Boeing unveils upgraded F-15 Silent Eagle with fifth-generation features

Originally posted by James R. Hawkwood

Originally posted by firepilotWRONG.

TVC only helps for close in, and there are other toys I would much rather have. TVC adds weight and yet another system to break. An F-22 would survive quite fine with out it.

Are you joking? You just cannot ignore the results off the TVC research program that spun around the creation off the X-31 and TVC'ed F-16 and F-15...

I mean, double digit kills versus 1 death all due to TVC giving you the supremacy in dogfighting...

The F-22 would be turned to ash if it doesnt have TVC.

Guess what? the F-22 was designed with air superiority in mind, not primarily as a close in dogfighter, although it is quite capable in that arena.

If the F-22 finds itself in the phone booth dogfight, something went terribly wrong. Its purpose is to detect, track and then destroy enemy planes without being detected, and while Supercruising.

Its would be utilized at 60,000 ft, flying at M1.7, with AIM-120, and not being detected. Thrust vectoring does NOTHING for that.

Stealth is far more important than TVC, if that was all important, it could just be added onto F-16s and F-15s.

But humor us. If the F-22 did not have it, are you saying it would be more detectable? Are you saying it would be more vulnerable to SAMS and air-air missiles?

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/ecec45c2c1bc.jpg[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/26647e178d94.jpg[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a7f0bf67871c.jpg[/atsimg]

Yes it is based off the Strike Eagle.

TVC only has an advantage at high AoA, usually above 30 degrees. At that sort of angles, the plane would very low energy - which is something that's not really ideal WVR - so yes, it's an advantage but not necessarily appreciable. Here's a nice PDF. HIGH ANGLE OF ATTACK AERODYNAMICS - Aerospace & Ocean Engineering. However, there was a document on Code One Magazine, that claimed TVC on the F-22A lowers trim drag and increases supersonic pitch rates by 50%. Don't have a link though, sorry.

If a customer really wanted TVC and the additional costs, then it would be done. No reason it wouldn't, IMO - these are going to be new build planes and it's been done on old build planes for experiments. I am curious though; with the new digital fly-by-wire system, I wonder how much the flight envelope can be expanded?

[edit on 22/3/2009 by C0bzz]

isn`t 4 x JDAM more than the F-35?

reply to post by Harlequin


Yes. F-35 can carry only two 500lb JDAM. However it can carry 2000lb variants. Other than that the loudouts are very similar.

[edit on 22/3/2009 by C0bzz]

only the A and C can carry the big ones , the B version can`t either

www.globalsecurity.org...

GBU-31 is the big boy and the F-35B can`t carry it

so going on your pictures , the F-15SE does ereything the F-35B can do , at less cost over further range given that lockheed published figures for F-35 (A and C) expect a combat radius of 600NM - this F-15 has a combat radius of 800NM

[edit on 22/3/09 by Harlequin]

F-35B is the STOVL aircraft not designed to compete with the F-15 on any basis... 600 nautical miles for the A & C is the requirement, the same way the Super Hornet's requirement is 390 nautical miles on a LO mission, where on a high mission it can actually goes 683 nautical miles.

Discussing maximum mission radius, Mazanowski presented an air-to-air mission profile in which all the aircraft took off with a weapon load, remained at high altitude and returned after about a minute of combat. All but the F-35 and Su-30MKI were carrying three external fuel tanks.

Under this scenario, the Rafale had a maximum mission radius of 896 n miles, the F/A-18 816 n miles, the F-35 751 n miles, the Eurofighter 747 n miles, the Su-30MKI 728 n miles and the Gripen 502 n miles.

forum.keypublishing.co.uk...

F-15 isn't mentioned, however, if an F/A-18 Super Hornet can fly that far, then I doubt an F-15 with shrunken tanks can do any better.

Warmed over export Strike Eagle cannot do everything F-35 does... doubt at less cost either (From Australian perspective!). Idea it matches F-35 in stealth is absurd; because no figures have been published, Boeing isn't privy to the information, second, newer F-15 doesn't even have inlet blockers... the engine face can be seen, and the aircraft is slab sided.

[edit on 23/3/2009 by C0bzz]

[edit on 23/3/2009 by C0bzz]

AWST had a bit more detail:

1) The modified CFT can be removed and replaced with the regular ones in 2 hours.

