Does it have datalink?

[Temetre]

vor 22 Minuten schrieb Hiob:

Edit: Wasn't the poor dogfighting results in Vietnam precisely the reason for the developement of the Viper?

I think that was more the result of the reformers/fighter mafia pushing low tech fighters. But mind that their conclusions were mostly wrong, and the Viper mainly got good when they put a bunch of tech into it.

Afaik the Vietnam results of the F4 wasnt much about the planes dogfighting performance really. More about lack of BFM training, and fighting from a very difficult position. Mind there was a huge number of F-4s carried bombs or escorted strike groups, which mostly got threatened by SAMs and got very rarely ambushed by Migs. So the Migs almost always had the upper hand at the start of the battle. When the Migs got baited into longer dogfights, it seems like the Phantoms often won out.

At the end of the war the Phantoms had a 3 to 1 kill ratio against Migs though. So even with those problems they proved superior in A2A combat, which includes dogfights and "no-BVR" rules.

 

Subsonic designs like Mig-15/17 might have inherently good low speed handling tho, compared to supersonic fighters.... not sure 

Edited January 17 by Temetre

[=475FG= Dawger]

20 minutes ago, Temetre said:

I wanna know what aircraft you think is better in the same scenario/year xD

Seems pretty realistic by all accounts, I dont think its overmodelled. Compared to, say, the Mig-21 thats perfectly stable till you hit 30 AoA or so where it departs  

Out in the real world, even the early F-15E easily beat the F-14’s in the slow speed realm. Described as “the absolute best pipper practice you can get” by people in a position to know. 

Not that I mind. I am hoping for the same treatment for the Phantom. It will be loads of fun. 

[Temetre]

Gerade eben schrieb =475FG= Dawger:

Out in the real world, even the early F-15E easily beat the F-14’s in the slow speed realm. Described as “the absolute best pipper practice you can get” by people in a position to know. 

Not that I mind. I am hoping for the same treatment for the Phantom. It will be loads of fun. 

Its hard to draw judgement calls from early anecdotes like that tho. Also, are we talking F-14s with TF-30s, and are early F-15Es lighter? In that case it wouldnt be hard to judge why they mightve felt that way. F-14B is quite a different beast Id say.

[Silver_Dragon]

On 5/15/2023 at 1:28 AM, Inf said:

Just wondering if the F4 will have datalink, and if so, will it be on the same LINK4 network as our Tomcat friends?

By my data, only the F-4J has Link 4 on receive only on 1973.

 

[=475FG= Dawger]

4 hours ago, Temetre said:

Its hard to draw judgement calls from early anecdotes like that tho. Also, are we talking F-14s with TF-30s, and are early F-15Es lighter? In that case it wouldnt be hard to judge why they mightve felt that way. F-14B is quite a different beast Id say.

IRL, all Tomcats are targets as soon as the wings move forward no matter the opponent. 
It isn’t quite that way in DCS, which bodes well for the Phantom, IMO. 

 

[WinterH]

4 hours ago, Hiob said:

But to answer seriously - as you already mentioned, the Tomcat, the Viper, F-5, any Mig, any Mirage...... (tbh I don't know from the top of my head, which exactly are the time appropriate variants....)

If we're talking about 1975 indeed, Viper doesn't exist in service yet, neither does the Eagle. If we're talking DCS, the only Mirage that applies is F1, and afaik F-4E with slats have about 1 degree per sec better sustained turn rate.

Tomcat will be better, no question there.

Personally I believe if we turely compared 3rd gen options in DCS, F-4E will be one of the better dogfighters, possibly even the best, if flown very well, but it will probably be hard to fly that well.

Overall though, I do believe F-5E and MiG-21Bis will have ample chance to outdo it with relatively similar skilled pilots. We'll see. When MiG-23MLA comes, it should be interesting too, I personally think slatted F-4E is the better dogfighter of two, even if just slightly, but not sure, MiG will be advantageous pre-merge though, and I'm sure it'll accelerate much better overall too.

4 hours ago, Temetre said:

You think the Mig-21 and Mirage F1 will outturn the F4E, that would be the ~75?

