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08-03-15, 05:41 PM | #16 |
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I must admit, I've long feared that "Stealth" will become the modern equivalent of dive bombing as per the WW2 Luftwaffe, ie hugely effective initially, then as various counters come into play a massive waste of resources. Almost all German WW2 bombers were designed and built with the ability to dive bomb (even the HE177 Strategic bomber) and this imposed cost, weight, design and drag limitations on almost all German bombers.
I'm not suggesting that there isn't a place for a specialised stealth a/c, or that we shouldn't incorporate cheap and easy signature reduction features in fighter planes, but this idea we have that every a/c has to be RF invisible brings massive costs and worse still, a massive operating cost that extends through the life of the a/c. I'm starting to lean towards the idea of an F-22 "silver bullet" style force for the initial air to air phase and upgraded F-15/16/18 to do most of the work. add in cheap semi stealthy cruise missiles for conventional strike and you have high end fighters for high threat scenarios and very capable mid level a/c, in numbers, to handle the rest. I would imagine that a reasonable investment in something like the above would cover most scenarios, at least until either drones take over or directed energy weapons clear the skies. |
08-04-15, 10:04 AM | #17 | |||||
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08-04-15, 02:24 PM | #18 | |||||
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In Canada its main nicknames were the widowmaker (press nickname), and the Lawn Dart or Aluminium Death Tube (what the pilots called it), and had a 46% loss rate in Canada over the time of its service, many attributable to teething problems as well. Of course our previous jet the F-86 saber had even higher losses, but then it flew in combat in Korea. Quote:
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This doesn't mean it was a bad plane as an interceptor, it just was rather poor at anything else, especially as missiles became more capable. To make use of its advantages takes an exceptional pilot, as you can't allow yourself to be drawn into a turning fight which is the natural impulse, as this plane can't turn. As the joke with Canadian pilots goes, 'banking with intent to turn'. To fight with it, your only option is to boom and zoom, as it was even less maneuverable than the F-4 Rhino. Quote:
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08-05-15, 03:36 PM | #19 | ||||
Ocean Warrior
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The early medium dive bombers were not too bad a design, and in a way they were necessary for any kind of precision bombing (like targeting the British Chain Home Stations for example) as Germany did not have particularly accurate bomb sights early war. But trying to make every single bomber dive capable was indeed foolish for all the reasons you said. The biggest mistake for Germany though was its failure to develop a good heavy bomber, particularly early on, which in part was due to this Dive bombing doctrine. We still use dive bombing to this very day in Close Air Support because it remains a very effective tactic because of its precision, and it allows pilots to get in and out of the target area fairly quickly due to the speed boost from the dive. The difference though is that we no longer build specialized dive bombers, and we don't try it with anything larger than a fighter or fighter/bomber. Also the flight profile is rather different as the dive is much shallower and a lot faster and not the near vertical dives of the Stuka using dive brakes that almost made the plane hang in the sky, and blackout inducing pullouts out of the dive. Quote:
Everything else should be more conventional. The reason for this is that stealth is very expensive, and entails a lot of sacrificing of the aircraft's performance and payload for that stealth. So it is kind of an all or nothing thing, as aircraft designed with both in mind have to make sacrifices either to stealth or capability, as is the case with the F-22 and F-35. They either have very limited stealth capability, or very limited combat capability, or some mix in between. This gets even more exaggerated when you attach external pylons to the F-22 or F-35, as now you have a very expensive plane, that still can't carry anywhere near what a comparable non stealth plane can, that is now rendered entirely non stealthy because of the pylons. I mean what is the point then? Sure you can ditch the pylons once the ordinance is expended and regain most of the stealth capability, but you would be 2/3rds of the way through the mission by then, so why bother using them in that capacity at all when you could field 5 times the number of conventional aircraft for the cost, each individually having greater capacity than the stealth aircraft. This is precisely why politicians should not be allowed to dictate design philosophy, as they don't have a clue what they are doing (this goes for some of the upper brass too who are equally incompetent). Quote:
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08-05-15, 04:31 PM | #20 |
Ocean Warrior
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What kind of flight profile would this aircraft be built for? If it is a high-medium altitude stealth plane, then it would be defeated by modern, mobile meter wavelength radars (such as Nebo-M) coupled with long range SAMs and/or modern fighters, as those would negate it's primary survivability feature - stealth.
And you did see A12, right?
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08-05-15, 08:05 PM | #21 |
Ocean Warrior
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I would picture it as being generally low flying and subsonic, preferably with the engines mounted midway in the body or wing roots and ducted to reduce IR emissions and decrease its sound signature. It probably should have super-cruise engines or some form of afterburner to give it the ability to popup and attack air or ground targets before disappearing back into the ground clutter, or to help it cover ground quickly when it has to.
