Wilde

The M109 should have a range of about 30km. MLRS should be able to shoot targets at 40km. Both probably depending on wind speed and direction.

Tell your employer to unblock .ru domains. Cold War is long over. ;)

Doesn't work for me. Only pops up this message: What is the new website's url? edit: argh nevermind... Found it already.

Sounds like this thing is extremely loud. One can hardly hear the engine turn. Could be the whistling is a distortion caused by the abused mike.

I think you misunderstood. The committee didn't pick a winning bid. They just seem to say it would be better to pick SH from defense perspective. It seems as if they think the F-35 is too expensive and will be available too late. I'm pretty sure the ultimate decision will be made by the parliament.

There was at least a third type. In the Western world it is only known as "Caspian Sea Monster". It was similar to the Lun, but it wasn't a missile plattform. Supposedly it was a cargo plane, probably for "amphibious" attacks. Rumors say it could have lifted up to 1'000 tons (including its own weight of some 500 tons). Check this link for pics and videos.

Yeah well, what I meant was: how to shoot it? It would come by the sea, so land-based SAMs were not an option. Surely it would not get close enough to hostile fleets to get shot by their naval SAMs. Can AWACS see a target flying below 30m? If the Ecranoplane flies smart, can intercepters take it down considering it is cruising at almost transonic speeds at sea level? My question was if there is an efficient weapon to take it down. You think there is? Which one is it then?

Both articles were old news. If you google around a little you'll find that total suggested budget for NASA was increased by some $200 million (to a flat $19 billion). According to the plan there are to be $6 billion spent over the next years. But that's just a "plan". Last year it was planned to spend close to $20 billion in 2011 and there was no mentioning of a cut in human space exploration. Expect plans to change for next year again. It's not the end for human space travel. There are other countries just starting their space conquering adventures. And the US will be back eventually too. They just cancelled a Bush-administration program.

That thing is really cool. Are there even any efficient weapons to take a thing like that out of the "sky"?

Well, sad for everyone with an interest in science and space. But to be realistic, we can be thankful that the US and others have done so many missions as of now. Considering they started it only to pretend to be cooler than Soviet Russia that is... ;) Now they over-stretched their economical capabilities to a degree that they can't afford it any longer. A setback for scientists and science enthusiasts all over the world. But they need get their stuff back on track in America. Also maybe this is the start to a corporation called "Weyland-Yutani Corp"? :P

Yeah, no offense mate. They look so real! Nice job by whoever did that.

:facepalm: I just spent a couple of minutes looking at those pictures wondering how they got shot and who leaked them. Only then I realized this are actually screens from a game! Screw you fooling me by linking them in this part of the forum! :lol:

What's your point? Do you want to read "OK AESA is better!" or what? OK AESA is better! ... As I said there are scan patterns for certain scenarios/situations. Obviously for closer ranges you need to narrow the azimuth you want to scan in order to do it equally fast. All it requires is some brains on the pilot's part. I was simply trying to hint you to the point, that there is no need to "take 180 shots" for a scan as you nicely calculated from some datasheet.

Of course it can. But it needs to emit radio waves in order to do so. Also there is no need to scan the entire area. Using a dedicated scan pattern narrows the area to scan significantly. For example if you want to scan at ranges >40km for other aircrafts you can effectively limit the angles to about +/- 5º in elevation, because there wont be any aircrafts in space or below the ground. So what you do is more or less sweeping the camera left and right only. It's pretty much the same procedure as how the Americans operate their non-AESA radars. In WVR there are dedicated scan patterns too as you probably know from the game.

Ehmmm :doh:

I disagree. A better radar or new missiles don't teleport you in the position you need. Neither do those things refuel you in flight. Yes, on paper an up-to-date F-16 is superior a 1985 Su-27 in BVR. But in reality it would be extremely difficult to make use of that superiority unless the Sukhoi pilot is drunk or generally bad. Basing your capabilities on just that would be stupid. That is why we built the Eurofighter. It has better BVR capabilities compared to hundreds of old Flankers too. But unlike the F-16 it is actually fast enough to get in firing range and make use of it. Your comparison of Vietnam era F-4 vs MiG-29S is not correct here. The MiG is better in BVR and has slightly more range also. It doesn't resemble the F-16 vs Flanker situation. It's not like I rate the Falcon a bad aircraft. Quite the contrary. But in my opinion it is just not a good tool to be used against Flankers.

