37 thoughts on “Air superiority fighter proposal 4”

1. “Canopy will be opened and closed completely manually, which will save 10 kg on actuators. Aerodynamics will be optimized for maneuverability; check the previous version of the article for details since there won’t be many changes.”

   All for performance, eh?

   But yeah I agree that this is the right decision, although pilots may find it a bit of an annoyance.

   “Unlike previous proposals, gun will be French GIAT-30. While its higher rate of fire means greater ammo expenditure compared to the BK-27, and higher caliber means less rounds carried, greater energy of individual projectiles and better acceleration mean that it is more effective at getting kills during short opportunities in an actual dogfight.”

   Yeah I figured this was the right decision.

   Other reason is that among the shots that hit the target, the 30mm is more likely to do heavy damage to the target.

   Other thoughts:
   – I suppose there will be no use of composites?

   So the body will be made mostly out of aluminum? Just titanium on the landing gear? Or anything else in the structure?
   Regarding the missile, do you think you should have a backup IR sensor, in case the intended target shuts off it’s radar?

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   1. “But yeah I agree that this is the right decision, although pilots may find it a bit of an annoyance.”

      On the upside, there is less chance of getting trapped inside cockpit a la F-22.

      “- I suppose there will be no use of composites? ”

      Depends on wether aluminium legures can be used to achieve this weight.

      “- So the body will be made mostly out of aluminum? Just titanium on the landing gear? Or anything else in the structure? ”

      Landing gear is titanium, and some parts of the airframe might be titanium too if required (titanium is stronger than aluminium).

      “- Regarding the missile, do you think you should have a backup IR sensor, in case the intended target shuts off it’s radar?”

      If target does shut off its radar then missile has achieved half the mission. But IR sensor combined with passive receiver may be too heavy; it might be better to simply use a radar that can act in both transmit-and-receive as well as receive-only mode. After all, if target does shut down its radar, chances are that it already suspects it is being attacked.

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      1. “On the upside, there is less chance of getting trapped inside cockpit a la F-22.”

         You’re referring to that software malfunction? Yeah there is that.

         http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=20396

         Yeah that’s more because they over-computerized everything. Complexity for the sake of complexity.

         There are a few other issues it seems not withstanding the Hypoxia with the F-22. The missiles are not reliable at low temperatures.

         http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairw/articles/20120725.aspx

         “The second problem, which is actually almost as old, is all about defective rocket motors for AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. As a result of the rocket problem no missiles have been delivered for nearly two years. The delays have been due to faulty solid fuel rocket motors, which was discovered during testing that the air force performs on a few of every new batch of missiles. The problem is that when rocket motors are exposed to very cold conditions (as would happen when an aircraft is flying at a high altitude) they become unreliable. The air force is withholding over half a billion dollars in payments until the reliability problem is fixed. At the same time the manufacturer is frantically trying to discover the cause of the failures. The manufacturer insists that it is building the rocket motors the same way it has for three decades.”

         This could have it’s issues when it comes to some environments – especially here in Canada.

         Both the F-35 and Eurofighter had issues with cold temperatures too, although I’m not sure if the Eurofighter’s issues have been fixed (after all they did go to Alaska). F-35s though for sure have not been.

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      2. There are a few parts that might be worth making out of titanium. Look at this Rafale picture for example:

         

         Canards and leading edge flaps too are made of titanium.

         Eurofighter too. The big problem I see with both designs is the excessive use of composites on the wing and fuselage, which could have an impact on repair and reliability in the field. When I asked no composites, I consider it a good thing that there are few to no composites. The increasing use of composites makes me uncomfortable, especially now that it’s entering the world of civil aviation. With the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787, we’re seeing progressively more composites being used.

         One of the more fascinating things about the F-22, off topic, is it’s use of titanium. Close to 40% of the total mass of the F-22 is titanium – and 67% in the rear fuselage. Of course, whether the F-22 is to be emulated is another matter entirely. Then again – it wasn’t really the titanium that led to cost overruns, most likely it was the stealth coating, TVC, and electronics.

