RIPTIDE

A continual theme of mine is always to take a closer look at the lessons of the Gulf War. I'm pretty sure that the men and women who need to take the lessons, know what was and what was not achieved. There's a common urge to big-up opponents well beyond what they really were. The Fact of the matter is, Iran only a few years before was bombing the sh1t out of Iraq's Eastern Airfields. That does not sound to me like State of the Art. As for the Iranians, The Iraqi's were doing likewise too.

No. We want Su-17M4.

Ah but LPR/I radars, Hajduk.

With Belarus already integrated into the CSTO/Union State defence I would have though shoulders were being rubbed for quite a while. Not to mention the NATO patrols over the Baltic States.

Ahh.. the White Knight has arisen. ;)

So you're now limiting these devices to populated areas? I'd personally chop as many as I could down and sell their very expensive components on. :P And I'd never get caught.

Thanks. 20m? That's a lot. Of course at altitude the effectiveness of explosives increases a lot in terms of radius.

Yes, this I understood anyway. :thumbup:

A good input to that question would be the guess that the R-33 with it's SARH head is most likely command detonated? That's a guess.... but a reasonable one. It may not be super effective against F-15/16 type things.

Right... so we're going to just leave a billion quid's worth of optoelectronics scattered around the country and absolutely NOONE will ever think about digging them up and selling them on. It would turn into the biggest game of 'treasure hunt' in history. For something that is not even necessary....

Actually now that I think of it, I think our Squadron has a female member that goes by the name of 'Presing' She tries to pretend she's a man but we all know she's a woman. :P

Dem clouds, tho bro. I'm still trying to figure out what country's border you would put Electro Optical sensors around in a grid. Do you have any idea of the staggering cost to grid a major country's frontiers? These devices are not cheap. THis reminds me of a similar discussion I had recently here before about the idea of replacing conventional bombs with missiles..... ... it's unworkable. And absolutely unnecessary to begin with.

Yeah... dem clouds, tho..

Hey now. The US stronk crowd should be happy. Anything with MiG-XX with Mach-XX ability might convince the bureaucrats to open more F-22 production and oil the F-35 media machine.

At maximum T/O weight it surely must be lower than that.

I think there may be an element of ABM here also very much akin to the F-15C that was used as a ASM-135 ASAT platform. We know the old Kirov Hulls are been refitted to serve as Naval ABM defence platforms. It wouldn't be beyond reason to see the MiG-41 fitted out to fill the gaps and add an airborne element to the whole system.

I think the difference is nothing. I did mention the words "ability to intercept". What I see is just a strawman pattern from the same poster. It isn't the first time for me personally. :)

Can you point out where exactly what I said differs from what you have said?

I think people are forgetting the primary role of the MiG-31 is airborne radar patrol over vast distances with the ability to intercept should it need to, at the time. Mach 4+? Sure. As stealth becomes more common in the next decades ahead, time to intercept will need to be shorter as stealthy targets might not be detected as soon as legacy airframes. It makes perfect sense to me. One thing I am sure of.... the architects of this upgrade know exactly what they're doing and why, notwithstanding the previous comments. IN terms of the MiG-25 engagements, what we know is they were useful in the service of Iraq at wiping out Iranian C-130 and F-4 based ELINT, but... not outside Iraq's Ground Control Range.. which had limits.

What grunts have experienced Ground Support from F-35s yet? They have no comparison. They'll be even less support if they see it falling to the ground in flames from ubiqutous and cheap mobile Anti-Air units in the future.

Wrong analysis. There is no kissing goodbye to stealth.... there is no stealth to kiss goodbye to. There is stealthy and then there is less stealthy. There is Engagement ranges shrinkage with stealthy. There is still engagement range issues with less stealthy. What wasn't the case? That ~4xSu-25 and possibly 1-2 Su-24M were lost to Anti-Air assets? Aircraft that might not have been lost had they waited several days to DEAD the country and ultimately lose the initiative? I think you miss the point. It's the approach that is the comparison. The approach being that you can't stand rigidly and wait for complete Supremacy of the Air domain before you send assets in at risk.

I downloaded a F-15 3ds model and used the tool. It works. But i have no idea how to interpret the data correctly. As you can imagine, it is CPU intensive even for the small model I used. I can only guess how long it might take to process on a 100k+ poly model. :helpsmilie:

I still remember reading about A-10's been tasked to tackle SA-3 sites in GW1. Some F-16s and Mighty F-15Es were lost to SA-2/3/AAA fire. And this war was by all accounts a very lopsided tussle. And even still aircraft had to fly in risky areas and conditions because they had to push forward. I think there is a general idea that has been cultivated over the last 20 odd years that these Wars go down in some very discrete steps with little temporal overlap. Something like: 1) Cruise missile S-200/EWR/C&C/Airbases 2) DEAD/SEAD/Anti-Air 2) Anti-Armor/Infrastructure Interdiction and General Land Army Action IN a real War where opponents are more closely matched.... ALL of the above happens very close to each other with lots of overlap. More crucially even when you're winning, Stage 2 might never be completely finished until the War itself is in it's closing stages. And because of that there will always be the potential for losses. And the reason is, that one can't wait so long. If you do, you simply loose the war. You have to take the risks and the associated losses that come with it. Sturmoviks, B-17s flying against the Axis never waited until they had Superiority in the air. They couldn't wait! Thay had to get in and do what they could. B-52's never enjoyed overall Air-Superiority in the air in Vietnam. Though they did at times enjoy local air Supremacy at huge expense and effort from ECM, DEAD raids and chaffers. So you see, a Major War... no one has time to wait. Armor will go on without full air superiority, as will bombers as will everyone else... and they will suffer from it at times. I guess the key of course is to try and create Local Air Supremacy. THe F-35 provides that more than A-10 in the CAS Ground support role. If you wait for the SEAD/DEAD aircraft to thouroughly clean an area for <4th Gen aircraft, by the time it's done your own mechanized ground units have lost the War. A closer example... the 2008 tiff in Georgia. If the Russians had to wait until they found every SA-11 battery the Georgians had, they might not have done so well, so quickly. THey still sent in Su-25s to bomb Georgia and lost a few in the process and a few other things aswell. That said... I still believe there will always be a need for Cost Effective Fixed Wing CAS as local conditions of a fluid front line demand. :thumbup:

Remember also he's showcasing the model of the weapons themselves aswell.... real life technical restrictions aside.

I still remember explaining across the speaker phone to my Ex that Naggin' Nadia in the Su-27 was not a real woman in my house at the time when she sounded off about G/angle of attack overlimits or whatever. Yep, true story. THe conversation lasted about 4 mins.. I had to send her a Utube link to FC2 footage that had the same sounds. That was fun.