If the enemy has many of the above described tease and trap gambit plays underway, you have to be able to match each one to ensure they do not break through and start slaughtering HVA sensor/EA platforms and the strike platforms. That means not just training for more pilots but also gas in-air and lifetime spares support on the ground. In regards to risk especially, we are approaching an age whereby, simply passing within range of an optics head positions you (with no warning and regardless of RF LO) to be killed in a flash of light. While the ability to sustain supersonic cruise at 50,000 feet must be set against the ability to stay in the fight wherein an enemy is launching SAMs that orbit on a turbine like a minefield before sweeping forward to kill ANYTHING below Mach 1 by the simple process of formating up alongside. If need be through multiple evasion and reengagement cycles.
This is where effective persistence in the combat area means the ability to kill, not just platforms but quite possibly /missiles/ without having to make a 1,000nm RTB. And particularly in offensive fighter warfare the ability to BE THERE where and when the enemy comes, regardless of the danger to you or the interval while the rest of the (cheap, slow, big payload) bomber force catches up. You must literally be able to stand in the door so that you can catch an opponent at this most predictable startpoint association with his base. Even as you must be able to attack an enemy that thinks HE is stalking the onrushing herd, from a roadbase or truck-catapult launch mechanism that has NOTHING to do with a 'SAM Site' because the weapon carries the sensors and it is the pack which moves forward in sanitizing the volume of empty airspace to find a threat, in depth, before attacking as a ravening horde. 'Anything else being rubbish'.
But you also want the ability to DICTATE TERMS on that engagement. This is less about individual platform strengths and weaknesses than it is the predictability-of-repetition by which you simply don't have enough platforms to cover all _ground_ targets and so must come back the next day. Where traditional fighter missioning soaks so much of your total force of multirole capable platforms and _particularly_ where even a 'conventional' enemy is increasingly able to sling salvos of BVR weapons (many kills from 1 risked system) without commiting himself to a standup fight, you must balance the ability to cover all approaches (close escort, TARCAP/Sweep plus BARCAP blocking force and delouse/HVA 'recovery' systems) with the ability to either buy-cheap.
Or succumb to 'multirole fever' (more capability=more cost) in which the ability to swing roles within a mission means that you are not effective at either.
In meeting all these sometimes conflicting demands, there are some unique UCAV advantages and proviso's you can work with to simply your development choices:
1. If you are escorting UCAV cow bombers, you WANT the enemy to come out in his Su-30 and try hunting these threats to his base with IRST. Because by the time he pays for his 50 million dollar fighter in 15-20 million dollar robots he will have shown you his tail long enough to blow it off with an F-22 from almost any point along the penetration corridor. This being one of the advantages of LO + Subsonic entrance in a small presented frontal area (no canopy, supersonic inlets or tails) that a threat must waste precious time and cannot count on optical (IRST heat) to get close to a threat which itself doesn't gain as much 'coprotection' from clustering as it does TIME from the interval between search-reach-kill encounters on it's widely dispersed fellows. Furthermore, there is only limited need to penetrate /beyond/ (over and thru) the target area which means less hassle escorting manned DEAD/EA assets. Again because the Raptor or a similar Fighter UCAV _wants_ the fight to happen. So long as we have more fighters aloft than they do, total.
OTOH, if the attack force is manned and remains sub-cruise and/or conventionally signatured in it's vulnerabilities, then the more Raptors you cut from the buy, the more vulnerable to sling-and-away BVR spear chucking your team becomes to a properly handled DCA intercept force (one which say lofts from X and recovers to Y without ever slowing below Mach 1 in a sustained Super Sprint). This can be particularly critical when the enemy has the brains to sort out specific enablers like the standoff targeting/suppression platforms whose absence from the battle can open up the whole field to S2A or even less capable defensive intercept as detection ranges open up and hardkill worry (ARM) goes away.