Mirage I'm not sure. But both F-5E and MiG-21Bis has a better instant turn I think, and if things get slow they'll remain more controllable than F-4 imo, slats or not. But we'll see.

[Biggus]

21 hours ago, Silver_Dragon said:

By my data, only the F-4J has Link 4 on receive only on 1973.

 

Introduction was earlier, I believe that the Js rolled off the production line with the AN/ASW-25 and it was retrofitted to most of the remaining Bs relatively quickly.

[Silver_Dragon]

Has some pages available and them only show on 70s, the AN/ASW-25A has only a receiver to the Link 4A.

https://books.google.ca/books/about/AN_ASW_25A_Communication_Set_Digital_Dat.html?id=SVydtgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

[Snappy]

18 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

IRL, all Tomcats are targets as soon as the wings move forward no matter the opponent. 
It isn’t quite that way in DCS, which bodes well for the Phantom, IMO. 

 

Yawn , how much more of an incorrect blanket statement -overgeneralisation can you put out there?

Its simply not true, as shown by the ACEVAL/AIMVAL face off and other occasions where the light grey eagle drew the short straw..

And I don’t care which aircraft is supposedly objectively better, much depends on pilot skills anyway.

I just dislike factually wrong overgeneralisations.

Edited January 18 by Snappy

[Hiob]

18 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

IRL, all Tomcats are targets as soon as the wings move forward no matter the opponent. 

 

Good one!

[JB3DG]

On 1/17/2024 at 6:36 AM, Temetre said:

Its hard to draw judgement calls from early anecdotes like that tho. Also, are we talking F-14s with TF-30s, and are early F-15Es lighter? In that case it wouldnt be hard to judge why they mightve felt that way. F-14B is quite a different beast Id say.

I would more likely believe this about the early F-15As than the E. The early E is PW-220s with increased weight, so it is more of a pig compared to a F-15C. The F-15A is considerably lighter than the C, and even with the lower thrust of the earlier F100 engines it still had a superior thrust to weight ratio. 

Edited January 19 by JB3DG

[Biggus]

22 hours ago, Silver_Dragon said:

Has some pages available and them only show on 70s, the AN/ASW-25A has only a receiver to the Link 4A.

https://books.google.ca/books/about/AN_ASW_25A_Communication_Set_Digital_Dat.html?id=SVydtgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

I'd have expected to see some notes in the 1972 tactical manual regarding Js that had not been fitted with it during production if it was added later.  Everything I've yet come across states that it was part of the baseline J and later retrofitted to the B.  GIven that the G had been in operational testing for some time before 1966, I would be surprised if this were not the case.

[Kalasnkova74]

On 1/17/2024 at 5:27 AM, Temetre said:

I think that was more the result of the reformers/fighter mafia pushing low tech fighters. But mind that their conclusions were mostly wrong, and the Viper mainly got good when they put a bunch of tech into it.

Afaik the Vietnam results of the F4 wasnt much about the planes dogfighting performance really. More about lack of BFM training, and fighting from a very difficult position. Mind there was a huge number of F-4s carried bombs or escorted strike groups, which mostly got threatened by SAMs and got very rarely ambushed by Migs. So the Migs almost always had the upper hand at the start of the battle. When the Migs got baited into longer dogfights, it seems like the Phantoms often won out.

At the end of the war the Phantoms had a 3 to 1 kill ratio against Migs though. So even with those problems they proved superior in A2A combat, which includes dogfights and "no-BVR" rules.

 

Subsonic designs like Mig-15/17 might have inherently good low speed handling tho, compared to supersonic fighters.... not sure 

 

To put some color on the topic, the F-16 was approved to solve two problems. Problem #1: the Warsaw Pact drastically outnumbered NATO air, and the US budget wouldn’t allow the F-15 to replace the USAF F-4E and A-7 1-for-1. Originally, the USAF Air Staff planned to just buy F-15s and park the LWF demonstrators at a museum once the trials concluded. 