         ‘If target does shut off its radar then missile has achieved half the mission. But IR sensor combined with passive receiver may be too heavy; it might be better to simply use a radar that can act in both transmit-and-receive as well as receive-only mode. After all, if target does shut down its radar, chances are that it already suspects it is being attacked.”

         There is that to consider – AWACs with disabling it you’ve done half the mission. That and the missile may just home into the last known location. How much more mass would that IR sensor add?

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2. Somewhat off topic Picard, but have you ever felt at times that you’re the only person that realizes how self-inflicted so many of the problems that our society seems to be facing are?

   The fact that this is a paper aircraft at all and nothing like it (closest fighters to it are the YF-16, Gripen, and Rafale) has ever left the drawing boards?
   Rise of ultra-expensive, in-effective weapons systems ever since the end of WWII? It seems that all of the hard won lessons have been forgotten.
   Magnitude of corruption within the defense departments of many governments around?
   A failure to recognize through previous combat and realistic testing how ineffective certain weapons systems (like radar guided missiles are)?
   Hell, even the political system? Most of the Western world basically has one political party – the neoliberal party and it’s more or less been a total disaster for the past 30 years.

   Sigh … was just on a forum where a lot of the people believe the hype and seem to really believe that the US has no money for defense and blame the current administration for “defense cuts”. Well, the Obama administration certainly does deserve a lot of blame, but not for cuts, which have left the US defense spending at historical high levels.

   Part of the reason is because of “racket paradox”. That is to say, a partially efficient solution is more profitable than a perfect solution. For a defense contractor, a partially effective weapons system is more profitable than a simpler effective one. It will drive unit costs (and thus profitability up), more money can be earned from fixing the problems associated with the system, more units may have to be bought because of imperfections, and so on.

   But another part may be that people just don’t want to well, think.

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   1. “but have you ever felt at times that you’re the only person that realizes how self-inflicted so many of the problems that our society seems to be facing are?”

      Not really, I came across Sprey’s presentations fairly early on.

      And all problems you have listed can be traced back to the materialism and capitalism.

      “But another part may be that people just don’t want to well, think.”

      And that is the main problem. It is far easier to sit back and sponge up BS served by corporations and politicians than to make an effort to separate lies from reality.

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      1. “We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so. ”

         Bertrand Russell

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      2. Indeed.

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3. I like your fighter proposals more and more. I always believed fighters should be as small as possible and found very hard to comprehend the increasing size of modern fighters especially in the light of the fact that supposedly as technology advances subsystems become smaller.
   The problem with modern fighter designs, is that while most of them boast about how technologically advanced they are most of them are in fact not. Most of them simply cram as much “technology” as allowed by the desired thrust to weight ration without wasting a single synapse on whether that technology is necessary. So we get fighters that are bigger then 50s era bombers. That process is similar in other branches of military spending: MBTs which are supposedly descendent from medium tanks now weigh more then WWII heavy tanks, Frigates weigh more then WWII light cruisers, Hum-vees are 4 times as big as WWII era jeeps and carry the same armament and number of persons. etc.
   In civilian designs the trend is inverse, things get smaller, a gaming laptop today weighs less and is slimmer then slim laptops of 5 years ago. A 6 inch screen smart-phone is more powerful and offers more entertainment options then an 15inch screen entertainment laptop of 5 years ago, smaller cars are more popular now then ever, even in categories that were usually characterized by big size, such as SUVs, smaller models are more popular take Nissan Juke, VW Tiguan, BMW X1 etc as examples.
   So what dose this mean? Are civilian engineers better then military ones?
   My opinion is that they are not, and that the problem lies with demand. In civilian markets, people equate smaller size with greater quality and usability so the demand is for things to get smaller. On the military side the demand is created by cretin generals, which try to overcompensate for some personal lacking and demand bigger designs. There are however exceptions. Three come to mind: Sweden, France and Japan. All three of this countries have had a very healthy respect for science and especially, for good engineering, and also their generals seem to not need to overcompensate for something either because it’s too cold (Sweden), they got used to the fact that small is not necessarily bad centuries ago (Japan) or they simply have no reason to compensate for something (France) 😀 . This three countries have produced interesting designs that use technology to minimize size and decrees cost: Rafale and Gripen are 75% respectively 50% the size of their competitors and manage to achieve higher performance, french LeClerc is the culmination of 50 years of french tank design that has emphasized small sized and correct use of new technology above all else (French medium tank designs in the 50 and 60s were 20-30tons and usually had auto-loaders) and Japan has built in the Type 10 a 40 ton tank with the same protection as a 70 ton Leopard 2 simply by using nano-crystalline alloys (a very hi technology that Japan has mastered over the past 30 years).
   Your designs, even while you critic the reliance on technology, make use of a lot of high technology but use it the right why to decrease the size of the product. For example your choice of a IRST over a AESA radar. Both are equally high technologies but AESA radar increases the size of the fighter and makes it vulnerable whilst the IRST offers almost the same performance and allows the size to be smaller. Same with the choice of interferometric RWR over radar. Unfortunately except for the Swiss ALR Piranha project in the 80s that I linked in another post, most modern designers seem to be afraid to think out of the box imposed by retarded generals. Even the Gripen is getting bigger.

