OT - New Russian Stealth Fighter

[CodyValkyrie]

No offense taken man. I was just stating the current (as of 5 years ago) state of our EW as I saw it in active duty. What the Russians have always been able to do was field a plethora of SAM equipment in country, and to its allies. Proof in point, Vietnam. Russian SAM technology has always been the boon of western civilizations, and in many trial by actual fire examples, Russian designs have proved formidable. I wouldn't have had a job in the U.S.A.F. had this not been the case.

I do feel however the topic has remained civil, and interesting. I am holding nothing negative on anyone. I'm simply stating my experience in regards to this conversation, and where it goes.

I have no dog in the fight regarding the new Russian design anymore and I find the whole conversation rather interesting. It looks like an interesting plane. I wonder how this will play out on the modern battlefield if they are able to field the plane in great numbers, as well as to their allies, and how this will interact with our current systems and technology.

My comments about EW were not directed at anyone in particular, but were rather intended to add informtion to this conversation, especially since the topic had shifted somewhat to EW and SAMS in particular, an area of which I feel I have some degree of expertise in.

 

[centuryseries]

No offense taken man. I was just stating the current (as of 5 years ago) state of our EW as I saw it in active duty. What the Russians have always been able to do was field a plethora of SAM equipment in country, and to its allies. Proof in point, Vietnam. Russian SAM technology has always been the boon of western civilizations, and in many trial by actual fire examples, Russian designs have proved formidable. I wouldn't have had a job in the U.S.A.F. had this not been the case.

I do feel however the topic has remained civil, and interesting. I am holding nothing negative on anyone. I'm simply stating my experience in regards to this conversation, and where it goes.

I have no dog in the fight regarding the new Russian design anymore and I find the whole conversation rather interesting. It looks like an interesting plane. I wonder how this will play out on the modern battlefield if they are able to field the plane in great numbers, as well as to their allies, and how this will interact with our current systems and technology.

My comments about EW were not directed at anyone in particular, but were rather intended to add informtion to this conversation, especially since the topic had shifted somewhat to EW and SAMS in particular, an area of which I feel I have some degree of expertise in.

No worries it is a very interesting discussion, I'm enjoying it. Just trying to ensure that it stays as balanced as possible!

I'm fascinated by the methods the jammers used to use to deceive the threat posed by Radar systems, one particular system I read about in Rich Grahams SR-71 books is intriguing the way it would somehow (the method is beyond me) give the tracking radar a false distance and location away from the deceiving aircraft thereby making any missile that gets close detonate harmlessly.

Awesome stuff - and that was old technology heaven only knows what these systems do today.

Has anyone found any decent photos of the T-50?

 

[stiz]

100% nonesense

i dont care if it is, i for one find it extermly hard to belive that claim, and i know i'm not the only one. Also if a plane makes it back to base with battle damage, but pulls of a successful landing, but is then scraped due to the damage .. is that counted as a loss ...

 

[Matt Wynn]

i dont care if it is, i for one find it extermly hard to belive that claim, and i know i'm not the only one. Also if a plane makes it back to base with battle damage, but pulls of a successful landing, but is then scraped due to the damage .. is that counted as a loss ...

a loss implies taken out in battle if i recall... not after service... i admire the way technology advances then gets stalemated by other tech... the T-50 just Like the Raptor, i'm sure will perform admirably, so what'll be it's official Designation? Su-40?

 

[Ken Stallings]

That's the problem with anything. If you want absolutely, positively watertight proof you'll have to go back in time and write everything down yourself.

For getting a quick overview, Wiki is awfully nice though. And that was all I was on about; showing that Northrop and Horten had indeed a connection.



The mechanism may be different but one would be blind denying any connection between the StG44 and the AK-47.

You miss his point! You are implying that the Horton design inspired Jack Northrup. Not true at all. Makes as much historical sense as trying to say one man inspired the design of the jet engine. In fact, it was a three-man parallel development track. One Brit, one German, and one Italian all worked the issues simultaneously and without coordination or awareness.

