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The Super Hornet guns down the F-22 Raptor
page: 6share:
Kilcoo316,
>>
- hehehe, I'll remember to tell that to the guys at work that a missile has near no form drag, I assume by lift @ drag you mean L/D, lift to drag? You do know that every change in the diameter of a missile results in a series of shock waves, each bleeding propulsive energy off?
>>
Compare fineness ratios on a missile to those on ANY jet you care to name. Ruling is as form does. Or did you actually expect me NOT to ask why a highspeed object looks tight and pointy instead of like a watermelon?
MASSIVE improvements in aeros efficiencies is why a BQM-34E/F can fly for 75 minutes at Mach 1 over a distance of 700 miles. _On 1,250lbs of fuel_.
>>
If it has control surfaces, it has excresence drag, if they generate lift, due to being stubby little things (in the case of non-cruise missiles), the lift dependant drag is alot more than you'd expect. But most of the missile lift comes from the body itself as far as I'm aware.
>>
Compared to an F-16 with a Targeting Pod, two 370 gallon tanks, two BRU-33 or BRU-57, FOUR GBU-12 and FOUR AIM-120?
Haahahahahaahahahhahha!
Why SHOULDN'T the wings be 'cruise missile like'? Heck, why shouldn't they be FIGHTER like-
www.designation-systems.net...
????
I specifically stated-
>>>
Primarily because form drag and lift at drag are the driving issues and the missile has next to none in one and highly 'open=optimizable' variables in the other (no wing or fuselage mating requirements on wingspan or chord etc.).
>>>
Which to me means that you design the weapon to ONE 'carriage box constraint'. Namely that of flying off the back of a truck or trailer mounted catapult.
Past that, the drone can look like an airplane, a missile or a hybrid of the two.
>>
- Tornado outclimbing a Lighting? Eh?? Out accelerating a phantom I can see as it can swing wing to change the drag rise coefficient. Out turning a hawk, nope not having that for a second.
>>
_Modern Fighting Aircraft Panavia Tornado. Doug Richardson_
Also I believe _Modern Fighter Combat_ by Mike Spick Though I can't find my copy at the moment.
At low level, the Tornado wins because of the highlift devices (and no challenge from Mach point for density) and the Hawks next-to-nothin' (.67-.77 vs. .47-.54) T/Wr.
>>
-1/10th the drag while performing big manouvres? I think not. Little dinky control surfaces are all the control authority the missile has, if it wants to move, it has to deflect these a long way = alot of lift induced drag, whereas the aircraft has a reasonable drag config up to around 20 deg.
>>
And we've all seen the video of AIM-7's cutting square corners to make an intercept. Airframes have next to nothing on high AOA, highly loaded, G performance compared to robotic weapons.
The difference being that if it misses or misfuzes, it's blown it's energy reserves and the engagement is over.
If my 'dogfighter' misses, it picks itself back up, shakes itself off (flies straight and level for 5-10 seconds). _AND COMES AROUND AGAIN_.
'Meanwhile' it's 10 clones do the same thing. And the fighter has no chance to reenergize itself.
Look-shoot-look becomes look-break-look. And then you're dead.
>>
- And what if I go straight through the skirmish line diving for the deck while this cruise missile interceptor hits the ground when I keep going through for the jackpot behind?
>>
The dogfight drone, with similar T/Wr and LESS DRAG is going to beat you sir. Remember, it doesn't have to 'pull out' (though it almost certainly has the G reserves to beat your best effort there as well.) It WANTS TO DIE.
Blowing itself up right next to your canopy. On the way down.
>>
- I don't have to see it, the radar/computer/HMD does.
>>
It doesn't get a chance. Because the frontal RCS of the drone is tiny and the MAWS will not necessarily see it in time to evade OR cue a counter attack. While the NATURE OF THE SYSTEM is that of at least FIVE attackers for FOUR counter shots (2 in the case of the particularly worthless F-35).
Speed of onset and spatial displacement counts. The drones converge. /Getting Around/ the 'radar' cone. And the MAWS probably never sees the cool-plume of the turbine.
>>
- How does it acheive the acceleration? Nose down and burner of course.
>>
Don't mistake 'burner' for some kind of hyperdrive. If the drone has the SAME T/Wr and LESS drag (by an order of magnitude) you WILL lose the runaway game. Your mass:unload and loss of LID will not help you.
Also keep in mind that now you are entering the trashfire threat and so everything that you flew at altitude to avoid is not right back in the battle. In 1966, after the VPAF came back from clobber college in China, the rate of mission-kill as dumped ordnance went from 10% to 55% /overnight/.
As altitude, once lost, could never be regained with the T/Wrs of the time and the only other option was to dump drag and weight.
>>
- Radar sees it, you dive and increase speed before manouvering 'inside' in a high g meeting that its control surfaces simply cannot match. Then your inside the picket line with speed on the baddies, keep going and nail the launcher.
>>
HOW? The drones are _hunting you_ They don't give up on the first miss! They REATTACK. And because they are not dependent on a 'launcher' (upwards of 100-200nm to the rear) for engagement tracking, each round is it's own acquisition and tracking system. And they can continue the hunt in a fashion that comes down to "Over here! She's hiding in this basket right _here_!" constant contact.
The ADM-160 can fly 200nm in a 100lb X 10ft X 6" airframe. The BQM-34F can fly as much as 890nm while weighing in at 2,280lbs, 29ft long and 5ft tall.
Somewhere between those two standards is a viable option which WORKS.
As surely as the Su-27/30 never will. When it's '4 vs. 75' (Indonesia vs. Australian F/A-18).
>>
- I'm making arguments based on experience and the adage from some real experienced engineers, "star wars design ideas don't work", Keep It Simple Stupid and of course, if its so easy, why as no-one else done it before?
>>
For the same reason as grazers don't believe in predators until it's too late. For the same reason as Samurai prevented peasants from owning steel weapons. For the same reason as a Pope outlawed the Crossbow.
They pretend it's 'in our best interests' of course. But the reality is that the MIC and the Military Aristocracy that they support are in it solely for their own good.
And Engineers aren't paid to sit up and say "Hey, wait a minute, PILOTED AIRFRAMES ARE VASTLY COST:CAPABILITY INEFFICIENT!" because if they did, they would be fired by an institution designed solely to employ the socially worthless.
The GWOT should show how truly 'capable' our made-for-manned platform military operating paradigm is at tracking down and capturing ONE MAN. While the very fact that we were still OVER Iraq, /10 years/ after we 'won', should indicate that society itself has lost the meaning of conquest.
As such, war itself is a flawed concept because it only drains not enriches and amalgamates cultures.
And pretending that 'dogfight vs. BVR' in a /manned/ sense is anything but an exercise in elective stupidity (like idiots at a sports bar quoting player stats straight off the gambling boards) is equally moronic.
Because the best systems for doing the job are not being compared with the existing systems for doing so.
And winning the "Let's buy some!" debate, every time.
KPl.
>>
- hehehe, I'll remember to tell that to the guys at work that a missile has near no form drag, I assume by lift @ drag you mean L/D, lift to drag? You do know that every change in the diameter of a missile results in a series of shock waves, each bleeding propulsive energy off?
>>
Compare fineness ratios on a missile to those on ANY jet you care to name. Ruling is as form does. Or did you actually expect me NOT to ask why a highspeed object looks tight and pointy instead of like a watermelon?
MASSIVE improvements in aeros efficiencies is why a BQM-34E/F can fly for 75 minutes at Mach 1 over a distance of 700 miles. _On 1,250lbs of fuel_.
>>
If it has control surfaces, it has excresence drag, if they generate lift, due to being stubby little things (in the case of non-cruise missiles), the lift dependant drag is alot more than you'd expect. But most of the missile lift comes from the body itself as far as I'm aware.
>>
Compared to an F-16 with a Targeting Pod, two 370 gallon tanks, two BRU-33 or BRU-57, FOUR GBU-12 and FOUR AIM-120?
Haahahahahaahahahhahha!
Why SHOULDN'T the wings be 'cruise missile like'? Heck, why shouldn't they be FIGHTER like-
www.designation-systems.net...
????
I specifically stated-
>>>
Primarily because form drag and lift at drag are the driving issues and the missile has next to none in one and highly 'open=optimizable' variables in the other (no wing or fuselage mating requirements on wingspan or chord etc.).
>>>
Which to me means that you design the weapon to ONE 'carriage box constraint'. Namely that of flying off the back of a truck or trailer mounted catapult.
Past that, the drone can look like an airplane, a missile or a hybrid of the two.
>>
- Tornado outclimbing a Lighting? Eh?? Out accelerating a phantom I can see as it can swing wing to change the drag rise coefficient. Out turning a hawk, nope not having that for a second.
>>
_Modern Fighting Aircraft Panavia Tornado. Doug Richardson_
Also I believe _Modern Fighter Combat_ by Mike Spick Though I can't find my copy at the moment.
At low level, the Tornado wins because of the highlift devices (and no challenge from Mach point for density) and the Hawks next-to-nothin' (.67-.77 vs. .47-.54) T/Wr.
>>
-1/10th the drag while performing big manouvres? I think not. Little dinky control surfaces are all the control authority the missile has, if it wants to move, it has to deflect these a long way = alot of lift induced drag, whereas the aircraft has a reasonable drag config up to around 20 deg.
>>
And we've all seen the video of AIM-7's cutting square corners to make an intercept. Airframes have next to nothing on high AOA, highly loaded, G performance compared to robotic weapons.
The difference being that if it misses or misfuzes, it's blown it's energy reserves and the engagement is over.
If my 'dogfighter' misses, it picks itself back up, shakes itself off (flies straight and level for 5-10 seconds). _AND COMES AROUND AGAIN_.
'Meanwhile' it's 10 clones do the same thing. And the fighter has no chance to reenergize itself.
Look-shoot-look becomes look-break-look. And then you're dead.
>>
- And what if I go straight through the skirmish line diving for the deck while this cruise missile interceptor hits the ground when I keep going through for the jackpot behind?
>>
The dogfight drone, with similar T/Wr and LESS DRAG is going to beat you sir. Remember, it doesn't have to 'pull out' (though it almost certainly has the G reserves to beat your best effort there as well.) It WANTS TO DIE.
Blowing itself up right next to your canopy. On the way down.
>>
- I don't have to see it, the radar/computer/HMD does.
>>
It doesn't get a chance. Because the frontal RCS of the drone is tiny and the MAWS will not necessarily see it in time to evade OR cue a counter attack. While the NATURE OF THE SYSTEM is that of at least FIVE attackers for FOUR counter shots (2 in the case of the particularly worthless F-35).
Speed of onset and spatial displacement counts. The drones converge. /Getting Around/ the 'radar' cone. And the MAWS probably never sees the cool-plume of the turbine.
>>
- How does it acheive the acceleration? Nose down and burner of course.
>>
Don't mistake 'burner' for some kind of hyperdrive. If the drone has the SAME T/Wr and LESS drag (by an order of magnitude) you WILL lose the runaway game. Your mass:unload and loss of LID will not help you.
Also keep in mind that now you are entering the trashfire threat and so everything that you flew at altitude to avoid is not right back in the battle. In 1966, after the VPAF came back from clobber college in China, the rate of mission-kill as dumped ordnance went from 10% to 55% /overnight/.
As altitude, once lost, could never be regained with the T/Wrs of the time and the only other option was to dump drag and weight.
>>
- Radar sees it, you dive and increase speed before manouvering 'inside' in a high g meeting that its control surfaces simply cannot match. Then your inside the picket line with speed on the baddies, keep going and nail the launcher.