2) The modified CFT results in a loss of 180-200 miles of range. They are looking at partions in the modified CFT to make up some fo that

3) The canted tails which were done to reduce RCS had the unintended effect of increasing lift at the rear of the airframe. this allowed the reduction of ballast at the front end.

4) Testing will begin in 2010 without the canted verticle stabalizers

5) The RAM coating on the engine have NOT been approved for export yet.

6) Nothing is being done to the IR signature of the craft and it will lack the engine blockers that the F-18E/F uses for RCS reductiom

7) The new F-15 can be made as stealthy int he frontal aspect as an F-35 with the RAM.

8) Numbers are being kicked around in terms of RCS from -10dbsm to -20. The F-22 has -40 for comparison.

from alot of `online` discussions , once you get out of the frontal aspect of the F-35 , then its game on as it can be seen at killable distances.

Originally posted by Harlequin
from alot of `online` discussions , once you get out of the frontal aspect of the F-35 , then its game on as it can be seen at killable distances.

Thats the trick though. If its heading inbound in that scenario then its going to still get in the first licks as it dials back the range at which it can be detected. Plus if its escorted by a flight of F-22A's providing CAP and perhaps SEAD it may be a moot point.

Coming in a bit late on the conversation:

This will actually be a very fierce contender to the F-35 in the foreign market.

A few reasons - first, it's a familiar airframe. Never underestimate the importance of appearance.

Second - it's got a vastly superior payload and mission profile. The F-35 has a few more technical widgets similar to the various capabilities of the F-22 - but the rest of their forces are not capable of taking much/any advantage of the added capability.

Third - It's a fighter. The F-15 airframe is that of an air superiority fighter. Plain and simple. It's internationally recognized as death incarnate. Australia has been dragging their feet about purchasing the F-35 because it is not really a fighter. In my opinion - it should be named the "penguin" - a similar-looking flightless bird. I'm not the only one with that opinion.

Fourth - two engines.

I do not intend to hop into any flying machine that has only one propulsion unit. While it may increase operational costs and total moving parts - when you're marketing to nations that do not have the pristine runways we have - who have sand, salt, and all kinds of other nasties in their air - you want two engines, as it's only a matter of time before one engine fails and you become a five-ton glider with the wing-area of a couple parachutes.

That, and if abnormally lofty FOD (AKA: Anti Aircraft Artillery) shreds one engine, you have another to get you home.

Fifth - made of 'real' materials. While LO technology is included - the airframe is still capable of performing its role without them, and built around materials that other countries could actually produce or locate if they needed to. Buying a plane you have no hope of maintaining, yourself, is not the best of ideas (unless you have zero in-house capability).

In the end - you have something that other countries will be looking for: a fast, maneuverable, maintainable, and survivable missile/bomb truck. It can put bombs and missiles where they need to go, and can do just as well as (probably better than) the F-35. It's a step or two up from their current arsenal, and will blend well with their existing tactics and capabilities.

And there are a lot of countries that would prefer to have a multi-role aircraft that is more balanced for air-to-air engagements. This design delivers that better than the Super Bug or Penguin will ever be able to.

An excellent move by Boeing, in my opinion.

That said - the F-15E will see a long life in the U.S. arsenal. The C-model will be phased out - but the E will live on. There's no reason to get rid of it - and the fact is that the F-22 is not an adequate replacement for the F-15E. It lacks the air-to-ground capacity that the F-15E has. The F-22 has a shallow weapons bay designed for Air-to-Air ordnance. It was never designed to be a strike fighter - it could assume a strike role if necessary - but it was never supposed to take up the role of the F/B-111, which the F-15E slid into after the retirement of that aircraft.

I wouldn't expect to see the F-15E (or some evolution, thereof) exit the stage until after the Interim Bomber (or New Generation Strike-whatever .... whatever they are calling that thing now, it's got a new name every time I look it up) is established in the Air Force squadrons. So it will be around until about 2045 or so (Interim Bomber to enter service around 2038; give about seven years to get a substantial number of them into service).

The F-35 will be obsolete in two decades (much like the B-2). To keep the LO-centric airframes competitive, you have to continually update them. They are very costly as they are part of an entire shift in combat tactics and philosophy. If you can't afford the shift and continual upgrade - all you're doing is buying the equivalent of a faddish airframe.

