F-15E SECONDARY Air-to-Air Role

[bfr]

1 hour ago, Aussie_Mantis said:

However, from a design capacity, I think that the "universal capacity" here where a fighter can essentially double as a strong attack/CAS plane with a wide range of pylons and ordnance is really an indicator of aircraft swinging more towards the multirole part of the spectrum- I can't really name any new fighter designs that are meant to be single-role. Especially with the newer gen5s, the name of the game seems to be multirole aircraft, and even with the older 4.5s, multirole was hardly an afterthought- aircraft like the EF Typhoon, which was designed to be the next aerial superiority fighter of Europe, were designed with that multirole capability in mind, and many more single-role aircraft received upgrades to perform multirole actions. It's really just easier and more convenient, as well as more potent to have a plane that does both- maybe not to the extent that you convert your plane into a strike fighter a la F-15A to F-15E, but at least from, say, F-14A to F-14B/D plus bombs, or from early Typhoons fitted for but not with targeting pods and later with that capability integrated in.

You are, ultimately, right, though. I highly doubt that it was intentional at the start- it probably was easier to just strap stuff to planes at that point. But I think the point does stand that most fighter development programs sell multirole capability as a plus, because at this point we can develop air to ground capability in an aircraft without sacrificing air to air capability.

The Typhoon is an interesting case of needs changing with the times. As you alluded to, it started out on the drawing board as a fighter and the multi/swing-role capability was redesigned into it during initial development as the Cold War came to an end and requirements shifted (and is partly why it took so long to gestate from proposal to production).

Another repurposing of a specialised role platform (albeit not as spread out over time as the Eagle) was the Tornado IDS spawning the ADV variant. Although you can argue the latter wasn't all that great an aircraft, and there was pretty much zero crossover in capabilities of the two (the IDS could only ever carry IR AAMs for self defence and seldom even bothered, the ADV couldn't even begin to do a strike mission).

[CBenson89]

No, it's pretty easy - you just drop it dumb - someone will have to lase for it though.

The eagles can carry sniper pods.


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[draconus]

59 minutes ago, CBenson89 said:

The eagles can carry sniper pods.

We were talking about the C version then.

[CBenson89]

We were talking about the C version then.

The c versions carry sniper pods. My brother is an Eagle driver. They carry sniper pods.


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[draconus]

6 hours ago, CBenson89 said:

The c versions carry sniper pods. My brother is an Eagle driver. They carry sniper pods.

Any more details? What years, squads and circumstances?

[davidrbarnette]

30 minutes ago, draconus said:

Any more details? What years, squads and circumstances?

There are a ton of publicly available pics of F-15C’s carrying Sniper pods. A quick search and you’ll find them.

[Horns]

14 hours ago, Aussie_Mantis said:

Spoiler

IIRC The F-15C has CFTs as well, but they're far more bulky. The difference between the C and E models are very different, though, I agree.

 

If you're acquiring 50 aircraft, you're acquiring 50 aircraft. Whether that's 20 fighters and 30 attackers or 50 multiroles plays no difference to that. Even so, I do agree that you can save in some areas, like maintenance bill, but I'd argue that it's an advantage in and of itself.

 

Perhaps- maintaining 30 ground attack and 20 fighters to escort them is a higher cost and maintenance load than 40-50 of the same plane. But I think that even then, a multirole aircraft does shine. The F-4 was intended to do only air to air roles, but the USAF pressed it into service as their tactical bomber for the Vietnam war as well as having packages of F-4s escorted by F-4s. The A-7 and F-111 did exist, but up until the introduction of the F-15, even when defence spending was at its highest pre-Reagan, the F-4 was the workhorse of the air force. Even during the Reagan era, the F-16 was expected to do both A2G and A2A roles like the F-4 before it. The only exceptions i can think of within the teen series are F-14s and F-15s, which while predominantly air to air, were kitted out for and were sometimes used in air to ground roles (F-14A in iranian service, F-15A in Israeli service). The best example of a cold war multirole platform that I can think of are the F-16 and the F-4, which saw high use and proliferation, and saw use in A2G as well as A2A roles in all of the countries they served- the Osirak Nuclear Reactor raid was not performed by A-4N Ayits, nor F-4s, but by a formation of F-16s escorted by F-15As, and Operation Wooden Leg was conducted by F-15s escorting F-15s that both dropped bombs- however, this is an outlier, since Israel is the only force at present to have used the original fighter variants of F-15s in that role.