2. Most A2A kills are frighteningly easy. You see, you point and you click. There being actually _very_ litle aggressive maneuvering. And relatively low requirements for the defensive side in sorting the scope. The reason is that large scale maneuvering eats your gas, flashes your planform to all kinds of sensors and wastes carefully builtup energy reserves that may take minutes to regain, throwing you out of position with the rest of your team-Chainsaw, Post Hole or Grinder based tactical game. If you fly a comparitively careful vectored approach, rolling out at the last second into HOE firing position, you should rarely need to use more than 3-4G on the airframe. Nominally, this argues /against/ the UCAV at least from our side of the equation. But it doesn't pay heed to the need to have presence over the battlefield to force the engagemet within a strictly cost limitered force structure (many lo, very few hi) on riskable assets. What it does condemn from the human-in-loop 'cunning beats good' angle is the notion that flying skill is a factor in warfare where WVR Is a mistake and HOBS weapons remove even most of the 'point' part of clicking.
3. Coordination at the external fight level is also overrated as a function of human communication and perception. Because while a a good datalink can present info on a 'global' level of S/A. And a good pilot can see a maneuvering (planview presented) target at over 20 miles. Nose on he is lucky if he can tally at 5-7. And if the target is small or spatially displaced from an associate signature (or he is busy with an existing threat and doesn't have time to scan for the ouside shooter or or or) this distance can go down to 'raindrop on canopy' 2nm or less. Such being typical for the F-16 and MiG-21 for instance.
Now throw in threat-LO in 10 years and threat ability to track supersonic targets at a minimum 30km with PIRATE and OSF and things get tricky.
In these conitions, particularly for the Raptor whose NCTR and groundtrack rapidity within the combat area leads to a tendency to impale, it becomes CRITICAL to redevelop a 'shooter eyeball' system whereby, even vs. a stealthed threat, you can literally run a skirmish line of hunting-dog drones out 20-50nm ahead of your principal leashholder and let THEM 'trip over' the threat. With a system like TCS which as roughly ten times the optical acuity of the human eye.
Once you push off the threat compression (imagine, LO vs. LO in a Supercruise+Supercruise closure environment!), you can have robo doberman X 'ping' the threat with a limited (Flight Lead only) count of airborne intercept radars in a highpower spot mode sure to gain range-rate tracking. A radar which INTENTIONALLY causes the threat RWR to go off the scales in terms of "Danger Will Robinson!" pilot indication.
Even as the ALR-94 on the F/A-22 can listen to and analyze the targets response. And you have 1-eye-2-ears on target to confirm that the optical silouhette matches the a thumbprinted threat aperture. And everybody is free to shoot.
4. Which is where cost comes in. Because if I can buy 3 UCAV for the price of one Su-30, I can kill a section pair of Super Flankers with 6 UCAVs and _24_ missile shots. Even before decisive agility advantages come into play. And never doubt, that said UCAV is a pirannha on a wounded capiberra at short range. Having not only a decisive energy advantage (imagine at 2.5:1 T/Wr at combat weight) but the ability to engage in so-called 'Superman' (Post Stall) maneuvers from speeds in the 400-500 knot instead of 170-250 knot range which is all that a human can stand. NOW, by dango, that 60dps nose hose becomes useful. Because I can have the robot begin it's 'excursion' from the normal envelope while it is effectively performing an accelerative stall. Solve for the weathercock problem on the HOBS ISRM it is carrying. And _recover_ to normal flight. Before it is effectively down to zero knots and thus '15 seconds away from being a player again'. Which is effectively what every manned platform is reduced to by it's pilot's onset limits (15-17G at 30-50G/sec).
AHAH!
Now you are looking at a system of sstems whereby Decisive Engagement Decisioning comes down to taking a straight up (40nm pole) shot from that Raptor as the robots sweep on by the threat without it ever knowing it's been tagged.
Using left-right/up-down pinch and heart attack method to turn the threat vector (away from the strike package) into an MRM shot from the UCAV teams as A-bandit tries to stave off a flanking rollup by B-element UCAVs which promptly turn turn away and fade from the HOE/signature threshold tracking conditions. Even as C-element robots turn in behind and kill A from as much as 20 miles detached support separation from B to speed the process of a tailpipe kill.).
Or you can force the threat to accept a _robotically visual_ combat (no radar, sub-20nm confirmed visual silouhette ID) in which you literally swarm it's aspects and kill it with as many shots as it takes.
5. THE KEY to understanding all of the above as 'human level sophisticated interpolative reasoning is eyes on target and...football.
www.flag-football.jp...
www.flag-football.jp...
Because this is how an F-whatever (or E-whatever) combat controller will in fact drive his hunting dogs into play. GIving them preset formation commands via simple diagrammatic outlines of how the two formations (enemy and friend) will meet.