>>
HOW? The drones are _hunting you_ They don't give up on the first miss! They REATTACK. And because they are not dependent on a 'launcher' (upwards of 100-200nm to the rear) for engagement tracking, each round is it's own acquisition and tracking system. And they can continue the hunt in a fashion that comes down to "Over here! She's hiding in this basket right _here_!" constant contact.
The ADM-160 can fly 200nm in a 100lb X 10ft X 6" airframe. The BQM-34F can fly as much as 890nm while weighing in at 2,280lbs, 29ft long and 5ft tall.
Somewhere between those two standards is a viable option which WORKS.
As surely as the Su-27/30 never will. When it's '4 vs. 75' (Indonesia vs. Australian F/A-18).
>>
- I'm making arguments based on experience and the adage from some real experienced engineers, "star wars design ideas don't work", Keep It Simple Stupid and of course, if its so easy, why as no-one else done it before?
>>
For the same reason as grazers don't believe in predators until it's too late. For the same reason as Samurai prevented peasants from owning steel weapons. For the same reason as a Pope outlawed the Crossbow.
They pretend it's 'in our best interests' of course. But the reality is that the MIC and the Military Aristocracy that they support are in it solely for their own good.
And Engineers aren't paid to sit up and say "Hey, wait a minute, PILOTED AIRFRAMES ARE VASTLY COST:CAPABILITY INEFFICIENT!" because if they did, they would be fired by an institution designed solely to employ the socially worthless.
The GWOT should show how truly 'capable' our made-for-manned platform military operating paradigm is at tracking down and capturing ONE MAN. While the very fact that we were still OVER Iraq, /10 years/ after we 'won', should indicate that society itself has lost the meaning of conquest.
As such, war itself is a flawed concept because it only drains not enriches and amalgamates cultures.
And pretending that 'dogfight vs. BVR' in a /manned/ sense is anything but an exercise in elective stupidity (like idiots at a sports bar quoting player stats straight off the gambling boards) is equally moronic.
Because the best systems for doing the job are not being compared with the existing systems for doing so.
And winning the "Let's buy some!" debate, every time.
KPl.
You keep mixing and matching capabilities without pausing to think of the impact of one on the other.
One moment it has the manouverability of an AMRAAM, the next it has the endurance of a cruise missile, the next it has the dash speed of a target drone.
For example, working with 30g manouvering needed to get a kill - how many cruise missile or target drones can do this? None, its not a simple job of bolting on bigger control surfaces - they need bigger actuators (much bigger), and thus hydraulic systems. These bigger control surfaces affect the cruise and manouvering drag levels as well. The firebee you posted can manouvre at 6 g - we only need an improvement of 5 times that.
Something more to you liking might be the GQM-163, 85km with speeds of Mach 2.5 @ sea-level and 3-4 at 15km up, with near 12 g ( @M2.5 - sealevel) manouvering - only X 2.5 times improvement needed. They come in at around 500,000 a pop. But that design would need modified (probably quite heavily) to get the manouvering capabilities, and the sensors/electronics onboard, and the warhead onboard.
Of course, as you know (and have been saying for ages on here), a UCAV will always have better highly optimised performance capabilities than a multi-functional aircraft - simply due to the lack of a human, and a lack of other design compromises.
BUT, by the time the research and development for such a weapon would be complete, we will be in the era of DEWs anyway. Even now, what is there to stop an AESA frying the drone as it slowly cruises in? You can put on shielding I suppose, but be sure that it will impact on everything else in there.
If it was so simple, why do you not think SAM manufacturers (of any country) have not done it already? Those tenders have by large nothing to do with the airforce, and the army have nothing to gain by putting out substandard equipment - just to keep prima dona pilots in jobs.
One moment it has the manouverability of an AMRAAM, the next it has the endurance of a cruise missile, the next it has the dash speed of a target drone.
For example, working with 30g manouvering needed to get a kill - how many cruise missile or target drones can do this? None, its not a simple job of bolting on bigger control surfaces - they need bigger actuators (much bigger), and thus hydraulic systems. These bigger control surfaces affect the cruise and manouvering drag levels as well. The firebee you posted can manouvre at 6 g - we only need an improvement of 5 times that.
Something more to you liking might be the GQM-163, 85km with speeds of Mach 2.5 @ sea-level and 3-4 at 15km up, with near 12 g ( @M2.5 - sealevel) manouvering - only X 2.5 times improvement needed. They come in at around 500,000 a pop. But that design would need modified (probably quite heavily) to get the manouvering capabilities, and the sensors/electronics onboard, and the warhead onboard.
Of course, as you know (and have been saying for ages on here), a UCAV will always have better highly optimised performance capabilities than a multi-functional aircraft - simply due to the lack of a human, and a lack of other design compromises.
BUT, by the time the research and development for such a weapon would be complete, we will be in the era of DEWs anyway. Even now, what is there to stop an AESA frying the drone as it slowly cruises in? You can put on shielding I suppose, but be sure that it will impact on everything else in there.
If it was so simple, why do you not think SAM manufacturers (of any country) have not done it already? Those tenders have by large nothing to do with the airforce, and the army have nothing to gain by putting out substandard equipment - just to keep prima dona pilots in jobs.
I guess the airforcec considers wvr fighting a thing of the past...
yay 1 line (not any more)
yay 1 line (not any more)
Kilcoo316,
>>
You keep mixing and matching capabilities without pausing to think of the impact of one on the other.
>>
No. You keep throwing things out there to distract from what I've already proven you wrong in and then I have to correct the new error. 'Stubby Wings' does NOT a bad lift at drag performer make. You simply have to have more energy to burn, better thrust vector control options and _no baby onboard_ to swoon under the G.
>>
One moment it has the manouverability of an AMRAAM, the next it has the endurance of a cruise missile, the next it has the dash speed of a target drone.
>>
And that's just it. It can have -elements- of BOTH. Which is what makes it a new and unique capability. What you are failing to see is that IF you can make the reattack mode happen and IF you have faster energy regain, /then/ you can ensure the collision or prox fuze kill base on BLEEDING THE MANNED JET DOWN.
Now throw in the dogpile effect of a pack hunting system and you do not have to make the kill on the first throw.
>>
For example, working with 30g manouvering needed to get a kill - how many cruise missile or target drones can do this?
>>
Ask the number of fighter pilots who have had a good drone remote operator suddenly do something to 'lose augmentation' (flip the drone to one side so that the flare on the wingtip is invisible). They can't lock it up and with only 6.5G on a BQM-34 they often have to break off the fight because they cannot hold position in the subsequent "My 30,000lb airframe, his 2,500lb drone driven by a 2,500lbst engine, guess who is quicker on the flipflop of maneuver state to maneuver state agility?" period to reposition himself before range safety requirements demand a noscore.
What I want YOU to imagine is a guns engagement 'dogfight' between two manned jets in which one guy got tired of trying to play for spacing and lead and simply 'zeroed the angle off and flew it in'. It becomes fairly easy to score then doesn't it.
Now imagine a drone with even /twice/ (12-15G at sea level) the available agility of the manned platform for any altitude:Mach point combination up to .9 Mach. And realize that all's that drone is doing is zeroing the angle off (going to boresight if you will) and steering to pure pursuit until the crosshairs overlay the canopy.
>>
None, its not a simple job of bolting on bigger control surfaces - they need bigger actuators (much bigger), and thus hydraulic systems. These bigger control surfaces affect the cruise and manouvering drag levels as well. The firebee you posted can manouvre at 6 g - we only need an improvement of 5 times that.
>>
Nonsense.
A. The 'dogfighter' airframe will be tailored to the weapon through a myriad of CFD and tunnel studies just like any other system.
B. Despite being a nominally 'testbed' oriented platform whose ENTIRE MISSION was to test unusual control configurations (canards, tiplets, forward and aft swept wings. all moving wings), the HiMAT, as a 23ft, 4,030lb, plane had a 12G capability which when pitted against an F-16 turn circle at equivalent Mach point and altitude (30K and .9) completed an 8G, 360` turn at a point where the F-16 was only about 180` and the F-4E was only at 120`. (_Modern Fighter Combat _ Bill Gunston and Mike Spick).
C. Have you ever seen the 'flat pack' actuator on an F-104? Turned sideways, they stuffed it into a 4" deep wing.
>>
Something more to you liking might be the GQM-163, 85km with speeds of Mach 2.5 @ sea-level and 3-4 at 15km up, with near 12 g ( @M2.5 - sealevel) manouvering - only X 2.5 times improvement needed. They come in at around 500,000 a pop. But that design would need modified (probably quite heavily) to get the manouvering capabilities, and the sensors/electronics onboard, and the warhead onboard.
>>
Now YOU are the one adding 'excessive requirements' to justify your own oblique 'paranthetic' assumption which is that 'modified quite heavily' is a mandate to avoiding going there altogether.
To which I say _bunk_.
I will not accept the notion that, to gain YOUR definition of capability I must accept increases in unrelated performance that specifically negate the capability itself.
Because 'the dogfight' starts and ends subsonically. And the need, as a DCA specific tool, is for a force of platforms that acts as their own netted sensor array. And can fly MORE than an 85km flight path in sweeping-clean a volume airspace. Independent of vulnerable ground based systems.
What you would have is a design that surrenders all of that /so as not to have to/ prove that the drone is indeed a 'superior dogfighter'.
And that's just cheapass diversionary debate tactics as your very next specious statement proves.
>>
Of course, as you know (and have been saying for ages on here), a UCAV will always have better highly optimised performance capabilities than a multi-functional aircraft - simply due to the lack of a human, and a lack of other design compromises.
>>
AAW is flown 70% of the time. Maneuvered 20% of the time. And kills 10% of the time. What this means is that it /soaks/ sorties at a HORRENDOUS rate. While doing next to nothing.
Now imagine you are a poor little podunk nation with an airforce composed of 10-20 jets that flies operationally, maybe 5-10 times a year, each.
How competent do you think you're gonna be vs. 100 jets (per raid) driven by pilots that fly 120hrs or more a year?
>>
BUT, by the time the research and development for such a weapon would be complete, we will be in the era of DEWs anyway. Even now, what is there to stop an AESA frying the drone as it slowly cruises in? You can put on shielding I suppose, but be sure that it will impact on everything else in there.
>>
It has to be seen to be killed. And you have to /maintain/ the "Maybe if I throw it out into the confusion of an active combat..." throwaway gambitable option to SACRIFICE that a deep-thrust might gain a significant and sudden advantage. Indeed, that is principally what airpower is about. Leveraging away from 2nd generation warfare along opposed linear fronts. And into mechanized 3rd generation systems which maintain linearity but use depth of maneuver to unbalance the battlefield structure.
As one man cannot buy a machine gun's time long enough to put 20 men into the next trenchline, so too can one /fighter/ not put a missile deep enough into the enemy backfield to destroy (say) a relay mirror aerostat. So that his life is wasted, even if he develops a sudden case of bonzai fever. BUT FOR THE SAME COST a _flight_ of 20 drones might be able to score that balloon before the enemy could acquire and kill and 3-4 second recharge/cooldown cycle his laser. Particularly if the weapons are painted in isoluminat colors and/or have active-adaptive camo (again something much more readily believable on a small, regular shaped, object).
As to the last, the problem is that you cannot envision an era in which there are NO manned jets to 'make an either or decision on'. Thus you fail to realize the hole in your logic:
1. If it will kill a missile, it will kill the front end of a jet. Not least because the jet is a heckuva lot easier to detect. No front end= no combattant capability worth mentioning.
2. If it is AESA vs. Drone. Then it is ATL or ABL vs. Jet. And the drone is cheap.
3. If the drone spots, with it's 20km seeker a jet that can only detect it at 10km, it can start to accelerate. Which means that now you are supersonic. And so are all your buds.