 

While they did favour one role or the other, I don't think it's appropriate to really describe it as single-role. The F-15A and F-15C have the exact same range of wing pylons for attaching bombs and rockets and guns to, and that wasn't exactly due to the F-15 being multirole- there's other reasons to have big pylons, such as what the A/C mainly used their pylons for- fuel tanks. It's not like you're deliberately not going to have large pylons just because your plane is designed for air to ground combat. And the F-22 negates that completely by just storing everything internally, and the weapons bay on F-35 was designed from the outset to fit things like JDAMs. I'm not sure whether SDB was designed to fit into the F-22's bay or if the bay was designed to fit SDB, though. 

As for the F-22, I have nothing to say regarding that. Touche. However, I might mention that even the F-22 ultimately can and will be used in strike roles, indicating at least some consideration from the outset of multirole capability, ergo, I propose that multirole capability is a highly important aspect of an aircraft and will paly an important part in future gen 5 development.

However, from a design capacity, I think that the "universal capacity" here where a fighter can essentially double as a strong attack/CAS plane with a wide range of pylons and ordnance is really an indicator of aircraft swinging more towards the multirole part of the spectrum- I can't really name any new fighter designs that are meant to be single-role. Especially with the newer gen5s, the name of the game seems to be multirole aircraft, and even with the older 4.5s, multirole was hardly an afterthought- aircraft like the EF Typhoon, which was designed to be the next aerial superiority fighter of Europe, were designed with that multirole capability in mind, and many more single-role aircraft received upgrades to perform multirole actions. It's really just easier and more convenient, as well as more potent to have a plane that does both- maybe not to the extent that you convert your plane into a strike fighter a la F-15A to F-15E, but at least from, say, F-14A to F-14B/D plus bombs, or from early Typhoons fitted for but not with targeting pods and later with that capability integrated in.

You are, ultimately, right, though. I highly doubt that it was intentional at the start- it probably was easier to just strap stuff to planes at that point.

But I think the point does stand that most fighter development programs sell multirole capability as a plus, because at this point we can develop air to ground capability in an aircraft without sacrificing air to air capability.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the era of the rise of the term 'multirole' and the term 'asymmetric' has been concurrent. I think most countries write a requirement for an aircraft that will have an air-to-air and a ground attack capability, so multirole aircraft aren't really competing against specialized airframes. The expectation is that an aircraft can be good enough air-to-air to defeat the anticipated threat, even if they leave air-to-air capability on the table in favor of multirole ability. When the F/A-18 beat the F-15 for the RAAF buy, I believe it was because we needed a ground attack capability (if I'm wrong and the only requirement was air-to-air then it supports your point), so we would have needed to acquire more airframes overall if we'd gone with the F-15. I don't think even the USN thinks the F/A-18 could match the F-15 air-to-air. I think Au expects the US to do the lion's share of air-to-air in any war we enter, so in a sense we get to have our cake and eat it too.

I think phasing plays a part as well. The expectation since Desert Storm has been that air supremacy will be attained quickly (or the remaining challenge to air ops is Ground Based Air Defenses). Once that happens the number of air-to-air aircraft needed diminishes with it, so it's useful to be able to rotate some of those airframes used to attain air supremacy through the ground attack role.

Carrier-based aircraft need to be all-rounders because of the premium on on-board space, so air-to-air specialists need not apply. That said, the F/A-18 is one example where I would agree with you: advances in electronics allowed a single type to incorporate avionics for both roles with no significant tradeoffs, as opposed to the original plan of having the common airframe fitted with avionics specific to the air-to-air or air-to-ground mission.

