Comment by jasonwatkinspdx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasonwatkinspdx | Hacker News Reader

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jasonwatkinspdx

"So why are we complaining about making an air force that serves our needs rather then one that might be useful for some other task."

Because the JSF is a shitty bomb truck too. It doesn't have the range, capacity or loiter time of nearly any other option. And for CAS vs bomb hauling, the JSF simply doesn't have the gun (and again, lacks the loiter time).

"As a note he says this will be the 'new mainstay of the air force' however we still have the F-22 as our air superiority fighter which is still believed to be better then anything out there, and indeed in their simulation the only limitation to the F-22 was there were too few of them."

We aren't dealing in hypotheticals where we can have any number of planes we want. That's the basic lesson of the RAND study: dollar for dollar you can have so many more SU-3 7 derivatives that even if the F-22's have a perfect kill probability, they quickly exhaust their magazines and have nothing else to do. And that's the outcome of the simulation: the F-22's live, most of the rest of the blue force dies, and red gains air superiority over the straight of Taiwan via the remaining flankers.

"It sure beats the Harrier and the F-18."

The FA-18 is more capable than the F-35 in both the A2A and A2G missions as a result of its superior capacity, range, and time on station. Comparing the FA-18 to the F-22 is more muddled, and IMHO comes down to an assesment of the relative performance of stealth vs EW. The prevailing attitude among the Russian military designers is that stealth is mitigated by state of the art communicating radars and passive emission detection (they claim detection of the F-22 at 50km on passive IR alone). And of course, as soon as the F-22 takes a shot stealth is no longer a consideration. Thankfully the F-22 is fast enough that it can turn and run. The F-35 can't, which is why they were decimated in the sim.

The F-35 has EODAS for spherical optical threat detection vs OLS front only on a Su-35 Flanker.

Also, a Su-35 Flanker cant fire a missile at 50km without radar lock, which would be difficult against a F-35. Even if they did fire a future Long-Range IR missile, the F-35 would detect and release flares to avoid the missile. Also, the kinetics of the missile would make it hard to track a F-35 during terminal phase.

A F/A-18 has significant less range and time on station than F-35, with both internally fueled. The F/A-18 carries all weapons externally.

As for your comment about stealth when the F-22 fires a missile, that assumes the F-22 doesn't change course after firing said missile. The F-22 would most likely turn away from the target, so they are not staying behind the missile relative to the target.

Pretty much everything you said in this entire thread is wrong or at least misguided.

I stand behind what I've said and encourage you to dig into the open source docs on this. The RAND study is worth a start but there's a lot more, including English language materials from the SU design staff.

"As for your comment about stealth when the F-22 fires a missile, that assumes the F-22 doesn't change course after firing said missile."

Doesn't matter. Once you've got a launch flare that gives you a position fix to hand to the radar to do localized searching, dramatically weakening the likelihood of avoiding continued spotting.

The 2008 RAND study has been widely debunked. Any idea of the RCS(X-band) of a F-22, or a F-35 for that matter?

F-22: 0.0005 m2

F-35: 0.0015 m2

F-16C: 1.0m2

Su-27/Su-30 Flanker: 10.0m2 (China has this series and J-11 "Flankers" built domestically)

Su-35 (Advanced) Flanker: 1.0m2 (Russia only)

From the front a stealthy F-35 is basically noise against the background using X-Band radar. The latest L-Band radar on a Su-30MKI (Bars N011M) or Su-35 AESA couldn't actually track a stealth target but might get a faint return.

My comment about the missile is that most missiles don't maintain full thrust the entire flight over 30NM - they have an initial boost to Mach 2.5+, then they coast at lower thrust until reaching the target. Newer missiles might have terminal boost but this would likely not be enough to hit an F-35 that sees the missile on EODAS. Very few Russian (or US made) missiles can shoot down a jet fighter at 20NM+ when that fighter detects the missile.

I'm familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the Su-27 and Su-30. The Su-27 OLS is the best feature against a stealth adversary but its nowhere near as good as the F-35 EODAS.

A F-35 would be almost impossible to track at 30NM using AESA radar much less a F-22. An F-15C with the latest APG-82 AESA can't track a F-22 for radar lock at 1000 ft range so what chance would a Su-30 have at 30NM. The SU-30 pilot would have to manually cue the OLS without radar. Auto-cueing a heat source would lock onto the flares.

