OutOnTheOP

Aye, and we've seen soldiers fighting with long pointy objects well after the advent of the repeating firearm, but that hardly makes "bayonetworthiness" a prime consideration for how good an infantry weapon is.

In that video, you seem to be doing 250-270 kph; or roughly 160 mph. Even assuming the readout was IAS, that still means you were only doing roughly 200 knots true. At 20,000 feet altitude. I'm amazed the aircraft even stays aloft at all- it "waffling" in that corner of the flight envelope should be no surprise

The irony in that statement does not escape me. You do realize that the consistent derision you show regarding every aspect of social, political, and military conduct of your (alleged) nation of citizenship is a considerably larger counterintelligence indicator than a vague, idle curiosity-driven question about how much work goes into making a missile, right? If people were exchanging plans, that'd be one thing, but you're just being ridiculous.

Author of article seems to me a political wag who doesn't have a clue what he's talking about, science-wise. The assertion that the US didn't know how to build a tailless supersonic aircraft is patently false (X-31, among others, is both supersonic and- from test data- stable without it's tail. The type of VHF radar (150 foot antenna? Yeah, that's TOTALLY road-mobile and tactically practical) referred to is incapable of providing weapons guidance.... and easily jammed by other assets.

Well, yeah, pretty footage, but... my god, the MUSIC! :doh::helpsmilie:

I vote Su27SM3... but with reservation. The poll is stupidly constructed; the original poster clearly wants the latest-greatest variants of everything. Which is fine and well to me- but only if they are widely deployed. The MiG29M is a silly option, as there's only like a dozen in existence. Only like three MiG35s, and as best I know, none operational. There are all of six Su-25KM. Three PAK-FA, and none have ever employed any weapons system, even in testing. Let's be honest, no one who says "we shouldn't make the F-35 because it's not operational and there's so few of them!" can honestly support most of the poll options on this poll; there are more F-35s out there than most of these variants. So I vote Su27SM3, as it's a good representation of a fair-size chunk of the Russian Flanker fleet. I'd have preferred Su27SM, but as far as I know, they're virtually the same in equipment and capabilities anyhow. I would have chosen the Su24 over all of them, as it opens a new role to the Russian side in-game, but the M2 just isn't that widely fielded. The Su24M, though, I'd be all for

I *REALLY* wish they'd delete the poll responses from this thread. They're grossly misleading and downright invalid. For YEARS, there were only four options up there: F-22, F-35, F-14, and F/A-18E. And let's be honest, that's really only two options, and one of them is obsolete and A2A-only. But for years people voted the poll based on those four options, until very recently when the F/A-18, F-15, F-15E, and F-16 were added. The vast majority of votes were cast before F-16 was even an option; that's one of the major reasons F/A-18E has such a lopsided lead (not to say that a more accurately applied poll wouldn't still see it leading, but certainly not by such a margin!). I wonder how many people voted for the F/A-18E only because when they saw the poll, F-16 wasn't an option? I know I'm one of them!

The Horten was NOT designed to be stealth, despite the inane nattering of latter-day "experts". It was designed to be aerodynamically efficient, pure and simple. Stealth was no more a design feature of the Ho229 than it was of the Mosquito (and incidentally, any dubious stealth qualities either of them had would be due to the wooden construction more than the shape. The exposed propellers/ turbines on either would have made for plenty of return anyhow).

This is true, but given the F-22's low-speed handling, I have to wonder what the approach speeds could be brought down to, and how the impact stresses would compare to other naval fighters...

There's nothing magic about LPI radars, as best I know. Granted, I'm no expert on them, but my understanding is that they work across frequencies, so any RWR will only pick up short bursts across frequencies, and since it is not a sustained single frequency paint, it cannot tell the difference between the radar and the multitude of civilian radio transmitters and other assorted transmitters out there. Even in that case, it would theoretically be possible to get an RWR to pick it up, but the RWR would have to listen to all the frequencies covered, and then be smart enough to collate tiny bursts from different frequencies and put them all together. It would require VERY good direction-finding from the RWR antenna (as the direction would be the only common value for the transmission bursts), and then a ton of processing power to sort every transmission in the air.

The JSTARS radar, while capable of doing radar mapping, is really configured more to detect moving targets. It would probably "pay more attention" to the moving waves than (relatively) stationary debris. The new P-3 Orion with the updated sensors (LSIP is the acronym that comes immediately to mind, but I don't remember exactly... it's littoral sensor something, if I remember right) would be more appropriate: it has a sea-configured SAR as well as an electro-optical sensor ball. *edit* nope, LSRS: Littoral Surveillance Radar System.

Given the timeframe DCS:WW2 is starting in (Mid-1944), the -J would seem most appropriate to me.