And once they /get there/, they are still running a simple 'pattern' recognitive system of shot optimization based on the following rule set:
i. If (Target) A reaches a fixed (70%) SSPK before Target B. Maneuver to dominant positioining for the shot.
ii. If (IFDL) A is /already/ target list shared by 2 or more UCAVs and there are more targets in the list, shift to B and recheck.
iii. If (Threat) X exceeds _his_ SSPK before you reach yours on A (or BCD etc.) then let X be the target you maneuver against.
iv. If the sum of your maneuver against X does not redue SSPK below 50% in the next 3-10 seconds before his likely Fox call, ask for help.
v. Obey all prioritization commands from above regarding high value targets (WMD equipped etc.) and the protection of friendlies. As well as hammered authorization for engagement in general.
UCAVs are nothing but autonomous mission computers that self-integrate data from multiple sensor sources into plans of action. BUT there is no reason for them to be anything but autopilots until you tell them otherwise (off the leash you go). And to again borrow from the Red Baron, "Let them fly about as they please..." does not mean that they cannot be /directed/ to a target area of interest, either by a human remote CC or on their own DTM set of waypoints. In which they can kill as they like, outside of which they are completely 'moated' (physical interlock prevented) from using their weapons systems.
It's once they _get to_ combat that all the advantages of agility, price, and signature/sacrificiality come into play for a UCAV. And we all know computers run vector math /vastly/ better than humans do, as proven by their total dominance over of the flight control system, the radar signal and dataprocessors and the EW suite.
i.e. they can SEE the above football play diagrams at any point in their progression and run time-lapse predictive routines on the top 10 most likely outcomes (point and clike through the shortest possible vector path at the easiest target) INSTANTLY. Something that even Ace/Sniper grade pilots cannot match under the stress of multiple G forces and multiple opponents.
Yet all the tactical logic ability to 'think a better fight' don't mean nothin' unless you can see and integrate new data, autonomously. Which is why,
THIS-
Small IR imager cameras
www.northropgrumman.com...
Dotted about the airframe (see flank and top windows, ignore the big one on the bottom)
www.deagel.com...
Leading to an 'SAIRST' or _Situational Awarenes_ Infrared Search and Track via 'DAS' or Distributed Aperture Sensors
www.jsf.mil...
Is what really spells the doom of manned fighters.
Because now we have 360` 'bugeye' tracking of targets, inbound missiles and friends. At 10-12nm distances which still exceed the best human vision 90% of the time. And which will never be 'locked in place' as the pilot strains to hold a 9G maneuver and sightline on his target. Such that he literally cannot twist his neck to look anywhere else. Perhaps even more importantly, the absence of a pilot and a cockpit means that you can FINALLY begin to use DIRCM. Which is nothing more or less than laser countermeasures to attack the most common (heat) 'dogfight' weapons in flight. You do that with today's platforms and the first target somebody is going to point at is going to be the 10 foot bubble of plexiglass around the pathetic meatbag since his blinding will effectively kill the mission, no matter what happens next to the airframe. You do that against a drone and it has 5-10 other (6X6 inch) cameras to look thru AND can get 'new eyeballs back at base' when it returns home. Indeed, with JPALS it can land completely blind. Literally.
6. Leading From Behind.
Aside from 'mad dog' scenarios in which mistaken ID is made (something I think is /vastly/ unlikely since the drone can afford to formate alongside the enemy if need be for a 'closer look' and if the threat even sees him there, his response will most likely be too late to save him from the 10 other jets which are just /waiting/ for a sign of hostility); the big question for most people is 'how do you flight it over datalink without becoming vulnerable to jamming/spoofing/hijack of signal?
The answer is, again, multifold:
A. You don't. No human on earth, I don't care how speedy his reflexes or skilled his X-Box larnin' is, can match the drone's reflexes OR the comms lag delay in sending video+control movements back and forth. Nor is it necessary because _just like all manned platforms_ the jet is fully capable of flying A-to-B and does so better than the human in terms of level flight and time-optimized turns etc. The only thing you need to do is be able to set where 'B' is. And that can be done with a digital terrain map and inertial/GPS coordinate update. Via digital datalink.