Problem #2 : NATO needed a new, simple , multirole aircraft to replace the aging F-104 (which embodied many of the things the “reformers” wanted in a fighter aircraft). Selling Belgium, Norway , and other NATO countries the F-15 wasn’t financially viable. Plus McAir wasn’t going to approve license production of its most expensive and valuable design anyway. 

The F-16 neatly addressed these important concerns. 

The air to air mission didn’t come into the picture. Which is honestly as it should be. Thanks to Hollywood , the importance of the air to air mission is DRAMATICALLY overstated - because nobody’s paying $25 to watch Tom Cruise bomb a steel plant. 
 

“In March 1969, US Navy…Best Fighter Pilots…etc”. Well, put away the Kenny Loggins cassette. Because the statistical reality is that most Southeast Asian Navy (and USAF/Marine) pilots never saw a MiG. They’d rotate in, fly their line period, and leave. USAF pilots literally had better odds playing the lottery than meeting a VPAF MiG. Even during the Korean War - “No Guts no Glory” and all that - USAF Colonel “Boots” Blesse begged his CO to extend his tour so after 100 missions he wouldn’t rotate home with four MiG kills on his tally. He ended with 9 kills after 125 missions. Thats not even 10%, and he’s flying F-86s in an exclusively guns only air to air mission with no missiles, aircraft radar, or SAMs. 

With the use of dedicated air to air units & reliance on SAMs to defend airspace, the dynamic is even more lopsided. In Desert Storm the 58th TFS nailed 16 Iraqi jets with their F-15s. All well and good, but those kills happened across 1,500 sorties the 58th flew in the theatre. When a dedicated air to air unit might have a 2% chance of taking down a fighter jet on any one sortie, you start to understand why “people in the know” roll their eyes at all the ink, pixels and media devoted to airplane jiu-jitsu.  A very small number of US pilots relative to the total engaged and shot down MiGs in Southeast Asia. ALL of them dropped bombs in some combat capacity. Make of that what you will. 

This background (and much more) is why the USAF Systems Command Configuration Committee - perhaps wisely - transitioned the YF-16 design into the air to ground focused F-16 we know and have today. 

Edited January 19 by Kalasnkova74

[=475FG= Dawger]

51 minutes ago, Kalasnkova74 said:

To put some color on the topic, the F-16 was approved to solve two problems. Problem #1: the Warsaw Pact drastically outnumbered NATO air, and the US budget wouldn’t allow the F-15 to replace the USAF F-4E and A-7 1-for-1. Originally, the USAF Air Staff planned to just buy F-15s and park the LWF demonstrators at a museum once the trials concluded. 

Problem #2 : NATO needed a new, simple , multirole aircraft to replace the aging F-104 (which embodied many of the things the “reformers” wanted in a fighter aircraft). Selling Belgium, Norway , and other NATO countries the F-15 wasn’t financially viable. Plus McAir wasn’t going to approve license production of its most expensive and valuable design anyway. 

The F-16 neatly addressed these important concerns. 

The air to air mission didn’t come into the picture. Which is honestly as it should be. Thanks to Hollywood , the importance of the air to air mission is DRAMATICALLY overstated - because nobody’s paying $25 to watch Tom Cruise bomb a steel plant. 
 

“In March 1969, US Navy…Best Fighter Pilots…etc”. Well, put away the Kenny Loggins cassette. Because the statistical reality is that most Southeast Asian Navy (and USAF/Marine) pilots never saw a MiG. They’d rotate in, fly their line period, and leave. USAF pilots literally had better odds playing the lottery than meeting a VPAF MiG. Even during the Korean War - “No Guts no Glory” and all that - USAF Colonel “Boots” Blesse begged his CO to extend his tour so after 100 missions he wouldn’t rotate home with four MiG kills on his tally. He ended with 9 kills after 125 missions. Thats not even 10%, and he’s flying F-86s in an exclusively guns only air to air mission with no missiles, aircraft radar, or SAMs. 