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   1. “I like your fighter proposals more and more.”

      This one is probably the last one, it is finally one design I can’t find any flaws in.

      “I always believed fighters should be as small as possible and found very hard to comprehend the increasing size of modern fighters especially in the light of the fact that supposedly as technology advances subsystems become smaller.”

      Modern fighters are either fighter-bombers or bomber interceptors, both which have historically always been large. There are literally no dedicated air superiority fighters in existence.

      “The problem with modern fighter designs, is that while most of them boast about how technologically advanced they are most of them are in fact not. Most of them simply cram as much “technology” as allowed by the desired thrust to weight ration without wasting a single synapse on whether that technology is necessary. So we get fighters that are bigger then 50s era bombers.”

      As military reformers have often stated, problem is not in technology. Problem is in how technology is applied.

      “That process is similar in other branches of military spending: MBTs which are supposedly descendent from medium tanks now weigh more then WWII heavy tanks,”

      Actually MBTs are descendants of World War II heavy tanks, more spiecifically Tiger I, which was twice as heavy as Sherman yet almost as fast and arguably more mobile (tactically speaking, strategically it had to change tracks when going by road and out of it, could not cross most bridges, broke down often etc.).

      “Are civilian engineers better then military ones?”

      Civillian engineers work in conditions where they have to find practical solutions if their firms are to survive, while military suppliers are often protected by the governments. Further, it is easy to know what is good in civillian engineering – just see what sells, after all the goal is to make profit, and people are not going to buy impractical things (most of the time, anyway; but even when they do, they’ll usually abandon them after some time). But military has to prepare for war during times of peace, when it doesn’t have to worry so much about efficiency, and does not have a fist-in-the-eye lessons of what actually works. Combine that with far more lavish budgets allowed, and you can see why it is easy for corporations to milk the military, especially when helped by their agents within the government (lobbysts, politicians etc.).

      “french LeClerc is the culmination of 50 years of french tank design that has emphasized small sized and correct use of new technology above all else (French medium tank designs in the 50 and 60s were 20-30tons and usually had auto-loaders) and Japan has built in the Type 10 a 40 ton tank with the same protection as a 70 ton Leopard 2 simply by using nano-crystalline alloys (a very hi technology that Japan has mastered over the past 30 years).”

      Yes, but LeClerc and possibly Type 10 are impractical simply due to very high costs (LeClerc is quite expensive, and I assume Type 10 also is).

      “Your designs, even while you critic the reliance on technology, make use of a lot of high technology but use it the right why to decrease the size of the product.”