B. Modern Day voice radio (secure, scrambled, hopping or spread spectrum) is an order of magnitude more vulnerable to jamming than any digital signal, simply because the length of (in seconds of direct transmit time or synching + burst compression lag) vocalization vs. the detail data presentation sent as 'bits and bytes' is HUGE. We are talking the difference between several thousand bytes of jammable signal vs. maybe a couple hundred spread over 10 channels before the total-burst is over.
C. Voice Comms, as a function of 'human superior' directive and informative radio discipline in the 3-1 system of flight corporate awareness is equally /terribly/ vulnerable to data obsolescence, even as it is spoken: "Bluejay 2, Threat at your 4 lagging, continue left turn, Bluejay 1 your high right, saddling.". Nominally sounds pretty tight for
WHO DO WHAT WHEN WHY FROM WHOM critical information.
But the fact remains, that the entire speech took about 5 seconds to get off, with maybe another 1-2 seconds to clear through the secure mode radio net (the only way to beat jamming on vocomms) and another 1/2 second at least for Bluejay 2 to 'get' and respond to.
Compare this to a digital presentation which showed Bluejay 2 a second-to-second /streaming/ graphical presentation of the fight on a SAD (Situational Awareness Display). And then further imagine pulling the cost, heads-down lag/vertigo risks and datastream (hundreds vs. thousands of bytes) which is relative to having a human glance at an MFD instead of staying heads up and outside the cockpit.
Of course the REAL problem here remains the certain fact that, with a 60-90` HOBS missile, Bluejay 2 is gonna eat steel buckshot _TWENTY_ SECONDS AGO. Because the weapon can come off the rail and, even if it doesn't see the target immediately (LOBL), turn on it's last-known-vector input (from the parent weapons system prelaunch input) until it does (LOAL). Indeed, the threat may well launch attacks at -both- BlueJay1 /and/ 2. Without having it's nose pointed at either.
Under such conditions, the time problem becomes so tight that even with a datalink, only a robot's reflexes and G ability may be able to save it from destruction.
And the Air Forces of the world KNOW THIS.
D. Okay, so 'shortrange' (within 20-50nm using Intra Flight Data Links or IFDL) comms are digital to avoid jamming and increase discreteness, even on manned platforms today. What about long range stuff? Here the problem is directionality, power and bandwidth as well as encryption. Basically, your best signal lamp is going to be a fighter's radar. Where you are already looking at upwards of a Megawatt in effective power and systems like the APG-77 have TWICE the total transmitting spectrum as previous radars. Keeping in mind that the distance to which the radar can be heard is 1/4th power that which it will generate a return (and the F/A-22 pilots have been quoted as seeing targets at 320nm). And that the UCAVs can transmit straight UP to a satellite, contributing their own (GPS or Star Tracker or Terrain Database registered) position to a netcentric 'theater wide' command and control architecture without giving away their position to threats or while 'invisible' (VLO) to the Raptor, it is entirely possible to sweep your very tight AESA lobe across where they /should be/ and have them hear your data traffic with the same RWR that they sort threats on.
E. Keeping It Just Between Us.
Now /theoretically/ high end 'hunting' ELS/ESM systems like Tamara and some forms of PCLS can still hear the chitter and squelch as a disruption in the local either. It is a /very/ tiny (sidelobe and radiated power controlled) source that is all the more difficult to hear because it is linear-directional and many thousands of feet above their sightline on the horizon (anything flying being itself subject to attack). But it can be done. Which is where some people start to worry about having these 'mindless killers' getting turned and coming back to eat the hand that unleashed them.
And they shouldn't.
Because there is another fourstep process to beat.
i. My Arc Lamp, Your Penlight.
ERPwise, the Raptor and certainly an E-10 is going to win most jammer battles, simply because the signal is again, both directional; and 1 way. So too is the jammer but it is trying to defeat a guarded antenna complex (buried stripline dipoles in the skin) on the UCAV which only listen for signals from certain elevation angles and directions. This means the signal coming is likely to be fairly clean, especially if the UCAV is not being directly strobed itself. Because it is RFLO'd 'invisible'.
ii. Needle In Haystack.
SDSKJDFSISFJKHJFHUDSRUIRYSDKLSJDJSLEOWIWIOIAADSFWRDSFDGDGDGD
ASFSDOIFUIFISFUOIFOIOISFOISIOFUOISUFISOFUOISSSDFJKFDJFUIEURFFFFSS
SOFIOSFKJKJKDFOPPOOIXCV
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