Wilde

Haha funny. Well, the question might have sounded stupid, but the dictionary wouldn't translate "sidelobe". In radar terms German is rather conservative about anglicisms. Whatever.. As I said, the side lobes should be rather small. We're talking some -20dB compared to the main lobe here, which is what, 1% of the main lobe then? Is an ARM weapon that sensitive?

What does that mean? Sorry, English is not my native language. Also I'm not overthinking it. I'm just curious. The emitting radar waves outside of the radar beam of the STT'ing radar should be rather minimal, shouldn't they?

Yes sure, that's pretty obvious. But what are the odds, that the ARM stays inside the radar beam at any point? If the F-4 breaks in any direction after the missile launch, then the radar beam would quickly sweep too. And then the ARM wouldn't be inside the radar beam anymore. That hit from the example must have been pretty lucky, or unlucky fwiw.

Hm, I always thought an ARM is a passive weapon system. Taking the B-52 example I don't get how that happened. If the bomber STT'ed the F-4, then how did the ARM know where to fly?

It was in Hamburg, Germany last year. The left wing actually touched the ground. The captain safely landed it on second try.

Yes, but a pr-sheet stating "detecting a fighter at 400km" is not exactly a definition for detection range. Also I know what an horizon is. But as I said, reasonable altitudes. A fighter is not supposed to fly at 13km height scanning for other fighters 600km away also at 13km height. So 400km is very close to the radar horizon of a fighter in practical use. By the way, the AWACS pr-sheet is talking about a 400km range too...

I think you made a mistake here. It's not limited to this range by its resolution (or however it is called in radar-speech). It's limited by physics. Earth curvature prevents you from detecting targets beyond that at reasonable altitudes. edit: The given figure is probably meant to advertise the system's capability to detect fighter sized aircraft at maximum possible range. Otherwise there surely were some people claiming that at max range it could only detect a Zeppelin or a flying skyscraper.

An Airbus A380 consumes 5 times the amount of those 48 Flankers. And no-one seems to be concerned about flying an Airbus A380 to Shanghai because of a hypothetical shortage of fuel there. Indeed there are probably quite a few airliners starting from Chinese airports across the day. ;) Them Chinese people are assembling pretty much the majority of all computers being sold in the entire world. It's safe to assume they could have a few hundred of their 1.3 billion inhabitants capable of maintaining a fighter plane. The amount of equipment is not a problem for them. The question is, if they have quality pilots or if they indeed fly like monkeys as assumed in the study.

Well, the study states "50nm against sub-sonic airplanes" iirc. Even if this is supposed to be tankers or airliners, a supercruising or afterburning fighter surely isn't that much harder to see on an IRST like that.

Hm, I prefer to put my money on RAND's unsubstantiated "facts" rather than on yours, sorry. ;) Although I believe both of you have a similar agenda.

I do in LOFC. But I wish it was as god as the one RAND believes the Typhoon to have.

Or maybe not? Apparently RAND thinks the Typhoon is already capable of doing that as we discuss here. You might want to read the other thread. ;)

That's what the American engineers thought some 20 years ago. They believed IR stuff is useless and it's all about radar. The day they will get shot at head-on by a modern IR missile from 50+ nautical miles will prove them wrong. It's only a matter of time before that happens.

Try this: Close Ramgen. Start LOFC. Create new pilot. Close LOFC. Start Ramgen. Then it should show in the drop down. At least it did for me.

This looks absolutely amazing. I'm so gonna love it! One question though: Ricardo, you said you've done the MiG-29. Does this mean all 3 (2? do the Russian ones actually differ?) versions or just the Russian ones? Asking because the German one has a few differences obviously (both altimeters, airspeed indicator, HSI and probably a few more things).

Digging out this thread out again. Shaggy, your skins are plain awesome. But I wonder if you have ever made, or considered to make, a fictional MiG-35 skin as for example this one (template)? I know, it's a different air-frame, but since there's no UB or 35 model available atm I'd love to at least fly a fictional skin like that. Cheers

Nice vids! I like the way they give credit to all the people supporting the actual pilots.

I've played ramgen missions and campaigns for a couple of hours. Seen the same problem occasionally. As GF2 said the statistics are taken from the configured pilot log. For it to work properly you need to revive the pilot every time you die. Otherwise LOFC will not update the log of the dead pilot anymore and thus ramgen cannot analyze your progress. As an alternative you can create a new pilot everytime you die and use the new one in the next mission.

He prolly meant those SAMs are too dangerous to get close to them. What boggles me is, that people keep on feeding the publicity stuff about the F-22 (and F-35 for that matter) being oh that superior to anything available in the whole world. So far it has been superior in licensed computer games only. What if the thing isn't anywhere close to being that superior? Then 187 pieces is just ridiculously few. And what, 400 million dollars? That's ridiculously much. If I was a rather young president, who didn't start the project but who has to take care of budgets now I'd be very skeptical about it. The rumours about the F-23, I don't believe though. It was part of an advanced fighter program. It was stopped when it didn't get the deal. I doubt it would be very easy to start the program again and somehow change it to a carrier-launched aircraft. Also there's only one remotely potential enemy with a carrier (2nd one building?). Why would the US navy need a completely new aircraft to do it's job? At the moment that would be only a massive money sink.

Oh man this thread is both interesting and horrible. Lots of people claiming lots of things. Using Wikipedia as a source is, well, questionable. The Carlos guy seems to be pretty much in it but he clearly has an agenda. But wow, what GGTharos is posting lacks any source at all. Seriously, you guys should get a grip. In armaments industries nobody is telling the truth. You're making yourself a tool if you phrase someone's "publicity facts" (that's especially for the people who believe in the marketing statements of companies like Lockheed Martin and the likes...)

No offence, but his doubts concerning stealth effectiveness aren't any more assumptions as your faith in it.

Old thread is old. But one quick remark from me on the topic. I served my military duty in a tank battalion for the German Bundeswehr. We were equipped with Leopard2 MBTs. And there were only 4 weapons systems, that were seriously considered dangerous to us: - air to ground missiles - ground to ground missiles (such as the MILAN) - anti tank mines - hostile MBTs A gun even as huge as the GAU-8 was not considered a serious threat. But the scenario is hypothetical anyways. On a real battlefield there are not just MBTs. There are also motorized/mechanized infantry units, artillery units, various kinds of APCs and so on. Non of those have platings similar to MBTs. So to them a GAU-8 or anything similar would be devastating. Besides that, a MBT is not built to take on any airborne weapon system. It's purpose is to take on infantry units and other MBTs. If a tank commander finds himself in a position where he is being attacked by ground attack planes repeatedly he or his boss must have done something wrong earlier in the process.. ;)

Hope they'll test it somewhere above a photographer then.

Well, i don't see a point in discussing this economical stuff. Obviously the company running the simulation in the first place seems to believe these planes will make it into service by then. Otherwise their simulation would have been kinda pointless, don't you think?

a16, both statements are untrue. In fact private Russian industry has a total debt of some 500 billion dollars to foreign investors. Yet, in total Russia's balance is still positive, because Russia's foreign currency reserves are bigger than that and the state doesn't have any debts of significant proportions. But seriously, this thread is way off topic now. It started with criticism about the JSF and whether it is justified or not.