      I never criticized reliance on technology – you can’t wage war without it, so by definition you have to rely on it to an extent. What I did criticize is misapplication of technology, belief that more bells and whistles automatically make for a better product, and overreliance on technology while ignoring more important factors. War is a dirty business, and you want the simplest designs that are still capable of carrying out the mission. But as always, it is easy to go too far to either extreme; hardest thing is to find the right balance.

      “For example your choice of a IRST over a AESA radar. Both are equally high technologies but AESA radar increases the size of the fighter and makes it vulnerable whilst the IRST offers almost the same performance and allows the size to be smaller. Same with the choice of interferometric RWR over radar. Unfortunately except for the Swiss ALR Piranha project in the 80s that I linked in another post, most modern designers seem to be afraid to think out of the box imposed by retarded generals. Even the Gripen is getting bigger.”

      Exactly. But problem is not only in generals. People tend to have a herd mentality. One person jumps on a certain conclusion first; then some people follow it because they don’t want to be left behind. Then more people follow it for the same reason, and more, and more… eventually, majority of people embrace a new idea. But the problem is that person who first embraced it did so without sufficient consideration – such things take time and effort. Which means that, more often than not, whole herd gets into situation like this:
      

      Take for example the radar: when introduced, it was a very useful technology. But its limitations were discovered fairly quickly; Japanese used first RWRs in World War II on their ships, and combined with better trained crews, it allowed them to successfully engage overwhelmingly superior US naval forces in several night battles. Night battles between US and Japanese forces also show problems of active sensors in general: in one battle, Admiral Tanaka with 8 destroyers engaged US detachment of 5 cruisers and 6 destroyers. Japanese did not have either radar or radar warners; but US fleet made several mistakes, including opening artillery fire before it was clear wether torpedoes hit. Only 4 destroyers engaged US forces – remaining 4 continuing with their delivery of supplies onto designated island – but they managed to sink one and heavily damage 3 US cruisers while loosing only one destroyer; and even that one destroyer could have survived had its captain not disobeyed orders and ordered artillery fire. Now, radar is outdated and dangerous technology, yet everyone still clings to it – it is used on aircraft and ships regardless of their mission, and even on some ground vehicles.

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      1. “This one is probably the last one, it is finally one design I can’t find any flaws in.”

         It probably will not be superceded by anything for the next 30-40 years. I suspect that any future designs will be incremental more so than anything else.

         Let’s call this progression:
         YF16 the way it should have been
         FLX
         Next Generation Fighter

         Mostly incremental improvements. We’re probably not going to see any radical developments on par with say, the Me-262.

         What might happen on the NGF? Well, engine efficiency will again improve and materials sciences may advance. Looking ahead 30-40 years from now, peak oil will of course passed, so it begs the question, will even small fighters be affordable?

         “Actually MBTs are descendants of World War II heavy tanks, more spiecifically Tiger I, which was twice as heavy as Sherman yet almost as fast and arguably more mobile (tactically speaking, strategically it had to change tracks when going by road and out of it, could not cross most bridges, broke down often etc.).”

         Pretty much this.

         It could be argued that most modern fighters are descendents of heavy fighters – essentially bomber interceptors.

         “But military has to prepare for war during times of peace, when it doesn’t have to worry so much about efficiency, and does not have a fist-in-the-eye lessons of what actually works.”

         I think it’s the peacetime garrison mentality that causes decay. War by nature forces a certain kind of efficiency on armies and on the nations involved.

         The reason why you don’t see massive failures like the F-35 in smaller nations like Sweden is I think, their size forces a certain degree of efficiency. That’s why they are efficient in their resource usage. Man for man, a smaller nation’s military will probably be better than that of a larger nation.

         “What I did criticize is misapplication of technology, belief that more bells and whistles automatically make for a better product, and overreliance on technology while ignoring more important factors. ”

         What makes a product “better”? The thing is, people have conflicting interests:

         Generals have their egos to please, and increasingly, a lucrative job in the defense industry when they retire
         Defense industries of course want big, costly weapons because they make money

         Against this you have the need for weapons that actually work.

