Royal Air Force (RAF-UK) Discussions and Updates
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the concerned
Active Member
it was mentioned in AFm . i still say in some missions a second pair of eyes is helpful like CAS/FAC surely the jsf will be called upon to cover these missions aswell.I personally think the jsf although a very good plane will not be able to match the f-15e/f-18f for SA
the road runner
Active Member
You need to read up on DAS in the JSF , it may change your point of view
Basically a big sensor bubble around the plane
[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fm5vfGW5RY"]F-35 JSF Distributed Aperture System (EO DAS) - YouTube[/nomedia]
I'm assuming that you're joking...
the growler, for all its positives does not remotely have the same SA as a JSF.
they are chalk and cheese, as much as a growler is chalk and cheese to a vanilla shornet
you do realise that the SA picture is not just about the shooters... the bulk of the SA picture is fed from externals..
a pair of eyes is limited to maybe give or take 12k.
eg would you rather have 500 pairs of eyes in a fixed location or an E2D?
Well, we've happily been doing CAS on single seaters for ages - Gr9, Jaguar, the A10, F16, the list goes on. I've seen mocked up drawings of a twin seat F35 on various fan sites but I think that's as far as that goes.
I'm not saying it'll never happen but it's not happening at the moment - neither is a twin seat strike Typhoon,
Ian
the concerned
Active Member
do you not think that not developing a 2 seater typhoon is what could have damaged its export prospect's.take a look at its rival the rafale the french realised even they needed a 2 seater and in numerous competitions the rafale was considered more mature a design .
Tee_Centre_10
Member
I would think that immature design, lack of multi-role ability, and very high, uncompetitive pricing* would have been factors in having few sales.
The first two has been worked out (after glacial development and many fighter competitions have been lost) but not much can be done about the last in the face of cheaper (eg. F-16 B52+) and better (F-35A) alternatives.
I'm not sure how you can link the Rafale being considered the more mature option with having it having a combat-capable 2-seat version. A combat-capable 2-seat Typhoon could be developed if it was desired.
As for a fighter type not having a combat-capable 2-seat version (or no 2-seat version at all, i.e. F-35), I would argue that with LIFT aircraft simulating the handling qualities and cockpits of high performance fighters, the fighters themselves having largely benign handling qualities (thanks to FBW), and with the current generation of high fidelity simulators, there is less (no??) need for a dedicated training version.
And although there are great benefits to having a WSO for strike missions, I would argue that with new cockpit data management techniques and the ability to receive and hand off sensor and targeting data to other platforms, the days of WSOs might be numbered. It seems that the trends are against retaining WSOs.
* Very high, uncompetitive pricing. Sorry, but it needs to be written twice!
The US has sold 4,500 F16's of various blocks without any trouble, plus more than a few F18's - all single seat designs barring the small amount of F18G's.
If Tiffy had arrived in the early 1990's and if the air to ground side had proceeded at a more rapid pace it might have done well. Pricing hasn't helped it mind.
the concerned
Active Member
just wondering how much is it going to cost to upgrade tornado one more time and maintain it for another 10 yrs how many typhoons could we buy for that price
F-16B and D and the F-18B/D/F are all fully combat capable two seaters that have been widely deployed by the US and exported. The RMAF only operates two seat Hornets and all of the RAAF's Super Hornets two seaters.
the concerned
Active Member
Aren't the latest f-16's also mainly 2 seaters like f-16i/f-16f/plus isn't the su-30 a 2 seater india's version of the pak-fa will be a 2 seater.Also take a look at the different variants of f-15e's they are all 2 seaters .maybe in the air superiority role a single seater is ok but for strike missions i still think a 2 seater is more desirable
No, they're not mostly two-seaters. The only variant which is exclusively two-seater is the F-16I for Israel, which is akin to the Mirage 2000D, a two-seat strike version of a single seat fighter.
Every other F-16 version is single-seat as standard, with a two-seat trainer, & every other customer has bought mostly single-seaters.
Every other F-16 version is single-seat as standard, with a two-seat trainer, & every other customer has bought mostly single-seaters.
A necessary and polite request
Can we get a little pause before posting?
Some of the questions coming in could be covered by doing some basic research first.
