'outmaneuver' is a tricky and unreliable word.  are we talking turnfighting or energy fighting?  reports from the block 50/52 f-16c pilots who DACTed against the german -29s were pretty confident.  they said, in effect, that fighting a -29 was about the same as fighting an f-18, but that the mig could recover energy significantly faster than the hornet.  however, as long as the falcons stayed in their optimum flight regime, they could consistently stay on top and run the migs out of energy.

remember, the a-4 can 'outmaneuver' the f-15, but the f-15 can 'outmaneuver' the a-4 also.  it is better to use more specific and accurate terms.

Well Im talking about a long war scenario.

In that case (notice I'm couching my words here just to present a case I think you should consider) how quickly you can get something out of the lab and into the field is critical.

It's damn foolish to underestimate an enemy, I'm not saying that stealth isnt worth every penny. (it is), but that reliance on stealth to the exclusion of fundamental aerial tactics is silly becuase it is something that once counteracted, takes a significant investment to regain.

I don't doubt the capability of our technology, but I'm not so quick to dismiss the resources of a nation which has made a reputation of doing well against technologoically superior forces.

I don't think its a complete one shot deal however, tis entirely possible for them to "Decloak" the f-117 fleet and still be inable to spot the 22's, or vice versa.

The panacea offered by stealth is that BY the time that significant portions of the fleet are "decloaked" the enemy air defene system will have been so utterly devetated taht the job can be finished with conventonal tactics with a minimum of losses.

sorry, but FAS.org dropped the ball on that one, both testbeds were decommisioned, and returned to su-35 status. there are no plans for rebuilding su-37's for anybody. HOWEVER, the su-30mki is a two seat multi-role variation of the flanker, and it has the same canards and thrust vectoring system used on the su-37 (though I hear its been reduced to 15 degrees of vectoring). Future Su-35's may also recieve TVC.




FYI the S-37 is now known as the Su-47....but it is still a testbed...

The Su-30mki is the plane to be worried about, it is already in service with the Indian Air Force, with ~20 aircraft. along with the TVC it has french avionics and Israle ECM.

[url]http://spacetrans.tripod.com/gallery-su30mki.html[/url]

It's kinda moot, really.  The Rooskis don't have the resources to sustain a large-scale, long time frame war.  On the other hand, no one has successfully invaded Russia and no one ever will.  The only way to take them is with SSBNs, not F117s or F22s.

No one has successfully invaded Russia [i]from the West[/i]. From the [i]East[/i] no one has yet failed to take Russia. Though the last one to do so was Timur the Lame (Tamurlane) in the 15th Century.

That is why Russia is always nervous about China-even though they still sell them weapons, they are careful to also arm India.

The real answer is  - who cares?  By the time the SU37 is in production, the US will be deploying fleets of RPVs that will run rings around it.  It's nice that a plane can pull 9 Gs, but people aren't tolerant of that many Gs.  An RPV can be designed to take 20 Gs and not have to worry about blackout or redout.

[b]I don't doubt that you can find this kind of information floating around about how the Russian stuff is "better than our stuff". This has been the rumor for at least the past 30 years and I cannot think of any time when it has proven to be truthful.[/b]

one word: kalashnikov

Heh actually Poland has on several occassions taken Russia. The last time was after the first world war, Russia was trounced soundly.

I don't think so Campybob.

No, drones will never be much more than they are now. The delay between the remote operator getting the data, reacting to it, and sending commands for the drone is too great for dogfighting. And the drones high G capablity is exceeded by the G capablity of the missiles we already have in service. Since a pilot only has to look at his target now to engage it, no more having to get on its tail and hang there, there isn't much advantage in pulling such a tight turn.

And we are working on a new design of G-suit that uses liquid instead of air that can get into the double diget G loading. NASA has learned that a pilot in good condition can handle over 13Gs BTW, and women a few tenths more than men.

The only way to expand a drones usefulness beyond what it is now, is to slave them to a fighter jets FCS and use them as "squires" to carry extra weapons and to help protect the manned fighter, by sacrificing themselves if need be. The F22A has plenty of room for the extra electronics.

I'm suprised they could keep enough scientists sober long enough to produce even one.  If they do get any flying, I'm sure they will be wrecked at the next Paris airshow.  What a joke.  The US kicks ass in equipment, training and personnel.  What a great time to be alive!

On the Playstation2, the SU 37 is always the badest ass plane. The only better ones are the fictional planes.
GG

Well that settle it then, the SU37 is the best. [;)]

The REAL reason why we are successful against FSU trained/equiped militiaries is due to the training.  They have a completely different concept of warfare, and at least with respect to aircraft, command and control.  FSU tactics dictate ground based control for all phases of flight.  Airspeed, altitude, intercepts, weapons arming and firing.  They don't have the concept of autonomous or [u]aided[/u] only OCA. Their tactics for supporting missile shots is, shall we say, suicidal.  So, give them the best equipment in the world, and they will still probably fail not because they are stupid individually, but because their doctrine and training has failed them.  It takes YEARS to really train someone well, and they have yet to develop the tactics.  If they were to change their tactics TODAY, it would be probably a decade before they were truly viable as a force.  