Another facet of this debate which everyone is failing to 'get' in the rush to JSF and other idiocies is that _working RF stealth_ means fighting (electro) optically. And LIVING to get to the range by which you can have a reasonable chance of exploiting EO's intrinsically shorter absolute detection distances (at least in realistically airframe sized apertures) means networking a SYSTEM of sweep-through surveillance capabilities so that you can find 'just one jet'. And be of sufficiently dense force numbers as to roll up it's defensive firepower, maneuver or exotic systems capabilities.
Wars are won, not by the ones who kill dominantly before losing. But who can withstand the most losses while still winning.
>>
If it was so simple, why do you not think SAM manufacturers (of any country) have not done it already? Those tenders have by large nothing to do with the airforce, and the army have nothing to gain by putting out substandard equipment - just to keep prima dona pilots in jobs.
>>
Look at the size of ARADCOM compared to the USN and USAF communities and try that again.
Furthermore, realize that, during the Cold War years, it doesn't make sense for us to acknowledge the obvious because both in NATO Europe and further abroad, projected airpower was the ONE WAY in which we coudl reasonably expect to influence the outcome of a typically badly outnumbered ground threat environment.
We also had minimal knowledge of LO. No SFPA (cheap or otherwise). No secure networking capabilities in-scale. No CFD modeling and high speed-scaled control actuation knowledge. No monolithic composite engineering capabilties. No computational capabilities adaptable to AI driven tactics database 'election' of attack modes.
NOTHING. Now all of those things are in place.
And still 'the companies' (Lets just be honest and name them as RAYTHEON, BOEING, NORTHROP and LOCKHEED MARTIN, all with significant manned air division commitments in prime or subsystem roles) are afraid of the pilot community.
If our nation's defense establishment was run sensibly by a totally autonomous R&D community that created systems based _specifically_ on their ability to UNDERMINE an existing force metric at equal or lower cost and as little as 20% gain in operational capability improvment in new areas, we would spend perhaps 1/3rd what we throw away in the service dominated 'only the union gets to vote' (what the mission is, what the spec for meeting the mission is, whose system meets the spec) system of today.
And that is ALSO 'bad for the companies' because their bottomline is based on the concept of the government throwing away all the money it can spend. And then some. Whether a program works, does not, is purchased or dives into obscurity. Or any combination of the above.
CONCLUSION:
There is no hope for a better world so long as the existing one is satisfied running itself into the ground based on ma$$ive wa$te 'sustaining the existent at the expense of the possible'. War without loot and territorial is itself a principal example of this but the real problem is humanist participancy factor. As long as man thinks he can 'do just fine' on and over a battlefield he has not been fit to occupy since the advent of repeating firearms; he will continue to waste money crutching up his ego as much as his ability to do /better/ by virtue of replacing his risked self with something that can never die.
KPl.
[edit on 21-4-2006 by ch1466]
>>
You keep mixing and matching capabilities without pausing to think of the impact of one on the other.
>>
No. You keep throwing things out there to distract from what I've already proven you wrong in and then I have to correct the new error. 'Stubby Wings' does NOT a bad lift at drag performer make. You simply have to have more energy to burn, better thrust vector control options and _no baby onboard_ to swoon under the G.
>>
One moment it has the manouverability of an AMRAAM, the next it has the endurance of a cruise missile, the next it has the dash speed of a target drone.
>>
And that's just it. It can have -elements- of BOTH. Which is what makes it a new and unique capability. What you are failing to see is that IF you can make the reattack mode happen and IF you have faster energy regain, /then/ you can ensure the collision or prox fuze kill base on BLEEDING THE MANNED JET DOWN.
Now throw in the dogpile effect of a pack hunting system and you do not have to make the kill on the first throw.
>>
For example, working with 30g manouvering needed to get a kill - how many cruise missile or target drones can do this?
>>
Ask the number of fighter pilots who have had a good drone remote operator suddenly do something to 'lose augmentation' (flip the drone to one side so that the flare on the wingtip is invisible). They can't lock it up and with only 6.5G on a BQM-34 they often have to break off the fight because they cannot hold position in the subsequent "My 30,000lb airframe, his 2,500lb drone driven by a 2,500lbst engine, guess who is quicker on the flipflop of maneuver state to maneuver state agility?" period to reposition himself before range safety requirements demand a noscore.
What I want YOU to imagine is a guns engagement 'dogfight' between two manned jets in which one guy got tired of trying to play for spacing and lead and simply 'zeroed the angle off and flew it in'. It becomes fairly easy to score then doesn't it.
Now imagine a drone with even /twice/ (12-15G at sea level) the available agility of the manned platform for any altitude:Mach point combination up to .9 Mach. And realize that all's that drone is doing is zeroing the angle off (going to boresight if you will) and steering to pure pursuit until the crosshairs overlay the canopy.
>>
None, its not a simple job of bolting on bigger control surfaces - they need bigger actuators (much bigger), and thus hydraulic systems. These bigger control surfaces affect the cruise and manouvering drag levels as well. The firebee you posted can manouvre at 6 g - we only need an improvement of 5 times that.
>>
Nonsense.
A. The 'dogfighter' airframe will be tailored to the weapon through a myriad of CFD and tunnel studies just like any other system.
B. Despite being a nominally 'testbed' oriented platform whose ENTIRE MISSION was to test unusual control configurations (canards, tiplets, forward and aft swept wings. all moving wings), the HiMAT, as a 23ft, 4,030lb, plane had a 12G capability which when pitted against an F-16 turn circle at equivalent Mach point and altitude (30K and .9) completed an 8G, 360` turn at a point where the F-16 was only about 180` and the F-4E was only at 120`. (_Modern Fighter Combat _ Bill Gunston and Mike Spick).
C. Have you ever seen the 'flat pack' actuator on an F-104? Turned sideways, they stuffed it into a 4" deep wing.
>>
Something more to you liking might be the GQM-163, 85km with speeds of Mach 2.5 @ sea-level and 3-4 at 15km up, with near 12 g ( @M2.5 - sealevel) manouvering - only X 2.5 times improvement needed. They come in at around 500,000 a pop. But that design would need modified (probably quite heavily) to get the manouvering capabilities, and the sensors/electronics onboard, and the warhead onboard.
>>
Now YOU are the one adding 'excessive requirements' to justify your own oblique 'paranthetic' assumption which is that 'modified quite heavily' is a mandate to avoiding going there altogether.
To which I say _bunk_.
I will not accept the notion that, to gain YOUR definition of capability I must accept increases in unrelated performance that specifically negate the capability itself.
Because 'the dogfight' starts and ends subsonically. And the need, as a DCA specific tool, is for a force of platforms that acts as their own netted sensor array. And can fly MORE than an 85km flight path in sweeping-clean a volume airspace. Independent of vulnerable ground based systems.
What you would have is a design that surrenders all of that /so as not to have to/ prove that the drone is indeed a 'superior dogfighter'.
And that's just cheapass diversionary debate tactics as your very next specious statement proves.
>>
Of course, as you know (and have been saying for ages on here), a UCAV will always have better highly optimised performance capabilities than a multi-functional aircraft - simply due to the lack of a human, and a lack of other design compromises.
>>
AAW is flown 70% of the time. Maneuvered 20% of the time. And kills 10% of the time. What this means is that it /soaks/ sorties at a HORRENDOUS rate. While doing next to nothing.
Now imagine you are a poor little podunk nation with an airforce composed of 10-20 jets that flies operationally, maybe 5-10 times a year, each.
How competent do you think you're gonna be vs. 100 jets (per raid) driven by pilots that fly 120hrs or more a year?
>>
BUT, by the time the research and development for such a weapon would be complete, we will be in the era of DEWs anyway. Even now, what is there to stop an AESA frying the drone as it slowly cruises in? You can put on shielding I suppose, but be sure that it will impact on everything else in there.
>>
It has to be seen to be killed. And you have to /maintain/ the "Maybe if I throw it out into the confusion of an active combat..." throwaway gambitable option to SACRIFICE that a deep-thrust might gain a significant and sudden advantage. Indeed, that is principally what airpower is about. Leveraging away from 2nd generation warfare along opposed linear fronts. And into mechanized 3rd generation systems which maintain linearity but use depth of maneuver to unbalance the battlefield structure.
As one man cannot buy a machine gun's time long enough to put 20 men into the next trenchline, so too can one /fighter/ not put a missile deep enough into the enemy backfield to destroy (say) a relay mirror aerostat. So that his life is wasted, even if he develops a sudden case of bonzai fever. BUT FOR THE SAME COST a _flight_ of 20 drones might be able to score that balloon before the enemy could acquire and kill and 3-4 second recharge/cooldown cycle his laser. Particularly if the weapons are painted in isoluminat colors and/or have active-adaptive camo (again something much more readily believable on a small, regular shaped, object).
As to the last, the problem is that you cannot envision an era in which there are NO manned jets to 'make an either or decision on'. Thus you fail to realize the hole in your logic:
1. If it will kill a missile, it will kill the front end of a jet. Not least because the jet is a heckuva lot easier to detect. No front end= no combattant capability worth mentioning.
2. If it is AESA vs. Drone. Then it is ATL or ABL vs. Jet. And the drone is cheap.
3. If the drone spots, with it's 20km seeker a jet that can only detect it at 10km, it can start to accelerate. Which means that now you are supersonic. And so are all your buds.
Another facet of this debate which everyone is failing to 'get' in the rush to JSF and other idiocies is that _working RF stealth_ means fighting (electro) optically. And LIVING to get to the range by which you can have a reasonable chance of exploiting EO's intrinsically shorter absolute detection distances (at least in realistically airframe sized apertures) means networking a SYSTEM of sweep-through surveillance capabilities so that you can find 'just one jet'. And be of sufficiently dense force numbers as to roll up it's defensive firepower, maneuver or exotic systems capabilities.
Wars are won, not by the ones who kill dominantly before losing. But who can withstand the most losses while still winning.
>>
If it was so simple, why do you not think SAM manufacturers (of any country) have not done it already? Those tenders have by large nothing to do with the airforce, and the army have nothing to gain by putting out substandard equipment - just to keep prima dona pilots in jobs.
>>
Look at the size of ARADCOM compared to the USN and USAF communities and try that again.
Furthermore, realize that, during the Cold War years, it doesn't make sense for us to acknowledge the obvious because both in NATO Europe and further abroad, projected airpower was the ONE WAY in which we coudl reasonably expect to influence the outcome of a typically badly outnumbered ground threat environment.
We also had minimal knowledge of LO. No SFPA (cheap or otherwise). No secure networking capabilities in-scale. No CFD modeling and high speed-scaled control actuation knowledge. No monolithic composite engineering capabilties. No computational capabilities adaptable to AI driven tactics database 'election' of attack modes.
NOTHING. Now all of those things are in place.
And still 'the companies' (Lets just be honest and name them as RAYTHEON, BOEING, NORTHROP and LOCKHEED MARTIN, all with significant manned air division commitments in prime or subsystem roles) are afraid of the pilot community.
If our nation's defense establishment was run sensibly by a totally autonomous R&D community that created systems based _specifically_ on their ability to UNDERMINE an existing force metric at equal or lower cost and as little as 20% gain in operational capability improvment in new areas, we would spend perhaps 1/3rd what we throw away in the service dominated 'only the union gets to vote' (what the mission is, what the spec for meeting the mission is, whose system meets the spec) system of today.
And that is ALSO 'bad for the companies' because their bottomline is based on the concept of the government throwing away all the money it can spend. And then some. Whether a program works, does not, is purchased or dives into obscurity. Or any combination of the above.