I hadn't actually seen the A14 before, boy does it remind me of the Ho.229. Design wise I would see the plane having a somewhat similar shape for both stealth and other design reasons (payload, fuel capacity, etc.). Another design feature I would probably incorporate would be to remove the traditional glass cockpit and imbed the pilot cockpit flush inside the body of the aircraft, as the cockpit has always been a major source of trouble for decreasing the radar signature of a plane. The pilot would be able to see outside the plane using a camera network and helmet mounted display. I am uncertain though if it should be carrier capable or not, as that could just complicate the design due to the unique needs of Navy aircraft. The key thing though is that this plane would have a rather small production run, as they would be too expensive and would not make sense as a replacement to more conventional craft. As for the Nebo-M, only time will tell if it performs even half as well as claimed (wouldn't exactly be the first time Russia has exaggerated a platform's capability). I also would not be surprised if future developments in stealth technology can find a way around it, though. |
08-05-15, 11:41 PM | #22 |
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I don't think ultra-maneuverability is that important a feature.
A reasonable amount of maneuverability is enough. We're talking about a platform with an extremely sophisticated radar system which will also be backed up with link and contact data from AWACS radar aircraft, among other sensor info. When you're taking your shots 20-30 miles away with an active radar missile, you can turn away to get some distance before the other guy's even in range to fire his missiles, if he even gets a lock on you in the first place (Stealth). And ignoring all that, it only takes a split second of yanking the nose to get an IR missile shot off, and after that the bad guy's usually going to have to break off to evade, or he'll be hit. Look at the examples of dogfighting in a sim/game like Flaming Cliffs (Lomac). Fights with missiles rarely devolve into scissors battles, it's usually finished in 1 or 2 reversals or even at the break, if it even gets that close. Probably more than 70% of all the fights are over at 20miles distance with a long range radar guided missile. |
08-06-15, 06:31 AM | #23 |
Ocean Warrior
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Nebo-M is a currently operated, mobile (15 minutes to set up) radar.
Getting stealth against it is not possible with existing known physical principles, due to the fact that the wavelength defeats both shaping and RAM coatings/structures. Even if such signature reduction measures were to be adopted, the growing radar power would still allow detection (at cost of murdering poor birds but still). In my opinion stealth is/was overrated. Relying on it for survivability creates a single point of failure within the desighn, plus stealth is difficult if at all possible to imporve post production.
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08-06-15, 11:19 AM | #24 | |||
Ocean Warrior
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Besides, if the Russian radar works so well as they claim against stealthy aircraft, do you not think the US would have quickly dropped the F-35. I mean why spend all those hundreds of billions of dollars if it doesn't really work? I guarantee that Lockheed Martin Skunkworks has access to comparable VHF radar systems to the Nebo-M, and would have tested the design against it. With their setup they can pretty much simulate just about any existing radar system in the world, and very accurately examine how stealthy a design is from all aspects against all the different radar types. Quote:
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08-06-15, 11:44 AM | #25 |
Ocean Warrior
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Most stealth aircraft (ie F117A, F22A, JSF series, B2A to lesser extend) have shaping features that are either equal in size or smaller to the wavelength, but are not significantly larger than it.
This leads to a such interaction between the radiowave and the aircraft that the shaping features do not actually matter, the wavelength (by enlarge) ignores those. RAM coatings wise, you either make those broadband and require RAM coatings/structures thickness to be on par or thicker than the wavelength, or you create narrowband RAM coastings/structures. This is why RAM coatings/structures are defeated by even shorter wavelengh radars of L-band (which also partially defeats shaping). JSF is too big to fail, even if it's stealth (which comes from way back) is no longer a decisive factor. A purpose built, low level flight platform is another matter however, even though you could fit an L-band radar that could detect 0.005m2 RCS at 600km onto a plane. In my opinion stealth sort of lost it's thunder back in 1987, with S300V2 (which had mobile long wavelength radar for target detection, surprise) coming around (unless you believe in the 0.00000000000001m2 RCS figures given for F117A and F22A) and rendered tactically (via fully mobile VHF/UHF and other radars) and strategically (via fielding of new long range means - such as beyound horizon radars) irrelevant, especially at high altitudes, as current airborne radar technology is still some ways behind the ground based stuff.
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Grumpy as always. Last edited by ikalugin; 08-06-15 at 11:50 AM. |
08-06-15, 07:44 PM | #26 |
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I've been flying combat sims (online) since Jane's F15 came out, all I can say is that I've never found maneuverability to be the most important issue in a fight. If the fight did devolve into close quarters it always ended within 30 seconds and 1-2IR missile shots.
