Europe and 5th generation aircraft

[Ozzy Blizzard]

I have no clue as to what Kelly Johnsons concerns were, but I have yet to see an explanation on how a S-300/S-400 is going to detect a VLO jet, unless it was very close. Not transient spikes controlled by the flight control system against a geolocated threat, not via ambient signals scattered from the VLO jet (particularly when they fly above 10k ft).

So they must use voodoo magic.

Spot on! I've yet to have it explained to me how an S300/S400's "Big Bird" radar can effectively detect or track a VLO platform at tactically significant ranges, even in principle. Its essentially a large PESA radar in the class of SPY-1 or AN/MPQ 65, with a slightly bigger aperture. If they cant do it then it astounds me that the 64N6E can, even though they are technologically comparable. If its sheer power output, they should be able to detect a legacy platform in transit to the moon! maybe your right, Its voodoo!

 

[Fritz]

Well calculating range from SFC is quite misleading, let alone that Typhoon's internal fuel load is about 11000 lb. And BTW do you calculate the range with max internal fuel not considering takeoff, RTB etc.?

No, it is not meant to be read literally, its a rough guide, that can differ 5% for both planes, both negative and positive.
So it can differ up to 10 %, which is significat.
Takeoff and climb will affect both planes, the heavier plane will be more affected.

 

[Scorpion82]

Wow where to begin with such a fundamentally flawed view of warfare. You must have an amazing crystal ball. I'll start by taking you on a trip back through time...to the 1930's. While the United States and Russia had to intervene and stop Nazi Germany from taking over Europe. There was a considerable length of time where INDIVIDUAL European nations had to survive on their own and failed to include powerful nations like France.
The French found themselves entangled in Viet Nam long before the United States intervened there. In 1956 the United States and Europe nearly went to with each other during the Suez Crisis. There was the French Algerian War. There was the Falklands Conflict that put major U.K. Surface combatants on the ocean floor because the U.K. was ill prepared to defend itself from modern threats. On the other side of that equation there was Turkish refusal to allow the U.S. Military access to Iraq just prior to combat operations. There are no French troops fighting in Iraq due to differences in policy. The list goes on. Facts, history and common sense do not support you at all.

But you are right about one thing. Europe will not go to war. That's because there is no "Europe" as a homogeneous military entity. So France may war while the U.K. and Germany decide that the conflict is not in their interest. And if they do help, there is not a seemless integration of capability. Also, in the US does help, there are limited to the significance of European contributions as was demonstrated during Operation Allied Force. You are basically assuming the USA will bail out Europe. Dangerous considering the USA is a nation weary of war on the brink of a huge shift in ideology.

Finally, wars today are'nt about being able to handle a threat. Militarily most major powers and the United States can deal with any threat. The problem is that there is a huge aversion to casualties built into the US and European public. A broken shattered Rafale captured on camera felled by S-300 with Algerian Military personnel dragging a dead or captured French pilot out of the wreckage can have strategic consequences. Events like this can be statistically insignificant and still resonate enough in a democracy enough to affect the outcome of a war. You don't need a major power threat to face this. The Serbs could put you in this situation.

-DA

I neither have a chrystal ball, nor I'm going to predict the entire future. There is no reason to teach me about history at all. Nonetheless the world of today is a different one! Much has changed, that doesn't mean there won't be any conflicts with Europe being involved at all, but the horror scenario you propose is more than unlikely in the forseeable future! Europe isn't going to invade countries as the US does, it might be part of a coalition, but it won't do it alone. You self say its not about the handling a military threat so what is your talk all about. All the time you speak about aircraft like Eurofighter etc. being insufficient to handle that threats and now you just claim they can but it doesn't matter. Not that I don't know what you mean, but your are somewhat contradicting yourself. And you think Europeans scream hurray we are going to war? There're reasons why some nations like Germany or France didn't supported OIF or why other nations quickly pulled out... I agree with you that Europe should become more independent, but Europe isn't the US. Have you actually realized what roles Europeans play in all the current operations/conflicts also were the US isn't involved?

 

[Fritz]

Or the operating altitudes. Not to mention the math and the specifications are wrong. 33 min at M1.7 is not 185nm.

Oops! my mistake, 33min at M.1.7 is 309nm

 

[swerve]

.... In 1956 the United States and Europe nearly went to with each other during the Suez Crisis. ...