Dude, if you think that stealth replaces tactics, you need to go and look up the AFTTP 3-3 series.  They're unclassified versions of classified tactics manuals.  Stealth does not mean straight and level.  See my previous post.  Stealth means gaining time and exploiting the inability of the enemy to target you until you have the advantage.  For a bomber, that may be penetrating a MEZ deep enough to strike a target and not be visible long enought to be targeted. For a fighter, it may mean launching an AIM-120 prior to being detected.
At the USAF Weapons School (which has been around LOTS longer than Top Gun), the Eagle division spends almost half the 6 month course doing WVR engagements.  The Raptor division will start up in the next few years, and they will most likely do the same...



Again, it's not just about technology.  It's about training and tactics, and they are DECADES behind.  Do you know they FSU had no concept of the Wild Weasel?  Their only concept of SEAD was for the most part PET shots or if the real shooting war started, simply nuking clear corridors throught the threats.  For them, the idea of aircraft roaming about the battlefield looking for unlocated and unpredictible surface-air threats was just unthinkable...



Bingo!

So? Data that takes 10 seconds to transmit takes ten seconds to transmit. And the lag is in the hardware at both ends.

Here is a little test, take a TV with antenne and set it to a local station. Turn on another set connected to a satellite dish and put your local station on. You will find some substantial lag between when you get the signal over the air, and when the signal has to detour to a uplink, be scrambled, then to satellite, then down to your dish and unscrambled.

Now imagine that going both ways. It doesnt matter that the signal travels at the speed of light through the air, since the computers at each end won't respond till they recieve a complete command.

The Kalashnikov has only one or two advantages...maybe. The only unarguable advantage is reliability.  Accuracy...gives up a LOT to the AR.  Damage?   Same category...the AK round is heavier, but a lot slower.

And remember, in EVERY war that the M16 family has run up against the AK family, the AK family LOST.  Vietnam is the exception only because politically the US gave up.  We won almost all of the battles.  Remember, only hits count.

It is based on an F-16A provided by Pakistan in fact. However, China's own aviation industry thus far has been a failure and they will continue to buy Russian Su-27/37 until then. Took them forever to start making their own decent tanks.

No, the parent of the J-10 is Lavi:
[url]http://www.stormpages.com/jetfight/J-10_J-11_FC-1.htm[/url], the F16 is only related to them in the extent that it was the Lavis parent design via the F16XL double delta wing prototype of the early 80's.

You missed the point, CK...

We are not talking about minutes here, but miliseconds...

True, radio waves move at very-close-to light speed (a tad slower, NOT being light, but the difference is negligable for the purposes described here).

BUT the distance that must be covered UP to the satellite, and then BACK DOWN to the user is so great, that even at light speed, there is noticable lag (miliseconds, but when moving at Mach 2+, dealing with missiles travelling at Mach 5+, milliseconds matter). The end result is like playing CounterStrike with a 56k modem against guys with broadband.

The average lag time for satellite-based data transmission is 200-400ms. About 10-20ms of this is machine overhead, the rest is the medium. If you play online games, you know where I'm going with this. When going against a human pilot who is 'right there', the extra .4 seconds of lag (Excluding reaction time. Since Mr Enemy Pilot has a set reaction time too, we're gonna assume that both Operator and Enemy are equally 'good', with equal reaction time) is enough to get a very expensive drone turned into a multimillion dollar clay pigeon.

Erm, dude.

Radio waves ARE light, just a different wavelength, which has NO bearing upon velocity.

Wow, I thought it would be the other way around. That 9/10ts of the delay was going through wireing, which is why fiber optics were getting popular and everyone wants to find a warm superconductor.

What a joke.  

The russians are comming the russians are comming!![BD][whacko][rolleyes]

It doesn't matter how potentially good a plane is if the country that owns it can't afford to keep it properly serviced and provisioned or keep its pilots in top training at all times.

At this time, the US is the only major power that can achieve these goals.

Our pilots spend a relatively large amount of time on training missions.  Perhaps a better name for them would be proficiency missions, because their goal is to maintain the pilot's proficiency and also his physical conditioning.    I can't quote how many hours of training flights the average active duty fighter pilot gets per month, but it's considerably more than just about any other fighter pilot anywhere else in the world, and that is why we win in international meets with those other air forces even though on paper, some of them may have better planes.


Right now,  the current world's two best fighters in real terms are our F15 Eagle and our F16.  Their combat kill ratios bear this assertion out.