Consider that in with the purchase options of the F-15SE versus the F-35.

Originally posted by James R. Hawkwood

Originally posted by Zaphod58The F-15 S/MTD/ACTIVE had two F100-PW-229 engines with asymmetric thrust vectoring. Initially they had rectangular exhaust nozzles that were only capable of moving along the pitch axis. Under the ACTIVE program it got new engines capable of pitch and yaw vectoring up to 20 degrees. It could be done rather easily without a huge alteration of the aircraft.

Then why does the new f-15 not have TVC then? It makes no sense due to TVC being vital for arial dogfighting.

The fact is that without TVC, the export F-15 or any other "new" figther entering service will not survive on the modern battlefield.
Yes i know the stories about off-bore sight/helm cueing missiles and/or BVR but still the classical dogfighting will happen on current and future battlefields and any advantage to win will be utilised including using TVC in dogfighting.

That's not true. With helmet sights and high off boresite missiles, TVC is only gonna be marginally useful in a dogfight. 5th Gen avionics combined with AIM-9X/AIM-120D/etc..., and lower RCS are far more important features.

reply to post by BlueRaja


Thrust vectoring is useful for two things - at low air-speeds, and high angles of attack.

Maneuvering at low air speeds is nice.... but most useful for airshows and impressing people who don't understand that a "dogfight" (merger) takes place at distances of several miles.

Furthermore, many people seem to think that a plane can somehow "scoot around" a missile. It doesn't work that way. A missile is a guided ballistic claymore mine. It zings off at supersonic speeds on an interception course with the aircraft. It does not "chase" the target - it merely makes adjustments so it will run into it. However, actually hitting something the size of a semi-truck in three dimensional space over several miles is rather difficult. To improve the odds of a kill, the warhead of a missile is designed to fragment, generating shrapnel that will shred the control/lifting surfaces, foul the engine, and do to planes what bird-shot does to birds.

Thrust-vectoring does nothing to give any appreciable advantage against any missile. It is useful for getting your nose pointed in the right direction - but modern combat avionics allow a missile lock to be obtained from wingmen and other networked sensor devices - making the "all knowing radar" in many games not too far off from what modern combat systems can achieve. It's nice to have - but I'd rather have an LO exhaust manifold as opposed to a TVC manifold. In real combat - you or the target is dead before you close to ranges where TVC is effective.

As for angles of attack - research into airframe and surface design has lead to a number of ways to improve the performance of control and lifting surfaces at high angles of attack. One project (though one conducted in Russia) involved the concept of a 'moving' upper surface - much like a treadmill. Tests showed that surfaces could remain departure-resistant (resist flow separation) well into 105 degrees AoA. Other (perhaps more practical) methods utilize porous materials and manipulating the boundary layer to delay flow separation.

Ultimately - improving the performance of lifting and control surfaces through high angles of attack by means of delaying flow separation (a departure/stall) and other airframe design considerations is vastly superior in overall benefit than anything that can be provided by thrust vectoring. (lift can be increased on a given surface and maintained through higher angles of attack - which is far more beneficial to a performance (military) aircraft than thrust-vectoring).

So, it's not anything that's really necessary on a combat aircraft. It would actually just add to complexity, cost, and other things that countries do not want. Even the lightest TVC implementations are quite heavy for an aircraft; ALL of them expensive; and they are just more things to break or be improperly maintained/calibrated (would be pretty interesting if the ground crew accidentally reversed the controls, somehow.... - perhaps impractical, but certainly the type of concern that would be raised by government seats).

It's impressive at air-shows, when you want aircraft to be moving slow enough to be seen - but, otherwise, that's about the extent of its usefulness. The military application of TVC is rather null in today's combat (and in the foreseeable future) scenarios.

Originally posted by Aim64C
reply to post by BlueRaja

 

Thrust vectoring is useful for two things - at low air-speeds, and high angles of attack.

Correction - 3 things.

It can be used to trim the aircraft at supersonic speeds, allowing the elevators to regain their full pitch authority.

Or it can be used as a direct pitch provider.


It makes quite a difference on the F-22.




Opening out to a wider discussion.

This thing will never be the equal of an F-35 in strike missions. But it might be similar in A2A.

It has pluses and minuses (rel. F-35) and does fill its own market niche.