CONCLUSION:
There is no hope for a better world so long as the existing one is satisfied running itself into the ground based on ma$$ive wa$te 'sustaining the existent at the expense of the possible'. War without loot and territorial is itself a principal example of this but the real problem is humanist participancy factor. As long as man thinks he can 'do just fine' on and over a battlefield he has not been fit to occupy since the advent of repeating firearms; he will continue to waste money crutching up his ego as much as his ability to do /better/ by virtue of replacing his risked self with something that can never die.
KPl.
[edit on 21-4-2006 by ch1466]
CONCLUSION:
There is no hope for a better world so long as the existing one is satisfied running itself into the ground based on ma$$ive wa$te 'sustaining the existent at the expense of the possible'. War without loot and territorial is itself a principal example of this but the real problem is humanist participancy factor. As long as man thinks he can 'do just fine' on and over a battlefield he has not been fit to occupy since the advent of repeating firearms; he will continue to waste money crutching up his ego as much as his ability to do /better/ by virtue of replacing his risked self with something that can never die.
LOL Shakes head. Funniest part about this string of impenetrable nonsense is that it has "CONCLUSION:" at the top. As if it is to mark for us that this cubist collection of phrases is about to be drawn to a logical close. I swear this passage alone is a postmodern masterpiece.
Ever hear the phrase you have to be able to walk before you can fly?
Try working out your ideas in a mental outline before you start polishing your prose with large and shiny words. Just a suggestion.
There is no hope for a better world so long as the existing one is satisfied running itself into the ground based on ma$$ive wa$te 'sustaining the existent at the expense of the possible'. War without loot and territorial is itself a principal example of this but the real problem is humanist participancy factor. As long as man thinks he can 'do just fine' on and over a battlefield he has not been fit to occupy since the advent of repeating firearms; he will continue to waste money crutching up his ego as much as his ability to do /better/ by virtue of replacing his risked self with something that can never die.
LOL Shakes head. Funniest part about this string of impenetrable nonsense is that it has "CONCLUSION:" at the top. As if it is to mark for us that this cubist collection of phrases is about to be drawn to a logical close. I swear this passage alone is a postmodern masterpiece.
Ever hear the phrase you have to be able to walk before you can fly?
Try working out your ideas in a mental outline before you start polishing your prose with large and shiny words. Just a suggestion.
Originally posted by ch1466
I will not accept the notion that, to gain YOUR definition of capability I must accept increases in unrelated performance that specifically negate the capability itself.
Look at the size of ARADCOM compared to the USN and USAF communities and try that again.
Furthermore, realize that, during the Cold War years, it doesn't make sense for us to acknowledge the obvious because both in NATO Europe and further abroad, projected airpower was the ONE WAY in which we coudl reasonably expect to influence the outcome of a typically badly outnumbered ground threat environment.
We also had minimal knowledge of LO. No SFPA (cheap or otherwise). No secure networking capabilities in-scale. No CFD modeling and high speed-scaled control actuation knowledge. No monolithic composite engineering capabilties. No computational capabilities adaptable to AI driven tactics database 'election' of attack modes.
NOTHING. Now all of those things are in place.
And still 'the companies' (Lets just be honest and name them as RAYTHEON, BOEING, NORTHROP and LOCKHEED MARTIN, all with significant manned air division commitments in prime or subsystem roles) are afraid of the pilot community.
OK, don't accept my notion, meanwhile the rest of the world will continue turning.
FACT - the design will be compromised, quite significantly
FACT - no missile manufacturer has come up with a solution remotely similar in overall capabilities to what is required
FACT - as much as you may like to ignore it, the army is not dictated to by the airforce, and if they want something, their supplier will try to give it to them.
It is a good idea, but the implementation of it is far from being as easy as you would like to portray.
Originally posted by grantrl78
LOL Shakes head. Funniest part about this string of impenetrable nonsense is that it has "CONCLUSION:" at the top.
Well his realises that people like you need a sumary to make sense of anything longer than half a page. if the conclusions still cant get you there i really would , in your position, not admit to not 'getting it'.
As if it is to mark for us that this cubist collection of phrases is about to be drawn to a logical close. I swear this passage alone is a postmodern masterpiece.
Postmordern being anything that goes clean over your head?
Ever hear the phrase you have to be able to walk before you can fly?
Try working out your ideas in a mental outline before you start polishing your prose with large and shiny words. Just a suggestion.
If you cant keep up just step out but PLEASE do not bother the rest of us with your limitations. Just a few 'suggestions'.
Stellar
Kilcoo316,
>>
OK, don't accept my notion, meanwhile the rest of the world will continue turning.
>>
That's the point isn't it? Ignore the kooks and keep right on wasting /enormous/ amounts of time, resources and societal momentum maintaining a force for war that is really a war for profit based industry whose 'leading lights' will long be dead and their millions gone to their children if not overseas before the world realizes that those who led them down the golden path were just as self centered, ignorant and cluelessly corrupt as they are.
That there WAS NO 'grand master plan'. And none of the toys brought security for more than it took to deplete the bank account funding them.
>>
FACT - the design will be compromised, quite significantly
>>
FACT. You keep stating that it will be but you do not prove /how/ in light of my REAL WORLD examples to the contrary. Indeed, you skip-tralalee past any attempt at a realistic counterpoint in the hopes that no one will notice your inability to comment authoritatively on-topic.
>>
FACT - no missile manufacturer has come up with a solution remotely similar in overall capabilities to what is required
>>
FACT. The division of Roles and Missions is about hunting preserve turf wars. Within those individual parochial bounds, designs are 'refined not supplanted' because only by maintaining diversity of capability can you justify plucking the money tree to the last leaf to ensure you have 'all the necessary golf clubs for all the required courses'.
Add to this the certainty that we have tested munitions off of UAV since the late 1970s. And that ADM-160 _passed_ all it's service requirement tests, only to have it's neck snapped in the crib when people started to consider ALL THE OTHER MISSIONS IT COULD DO.
And it becomes clear that the only people who have reasonable belief in as a function of KNOWLEDGE ABOUT the conceptual system performance and ease of deployment are those whose hostility towards it's success is personal-threat job security driven and thus completely biased in anything they might say, either way.
>>
FACT - as much as you may like to ignore it, the army is not dictated to by the airforce, and if they want something, their supplier will try to give it to them.
>>
FACT. The ADI, including JLENS and SLAMRAAM and MALI would have been run by the Army. MALD (as the baseline for the CMD interceptor MALI) was cancelled with prejudice, JLENS was ignored without an effective over-hill interceptor with controlled recovery/safing options and the Marines, who lack the manpower to be more than mechanized commandos, are the sole operator of an effective (cheap to 20,000ft or 6 miles), mid-range, S2A boost-slide alternative.
FACT. The average call lag for preplanned CAS in OEF was 26 minutes. And so UBL got away from Tora Bora and men died needlessly because the Army lost 3 out of 4 helicopters in the first 15 minutes of Anaconda.
Furthermore, the USAF would not drop their precious PGMs without precise targeting coordinates and they had retired all the dedicated (bent pipe) platforms like the ABCCC-130 with which to coordinate said fires. Even as the most hackneyed of single-seat replacements as the ludicrous A-10 SADL mod was also 'not in the A-10C!' put on back burner. So that Lockheed Owego would only have to crack the airframe once.
Delay for unfragged CAS could thus be as much as 17 hours because _nobody had the radios to give a yell_.
This after the Key West agreement took away the perfectly useful OV-1 Mohawk and T-28 Trojan and 'laid the groundwork' for cancelling the night all weather + PGM capable AH-56 in (day) 'light' (only) of the much inferior A-10 being available ten years later.
There are between 9 and 12 Predator orbits over Iraq. A country the size of Kansas. That's like covering a football stadium with 12 flashlights pointed at your feet.
Now lets move onto Air Defense.
FACT. At one time, there were 20 NIKE sites around New York. Had nearly ANY ONE OF THEM still been functioning on 9/11, at least one of the Twin Towers might still be standing. The government had known since 1994 that attacks on large structures with airliners was possible. And done NOTHING to provide a covert capability, even with presurveyed, rapid-erect Patriot sites on purchased land as had been done before.
The USAF's GAI performance on that day can best be summarized as SUBSONIC from TOO FAR AWAY.
This having been a known outcome as far back as the late 1970's when they began the process of shutting down ADC/ADTAC and computer simulations showed _Bears_ 'merging with traffic' all over U.S. airspace with nobody within HUNDREDS OF MILES able to do anything about it.
CONCLUSION:
So the USAF, in their malicious obsession with providing for their own cockpit uber alles needs over that of their nation and paymasters best security interests, has not only failed in providing the systems platforms to make a reasonable /attempt/ at fighting a real 'terrorist hunting war.' But they have long since abandoned the ONE THING which they and only they have been charged (for almost half a century) with doing.
Defend our airspace.
Don't BS me about service priorities mister. I'll laugh in your face. Their sole priority is themselves.
>>
It is a good idea, but the implementation of it is far from being as easy as you would like to portray.
>>
It is a great idea and if someone with an ounce of brains 'implemented it' (began an aggressive R&D program with existing technology base) tomorrow, 'the next time' (inside 5 years) the USAF or Navy swung their testicles into a wheel barrow and declared expeditionary sport war, even a poduck threat like Al Qaeda could inflict upwards of 50% losses on the D1/R1 airframes.
100% if the tankers were exposed.
And I hope somone does it.
Simply because 'our boys in uniform' volunteered to become slaughter dawgs in an elitist military subculture and they have shown next to no competency in their chosen vocation at a time when we REALLY NEED THEM TO JUST DO THEIR DAMN JOB.
Maybe if they die like normal humans, completely outclassed by REAL warfighter technology, the world will look at the 'humanist' nature of the most inhumane activity known to man and DECIDE if they really want to pretend in sky knights on turbine horses solely for jousting rights.
Or would prefer a cheaper peace secured by real capabilities and non-fragmented diplomacy.
KPl.
>>
OK, don't accept my notion, meanwhile the rest of the world will continue turning.
>>
That's the point isn't it? Ignore the kooks and keep right on wasting /enormous/ amounts of time, resources and societal momentum maintaining a force for war that is really a war for profit based industry whose 'leading lights' will long be dead and their millions gone to their children if not overseas before the world realizes that those who led them down the golden path were just as self centered, ignorant and cluelessly corrupt as they are.
That there WAS NO 'grand master plan'. And none of the toys brought security for more than it took to deplete the bank account funding them.
>>
FACT - the design will be compromised, quite significantly
>>
FACT. You keep stating that it will be but you do not prove /how/ in light of my REAL WORLD examples to the contrary. Indeed, you skip-tralalee past any attempt at a realistic counterpoint in the hopes that no one will notice your inability to comment authoritatively on-topic.
>>
FACT - no missile manufacturer has come up with a solution remotely similar in overall capabilities to what is required
>>
FACT. The division of Roles and Missions is about hunting preserve turf wars. Within those individual parochial bounds, designs are 'refined not supplanted' because only by maintaining diversity of capability can you justify plucking the money tree to the last leaf to ensure you have 'all the necessary golf clubs for all the required courses'.
Add to this the certainty that we have tested munitions off of UAV since the late 1970s. And that ADM-160 _passed_ all it's service requirement tests, only to have it's neck snapped in the crib when people started to consider ALL THE OTHER MISSIONS IT COULD DO.
And it becomes clear that the only people who have reasonable belief in as a function of KNOWLEDGE ABOUT the conceptual system performance and ease of deployment are those whose hostility towards it's success is personal-threat job security driven and thus completely biased in anything they might say, either way.
>>
FACT - as much as you may like to ignore it, the army is not dictated to by the airforce, and if they want something, their supplier will try to give it to them.