To this day, no F15 or F16 has ever lost an air to air battle.  NONE.  Some have been lost to other causes, but never in a dogfight.

For a person who has never actually sat in the cockpit of a real F16,  I'm fairly knowledgeable about the Viper.  It's all simulator based knowledge, but the simulator software maintains a high level of fidelity to the real thing,  and I've also studied the Viper from all the reading materials I can get my hands on.

The Viper's chief advantages are several:  It can SUSTAIN a 9G turn, IF the pilot can.

This one fact alone is the reason why the crash rate of F16'is fairly high:  Pilots over-G themselves inadvertently, go unconscious, and crash. I have heard that an automatic recovery system is being evaluated that would keep the plane from crashing into the ground (with the aid of the radar) so as to make this sort of occurrence a thing of the past.   Essentially, it's a variant on terrain following radar that just won't let the plane crash.   It's supposed to be "always on" and can keep the pilot from getting into a maneuver that can't be recovered from before the ground comes up and smites thee, as well.   Certainly it's a brilliant concept.
A plane that's so smart it won't let the idiot in the seat crash it.


It has a great deal of engine power and can out-accelerate practically anything else.  And its turning radius at corner airspeed (its range of speeds at which it turns at the highest rate) is also practically unmatched.   It also has a phenomenal roll rate of 360 degrees per second.  So fast that most pilots never roll it at that limit because the maneuver happens too fast for it to be easily controlled, plus it's very abrupt and rather punishing on the pilot's neck.  

And, its most recent avionics upgrades keep it at or near the top of the game in terms of radar and avionics performance.

Lastly,  it is being equipped with the new AIM-120X,  which is a scary maneuverable variant of the AIM-120 "Slammer" that is capable of literally pulling a right angle turn in midair so fast that you'll probably be unable to keep your eyes on it.   You can see a video of it in a demonstration at Raytheon's web site.

I believe it's actually a thrust vectoring missile.  Scary.

The F16 is probably the best balanced light fighter in the world.   That could explain its popularity.   Worldwide production (Some are made in Europe under license) will exceed the total production of even the F-4 Phantom before long,
and that was 5,057 aircraft built in the US alone, not counting foreign production.  The F4 was in US service for 38 years, and the F16 may serve as long.


CJ

your thinking of the AIM-9X. look at the top of page 2 to see the video. there is no aim-120X.

fyi the AA-11 Archer also has thrust vectoring, and has been around a while longer.

I couldnt find video of a AIM-120X, AIM-9X Sidewinder was the video shown a couple pages back in this thread, and it is a thrust vectoring missile.

Well it might, but it has those giant ass fins still see
[img]http://www.danshistory.com/archer.jpg[/img]

The missiles that are known to be thrust vectoring, SidewinderX, ASRAAM, and Python4 have very small fins, and the ASRAAM has tailfins only.

I would say that at least the original R-73's (the Russian designation) got their feindish manuverablity just from aerodynamics and a exceptionally good solid fuel motor that gave it unusually good thrust to weight. Their have been two varients since this, R-73M1 and the current R-73M2 and they certainly could have thrust vectoring by now, though if they do they have uniquely decided to keep the big fins as well.

They travel slower because the speed of light that we all learn in college is the speed of light in a vaccuum...it slows down in the atmosphere.

That's the AIM-9X, not AIM-120X

Actually ther reason for the high crash rate is due to the single engine design.  Most non-engine related crashes have nothing do with GLOC.  It's usually loss of SA with respect to either the ground or another aircraft...

Yeah, you are right, it is the AIM-9X. Somehow I got my signals mixed up.

As for the "lawn dart" issue, a look at the accident reports for F16's shows that there have been some engine failures, most of which were determined to be caused by separation of the augmentor casing (afterburner) in flight due to the formation and growth of cracks.    Essentially the tail cone ws falling off in flight.   I've seen photos of one F16 which safely landed after suffering this sort of mishap.  The tailcone was completely gone, and another photo showed the plane's pilot posing with the tailcone where it fell in the desert.
 

The problem was eventually found and rectified by inspection and replacement of faulty augmentor casings.

CJ

Since from 1994-2000, the Air Force has had 6 Class A mishaps with loss of aircraft, and 2 pilot fatalities due to GLOC (G-related loss of consciousness).  That's for all all aircraft, to include trainers.

From 1990-2000, the USAF has 69 engine related F16 class A mishaps (I have no data on how many involved loss of aircraft and which were just $1M or more in cost), while the A10 had 4, and the F15 had 17.  As far as rates go, that corresponds to 1.59, .25, and .74 (per 100,000 flying hours).

This is a few more than "some" accidents.  This is why I can't understand the decision to replace the F16 with another single engine aircraft (F35).

T-34
ZSU-23-4
Their new attack and AA heli's (cant remember the names)
There are others as well, just can't remember them all.

