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2004-08-06 Home Front: Tech

America's Eagle is brought down to earth with a bump

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Posted by penguin 2004-08-06 6:40:01 PM|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 1970's weapons engineering = long in tooth...

Posted by borgboy 2004-08-06 7:17:24 PM|| 2004-08-06 7:17:24 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 Something to pay attention to. It also worth remembering that the Brits were surprised at the quality of the Argentine pilots.

(Until they recalled Juan Manuel Fangio and his ilk)
Or any country that produces F1 drivers is likely to have a few good pilots.

Posted by Shipman 2004-08-06 7:31:01 PM|| 2004-08-06 7:31:01 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 Stealth, thrust-vectoring....things the F-15 doesn't have, and the Raptor does. Congress has got to get off it's collective arse.

Posted by Rex Mundi 2004-08-06 7:40:02 PM|| 2004-08-06 7:40:02 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 This was posted here some time ago. Please refer to this Rantburg article.

Posted by Zenster 2004-08-06 7:41:55 PM|| 2004-08-06 7:41:55 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 15 is primarily now a groundstrike bird. The "Starship" (As the ADF version is known) is very long in the tooth. An F16C Block 50 or better would be a better adversary - and the F/A-18G is probably the best all around aircraft fielded by the US these days.

Other things to consider: There were no AWACS involved from the US, but Indian battlespace radars (IN line with old Soviet/Russian doctine of Positive Control) was used to give the Indian pilots guidance to the target in EM quite fashion - without being challenged with Wild Weasel SEAD/IRON-Hand strike on it.

SO basically the Indians were given vectoring to the US Aircraft, the US Aircraft were left blind, and it was a simple "Jump 'em" dogfighting, with the US forces going in blind and dumb.

Even so - they should have had a better accounting than a 9 to 1 combat loss ratio.

Some of that is attributable to air crew training - after all US Air Superiority pilots mainly work against airliners and stray Cessnas these days, and most of them are in the mud moving business doing ground support in the GWOT. So their training (especially dissimilar aircraft training) was probably not where it should be (thus the reason for exercises like these).

Secondarily, the F15 is not a dogfighter, the newer Sukhois are. And with the newer standoff missles the Russian hs, they now have "long enough arms" to force the US to fight straight up (The AMRAAM is outranged by some of the more modern Russian AA missles), and in a straight up dogfight, the 15 is at a disadvantage over higher T/W different wing-load birds, like the SUs, some MiGs, the FA-18 and even the F-16.

Bottom line - remember the age difference between the F15 and the SU's in the story is the same between Sopwith Camel or Spad and the Me-109 or Japanese A6 (Zero). (1918 to 1940 = 1975 to 1997 = 22 years).

So yes, its time to update our aricraft, but to also see how they woule do with the full suite of weaponry and sensors and tactics that the US uses (including SEAD, WW, satellites, PAVE units, AWACS, ECM, ECCM, attacking the C3I of the enemy with TLAM/Cruise and things like that like).

Posted by Oldspook 2004-08-06 7:45:00 PM|| 2004-08-06 7:45:00 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 #4 Sorry about that Zenster. I did a search for Cope and I must have missed the article you linked.

I hate it when that happens.

Posted by penguin 2004-08-06 7:50:16 PM|| 2004-08-06 7:50:16 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 Old Spook, any chances that we didn't use our "best and newest" stuff with these Indians?
Why show 'em what we've really got, eh?

Posted by GreatestJeneration 2004-08-06 7:54:38 PM|| [http://www.greatestjeneration.com] 2004-08-06 7:54:38 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 Oldspook's points are well taken, but how long will it be before we are making a double major leap, not just to unmanned aircraft, but to CPB tech aircraft?
Imagine if you will a Mach-7, sub-orbital capable, ram- or scramjet powered fighter-bomber that can take out any aircraft, air-to-air or surface-to-air missile within the range of its laser. For other weapons systems, it might have a rail gun that can propel a beer-can sized advanced ceramic projectile at 6km/sec, or be able to use its laser to turn an enemy aircraft canopy opaque in a fraction of a second.
What manned aircraft could keep up?

Posted by Anonymoose 2004-08-06 8:04:55 PM|| 2004-08-06 8:04:55 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 That stuff is (probably) being tested right now - UAV's with supersonic engines and stronger airframes, stealthy design.

UAV, aside from putting the Fighter Pilot union members out of a job (How do you know there's a fighter pilot in the bar? He'll tell you!), well they can pull far more G's, take damage, etc. The achilles heel is the delay in reaction due to distance. Speed of light is a limitation for round-trip command of a UAV.

300,000,000 m/s might seem fast, but given that you have to get the signal up, then down, then processed, then up then down, then processed again... 40,000,000 meters is roughly geosync orbit (most comms birds live there 23K miles = 38K Km). so minimum 500ms (half a second) between the initial transmission departing and the response arriving - for an aircraft with a relative closure of 1200 MPH (600mph each) is a shade over 500m/s - meaning the positions of the aircraft are 280-300 meters different than what the guy at the other end saw.

Physics is a bitch - the solution will still require someone running the UAV to be in theater and line of sight, or else a lot of investment in low earth orbit satellites and local groundstations, etc.

Posted by Oldspook 2004-08-06 9:53:54 PM|| 2004-08-06 9:53:54 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 But that works off an assumption of real-time commands for split second decisions. In practice, that would almost have to be done with artificial intelligence. "You are located at 'A': Move to location 'B': Engage enemy at target 'C'"
Basically the same principal as fly-by-wire, the human input giving the general direction and the computer doing the detail work far faster than a human could.

Posted by Anonymoose 2004-08-06 11:09:29 PM|| 2004-08-06 11:09:29 PM|| Front Page Top

18:08 Frank G
17:53 Zenster
18:56 Mark Espinola
18:40 Zenster
17:56 Aris Katsaris
17:46 Frank G
17:33 Shipman
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17:05 Ptah
07:52 Shipman
02:59 Super Hose
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02:41 Super Hose
01:49 Zenster
01:10 Mike Sylwester
00:34 .com
00:00 Frank G
23:57 Zenster
23:38 Jarhead
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23:15 Frank G
23:14 Zenster
23:09 Anonymoose