         “Take for example the radar: when introduced, it was a very useful technology. But its limitations were discovered fairly quickly;”

         I think there has been a unwillingness in the West to recognize what technology can and cannot do.

         Especially noteworthy in modern air forces is I think what could be called “the limitations of air power”. There isn’t a sense of understanding of what air power simply cannot do. Officially the USAF claims that air power can win wars alone. That simply is not the case, but it’s a powerful guiding force to how the US has waged war.

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      2. “Looking ahead 30-40 years from now, peak oil will of course passed, so it begs the question, will even small fighters be affordable? ”

         By that time alternatives will (hopefully) have been found. I hope it happens even before that, as oil has far more important uses than burning it. There is literally nothing which can’t be made from oil, and yes it includes food.

         “The reason why you don’t see massive failures like the F-35 in smaller nations like Sweden is I think, their size forces a certain degree of efficiency. That’s why they are efficient in their resource usage. Man for man, a smaller nation’s military will probably be better than that of a larger nation.”

         Exactly. Small nations don’t have money to waste and are so more careful about what they use it on.

         “I think there has been a unwillingness in the West to recognize what technology can and cannot do. ”

         Problem is that Western militaries, especially US military, have hailed technology as a solution to all problems, and would have a difficult time now admitting that yes, technology does have limitations. Even though it is obvious to anyone above amoeba-level of independent thought.

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      3. “We’re probably not going to see any radical developments on par with say, the Me-262.”

         Thinking about this further – only way this could happen is if ramjet technology came out and became viable somehow.

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   2. “This one is probably the last one, it is finally one design I can’t find any flaws in.”

      Heh… turned out I was wrong.

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4. “Problem is that Western militaries, especially US military, have hailed technology as a solution to all problems, and would have a difficult time now admitting that yes, technology does have limitations. Even though it is obvious to anyone above amoeba-level of independent thought.”

   It’s the result of the perfection intersection of several forces:

   The profit-hungry defense industry
   Careerism and a lack of ethics within the military
   Politicians who do not perform oversight and who want “pork” in their electoral districts
   A public that fails to think critically and is not on the receiving end of any of these failures

   High technology forces, like everything else has its limits.

   To be honest, I’ve always wondered if it’s cultural. There’s a powerful anti-intellectualism force in the US, even compared to the rest of the Western world.

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   1. It is cultural, Western culture is materialistic and money-oriented and that shows in military too.

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      1. Indeed so.

         We seem to live in a society where a person’s worth is judged not by what they do, but by how much money they have.

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5. I’d like to get your opinion on an issue.

   Do you think there could be an advantage to designing an kinetic-kill WVR – IR missile. That is one without an warhead.
   As I see it, for WVR missiles I don’t know if proximity warheads offer much. I mean an aircraft targeted by a WVR – missile will maneuver violently to escape, and the chances are that a proximity detonation even with continuous-rod warhead will not damage the aircraft because the aircraft would already be moving away from the blast. What do you know from history how many IR-missile kills have been from impact and how many from proximity detonation.
   A kinetic kill IR missile could be maybe a quarter of the size of IRIS-T for the same maneuvering performance allowing for more to be carried and maybe salvo fired. Also for increasing precision in the terminal phase it could split into several sub-projectiles like the Starstreak missile ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starstreak ) .
   Also it could be turned much more easily into a BVR missile by the procedure you suggested in this article.

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   1. “Do you think there could be an advantage to designing an kinetic-kill WVR – IR missile. That is one without an warhead.”

      Probably none. Fighters are too agile for such missiles to work reliably, and any cost reduction is offset by reduction in Pk.

