F/A-22: To Fly High or Get its Wings Clipped
- Thread starter LancerMc
- Start date
You are taking it out of context. It doesn't have to be in the one mission.kyakko said:
A F-22 goes out on a mission and kills 3 suhkoi fighters.
A F-22 goes out on another mission kills another 3 suhkoi fighters.
A F-22 goes out on third mission and kills 3 suhkoi fighters.
A F-22 goes out on its 4th mission while concentrating on ground attack it gets surprised by two suhkoi fighters, he shoots one suhkoi down but the second fires a mission and the F-22 is hit.
Whats the score now?? 10 suhkois shot down to every 1 F-22. A 10:1 kill ratio
Those numbers are opbviously based on the aircraft alone and assuming equal pilot skill. An F-15 with awac's flying against poorly trained pilots have acheived over 100 enemy kills without a loss. So an F-22 should acheive a similar ratio when flying against a nation with a inferior airforce.
The F-22 has a bigger edge over its current adversaries than the F-15 ever has. The best aircraft the F-15 have flown against are first generation mig-29's over serbia. The mig 29 was probably the most advanced enemy aircraft at that time, yet the F-15 shot down four of them. The Su-30 is currently the most advanced enemy aircraft and the difference between it and the F-22 is huge compared to the Mig-29 vs F-15 comparison.
So even if the F-22 is flown against the best enemy aircraft we have today it would probably exceed the 100:0 kill ratio that the F-15 eagle has acheived in the past.
Last edited:
contedicavour
New Member
Roe
Guys somebody forgot that all these scenarios are in full-out war with F22s sent to kill everything that flies in a declared war, and w/o paying attention to enemy SAMs.
Rules of engagement normally don't authorize you to shoot down an enemy plane at the maximum range of your radar/missile combination. You've got to come close, identify, warn off ... most likely you'll be able to shoot a missile only if attacked...
So, before you can use all the advantages you have to be in a very clear and neat scenario of declared war with ROEs that go with it.
Unless of course the USAF is planning to use as expendable assets F15s in the first interceptions/encounters and then send the F22s once the F15s have been shot down. Not very neat for the F15 pilots
cheers
Guys somebody forgot that all these scenarios are in full-out war with F22s sent to kill everything that flies in a declared war, and w/o paying attention to enemy SAMs.
Rules of engagement normally don't authorize you to shoot down an enemy plane at the maximum range of your radar/missile combination. You've got to come close, identify, warn off ... most likely you'll be able to shoot a missile only if attacked...
So, before you can use all the advantages you have to be in a very clear and neat scenario of declared war with ROEs that go with it.
Unless of course the USAF is planning to use as expendable assets F15s in the first interceptions/encounters and then send the F22s once the F15s have been shot down. Not very neat for the F15 pilots
cheers
I am going mad out of these comparisions.
But one thing is Sure.
Depending Too Much on Technology can lead to disaster.
Let it be US or any other nation.
Its Always Strategy and Tactics which Rule the war, Not Technology or capability.
Its more important for US as how, where and why they will use F-22 or any other weapon.
History says whenever Forces depended too much technology, They had to suffer loss and defeat.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Everybody is watching F-22 and will try their best to counter it in the most unimaginable way.
The Expectations from F-22 are very high.
F-22 is yet to see the Combat.
The So called Stealth technology will certainly be countered some or the other time to make Radars even more Powerful.
But one thing is Sure.
Depending Too Much on Technology can lead to disaster.
Let it be US or any other nation.
Its Always Strategy and Tactics which Rule the war, Not Technology or capability.
Its more important for US as how, where and why they will use F-22 or any other weapon.
History says whenever Forces depended too much technology, They had to suffer loss and defeat.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Everybody is watching F-22 and will try their best to counter it in the most unimaginable way.
The Expectations from F-22 are very high.
F-22 is yet to see the Combat.
The So called Stealth technology will certainly be countered some or the other time to make Radars even more Powerful.
true, but werent those babys designed with WW3 in mind? or at least european battle fields, nato v warsaw pact.
The best historical preceedent might be the korean war when the F-86 was introduced, although the american pilots were supeior to anyone on the communist side, the american flyers also had the technological edge with devastating effect for the communists.
It remains to be seen if the raptor can have this kind of effect in a future war,
In any case as so many people stress on defencetalk its air warfare systems that win battles in rather than the kind of plane you fly.
It kind of funny seeing guys frothing at the mouth over magizine articles when the raptor has never even flown in anger.
Expectations for the Typhoon are a bit more muted, prob a good thing.
That is true, but there are exceptions. It depends on the platforms involved, and whether AWACS clears the BVR shot. Back in the first Gulf War, only the Eagles were cleared for BVR shots, (Every man a tiger, Clancy), all other aircraft had to VID their targets first. It happens when you have a situation like both the Gulf Wars where Blue Air was numerically superior to Red Air. Too many friendlies around to allow everyone to take BVR shots.contedicavour said:Guys somebody forgot that all these scenarios are in full-out war with F22s sent to kill everything that flies in a declared war, and w/o paying attention to enemy SAMs.
Rules of engagement normally don't authorize you to shoot down an enemy plane at the maximum range of your radar/missile combination. You've got to come close, identify, warn off ... most likely you'll be able to shoot a missile only if attacked...
So, before you can use all the advantages you have to be in a very clear and neat scenario of declared war with ROEs that go with it.
Unless of course the USAF is planning to use as expendable assets F15s in the first interceptions/encounters and then send the F22s once the F15s have been shot down. Not very neat for the F15 pilots
cheers
In the case of the F-22, its most likely they would be the selected aircraft to make BVR shots. Of course, again, unless cleared by AWACS if you happen to be in an F-16. IMO, this would become a very crucial to the US, since they do normally operate more aircraft than their opponents in their air campaigns.
Contedicavour,
>>
Guys somebody forgot that all these scenarios are in full-out war with F22s sent to kill everything that flies in a declared war, and w/o paying attention to enemy SAMs.
>>
Why shouldn't it be? Other assets were and are necessary to support F-15s doing the TARCAP or Frei Jagd sweep mission. So you might as well bring the bombers along to finish what you start.
An F-22 is essentially invisible at X-band and at least 'reduced' to C-H which are the primary S2A bands. Thus the only thing you need is a decoy able to emulate SSC and a long range ARM/EA ability to hard and soft kill whatever comes up to look.
THERE IS NO PACKAGE EFFECT to clutter up the screens and generally make things confusing.
>>
Rules of engagement normally don't authorize you to shoot down an enemy plane at the maximum range of your radar/missile combination. You've got to come close, identify, warn off ... most likely you'll be able to shoot a missile only if attacked...
>>
Nonsense. Positive Airspace Control rules are all about flow and timing. You go one way down one route and then you exit and head out another. As you come back across the FEBA, you go through a gate in a fence composed of SAMs and are inidividually 'deloused' (Visually or by EOID/EID) as you come.
ALL of these things are time-dependent. The corridor will only be held open for a certain number of minutes. You will 'punch your card' at the gate or it will close in your face.
Similarly, you go against the flow of traffic and you WILL take a face shot.
ANYTHING outside these limited areas safe passage being a free-fire zone accepted target.
>>
So, before you can use all the advantages you have to be in a very clear and neat scenario of declared war with ROEs that go with it.
>>
The 'neatest thing' about the Raptor is that the APG-77 can see other Raptors. And it can see normal targets. And it has the JEM (Jet Engine Modulation) and 2DISAR (Match the phase and centroid overlaps against an 'extinction pulse' code and the residual is the key signature of a given jet at a give aspect) as well as basic RCS values to distinguish the two. Now, since nobody can really DO MUCH without radar emission of /some kind/ (even if it's just an uplink to steer a passive missile), if you light off, you're toast from twice the declarative distance as you would be using cooperative or non-cooperative active interrogation methods.
But the fact remains that if you have 20 F-22s over somebodies airspace and suddenly AWACS sees launch indications (radio traffic and rising doppler) at a threat airbase, it's gonna turn the nearest Raptor section towards that threat while turning _everyone else away_ and there will be little or nothing that said GAI can do to keep from being engaged. Not least because more back of beyond threats can only afford to launch in 2's and 4's with very little cross coverage and mutual support from other bases.
The 'neat thing' then being that once you have temporary dominance of the threat air, it's not over for them. Because if they _don't_ come up to play. We will merely switch to HAS-plinking and take them out where they sit.
>>
Unless of course the USAF is planning to use as expendable assets F15s in the first interceptions/encounters and then send the F22s once the F15s have been shot down. Not very neat for the F15 pilots
>>
It would be wise to use UCAVs or TurboSAMs in this role, simply because there are too few F-22 to do the job of riding herd on either conventional or F-35 based systems. As well as because of the rising threat of DEWS. But what you are suggesting is an employment limitation that simply doesn't apply to the first 3-5 days of an airwar wherein (properly executed) the F-22s and select decoy/suppression assets should be the ONLY aircraft operating in enemy airspace.
And so long as you have tracks on them (through MIDS/L16 intermittent LINK reporting if nothing else), a small force, well distributed in their own operational areas, is quite easy to keep sorted from the morts.
CONCLUSION:
The lie of inadequate BVRID rules goes back to Vietnam. It was untrue then because the pantywaists in WDC couldn't control their panic long enough to reach the obvious conclusion: 3 planes plus an Aussie Gunboat does NOT compare to the 2,586 aircraft lost to SAMs and AAA. Yet a lack of air dominance can force you to 'refight' an action which otherwise would be over for want of intimidation (jetnoise the sound of 'freedom') and uninterrupted secondary missions. Had we maintained a decent set of full systems lock, max-range, Sparrow ROE, we might have lost 20-50 more aircraft. But the Viets would never have been able to keep us from bombing their ABs into oblivion in the first 2-3 days and we would have taken out or suppressed their SAM network within a few days after that (pushing EB/RB-66 Support Jammers off station was a favorite 'sport' of VPAF MiG-21s, the asian equivalent of cow tipping). i.e. We would not have fought FOUR airwars in the periods 1966-67, 1968, 1972(I-Easter) and 1972(II-Christmas).
Still, the SOA which caused those ROEs has moved on and ALL of the conditional modifiers (no LDSD, limited NCTR, poor missiles and missile maintenance, poor cockpit ergonomics, limited tactical initiative) have since eliminated as technical faults.
DO NOT SEEK TO 'RELIVE THE MYTH'.
KPl.
>>
Guys somebody forgot that all these scenarios are in full-out war with F22s sent to kill everything that flies in a declared war, and w/o paying attention to enemy SAMs.