With the use of dedicated air to air units & reliance on SAMs to defend airspace, the dynamic is even more lopsided. In Desert Storm the 58th TFS nailed 16 Iraqi jets with their F-15s. All well and good, but those kills happened across 1,500 sorties the 58th flew in the theatre. When a dedicated air to air unit might have a 2% chance of taking down a fighter jet on any one sortie, you start to understand why “people in the know” roll their eyes at all the ink, pixels and media devoted to airplane jiu-jitsu.  A very small number of US pilots relative to the total engaged and shot down MiGs in Southeast Asia. ALL of them dropped bombs in some combat capacity. Make of that what you will. 

This background (and much more) is why the USAF Systems Command Configuration Committee - perhaps wisely - transitioned the YF-16 design into the air to ground focused F-16 we know and have today. 

 

I wouldn’t say the importance of A2A is overstated. Without air supremacy, modern war doesn’t get much accomplished and is very bloody. 

It is true that there have been very few near peer air forces fighting each other in the past 75 years, so the opportunity for A2A is quite limited. 
 

In the age of intercontinental nuclear weapons, its hard to imagine a direct, conventional existential confrontation by great powers but if it did occur, the A2A battle would necessarily precede any large scale offensive operations.

 

 

[TLTeo]

On 1/17/2024 at 4:55 PM, =475FG= Dawger said:

IRL, all Tomcats are targets as soon as the wings move forward no matter the opponent. 

This myth needs to die already. The Tomcat's wings swing forward between Mach 0.6 and 0.8 (source: the actual F-14 manual https://www.heatblur.se/F-14Manual/general.html#wing-sweep-system ).

If the wings are forward you're fighting exactly where the Tomcat wants to.

Edited January 19 by TLTeo

[Kalasnkova74]

1 hour ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

I wouldn’t say the importance of A2A is overstated. Without air supremacy, modern war doesn’t get much accomplished and is very bloody. 

Hanoi managed just fine without air supremacy.

But don’t take my word for it. Consider then-Colonel Robin Olds, who stated :

”you can’t shoot down enough MiGs to win wars”.

For a more recent voice:

“The Ukrainians have already shown in Kharkiv and Kherson, and previously the battle of Kyiv, you can win battles and indeed wars without air superiority,” said Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow and military aviation expert at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 19 by Kalasnkova74

[Silver_Dragon]

23 minutes ago, Biggus said:

I'd have expected to see some notes in the 1972 tactical manual regarding Js that had not been fitted with it during production if it was added later.  Everything I've yet come across states that it was part of the baseline J and later retrofitted to the B.  GIven that the G had been in operational testing for some time before 1966, I would be surprised if this were not the case.

Has the problems of Datalinks and carrier donnors:

• Nimitz CVN class comming with Link 4/4A, Link 11 on 1975
• John F. Kennedy (CV-67) 1970: Fitted with Link 4/4A and Link 11 data links.
• America (CV-66) 1970: Fitted with Link 4/4A and Link 11 data links.
• Enterprise (CVN-65) Oct 64 - Jul 65: Refueled. Link 4/4A and Link 11 data links added.
• Constellation (CV-64) 1965?: Fitted with NTDS, Gen 3 Semi-Automatic combat system, Link 4/4A and Link 11 data links.
• Kitty Hawk (CV-63) Aug 64 - Apr 65: Fitted with NTDS, Gen 3 Semi-Automatic combat system, Link 4/4A and Link 11 data links.
• Independence (CVA-62) 1973: Remaining Mk42 guns removed, fitted with SW(8)1 Mk25 BPDMS w/8 RIM-7E//2 Mk115. Probably received Gen 4 Semi-Automatic combat system, Link 4/4A, Link 11 data links.
• Ranger (CVA-61) Oct 66 - May 67: NTDS added, Gen 3 Semi-Automatic combat system, with Link 4/4A, Link 11 data links.
• Saratoga (CVA-60) 1967: Fitted with Link 4/4A and Link 11 data links.
• Forrestal (CVA-59) Apr 66 - Jan 67: NTDS added, Gen 3 Semi-Automatic combat system, Link 4/4A, Link 11 data links fitted.
• Coral Sea (1960) (CVA-43) 1975: Fitted with Link 4/4A and Link 11 data links.
• Midway (SCB-110) (CV-41) Feb 66 - Jan 70: Midway rebuilt SCB-101.66. Gen 3 Semi-Automatic combat sustem. C11 catapults replaced with C13, flight deck area increased. Mk39 5 inch reduced to SW/PA/SA(1)3 (1.3). Displacement 47985 std, sensors SPS-10, SPS-30, SPS-37A, SPS-37C, Raytheon 1500B, SPS-58. NTDS, Link 4/4A and Link 11 data links added.