>>
FACT. The ADI, including JLENS and SLAMRAAM and MALI would have been run by the Army. MALD (as the baseline for the CMD interceptor MALI) was cancelled with prejudice, JLENS was ignored without an effective over-hill interceptor with controlled recovery/safing options and the Marines, who lack the manpower to be more than mechanized commandos, are the sole operator of an effective (cheap to 20,000ft or 6 miles), mid-range, S2A boost-slide alternative.
FACT. The average call lag for preplanned CAS in OEF was 26 minutes. And so UBL got away from Tora Bora and men died needlessly because the Army lost 3 out of 4 helicopters in the first 15 minutes of Anaconda.
Furthermore, the USAF would not drop their precious PGMs without precise targeting coordinates and they had retired all the dedicated (bent pipe) platforms like the ABCCC-130 with which to coordinate said fires. Even as the most hackneyed of single-seat replacements as the ludicrous A-10 SADL mod was also 'not in the A-10C!' put on back burner. So that Lockheed Owego would only have to crack the airframe once.
Delay for unfragged CAS could thus be as much as 17 hours because _nobody had the radios to give a yell_.
This after the Key West agreement took away the perfectly useful OV-1 Mohawk and T-28 Trojan and 'laid the groundwork' for cancelling the night all weather + PGM capable AH-56 in (day) 'light' (only) of the much inferior A-10 being available ten years later.
There are between 9 and 12 Predator orbits over Iraq. A country the size of Kansas. That's like covering a football stadium with 12 flashlights pointed at your feet.
Now lets move onto Air Defense.
FACT. At one time, there were 20 NIKE sites around New York. Had nearly ANY ONE OF THEM still been functioning on 9/11, at least one of the Twin Towers might still be standing. The government had known since 1994 that attacks on large structures with airliners was possible. And done NOTHING to provide a covert capability, even with presurveyed, rapid-erect Patriot sites on purchased land as had been done before.
The USAF's GAI performance on that day can best be summarized as SUBSONIC from TOO FAR AWAY.
This having been a known outcome as far back as the late 1970's when they began the process of shutting down ADC/ADTAC and computer simulations showed _Bears_ 'merging with traffic' all over U.S. airspace with nobody within HUNDREDS OF MILES able to do anything about it.
CONCLUSION:
So the USAF, in their malicious obsession with providing for their own cockpit uber alles needs over that of their nation and paymasters best security interests, has not only failed in providing the systems platforms to make a reasonable /attempt/ at fighting a real 'terrorist hunting war.' But they have long since abandoned the ONE THING which they and only they have been charged (for almost half a century) with doing.
Defend our airspace.
Don't BS me about service priorities mister. I'll laugh in your face. Their sole priority is themselves.
>>
It is a good idea, but the implementation of it is far from being as easy as you would like to portray.
>>
It is a great idea and if someone with an ounce of brains 'implemented it' (began an aggressive R&D program with existing technology base) tomorrow, 'the next time' (inside 5 years) the USAF or Navy swung their testicles into a wheel barrow and declared expeditionary sport war, even a poduck threat like Al Qaeda could inflict upwards of 50% losses on the D1/R1 airframes.
100% if the tankers were exposed.
And I hope somone does it.
Simply because 'our boys in uniform' volunteered to become slaughter dawgs in an elitist military subculture and they have shown next to no competency in their chosen vocation at a time when we REALLY NEED THEM TO JUST DO THEIR DAMN JOB.
Maybe if they die like normal humans, completely outclassed by REAL warfighter technology, the world will look at the 'humanist' nature of the most inhumane activity known to man and DECIDE if they really want to pretend in sky knights on turbine horses solely for jousting rights.
Or would prefer a cheaper peace secured by real capabilities and non-fragmented diplomacy.
KPl.
Originally posted by ch1466
>>
FACT - the design will be compromised, quite significantly
>>
FACT. You keep stating that it will be but you do not prove /how/ in light of my REAL WORLD examples to the contrary. Indeed, you skip-tralalee past any attempt at a realistic counterpoint in the hopes that no one will notice your inability to comment authoritatively on-topic.
Ignoring the rest of the post which was... meandering.
The laws of physics are proof.
1. You need to be able to out manouvre the manned aircraft
2. You need to have endurance to patrol
3. You need to have high engagement speed to close
4. You need sensors
5. You need a warheard
6. You want to accomplish all this for a 'throwaway' price, under $1 million US was your figure.
A drone will give you 2 and 3
A MALD will give you 2
A conventional missile will give you 1,3,4 & 5.
Even using the GQM-163, you need to scale up the control surfaces for increasing manouverability, their actuators, the piping and pumps - then install the warhead and sensors/comms electronics... scale up the control surfaces even more now to compensate (for the increased weight of their support systems as well), resulting in a big missile, which will not come in at under 1 million dollars no matter how much you wish it to be.
Your paranoia over the armed services is clouding your judgement.
Kilcoo316,
Ignoring the rest of the post which was... meandering.
>>
1. You need to be able to out manouvre the manned aircraft
>>
And a drone which can natively withstand more _instantaneous_ G /and/ get back the speed which was lost in the 'magic move' more quickly than a jet (less drag, same T/Wr) will do exactly that.
Because in point of truth, it only needs to _bleed down_ it's opponent, like wolves harrying a sick moose. Until the end comes in a flash of MULTIPLE attacks that hamstring then butcher it.
In 1966, after 6 months of clobber college in China, the VPAF went from 10% to 55% scored mission kills. In a jet whose nominal performance wasn't even half that of the F-105's they forced to dump ordnance.
>>
2. You need to have endurance to patrol
>>
The third law of firepower is maneuver to target, not to engage. Where baseline /surveillance/ (go over here and _look_) can be by longwave radar or even Ding Hao netted means, you cannot avoid the realization that if a hunting weapon is moving through space for upwards of a couple hundred miles AFTER it reaches fighting altitude, it is indeed 'patrolling' for the one mission that an equal number (by cost) of Su-27 would need to survive before being bombed on their runway or run out of gas in a chase.
>>
3. You need to have high engagement speed to close
>>
No you don't. Closure is relative to aspect angle and a Mach 1 drone WILL overtake a Mach .85 manned airframe. Most especially if it is launched in a formation that reflects the ability to 'I see, you cut off' tap-bounce vector lines. Since there is no reason not to expect FQ attacks as often as RQ ones _provided you launch early enough in the raid_ (or have a standing orbit), there is no reason to believe the the drones will not in fact have 'doubled closure'. Inherent to the flying monkey not being able to see them until they are in the cockpit with him.
>>
4. You need sensors
>>
Really reaching here since you have yet to state why the drone cannot be it's own 'netcentric' sensor system. As indeed the notion of _Mosaic Apertures_ is at the heart of all NCW systems ability to take in and process target/threat data.
>>
5. You need a warheard
>>
Are you on crack? Why didn't you 'say something' in response to my earlier comment that the warhead and fuze are intrinsic to an existing system? Oh I get it, this is like a repeat jam technique isn't it? Lag the signal just enough and the truth will get lost in the noise.
>>
6. You want to accomplish all this for a 'throwaway' price, under $1 million US was your figure.
>>
What I have STATED CLEARLY was that the baseline for it being a 1 million dollar missile is there (when you foolishly stated otherwise). What I have _also made utterly clear_ is that the missile has to cost less than the interceptor it would replace AS A FUNCTION OF the number of shots that it's designated opponent would be able to shoot at it.
Su-30 with all the fixings is a 50 million dollar airframe. An F-35 has 2 shots in stealth mode. Divide 50 by 4 (two longrange kills and a section pair to continue the Highland Charge motif) and the number you come up with is 12.5 million. The simple fact being that if you have 8, 12.5 million, systems and they ALL TOGETHER score a section of F-whatever before dying. You have _still done better than any existing system would_. Because the Flanker, (Rafale, Flubber, JAS) by virtue of both it's own signature and dependence on RF targeting systems, is gonna die before it completes ONE mission. Likely not long after WIW. While the drones, even if they die /completing ONE mission/ will still have 2 kills to their name.
And where those two kills are each 104 million dollar 'super fighter lites'. The total is 100 vs. 208 million dollars. In favor of the little guy with a functioning accountant on his side.
>>
A drone will give you 2 and 3
A MALD will give you 2
A conventional missile will give you 1,3,4 & 5.
>>
So will flak. Yet nobody seems to question that the flak round is 'too slow or limited in it's control surfaces to maneuver' and 'too limited in sensor abilities to selftrack' when it blows up in lethal proximity to a jet.
The Drones have the option of killing from either a first pass or a second pass basis. YOU are the one who must prove that their additive energy totals as a 'basic physics' of specific excess power are not sufficient to make the endgame happen.
First by proving that the MAWS and/or Radar can detect a target with perhaps a .00025dbsm RCS and a heat signature as low as a burned out missile. So that the pilot can time his evasion.
Then by proving that the engagement conditions don't favor a drone skirmish line in a spread perhaps 40-100 miles wide being able to gain the overtake sufficient to make the cutoff as he tries to run like a yiping mutt.
And finally, by showing that the drones superior 'on site as much as sight' energy factor does not give them more time to finalize the kill.
SAMs exist to enable transit over long ranges before a target is completely beyond the cueing/guidance sensor as much as engagement zone bubble. Where stealth negates longrange acquisition and network sensors exist to move the initial detection footprint under the airframe rather than the airframe past a remote aperture, the targeting issue goes away. Where the conventional SAM cost is so enormous as to make it impossible to throw at a given (VLO) occupation volume like a crapshoot of _weapon_ acquisition, you MUST gain back your initial investment by making it possible for the weapon to scan-as-it-goes and REATTACK after a failed initial pass.
SAM's by virtue of compensating for _long launch ranges_ (NOT terminal energy requirements!) are completely burned out upon arrival.
And so cannot reattack, even if they have the aerosurface areas to take advantage of 'lower energy states' (and they don't).
>>
Even using the GQM-163, you need to scale up the control surfaces for increasing manouverability, their actuators, the piping and pumps - then install the warhead and sensors/comms electronics... scale up the control surfaces even more now to compensate (for the increased weight of their support systems as well), resulting in a big missile, which will not come in at under 1 million dollars no matter how much you wish it to be.
>>
No. I'm sorry but you want to graft your idea atop mine before proving why your idea cannot work as a function of identifying it with mine. Typical misdirective/misinformational trick.
Unfortunately, as with all your other balderdash statements, you make no reasoned accounting for SCALE of performance as a function of easing such things as microsecond timings on fuze settings and the need for a huge warhead to compensate for wide miss distances (among many other faulted assumptions on your part).
Indeed, I would go so far as to state that you have ZERO conceptual understanding of the system function on the simplest of baselines: "Alright, let's fly the Test Point again!" _in the same sequence_. IN REAL NOT VIRTUAL CONDITIONS. Until you have tweaked everything. As an element of simplifying overall development costs.
With a weapon that can be pararecovered and refurbished to do it all again for the /next/ Test Point.
If your understanding of the basics of the weapons system as well as the details of it's integration as a scaled weapons system is so poor as to approach ephemeral, how can you expect me to treat you any more seriously than you do your own research?
>>
Your paranoia over the armed services is clouding your judgement.
>>
Again, no specific case point where I'm wrong on detail. Only a generalist psychology analysis as a drive by slur. Are you qualified?
Alright, so I will be the adult here and 'make it real' then.
F-16C.50= 27 million each.
4 Year Public Undergrad College Tuition= 45,416 bucks.
money.cnn.com...
Every time you -buy- an F-16 you DESTROY 550 college grads.