>>
Why shouldn't it be? Other assets were and are necessary to support F-15s doing the TARCAP or Frei Jagd sweep mission. So you might as well bring the bombers along to finish what you start.
An F-22 is essentially invisible at X-band and at least 'reduced' to C-H which are the primary S2A bands. Thus the only thing you need is a decoy able to emulate SSC and a long range ARM/EA ability to hard and soft kill whatever comes up to look.
THERE IS NO PACKAGE EFFECT to clutter up the screens and generally make things confusing.
>>
Rules of engagement normally don't authorize you to shoot down an enemy plane at the maximum range of your radar/missile combination. You've got to come close, identify, warn off ... most likely you'll be able to shoot a missile only if attacked...
>>
Nonsense. Positive Airspace Control rules are all about flow and timing. You go one way down one route and then you exit and head out another. As you come back across the FEBA, you go through a gate in a fence composed of SAMs and are inidividually 'deloused' (Visually or by EOID/EID) as you come.
ALL of these things are time-dependent. The corridor will only be held open for a certain number of minutes. You will 'punch your card' at the gate or it will close in your face.
Similarly, you go against the flow of traffic and you WILL take a face shot.
ANYTHING outside these limited areas safe passage being a free-fire zone accepted target.
>>
So, before you can use all the advantages you have to be in a very clear and neat scenario of declared war with ROEs that go with it.
>>
The 'neatest thing' about the Raptor is that the APG-77 can see other Raptors. And it can see normal targets. And it has the JEM (Jet Engine Modulation) and 2DISAR (Match the phase and centroid overlaps against an 'extinction pulse' code and the residual is the key signature of a given jet at a give aspect) as well as basic RCS values to distinguish the two. Now, since nobody can really DO MUCH without radar emission of /some kind/ (even if it's just an uplink to steer a passive missile), if you light off, you're toast from twice the declarative distance as you would be using cooperative or non-cooperative active interrogation methods.
But the fact remains that if you have 20 F-22s over somebodies airspace and suddenly AWACS sees launch indications (radio traffic and rising doppler) at a threat airbase, it's gonna turn the nearest Raptor section towards that threat while turning _everyone else away_ and there will be little or nothing that said GAI can do to keep from being engaged. Not least because more back of beyond threats can only afford to launch in 2's and 4's with very little cross coverage and mutual support from other bases.
The 'neat thing' then being that once you have temporary dominance of the threat air, it's not over for them. Because if they _don't_ come up to play. We will merely switch to HAS-plinking and take them out where they sit.
>>
Unless of course the USAF is planning to use as expendable assets F15s in the first interceptions/encounters and then send the F22s once the F15s have been shot down. Not very neat for the F15 pilots
>>
It would be wise to use UCAVs or TurboSAMs in this role, simply because there are too few F-22 to do the job of riding herd on either conventional or F-35 based systems. As well as because of the rising threat of DEWS. But what you are suggesting is an employment limitation that simply doesn't apply to the first 3-5 days of an airwar wherein (properly executed) the F-22s and select decoy/suppression assets should be the ONLY aircraft operating in enemy airspace.
And so long as you have tracks on them (through MIDS/L16 intermittent LINK reporting if nothing else), a small force, well distributed in their own operational areas, is quite easy to keep sorted from the morts.
CONCLUSION:
The lie of inadequate BVRID rules goes back to Vietnam. It was untrue then because the pantywaists in WDC couldn't control their panic long enough to reach the obvious conclusion: 3 planes plus an Aussie Gunboat does NOT compare to the 2,586 aircraft lost to SAMs and AAA. Yet a lack of air dominance can force you to 'refight' an action which otherwise would be over for want of intimidation (jetnoise the sound of 'freedom') and uninterrupted secondary missions. Had we maintained a decent set of full systems lock, max-range, Sparrow ROE, we might have lost 20-50 more aircraft. But the Viets would never have been able to keep us from bombing their ABs into oblivion in the first 2-3 days and we would have taken out or suppressed their SAM network within a few days after that (pushing EB/RB-66 Support Jammers off station was a favorite 'sport' of VPAF MiG-21s, the asian equivalent of cow tipping). i.e. We would not have fought FOUR airwars in the periods 1966-67, 1968, 1972(I-Easter) and 1972(II-Christmas).
Still, the SOA which caused those ROEs has moved on and ALL of the conditional modifiers (no LDSD, limited NCTR, poor missiles and missile maintenance, poor cockpit ergonomics, limited tactical initiative) have since eliminated as technical faults.
DO NOT SEEK TO 'RELIVE THE MYTH'.
KPl.
Kyakko,
>>
wow... a very informative and interesting read. you should write a book. perhaps you can persuade our government will better allocate fundings for the development of better AA missiles. i really have a hard time believing in the controlled excercises. they read like proproganda to me.
>>
Actually I'm very much a Raptor fan. It is one of the few, useful, and SOA pushing weapons systems out there in our inventory. I just don't like seeing the jet rendered as a superplane 'after the fact' of a decision to limited inventory purchase it with the intent to employ it aggressively beyond what we have the numbers or doctrine to support.
That said, my ideal for the perfect missile is one which goes to the threat and SITS ON IT. So that the moment it goes wheels in well (or even upon detection of taxi from a hardened shelter farm), you can send it to score the 'dogfight' kill by attacking at co-Mach and superior energy loading.
The best illustration of this is most likely the ADM-160 MALD. Which, in it's FIM-160 MALI format, was once touted as a principle element of the CMDI.
The nice thing about this is that you have a missile which, even if it costs 1-2 million dollars each (MALDs initial estimate was for a 75,000 dollar production weapon) can saturate the threat airspace so that the enemy never gets up a head of steam sufficient to get away from their baselanes. In this, I liken it to a pack of wolves constantly using hunting datalinks to cut off and hamstring any attempt by a manned jet to push out to a distance (now upwards of 55-60nm, even subsonically) from which the Western threat can release SDB.
It's that 3-5 minute window, from Viking Launch to maximum extension downrange, that you want to turn into a 'bar brawler' scenario and it is implicit to the notion of a turbine powered weapon with possible squib-rocket boosting. That can attack and then reattack a threat rather than do the typical of Miss-iles everywhere: Make one toss of the dice and craps out.
>>
As good as the raptor is, it's difficult for me to believe that it can take down 8 su-30's until i see it happen in a real combat situation. something just doesn't seem right about the numbers. i mean, it's one thing for an su3xx to 10:1 chance against the f-22 but it's another thing to have 10 su-3xx to have 1:1 odds. there are demishing returns when you add more fighters into the mix against a single f-22 cuz there are some many new variables added, sorta like a bar brawl.
>>
Here's how I see a Raptor : Super Flanker fight emerging-
0nm....................................................<Raptor 01
Su-30.Su-30.Su-30>>>>>>>>>>>< Raptor 02........//.......RQ-4RTIP
Su-30.Su-30.Su-30>>>>>>>>>>> <Raptor 03.......//........Raptor 05/06
5nm....................................................<Raptor 04
With Su-30s flying blind they need to linearize the possible number of vectors that can effect their game. i.e. Get enough of a head of steam that they can put everybody that CAN kill them, 'on the nose'. With a sustained supersprint of say Mach 1.6-2 all the way out from whatever CAP or QRA launch point they choose.
In this they have the advantage of seeing shots coming with MAKS or similar MLDS as well as possibly their IRSTs. While by stacking back, anything which tries to run up the baffles of the lead section is going to not only have a very hard geometry setup (making upwards of 90-120` worth of saddle turn). But is also going to 'flash aspect' as it does so. Potentially setting itself up for either an IR (even a Raptor will need burner to effectively catch a Flanker at full gallop) or possibly even radar shot.
Either way, the Flanker team's hope is that if they /just keep coming/ at say 10-20nm trail spacing, they will self-define the schwerpunkt by which they punch through the limited Raptor force (and _all_ USAF A2A doctrine remains set on Division or fourship level fighting formations, even if the individual sections are often detached by some distance) and hit the ISR, tanking or primary strike elements behind them.
Of course this means effectively turning your lead pilots into gator bait but if you are dedicated, it can work. So long as your shooters are also your MCG illuminators, they will not want to continue to close while the longer ranging shots time out because if even a few of the ones against the closest targets /miss/ you can cross the detection threshold at which a Flanker can fire back 'visually' (or by EOID).
OTOH, if you move to an extended range system like the AMRAAM-D, Meteor or indeed MALI equivalent, with 2-way datalinks and INS/GPS capable navigators to precisely measuring both own position and energy as a function of time of flight inherent to reaching all threat elements, in trail, then _theoretically_, so long as the threat signature remains relatively conventional (3-5m2) as soon as the 'Wall Of Raptors' launches their weapons, they can each split off into wide-out 'heart attack' shaped geometries designed to create curvilinear reengagement arcs on whatever needs cleaning up after the initial salvo. And if each shooter in the F-22 lead division has a full six BVR missiles onboard, thats going to be quite a few shots in the air as 'insurance' against the initial sections blowing on thru to reach whatever it is the Raptors are guarding.
The key being to of course 'never take a sniper rifle into a telephone booth expecting to beat a drunken midget with a pocket knife'. To avoid, as you put it, the bar brawl scenario.
In this, _if there are enough missiles onboard_, so that you don't have to to commit to a merge but can come off and then reengage, neutrally, I can well believe the numbers they are giving for 'synthetic shots' (modelled aspect/G-sustainment/SPJ/expendables).
The problem becomes what happens when it's not 'Raptor vs. Flanker'. But rather X-airframe vs. KC-135. Or X-airframe vs. F-16/35.
Because now you have heavily loaded, (fresh off the tanker), and fuel/timing critical strike aircraft pushing from behind. So that, in a zero-loss environment, you can't extend and reset but have to 'play thru' as this concentrated wave attack tries to break past you.
Reality Check Time:
50 Su-30MK2 X50 million each = 2.5 billion dollars.
Which is about all that Outer Podunk can afford for an entire /decade/ worth of cyclical (air/sea/land) military expenditure. And if they launch all at once, they may break up the first-day waves and give the JFACC a severe shock (if not his walking papers). But then they are a spent force because, especially at full blower, I doubt if more than 1 in ten will even have /the gas/ to get back home. And they will be chased the whole way. And bombed on their bases.
Looked from that perspective, a pilot would have to be an IDIOT to throw away his life on ghost-shots from aircraft he could not see but which were killing him, not from 60-80km out. But _250-500km_ which is what you can expect from an ADAAM (Air Directed AAM) shot being datalink command guided into a seeker cube.