-DA

Went to ? with each other? If the missing word is "war", then you're mistaken. There was no prospect whatsoever of war. The financial sanctions taken by the USA (e.g. blocking an IMF loan to the UK) were considered extreme, in the context of the relationship between the two countries. Also, "Europe" was not involved: UK & France only.

The USA opposed the use of force, & was strongly in favour of the whole thing being dealt with under the auspices of the UN. How times change!

 

[Ozzy Blizzard]

Scorp i think theres a difference between a platform being less survivable in a threat environment and a platform not being survivable. Even in a 2020 worst case SU-35/S-400 IADS Typhoon is not going to be inviable, however it will be significantly less survivable than say F-35, and with a casualty adverse public and political leadership it may not be survivable enough. I don't think Darth (I don't want to put words in his mouth) was actually saying typhoon was inviable, rather that the level of survivability may not be acceptable to a casualty adverse public. Therefore Europe will probably still want a 5th gen fighter in large numbers.

 

[JWCook]

No, it is not meant to be read literally, its a rough guide, that can differ 5% for both planes, both negative and positive.
So it can differ up to 10 %, which is significat.
Takeoff and climb will affect both planes, the heavier plane will be more affected.

Here's some stuff I posted in 1998 that may help, please excuse errors omissions etc..

"As no range details are freely available (that I can Find) for the
F22, I got to thinking how to work out the rough ranges for CAP, Air
to Air, and ferry.



The only thing that I could come up with was the comparison method,
this is where I took a 'known' (by this I mean, what has been published) ranges, and compared them to the engine dry thrust and fuel loads, my (big) assumption was that for every pound of thrust a certain amount of fuel was required and that this would be fairly constant.



This figure would be comparable across engines designed in the last decade, with allowance made for larger or smaller engines.



Ok, a quick rundown.



I will start with the ferry range as this is the easiest.

The EF2000 can fly 2000 Nm (Nautical Miles) using 5700 litres of fuel
+ 2 x 1000 litres drop tanks, total 7700ltrs , this gives a figure of
3.85 ltrs per nautical mile for an engine that produces 120kN dry
thrust.



This figure does not include any reserve fuel, but as all aircraft
usually have this margin, it can for this purpose be ignored.

But now we have established a fuel usage figure for ferry range for a
120kN class engine.



Now the F22 can carry 11000 litres of fuel internally, but the engines
produce 220kN of thrust, if we use the same ratio 220kN/120kN and
apply this to the fuel we get 7.05 litres per Nm.



Ok the above is rough, and no doubt somebody will tell me larger
engines are more/less efficent, and I would like to know!!!.



So the ferry range for the F22 is around 11000/7.05= 1560Nm using
internal fuel.

With additional drop tanks (9000 litres) this extends to 2837Nm.



Using this figure of 7.05 ltrs per Nm, the F22 can fly around 780Nm
combat radius, with no loiter time, using internal fuel only.


The above is based on:-

1. The ratio of fuel used on late generation engines is related to dry thrust figures, and that they remain roughly constant.
2. The the aircraft/engines are similar in their roles.
3. That ferry range is the most fuel efficient.
4. That the 2400lbs of weapons does not affect range.

It has holes big enough to drive a truck through, but it wasn't bad for a 'back of an envelope' calculation.

Cheers

 

[Fritz]

Ok the above is rough, and no doubt somebody will tell me larger
engines are more/less efficent, and I would like to know!!!.

I can tell you right now that larger engines are less efficient, any engineer will confirm this.

 

[JWCook]

I was quite please with how it turned out that calculation..

I guesstimated the fuel as ~19.400 lbs when everyone was quoting 23.000lbs and it turned out as ~18.500, just lucky I guess, and it wasn't too far off the mark really.

If you plug in other know figures see if the theory works out reasonable, I havn't done this yet it would be interesting to see if theres any merit to it.

i.e. just use 3.85 ltrs per nautical mile for a modern engine that produces 120kN dry thrust, scale it up/down in relation to the thrust.

lol Enjoy yourself

cheers

 

[DarthAmerica]

Went to ? with each other? If the missing word is "war", then you're mistaken. There was no prospect whatsoever of war. The financial sanctions taken by the USA (e.g. blocking an IMF loan to the UK) were considered extreme, in the context of the relationship between the two countries. Also, "Europe" was not involved: UK & France only.

The USA opposed the use of force, & was strongly in favour of the whole thing being dealt with under the auspices of the UN. How times change!