The military, in what is now going on 5 years worth of active campaigning, has not found ONE MAN so as to put an end to this insanity. Even as they are paid more and more money to 'keep trying' to do exactly that (negative incentive if ever I heard one).
Indeed, despite all the hue and cry about 'our brave soldier boys' there is not even a FORCE ON THE GROUND in Pakistan where UBL is supposed to be lurking.
We will not buy the kinds of cheap airframes needed to putup a loitering replacement for the eyes-on-ground needed to find this ONE MAN. And we fail to do so based on the false presumption that manned jets are 'all that' relative to the simplest solutions to the contrary.
That is JUST WRONG.
Because war for it's own sake does not bring security. It brings oppression. And we are paying the flying monkeys who are a very large part of making it happen.
257 billion bucks and counting.
For a jet that costs twice as much as an F-16. But does very little 'better'.
5 million 658 thousand, 799 college graduates. So that little boys can put a "My other toy is..." bumper stickers on their back fender.
That is just criminal given how _poorly_ the current generation is doing.
KPl.
Ignoring the rest of the post which was... meandering.
>>
1. You need to be able to out manouvre the manned aircraft
>>
And a drone which can natively withstand more _instantaneous_ G /and/ get back the speed which was lost in the 'magic move' more quickly than a jet (less drag, same T/Wr) will do exactly that.
Because in point of truth, it only needs to _bleed down_ it's opponent, like wolves harrying a sick moose. Until the end comes in a flash of MULTIPLE attacks that hamstring then butcher it.
In 1966, after 6 months of clobber college in China, the VPAF went from 10% to 55% scored mission kills. In a jet whose nominal performance wasn't even half that of the F-105's they forced to dump ordnance.
>>
2. You need to have endurance to patrol
>>
The third law of firepower is maneuver to target, not to engage. Where baseline /surveillance/ (go over here and _look_) can be by longwave radar or even Ding Hao netted means, you cannot avoid the realization that if a hunting weapon is moving through space for upwards of a couple hundred miles AFTER it reaches fighting altitude, it is indeed 'patrolling' for the one mission that an equal number (by cost) of Su-27 would need to survive before being bombed on their runway or run out of gas in a chase.
>>
3. You need to have high engagement speed to close
>>
No you don't. Closure is relative to aspect angle and a Mach 1 drone WILL overtake a Mach .85 manned airframe. Most especially if it is launched in a formation that reflects the ability to 'I see, you cut off' tap-bounce vector lines. Since there is no reason not to expect FQ attacks as often as RQ ones _provided you launch early enough in the raid_ (or have a standing orbit), there is no reason to believe the the drones will not in fact have 'doubled closure'. Inherent to the flying monkey not being able to see them until they are in the cockpit with him.
>>
4. You need sensors
>>
Really reaching here since you have yet to state why the drone cannot be it's own 'netcentric' sensor system. As indeed the notion of _Mosaic Apertures_ is at the heart of all NCW systems ability to take in and process target/threat data.
>>
5. You need a warheard
>>
Are you on crack? Why didn't you 'say something' in response to my earlier comment that the warhead and fuze are intrinsic to an existing system? Oh I get it, this is like a repeat jam technique isn't it? Lag the signal just enough and the truth will get lost in the noise.
>>
6. You want to accomplish all this for a 'throwaway' price, under $1 million US was your figure.
>>
What I have STATED CLEARLY was that the baseline for it being a 1 million dollar missile is there (when you foolishly stated otherwise). What I have _also made utterly clear_ is that the missile has to cost less than the interceptor it would replace AS A FUNCTION OF the number of shots that it's designated opponent would be able to shoot at it.
Su-30 with all the fixings is a 50 million dollar airframe. An F-35 has 2 shots in stealth mode. Divide 50 by 4 (two longrange kills and a section pair to continue the Highland Charge motif) and the number you come up with is 12.5 million. The simple fact being that if you have 8, 12.5 million, systems and they ALL TOGETHER score a section of F-whatever before dying. You have _still done better than any existing system would_. Because the Flanker, (Rafale, Flubber, JAS) by virtue of both it's own signature and dependence on RF targeting systems, is gonna die before it completes ONE mission. Likely not long after WIW. While the drones, even if they die /completing ONE mission/ will still have 2 kills to their name.
And where those two kills are each 104 million dollar 'super fighter lites'. The total is 100 vs. 208 million dollars. In favor of the little guy with a functioning accountant on his side.
>>
A drone will give you 2 and 3
A MALD will give you 2
A conventional missile will give you 1,3,4 & 5.
>>
So will flak. Yet nobody seems to question that the flak round is 'too slow or limited in it's control surfaces to maneuver' and 'too limited in sensor abilities to selftrack' when it blows up in lethal proximity to a jet.
The Drones have the option of killing from either a first pass or a second pass basis. YOU are the one who must prove that their additive energy totals as a 'basic physics' of specific excess power are not sufficient to make the endgame happen.
First by proving that the MAWS and/or Radar can detect a target with perhaps a .00025dbsm RCS and a heat signature as low as a burned out missile. So that the pilot can time his evasion.
Then by proving that the engagement conditions don't favor a drone skirmish line in a spread perhaps 40-100 miles wide being able to gain the overtake sufficient to make the cutoff as he tries to run like a yiping mutt.
And finally, by showing that the drones superior 'on site as much as sight' energy factor does not give them more time to finalize the kill.
SAMs exist to enable transit over long ranges before a target is completely beyond the cueing/guidance sensor as much as engagement zone bubble. Where stealth negates longrange acquisition and network sensors exist to move the initial detection footprint under the airframe rather than the airframe past a remote aperture, the targeting issue goes away. Where the conventional SAM cost is so enormous as to make it impossible to throw at a given (VLO) occupation volume like a crapshoot of _weapon_ acquisition, you MUST gain back your initial investment by making it possible for the weapon to scan-as-it-goes and REATTACK after a failed initial pass.
SAM's by virtue of compensating for _long launch ranges_ (NOT terminal energy requirements!) are completely burned out upon arrival.
And so cannot reattack, even if they have the aerosurface areas to take advantage of 'lower energy states' (and they don't).
>>
Even using the GQM-163, you need to scale up the control surfaces for increasing manouverability, their actuators, the piping and pumps - then install the warhead and sensors/comms electronics... scale up the control surfaces even more now to compensate (for the increased weight of their support systems as well), resulting in a big missile, which will not come in at under 1 million dollars no matter how much you wish it to be.
>>
No. I'm sorry but you want to graft your idea atop mine before proving why your idea cannot work as a function of identifying it with mine. Typical misdirective/misinformational trick.
Unfortunately, as with all your other balderdash statements, you make no reasoned accounting for SCALE of performance as a function of easing such things as microsecond timings on fuze settings and the need for a huge warhead to compensate for wide miss distances (among many other faulted assumptions on your part).
Indeed, I would go so far as to state that you have ZERO conceptual understanding of the system function on the simplest of baselines: "Alright, let's fly the Test Point again!" _in the same sequence_. IN REAL NOT VIRTUAL CONDITIONS. Until you have tweaked everything. As an element of simplifying overall development costs.
With a weapon that can be pararecovered and refurbished to do it all again for the /next/ Test Point.
If your understanding of the basics of the weapons system as well as the details of it's integration as a scaled weapons system is so poor as to approach ephemeral, how can you expect me to treat you any more seriously than you do your own research?
>>
Your paranoia over the armed services is clouding your judgement.
>>
Again, no specific case point where I'm wrong on detail. Only a generalist psychology analysis as a drive by slur. Are you qualified?
Alright, so I will be the adult here and 'make it real' then.
F-16C.50= 27 million each.
4 Year Public Undergrad College Tuition= 45,416 bucks.
money.cnn.com...
Every time you -buy- an F-16 you DESTROY 550 college grads.
The military, in what is now going on 5 years worth of active campaigning, has not found ONE MAN so as to put an end to this insanity. Even as they are paid more and more money to 'keep trying' to do exactly that (negative incentive if ever I heard one).
Indeed, despite all the hue and cry about 'our brave soldier boys' there is not even a FORCE ON THE GROUND in Pakistan where UBL is supposed to be lurking.
We will not buy the kinds of cheap airframes needed to putup a loitering replacement for the eyes-on-ground needed to find this ONE MAN. And we fail to do so based on the false presumption that manned jets are 'all that' relative to the simplest solutions to the contrary.
That is JUST WRONG.
Because war for it's own sake does not bring security. It brings oppression. And we are paying the flying monkeys who are a very large part of making it happen.
257 billion bucks and counting.
For a jet that costs twice as much as an F-16. But does very little 'better'.
5 million 658 thousand, 799 college graduates. So that little boys can put a "My other toy is..." bumper stickers on their back fender.
That is just criminal given how _poorly_ the current generation is doing.
KPl.
If all this is so ridiculously simple as you keep repeating - why is no SAM missile like it?
After all they are designed for the exact same purpose - deny airspace to enemy aircraft or destroy them if they enter - do the airforce veto the army from having SAMs?
I'm not going to continue repeating the reasons why such an interceptor has not been built as you are continuing to ignore it and mix and match examples without thought of the effects.
What do you mean by qualified? Qualified to be making the assertions on performance impacts etc? Yes, I would say I'm quite reasonably qualified.
This netcentric information you are on about - are you saying it now needs no on-board sensors? If so, and it gets its data entirely from off board, where is the data coming from? [I believe you told me this before but I cannot remember] Was it satellites or something.
Also, would you intend to have patrols of these missiles up 24/7? If it has to fly 100 miles before engagement the fighters will be able to launch their own stand off munitions and turn back. How do you intend to deny airspace over a 300 + mile front? All of a sudden you need a skirmish line of 30 or so at a distance of 10 miles - and what if the enemy flight has 4 aircraft? Or 2 flights totalling to 8.
Also, how do you replace the strike element that an aircraft brings - you effectively are proposing a new SAM (I've just been too stupid not to see that earlier), not a replacement for a striking aircraft.
A SAM with data sources not comparable to any existing design - which is wholly unfair. As I said, the idea has merit, but it is inflexible and won't render aircraft obsolete and needs next generation sensors.
Do you think an onboard radar will have anything like the range to detect a VLO aircraft at more than 2 or 3 miles range? That changes the economics yet further - now for the 300 mile front you need a hundred+ of these things in the air, all communicating with each other to advance in a front sweeping all before it. The VLO next generation aircraft isolates one drone meets it, dives for the deck, evades in a high g manouvre the missile cannot match (to lead the nose) - and then the F-22 just supercruises away. And the rest of the flight of 3 just cruise on through unhindered.
Meanwhile the drones in the locality turn to try and close, but due to their lack of closure rate they fail, and leave the skirmish line in tatters, so even conventional a/c have a more than decent chance of slipping through.
Had an idea that might be even better and is pretty doable right now.
Take a tomahawk, or drone or whatever, doesn't need, speed, doesn't need manouverability - just endurance and reasonable LO tech.
Stick a big AESA in the nose, and use it as a guidance tool for SAMS or long range missiles from aircraft. It can patrol a postions, and deny the airspace bubble to the enemy. They try to HARM the radar from long range, its moving at 300+ mph turn the radar off for a wee bit and HARMs wouldn't do the job, they'd need an active seeker of sorts.
Another plus, the radar will get any low level aircraft that could otherwise sneak in on the SAMs position through ground topology.
If you want to sweep the area, send the drone ahead of your aircraft patrol, it picks up the bandits, datalinks to the fighters behind and they fire on the baddies. If they try and destroy the drone it can turn off radar again momentarily, the baddies know they are heading into a crap shoot and they won't want to be there. If they close to engage the drone, it lights up radar again, and the standoff goodie fighters launch.