There is no shortage of people who will be willing to help, but when basic questions get asked where some research/trawling could have occurred first - well at that point irritation levels go up
some consideration and energy exercised prior to posting will start pulling back perceptions of laziness and accompanying frustration
This is not intended to kill the quality and momentum of the thread - but its necessary if the intent is to maintain some quality control
post edit
see Swerves response below as an example of where basic research would have yielded answers before the question was posted
Can we get a little pause before posting?
Some of the questions coming in could be covered by doing some basic research first.
There is no shortage of people who will be willing to help, but when basic questions get asked where some research/trawling could have occurred first - well at that point irritation levels go up
some consideration and energy exercised prior to posting will start pulling back perceptions of laziness and accompanying frustration
This is not intended to kill the quality and momentum of the thread - but its necessary if the intent is to maintain some quality control
post edit
see Swerves response below as an example of where basic research would have yielded answers before the question was posted
Back in the late 70's early 80's a Phantom pilot of note who's name I shamefacedly admit I cannot now recall said "Replace my RIO with a machine? Hell, yeah, when I can shout "switch to Winders" and the machine can do that..."
We're at that point and beyond.
So, simple question - you're doing deep strike and interdiction. Guy in back or say, another 500 lbs of fuel? That's what that person in the back (or "Hostage number 2") represents, once you've added the weight of the ejection seat and sundries to his own weight.
With direct reference to the question, should we buy more Typhoon, my answer would be "No" - F35 will be a bit cheaper, a lot more capable and still have a large UK workshare.
Funding a twin seat strike version of Tiffy? No thanks. Cockpit automation has reached the situation where even in the Tornado, 80% of the mission could be flown from the front seat and in the case of Typhoon, the navigation, weapons release and countermeasures are all well within the realms of modern computing standards.
Better yet, buy F35 and just have a quieter life with less people shooting at you (if they can't see you and you have a much better chance of seeing them first, it's easier to conduct and prosecute strike missions)
And that's one of the things I'm looking forward to when F-35 is in squadron service and performing the exercises that legacy aircraft now are undertaking.
For exercise and civilian airspace transit purposes the F-35's will be quite "noisy" in terms of signature. It's going to be great to see the frustration that going to full wartime LO causes amongst those who thought they had a handle on the F-35's signature...
It happens a bit now with F-22, but when it happens across entire force packages, well those who've chosen to stick with legacy non-LO aircraft are going to find themselves a tad irrelevant...
Oh, God, yes, I'd forgotten about that - we'll see F35's trundling around with luneberg lenses fitted and have to listen to the tin foil hat brigade announcing "well, the local civilian air traffic radar was tracking it from 100 miles away" ad nauseam. Damn..always something old getting dragged back up.
PeterCrisp
Member
I know the UK isn't in the greatest financial position right now and we are still to get some of the later deliveries of Typhoon but when will serious consideration start being given to whatever platform succeeds it?
Given that it takes a fair while just to do initial design studies let alone flight testing would it be premature to think they might do preliminary studies this decade?
Given that it takes a fair while just to do initial design studies let alone flight testing would it be premature to think they might do preliminary studies this decade?
Yep, though the F-35 has moved away from the Lunesberg Lens type reflectors to enhance it's RCS for peacetime purposes.
F-35 uses four squared off oblong shaped transmitters fitted above and below the fuselage just in front of the vertical fins to manage it's signature.
You can see one of them here just in front of the left vertical fin and another underneath the fuselage just forward of the "hump" underneath the engine:
http://www.codeonemagazine.com/images/media/2011_AF09_Flight02_AB_1267828237_6456.jpg
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I must admit that the idea of the F-35 being fitted with RCS ehancers only arose when I read this thread. Somehow, the fact that thousands of these things are going to be flying around in the future, operated by a multitude of nations, convinced me that trying to keep it's RCS a secret would be an exercise in futility.
One could well say the same things for radar and weapons capabilities too. Yet military forces have kept the secrets of their full capability from those they want to...
The only way that RCS is going to be determined is when the aircraft is measured by a radar system or if the classified specs leak.
No nation will be flying these aircraft in full wartime configuration, until a war starts, even then in the limited scenarios we see today (Libya being the most recent example) the full capability of the aircraft may still not be apparent.
In addition to which, signature management is an on-going exercise. F-35's in 2030 won't have the same signature level they have in 2020 and so on...