Why no thrust vector nozzle engines on the F15?

I highly doubt that because 1 Russian pilots are very well trained even scince 91, and a 1985 F-15 would be the early modle F-15C which would be tracked and engaged before it could do any real type of manovering, to avaid be shot down, in your zeal describing the mythical U.S. great trained piloting doctrine over the Russkies, you used a very bad example, putting the first F-15c model up against a MiG-35

[edit on 5-12-2008 by 121200]

And I know for a fact that Russian and Ukranian pilots struggled to get more than a handful of hours in the air a year in the 1990s, and the problem still exists to a large degree now - not enough funding to get them flight time.

This is an old article but it still sheds some light, as to Russia's so-called weakend Airforce"

"The former Air Forces and Air Defence Forces have now been merged into a single service (at a cost of some 93,000 posts), under Colonel General (Aviation) Anatoly Kornukov. Whilst still a large force, it has suffered from a decade of underfunding, which has led to a lack of modern airframes, abysmally low flight training levels and problems with repair and maintenance. It has also failed to adjust to the fragmentation of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union and the effect that this would have on Moscow's old integrated air defence system. In 1998, the deputy Commander-in-Chief of the air force expressed his desire for the annual flying hours per pilot to average around 50 hours. In 1990, the air force accumulated two million annual flying hours, by 1999 this had dropped to 200,000-230,000"
www.aeronautics.ru...

Now given that numbers and a experienced pilot core how many hours do you require per year to maintain the standard of flying required by the Russian integrated air defense system? The flying hours are in fact allocated to keep a certain percentage of pilots ( presumably what they think is required to assist the air defense network against any hostile threat) as proficient as before and given the reality of the modern versions of the Su-27/30 and Mig 31 200 000 hours is more than plenty to keep a core of 500 -1000 pilots trained to general NATO standards of around 120 hours per year.

[edit on 5-12-2008 by 121200]

What evidence do you have that TVC put into old Su-27's won't dramaticaly increace it's cababilities.

[edit on 5-12-2008 by 121200]

Woops! I'm red in the face!

My bad.

Shattered OUT...

The F-15 is already G limited during ACM. If you overstress the airframe, even in a real combat situation, you can lose the airframe. They're getting old, and retrofitting them with TVC would kill more airframes. They'd have to inspect them to find out which could handle it, and which couldn't. Buying new airframes with all the upgrades would cost a ton more money and would take away from other programs.

Sorry, even you'r a marster of historical aviation but I still suspect what you said that PANAVIA Tornado was a replacement of F-111 not only because of that Germman has never equiped F-111, but laso that Tornado was not a same grade/class combat aircraft as F-111, and the layout out of Germmany for MRCA actually developed from F-111 or reproved from F-111.

The main point as Zaphod said above. The other one is that TVC wasn't avialable when F-15 entranced in servece.

reply to post by emile

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Emile, I said 'Grumman' like that in inverted commas because during 1978/79 BAe, via Panavia, was promoting the Tornado to the USAF as their new strike aircraft in partnership with Grumman who would build it in the USA (the only way to get America to buy a foreign military jet). This was being considered hand in hand with a reciprocal RAF buy of the F-15, fitted with the AI 24 Foxhunter radar which would have meant the cancellation of the Tornado F.3 Interceptor variant. None of which, of course, actually came to pass.

Why do you not consider the Tornado 'in the same class' as the F-111? It is exactly the SAME class of aircraft and the Tornado is superior in many areas. Remember the Tornado was only developed after the RAF cancelled its own order for the F-111 in order to replace the Canberra and it ws joked at the time that the Tornado's development acronym of MRCA stood for Must Refurbish Canberra Again.

Germany did not develop the layout of the Tornado from the F-111, in fact Germany did not develop the layout at all because the very attractive MBB design was not used.

In actual fact the layout of the F-111 was developed by General Dynamics using a lot of data supplied to NASA by BAC (Vickers at the time) from VG research by Barnes Wallis, which was integrated with domestic US research and trials.

The Tornado is a development of the unbuilt BAC P.45, via the AFVG and UKVG projects, which I covered in a lengthy thread some time ago which you replied to, so how come you are still getting it arse about face?



[edit on 6-12-2008 by waynos]

The only way to get more F22s is to ditch the old F15 fleet for cost savings and divert the funds to maintain the old fleet to buy the Raptors. After all the politicians would be in a quagmire where the U.S. has only about 200 fighters and nothing else. So they have the Air Force buy more Raptors. Or otherwise keep improving the F15 to stay on parity with more modern fighters of the world.

The problem is that you would be unable to truly replace the tactical strike role played by the F-15E unless you ramped up the F-35 production for starters.

Also, there still is a role for the Eagle. Current scenarios see the AESA equiped F-15's serving as backstops for the Raptors esp. in the stealthy cruise missile defence role. In addition, recent operational testing has shown that a Raptor can serve as a force multiply for other airframes acting in a mini AWACS role.

So cutting the F-15 fleet may not buy you enough Raptors to make up the difference

reply to post by FredT

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All you did was explained the potential role of the F15s for the near future and no explanation how much it would save to cut the old F15s to buy new Raptors. Not to mention can't the Raptors also be used for tactical bombings as well?

How much would the Air Force saved if they stop maintaining and mothball the whole F15 fleet?

According to the 2009 fiscal budget - $35.9billion was requested in total for Operations and Maintenance of the entire USAF fleet, including the F-15.

A one time expenditure of $497million was excluded from the 2009 fiscal budget.

thomas.loc.gov...

I can't find anything specifically on the USAF F-15 fleet, but the Saudi F-15 fleet has had $2.6billion spent on maintenance in the ten years between 1993 and 2003.

www.washingtoninstitute.org...

So, in the grand scheme of things, you wouldn't save a hell of a lot by mothballing the F-15.

Thrust Vectoring does nothing for air superiority, and actually is a detriment in that role. It is more weight, more complexity, just something else to break.

Besides, the F-15s will manuver best at higher speeds, not low speeds.

Now, AESA and AIM-120D, now that adds a whole another magnitude of ability for air superiority.

reply to post by nh_ee

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Don't tell the Israeli pilots that the F-15 isn't a dogfighter.

There are major political ramifications that go along with a question such as this. I always get a chuckle out of the guys/gals that make a ruckus over the Indian Air Force results from a few years ago that "clearly" show the Migs to be "superior" to the F-16s. That is exactly what the Pentagon was going for. How do you think they get funding for programs such as the F-22 and F-35?