Take a tomahawk, or drone or whatever, doesn't need, speed, doesn't need manouverability - just endurance and reasonable LO tech.
Stick a big AESA in the nose, and use it as a guidance tool for SAMS or long range missiles from aircraft. It can patrol a postions, and deny the airspace bubble to the enemy. They try to HARM the radar from long range, its moving at 300+ mph turn the radar off for a wee bit and HARMs wouldn't do the job, they'd need an active seeker of sorts.
Another plus, the radar will get any low level aircraft that could otherwise sneak in on the SAMs position through ground topology.
If you want to sweep the area, send the drone ahead of your aircraft patrol, it picks up the bandits, datalinks to the fighters behind and they fire on the baddies. If they try and destroy the drone it can turn off radar again momentarily, the baddies know they are heading into a crap shoot and they won't want to be there. If they close to engage the drone, it lights up radar again, and the standoff goodie fighters launch.
Wellthe Us is developinga HARm that homes in on radiation and has an active seeker its called AARGM!! No more sams hiding with their radars off!!
www.atk.com...
www.globalsecurity.org... !!!
[edit on 24-4-2006 by urmomma158]
www.atk.com...
www.globalsecurity.org... !!!
[edit on 24-4-2006 by urmomma158]
Kilcoo316,
>>
If all this is so ridiculously simple as you keep repeating - why is no SAM missile like it?
>>
There you go again, trying to lay your definition of 'whut it iz' on my system concept so as to make it seem like I have to fit your mold. To which I can only laugh and say "Unh Unh Uhhhhhh!".
There is principally no difference between a SAM and an Interceptor in 'launch mode'. BOTH being profoundly SURFACE TO AIR defined systems. What differentiates them is the kill mechanization and specifically guidance modes. In that a SAM puts the guidance system on the ground to maintain cheapness and provide some standoff at the cost of absolute range (from the site) at which the engagement can be realistically made. While a 'fighter' sacrifices the capabilities of the actual kill mechanism to be able to forward-loft as a two-stage interceptor. Especially in the era of VLO, the SAM is thus always going to be a 'point' defense system. While the effectiveness of the fighter is defined by the size and vulnerability of the bus system more than the effectiveness of the weapons it carries. This can further be defined as the likelihood of whether the fighter will survive long enough to REACH it's separation point. When it has to go through the missiles-escorting-the-escorts-escorting-the-bombers. As a three layer composite hand on it's furious-midget forehead.
Throw in the coward factor of ill-trained pilots wondering why _their_ 1-2 planes should be risked against 70-100 or more highly trained enemy. And the tendency is to see these wunderjetten fixed to the tarmac as surely as the S-300 guarding the airbase.
Again: _It matters less how you launch than how long you live to provide guidance once you do_. So the only solution is to make the fighter bus function into the missile and the SAM netted guidance function into the bus. Leaving you with a hybrid of both.
That said, in addition to the HiMAT and the MALD/MALI, I can think of several systems which are /aerodynamically/ similar to this notion, the E.381 Julia, the Bachem 349 Natter and the Entzian conversion of the Me-163. You know, back when the Nazi's had nothing to lose and would try anything that worked? Back when we were not so stodgy as to think that the world turned around an existing set of answers regardless of whether the questions were rigged?
>>
After all they are designed for the exact same purpose - deny airspace to enemy aircraft or destroy them if they enter - do the airforce veto the army from having SAMs?
>>
The Air Force exists because it can go places /in other guys airspace/ while the Army is fixing coffee back in the CAOC.
If you cross an R&M line, you generate a conflict of interest whereby the Army can no longer count on an Air Force to defend it (because in theory these things could destroy even own-turf defensive air superiority). And the AF is out of a job because they are 'no better than the Army'. Do you _honestly_ think that the USAF is going to let that happen? Do you HONESTLY think that we were better off letting the cities be naked to attack rather than play 'missile command' with atomic headed Nike H and Bomarc to FORCE the enemy to come into our airspace with slower-cycled bombers, 'under the radar'?
The AF is the dominant service because it is:
A. The sexiest.
B. The only one which can be used to play-at-war rather than win them, over somebody else' turf.
Yet the definition of 'what is a fighter' is complicated, not as a function of multirole identiy but as a consequence to crutching up the innumerable shortcomings of the babies onboard. The notion that fighters are in fact /bombers/ 99.999% of the time is achieved as a function of "Ainhh, might as well..." Rather than _cost:risk:capability_ optimization.
The 'Fallout Missioning' of which is why people see fighters as a do-all rather than an utterly compromised system worth _F-All_.
All because manned air superiority is seen as the king of all missions rather than the one you should look to fight-least. No (manned) air superiority=no (manned) bombers the rest of the time.
And that would make a whole lot of little Sky Knights worth more or less nothin' now wouldn't it?
>>
I'm not going to continue repeating the reasons why such an interceptor has not been built as you are continuing to ignore it and mix and match examples without thought of the effects.
>>
Why? When I answer every one of your empty posits with a real world example of where the technology is sourceable to and you cannot even be bothered to further your disagreement 'in principle' as a continued defense of YOUR position!
This makes it clear that you yourself have no confidence in it beyond the initial declaration. And so are wriggling off your own baited hook.
>>
What do you mean by qualified? Qualified to be making the assertions on performance impacts etc? Yes, I would say I'm quite reasonably qualified.
>>
Riiiiight. Which is why you keep mentioning problems that don't exist or for which existing innovate-and-overcome counter examples GOING BACK TO THE FIFTIES are an extant counterproof.
>>
This netcentric information you are on about - are you saying it now needs no on-board sensors? If so, and it gets its data entirely from off board, where is the data coming from? [I believe you told me this before but I cannot remember] Was it satellites or something.
>>
The existing IADS or a provisional one (depending on the sophistication of the country) sends a raid warning alert to fielded truck-catapult systems sitting on presurveyed hardstands with landline or microwave fast routing. It's not cheap. But it is the equivalent of a single SAM battery vs. an entire national Air Defense coverage system. The U.S. services cannot win even an airwar, from the peripheries. And if they try and penetrate to depth, they are dead.
Because these catapult trucks fire the drone which subsequently climb up at a leisurely rate of say 15,000fpm while the jets are still 'on there way over from Aviano'.
The drones then fly whatever marshal stack orbit you wish until released or immediately assume battle formation and advance to contact as the threat comes over the fence or across a given (target defense threshold) response line.
>>
Also, would you intend to have patrols of these missiles up 24/7? If it has to fly 100 miles before engagement the fighters will be able to launch their own stand off munitions and turn back.
>>
How? Would you now equip every jet with a Storm Shadow or JASSM? Or would you prefer to be more realistic and stick with a 30-40nm GBU-39? How about a 12-15nm JDAM? Your inability to realistically do more than grab-bag a 'suitable countermeasure' from the sack _without consideration for targeting or munition stocks_ brings your professional competency to be judging system fitness in principle or execution once more into question sir.
In any case, look at Afghanistan-
www.cia.gov...
A country at least 500nm across it's latitudinal axis and a good 700nm from top to bottom. With another 200nm over Pakistan to the sea. This being a backwards little moronic nation, with the 'sole advantage' of _operational depth_ to let even the simplest of observer corps styled relays outrun a 7-10nm/min strike force so that the drones can be launched on warning as much as in constant relays.
Where 'the fence' is defined less by a national border than the absolute pursuit performance of the worst threat, once you are over the fence, you had better not go nuts with deceptive raid ground track maneuver. Because you WILL NOT have a tanker to keep you safe.
Mind you, with 1,250lbs or less of fuel, there is no reason to assume that even a standing CAP with 2-5 mission pararecovered recycle would not be /vastly/ more efficient than an Su-27 equivalent sucking down 12-19Klbs of gas every time it turns.
............................................>
How do you intend to deny airspace over a 300 + mile front? All of a sudden you need a skirmish line of 30 or so at a distance of 10 miles - and what if the enemy flight has 4 aircraft? Or 2 flights totalling to 8.
>>
Well now, the depends on exactly how far and how force fraction commited I intend to take the intercept, now doesn't it?
If I only intend to provide an 'untouchable' (invisible) CAP orbit in the likely lanes between a target group and an ingress direction, I can run them out 40nm in mixed bearing lane+altitude block coverage, sit there, and wait for a secure TACAMO like release order based on 'local' observation from radars or acoustics or ground optics and even human surveillance. This go-to-it command can, in 20 digits or less of burst-synch, command numbers and formation and attack plan like a football playbook sequence-
www.smartdraw.com...
www.wheelbarrowsoftware.com...
As the drones exit the wagon wheel.
If I intend to find the threat on the other side of a fence as it comes off a tanker, I may need a longer range radar or a separate warning cue (small boat or radio traffic monitoring or 'plane spotter enthusiast' for instance).
It should also be noted that the type of sensor will dictate a lot of the formation geometries.
If it's truly a 'seeker' like system with limited elevation and traverse for a given IFOV, then you may need to stack in depth as well as laterally to get a 'wall of MALI' type effect.
If you have a fully gimbaled IRST with one or more heads ala MiG-29 or OSF, you can probably scan a wider total field of regard and so thin out the total drone numbers as to enable pass-by handoff and targeting, even within the drone formation itself.
If you are facing a combat spread of section pairs, in a staggered line abreast between element leads:
.......FL1................Threat Axis..........................................................................
.................2................\/..................................................................................
...................................\/...................2.............................................................
..........................................1...........................................................................
By the time the threat raid tally's FL 1 (as a hot-plume 20km stood off from it's ground track) as the loosely defined (by modem connectivity to the outside world as opposed to intraflight only) flight lead, the others may well be ready to roll in behind it. Whether it sprints to get away from. Or turns to engage, the eyeball drone.
>>
Also, how do you replace the strike element that an aircraft brings - you effectively are proposing a new SAM (I've just been too stupid not to see that earlier), not a replacement for a striking aircraft.
>>
Amazing isn't it? Nobody actively targets the U.S. with military airpower. We are always the ones who go in to 'free with HE!' spread the misery.
That said, the real answer will always be that the platform which does ONE job, is worth more than the platform it replaces which _does not_. At orders of magnitude greater individual system and support cost.
Because, if you then insist on maintaining the strike mission as an option, you can then allocate funds to do that mission with appropriate (uncompromised) grace.
By 2015, we will be ass deep in alligators named DEWS.
If we wish to maintain penetrating air as a viable option, we will flat out NEED to have the ability to do the kinds of missioning that includes random exchanges of million dollar assets based on nothing more than flying into a given cube of airspace through which beam-director optics are looking.
Either way, whether you are doing OCA against a defending force composed of drones little more valuable than missiles themselves.
Doing DCA against an impinging threat of unmanned assets that 'feel neither pain nor fear'.
Or looking at minimizing passage-threat attrition losses against ZTOF systems which cannot be 'argued with' using conventional CM and suppression.
It behooves you to rebalance both sides of the fighter:strike equation via recoverable bombers with minimized 'up front' beyond their expensive sensor packages. And terminally penetrating, possibly throwaway, 'escorts' (frei jagd), which can be risked in some considerable numbers against a threat force composed of mixed hunting and DEWS systems themselves.
KPl.
[edit on 25-4-2006 by ch1466]
>>
If all this is so ridiculously simple as you keep repeating - why is no SAM missile like it?
>>
There you go again, trying to lay your definition of 'whut it iz' on my system concept so as to make it seem like I have to fit your mold. To which I can only laugh and say "Unh Unh Uhhhhhh!".