OTOH... 500 Turbo-SAM @ 2 million each = 1 billion dollars. Assume they can fly for 2hrs @ 200nm or 30 minutes at Mach 1.4. Assume they can be truck launched from catapults like a modern day V-1 (indeed the Mirach 600 recce drone is exactly this). Assume that you can use them 5 times before refurbishment and 20 times before their done, using pararecovery and beacon or IMU 'dropzones' onto airbags. Assume that they have something like a .1-1m2 frontal cross-section, just because they are roughly the size of a cruise missile and thus don't need things like 10 square foot intakes per engine and 36" square radar antennas. Also no canopy and only limited controlsurfaces because they use thrust vector (both tail and midbody pif-paf).
Lastly, realize that, with NO MAN TO WORRY HIMSELF SICK ABOUT DYING they will gladly throw themselves on the enemy longspears, just so that their robotic cousins can walk across their backs.
NOW, the engagement model looks something like this-
0nm MOB1
..................................TS19.TS13.TS7.TS1>>>>>>>>>>F22-01/02..................F35-01/04....TS25-28<<Road Launcher2>>TS37-40
....................CAP1....TS20.TS14.TS8.TS2>>>>>>>>>>
..................................TS21.TS15.TS9.TS3>>>>>>>>>>F-22-03/04.................F35-05/08....TS29-32<<RoadLauncher1>>TS41-44
MOB2 ........CAP2....TS22.TS16.TS10.TS4>>>>>>>>>
..................................TS23.TS17.TS11.TS5>>>>>>>>>F-22-05/06.................F35-09/12....TS33-36<<Road Launcher 3>>TS45-48
....................CAP3....TS24.TS18.TS12.TS6>>>>>>>>>
50nm MOB3
Wherein the Turbosams (or small UCAVs) are spread out in a skirmish line just wide enough for each one's optical sensors to sweep across. And they are launched into holding orbits (to avoid the 1967 Egyptian Scenario) using airbase observers, radio listening stations and traitors within the Western air campaign administration to cue from. Now the F-22s are not able to funnel their shots down a single long necked column of target airframes. So that it's 24 missiles vs. Six Flankers. Instead, because of the targets very small signature and _deliberate_ lack of mutual support on a wide frontage, everbody has to be online and looking and everybody is only putting 1.5 shots into each of 8 targets, instead of four per as with the Flankers. For much the same reason, you can forget about ADAAM shooter-illuminatorism.
What's more, since there are _24_ Turbosams, and each will go from .85 Mach to 1.4 Mach on command from the ground stations, there is a decent chance that they will break past the forward screen, redeploy (creating a smaller survivors skirmish line) and collide with the F-35s whose small wings and slow cruise Mach point makes them very vulnerable at half the altitude the F-22s are at.
The 'real threat' then coming from the roadbase launchers which fire weapons both into the rear quarter of the F-35s based on acoustic, optical or even a Ding Hao guesstimate ground observer system (the _TSAMs_ being the 'fighter sweep' equivalent to surveillance and the fire control in a terminal kill vehicle system).
And so can both creep up the JSF's wake.
AND go after any Jammer/ADAAM or 'Offensive Tanking' that is coming up third in line.
48 X 2 million each = 96 million dollars expended. Even if you lost every single one of them while scoring only a few (say 5) kills that's /less than/ the loss of 2 of the previous scenario's Super Flankers. Even as it is (6X8 as 4 each R-27 and R-77) exactly THE SAME as the total shot count carried by those full-signature jets. Jets which have to come all the way back home (70-100nm, maybe more) to land on a 10,000ft runway. Jets which have a pilot that will never be more expert than the 60-80hrs of training you give him each year.
And that's a big difference.
Because those Alamo and Adder only mean something if the parent jet survives to launch them, in parameters, for a single-chance, hit-or-miss, shot on EACH threat that the Flanker can find and fix. Effectively, so long as they can talk to each other, EACH AND EVERY TURBO SAM IS A THREAT UNTO ITSELF FROM THE MOMENT IT LAUNCHES UNTIL IT RUNS OUT OF GAS. And unlike a rocket powered boost-slide weapons, if it misses it can come around and try-try again. Which collectively means that you could see 10 missiles dogpiling a single manned fighter and indeed /maneuvering with it/ until one can close up and gain a 'formating kill', ten feet off the side of the canopy. What's more, you will never be able to pin them down to their launch or recovery zones. Never be able to say WHERE those roadbases are. Because even if the trucks AND missiles show up, 'clean sky', on longrange radar; the missiles don't have to be recovered near where they are launched. And (at launch) they can easily be programmed to run out 10-20nm from the launcher before lofting up to cruise altitude from an offset clutter point.
Similarly, since the length and complexity of burst-code 'RTB!' recovery message will be short and very much LOS:altitude limited (you might even go with encoded optical flashers or colored flares) there is no reason to believe it will be ELINT exploitable either. Even RF is not an ELINT guarantee, given you burst-crypt from 100 beacons. Only 10 of them being 'real'. And only the missiles knowing which ones to listen to.
OTOH, from our side, it means that the trade between a 374,000 dollar AIM-120 is no longer against a 50 million dollar jet (.00748 or 133:1 cost:value trade). But rather against a 2 million dollar hunting weapon (.187 or a 5.3:1 cost:value trade). So it no longer pays us to invest in limited numbers of very expensive missiles for technology leverage either since not a single one will have the same range and performance as turbine powered weapons and thus 'pole' means little or nothing.
Is it beyond the SOA? I don't think so. I can put a lot of fancy seeker recognition and secure bandpipe features into a 2 million dollar missile whose baseline design is mimicked from recce/target drone technology already 50+ years plateau'd. Indeed, the last Blk.4 Tomahawk multiyear replenishment purchase by the USN (1/24/06) for instance was for 2,200 missiles in a 1.6 billion dollars contract award which works out to only 730,000 bucks each.
And the USAF knows this. And the USAF insists that they can 'compensate' by developing the 112 million dollar F-35 (twice the cost of the Su-30) with a 'later upgrade' to an ATL equipped F-35D configuration. A variant nominally intended for CAS but which is actually a hybrid of the F-35B (SDLF power shaft) and the F-35C airframe (big wings = slow boat with lotsa lift). And has _yet to even be approved_ for detail design work in a program which is already (191->276 billion) at 144% of initial budget.
The latter sirs is the point where SOMEONE with an ounce of budgetary sense and loyalty to the People's Fisque should _Just Say No_. As they look for a plug to pull on multiple Anti Deficiency Act and RICO based violations.
CONCLUSION:
The reality of life remains that for most BFE threats, there is no need to worry about any of this. Because they simply cannot afford even a billion dollars in high-leverage warwinner technology. For those nations a FEW sorties by a reasonabe (350-500) force of Raptors, backed by a BUNCH of endurance UCAVs is more useful because it is more tailored to the kinds of small and time-sensitive targets that characterize the 'policing the world' LIC/SSC/OOTW mission set. But when you start to talk about high intensity systems, when you start to make them have to link together so that the one supports the other in a 'hi lo mix'. THEN you start to see both a warfighter vulnerable to it's own cost. And a threat capability which gains in notoriety if not real defensive leverage. By putting the superior _cheap_ alternative optimized to exploit the weakness of the few with the masses of the many. Engaging from un unpredictable position where high cannot enable low without itself becoming vulnerable.
THAT is what 183 F-22 and 1,200+240+170 F-35 will eventually come to mean.
And then A Day will dawn in a beam of High Intensity Coherent Light and even the best tech-heavy manned systems will run yiping for the far horizon. For there will be DEWS upon the grass and every pilots life won't be worth the bloody vapor they flash to. That Day is less than 10 years off, IMO.
KPl.
>>
wow... a very informative and interesting read. you should write a book. perhaps you can persuade our government will better allocate fundings for the development of better AA missiles. i really have a hard time believing in the controlled excercises. they read like proproganda to me.
>>
Actually I'm very much a Raptor fan. It is one of the few, useful, and SOA pushing weapons systems out there in our inventory. I just don't like seeing the jet rendered as a superplane 'after the fact' of a decision to limited inventory purchase it with the intent to employ it aggressively beyond what we have the numbers or doctrine to support.
That said, my ideal for the perfect missile is one which goes to the threat and SITS ON IT. So that the moment it goes wheels in well (or even upon detection of taxi from a hardened shelter farm), you can send it to score the 'dogfight' kill by attacking at co-Mach and superior energy loading.
The best illustration of this is most likely the ADM-160 MALD. Which, in it's FIM-160 MALI format, was once touted as a principle element of the CMDI.
The nice thing about this is that you have a missile which, even if it costs 1-2 million dollars each (MALDs initial estimate was for a 75,000 dollar production weapon) can saturate the threat airspace so that the enemy never gets up a head of steam sufficient to get away from their baselanes. In this, I liken it to a pack of wolves constantly using hunting datalinks to cut off and hamstring any attempt by a manned jet to push out to a distance (now upwards of 55-60nm, even subsonically) from which the Western threat can release SDB.
It's that 3-5 minute window, from Viking Launch to maximum extension downrange, that you want to turn into a 'bar brawler' scenario and it is implicit to the notion of a turbine powered weapon with possible squib-rocket boosting. That can attack and then reattack a threat rather than do the typical of Miss-iles everywhere: Make one toss of the dice and craps out.
>>
As good as the raptor is, it's difficult for me to believe that it can take down 8 su-30's until i see it happen in a real combat situation. something just doesn't seem right about the numbers. i mean, it's one thing for an su3xx to 10:1 chance against the f-22 but it's another thing to have 10 su-3xx to have 1:1 odds. there are demishing returns when you add more fighters into the mix against a single f-22 cuz there are some many new variables added, sorta like a bar brawl.
>>
Here's how I see a Raptor : Super Flanker fight emerging-
0nm....................................................<Raptor 01
Su-30.Su-30.Su-30>>>>>>>>>>>< Raptor 02........//.......RQ-4RTIP
Su-30.Su-30.Su-30>>>>>>>>>>> <Raptor 03.......//........Raptor 05/06
5nm....................................................<Raptor 04
With Su-30s flying blind they need to linearize the possible number of vectors that can effect their game. i.e. Get enough of a head of steam that they can put everybody that CAN kill them, 'on the nose'. With a sustained supersprint of say Mach 1.6-2 all the way out from whatever CAP or QRA launch point they choose.
In this they have the advantage of seeing shots coming with MAKS or similar MLDS as well as possibly their IRSTs. While by stacking back, anything which tries to run up the baffles of the lead section is going to not only have a very hard geometry setup (making upwards of 90-120` worth of saddle turn). But is also going to 'flash aspect' as it does so. Potentially setting itself up for either an IR (even a Raptor will need burner to effectively catch a Flanker at full gallop) or possibly even radar shot.