There was very much a prospect of war. That doesn't mean I think it would have taken the form of USA vs UK/France in a direct conflict. There were various ways for the United States to stop the U.K. and France but it was going to stop them. The bottom line is the USA and European countries interest aren't always in sync. This is why European nations need to adjust their defense priorities. And yes, thank you for making my point. "Europe" was not at war. France and U.K. were. "Europe" can't go to war and that is the point.

-DA

 

[JWCook]

Here's a nice graphic or two on the F-22.

http://www.tailhook.org/RENO 2007 BRIEFS/Friday Briefs/RaptorBrief.ppt

Shows F-22 @55,000lbs at military power envelope, apparently hits nearly M1.8 at FL35.

Cheers

 

[DarthAmerica]

Scorp i think theres a difference between a platform being less survivable in a threat environment and a platform not being survivable. Even in a 2020 worst case SU-35/S-400 IADS Typhoon is not going to be inviable, however it will be significantly less survivable than say F-35, and with a casualty adverse public and political leadership it may not be survivable enough. I don't think Darth (I don't want to put words in his mouth) was actually saying typhoon was inviable, rather that the level of survivability may not be acceptable to a casualty adverse public. Therefore Europe will probably still want a 5th gen fighter in large numbers.

This is my exact point! And we have ODS/OAF/OEF/OIF verifying it. Also, it's not just Eurofighter. It's the entire system Eurofighter fights with. "Little" things like having limited to no all weather strike capability means that Europeans could end up expending more effort and lives than necessary to achieve objectives. Things like reliance on US EW assets for escort and stand off jamming mean that European air forces could be more vulnerable for example. Poor ISR. These disadvantages are amplified by the non-LO nature of the Eurofighter. We learned during ODS that low altitude tactics are actually more deadly due to the stealthy and autonomous nature of MANPADS and AAA compared to Radar Guided SAMs and Fighters. IF you have a system capable of suppressing those threats. European nations in general don't. Late model SAMs and fighters that are being proliferated make it even worse.

Without the imported F-35 or US help European airforces will have to expose themselves more to the enemy plain and simple. Statistically that increases the chance of being shot down. Again, ~.0017 chance during ODS of getting hit by SAM/AAA/Fighter per combat sortie. About 44% of those hit were shot down. Thats against an IAD that was overwhelmed qualitatively and quantitatively. Iraqi IADS were designed to deal with dozens of Israeli or Iranian fighters not thousands of coalition warplanes with a detailed understanding of the nature of the defense. European nations lacking the same qualitative and numerical superiority facing more modern defenses would be likely to experience much higher loses. Thats not good considering our value of human life. Even if in a hypothetical conflict such as renewed hostilities in Serbia for example the IADS effectiveness increased by 20% over the ODS model in the absence of the US Military, using the same number of sorties flown by the major allied contributors ~7500 European airforces should expect to lose 15 to 20 combat aircraft with about that number damaged. That's only a modest increase and against a vastly inferior opponent.

People may say, 20 fighters shot down isn't bad. I would agree on principle. But how do you predict the public reaction? What if the 20 losses aren't equally distributed and one of the participants decides to exit the war due to domestic pressure(OIF/Spain).

-DA

 

[DarthAmerica]

I was quite please with how it turned out that calculation..

I guesstimated the fuel as ~19.400 lbs when everyone was quoting 23.000lbs and it turned out as ~18.500, just lucky I guess, and it wasn't too far off the mark really.

If you plug in other know figures see if the theory works out reasonable, I havn't done this yet it would be interesting to see if theres any merit to it.

i.e. just use 3.85 ltrs per nautical mile for a modern engine that produces 120kN dry thrust, scale it up/down in relation to the thrust.

lol Enjoy yourself

cheers

Raptors carry up to 20649.5lbs of fuel internally and up to 36515 with 4x 600 gal drop tanks plus 33.5 lbs in the APU.


-DA

 

[swerve]

There was very much a prospect of war. That doesn't mean I think it would have taken the form of USA vs UK/France in a direct conflict. There were various ways for the United States to stop the U.K. and France but it was going to stop them.
-DA

It did stop them, without a war, or the threat of one. Refusing a loan & threatening further financial sanctions is not warfare. The USA made no threat of war, even implicitly, & for either France or the UK to start a war with the USA in 1956 was unthinkable. Can you please cite supporting evidence for your assertion that "There was very much a prospect of war"? And please do not revise "war" to mean a diplomatic spat.

The bottom line is the USA and European countries interest aren't always in sync. This is why European nations need to adjust their defense priorities.
-DA

This I agree with.