Now that we're back in the era of near-peer competition, it will be interesting to see if multirole aircraft continue to proliferate or we see a return to types that strive for the best achievable performance in a single mission. The J-20 could be argued to be the first type in quite a while that was designed with air superiority as the sole emphasis: it can carry the LS-6 and the AS-17 Krypton, but the former was really designed to suit the airframe rather than the other way around, and the latter can only be carried externally as a result of the uncompromising air-to-air emphasis...

[Rifter]

5 hours ago, draconus said:

Any more details? What years, squads and circumstances?

In the resent past sniper pods on the C-model enhance the air-to-air capabilities. This creates the ability to identify targets without using radar. Especially when the target cannot be tracked by the radar because it is a stealthy aircraft. We are talking about AIM-9X employment by the way. The sniper pod acts as a capability boost here.

[Alpha]

On 3/30/2023 at 9:15 AM, Aussie_Mantis said:

The Iraqi Air Force in '91 was a crack, single-role but highly combat-experienced arm of highly motivated pilots. They lost to multirole pilots who didn't have a lick of combat experience. 

 

(...)

"Single-Role is Better than Multirole" is a mentality that died the moment planes started to be able to become highly maneuverable and large enough to carry an appreciable payload- arguably with the F-4 Phantom, in my opinion.

As pointed out by GGTharos and others: There´s a reason the saying is "Jack of all Trades - master of none". Part of it is due to the platform but mostly it´s about the training. Any dedicated Air-Air Unit spends 100% of their time training Air-Air - and they need all those hours to reach and maintain the highest level in their field. Even given unlimited funds -> hours a squadron would never be able to train each task to the same, high level. Any multirole Unit has to divide their Flighttime into very different areas - it´s a huge differrence when you have 200hrs per year and pilot and split that into Air-Air, Strike, CAS,... vs being in a pure Air-Air squadron using 200hrs to fly Air-Air. No multirole unit ever pretends to be as well trained as any specialised unit _in that area_. Platforms aside, A10s are great at CAS because they spend almost 100% of their time doing that. The light grey (F-15C) were "King of Air-Air" because that´s all they ever did. Dedicated SEAD-Units might even fly the same jet as other units do - they´re still way better in that area due to their training. Training matters big time. Any combination of very different tasks (Air-Mud, Air-Air) is a compromise due to limited resources.

 

And that´s where the first quoted sentence is missing the point a bit: Desert Storm deployed a very well trained western Alliance with several single-Task Masters (like the F-15C, but also F-4G Wild Weasel, Tornado, EF-111, F117,...), their coordination and experience being boosted for decades by superior training (Red Flag is a pretty famous training revolution) to a level higher than seen by any "combat experienced" iraqi crews. Again: Training matters.

 

For the capability of the Mudhen: It can do Air-Air but it´s made for Air-Ground, reflected in training and the very jet itself. To quote Toro, a real Mudhen-Driver: "If you want an A/A mission with an aircraft that excels at that mission, go C model.  If you want a dual role aircraft that is designed to excel at A/G, go for the Strike Eagle.  The Mudhens can't BFM for <profanity> against the Vipers and Eagles, but the other guys don't get to rage into a threat zone at more than 500 knots, less than 500 feet, blacked out, at night."  (https://www.flyingsquadron.com/forums/topic/21493-single-seat-or-strike-eagle/?page=2)

Edited April 1, 2023 by Alpha

[Aussie_Mantis]

On 4/2/2023 at 8:17 AM, Alpha said:

As pointed out by GGTharos and others: There´s a reason the saying is "Jack of all Trades - master of none". Part of it is due to the platform but mostly it´s about the training. Any dedicated Air-Air Unit spends 100% of their time training Air-Air - and they need all those hours to reach and maintain the highest level in their field. Even given unlimited funds -> hours a squadron would never be able to train each task to the same, high level. Any multirole Unit has to divide their Flighttime into very different areas - it´s a huge differrence when you have 200hrs per year and pilot and split that into Air-Air, Strike, CAS,... vs being in a pure Air-Air squadron using 200hrs to fly Air-Air. No multirole unit ever pretends to be as well trained as any specialised unit _in that area_. Platforms aside, A10s are great at CAS because they spend almost 100% of their time doing that. The light grey (F-15C) were "King of Air-Air" because that´s all they ever did. Dedicated SEAD-Units might even fly the same jet as other units do - they´re still way better in that area due to their training. Training matters big time. Any combination of very different tasks (Air-Mud, Air-Air) is a compromise due to limited resources.