Other ships with datalinks was:

• Virginia (i) CGN class: 1980: Fitted with Link 4A, Link 11 data links.
• California CGN class fitted with Link 4A, 11 on 1975.
• Truxtun DLGN/CGN 30:  1977: SM2ER replaced SM1ER. Combat system upgraded to Gen 4 Semi-Automatic, fitted with Link 4/4A, Link 11 data links, Mk42 AA Rating 1.4.
• Bainbridge CGN: Jun 74 - Sep 76: AAW Modernization, fitted with NTDS, Link 4/4A and 11 data links. Combat system upgraded to Gen 4 Semi-Automatic. SM1ER//SPG-55B replaced with Terrier//SPG-55. 2nd Gen D countermeasures fitted, ES upgraded to 2nd Gen. SQS-23 upgraded to SQQ-23 PAIR. Fitted with SPS-59/LN-66 and SPS-43 radars, equipment to process signals from LAMPS helicopter. No hangar. Mk33 3 inch guns replaced by P/S(1)2 Mk67 20mm (0.2L).
• Long Beach CGN: 1965: Fitted with Link 11 data link.
• Ticonderoga (ii) CG: 1985: Fitted with Link 4/4A, Link 11, Link 16, and ARQ-44 Hawklink ARQ-44.
• Belknap CG: 1965: Fitted with Link 4A and 11 data link.
• Albany CG: Nov 70: Albany ECM upgraded to 1st Gen J&D, fitted with Link 11 data link. Aug 72 - Aug 73: Chicago AAW Refit. Fitted with NTDS, Link 11.
• Leahy CG: Class AAW refit: Fitted with NTDS, Link 4/4A and Link 11 data links, combat system Gen 4 Semi-Automatic. All fitted with four SPG-55B, SPS 37 replaced by SPS-43. SM1ER Blk II/III replaced Terrier, ECM and ES upgraded to 2nd Gen. Leahy Feb 67 - Aug 68, Harry E. Yarnell Feb 68 - Jun 69, Gridley Sep 68 - Jan 70, Reeves Apr 69 - Aug 70,
  Worden Nov 69 - Jan 71, Dale Nov 70 - Nov 71, England Apr 70 - Jun 71, Richmond K. Turner May 71 - May 72, Halsey Nov 71 - Dec 72.
• Kidd DDG fitted with Link 4/4A, 11 on 1981.
• Coontz DDG: King and Mahan fitted with first NTDS systems, Link 4/4A, Link 11 data links, combat system Gen 4 Semi-Automatic. AAW refit. 3 inch guns removed, NTDS, Link 4/4A and Link 11 added to all units, combat system Gen 4 Semi-Automatic. SQS-23 upgraded to SQQ-23 PAIR, SPQ-5 replaced by SPG-55, Terrier replaced by SM1ER. SPS-39 replaced by SPS-48A. Countermeasures upgraded to 2nd Gen D, ES to 2nd Gen. Farragut May 68 - May 69, Luce Feb 70 - Jul 71, MacDonough Apr 73 - Apr 74, Coontz Feb 71 - Apr 72, King Jul 74 - Mar 77, Mahan Aug 73 - Mar 75, Dahlgren Feb 72 - Mar 73, William V. Pratt Oct 72 - Oct 73, Dewey Nov 69 - Apr 71, Preble Jan 69 - Jul 70. Farragut fitted with 8 ASROC reloads.
• Charles F. Adams DDG: 1972 - 1973: Towers, Robinson, Berkeley, Cochrane; Fitted with JPTDS, a compact version of NTDS, Link 11 data link. Combat system Gen 4 Semi-Automatic. 1980s: Three fitted with NTDS, Link 11 data link, Combat system Gen 4 Semi-Automatic. Radar fit changed to SPS-10, SPS-40D, SPS-52C, LN-66. Mk68 replaced with Mk86 GFCS (SPG-60 and SPQ-9A radars). SPG-60 can direct Mk42 gun or additional SM1MR missile. Tattnall Aug 81 - Sep 82, Goldsborough Nov 83 - Jul 84, Benjamin Stoddert Apr 84 - Aug 85.
• Spruance DD: fitted with Link 11. 
• O.H. Perry FFG: fitted with Link 14 (Short Hull), Link 11 (Long Hull). 1980s: Short hull fitted with Link 11.
• Brooke DEG/FFG: 1976-77s: AAW modernization. Tartar replaced by SM1MR. Combat system Gen 4 Semi-Automatic, fitted with Link 14 data link, estimate fitted with 2nd Gen acoustic countermeasures.
• Knox DE/FF: Fitted with Link 14.
• Garcia DE/FF: DASH hangar enlarged to accept single SH-2F LAMPS I. ECM and ES upgraded to 2nd Gen. Fitted with Link 14 data link. Aft 5 inch arc changed to P&S. Garcia, Bradley, Brumby, O’Callahan 1972, Edward McDonnell, Davidson 1973, Voge 1974.