Jack Northrup had his vision about a flying wing before World War II and therefore since we did not know about the Horton design until after the war ended, it is illogical, inaccurate, and to a certain degree insulting to assert that Northrup was inspired by the Horton aircraft.

Yes, he inspected the aircraft, but that was for helpful tidbits. Northrup didn't look at the aircraft after the war and suddenly see a flash of inspiration. He had been working the issue himself years prior.

One should note that nowhere have I written here that other nation's stuff was junk. In fact, what I said is that it's wrong to assert inferiority on the part of allied AAA systems. I've also provided personal knowledge and experience to help back it up. I would assert that to use Wikipedia to try to refute such statements doesn't strengthen the argument. Whether this sidebar discussion on the B-2 or AAA systems, much has been brought to this discussion that is historically inaccurate. To return to my original point regarding allied AAA systems ...

The Patriot was not developed to take down incoming missiles. It was designed to take out incoming aircraft. It was just that Patriot was such an incredibly lethal, fast, and accurate anti-aircraft system, that it could pull double duty in Gulf War I to take out SCUDS. Some have myopically claimed the effectiveness was doctored.

They miss the point on three levels. It wasn't designed to do that and only became highly lethal in ABM use with follow-on modifications. Second, in war you aren't obligated to tell the enemy the truth. Third, despite some misses in GW1, it did have a few cases of direct hits -- something amazing for the day! Sorry if we used the media to send a somewhat hyped up message. But I hope civilians can understand that in the effort to discourage Saddam from using them to kill innocent civilians, a little "white lie" was entirely moral and justified!

Moreover to this discussion, it means one heck of a fine AAA system was fielded!

Cheers,

Ken

 

[bushpilot]

There's already a FSX native model of this, here's a shot of it with stealth enabled:

 

[Ken Stallings]

FSX model of stealth clouds? Nice to know!

 

[CodyValkyrie]

The Klingons and Romulans must answer for this atrocity!

 

[warchild]

You miss his point! You are implying that the Horton design inspired Jack Northrup. Not true at all. Makes as much historical sense as trying to say one man inspired the design of the jet engine. In fact, it was a three-man parallel development track. One Brit, one German, and one Italian all worked the issues simultaneously and without coordination or awareness.

Jack Northrup had his vision about a flying wing before World War II and therefore since we did not know about the Horton design until after the war ended, it is illogical, inaccurate, and to a certain degree insulting to assert that Northrup was inspired by the Horton aircraft.



Cheers,

Ken

One of the more amazing and unexplained phenomena that can be seen throuought history, is people getting similar ideas within a specific time range. This is most noticeable with the Renaissance Style of painting wherein several artists living hundreds of miles apart and having no contact with each other, developed very similar styles. iin the 20s and thirties, and fourties, flying wings for some reason became a popular idea, and america finally carried through with the B-2. It's very easy to claim that one thing copies another, when truth told, none of the inventors may have a clue about the existence of the others doing the same thing..

 

[deathfromafar]

i dont care if it is, i for one find it extermly hard to belive that claim, and i know i'm not the only one. Also if a plane makes it back to base with battle damage, but pulls of a successful landing, but is then scraped due to the damage .. is that counted as a loss ...

The claims are 100% confirmed. NO Air to Air losses have occurred of a single F-15 in combat between the USAF,IDF, and Saudi AF who have used them in combat. The record currently stands at 104 to 0.

There have been F-15E's lost to SAM's and Ground Fire. The first 2 lost happened on Jan 16th 1991 in the Strike Eagle's combat debut. Even the E model's loss rate is extremely low. All this equates to a combination of excellent design, above average systems, avionics/countermeasures, and excellent training and planning.

