Not to mention the fact there aren't any Su-35s in service anywhere. I believe there's a half dozen or so in Russia used for testing.

PD

I've seen them before. Some defense research agency called DERA IIRC did them. Of course, no one knows exaclty what assumptions they used.

I'm pretty sure the AIM-120 is factored in. But the Russians presumably are calculated to have their R-77 and R-37 weapons as well, so that evens out.

The fact they can't see it well probably contributed to the 10:1 ratio they estimated - probably they calculated the Americans getting the first shot and assumed a high hit rate. However, presumably they will use IRST tracking.

Supercruise actually becomes a MINUS in a stealth plane going against someone with an IRST. You can try and intermix the exhaust to reduce the temperature differential, but the engine exhaust is still quite hot, and missiles and IRSTs these days track from the front as well. Supercruise increases frictional heating, which shows up on the IRST as a target. Once the F-22 gets detected, it loses its stealth advantage and the fight gets decided on much different terms.

Oh how I long for the days of the R-40 (AA-6 Acrid) and R-33 (AA-9 Amos)... :roll:

Actually, you may not want that. Sure, American weapons tended to be better than their Soviet counterparts, but before AMRAAM, long range BVR missiles generally have pretty low hit percentages (IIRC, some reports suggest even the AMRAAM hit rate fell by the time of Kosovo, which suggests people have started thinking how to defeat it) all around.

The day of the Acrid is also the day of the pre-L versions of the Sidewinder, when all missile hit percentages were poor.

SU 35's are used by the russian airforce and are in service but they have been super seeded by the more advance and monoverable SU37 and that will be out done again very soon with the SU42 if its ever built.

The AIM-54 along with its F-14 counterpart are being phased out by the US Navy in favor of the much more versatile F-18E (WHich is actually a new plane and only resembles the older F/A-18C).

THe AIM-54 has for the first time been fired in combat in the Gulf War. It currently holds a 100% miss rate. Not a very viable missile in todays fight. It was designed to shoot down bombers which is why. Fighters just dodge it.

-S

That is about right. SU-35 was supposed to be built for full scale service, but they have yet to do that. So the US built a Super Plane that is designed to defeat a ghost plane made by the Russians.

Something about the above story reminds me of what the US did to the Russians back in the 1970's with the XB-70. We built 3 prototypes, and the Russians dumped hordes of money into designing the MiG-25 Foxbat to shoot it down, and then we go ahead and cancel the XB-70! SOund familiar?

-S

IRST is of limited usefulness. Very short ranged and not capable of counting compressor blades to determine aircraft type. ALl it does is let you know that someone is there and also let you know that there is nothing you can do about it! :) That is of course if you fall into the IRST's cone of vision.

-S

Your forgetting the Iran-Iraq war. Some sources say that Iranian F-14s using AIM-54s scored some 60-70 kills according to some (probably exaggerating) sources. But some were shot down.

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/planes/q0077.shtml

From that article - here is what the US estimates:

Western estimates for the true kill-loss ratio attained by the F-14 during the conflict credit 4 kills against 4 or 5 losses.

-S

PS. They go on further to say that the AIM-54 may not even be operational due to sabotage. Also, they do not say what missile was used to shoot down the aircraft, so it could even be an AIM-7 or AIM-9 was used.

Until the current government of Iran changes I doubt we will ever know the truth.

No doubt! There media hype is remarkably similar to chomical allie!

-S

If you can pick it up on IR, it moves fast at about Mach 1.5, and not on radar when you do a fast check, well sheesh, that means either an American F-22 or maybe a Eurofighter - enemy.

These days, IRSTs are up to 40km vs fighters inbound, 90 out, non afterburning. I'd guess with all the extra heat supercruise will cause, it may go up to 60 in or so. Still not enough to give you first shot (at high altitude - missile ranges plummet like a stone from their brochure propaganda at lower altitude fights), but enough to set up some patrol zones. Once you see it, you can fire IR guided missiles.

The FOV. IIRC the total cone of vision is 120x75, comparable to a radar, of which 60x10 is scanned at one time, which is quite comparable to radar.

You are assuming a fighter or bomber without reduced IR signature. Your effective range of IRST against this thing is most like about the same time a slammer lights up your aircraft as it just turns on its radar on its final terminal guidance envelope.

IRST is pointless and almost useless at 40 km too on something that travels about a mile every 2.5 seconds in Supercruise. If you have it on IRST, and it has you as its next victim, and you are probably traveling directly at it to be in the IRST cone and probably at about Mach .9 in your SU, that would give you about 30 to 40 seconds warning before this thing flies right by you, and probably only about 15 seconds warning before a slammer lights you up by turning on its internal radar for its final terminal guidance. Hope you're not sleeping in that 15 seconds because you have little time to think of a game plan to live for an extra second or two, or die instantly.

Starting to see the reason the US doesn't care too much about IRST? Its almost pointless. This F-22 is a killing machine and it does its job well.

-S

PS. The five F-15's couldn't even begin to fight only one of these things and the F-15 pilot that lived longer than 2 minutes, didn't live longer than that by much. They gave up even trying to take on the 1 F-22 and all of them together just concentrated on living as long as possible. These were experienced pilots all trying to coordinate on only 1 plane. THey had no chance. The F-22 is a very unfair fighting machine and I pity anyone that wants to even think about trying to do anything against it. Trust me on this one - future wars against this aircraft will be relagated to using SAM warfare only until someone can build a better plane at some point.

MiG Mapo 1.42 is the only aircraft that may have a chance. Russia abandoned this project due to costs however.

In a few years a weekness will be spotted by some nation then a missile or gun developed and were back to square one so heres a premature hello to the YF24.