Some kid name Ashton Carter (yes, that Ashton Carter) performed and wrote studies on DEWs for BMD back in the 80s. He estimated a USSR booster could absorb energy 10Kj/cm^2 which could increase to 60kj/cm^2 by the time simple countermeasures were applied. This implies tracking times of 10s of seconds per object with…
Andrew Sickafoose
AndrewSickafoose
If the USAF wanted to kill the A-10 they would have sent it to Syria a couple months ago.
Rotor ate its wake. The pilot may have added aft cyclic at just the wrong time (pitch up). That body rotation about the longitudinal axis is characteristic of loss of lift. You can hear the pilot react by adding power and lateral cyclic but unfortunately there is no control authority. Glad no one was hurt!
IRST isn’t needed in COIN and in a hot war against Redfor IADS the F-15C can’t even get to the AO. So the only scenario in which the F-15 gets anything from ISRT is in a defensive role outside of the IADS of either side. In a defensive situation, there is already spotlighting from AWACS and, above all things, the…
This seems like an aggressive tack, when Turkey could potentially be wooed to lean East by just Russia winning out in Syria and continuing the “war on terrorism” in Iraq all the way to it’s partner across the Gulf. While NATO is the other stud at the dance, Russia, Iran, and the Chinese can crack world order and the…
This line of thinking is flawed. Flight characteristics are derived from basic geometry and design considerations and those have not changed since the A/C was put into service. The Bone is heavy and underpowered and unstable at tanker altitude and tanker speed and will *always* be heavy and underpowered and unstable…
Consider the flight regime the Bone was designed for. It’s a low altitude supersonic interdictor. So everthing is sized for that mission. Stabs and wings are thinned out to reduce parasitic and supersonic volume drag. Control surfaces are sized to air density and free stream velocities at sea level. Stabilizers are…
Simple metallurgy.
F-22 would likely blow you out of the sky even if you could see it. Because it would be flying 15k ft higher and several hundred MPH faster, so you would be running from it’s missiles even before you could engage. Your only hope would be to egress well before engagement range and even still it could probably run you…
Neither F-18 or F-35 is going to do the job for Canada unless the munitions scene changes. F-18 > F-35 with AIM-120 and JDAM. F-18 has the better old school aero.
Of all procurement programs in the last 25 years, the USA simply cannot afford to fuck up this program.
Now playing
The F-16 in any package is highly suspect in a SEAD role...remember Package Q on third day of DS.
If we could split hairs for a minute it really was the second scrapped design. The first being a very conventional follow on to the A330. Some US operators dependent on internal MROS still wish AB had made this jet, because nobody ended making an alterative to composite. And operators in the US know how much of a…
Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim
Of course. But COD, tanking, seabasing, don’t push the LDH over the shoreline. Assume the Marines will have to keep some flights back for HAVCAP. What are the 6 available sorties, non-stealth with external ordinance, for CAS/SEAD/DEAD on day 2 going to do when the fuel is running low and the ground crew and pilots are…
Trying to not to feed the trolls here, but how on earth will a 8 AC LDH manage to provide sortie rates high enough to project fleet coverage (2 AC minimum) AND strike packages over the beach? In anything but a totally sterilized AO, ie the middle east, the numbers just don’t add up. We had to send *thousands* of…
Why don’t you go camping then? I hear its way hardcore.
Even at 50k ft modern ISRT systems don't have the range and FOV performance of even the APY2 on the E-3 sentinel. 400km vs 100km. Part of this is atmospheric windowing will always favor the X-band, looking up or down.
Literally more than a dozen millions