Carriers previously was equiped surely with ART-22,26,28 Bellhop as UK carriers, receive data from AD-3W/AD-4W/E-1B Tracer, first aircraft with Link 4/4A was E-2A/B on Oct 65. F-4B and previous fighters only by Carrier / Cruiser GCI?

[Temetre]

Am 17.1.2024 um 17:33 schrieb WinterH:

Mirage I'm not sure. But both F-5E and MiG-21Bis has a better instant turn I think, and if things get slow they'll remain more controllable than F-4 imo, slats or not. But we'll see.

Tbf its a bit of a guessing game, but my money is on the F-4E being generally more agile and capable than the Mig-21Bis. The Mig has high instantaneous turn, but thats the only thing it got really. And maybe the emergency afterburner, but thats more of a gimmick.

I tend to believe that the Mig-21Bis in DCS is unrealistically controllable at high AoA though. Its quite easily flyable up to 30 AoA or so, and only then departs. In reality it probably would be worse than the F-14, with control close to 30 AoA becoming ever harder. 

 

Ofc thats all speculation, Im very curious to see where the plane will fall.

vor 4 Stunden schrieb JB3DG:

I would more likely believe this about the early F-15As than the E. The early E is PW-220s with increased weight, so it is more of a pig compared to a F-15C. The F-15A is considerably lighter than the C, and even with the lower thrust of the earlier F100 engines it still had a superior thrust to weight ratio. 

So the early E would suffer even more? In that case this seems like a strange statement indeed.

With the F-15 A-C Id be way more ready to believe it.

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Kalasnkova74:

To put some color on the topic, the F-16 was approved to solve two problems. [...]

Thank you for expanding on the Viper bit!  

vor 45 Minuten schrieb Kalasnkova74:

Hanoi managed just fine without air supremacy.

While I dont fully disagree, Id be willing to argue just a bit against that: Air supremacy isnt about destroying fighters, its about controlling the air space and limiting the enemy ability to do things with aircraft.

The US still managed to drop a huge amount of bombs on Vietnam; the SAM/AA-coverage limited their effectiveness, just like in Kosovo, but it didnt effectively stop the bombing. With more of a direct challenge to american air supremacy, Hanoi wouldve had an easier time Id feel.

In Ukraine nobody really has true air supremacy, its a mostly contested airspace. Hence fighters and Helis are very limited in what they can do there.

Edited January 19 by Temetre

[SgtPappy]

On 1/17/2024 at 11:33 AM, WinterH said:

If we're talking about 1975 indeed, Viper doesn't exist in service yet, neither does the Eagle. If we're talking DCS, the only Mirage that applies is F1, and afaik F-4E with slats have about 1 degree per sec better sustained turn rate.