      “As I see it, for WVR missiles I don’t know if proximity warheads offer much. I mean an aircraft targeted by a WVR – missile will maneuver violently to escape, and the chances are that a proximity detonation even with continuous-rod warhead will not damage the aircraft because the aircraft would already be moving away from the blast. What do you know from history how many IR-missile kills have been from impact and how many from proximity detonation.”

      No data on that, but I do know that contact-fuzed SAMs had significantly lower Pk than proximity-fuzed ones (0,0-some % vs 0,1-1%).

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   2. Pk would not be very good for such a missile at the edge of WVR-ranges.

      Kinetic weapons are only going to be good for slow moving targets or preferably, stationary targets like buildings. They make sense for tanks because tanks will move at 100 km/h tops (and usually much less than that). Fighters remember are moving at close to the soundbarrier or supercruising in enemy airspace. Plus aircraft have the freedom to move in all 3 dimensions.

      At gun ranges though, it changes and I could see a kinetic kill weapon having some utility. The question is, why use it in place of a gun? The missile will weigh more than gun ammo and it will struggle to maneuver towards the target in gun ranges.

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   3. Rethinking this, it might work potentially as a bomber interceptor at close ranges (higher Pk than a gun would), but that’s about all I can think of for it.

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      1. @Chris

         I was thinking for it more as a weapon for the Next Generation fighter you were talking about, somewhere above. Presumably this Next Generation Fighter would come into exist 40 years from now, when Directed Energy Weapons would be mature technology and would, maybe, replace the gun. In this scenario I would see that instead of being retired the gun would become a kinetic kill missile (KKM) launcher instead. I don’t see KKM being fired in ones like today’s IR – missiles, but in salvos of at least two. Launchers would permit KKM missiles to have an initial speed of the fighters speed plus whatever it’s muzzle velocity, and would permit KKM to be significantly smaller, thus being carried in larger numbers. With two launchers and a capacity to burst fire two KKM in 0.5 s the fighters could be going around firing salvos of 4 KKMs which would significantly improve Pk’s at ranges between 2km and 10 km.

         “At gun ranges though, it changes and I could see a kinetic kill weapon having some utility. The question is, why use it in place of a gun? ”

         Well because in about 40 years with improvement in IRST, WVR combat might start at ranges at which we now consider it to be BVR combat. In this situation dogfights might happen at ranges above current gun ranges.

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      2. It would depend on a few things:

         The muzzle velocity of the KKM
         The altitude fired (at hypersonic speeds, atmospheric friction may very well disintegrate the projectile before it gets several kilometers)
         The amount of projectiles fired

         The best way of course to defeat such a weapon for an enemy fighter would be to maneuver

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6. Pingback: NATO air forces proposal | Defense Issues

7. Would it be practical seeing that this aircraft is going to spend a substantial amount of its lifespan at supersonic speeds, to design the airframe to “ride” the compression waves?

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   1. I’m not sure how to do that, I mostly focused on maneuvering performance and wave drag (yet another reason for a single-engined design, btw).

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      1. Re-thinking it, I may take that back.

         For the aircraft to “ride” supersonic booms, it would have to be either wing anhedral with dihedral canards. The interesting thing about this is that you could hypothetically have your aircraft remain stable for your wing sweep divided by about 5. That was discovered by a German scientist, Dietrich Kuchemann. So you’re looking at 8-9 degrees maximum anhedral. The optimum amount would need wind tunnel testing though.

         The only other option to waveride well would be to have the wingtips form a wedge under the aircraft. Look up what the XB-70 did.

         Yeah maybe that isn’t viable. Oh well, it was worth looking at.

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      2. Yeah I probably take that back.

         What I had in mind was known as a “waverider”, which is an aircraft that attempts to “ride” its own supersonic shockwave that was generated by that aircraft exceeding the sound barrier.

         This requires a sharply pointed nose followed by a concave underneath, hence the downward pointed wings. This is known as a caret wing. Anyways, with wing anhedral, you would also need the aircraft’s wing tips to sweep downward as occurred in the XB-70 (actually you may not even need the anhedral wings in that case … hmm gotta thing about this more; simple waveriders only work at certain machs which is why you need the wingtips to sweep downwards). The goal of this is to create a concave shape underneath the aircraft.