Actually there are at least 48 Su-27SM in service. 22nd and 23rd fighter aviation regiments, both 11th air army, have been upgraded. Don't know if there are any plans to upgrade further regiments to 27SM though as they seem to be going after Su-35S now. Plans there are to crank out 2 regiments within the next 2 years. That would be at least 3 years ahead of IOC of the PAK-FA. So presumably they'll get follow-up contracts before production of PAK-FA starts. And frankly, does anyone here really believe PAK-FA will be in service by 2015?! ;) As for the topic I'm pretty sure any Flanker owns any Falcon if flown correctly. Flanker is faster and has a lot more range. Thus the Falcon will never get within shooting range. Once it hits bingo fuel and has to run the Flanker could go after it and take it down. Also a Block 50 or whatever is no match whatsoever for an MKI or even 35S. That being said, I think it's moot to compare planes in some amateur armchair expert sort of way. After all both the Flanker and the Falcon are just one of many wheels in their respective war machineries. The question should be: do all the wheels fit nicely together? And the answer is only known to the people who know all the strategies and data. Unfortunately they would never share it with us. :(

I believe you're still underestimating it's merits. Those simple L-band radars could work very nicely against VLO aircraft. That is because they most likely are designed to work asymmetrically. Their point is not to detect or track a VLO aircraft in the first place imho. I think what they really are about is to being able to detect the VLO aircraft's datalink emissions and to be able to jam those. This effectively means an enemy VLO aircraft is blind unless it uses it's own X-band radar or tries to get targeting information via datalink. Either way it will instantaneously lose it's VLO characteristic. And in the case of the datalink fed system intended to provide superior situational awareness for a F-35 pilot it could render the whole concept useless too, if the L-band array can jam the datalinks. I wouldn't want to be a pilot in a F-35 in a situation like that. Don't bite me. I don't really know if that's their idea or if their solutions can actually do it. But I would expect an approach like that from them. Russian engineers are not morons.

It's because of the lift fan. That thing is a STOVL version. You can see the covering blankets of the lift fan behind the cockpit. The other versions have a bigger canopy, that doesn't obstruct rear view as much.

Nice, finally they have it flying. Many Russians surely were a little bit proud today. Now let's see how soon it enters service. Oh and learning some facts about it would be nice too. It doesn't look as ugly as I expected it to be. Yet it's no beauty either, so I'll keep the Flanker as my Avatar. :P

And another day of waiting... What's the reason? I heard there was snow in KnA today? How is that possible at some -20ºC?!

No, it is from some rendering, that has been around for at least half a year. edit: found it

I wrote "fact". Suggesting it's not. You wrote: "The fact of the matter is that stealth works. My government would not spend $2.2 billion on a B-2 if it didn't." Just because your government spent $2.2 bn or whatever on it doesn't mean stealth works. Well not the way people think it does. That's not how they decide on matters like that. Everything needed is indoctrination of the tax payers. Keep on telling them how your greatest asset is superior air power and how your new, shiny toy is a generation ahead and eventually they believe all those fairy-tales. Add to that some mystification, that tells them the toys are so superior that "we can't declassify" and they'll even accept that there's no way to control the expenses. Or in the way you put it: If your government believed the B-2 had been worth it's price the whole 132 would have been produced instead of the 21 that actually were. And if your government believed the F-22 had been worth it's price than the whole 750 would have been produced. Both your claim and my spins are incorrect. In reality the situation changed during these projects. Today your government would not invest such money in a project like they did back then. But just like then they will not inform you about their intentions. They are advertising their intentions to you in the most suitable way they can. After all they want you to vote for them again.

Well, if you read what I wrote you'll understand I was talking about a real, hot conflict against a top tier military. The F-15 has never been in such a conflict, so no, it doesn't have the 100:0 ratio. And whoever thinks the F-22 would get such a ratio in the mentioned scenario lives in a phantasy world. As for what your government would do or wouldn't I'd suggest to be very cautious. They are politicians. And they are also people. They have made a lot of strange decisions. Including some that you probably don't agree with either. I could easily spin that remark of yours into some very interesting "fact" that I am sure you would not find funny.

Yes GG, I know all this from LM ads. Just saying I don't think it's gonna work out like that. You simply assume everything would work 100% the way you planned and anticipated it. I prefer to stick with Murphy. When suddenly - like in the past - missile pK is massively below expectation for example and the Raptor only manages 1 kill per sortie, then the picture changes, a lot. This is still assuming a very unrealistic 100:0 kill ratio btw...