Tomcat will be better, no question there.

Personally I believe if we turely compared 3rd gen options in DCS, F-4E will be one of the better dogfighters, possibly even the best, if flown very well, but it will probably be hard to fly that well.

Overall though, I do believe F-5E and MiG-21Bis will have ample chance to outdo it with relatively similar skilled pilots. We'll see. When MiG-23MLA comes, it should be interesting too, I personally think slatted F-4E is the better dogfighter of two, even if just slightly, but not sure, MiG will be advantageous pre-merge though, and I'm sure it'll accelerate much better overall too.

Mirage I'm not sure. But both F-5E and MiG-21Bis has a better instant turn I think, and if things get slow they'll remain more controllable than F-4 imo, slats or not. But we'll see.

 

2 hours ago, Temetre said:

Tbf its a bit of a guessing game, but my money is on the F-4E being generally more agile and capable than the Mig-21Bis. The Mig has high instantaneous turn, but thats the only thing it got really. And maybe the emergency afterburner, but thats more of a gimmick.

I tend to believe that the Mig-21Bis in DCS is unrealistically controllable at high AoA though. Its quite easily flyable up to 30 AoA or so, and only then departs. In reality it probably would be worse than the F-14, with control close to 30 AoA becoming ever harder. 

Ofc thats all speculation, Im very curious to see where the plane will fall.

So the early E would suffer even more? In that case this seems like a strange statement indeed.

I always get giddy when this kind of discussion pops up again because I can link the analyses that were done in the other threads. Below is my educated guess for some of the jets:

And below is Smyth's excellent EM diagram analyses on the MiGs and F-5 based on real available data. Obviously none of this exactly reflect DCS (particularly the aforementioned inaccuracies with the MiG-21 low speed, high AoA turn rates), but it will give us a good idea:

 

 

Edited January 19 by SgtPappy

[Biggus]

20 hours ago, Silver_Dragon said:

Has the problems of Datalinks and carrier donnors:

I'm not sure how Link 4 equipment not being on every carrier calls into question whether F-4Js received AN/ASW-25s at production.

20 hours ago, Silver_Dragon said:

Carriers previously was equiped surely with ART-22,26,28 Bellhop as UK carriers, receive data from AD-3W/AD-4W/E-1B Tracer, first aircraft with Link 4/4A was E-2A/B on Oct 65. F-4B and previous fighters only by Carrier / Cruiser GCI?

October 1965 being the first combat deployment of the Link 4/4A system on the Kitty Hawk.  VF-213 was also aboard with their F-4Gs equipped with AN/ASW-21s.  Up until this point though, fighter control relied on voice communication between controller and fighter.  If we're talking about Vietnam, there were a number of controlling agencies that a fighter may have been subordinate to, both shipboard and airborne.

Voice communications appear to have remained the primary method of fighter control throughout the service life of the F-4J, despite the availability of the datalink.

[Dragon1-1]

On 1/19/2024 at 1:29 PM, Kalasnkova74 said:

“The Ukrainians have already shown in Kharkiv and Kherson, and previously the battle of Kyiv, you can win battles and indeed wars without air superiority,” said Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow and military aviation expert at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

That's a big conclusion to make from a war that that hasn't been won so far. What the Ukrainian war had shown is that you have to be able to win without air superiority, because assuming it will get you in trouble if the enemy can successfully deny it. It has also shown that without air superiority on either side, modern wars tend to bog down, as technological balance generally favors the defender.

I would say, that for an offensive war to succeed, air superiority is very much critical, and for the defending side denying it to the attackers can be victory enough, at least if they're prepared to fight a war of attrition. Without air cover, it's easy for an offensive to bog down, and any victory might be pyrrhic at best. 

On 1/19/2024 at 1:29 PM, Kalasnkova74 said:

Hanoi managed just fine without air supremacy.

But don’t take my word for it. Consider then-Colonel Robin Olds, who stated :

”you can’t shoot down enough MiGs to win wars”.