 

And that´s where the first quoted sentence is missing the point a bit: Desert Storm deployed a very well trained western Alliance with several single-Task Masters (like the F-15C, but also F-4G Wild Weasel, Tornado, EF-111, F117,...), their coordination and experience being boosted for decades by superior training (Red Flag is a pretty famous training revolution) to a level higher than seen by any "combat experienced" iraqi crews. Again: Training matters.

 

For the capability of the Mudhen: It can do Air-Air but it´s made for Air-Ground, reflected in training and the very jet itself. To quote Toro, a real Mudhen-Driver: "If you want an A/A mission with an aircraft that excels at that mission, go C model.  If you want a dual role aircraft that is designed to excel at A/G, go for the Strike Eagle.  The Mudhens can't BFM for <profanity> against the Vipers and Eagles, but the other guys don't get to rage into a threat zone at more than 500 knots, less than 500 feet, blacked out, at night."  (https://www.flyingsquadron.com/forums/topic/21493-single-seat-or-strike-eagle/?page=2)

 

The saying is Jack of all trades, master of none, is better than master of one. I think that might apply here with the F-15. Also, the A-10 was hardly ever good at CAS,

Your point however still applies. I recant.

[Alpha]

17 hours ago, Aussie_Mantis said:

Also, the A-10 was hardly ever good at CAS,

That must be a typo. The A-10 Community was and is King of the Hill in terms of CAS. That´s their primary mission, they do this all the time, the platform is good - within the RL military aviation community you´ll never find anybody who doubts the A-10 bros to be very, very good at CAS. 

Edited April 5, 2023 by Alpha

[Scott-S6]

3 hours ago, Alpha said:

That must be a typo. The A-10 Community was and is King of the Hill in terms of CAS. That´s their primary mission, they do this all the time, the platform is good - within the RL military aviation community you´ll never find anybody who doubts the A-10 bros to be very, very good at CAS. 

 

If you talk to infantry that have received CAS from an A10 (note - not guys that have witnessed this from a distance) and have seen up close just how large the dispersion of that gun is - their feelings are rather mixed.

Prior to the C upgrade package, the A10 was terrible at CAS - nothing to assist the pilot in target identification and no ability to deploy precision munitions unaided. There's a reason why the A10 had so many friendly fire incidents prior to to that and remember that we were two years into GW2 before the C upgrades started being rolled out.

CAS, of course, was absolutely not what the aircraft was designed for.

Edited April 5, 2023 by Scott-S6

[Eviscerador]

43 minutes ago, Scott-S6 said:

If you talk to infantry that have received CAS from an A10 (note - not guys that have witnessed this from a distance) and have seen up close just how large the dispersion of that gun is - their feelings are rather mixed.

Prior to the C upgrade package, the A10 was terrible at CAS - nothing to assist the pilot in target identification and no ability to deploy precision munitions unaided. There's a reason why the A10 had so many friendly fire incidents prior to to that and remember that we were two years into GW2 before the C upgrades started being rolled out.

CAS, of course, was absolutely not what the aircraft was designed for.

 

I did, I talked with one spanish NATO certified JTAC that was on tour on Afghanistan. He said that the only thing he loved more than having an A10 overwatching them, was having our own Tigres doing the job.

He said the A10 guys were always on spot and the avenger gun was so accurate they could target a building just next to one with blue troops and be confident they weren't going to cause any blue casualties.

On the other hand, other fast jets relied too much on JDAMs and laser mavericks which were precise but their lethal radious were much bigger.

And he chucked remembering when one day the plane in overwatch was a B1, with 2000 lbs JDAMs and no TGP, coordinates only. That day he was really, really stressed doing his job.