In around 60-90 seconds into the merge an F-35 would be within range for an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile shot while the Su-30 pilot is trying to cue the OLS manually. Most recent dogfights are over in under 2 minutes.

Take a look at this documentary on the F-22 program. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-Sh1SAaJz0

And here is the RAND press release about the previous report you referenced. http://www.rand.org/news/press/2008/09/25.html "Those reports are not accurate."

Before the battle of Midway the Japanese navy wargamed the battle and cadets (playing the US) did to the Japanese exactly what the actual US navy did. Naval command debunked the results, changed the rules, ran a new wargame, and won. They then went and got the core of their actual navy destroyed.

Any argument like this in favor of the F35 is very dubious. You're talking about the F35 allegedly defeating older technology with radar, stealth, and missiles. Yow know what will win using radar, stealth, and missiles? Drones. Who might suddenly show up to a battlefield with a lot of drones?

Yeah, it's also hard to do an apples to apples comparison. Should the F-35 be compared to competitors that are in operation now, or ones that will be available for purchase at the same time the JSF is? This gets even more difficult with the SU jets, because they've shifted to a very aggressive continuous upgrade program. So in particular with the radars and the EW stuff it's not clear what gear a given model will actually have.

> Also, a Su-35 Flanker cant fire a missile at 50km without radar lock, which would be difficult against a F-35. Even if they did fire a future Long-Range IR missile, the F-35 would detect and release flares to avoid the missile. Also, the kinetics of the missile would make it hard to track a F-35 during terminal phase.

If you know how much heat is coming out, then you know roughly what thrust should be being produced. Couple that with known performance characteristics of the aircraft - i.e. aircraft don't just go from manoeuvring in one way to manoeuvring in another - and I would imagine you can tell the two apart fairly easily.

After all, fighter jets don't, at least in the course of normal operation, just change their emission profile and fall out of the sky.

Actually, A-6Bs on SAM suppression flights idled their engines and dived for the deck to avoid SAMs fired at them over Vietnam.

There have been cases of MiG-21s and Mirage F1s releasing flares and successfully avoiding an AIM-9 missile fired at them from less than 10NM. The engaging fighter usually speeds towards the target and fires a second missile at closer range and shoots it down.

Sounds pretty much like the latest gens of the french rafale, except for the VTOL ;-)

Rafale has reduced RCS and OLS(FLIR) but its not spherical either. Only the F-35 has spherical Electro-Optical systems. The Rafale also doesn't have mature A/G capability. Laser targeting and AESA radar have only recently been added to the Rafale F3 version.

>the only limitation to the F-22 was there were too few of them.

...

>the F-22's live,

F-22 is cheaper than F-35 (and btw looks better - weapons look is important for projecting power - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtahqXjFcxU :), yet F-22 program was closed because of cost while F-35 continues (and still seems to be in R&D stage, though the late stage of R&D). Something bad about F-22 vs. that being good in F-35? Or just government spending logic?

Interesting also that there is a ban on export of F-22 (even to good friends like UK/etc) while F-35 is supposed to be available for export.

"Or just government spending logic?"

I believe it's just this. Too much of our military's decision making is influenced by the contractors that build the weapons. The F-35 is the largest single military purchase we've ever done. Too many people would lose too much if the program was abandoned, so the politicians involved cannibalized budgets from things that could be a competitor.

"Interesting also that there is a ban on export of F-22 (even to good friends like UK/etc) while F-35 is supposed to be available for export."

It is. I think that may be partly to do with materials used on the F-22, particularly the coatings. It has to be 'repainted' every so often in a very precise way, so to sell them to allies we'd also have to transfer knowledge of the materials and process.

It's worth noting that many of the customers that were in line to buy the F-35 have pulled out or are at least voicing concerns in their media.

I thought the issue was the F-35 could be multirole, and F-22 couldn't, so they needed to replace F-16/F-18/A-10/etc., which the F-22 couldn't do.

I still think manned combat aircraft are probably on the way out, and absent a current threat, we should be life-extending our existing aircraft, spending 10% of F-35/F-22/etc. on combat UAVs, and end up with ultimately better capability (like, 100x more UAVs than manned aircraft, the ability to go on one-way missions, etc.) Kills the aviator officer career path, though.

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