         This concave shape in turn allows the aircraft to “ride” on the shockwave produced by it’s own sonic boom when it exceeds the soundbarrier, generating what is called “compression lift”. That is like any lift – improving the aircraft’s lift to drag ratio, but generated from the sonic boom.

         The reason why I thought the design might work is because of the large wing and the fact that the aircraft spends a large proportion of it’s time supersonic.

         I’m not sure how big the shockwave would be generated at mach 1.6 though – perhaps it’s not that much.

         Anyways, it’s worth looking at this:

         Click to access XB70PresS07.pdf

         I’m looking for the original source (link got deleted on Nasa’s website for the more detailed write-up).

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8. Speaking of incremental gains, this is probably what’s going to happen:

   http://www.virginia.edu/ms/research/wadley/high-temp.html

   Unless something revolutionary happens, it’s probably what’s to be expected. Revolutionary would be say, a technology that completely eliminated the sonic boom and with it, the associated wave drag.

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9. I did not notice the area rule measure in your drawing, this airframe may not be able to break the sound barrier.

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10. Some questions:

    Do you think that a wingtip device could be put on the wing tips? You might see a ~3% gain in fuel efficiency if you did.
    Is it necessary to make an S shaped inlet for the radar? As in, does performance suffer than from a straight inlet?

    I suppose the issues here are the radar section and the thermal signature of the engine.

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    1. “As in, does performance suffer than from a straight inlet? ”

       I don’t think so.

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11. Scrapped idea – do you think it could work nowadays? Tracked landing gear:

    

    This is a picture of the B-36. Apparently its size and complexity meant at the time that only a few airfields could service it.

    Tracks were abandoned because of their noise and because the friction they generated could cause a fire. I think that with a low enough takeoff speed, the friction could be mitigated.

    Video of B-36 landing (embedding doesn’t work on this one, gotta watch on Youtube):

    An A-20 landing on tracks:

    Smaller aircraft, but worth a look at.

    The big issue I see is extra weight. The tracks weigh quite a bit and that is weight that cannot be shed on takeoff.

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12. Let me quote you: “Number of on-board kills is another important factor; relation can be seen here (historical performance will be used: revolver cannon Pk = 0,3, rotary gun Pk = 0,26, IR missile Pk = 0,15, BVR missile Pk = 0,08):”

    Are you actually saying that any BVR missile will have the same Pk against any plane, without any variation?

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    1. “Are you actually saying that any BVR missile will have the same Pk against any plane, without any variation?”

       There are always variations, values I have cited are only average values used to estimate number of on-board kills. I didn’t think one has to be a genius to work that out.

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       1. When you are basing your strategy on a “scenario” where everyone comes in clearly defined masses without any influence of intel, supporting assets, various specific capabilities of each aircraft, training, anyone has the right to point at you and laugh.

          It’s the old joke of a physicist giving advice to a farmer using a model of a “spherical cow in a frictionless vacuum”.

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       2. I have all right to point at you and laugh (or ridicule you) for not reading the article at all before commenting on it. Take a look at this:

          “This scenario will approximate performance in combat of Western aircraft listed against Chinese Flankers; scenario itself is taken from a 2008 RAND study”

          “Other than this very specific scenario, it is more likely that standard combat will involve fighters patrolling areas of interest and trying to surprise the opponent.”

          Since when is a “not very likely”, “highly specific scenario” a measure of standard air combat? But no matter what the scenario is, having more fighters in the air is always an advantage.

          You can find the RAND study here:

          Click to access 2008_RAND_Pacific_View_Air_Combat_Briefing.pdf

          That being said, scenario as used is very relevant for a) defense of the Taiwan, b) defense of the any other island and c) defense of the carrier battle group, even though situation is still likely to be far more complex than described.

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