SorryOciffer

That is neither here nor there.  The purpose of my post was to inform the person I was responding to that his 'theory' that radio waves 'are not light' is in err, incorrect, false, misinformed, etc.

For those physics slow, all 'light' (from radio waves through microwaves and infrareds and the visable spectrum and the ultraviolets to the x-rays and finally the gamma rays) move 'AT LIGHT SPEED', because they are 'light'.  Radio waves move at the same speed as 'light' (here I am referring to visable spectrum EM waves that normal ignorant savages call 'light') in an atmosphere, or through whatever medium they are able to penetrate (this varies depending upon wavelength), the different wavelengths (and energy) have zero, nil, no effect on the velocity of the EM wave.  So in other words radio waves move 'at light speed', granted 'light speed' does vary depending upon the medium through which it is traveling, but it is still 'light speed' (you just have to add different modifying prepositions at the end of 'light speed', such as 'light speed in a vacumn' or 'light speed in the earth's atmosphere').

[img]http://www.sistemasdearmas.hpg.ig.com.br/aa11tvc2.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.sistemasdearmas.hpg.ig.com.br/aa11tvc1.jpg[/img]

they have kept the big fins, but since the R-73 is larger than the aim-9 and ASRAAM it may need the extra control surfaces.

I think you hit the nail on the head. China will always be a threat in the foreseeable future and much of their money to be so will come from [b]us[/b].

The AA-11, to the best of my knowledge, is a boost only missile.  It needs the aero control surfaces to maneuver when the motor burns out...

I may be off the mark on this particular plane, but Communist Beijing does have an F-16A courtesy of Pakistan. Pakistan has been bitching at the Americans to approve a sale of more planes they made in the 1990s. Hopefully we won't do it.

If the Commie Chinees have one of our F16's, whether by sale or otherwise,  it needs to have an 'accident' via any means possible...or get stolen, like out of the movie "Firefox".


The thought of those subway rat bastards with one of our Vipers is enough to chill my guts.

For doing this,  the Pakistanis should have to suffer the indignity of our armed forces coming into Pakistan and CONFISCATING every plane we sold to them, and then blacklisting them until they kiss our entire ass with great gusto.

CJ

The single engine design and the P&W F100 having some long term reliability issues. F15C/Ds use the same engine, have the same problem-but don't crash as often because they have two. The overwhelming number of accidents due to engine failure with F16's is in those fitted with F100s-those with GE F110s hardly ever have a engine related failure. Neither do the F110 engined F15E Strike Eagles.

This gets worked over a couple times a year in the local media, since Luke Field is our next door neighbor and they fly right over head every day.

In 1999 we had [i]NINE[/i] F16 crashes in that one year from Luke based aircraft, or aircraft visiting Luke (one belonged to Singapore AF). A couple crashed near the base, others on the Goldwater and Nellis ranges, on in the White Tanks. The Singapore F16 came down near Davis Monthan.

7 of the 9 were F100 engined.

Oh, another unrelated thought. I wonder if they can make the JHMS work with Maverick and GBU-15s as well? It would be so much safer for A-10s and Harriers to not have to fly right at their more heavily defended targets. Plus there are some targets, like bunkers on steep hillsides, that can be just awkward to get to..

In theory, yes, you could slave either the seeker cranium on an AGM-65 or a pod, but the problem is one of PID.  Most AGM-65 shots are taken at a range where you couldn't ID the target.  Same for an LGB (especially an LGB!).  The HMS is most useful for very close WVR engagements where you have already ID'd the air threat...

I've heard the Abakan AN-94 rifle has reliability issues. Have'nt seen anything concrete about this. could just be teething problems with the weapon, but whenever i see pictures of Russian Spetnaz or FSB, they all have AK-74's or some variant and not AN-94.

Doesn't it project the seeker image for the pilot?

I wouldn't sweat an A model.  APG-66, no AIM-120 support, analog flight controls...

To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not sure.  I know that it will project cueing information specific to the weapon being used, but for a pod or AGM-65, that would involve a magnified view.  That could get really disorienting to have your view either magnify, or a portion magnify.  What it actually projects, I'd only be guessing.  We don't get HMS in the B-1.  Not too useful for us!

Probably long taken apart like the EP-3 spy plane that they got handed into their lap in 2001. They struggled for over 10 years trying to get their prototype of it to work. That's why they bought the Su-27s. [:)]

They still have an active fleet of F-16As sold during the 1980s to the Zia regime. We're going to have to go in there and deal with those western provinces anyway, since the Pakistani government (read: Musharraf) doesn't seem to want to do it.



I'm not, but one should not forget this the next time they want to buy stuff from us. The incident has been forgotten due to the "War on Terror" it seems, though the US has not as yet honored the order they put in for newer F-16s.