So yeah, the A10 maybe have a story of blue on blue incidents, but that's because they were always requested when troops are in danger close. Still, they always had somebody to pay for their rounds on the base. Always.

[Scott-S6]

13 minutes ago, Eviscerador said:

So yeah, the A10 maybe have a story of blue on blue incidents, but that's because they were always requested when troops are in danger close.

Or, those incidents were mostly prior to the C package at which point the A10 was terrible at CAS, something it was never intended to do?

[Alpha]

Well, this is really off-topic, but anyways: Yeah, I´ve talked to a bunch of people who got danger-close support by A10s - very happy customers. And while time-on-station, loadout etc are important the most important thing still is the ability and training of the crew. There´s really nobody within the fixed-wing community who does more CAS than Hog-Drivers and nobody who is as proficient in that field.

 

Just like about anybody with a radio can do emergency CAS there´s a huge difference to a trained/qualified JTAC. It´s really the same in the air - while a lot of platforms and units can do CAS to some extend (hell, even the Buff guys pitch in here) there´s a huge difference to a qualified Hog-Driver. CAS is really training intensive, you just don´t get to the Hog-Drivers level of proficiency by doing this half as much as they do. Which is why this discussion never ever exists in real military aviation and saying "hogs are bad at CAS" is probably among the Top3 things to show how little one knows about real military aviation. Having flown a different jet with a very different task I remember that as early as during UPT we got to experience the Hog-Communities focus on that stuff and I have never heard anybody from any other weapon system (fixed-wing) claiming they´d be as good in that field. There´s really no discussion IRL.

[Coole28]

46 minutes ago, Scott-S6 said:

CAS, of course, was absolutely not what the aircraft was designed for.

So the plane that came from the A-X program, a program aimed filling the gaps in the USAF’s CAS capability, wasn’t designed for CAS?  Someone should tell the Air Force, cause according to them on their website “[the A-10A] was designed specifically for the close air support mission”.  They might want to get their money back from Fairchild for false advertising.

1 hour ago, Scott-S6 said:

no ability to deploy precision munitions unaided.

We just going to ignore the fact that more AGM-65s were expended (5,296) than any other PGM in the Gulf War?  And that the A-10 was responsible for the bulk of AGM-65 employments during the war, which was also coincidentally the first time it ever saw combat?  Whack.

 

The A-10 was designed in the late ‘60s when the primary sensor for identifying friendly positions was still the Mk. 1 eyeball.  Doing this required flying low and slow, and lessons learned in Vietnam demonstrated how vulnerable aircraft were to ground fire while doing these missions.  The need for a higher survivability plane to perform these low and slow CAS missions gave birth to the A-X program, which would ultimately give us the A-10.  You keep mentioning how the A-10 didn’t have sensors to aid in target identification prior the C model as some indicator that it was poor at CAS, but back in the ‘60s and ‘70s none of the other planes running CAS missions had this either. 

[Cab]

1 hour ago, Scott-S6 said:

...something it was never intended to do?

I believe this is correct. If I remember correctly the original requirement resulting in the A-10 was destroying Soviet tanks invading Western Europe, not CAS.

[Scott-S6]

1 hour ago, Coole28 said:

So the plane that came from the A-X program, a program aimed filling the gaps in the USAF’s CAS capability, wasn’t designed for CAS?  Someone should tell the Air Force, cause according to them on their website “[the A-10A] was designed specifically for the close air support mission”.  They might want to get their money back from Fairchild for false advertising.

We just going to ignore the fact that more AGM-65s were expended (5,296) than any other PGM in the Gulf War?  And that the A-10 was responsible for the bulk of AGM-65 employments during the war, which was also coincidentally the first time it ever saw combat?  Whack.

 

The A-10 was designed in the late ‘60s when the primary sensor for identifying friendly positions was still the Mk. 1 eyeball.  Doing this required flying low and slow, and lessons learned in Vietnam demonstrated how vulnerable aircraft were to ground fire while doing these missions.  The need for a higher survivability plane to perform these low and slow CAS missions gave birth to the A-X program, which would ultimately give us the A-10.  You keep mentioning how the A-10 didn’t have sensors to aid in target identification prior the C model as some indicator that it was poor at CAS, but back in the ‘60s and ‘70s none of the other planes running CAS missions had this either. 