Any IIR sensor with sufficient resolution would run around $1 million USD. This is roughly what the US LRAS costs. The airborne versions would actually cost significantly more, as miniaturization, weight savings, and cooling become more of an issue. That said, ground mounting them is the worst place to put them, as it puts a whole lot of very dense air between them and the target. Considering that they're already looking 18 kilometers (!!!) to see an F-22/F-15 at ceiling altitude directly above them, I doubt their effective range would be much farther than 5-6 kilometers laterally, and even then, I suspect they'd have a pretty poor acquisition rate with all the atmospheric distortion

No shit? Maybe you should read what I posted: the US did not put it into service because they didn't need to. They had, however, a fully developed F-12 system, including AIM-47 missiles integrated into the FCS, which they tested in live fire conditions. I never said the US DEPLOYED anything in the same class as MiG-25/31, I said they DEVELOPED something in the same class. And could have built it, had they so chosen

Because... no American planes have datalinks? I mean, hardly any of them have datalinks, after all. By which I mean almost all of them. So, ANY US combat aircraft (F-16, F-15, F/A-18, F-22, F-35) can fill this role, by your logic. Realy? The MiG-31 radar has a reliable 150km detection range against F-22 and B-2? I find that very, VERY hard to believe. Also F-22 can do the same thing, AND not be seen by the enemy while they're at it. Or, you could get, you know, a proper AWACS aircraft, and cover 640x640 km (assuming, of course, that the aircraft you're looking for are standard fighter-size returns like, oh, I don't know, a MiG-31). I disagree; as far as aerodynamic performance goes, I think they're squarely in the same class. YF-12 was armed similarly as well, and had a radome of similar dimensions (pretty sure YF-12 actually had a larger antenna). Neither one of them would ever be much good in a dogfight, but as missile-armed interceptors, I'm not seeing much functional difference there... except that YF-12 had three times the operational range. As was mentioned earlier, YF-12 just never went into full scale production because the US had no need for a mach 3+ interceptor. Even MiG25 was only built as a response to the threat of the US XB-70 Valkyrie mach 3 strategic bomber. Russia never had (and was never developing, to the best of my knowledge) a bomber with those kind of capabilities, and the only production supersonic Russian bombers were mach 1.8 Tu-22 and mach 2.0 Tu-160 (all 16 of 'em)

*ahem* I'll just leave this here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YF-12 Also, MiG-25/31 as a "dogfighter"? Not sure if joke...

A class of it's own? *lol* What class is that, "huge engines with wings taped on as an afterthought"? Cut the hubris; there's nothing inherently special about the MiG-25/31 that put it "in a class of it's own". There were plenty of other aircraft capable of attaining those speeds. And as I recall, SR71, capable of the same speeds and altitudes (and sustaining them much longer!) had an interceptor variant. We know you have an unwavering love of anything Soviet, and irrational hatred of anything American, but seriously, try to be objective from time to time?

Come to think of it, it's rather convenient that the P-51 (in F-51 guise) was still in service in Korea, making it a good choice to model, as it spans two conflicts. By the same logic, late-war F4Us and B-29s would make excellent additions to DCS...

Not to mention that, policy against assassination notwithstanding, if they REALLY wanted him dead badly enough to jump through those hoops, they could just as easily stage an "accident" or a run-in with a "mugger" or any number of infinitely easier ways to off him.

Well, you can't magically disappear all that heat, but you CAN use nozzle design to mix it with cooler bypass air; a very broad, thin nozzle using bypass air mixing will have a cooler plume.

Why not? Close Air Support doesn't mean the CAS aircraft has to fly 500 feet directly over allied forces; it means aircraft delivering munitions onto enemy forces in contact with friendly forces (and contact doesn't even have to mean they're actively shooting at each other!). The B-1B works just fine for a dash-in-from-the-IP-and-lay-in-a-half-dozen-JDAMS-on-vital-points CAS mission. My BN used one in Iraq for preplan CAS and preparatory fires; it was awesome.

I did that thing out of North Carolina a few years ago; cool program. Learned my stomach doesn't much care for negative g, but I apparently take positive g better than the USN-Reserve F/A-18 pilot that was in the instructor seat. No, nothing in DCS is particularly good analogue. It is extremely well auto-coordinated, so you don't really have to touch the rudders, and it has an excellent turn rate- it handles much more like the more modern jet fighters than it does to the P-51 in terms of overall handling. The big departure in handling characteristics compared to, say, the F-15, is that it's power-to-weight ratio is quite low, so you can't take it much into the vertical. Maybe use the F-15 and limit yourself to 70-80% throttle settings?

Come to think of it, that'd make a really cool visual effect in-game for night-time flight: the static discharges off the rotor blades are, in fact, visible as a faint purple-ish glow on the trailing edges of the rotor blades when flying in very dark areas. You'd never notice it when flying over a well-lit city, but over the wilderness, sure.

In response to the OP: no. The Mi35 and Mi28 do not have the correct laser designator, capable of transmitting the correct PRF codes, to guide hellfire. Or more accurately, they could perhaps fire it, but without major modifications, could not guide it. Theoretically they could fire them at targets lased by other elements (ground-based designators, or the EO pods on those Cessnas), but why bother?

Kaktus, lol, it seems you're not very bright, that's the problem here. I didn't say anything about the throwing range of Americans with hand grenades, I am simply stating and want you to SAY out loud, IF do you understand in english what IF means, IF an American infantryman DOES throw an AN-M14 thermite grenade and it just HAPPENS to hit the top of the turret directly above the ammunition stowage, and it doesn't bounce or roll off the top of the turret, then it will burn through the armor and ignite the ammunition and the tank will be destroyed. American infantry with hand-thrown thermite grenades are therefore clearly a superior choice for combating enemy tanks. ...do you have any idea how asinine that kind of argument is? Or any notion that all you're doing is shifting your goalposts? I mean, once it became indefensible to continue insisting that FFARs are somehow a good choice for AT work, you change the argument to "oh, but they have enough power IF you hit", changing the argument midstream just so you can try to make yourself look less wrong. Absolutely ridiculous.