There is principally no difference between a SAM and an Interceptor in 'launch mode'. BOTH being profoundly SURFACE TO AIR defined systems. What differentiates them is the kill mechanization and specifically guidance modes. In that a SAM puts the guidance system on the ground to maintain cheapness and provide some standoff at the cost of absolute range (from the site) at which the engagement can be realistically made. While a 'fighter' sacrifices the capabilities of the actual kill mechanism to be able to forward-loft as a two-stage interceptor. Especially in the era of VLO, the SAM is thus always going to be a 'point' defense system. While the effectiveness of the fighter is defined by the size and vulnerability of the bus system more than the effectiveness of the weapons it carries. This can further be defined as the likelihood of whether the fighter will survive long enough to REACH it's separation point. When it has to go through the missiles-escorting-the-escorts-escorting-the-bombers. As a three layer composite hand on it's furious-midget forehead.
Throw in the coward factor of ill-trained pilots wondering why _their_ 1-2 planes should be risked against 70-100 or more highly trained enemy. And the tendency is to see these wunderjetten fixed to the tarmac as surely as the S-300 guarding the airbase.
Again: _It matters less how you launch than how long you live to provide guidance once you do_. So the only solution is to make the fighter bus function into the missile and the SAM netted guidance function into the bus. Leaving you with a hybrid of both.
That said, in addition to the HiMAT and the MALD/MALI, I can think of several systems which are /aerodynamically/ similar to this notion, the E.381 Julia, the Bachem 349 Natter and the Entzian conversion of the Me-163. You know, back when the Nazi's had nothing to lose and would try anything that worked? Back when we were not so stodgy as to think that the world turned around an existing set of answers regardless of whether the questions were rigged?
>>
After all they are designed for the exact same purpose - deny airspace to enemy aircraft or destroy them if they enter - do the airforce veto the army from having SAMs?
>>
The Air Force exists because it can go places /in other guys airspace/ while the Army is fixing coffee back in the CAOC.
If you cross an R&M line, you generate a conflict of interest whereby the Army can no longer count on an Air Force to defend it (because in theory these things could destroy even own-turf defensive air superiority). And the AF is out of a job because they are 'no better than the Army'. Do you _honestly_ think that the USAF is going to let that happen? Do you HONESTLY think that we were better off letting the cities be naked to attack rather than play 'missile command' with atomic headed Nike H and Bomarc to FORCE the enemy to come into our airspace with slower-cycled bombers, 'under the radar'?
The AF is the dominant service because it is:
A. The sexiest.
B. The only one which can be used to play-at-war rather than win them, over somebody else' turf.
Yet the definition of 'what is a fighter' is complicated, not as a function of multirole identiy but as a consequence to crutching up the innumerable shortcomings of the babies onboard. The notion that fighters are in fact /bombers/ 99.999% of the time is achieved as a function of "Ainhh, might as well..." Rather than _cost:risk:capability_ optimization.
The 'Fallout Missioning' of which is why people see fighters as a do-all rather than an utterly compromised system worth _F-All_.
All because manned air superiority is seen as the king of all missions rather than the one you should look to fight-least. No (manned) air superiority=no (manned) bombers the rest of the time.
And that would make a whole lot of little Sky Knights worth more or less nothin' now wouldn't it?
>>
I'm not going to continue repeating the reasons why such an interceptor has not been built as you are continuing to ignore it and mix and match examples without thought of the effects.
>>
Why? When I answer every one of your empty posits with a real world example of where the technology is sourceable to and you cannot even be bothered to further your disagreement 'in principle' as a continued defense of YOUR position!
This makes it clear that you yourself have no confidence in it beyond the initial declaration. And so are wriggling off your own baited hook.
>>
What do you mean by qualified? Qualified to be making the assertions on performance impacts etc? Yes, I would say I'm quite reasonably qualified.
>>
Riiiiight. Which is why you keep mentioning problems that don't exist or for which existing innovate-and-overcome counter examples GOING BACK TO THE FIFTIES are an extant counterproof.
>>
This netcentric information you are on about - are you saying it now needs no on-board sensors? If so, and it gets its data entirely from off board, where is the data coming from? [I believe you told me this before but I cannot remember] Was it satellites or something.
>>
The existing IADS or a provisional one (depending on the sophistication of the country) sends a raid warning alert to fielded truck-catapult systems sitting on presurveyed hardstands with landline or microwave fast routing. It's not cheap. But it is the equivalent of a single SAM battery vs. an entire national Air Defense coverage system. The U.S. services cannot win even an airwar, from the peripheries. And if they try and penetrate to depth, they are dead.
Because these catapult trucks fire the drone which subsequently climb up at a leisurely rate of say 15,000fpm while the jets are still 'on there way over from Aviano'.
The drones then fly whatever marshal stack orbit you wish until released or immediately assume battle formation and advance to contact as the threat comes over the fence or across a given (target defense threshold) response line.
>>
Also, would you intend to have patrols of these missiles up 24/7? If it has to fly 100 miles before engagement the fighters will be able to launch their own stand off munitions and turn back.
>>
How? Would you now equip every jet with a Storm Shadow or JASSM? Or would you prefer to be more realistic and stick with a 30-40nm GBU-39? How about a 12-15nm JDAM? Your inability to realistically do more than grab-bag a 'suitable countermeasure' from the sack _without consideration for targeting or munition stocks_ brings your professional competency to be judging system fitness in principle or execution once more into question sir.
In any case, look at Afghanistan-
www.cia.gov...
A country at least 500nm across it's latitudinal axis and a good 700nm from top to bottom. With another 200nm over Pakistan to the sea. This being a backwards little moronic nation, with the 'sole advantage' of _operational depth_ to let even the simplest of observer corps styled relays outrun a 7-10nm/min strike force so that the drones can be launched on warning as much as in constant relays.
Where 'the fence' is defined less by a national border than the absolute pursuit performance of the worst threat, once you are over the fence, you had better not go nuts with deceptive raid ground track maneuver. Because you WILL NOT have a tanker to keep you safe.
Mind you, with 1,250lbs or less of fuel, there is no reason to assume that even a standing CAP with 2-5 mission pararecovered recycle would not be /vastly/ more efficient than an Su-27 equivalent sucking down 12-19Klbs of gas every time it turns.
............................................>
How do you intend to deny airspace over a 300 + mile front? All of a sudden you need a skirmish line of 30 or so at a distance of 10 miles - and what if the enemy flight has 4 aircraft? Or 2 flights totalling to 8.
>>
Well now, the depends on exactly how far and how force fraction commited I intend to take the intercept, now doesn't it?
If I only intend to provide an 'untouchable' (invisible) CAP orbit in the likely lanes between a target group and an ingress direction, I can run them out 40nm in mixed bearing lane+altitude block coverage, sit there, and wait for a secure TACAMO like release order based on 'local' observation from radars or acoustics or ground optics and even human surveillance. This go-to-it command can, in 20 digits or less of burst-synch, command numbers and formation and attack plan like a football playbook sequence-
www.smartdraw.com...
www.wheelbarrowsoftware.com...
As the drones exit the wagon wheel.
If I intend to find the threat on the other side of a fence as it comes off a tanker, I may need a longer range radar or a separate warning cue (small boat or radio traffic monitoring or 'plane spotter enthusiast' for instance).
It should also be noted that the type of sensor will dictate a lot of the formation geometries.
If it's truly a 'seeker' like system with limited elevation and traverse for a given IFOV, then you may need to stack in depth as well as laterally to get a 'wall of MALI' type effect.
If you have a fully gimbaled IRST with one or more heads ala MiG-29 or OSF, you can probably scan a wider total field of regard and so thin out the total drone numbers as to enable pass-by handoff and targeting, even within the drone formation itself.
If you are facing a combat spread of section pairs, in a staggered line abreast between element leads:
.......FL1................Threat Axis..........................................................................
.................2................\/..................................................................................
...................................\/...................2.............................................................
..........................................1...........................................................................
By the time the threat raid tally's FL 1 (as a hot-plume 20km stood off from it's ground track) as the loosely defined (by modem connectivity to the outside world as opposed to intraflight only) flight lead, the others may well be ready to roll in behind it. Whether it sprints to get away from. Or turns to engage, the eyeball drone.
>>
Also, how do you replace the strike element that an aircraft brings - you effectively are proposing a new SAM (I've just been too stupid not to see that earlier), not a replacement for a striking aircraft.
>>
Amazing isn't it? Nobody actively targets the U.S. with military airpower. We are always the ones who go in to 'free with HE!' spread the misery.
That said, the real answer will always be that the platform which does ONE job, is worth more than the platform it replaces which _does not_. At orders of magnitude greater individual system and support cost.
Because, if you then insist on maintaining the strike mission as an option, you can then allocate funds to do that mission with appropriate (uncompromised) grace.
By 2015, we will be ass deep in alligators named DEWS.
If we wish to maintain penetrating air as a viable option, we will flat out NEED to have the ability to do the kinds of missioning that includes random exchanges of million dollar assets based on nothing more than flying into a given cube of airspace through which beam-director optics are looking.
Either way, whether you are doing OCA against a defending force composed of drones little more valuable than missiles themselves.
Doing DCA against an impinging threat of unmanned assets that 'feel neither pain nor fear'.
Or looking at minimizing passage-threat attrition losses against ZTOF systems which cannot be 'argued with' using conventional CM and suppression.
It behooves you to rebalance both sides of the fighter:strike equation via recoverable bombers with minimized 'up front' beyond their expensive sensor packages. And terminally penetrating, possibly throwaway, 'escorts' (frei jagd), which can be risked in some considerable numbers against a threat force composed of mixed hunting and DEWS systems themselves.
KPl.
[edit on 25-4-2006 by ch1466]
Originally posted by VType
Uh oh. I think maybe the Air Force is relying on Beyond Visual Range weapons platforms vs. Actuall agile close in dog fighters.
Work Smarter, Not Harder
Let them come to us. The military's standpoint is this:
See them, before they can see you.
The dream Military Motto:
If they see can see us, we saw them A LONG time ago!
If the F-22 does not already gun down the enemy aircraft from a distance, that's when they call in other support. It's teamwork. One single aircraft is not going to be perfect in all situations. You wouldn't take a Rolls Royce to a drag strip or a drift track, and you wouldn't take the president around in a Honda Civic! Just like you wouldn't drag race a 4x4 truck, and you wouldn't go off-roading in a Geo Metro.
Different things have different jobs and uses.
Originally posted by mlindahl
Work Smarter, Not Harder
Did you just learn this phrase today? Because thats three times you've posted it in a few minutes
Originally posted by waynos
Originally posted by mlindahl
Work Smarter, Not Harder
Did you just learn this phrase today? Because thats three times you've posted it in a few minutes
Sorry...it's just a very valuable/appropriate phrase when talking about the F-22.
I was teasing, of course
(and fancy having to edit a one sentence post, durrr )
[edit on 1-5-2006 by waynos]
(and fancy having to edit a one sentence post, durrr )
[edit on 1-5-2006 by waynos]
Originally posted by mlindahl
The dream Military Motto:
If they see can see us, we saw them A LONG time ago!
HUH? Are you missing something here? I'm sorry, but the first part of this sentence does not make any scense! It looks like you either have an extra word, or forgot one. Were you trying for something like this:
If they can see us, we 've already seen them LONG ago!
You might wish to rewrite this so others know for sure what you are saying!
Tim
No, his motto makes almost perfect gramatical sense, he just needs to change "saw" to "Seen" and "we" to "we've".
The letter "A" is what ties it all together, by getting rid of it, that's just not making any sense. We saw then long time ago?
Make any sense to you?
Shattered OUT...
The letter "A" is what ties it all together, by getting rid of it, that's just not making any sense. We saw then long time ago?
Make any sense to you?
Shattered OUT...
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