Like many military programs, requirements evolved and accomodating other needs diluted that original intent.

As for the other aircraft also having nothing for target identification other than eyeballs - by the time the A10 saw combat, that low and slow window for unaided target ID was no longer practical thanks to improvement in AA, especially effective and ubiquitous manpads. The A10A never got to see the battlefield conditions thar it could have shone in.

Yes, the A10 deployed lots of AGM65s and we all know that the AGM65 camera is extremely poor for target identification even if you're not flying at the altitudes that A10s were forced to fly at during GW1. It's okay for a fulda gap scenario where everything beyond a certain line is enemy (but it'd still be nice to know if that blob is a tank, SPG or AAA without flying into AAA range) - it's not suitable for any more complex environment which certainly includes CAS and we see this in the friendly fire numbers. 

The C upgrades were deeply needed by the A10.

Edited April 5, 2023 by Scott-S6

[Coole28]

54 minutes ago, Scott-S6 said:

Like many military programs, requirements evolved and accomodating other needs diluted that original intent.

…

The C upgrades were deeply needed by the A10.

 

Don’t think anyone is denying the C model upgrades were needed to maintain relevance in the modern CAS role.  And I’m not going to debate whether the plane is good at it either, not in an F-15E thread anyway.

But stating “The plane wasn’t intended for CAS” when that was quite literally what it was designed for based on what the CAS mission entailed at the time (late ‘60s), and “It wasn’t self PGM capable prior to the C model” when it launched thousands of them in the ‘90s, it’s just blatantly wrong information.  Thats all I’m pointing out. 

[Scott-S6]

20 minutes ago, Coole28 said:

Don’t think anyone is denying the C model upgrades were needed to maintain relevance in the modern CAS role.  And I’m not going to debate whether the plane is good at it either, not in an F-15E thread anyway.

But stating “The plane wasn’t intended for CAS” when that was quite literally what it was designed for based on what the CAS mission entailed at the time (late ‘60s), and “It wasn’t self PGM capable prior to the C model” when it launched thousands of them in the ‘90s, it’s just blatantly wrong information.  Thats all I’m pointing out. 

Fair, I made my point poorly.

The initial CAS role was diluted by cold war concerns and the battlefield envisaged for it's CAS role had ceased to exist by the time it entered service with training focusing on the Soviet armour column attack role.

While it can deploy Mavs unaided it has a highly limited capability to identify targets for them in the conditions it actually found itself operating. 

So the A10A never got an opportunity to be good at CAS.

[draconus]

1 hour ago, Scott-S6 said:

So the A10A never got an opportunity to be good at CAS

So which one was better?

[Coole28]

2 hours ago, Scott-S6 said:

So the A10A never got an opportunity to be good at CAS.

On this we can agree.  

[Scott-S6]

2 hours ago, draconus said:

So which one was better?

You're arguing that least bad automatically becomes good?

[Kev2go]

17 hours ago, Scott-S6 said:

If you talk to infantry that have received CAS from an A10 (note - not guys that have witnessed this from a distance) and have seen up close just how large the dispersion of that gun is - their feelings are rather mixed.

Prior to the C upgrade package, the A10 was terrible at CAS - nothing to assist the pilot in target identification and no ability to deploy precision munitions unaided. There's a reason why the A10 had so many friendly fire incidents prior to to that and remember that we were two years into GW2 before the C upgrades started being rolled out.

CAS, of course, was absolutely not what the aircraft was designed for.

 

sounds to me like you just described an F16A. TBH can even include F16C blocks 25 thru 32 ( pre SCU modernization)  " nothing to assist pilot in target identification, and no ability to deploy precision guided munitions unaided"

Edited April 6, 2023 by Kev2go

[draconus]

10 hours ago, Scott-S6 said:

You're arguing that least bad automatically becomes good?

Even if not good, when no other is better, it's automatically the best.