That statement is only part of the equation, because you very definitely can let enough of them through to lose you the war. Hanoi did not need air superiority, it needed to deny US forces the ability to bomb its infrastructure. The MiGs were made for this exact role, and they performed quite well in it. In fact, the MiGs won the moment the Phantoms punched off their bombload and turned to fight them, any that they actually shot down were a nice bonus. More than that, the threat of MiGs reduced the sortie generation rate and affected USAF planning.

BTW, the chances of a USAF pilot meeting a MiG were greatly dependent on where he was assigned. The Wolfpack, for instance, would be fragged against them quite often. Meanwhile, other squadrons, like the Panther Pack, operated down south and mostly dealt with flak and an occasional SAM. Air to air mostly happened in Route Pack 6, so units that didn't fly there wouldn't have much chance of meeting a MiG.

[Kalasnkova74]

15 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

That statement is only part of the equation, because you very definitely can let enough of them through to lose you the war.

Rule #1 of establishing air superiority is to bomb the enemy’s air bases. If the bad guys can’t take off, you win by default. This lesson was disregarded in Rolling Thunder (and much later with Putin’s escalation of the Ukraine war in February 2022), forcing the U.S. to kill MiGs “the hard way” over Vietnam via aerial action. 

In Linebacker, the airfields were bombed consistently (as they should have been from day 1), and the North Vietnamese were forced to operate from hidden bases and across the Chinese border. 

The same dynamic happened in Desert Storm. With his IADS wrecked and airfields under constant Coalition bombardment, Saddam had no realistic hope of establishing air superiority and punted his Air Force to Iran accordingly. 

Folks look at the F-22 and F-15A/C as air superiority systems. But those are last resort options- the primary air superiority weapon of a well run air plan is the bombers & surface to surface missiles wrecking your opponents runways. 

Edited January 21 by Kalasnkova74

[Dragon1-1]

3 hours ago, Kalasnkova74 said:

Rule #1 of establishing air superiority is to bomb the enemy’s air bases. If the bad guys can’t take off, you win by default. This lesson was disregarded in Rolling Thunder (and much later with Putin’s escalation of the Ukraine war in February 2022), forcing the U.S. to kill MiGs “the hard way” over Vietnam via aerial action.

If you can get to them. See Linebacker, where the bases were protected either politically (China) or physically (hidden airstrips). Notably, MiGs were all designed to operate from low quality airfields. While I'm not quite sure if you could operate a MiG-29 from a literal dirt strip (MiG-23 and earlier you supposedly could), they repeatedly demonstrated the ability to operate from a stretch of road. This was actually the Scandinavian and to some extent British (Harriers!) plan for the Cold War - dispersed roadbases with several hardened bunkers off to the side. Good luck bombing that. 

3 hours ago, Kalasnkova74 said:

Folks look at the F-22 and F-15A/C as air superiority systems. But those are last resort options- the primary air superiority weapon of a well run air plan is the bombers & surface to surface missiles wrecking your opponents runways. 

Bombing your enemy's air force on the ground is a nice trick that's great when it works, but it's hard to do when your opponent is competent. The F-15A was designed with awareness of that fact, and the F-22 followed the same basic concept. Iraqi IADS was a joke compared even to what Ukraine had at the start of the war. I highly doubt Russians could have actually disabled Ukrainian airfields even if they were smart enough to try (although they could have done more damage than they did). You have to be able to win a fight in the air, because taking out all enemy air on the ground is literally the best case scenario. A "well run airplan" is one that has a contingency for when your enemy manages to scramble their planes before your missiles and bombers can poke holes in their airstrip, and another for when they inevitably manage to disperse their airforce. Airplans that assume the best case scenario are the ones that get pilots a stay at the local equivalent of Hanoi Hilton at best. Unless, of course, you're fighting the Iraqis, whose main advantage in a fight seems to be enthusiasm.

[Omega417]

Lot of armchair generals in a topic asking if our plane will have any form of datalink.

[Temetre]

vor 15 Stunden schrieb Omega417:

Lot of armchair generals in a topic asking if our plane will have any form of datalink.

 First time on the internet?