 

[deathfromafar]

I'd like to elaborate a little further regarding the discussions of Simulated Air to Air kills in large scale exercises. Seems there are a lot of forum board and youtube baby-chest thumpers trying to make hay out of some of the results of various Fighter/Weapons Meets. The whole purpose of such exercises are to build knowledge, skill, confidence, efficiency, and above all, survivability to Air Combat Crews. The US has the two largest and most experienced organizations in the world who provide just such training. The training's sole purpose is to help our forces and allied forces in hopes of giving them an edge in combat. Our instructors both indigenous and foreign are some of the best people in the business. They(the Red Team) are not there to beat up on the Blue Team or show them who is boss/who has the best equipment. If they wanted to they could but it would defeat the purpose of the training.

Sometimes the most experienced pilots will go 1V1 to see what they have. Here's a video showing guys from the 457th FS flying F-16C Block 32's against Luftwaffe Mig-29's. The score as the video indicates was lopsided. One of the pilots(retired USAF) who flew in the exercise is a lurking member here. All the F-16 Pilots in that exercise were previous Red Flag Instructors many of whom were Vietnam and Gulf War Vets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJrtHQsKjOw&feature=related

 

[Ken Stallings]

Well said, sir!

Joe Foss said it best in my view. "It ain't the crate! It's the man in the crate!"

The view of the USAF and USN aviation is that it really works best if you can put the best man in the best crate! Then, you have an unfair advantage. And in war, that's the way you want it -- a completely unfair advantage!

So, in training, we often deliberately put our guys in a competitive disadvantage to hone specific skills. Then, they have all the tools in their bag.

Cheers,

Ken

 

[Ken Stallings]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJrtHQsKjOw&feature=related

:ernae: That's what Chuck Yeager would term an old-fashioned fanny waxing!

I got a laugh when the video spliced the scene of the crash at the airshow.

Ken

 

[Sundog]

Sundog,

Flew the MC-130E in those successful Red Flag missions in 1997-99.

We had many "tricks" to defeat the latest Soviet stuff. I flew multiple Red Flag sorties and was never shot down. Had a few claims made on us, but our "tricks" often fooled their systems in sly little ways that even the operators were unable to figure out until everyone sat down and crunched the actual numbers.

Cheers,

Ken

Ahhh...O.K., thanks for the info. That makes me want to go fly my CS C-130 now.

 

[Sundog]

I'd like to elaborate a little further regarding the discussions of Simulated Air to Air kills in large scale exercises. Seems there are a lot of forum board and youtube baby-chest thumpers trying to make hay out of some of the results of various Fighter/Weapons Meets. The whole purpose of such exercises are to build knowledge, skill, confidence, efficiency, and above all, survivability to Air Combat Crews. The US has the two largest and most experienced organizations in the world who provide just such training. The training's sole purpose is to help our forces and allied forces in hopes of giving them an edge in combat. Our instructors both indigenous and foreign are some of the best people in the business. They(the Red Team) are not there to beat up on the Blue Team or show them who is boss/who has the best equipment. If they wanted to they could but it would defeat the purpose of the training.

Sometimes the most experienced pilots will go 1V1 to see what they have. Here's a video showing guys from the 457th FS flying F-16C Block 32's against Luftwaffe Mig-29's. The score as the video indicates was lopsided. One of the pilots(retired USAF) who flew in the exercise is a lurking member here. All the F-16 Pilots in that exercise were previous Red Flag Instructors many of whom were Vietnam and Gulf War Vets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJrtHQsKjOw&feature=related

I don't know how old it was, but one of the best shows I've ever seen on DACT was on the military channel not too long ago and it was about an F/A-18 squadron that deployed to Germany to train against the Luftwaffe's MiG-29s. It was very informative, at least for me anyway. It also seemed very "down to earth," no pun intended, at least in terms of how it presented the training scenario's, etc. If anyone here hasn't seen it, I highly recommend it. I believe it's from 2006 and titled "Red October," After doing a search for it.