 

[DarthAmerica]

It did stop them, without a war, or the threat of one. Refusing a loan & threatening further financial sanctions is not warfare. The USA made no threat of war, even implicitly, & for either France or the UK to start a war with the USA in 1956 was unthinkable. Can you please cite supporting evidence for your assertion that "There was very much a prospect of war"? And please do not revise "war" to mean a diplomatic spat.

Yes it stopped them. It was a measured move. The United Stated is not going to jump straight to open warfare when it has other options. However, the United Stated under no circumstances would allow the U.K. or France to control the Suez. What I'm saying is ultimately the United Stated would have used any means necessary to eject the Europeans from the Suez and even threatened to kick France and U.K. out of NATO. Control of the Oceans and key SLOC choke point is fundamental to United States national security policy.

In the end my point is that the USA and European nations do not always have the same interest and in this case the actions of the United States had the same end result as force.

-DA

 

[swerve]

Yes it stopped them. It was a measured move. The United Stated is not going to jump straight to open warfare when it has other options. However, the United Stated under no circumstances would allow the U.K. or France to control the Suez. What I'm saying is ultimately the United Stated would have used any means necessary to eject the Europeans from the Suez and even threatened to kick France and U.K. out of NATO. Control of the Oceans and key SLOC choke point is fundamental to United States national security policy. ...

-DA

I think you need to read some of the history of the time, & the place.

Who do you think controlled Suez until early 1956? Who do you think controlled it from then until October 1956? What was the attitude ot the latter to the USA? Who was that state allied with? nfloorl:

BTW, the USA didn't threaten to kick the UK & France out of NATO. Exactly the opposite, in fact. It was trying to bring them to heel within NATO.

I will not expand on that, because we are too far off topic already. I suggest that instead of digging yourself further into the hole of historical errors you are in by replying, you spend a little time on studying the history of the Suez Crisis. Make sure you go back to October 1954, at the very least. And make sure you read some of the US primary documents, especially any internal memos by Eisenhower & Dulles which have been declassified. They should correct your misapprehensions about US government attitudes at the time.

 

[DarthAmerica]

I think you need to read some of the history of the time, & the place.

Who do you think controlled Suez until early 1956? Who do you think controlled it from then until October 1956? What was the attitude ot the latter to the USA? Who was that state allied with? nfloorl:

BTW, the USA didn't threaten to kick the UK & France out of NATO. Exactly the opposite, in fact. It was trying to bring them to heel within NATO.

I will not expand on that, because we are too far off topic already. I suggest that instead of digging yourself further into the hole of historical errors you are in by replying, you spend a little time on studying the history of the Suez Crisis. Make sure you go back to October 1954, at the very least. And make sure you read some of the US primary documents, especially any internal memos by Eisenhower & Dulles which have been declassified. They should correct your misapprehensions about US government attitudes at the time.

Get over yourself. This is something I know in extensive detail. Especially US national security priorities. But it is off topic. Right or wrong the bottom line is that US and European interest can differ. We agree on that. The rest is a difference of opinion and I'm sure that I'm right. So lets get back to Typhoons and such since we agree on the primary issue...

-DA

 

[obrescia]

oh yes they did.

No they didn't.

F-117 retired this year. The serbian shootdown was years ago
F-22 has superior LO management and a broader autonomous capability.

Replacing a 26 year old 1st generation LO platform with an asset that can actually communicate in flight without compromising its mission seems normal iterative capability and platform development to me.

I think you need to look at the post mission assessment of how the Serbs achieved their success. It's not (as is so simplistically repeated) an example of the vulnerability of LO platforms.

Don't lookay the event from an idealogical or fan club perspective - look at it from an engineering perspective.

The shoot down in Serbia was part of the DoD cost/capability analysis and the numbers didn't work anymore - they had to pull the plug.

 

[obrescia]

just good old politics

The shoot down in Serbia was part of the DoD cost/capability analysis and the numbers didn't work anymore - they had to pull the plug.

The only reason F-117 lasted as long as it did is because congress attempted to slow it retirement because the airplane supported certain congressional districts, so just more 'good old politics', not technical realities.

 

[DarthAmerica]

The only reason F-117 lasted as long as it did is because congress attempted to slow it retirement because the airplane supported certain congressional districts, so just more 'good old politics', not technical realities.

Prove anything you just posted?

The F-117 was retired because the USAF has replaced it with the F-22A. Please stop making up things.

-DA