Either way, the Flanker team's hope is that if they /just keep coming/ at say 10-20nm trail spacing, they will self-define the schwerpunkt by which they punch through the limited Raptor force (and _all_ USAF A2A doctrine remains set on Division or fourship level fighting formations, even if the individual sections are often detached by some distance) and hit the ISR, tanking or primary strike elements behind them.
Of course this means effectively turning your lead pilots into gator bait but if you are dedicated, it can work. So long as your shooters are also your MCG illuminators, they will not want to continue to close while the longer ranging shots time out because if even a few of the ones against the closest targets /miss/ you can cross the detection threshold at which a Flanker can fire back 'visually' (or by EOID).
OTOH, if you move to an extended range system like the AMRAAM-D, Meteor or indeed MALI equivalent, with 2-way datalinks and INS/GPS capable navigators to precisely measuring both own position and energy as a function of time of flight inherent to reaching all threat elements, in trail, then _theoretically_, so long as the threat signature remains relatively conventional (3-5m2) as soon as the 'Wall Of Raptors' launches their weapons, they can each split off into wide-out 'heart attack' shaped geometries designed to create curvilinear reengagement arcs on whatever needs cleaning up after the initial salvo. And if each shooter in the F-22 lead division has a full six BVR missiles onboard, thats going to be quite a few shots in the air as 'insurance' against the initial sections blowing on thru to reach whatever it is the Raptors are guarding.
The key being to of course 'never take a sniper rifle into a telephone booth expecting to beat a drunken midget with a pocket knife'. To avoid, as you put it, the bar brawl scenario.
In this, _if there are enough missiles onboard_, so that you don't have to to commit to a merge but can come off and then reengage, neutrally, I can well believe the numbers they are giving for 'synthetic shots' (modelled aspect/G-sustainment/SPJ/expendables).
The problem becomes what happens when it's not 'Raptor vs. Flanker'. But rather X-airframe vs. KC-135. Or X-airframe vs. F-16/35.
Because now you have heavily loaded, (fresh off the tanker), and fuel/timing critical strike aircraft pushing from behind. So that, in a zero-loss environment, you can't extend and reset but have to 'play thru' as this concentrated wave attack tries to break past you.
Reality Check Time:
50 Su-30MK2 X50 million each = 2.5 billion dollars.
Which is about all that Outer Podunk can afford for an entire /decade/ worth of cyclical (air/sea/land) military expenditure. And if they launch all at once, they may break up the first-day waves and give the JFACC a severe shock (if not his walking papers). But then they are a spent force because, especially at full blower, I doubt if more than 1 in ten will even have /the gas/ to get back home. And they will be chased the whole way. And bombed on their bases.
Looked from that perspective, a pilot would have to be an IDIOT to throw away his life on ghost-shots from aircraft he could not see but which were killing him, not from 60-80km out. But _250-500km_ which is what you can expect from an ADAAM (Air Directed AAM) shot being datalink command guided into a seeker cube.
OTOH... 500 Turbo-SAM @ 2 million each = 1 billion dollars. Assume they can fly for 2hrs @ 200nm or 30 minutes at Mach 1.4. Assume they can be truck launched from catapults like a modern day V-1 (indeed the Mirach 600 recce drone is exactly this). Assume that you can use them 5 times before refurbishment and 20 times before their done, using pararecovery and beacon or IMU 'dropzones' onto airbags. Assume that they have something like a .1-1m2 frontal cross-section, just because they are roughly the size of a cruise missile and thus don't need things like 10 square foot intakes per engine and 36" square radar antennas. Also no canopy and only limited controlsurfaces because they use thrust vector (both tail and midbody pif-paf).
Lastly, realize that, with NO MAN TO WORRY HIMSELF SICK ABOUT DYING they will gladly throw themselves on the enemy longspears, just so that their robotic cousins can walk across their backs.
NOW, the engagement model looks something like this-
0nm MOB1
..................................TS19.TS13.TS7.TS1>>>>>>>>>>F22-01/02..................F35-01/04....TS25-28<<Road Launcher2>>TS37-40
....................CAP1....TS20.TS14.TS8.TS2>>>>>>>>>>
..................................TS21.TS15.TS9.TS3>>>>>>>>>>F-22-03/04.................F35-05/08....TS29-32<<RoadLauncher1>>TS41-44
MOB2 ........CAP2....TS22.TS16.TS10.TS4>>>>>>>>>
..................................TS23.TS17.TS11.TS5>>>>>>>>>F-22-05/06.................F35-09/12....TS33-36<<Road Launcher 3>>TS45-48
....................CAP3....TS24.TS18.TS12.TS6>>>>>>>>>
50nm MOB3
Wherein the Turbosams (or small UCAVs) are spread out in a skirmish line just wide enough for each one's optical sensors to sweep across. And they are launched into holding orbits (to avoid the 1967 Egyptian Scenario) using airbase observers, radio listening stations and traitors within the Western air campaign administration to cue from. Now the F-22s are not able to funnel their shots down a single long necked column of target airframes. So that it's 24 missiles vs. Six Flankers. Instead, because of the targets very small signature and _deliberate_ lack of mutual support on a wide frontage, everbody has to be online and looking and everybody is only putting 1.5 shots into each of 8 targets, instead of four per as with the Flankers. For much the same reason, you can forget about ADAAM shooter-illuminatorism.
What's more, since there are _24_ Turbosams, and each will go from .85 Mach to 1.4 Mach on command from the ground stations, there is a decent chance that they will break past the forward screen, redeploy (creating a smaller survivors skirmish line) and collide with the F-35s whose small wings and slow cruise Mach point makes them very vulnerable at half the altitude the F-22s are at.
The 'real threat' then coming from the roadbase launchers which fire weapons both into the rear quarter of the F-35s based on acoustic, optical or even a Ding Hao guesstimate ground observer system (the _TSAMs_ being the 'fighter sweep' equivalent to surveillance and the fire control in a terminal kill vehicle system).
And so can both creep up the JSF's wake.
AND go after any Jammer/ADAAM or 'Offensive Tanking' that is coming up third in line.
48 X 2 million each = 96 million dollars expended. Even if you lost every single one of them while scoring only a few (say 5) kills that's /less than/ the loss of 2 of the previous scenario's Super Flankers. Even as it is (6X8 as 4 each R-27 and R-77) exactly THE SAME as the total shot count carried by those full-signature jets. Jets which have to come all the way back home (70-100nm, maybe more) to land on a 10,000ft runway. Jets which have a pilot that will never be more expert than the 60-80hrs of training you give him each year.
And that's a big difference.
Because those Alamo and Adder only mean something if the parent jet survives to launch them, in parameters, for a single-chance, hit-or-miss, shot on EACH threat that the Flanker can find and fix. Effectively, so long as they can talk to each other, EACH AND EVERY TURBO SAM IS A THREAT UNTO ITSELF FROM THE MOMENT IT LAUNCHES UNTIL IT RUNS OUT OF GAS. And unlike a rocket powered boost-slide weapons, if it misses it can come around and try-try again. Which collectively means that you could see 10 missiles dogpiling a single manned fighter and indeed /maneuvering with it/ until one can close up and gain a 'formating kill', ten feet off the side of the canopy. What's more, you will never be able to pin them down to their launch or recovery zones. Never be able to say WHERE those roadbases are. Because even if the trucks AND missiles show up, 'clean sky', on longrange radar; the missiles don't have to be recovered near where they are launched. And (at launch) they can easily be programmed to run out 10-20nm from the launcher before lofting up to cruise altitude from an offset clutter point.
Similarly, since the length and complexity of burst-code 'RTB!' recovery message will be short and very much LOS:altitude limited (you might even go with encoded optical flashers or colored flares) there is no reason to believe it will be ELINT exploitable either. Even RF is not an ELINT guarantee, given you burst-crypt from 100 beacons. Only 10 of them being 'real'. And only the missiles knowing which ones to listen to.
OTOH, from our side, it means that the trade between a 374,000 dollar AIM-120 is no longer against a 50 million dollar jet (.00748 or 133:1 cost:value trade). But rather against a 2 million dollar hunting weapon (.187 or a 5.3:1 cost:value trade). So it no longer pays us to invest in limited numbers of very expensive missiles for technology leverage either since not a single one will have the same range and performance as turbine powered weapons and thus 'pole' means little or nothing.
Is it beyond the SOA? I don't think so. I can put a lot of fancy seeker recognition and secure bandpipe features into a 2 million dollar missile whose baseline design is mimicked from recce/target drone technology already 50+ years plateau'd. Indeed, the last Blk.4 Tomahawk multiyear replenishment purchase by the USN (1/24/06) for instance was for 2,200 missiles in a 1.6 billion dollars contract award which works out to only 730,000 bucks each.
And the USAF knows this. And the USAF insists that they can 'compensate' by developing the 112 million dollar F-35 (twice the cost of the Su-30) with a 'later upgrade' to an ATL equipped F-35D configuration. A variant nominally intended for CAS but which is actually a hybrid of the F-35B (SDLF power shaft) and the F-35C airframe (big wings = slow boat with lotsa lift). And has _yet to even be approved_ for detail design work in a program which is already (191->276 billion) at 144% of initial budget.
The latter sirs is the point where SOMEONE with an ounce of budgetary sense and loyalty to the People's Fisque should _Just Say No_. As they look for a plug to pull on multiple Anti Deficiency Act and RICO based violations.
CONCLUSION:
The reality of life remains that for most BFE threats, there is no need to worry about any of this. Because they simply cannot afford even a billion dollars in high-leverage warwinner technology. For those nations a FEW sorties by a reasonabe (350-500) force of Raptors, backed by a BUNCH of endurance UCAVs is more useful because it is more tailored to the kinds of small and time-sensitive targets that characterize the 'policing the world' LIC/SSC/OOTW mission set. But when you start to talk about high intensity systems, when you start to make them have to link together so that the one supports the other in a 'hi lo mix'. THEN you start to see both a warfighter vulnerable to it's own cost. And a threat capability which gains in notoriety if not real defensive leverage. By putting the superior _cheap_ alternative optimized to exploit the weakness of the few with the masses of the many. Engaging from un unpredictable position where high cannot enable low without itself becoming vulnerable.
THAT is what 183 F-22 and 1,200+240+170 F-35 will eventually come to mean.
And then A Day will dawn in a beam of High Intensity Coherent Light and even the best tech-heavy manned systems will run yiping for the far horizon. For there will be DEWS upon the grass and every pilots life won't be worth the bloody vapor they flash to. That Day is less than 10 years off, IMO.
KPl.
The turbosam idea is basically a small fast UCAV. Make a UCAV fast and it provides so much more.