 

[stiz]

I'd like to elaborate a little further regarding the discussions of Simulated Air to Air kills in large scale exercises. Seems there are a lot of forum board and youtube baby-chest thumpers trying to make hay out of some of the results of various Fighter/Weapons Meets. The whole purpose of such exercises are to build knowledge, skill, confidence, efficiency, and above all, survivability to Air Combat Crews. The US has the two largest and most experienced organizations in the world who provide just such training. The training's sole purpose is to help our forces and allied forces in hopes of giving them an edge in combat. Our instructors both indigenous and foreign are some of the best people in the business.

I'm not gonna say what i wanna say here because i'll most likely get banned for disturbing the peace and upsetting chest beating yanks.

 

[deathfromafar]

I'm not gonna say what i wanna say here because i'll most likely get banned for disturbing the peace and upsetting chest beating yanks.

Actually Stiz, aside from your above remark being filled with youthful exuberance, to the contrary I did not aim my remark at you specifically but I know you're aware of what I mean when I mention that there is a lot of that going on in various places and for the record, I don't see you doing that. Here you have a good cross section of guys who have worked in the arena in one form or another and are very knowledgeable. Sundog is from the Aerospace Engineering arena. Ken Stallings from the Military who is close in the know about these things. CodyValkyrie from ECM which are too often overlooked by the public at large but extremely valuable field and folks. I worked as a Govt Contractor for the Military(Aviation) many moons ago and was in the middle of many exercises. there are literally dozens of people in here with tons of background in Military Aerospace. We speak the truth and we're all about helping allies. In a very unified sense, our efforts and hard work have paid off in spades. The combat results are proven and manuals that got us there were written quite often in blood from all too often difficult to deadly experiences.

 

[centuryseries]

Sundog is from the Aerospace Engineering arena. Ken Stallings from the Military who is close in the know about these things. CodyValkyrie from ECM which are too often overlooked by the public at large but extremely valuable field and folks. I worked as a Govt Contractor for the Military(Aviation) many moons ago and was in the middle of many exercises. there are literally dozens of people in here with tons of background in Military Aerospace. We speak the truth and we're all about helping allies. In a very unified sense, our efforts and hard work have paid off in spades. The combat results are proven and manuals that got us there were written quite often in blood from all too often difficult to deadly experiences.

That aside loyalty can cloud judgement/opinion on ones own wares - I think that the company I work for has better products than our rivals - but is that because I work there, or is it because they are better products than the rest? I'd like to think the latter, but I cannot be sure my judgement is not being overrun by corporate loyalty.

Lets get back on topic no more B-2, no more SAMs no more ECM no more exercises or competition results and no more F-15 fan club lol this topic was supposed to be about the T-50 design.

 

[deathfromafar]

That aside loyalty can cloud judgement/opinion on ones own wares - I think that the company I work for has better products than our rivals - but is that because I work there, or is it because they are better products than the rest? I'd like to think the latter, but I cannot be sure my judgement is not being overrun by corporate loyalty.

Lets get back on topic no more B-2, no more SAMs no more ECM no more exercises or competition results and no more F-15 fan club lol this topic was supposed to be about the T-50 design.

No loyalty clouding judgment here, just stating facts which some seem to simply not like/or agree with but otherwise laid out in an objective and level manner.

BTW, this T-50 may be in deep trouble already. I got a couple of financial reports from a friend of mine who works in and out of Moscow. Money wise, things aren't looking too bright for the T-50 and other major projects in Russia. Deep cuts are coming and remaining money is to be steered towards more important projects. The 250 T-50's the Russian Air Force hoped for may end up only being 60 to 100 drawn out between 2015 to 2025. The new wonder-Sukhoi was named as being targeted as an unnecessary defense program by some critics. So, it may fall to a similar fate to the F-22. Time will tell.

 

[Ken Stallings]

The T-50 is suffering because of the decline in the price paid for natural gas out of Russia. That gas contract with Europe was a huge source of revenues for Russia.

The economic recession in the United States is pretty significant, and to those who've lost their jobs and/or are woefully underemployed at this time, it's a depression. But as it normally the case, we in the US complain loudly when in fact it's worse elsewhere.

Ken