Sure, you can evade missiles all day long but while you're doing that your enemy is just going to close distance while you can't shoot at him because you've lost your lock, or your missile range is going to be too short because you've lost energy evading the missiles, but he's still up high and now heading in the opposite direction. Besides that a good BVR fighter will send more than 1 missile your way on the first salvo and time the second one to really mess with your evasion efforts. It all comes down to using the best features of your aircraft and the assets on your side in order to win. You wouldn't try to dogfight a Zero in a P-38 would you? (I used to fly these exclusively online and racked up kills like crazy in both. Flying one like you'd fly the other would be a recipe for quick death). Fly your aircraft in a way that compliments its strengths. Just because an aircraft is maneuverable doesn't make it better than yours. IMO the American side has better tools (Missiles, link data, etc) than the current Russian or Chinese offerings, and in the end that is what is most important, because I don't see any real F-35 vs F-16 engagements happening in the near future. Last edited by Wildcat; 08-06-15 at 07:50 PM. |
08-06-15, 10:11 PM | #27 | |||||
Ocean Warrior
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Shaping alone never entirely works as the best it can hope to accomplish is decreasing the radar signature and lowering the detection range (which is the entire purpose of stealth, your not invisible, your just harder to detect). You can't eliminate all the possible radar returns by shaping alone. The big question is if there exist RAM coatings that still work or not. Plus of course there are other piloting tricks that can be used to defeat radar beyond NOE flying, even with non-stealthy aircraft. As for radar detection it was already known that the F-117 had some detection problems even before the start of the F-35 design process, that was one of the reasons why it was fazed out (the other being the massive downtime and support/maintenance costs). So it doesn't make a huge amount of sense to add stealth capability at such a greater expense, knowing it doesn't work at all. But then again I seriously question a lot of the design decisions when it comes to the F-35, so who knows. Quote:
I can think of many occasions in Falcon 4 or DCS where I was in a guns only situation against another player because we had already expended all of our ordinance against each other or other players that had been already shot down. Including a few times where me and another player were so evenly matched you lost because you ran out of fuel. Quote:
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But this is exactly my point. The F-35 reportedly does not have either advantage as it has both poor energy management and poor maneuverability, it doesn't have either and still lost to a 3-4 decades old plane where the F-35 had every single advantage as far as load outs (F-16 have severe penalties to maneuverability and energy while carrying twin fueled drop tanks). The only thing going for this plane is its stealth features, which are utterly useless up close. This also means that the F-35 would have almost no chance of successfully evading a missile that has locked on to it. If your fighting a plane that can turn like a Zero and has the speed and energy of a P-38, while your plane can't do either as well, and the other pilot is as skilled as you are, who do you think is going to win the fight? This is why I am saying if the F-35 is performing as poorly as the test pilot claims, it is in serous trouble if it ended up in combat against a modern well equipped foe. Quote:
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08-07-15, 02:31 AM | #28 |
Ocean Warrior
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As far as I am aware RAM coatings issue is due to underlying basic physics, unless US not only had a theoretical breakthrough in radio physics on Ufimtsev level, but also a simmilar breaktrhough in relevant material science and implimented those breakthroughs, then such changes are not possible.
I am not aware of such breakthroughs. And, in all likelyhood, we would be if they did occur 10 years ago. My point is that the improvements in radar technology outpaced the reach of stealth, as permitted by known physics principles. This was due to increases in power (ie new naval L-band radar with around 1.5 mega-watts of impulse power and 1.3 consumed), improvements in mobility. This would be further improved via the GaN and better modules becomming availiable in the near future (GaN gives around 40 percent average emited power efficiency vs 20 currently availiable). Improvements in signal processing methods and means (multistatic arrays, reverse SAR) would further improve counter stealth detection to the point, where it becomes irrelevant, as you would be able detect tertiary effects of aircraft flying through air even if aircraft itself is invisible and primary/secondary effects are fully supressed.
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08-07-15, 11:59 AM | #29 | |
Ocean Warrior
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There are also a lot of other questions we can't answer either, such as the real world impact of these competing forms of technology. Such as even if the stealth planes can be detected and even tracked to a certain extent with newer ground based radar systems, can they really be effectively engaged with missiles, and/or aircraft, and what are the limitations as to range and other factors. Also what about the other methods of avoiding radar detection, particularly when coupled with stealth, how does that effect the equation. Neither side can I think fully answer these questions, or be fully certain of either technology. Physics is always going to our best guesses (theories) based on the evidence we have at hand, and all of our theories are flawed because of this. Lastly even if Russia really does have the technology to counter stealth. That in of itself does not mean a whole lot. Russia and NATO/US are very unlikely to come to direct head to head combat, and it will be quite a long while before most other countries will be able to afford to deploy such technology in any quantity for it to be of much use. |
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08-08-15, 09:49 AM | #30 |
Ocean Warrior
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Stealth is still usefull in a number of roles. Because primary means for stealth detection (apart from optics, as those are weather dependent) use large apertures (either for high power*aperture or for long wavelengths), stealth still does offer some advantages, especially if coupled with otherwise capable platform (in terms of ECM/kinematics), as then it gives you an edge in engagements, for example in missile lock on probability (due to stealth, those would lock on at shorter ranges, thus increasing chance of evasive manuevers working out).
The problem here is that the improvements in electronics have led to a situation, where long wavelength radars (such as Nebo-M, Nebo-SVU and many others) allow for ARH missile guidance, as they now have sufficient accuracy for this. I could provide relevant calculations if you so desire. L-band and other high aperture*power AESA radars always had that accuracy in the first place. Sure, Russia and NATO are unlikely to fight it out, but at the same time those counter stealth means are availiable for export and are affordable. For example beyound horizon radar set with 3000km range is priced at ~200m USD.
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