If the US develop a UCAV that can sit infront of the F-22 acting as a "bullbar" then the F-22 will be safe from any turbosams threat. The UCAV's would engage the turboSAM with its own missiles failing that, a UCAV could potentially pull over 10g in combat out performing the big heavy missile.
The turbosam being much heavier than a standard missile would see it struggle performance wise chasing the UCAV. If the missile attacked the UCAV head on the UCAV could be programmed to dive 20degree's to maintain speed while performing a 15G turn. A heavy 1000kg missile made in china would probably miss the UCAV. The turbosam would then have to turn around and attack the UCAV from behind.
Mean while the big daddy F-22 does not like his little UCAV being threatened and hits the turbosam on its bum with an AMRAAM.
The current UCAV design is proposed to be a slow subsonic aircraft with basic agility designed for strike missions only. However adding to the turbosam idea a second UCAV could be developed with supersonic speeds and thrust vectoring. Not only would it then keep pace with an F-22 with the F-22 but it could be used in a similar fashion to your turbo-sam idea.
If the US develop a UCAV that can sit infront of the F-22 acting as a "bullbar" then the F-22 will be safe from any turbosams threat. The UCAV's would engage the turboSAM with its own missiles failing that, a UCAV could potentially pull over 10g in combat out performing the big heavy missile.
The turbosam being much heavier than a standard missile would see it struggle performance wise chasing the UCAV. If the missile attacked the UCAV head on the UCAV could be programmed to dive 20degree's to maintain speed while performing a 15G turn. A heavy 1000kg missile made in china would probably miss the UCAV. The turbosam would then have to turn around and attack the UCAV from behind.
Mean while the big daddy F-22 does not like his little UCAV being threatened and hits the turbosam on its bum with an AMRAAM.
The current UCAV design is proposed to be a slow subsonic aircraft with basic agility designed for strike missions only. However adding to the turbosam idea a second UCAV could be developed with supersonic speeds and thrust vectoring. Not only would it then keep pace with an F-22 with the F-22 but it could be used in a similar fashion to your turbo-sam idea.
RJMaz1,
>>
The turbosam idea is basically a small fast UCAV. Make a UCAV fast and it provides so much more.
>>
Yes but there are key differences. The Turbosam doesn't have to pay a structural penalty inherent to landing gear, refueling receptacle or even 'training' (including bandwidth availability and trained pilot/operator corps among other problems) for joint manned/unmanned operational suitability.
It also doesn't need to recover to a fixed chunk of 10,000ft concrete.
This makes it more of a cross between a Bachem 349 Natter and an He-162 Spatz. Or to use a more modern context- 'the Katyusha of guerilla air defense'. Cheap. Unfixable. Lethal on a jetnoise-and-contrails-overhead basis of limited cue. No real integration with an equally expensive IADS required.
>>
If the US develop a UCAV that can sit in front of the F-22 acting as a "bullbar" then the F-22 will be safe from any turbosams threat. The UCAV's would engage the turboSAM with its own missiles failing that, a UCAV could potentially pull over 10g in combat out performing the big heavy missile.
>>
You mistake me sir. I never expected a microwinged Turbosam with a large chunk of it's performance subsonic to be /intended/ to kill the Raptor force running in at Mach 1.5+ and 45-50K+. Maneuvering to advantage on such a threat would be akin to turning an SR-71.
Rather the ideal is that it goes after the P-3 AIP and RQ-1/4 and EA-18 and KC/RC-135 and the E-3/8 etc. etc. i.e. the SLOW assets that are out there 'all the time'.
If this should, on occasion, include an F-16/35 major strike threat then so be it. If it doesn't, then you are still disrupting the ability to 'build picture' inherent to ISR. and 'go deep' in the rollback and airspace management/targeting assets. BEFORE that first raid happens.
>>
The turbosam being much heavier than a standard missile would see it struggle performance wise chasing the UCAV.
>>
Doubt it, very much. Back in the late 50's the Russians designed a single-use recce drone called the Tu-121 Jastreb.
http://aeroweb.lucia.it/rap/Museums/KENS09.jpg
It was used all the way up through the early 70s.
Routinely coming across the curtain and all the way out to the Channel Coast and going down to Spain before returning to the East. At Mach 2.8 and 60-70,000ft. It was a monster no doubt, roughly 91ft long, but the point is, when we were 'officially scared spitless of the MiG-25' _it was a drone we were looking at on radar tapes_. Indeed, things got so desperate (the only SAMs we had which could catch it were the nuclear-tipped variants of Bomarc and Nike Hercules) that an article was put in a leftist magazine in Britain 'warning of the consequences' if the flights were not stopped.
Now, keep in mind that, _with todays technology_, the TurboSAM is much more apt to look like one of these:
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-81.html
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-37.html
With a length of between 12 and 15ft. A weight between 500-1,500 POUNDS and a generally 'lazy' (lifting body, nose high alpha) subsonic performance as a pure delta or perhaps swing wing airframe.
And you start to realize two things:
1. You're going to smack it in the teeth. Or miss. And the /attempt/ to pull a 'superman' (euvering) loop will cost you so much energy that you will not be able to catch up again from behind. Just like MiG-25s later had a heckuva time cutting off the SR-71.
2. Your nose-on signature values are going to be _tiny_. Both optically and by radar. Which means that even an APG-77 (which can pick up other Raptors at as much as 100nm) may not be catching one of these things much outside of 40-60nm. And an optical search, while it may cue on singletons. Will not be able to find all 40-50 drones that are in a skirmish line separated by up to 15 miles of lateral and 10,000ft of vertical spacing.
>>
If the missile attacked the UCAV head on the UCAV could be programmed to dive 20degree's to maintain speed while performing a 15G turn. A heavy 1000kg missile made in china would probably miss the UCAV. The turbosam would then have to turn around and attack the UCAV from behind.
>>
Again, you are making a mistake. This is a _SAM_. It doesn't need to 'dogfight' like an Me-109/FW-190. It can obey a purely Hitlerian doctrine of 'Ignore the fighters, hit the bombers!'. And at Mach 2, on a kamikaze vector and angularly separated to that /whatever/ happens in the initial break, the victim is turning it's tail towards a second and third missile swooping in from the sides, enough will make it through to kill a significant number of strikers. Even if it's only a mission kill as the bombs and tanks come off and burners are lit to fight as close to equality as possible.
>>
Mean while the big daddy F-22 does not like his little UCAV being threatened and hits the turbosam on its bum with an AMRAAM.
>>
Big Daddy F-22 is carrying two GBU-32 or eight GBU-39. And so doesn't have but 2 AIM-120s and 2 AIM-9X to 'have an opinion with'. That's the key to our side of the equation vs. theirs. 'Real Wars' (according to Stalin) are not won by how many bad guys you can kill before dying. They are won by how many losses you can take and still win. Robots that move at Mach 2 cannot be 'argued with' in a conventional dogfighting turn'n'burn manner, they will not stop, ever, until they run out of gas or find a target worth destroying. Or hear the beacon to RTB in some open field somewhere.
And if there are 50+ of them, ALL IN THE AIR AT ONCE, (as opposed to 'In The Total Threat Force Orbat') then they provide a reasonable chance of scoring decent attrition, even against high energy fighters. While support mission platforms are morte-du-jour dust in the wind.
>>
The current UCAV design is proposed to be a slow subsonic aircraft with basic agility designed for strike missions only.
>>
I question this, less for the A2A function than for the simple need to submarine under the horizon and accept trashfire losses in trade for defeating long-LOS DEWS threats. But in any case, the fact remains: Better to lose a robot to a robot. Especially one designed around a 25 million dollar technology ceiling than it is to put blood up against a silicon chip and pretend that the 112 million dollar JSF or a 177 million dollar F-22 is 'all that you are risking'.
To a 2 million dollar T-SAM. Or a 1,500 dollar bunch of chemicals in a high energy Laser.
>>
However adding to the turbosam idea a second UCAV could be developed with supersonic speeds and thrust vectoring. Not only would it then keep pace with an F-22 with the F-22 but it could be used in a similar fashion to your turbo-sam idea.
>>
I'm afraid, if it comes down to UCAV:hunting missile technology then we will be limited in what we can do by the size of the internal weapons bays vs. the number of shots coming at us. An A-45/47 may be looking at something more akin to this-
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-160.html
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/cg...5.1155385272.RN3HuMOa9dUAAH5tASw&modele=jdc_1
Which is in the same 6ft, 250lb, category as a GBU-39. Even using a hybrid engine, such an 'AIM-160' system will be hard pressed in either total flight time (11 minutes at Mach 1.1 is 100nm but if you only pick up a target when it is _50nm_ out, you seriously in trouble for erecting a large screen force barrier before it's all over you). Or absolute performance (FQ Mach 1.4 to Mach 2++ may be a near impossible intercept solution to create).
My best guess for solving the Turbo-SAM problem would be either _truly effective_ optical LO (since all my systems are based on optical hunting) on a relatively featureless UCAV (no tail or cockpit or gaping inlets). Or a combination of very high capability lasers (high intensity, multiple rapid-fire salvos before cooling, dual upper or lower hemisphere turret optics) _forward_ in the ops area. Cued onto the defensive intercept threat by either a large bore SAIRST on an RQ-4. Or a true SATWACS ala Teal Ruby.
As long as the threat (TurboSAM) has to go supersonic early to compress both the leading edge of the conventional, mechanical-intercept AAM, response and to deny pursuit conversion by high energy UCAVs; it will have a minimum threshold size to encapsulate the fuel it can carry and still achieve climbout and a reasonable loiter before sweeping forward. Anything in the 15-20ft region especially, moving at high Mach, will be trackable using IR. Just as the F-22 is. If only they were honest about the limitations of the 'Topcoat' and crossdoped detectors on plume vs. primary EO detection thresholds as a function of cross cue from acquisition into fine angular tracking.
CONCLUSION:
The 'Chinese TurboSAM' you decry as this-
http://www.sinodefence.com/airforce/uav/ck1.asp
(More or less a cross between our Compass Cope/Buffalo Hunter and a Chukar)
Has already moved on to this-
http://www.sinodefence.com/airforce/uav/ck2.asp
Which means that, just by designing a target drone suitable for supersonic engagement, they have already got the basis of a Turbo-SAM, even if they are doctrinally stagnated into mimicking U.S.