However, Boeing themselves have stated:

To be fair, Boeing acknowledges the F-15SE’s stealth improvements do not help against ground-based radar systems, which are critical for waging offensive strikes against opponents armed with surface to air missile systems.

www.flightglobal.com...

Originally posted by CaptainCaveMan
Yeah they should make more F-15's.
They are excellent machines.
Raptor, since looking at the Typhoon

Really, they should make some better F-15's.
Typhoon kicks everything's butt.
It lacks on stealth but how you gonna chase it doing loop the loops

Typoon is rubbish.15 YEARS OUT OUT OF DATE.

15 years.it is a museam piece.


It does not even have vectored thrust or VTOL capability or stealth.

it is not even needed as being outmoded.

it is a dead duck.

American planes are ALWAYS the BEST.

REMEMBER.

[edit on 4-5-2009 by esecallum]

Originally posted by Darkpr0
Check out the head-on picture from the link in the article, you could almost call it an F-18

.

Originally posted by James R. Hawkwood
1: Are the specs upgraded? (longer range, higher speed etc...)

Improving the fourth generation fighter’s profile on air-to-air radar is Boeing’s key goal for the F-15SE

Sounds like this biggest difference will be in the aerodynamics, caused by the internally-carried weaponry cleaning off the wings. Though I doubt it's a huge difference since missiles and whatnot are designed to be reasonably aerodynamic anyway and the mass is still there. As well, could be marginally better roll rates as missile mass is located closer to the longitudinal axis of the plane. Hard to say just how much, though.

2: Does it have TVC? (if yes: 2D or 3D?)

No. That'd be a huge modification on the F-15's entire ass structure for 2D, and I don't think Americans have any mass-production designs for any 3D TVC at this time. I'm still doubtful about asynchronous 2D on future American aircraft as well.

3: How likely is it gonna be bought by other nations?

IMO I suspect that it faces slim chances. It has stiff competition from the F-35, and it seems that the F-15SE's only real advantage is the long list of people waiting for their F-35's to come off the line. Countries who don't feel like waiting for the F-35 might jump ship for the F-15SE, but I don't see very many doing that. If it really comes down to someone wanting to dump the F-35 for other alternatives they would probably look to Europe or even Russia.

for the rest: Potential SU-27/30 killer/rapist.

That may be selling newer Flankers short. If anything, Su-30 (MK plus variants) and Su-35BM are probably going to be competing for the same market space as the F-15SE. Except that Su-30's are already available, and the Su-35BM will still probably come out first for production. Could put some pressure on Boeing if they can't produce a significantly superior product.

Another factor that will reflect on the F-15SE is the rise of 5th generation jets. When the F-15SE finally gets introduced into services around the world (assuming purchase and use) it will be doing so basically in the shadow of 5th generation jets such as the F-35 and the F-22. As well it will face stiff competition as PAK-FA, FGFA, ATD-X, and KFX enter into their own respective services. With the flow of 5th generation technology within those countries (and quite possibly others if the American taboo of selling 5th generation technology doesn't stick elsewhere) the F-15SE will likely become outclassed. And, by the sounds of some of these projects, that time may not be too far away.

Just my thoughts.
Pr0

PS.

To be fair, Boeing acknowledges the F-15SE’s stealth improvements do not help against ground-based radar systems, which are critical for waging offensive strikes against opponents armed with surface to air missile systems.

Interesting choice for a company whose best customer's business is stomping on countries with nothing but land-based air defenses.

Now I'm really done.

F-15S/MTD has 2D TVC (rectangular shape nozzles) and F-15 ACTIVE has 3D TVC (round nozzles)
Also F-16 MATV has 3D TVC

This is a great discussion. There has been no mention of the political angle though. Which is why this thing exists IMO.

Its doesn't matter that there may be some Russian options as good or better. Buying fighters/strike aircraft is almost always a political decision as much or more so than a technical one. Western allies wont buy Russian, even if it is better.

Its not designed to steal sales from PAK-FA its designed to give US aligned nations/clients who don't want the F-35 another option. The Japanese / Koreans / Australians wont buy Russian and this is probably a better option for all of them. The Japanese and Koreans in particular since they already have 15s.

The ideal product would be a cheaper stealth degraded F-22 export airframe (with F-35 common avionics and maintainability improvements, and probably deleted vectored thrust). Unfortunately there no appetite to make such a thing, hence the F-15SE.