..and those fighters doing fancy aerobatics would be suicidal in air to air combat!
A (near stationary) sitting duck for a 'Sidewinder'.
OC
A (near stationary) sitting duck for a 'Sidewinder'.
OC
What a Price To Pay for F35 Fighter!
- Thread starter errol43
- Start date
Old Codger said:
That's been claimed continuously since the introduction of the Fokker triplane in 1917.
That thinking was proved wrong for the rest of the Great War and then again during the Spanish civil war, WW2, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Gulf war, the Kosovo war and in various skirmishes since then.
But hey, maybe one day it will become true.
Not by me, but highly trained RAAF and USAF fighter pilots!
Why is it that if the Russians are so good at producing CHEAP and CAPABLE fighters, they cannot sell them to anyone except the Indians, Chinese, and a few "TPLACs".
OC
OC
Old Codger said:
I don't doubt it, but going all the way back to the Great War there have always been two basic schools of thought on dogfighting.
One is that that pilots should know how to shoot down other aircraft in air-to-air combat and the other is that with the currently available technology, dogfighting is impractical, unimportant, impossible or obsolete.
The debate has been going on since bi-plane pilots started taking pot shots at each other with revolvers and the "dogfighting is silly" camp has been wrong since about the same time.
Big AD,
The days of the Fokker and the Spitfire are long gone. Machine guns fired by clever pilots are also. It is now the age of the missile and most air force planes are nothing more than very fast and agile trucks, lugging around fancy radars and missiles that do the work.
As pointed out above, Beyond Visual Range is now the name of the game and fancy 'Cobras' are just for air shows and a near stationary Sukoi still need a vital few seconds to get back y speed and that is when he is vulnerable. The manouvre was in fact the Russian response to "Viffing" - Vectoring in Forward Flight", a combat tactic of the Harrier which could 'stop on a dime' to let the bad guy pass and present himself to the Sidewinder.
Interestingly, in Vietnam they found out that something like 90% of all air to air combat was SUB-sonic!
OC
The days of the Fokker and the Spitfire are long gone. Machine guns fired by clever pilots are also. It is now the age of the missile and most air force planes are nothing more than very fast and agile trucks, lugging around fancy radars and missiles that do the work.
As pointed out above, Beyond Visual Range is now the name of the game and fancy 'Cobras' are just for air shows and a near stationary Sukoi still need a vital few seconds to get back y speed and that is when he is vulnerable. The manouvre was in fact the Russian response to "Viffing" - Vectoring in Forward Flight", a combat tactic of the Harrier which could 'stop on a dime' to let the bad guy pass and present himself to the Sidewinder.
Interestingly, in Vietnam they found out that something like 90% of all air to air combat was SUB-sonic!
OC
Old Codger said:
That may very well be the case, but like I said, the last hundred years of air-to-air combat has showed that being able to do "fancy aerobatics" in battle has actually been an important skill, regardless of how fantastic the technology has been.
The Spitfires you mentioned weren't even designed for dogfighting because the thinking at the time was that it would be too difficult at such high speeds and they'd be simply countering strategic (mass) bombing raids. Neither were the Me 109s that they ended up facing in an era of aviation that turned out to become famous for dogfighting.
The same thing happened when the U.S. went into Vietnam. "Dogfighting is so last war. Our new jets are too awesome for dogfighting". Then a whole heap of them got shot down during Operation Rolling Thunder, they set up the TOPGUN school for teaching fighter tactics and their kill-to-death ratio against the MiGs went through the roof.
The TOPGPUN school is still running and several other countries have an equivalent (including Russia).
Like I said, maybe one day the technology will be so good that dogfighting really will become obsolete but it would be a mistake to think that is the case now unless there is proper evidence to support it. People have been saying it for nearly a hundred years. So far they've been wrong every time and all that the faster speeds and better technology has meant is that they've had to learn how to dogfight at faster speeds and with the better technology.
Hawkeye,
Years ago, a member of the 'Skunk Works' in CA claimed that he could make a very good fighter aircraft out of a 747.
BEST radars and BEST missiles, greatest range and loiter time, far outperforming any that the opposition would have.
As you point out, Drones are the future of military aviation.
No reference, sorry.
OC
Years ago, a member of the 'Skunk Works' in CA claimed that he could make a very good fighter aircraft out of a 747.
BEST radars and BEST missiles, greatest range and loiter time, far outperforming any that the opposition would have.
As you point out, Drones are the future of military aviation.
No reference, sorry.
OC
I will bet a zillion they are working on that already!
;-)
OC
;-)
OC
For all the whiz-bang new technology, the Russians will probably figure it's easier and cheaper to build kamikaze drones that just fly straight into the F35.
The Reaper drones are about $15 million, so if a knock-off can be made for, say, $4.5 million you could have thirty clone drones for less than the $140 million price of an F35. Plus you can stick some missiles on them as well.
The Reaper drones are about $15 million, so if a knock-off can be made for, say, $4.5 million you could have thirty clone drones for less than the $140 million price of an F35. Plus you can stick some missiles on them as well.
It could well come to that, but radars and other sensors should give the controller warning of danger.
It will be a tech race as always, and the Yanks are good at that.
OC
It will be a tech race as always, and the Yanks are good at that.
OC
Old Codger said:
They also get carried away with it sometimes.
Like how they were shocked to find the MiG-25 had an avionics system running on old vacuum tubes (compared to the F15's modern solid state electronics). The Russians thought solid state stuff was pretty cool too, but using it meant they also had to stick a massive air conditioner in the plane as well to keep the electronics happy so instead they went with ye olde time vacuum tubes. In addition to giving the plane a very powerful radar, the tubes were also cheap, nuclear blast proof and easy for a badly trained, illiterate conscript to install at a remote airfield in the middle of a winter snow storm.
No good asking me, I just found the 'Start' button!
What do I do now?
OC
What do I do now?
OC
Old Codger said:
Actually a Javlin is very good against tanks, against a motorbike well let's not even go there.....
Well the old tanker saying is "the best anti-tank weapon is another tank".
I am inclined to agree. Though my tanker brother always disagreed when I said tanks are mobile coffins.
OC
I am inclined to agree. Though my tanker brother always disagreed when I said tanks are mobile coffins.
OC
Old Codger said:
Yeah that was the saying, a Javlin at $110,000.00 is cheap and they are amazing, Big Bang at the other end. Fire and then take the launcher and displace. If you are in the tank you do not know it is on the way. One particular country is working on a counter measure at the moment.
Technology is out of control at the moment and things are advancing so quickly.
In regards to drones has anyone seen the swarming of drones? They are working on having huge numbers of drones that fly in set and random patterns. Basically like flies, if you send 100 of them 98 may get taken out the other two get through.