OTOH, the true A2A UCAV is a weapons system you use to provide close in escort and suppression to things like helicopters or other bomber UCAV in lolo trashfire. Or apply as a "We don't know where the lasers are sir!" high altitude system against conventional threats where you have to maintain a long standoff with your manned assets. Again, the _primary driver_ is going to be COST. So that, with too few F-22 to adequately do the job of both strike (configuration penalty) and A2A (speed/proximity penalty), you can at least have something akin to a fighter performance (800-900 knots) system to hold the hand of the strike UCAVs while maintaining a nominally more autonomous combat sensor orientation (all forward rather than all down) to help cue to air targets autonomously.
How long this need will last once DEWS well and truly arrive I do not know. But as with all fighters, it will likely be able to switch hit with at least a pair of SDBs or other light IAMs so it may not be a single-use restrictive platform (as the Albino Eagle is), even with all air defenses completely down. It's low drag will also likely be a factor in achieved endurance for a given fuel load which will be important as the price of air campaigns continues to skyrocket with the per-barrel ri$e in oil.
KPl.
>>
The turbosam idea is basically a small fast UCAV. Make a UCAV fast and it provides so much more.
>>
Yes but there are key differences. The Turbosam doesn't have to pay a structural penalty inherent to landing gear, refueling receptacle or even 'training' (including bandwidth availability and trained pilot/operator corps among other problems) for joint manned/unmanned operational suitability.
It also doesn't need to recover to a fixed chunk of 10,000ft concrete.
This makes it more of a cross between a Bachem 349 Natter and an He-162 Spatz. Or to use a more modern context- 'the Katyusha of guerilla air defense'. Cheap. Unfixable. Lethal on a jetnoise-and-contrails-overhead basis of limited cue. No real integration with an equally expensive IADS required.
>>
If the US develop a UCAV that can sit in front of the F-22 acting as a "bullbar" then the F-22 will be safe from any turbosams threat. The UCAV's would engage the turboSAM with its own missiles failing that, a UCAV could potentially pull over 10g in combat out performing the big heavy missile.
>>
You mistake me sir. I never expected a microwinged Turbosam with a large chunk of it's performance subsonic to be /intended/ to kill the Raptor force running in at Mach 1.5+ and 45-50K+. Maneuvering to advantage on such a threat would be akin to turning an SR-71.
Rather the ideal is that it goes after the P-3 AIP and RQ-1/4 and EA-18 and KC/RC-135 and the E-3/8 etc. etc. i.e. the SLOW assets that are out there 'all the time'.
If this should, on occasion, include an F-16/35 major strike threat then so be it. If it doesn't, then you are still disrupting the ability to 'build picture' inherent to ISR. and 'go deep' in the rollback and airspace management/targeting assets. BEFORE that first raid happens.
>>
The turbosam being much heavier than a standard missile would see it struggle performance wise chasing the UCAV.
>>
Doubt it, very much. Back in the late 50's the Russians designed a single-use recce drone called the Tu-121 Jastreb.
http://aeroweb.lucia.it/rap/Museums/KENS09.jpg
It was used all the way up through the early 70s.
Routinely coming across the curtain and all the way out to the Channel Coast and going down to Spain before returning to the East. At Mach 2.8 and 60-70,000ft. It was a monster no doubt, roughly 91ft long, but the point is, when we were 'officially scared spitless of the MiG-25' _it was a drone we were looking at on radar tapes_. Indeed, things got so desperate (the only SAMs we had which could catch it were the nuclear-tipped variants of Bomarc and Nike Hercules) that an article was put in a leftist magazine in Britain 'warning of the consequences' if the flights were not stopped.
Now, keep in mind that, _with todays technology_, the TurboSAM is much more apt to look like one of these:
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-81.html
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-37.html
With a length of between 12 and 15ft. A weight between 500-1,500 POUNDS and a generally 'lazy' (lifting body, nose high alpha) subsonic performance as a pure delta or perhaps swing wing airframe.
And you start to realize two things:
1. You're going to smack it in the teeth. Or miss. And the /attempt/ to pull a 'superman' (euvering) loop will cost you so much energy that you will not be able to catch up again from behind. Just like MiG-25s later had a heckuva time cutting off the SR-71.
2. Your nose-on signature values are going to be _tiny_. Both optically and by radar. Which means that even an APG-77 (which can pick up other Raptors at as much as 100nm) may not be catching one of these things much outside of 40-60nm. And an optical search, while it may cue on singletons. Will not be able to find all 40-50 drones that are in a skirmish line separated by up to 15 miles of lateral and 10,000ft of vertical spacing.
>>
If the missile attacked the UCAV head on the UCAV could be programmed to dive 20degree's to maintain speed while performing a 15G turn. A heavy 1000kg missile made in china would probably miss the UCAV. The turbosam would then have to turn around and attack the UCAV from behind.
>>
Again, you are making a mistake. This is a _SAM_. It doesn't need to 'dogfight' like an Me-109/FW-190. It can obey a purely Hitlerian doctrine of 'Ignore the fighters, hit the bombers!'. And at Mach 2, on a kamikaze vector and angularly separated to that /whatever/ happens in the initial break, the victim is turning it's tail towards a second and third missile swooping in from the sides, enough will make it through to kill a significant number of strikers. Even if it's only a mission kill as the bombs and tanks come off and burners are lit to fight as close to equality as possible.
>>
Mean while the big daddy F-22 does not like his little UCAV being threatened and hits the turbosam on its bum with an AMRAAM.
>>
Big Daddy F-22 is carrying two GBU-32 or eight GBU-39. And so doesn't have but 2 AIM-120s and 2 AIM-9X to 'have an opinion with'. That's the key to our side of the equation vs. theirs. 'Real Wars' (according to Stalin) are not won by how many bad guys you can kill before dying. They are won by how many losses you can take and still win. Robots that move at Mach 2 cannot be 'argued with' in a conventional dogfighting turn'n'burn manner, they will not stop, ever, until they run out of gas or find a target worth destroying. Or hear the beacon to RTB in some open field somewhere.
And if there are 50+ of them, ALL IN THE AIR AT ONCE, (as opposed to 'In The Total Threat Force Orbat') then they provide a reasonable chance of scoring decent attrition, even against high energy fighters. While support mission platforms are morte-du-jour dust in the wind.
>>
The current UCAV design is proposed to be a slow subsonic aircraft with basic agility designed for strike missions only.
>>
I question this, less for the A2A function than for the simple need to submarine under the horizon and accept trashfire losses in trade for defeating long-LOS DEWS threats. But in any case, the fact remains: Better to lose a robot to a robot. Especially one designed around a 25 million dollar technology ceiling than it is to put blood up against a silicon chip and pretend that the 112 million dollar JSF or a 177 million dollar F-22 is 'all that you are risking'.
To a 2 million dollar T-SAM. Or a 1,500 dollar bunch of chemicals in a high energy Laser.
>>
However adding to the turbosam idea a second UCAV could be developed with supersonic speeds and thrust vectoring. Not only would it then keep pace with an F-22 with the F-22 but it could be used in a similar fashion to your turbo-sam idea.
>>
I'm afraid, if it comes down to UCAV:hunting missile technology then we will be limited in what we can do by the size of the internal weapons bays vs. the number of shots coming at us. An A-45/47 may be looking at something more akin to this-
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-160.html
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/cg...5.1155385272.RN3HuMOa9dUAAH5tASw&modele=jdc_1
Which is in the same 6ft, 250lb, category as a GBU-39. Even using a hybrid engine, such an 'AIM-160' system will be hard pressed in either total flight time (11 minutes at Mach 1.1 is 100nm but if you only pick up a target when it is _50nm_ out, you seriously in trouble for erecting a large screen force barrier before it's all over you). Or absolute performance (FQ Mach 1.4 to Mach 2++ may be a near impossible intercept solution to create).
My best guess for solving the Turbo-SAM problem would be either _truly effective_ optical LO (since all my systems are based on optical hunting) on a relatively featureless UCAV (no tail or cockpit or gaping inlets). Or a combination of very high capability lasers (high intensity, multiple rapid-fire salvos before cooling, dual upper or lower hemisphere turret optics) _forward_ in the ops area. Cued onto the defensive intercept threat by either a large bore SAIRST on an RQ-4. Or a true SATWACS ala Teal Ruby.
As long as the threat (TurboSAM) has to go supersonic early to compress both the leading edge of the conventional, mechanical-intercept AAM, response and to deny pursuit conversion by high energy UCAVs; it will have a minimum threshold size to encapsulate the fuel it can carry and still achieve climbout and a reasonable loiter before sweeping forward. Anything in the 15-20ft region especially, moving at high Mach, will be trackable using IR. Just as the F-22 is. If only they were honest about the limitations of the 'Topcoat' and crossdoped detectors on plume vs. primary EO detection thresholds as a function of cross cue from acquisition into fine angular tracking.
CONCLUSION:
The 'Chinese TurboSAM' you decry as this-
http://www.sinodefence.com/airforce/uav/ck1.asp
(More or less a cross between our Compass Cope/Buffalo Hunter and a Chukar)
Has already moved on to this-
http://www.sinodefence.com/airforce/uav/ck2.asp
Which means that, just by designing a target drone suitable for supersonic engagement, they have already got the basis of a Turbo-SAM, even if they are doctrinally stagnated into mimicking U.S.
OTOH, the true A2A UCAV is a weapons system you use to provide close in escort and suppression to things like helicopters or other bomber UCAV in lolo trashfire. Or apply as a "We don't know where the lasers are sir!" high altitude system against conventional threats where you have to maintain a long standoff with your manned assets. Again, the _primary driver_ is going to be COST. So that, with too few F-22 to adequately do the job of both strike (configuration penalty) and A2A (speed/proximity penalty), you can at least have something akin to a fighter performance (800-900 knots) system to hold the hand of the strike UCAVs while maintaining a nominally more autonomous combat sensor orientation (all forward rather than all down) to help cue to air targets autonomously.
How long this need will last once DEWS well and truly arrive I do not know. But as with all fighters, it will likely be able to switch hit with at least a pair of SDBs or other light IAMs so it may not be a single-use restrictive platform (as the Albino Eagle is), even with all air defenses completely down. It's low drag will also likely be a factor in achieved endurance for a given fuel load which will be important as the price of air campaigns continues to skyrocket with the per-barrel ri$e in oil.
KPl.
The turbosam idea of recovering the missile would only work well if you are defending your home soil. In desert storm the turbosam would have to fly into Iraq territory and then back out again once fuel reached a certain level. So its range would be halved.
When you are the attacker the turbosam is not ideal as you may not have the forces on the ground to recover the missile. However the turbosam idea may indeed be the next major threat the USAF faces.
To counter chinesse turbosam's we would not launch similar spec turbosams in defence. That would be like launching F-15's to attack suhkoi's, it would be much better to launch a slightly more advanced weapon than the enemies. So to kill the chinesse 1000kilo missile you'd something with more range, more intelligence and has the ability to take out more than one turbosam.
That sounds indeed like a UCAV to me. A UCAV with a few AMRAAMs internally with a good radar could hunt for the turbosam's just like the turbosams are hunting for it. They will both find eachother eventually the UCAV would probably have better tracking abilities due to its much large size. They would then attack eachother robot versus robot. However the UCAV has AMRAAMs onboard so it could launch these at the turbosam providing the UCAV with a huge advantage. If the AMRAAMs miss and the UCAV get shot down you'd loose 30 million no pilot lost. However the chances are the AMRAAM would hit and the UCAV can then return to the carrier to re-arm or search for more turbosam's.
So in conclusion the turbo-sam is ideal if you are defending an attack from the USAF's current force structure. However realising that the best defence for a turbo-sam is a cheap pilotless aircraft that can be lost and you can flood enemy airspace with, just like the enemy will flood the air with turbo-sams. So the US should not be devloping turbo-sams but UCAV's.
When you are the attacker the turbosam is not ideal as you may not have the forces on the ground to recover the missile. However the turbosam idea may indeed be the next major threat the USAF faces.
To counter chinesse turbosam's we would not launch similar spec turbosams in defence. That would be like launching F-15's to attack suhkoi's, it would be much better to launch a slightly more advanced weapon than the enemies. So to kill the chinesse 1000kilo missile you'd something with more range, more intelligence and has the ability to take out more than one turbosam.
That sounds indeed like a UCAV to me. A UCAV with a few AMRAAMs internally with a good radar could hunt for the turbosam's just like the turbosams are hunting for it. They will both find eachother eventually the UCAV would probably have better tracking abilities due to its much large size. They would then attack eachother robot versus robot. However the UCAV has AMRAAMs onboard so it could launch these at the turbosam providing the UCAV with a huge advantage. If the AMRAAMs miss and the UCAV get shot down you'd loose 30 million no pilot lost. However the chances are the AMRAAM would hit and the UCAV can then return to the carrier to re-arm or search for more turbosam's.
So in conclusion the turbo-sam is ideal if you are defending an attack from the USAF's current force structure. However realising that the best defence for a turbo-sam is a cheap pilotless aircraft that can be lost and you can flood enemy airspace with, just like the enemy will flood the air with turbo-sams. So the US should not be devloping turbo-sams but UCAV's.
weasel1962
New Member
Re:
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Deleted
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RubiconNZ
The Wanderer
Flog a dead horse perhaps but .......
Retired RAAF Vice-Marshal: Abandon F-35, Buy F-22s (updated)
F-22s for Australia?
In "Rapped in the Raptor: why Australia must have the best," Australian newspaper The Age reports that:
"[Recently] Retired RAAF air vice-marshal Peter Criss has put aside usual conventions to openly question the wisdom of Canberra spending about $16 billion for the F-35 Lightning, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter. The Government committed an initial $300 million to become an early partner in the JSF program, with a final decision to be made by 2008. But Mr Criss says the RAAF should, in fact, consider buying the F-22 Raptor..."
Criss' disquiet is the first significant breaking of ranks by top military brass over this issue, and DID has been given his complete statement which is now reproduced below. In addition, Australia's opposition Labour Party has stepped into the fray with a formal statement discussing the fighter gap that will exist once the F-111s are retired early in 2010. Australia's F-35 purchase is rapidly moving from an assumed conclusion to a very serious debate....
Retired Air Vice Marshal Peter Criss' full statement, forwarded to DID via email, reads as follows:
Air Vice-Marshal Criss has called for an open debate between all interested Australian parties at a neutral location on all aspects associated with the selection of a replacement aircraft or aircrafts for the existing F/A-18 and the F-111 fleets. He said he had heard the Minister recently quoted as saying that the JSF may not be the aircraft for Australia but the F22 would not be a contender.
"The basis of this position must be divulged to the Australian public in open forum and be subjected to critical evaluation by interested Australians - not interested foreign contractors and Defence Department bureaucrats advising the Minister." From Air Vice-Marshal Criss's perspective, the decision to join the collaborative development team working on the JSF in the late nineties wascommendable; however, unfortunately some appear to have allowed this investment to incorrectly influence the potential procurement advice going to the Minster he said.
Air Vice Marshal Criss was present at discussions between the Chief of both the United States and Australian air forces in the late nineties when the F-22 was offered to the RAAF and it was dismissed out of hand by the Australian delegate. "At the time very little was known about either aircraft and the F-22 was being quoted as approximately fourtimes more expensive than the JSF so I thought the Australian position was understandable at that time".
"Today, and especially by the expected delivery time for the JSF in 2012 (or perhaps later), there appears to be very little if any difference in price between the two contenders and yet there is no comparison in capability, with the F-22 demonstrating proven performance well beyond anything the JSF is likely to deliver when it eventually comes off paper and into production."
Criss remembers well what Secretary of Defence McNamara sought in the early sixties with the intended multi-role F-111 - "we got an excellent bomber but a worthless fighter - the two roles are too incompatible for a common platform and I don't care how far technology has moved since the McNamara days."
"What concerns me is that if the Minister is now saying that the JSF may not be the aircraft for Australia, and I think he is right, and if the Minister is dismissing the F-22 out of hand without disclosing the basis for this decision, then the only other possible contender that could remotely fit the Australian requirement would be the Boeing Super Hornet, a slightly more advanced version of the aircraft currently in service with the RAAF, employing technology far inferior to any potential adversary in our region and incorporating technology far inferior to anything the JSF or F-22 has to offer."
Air Vice-Marshal Criss said that those advising the Minister must be prepared to have their advice examined and challenged in an open forum on neutral ground by appropriately cleared impartial Australian specialists:
"Frankly, it is not good enough to hide under the security classification bubble to protect the Minister and the Government from very close scrutiny of this critical national defence issue - the future generations of all Australians depends on getting the F/A-18 and F-111 replacement decision right, and up to now what I am reading is exactly that - a claim that one aircraft is better than another but I can't tell you why.
What I am seeing is a classic 'Yes Minister', and Sir Humphrey would be proud but I am not", the retired Air Commander Australia said.
----
F-35 JSF
If the Australian government is approaching the F-35 decision as an internal debate, however, the deal's opponents are laying out their own thinking in very clear and detailed terms. For instance, we have a detailed analysis that argues for Criss' preference within a larger strategic framework It connects Australia's strategic imperatives to regional developments and threats, before looking at aircraft capabilities and costs; all to make the case that RAAF F-35As are a mistake, and the F-22 a better option given Australia's needs. See also Australia's Joint Standing Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade's "Inquiry into Australian Defence Force Regional Air Superiority" for shorter and less in-depth submissions from many other sources, as well as several from Australia's Department of Defence (which supports the F-35A).
Criss' remarks have also energized Australia's Labour Party opposition, which openly backed Criss' call for a re-examination of the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter purchase.
Robert McClelland MP, the opposition Shadow Minister for Defence and the Federal Member for Barton, New South Wales, has advocated an initial buy of F-22s instead of the initial F-35 tier for some time now - most notably in his address to the ANU Strategic & Defence Studies Centre on April 6, 2006 [PDF format]. He contends that this 2012 buy would fill the gap left by the F-111s, maintain Australia's regional air superiority over local SU-27/30 Flanker variants, and allow Australia to reduce both cost per aircraft and risk by buying later (and hence cheaper and more proven) production examples of the F-35 Lightning II. His most recent public statement, "Minding the gap - the Joint Strike Fighter and Australia's air capability," lays out his criticism of the current approach:
...it was Hughes in 1925 who said:
"The aeroplane comes to us in Australia as a gift from the gods, for it places in our hands and within our resources an agency so exactly suited to our circumstances that we might well regard it as designed for our special benefit and protection."
And he was right.... Our neighbours are buying ever more advanced aircraft - this was no doubt one of the reasons the Howard Government signed up for the JSF project in 2003.
What the Howard Government failed to do - at the time or since - is have a plan B whereby an alternative aircraft would be available if the JSF was delayed. Singapore, involved in the same JSF project, has a plan B.
In fact so great is the Howard Government's faith in the JSF that the usual tendering processes for very large projects were thrown out the window. The JSF was taken on faith without having taken to the air.
There is another aircraft available, the F/A-22 Raptor. It costs more than the JSF on current indications although that price gap appears to be closing [DID: for early production F-35s, est. about $100-115 million vs. about $140 million for additional F-22As]. But this aircraft is a proven performer and its strike capability is being enhanced.
The worry is that the Howard Government and a goodly proportion of the defence establishment refuse to look seriously at the Raptor, and keep staring intently, perhaps wishfully, at the JSF. There is still no plan B to maintain our air superiority until delivery of the JSF.
Also there is simply no way the JSF will be introduced for service in Australia in 2012 - final testing is programmed to continue to 2013. Some pundits are betting this country will not receive its allocation of JSFs until 2020!
So with the F-111s to be rolled out of their hangars for the last time in 2010, Australia will face a big capability gap, the duration of which no one can be sure.
.... Australia's regional standing and influence has a direct relationship to our air combat capability....
----
The debate in Australia promises to become more and more interesting, not least given the existing US prohibitions on export of the F-22 Raptor. But what happens if two key US allies, Australia and a suddenly more prominent Japan, are both asking and both very serious?
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/
Now some of this I don't buy especially the advanced neighbour in our immediate area with nice planes no weapons or a couple of planes with no weapon kind of countries, however the wider strategic environment includes India, China and Pakistan, however to be honest I’m starting to be uncertain about the JSF buy, comments, article completely out field, one thing I don't understand is the bashing of the Super Hornet, is the article saying that the Super Bug leaves the US Navy drastically weak against advanced fighters until the intro of the JSF which will not even do the job? I suppose a lot of you are tired of it, but still I’m curious....
Retired RAAF Vice-Marshal: Abandon F-35, Buy F-22s (updated)
F-22s for Australia?
In "Rapped in the Raptor: why Australia must have the best," Australian newspaper The Age reports that:
"[Recently] Retired RAAF air vice-marshal Peter Criss has put aside usual conventions to openly question the wisdom of Canberra spending about $16 billion for the F-35 Lightning, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter. The Government committed an initial $300 million to become an early partner in the JSF program, with a final decision to be made by 2008. But Mr Criss says the RAAF should, in fact, consider buying the F-22 Raptor..."
Criss' disquiet is the first significant breaking of ranks by top military brass over this issue, and DID has been given his complete statement which is now reproduced below. In addition, Australia's opposition Labour Party has stepped into the fray with a formal statement discussing the fighter gap that will exist once the F-111s are retired early in 2010. Australia's F-35 purchase is rapidly moving from an assumed conclusion to a very serious debate....
Retired Air Vice Marshal Peter Criss' full statement, forwarded to DID via email, reads as follows:
Air Vice-Marshal Criss has called for an open debate between all interested Australian parties at a neutral location on all aspects associated with the selection of a replacement aircraft or aircrafts for the existing F/A-18 and the F-111 fleets. He said he had heard the Minister recently quoted as saying that the JSF may not be the aircraft for Australia but the F22 would not be a contender.
"The basis of this position must be divulged to the Australian public in open forum and be subjected to critical evaluation by interested Australians - not interested foreign contractors and Defence Department bureaucrats advising the Minister." From Air Vice-Marshal Criss's perspective, the decision to join the collaborative development team working on the JSF in the late nineties wascommendable; however, unfortunately some appear to have allowed this investment to incorrectly influence the potential procurement advice going to the Minster he said.
Air Vice Marshal Criss was present at discussions between the Chief of both the United States and Australian air forces in the late nineties when the F-22 was offered to the RAAF and it was dismissed out of hand by the Australian delegate. "At the time very little was known about either aircraft and the F-22 was being quoted as approximately fourtimes more expensive than the JSF so I thought the Australian position was understandable at that time".
"Today, and especially by the expected delivery time for the JSF in 2012 (or perhaps later), there appears to be very little if any difference in price between the two contenders and yet there is no comparison in capability, with the F-22 demonstrating proven performance well beyond anything the JSF is likely to deliver when it eventually comes off paper and into production."
Criss remembers well what Secretary of Defence McNamara sought in the early sixties with the intended multi-role F-111 - "we got an excellent bomber but a worthless fighter - the two roles are too incompatible for a common platform and I don't care how far technology has moved since the McNamara days."
"What concerns me is that if the Minister is now saying that the JSF may not be the aircraft for Australia, and I think he is right, and if the Minister is dismissing the F-22 out of hand without disclosing the basis for this decision, then the only other possible contender that could remotely fit the Australian requirement would be the Boeing Super Hornet, a slightly more advanced version of the aircraft currently in service with the RAAF, employing technology far inferior to any potential adversary in our region and incorporating technology far inferior to anything the JSF or F-22 has to offer."
Air Vice-Marshal Criss said that those advising the Minister must be prepared to have their advice examined and challenged in an open forum on neutral ground by appropriately cleared impartial Australian specialists:
"Frankly, it is not good enough to hide under the security classification bubble to protect the Minister and the Government from very close scrutiny of this critical national defence issue - the future generations of all Australians depends on getting the F/A-18 and F-111 replacement decision right, and up to now what I am reading is exactly that - a claim that one aircraft is better than another but I can't tell you why.
What I am seeing is a classic 'Yes Minister', and Sir Humphrey would be proud but I am not", the retired Air Commander Australia said.
----
F-35 JSF
If the Australian government is approaching the F-35 decision as an internal debate, however, the deal's opponents are laying out their own thinking in very clear and detailed terms. For instance, we have a detailed analysis that argues for Criss' preference within a larger strategic framework It connects Australia's strategic imperatives to regional developments and threats, before looking at aircraft capabilities and costs; all to make the case that RAAF F-35As are a mistake, and the F-22 a better option given Australia's needs. See also Australia's Joint Standing Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade's "Inquiry into Australian Defence Force Regional Air Superiority" for shorter and less in-depth submissions from many other sources, as well as several from Australia's Department of Defence (which supports the F-35A).
Criss' remarks have also energized Australia's Labour Party opposition, which openly backed Criss' call for a re-examination of the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter purchase.
Robert McClelland MP, the opposition Shadow Minister for Defence and the Federal Member for Barton, New South Wales, has advocated an initial buy of F-22s instead of the initial F-35 tier for some time now - most notably in his address to the ANU Strategic & Defence Studies Centre on April 6, 2006 [PDF format]. He contends that this 2012 buy would fill the gap left by the F-111s, maintain Australia's regional air superiority over local SU-27/30 Flanker variants, and allow Australia to reduce both cost per aircraft and risk by buying later (and hence cheaper and more proven) production examples of the F-35 Lightning II. His most recent public statement, "Minding the gap - the Joint Strike Fighter and Australia's air capability," lays out his criticism of the current approach:
...it was Hughes in 1925 who said:
"The aeroplane comes to us in Australia as a gift from the gods, for it places in our hands and within our resources an agency so exactly suited to our circumstances that we might well regard it as designed for our special benefit and protection."
And he was right.... Our neighbours are buying ever more advanced aircraft - this was no doubt one of the reasons the Howard Government signed up for the JSF project in 2003.
What the Howard Government failed to do - at the time or since - is have a plan B whereby an alternative aircraft would be available if the JSF was delayed. Singapore, involved in the same JSF project, has a plan B.
In fact so great is the Howard Government's faith in the JSF that the usual tendering processes for very large projects were thrown out the window. The JSF was taken on faith without having taken to the air.
There is another aircraft available, the F/A-22 Raptor. It costs more than the JSF on current indications although that price gap appears to be closing [DID: for early production F-35s, est. about $100-115 million vs. about $140 million for additional F-22As]. But this aircraft is a proven performer and its strike capability is being enhanced.
The worry is that the Howard Government and a goodly proportion of the defence establishment refuse to look seriously at the Raptor, and keep staring intently, perhaps wishfully, at the JSF. There is still no plan B to maintain our air superiority until delivery of the JSF.
Also there is simply no way the JSF will be introduced for service in Australia in 2012 - final testing is programmed to continue to 2013. Some pundits are betting this country will not receive its allocation of JSFs until 2020!
So with the F-111s to be rolled out of their hangars for the last time in 2010, Australia will face a big capability gap, the duration of which no one can be sure.
.... Australia's regional standing and influence has a direct relationship to our air combat capability....
----
The debate in Australia promises to become more and more interesting, not least given the existing US prohibitions on export of the F-22 Raptor. But what happens if two key US allies, Australia and a suddenly more prominent Japan, are both asking and both very serious?
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/
Now some of this I don't buy especially the advanced neighbour in our immediate area with nice planes no weapons or a couple of planes with no weapon kind of countries, however the wider strategic environment includes India, China and Pakistan, however to be honest I’m starting to be uncertain about the JSF buy, comments, article completely out field, one thing I don't understand is the bashing of the Super Hornet, is the article saying that the Super Bug leaves the US Navy drastically weak against advanced fighters until the intro of the JSF which will not even do the job? I suppose a lot of you are tired of it, but still I’m curious....
The US categorically stated last week that F-22 would not be available for export.robsta83 said:
Have you read some of the responses in T5C?
more to the point are the comments made at the Joint Committee on the 10th Oct.
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Australia should forget about buying F-22s, as America has no intentions of selling any!
The reason why the Australian defence minister asked the department for a second choice is that this years last American order for F-22s ran 186 million in US dollars each. There won't be any extension to the F-22 production line, not even America can afford F-22s in numbers.
I expect the second choice, Plan B, to be an Australian order for 100 Super Hornets, the latest versions. The US Navy is and will be buying Super Hornets for another several years. Their price is around 50 million in US dollars. Australia can afford Super Hornets, their price is a known fact, the Super Hornets cost in the vicinity of what Australia expected to pay for the JSF, F-35As.
Of course, the final price for the F-35As is open to question, there have been no confirmed orders, nor has the US government or any other government confirmed its numbers as yet. The higher the costs, the fewer aircraft bought, creating an even higher price. The dog is chasing its tail pricing the F-35.
On the other hand, if the acquisition costs for the F-35 is indeed 50 million in US dollars, Australia can afford the JSF. But there are too many governments and too many legislatures wishing to kill the program, these numbers will never be confirmed, creating an aircraft too expensive for any nation to buy in quantity. The Cost Panic is already happening! The orginial poster confirms this!
Australia is so large, its needs maritime strike, in my opinion the best aircraft around selling for a price Australia can afford in enough numbers is the Super Hornet.
The reason why the Australian defence minister asked the department for a second choice is that this years last American order for F-22s ran 186 million in US dollars each. There won't be any extension to the F-22 production line, not even America can afford F-22s in numbers.
I expect the second choice, Plan B, to be an Australian order for 100 Super Hornets, the latest versions. The US Navy is and will be buying Super Hornets for another several years. Their price is around 50 million in US dollars. Australia can afford Super Hornets, their price is a known fact, the Super Hornets cost in the vicinity of what Australia expected to pay for the JSF, F-35As.
Of course, the final price for the F-35As is open to question, there have been no confirmed orders, nor has the US government or any other government confirmed its numbers as yet. The higher the costs, the fewer aircraft bought, creating an even higher price. The dog is chasing its tail pricing the F-35.
On the other hand, if the acquisition costs for the F-35 is indeed 50 million in US dollars, Australia can afford the JSF. But there are too many governments and too many legislatures wishing to kill the program, these numbers will never be confirmed, creating an aircraft too expensive for any nation to buy in quantity. The Cost Panic is already happening! The orginial poster confirms this!
Australia is so large, its needs maritime strike, in my opinion the best aircraft around selling for a price Australia can afford in enough numbers is the Super Hornet.
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knightrider4
Active Member
Super Hornet
I see your point if you cant purchase enough aircraft in sufficient numbers you may as well not get them. However there are far better options than a Super Hornet in my view. Maybe a small purchase of SH's for maritime strike but certainly not as a one aircraft for all situations it's simply not good enough. Perhaps a 70 EF2000/30 Super Hornet split now thats more like it.
I see your point if you cant purchase enough aircraft in sufficient numbers you may as well not get them. However there are far better options than a Super Hornet in my view. Maybe a small purchase of SH's for maritime strike but certainly not as a one aircraft for all situations it's simply not good enough. Perhaps a 70 EF2000/30 Super Hornet split now thats more like it.
The Joint Committe made it clear on the 10th Oct that no interim is being sought.Sea Toby said:
Boeing have already made an approach for shornet and got bounced.
The comments have yet to be released in the public domain, but the words "catastrophic need" were used as the only case where an interim would be considered.
Cootamundra
New Member
AGREED. Criss, the ALP, Goon, Copp et al are all living in fairly land.Sea Toby said:
RAAF has again said that they DO NOT expect to need the plan B option. JSF is still on track and expected to cost around the initial expectations. Yes, the price will be more and POTENTIALLY the price will be MUCH more assuming the US Services don't buy in the quantity that is expected.
The cost panic is over-rated, none of us will know until the MOU is signed in 08, until then all of this is pure speculation and politicking. The SH is a viable alternative if needed, but we don't need to worry about it just yetSea Toby said:
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