India's First Stealth Fighter To Fly In 4 Months 611
xmpcray writes "Less than four months from now, India's first stealth fighter will fly for the first time. It is called the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft, or FGFA, and is being developed in Russia by Sukhoi. Several of the technologies being developed for the stealth fighter have evolved from those used in the Sukhoi 30 MKI. Considered the most maneuverable fighter in the world, the Sukhoi 30 MKI uses thrust vectored engines, which deflect the exhaust from its engines to extreme angles, enabling the jet to pull off violent maneuvers like a flat spin — where the jet literally spins around on its axis."
Interesting stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
The end of last year, a couple videos came out with an American F-15 pilot talking about what it was like going up against the Indian Air Force Su-30MKI. It was quite interesting, as the vectored thrust did offer additional maneuverability but it came at a cost. That isn't to say that this new jet and training wont overcome that advantage, but it was a glimpse into the world of air to air combat I don't think makes it out into the civilian world all that often. The clips were put up on youtube - I'll link to both.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKEa-R37PeU [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ibgAQ7lv0w [youtube.com]
Basically if I understand it correctly the vectored thrust allowed them to turn, but they would lose airspeed and altitude in the process. As the fighter types say - speed is life - and once it happened they were apparently easy pickings. This FlightGlobal writeup about it [flightglobal.com] may do a better job of explaining.
But I wonder is how much longer this will matter. The Lockheed video on their DAS [youtube.com] for the F-35 pretty much asserts that the system makes maneuverability irrelevant. I realize that it's a vendor sales presentation, but at the same time I know off-bore-sight missiles are pretty much a done deal. Stealthiness helps some, but I doubt it would be enough as these systems keep improving. It seems soon the primary factor in air to air combat will be the quality of radar and missiles that are available.
When I bring this up with current military folks, they say they think rules of engagement will keep it from going that far. I can see that in situations where one side has complete air superiority - but if it comes to evenly matched sides, I think ROE will be out the window when sticking to it means losing. The whole thing is rather disconcerting as we seem to be developing better ways to kill just as quickly as all our other tech is advancing but I don't see leaps in our ability to live peacefully or get along keeping up with it all.
Saw it Coming (Score:2, Interesting)
There's a pretty good software fix for combating stealth fighters. It involves radar information sharing between many radar sources. Take a little piece of the picture from many different radar sources, and share them, and someone's going to get enough of a picture to launch a missile at. Guess what the F-22 can do?
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
Just like the Harrier. Against the Argentinians the British pilots would effectively slam on the brakes and attack the other aircraft from behind.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
When I bring this up with current military folks, they say they think rules of engagement will keep it from going that far. I can see that in situations where one side has complete air superiority - but if it comes to evenly matched sides, I think ROE will be out the window when sticking to it means losing. The whole thing is rather disconcerting as we seem to be developing better ways to kill just as quickly as all our other tech is advancing but I don't see leaps in our ability to live peacefully or get along keeping up with it all.
Do you think the world will see serious war against major powers in the near future? When was the last time we had real out-and-out dog fights? Gulf War I? I keep thinking that the future of warfare is basically going to be these anti-terrorism wars, where global powers are fighting villagers getting financed by someone.
Re:Good for US overall (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/US-State-Dept-Throws-A-Wrench-Into-Exports-Allied-Shipbuilding-05321/ [defenseindustrydaily.com]
Here's a case where the US may lose business to an ally because of politics.
This is why the French were so successful for so long, they didn't care who they sold to.
In fact with the restrictions that the US demands now, it becomes much easier to buy elsewhere, and there is great incentive to produce weapons/platforms capable of taking on the second tier US stuff which they are exporting.
Re:Saw it Coming (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
The whole thing is rather disconcerting as we seem to be developing better ways to kill just as quickly as all our other tech is advancing but I don't see leaps in our ability to live peacefully or get along keeping up with it all.
A lot of people feel this way, but fortunately it is not true. Sure there are some isolated conflicts, but consider what the world was like 25 years ago: a couple different wars in Central American countries, an arms escalation war with between the US an Soviet Union which sometimes became violent in places like Afghanistan, England had just finished a war with Argentina, Africa was in war all over the place, South Africa had apartheid, the specter of global thermonuclear warfare still hung over our heads.
A hundred years ago, warfare was considered glorious, exciting, and desirable.
Now, at best we consider warfare a necessary evil. In Latin America, where we used to have leaders like Che Guevarra starting wars, we now only have a guy like Hugo Chavez who tries to rig elections. Bad, but much less violent. We now worry about terrorists, not about full on wars. Even the Israel situation is mostly settled: what was once a fight between many countries is largely now a conflict between Palestine and Israel. Even the US, who continues to go to war has changed their outlook: in Vietnam we killed entire villages, now we put extreme effort into avoiding civilian casualties.
The world is moving closer to peace every day. Step by step.
Stealthy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Vectored exhaust (Score:3, Interesting)
Long term (Score:5, Interesting)
Long term, are manned aircraft going to be still used for air superiority?
Cost effectiveness might be a key factor. Drone aircraft don't need to be manufactured to fly for years and thousands of missions. They could be made just good enough to survive 10 to 100 or so sorties, with a 10% failure rate considered acceptable for the first mission. Drone operators could train using simulators and a small number of better quality drone aircraft. For the missions needing drones to loiter over an area for a prolonged period, a different model of drone would be used - you don't need high speed jet interceptors if the enemy has no aircraft left. Also, drones wouldn't need to have the dogfighting performance of an F-35. They could be slower and less maneueverable - but packed with missiles and with a radar system capable of defeating stealth aircraft.
Drone aircraft wouldn't need to be "recalled" or inspected. If a fault is found that might cause a crash, no point in fixing it unless the problem is severe. You could manufacture thousands of them and leave them stored in special packing canisters. Unpack a few every few years and use them testing them to get empirical measurements of average 'shelf life'.
I think that with these and other cost saving measures, you could probably manufacture 3 to 5 drone aircraft for the cost of one manned aircraft with similar capabilities. The MQ-9 Reaper is about 1/3 the cost of the Apache helicopter it supplants. As long as you could guarantee that the drones would always work despite enemy jamming (possible with mesh networking, phase array communication antenna and one time pad encryption, I think) then they would be the only game in town.
Re:In Flight School (Score:1, Interesting)
Besides, controlled flat spins look badass [youtube.com].
Re:Long term (Score:4, Interesting)
As long as you could guarantee that the drones would always work despite enemy jamming (possible with mesh networking, phase array communication antenna and one time pad encryption, I think) then they would be the only game in town.
You can't guarantee that the drones would always work despite enemy jamming.
But then again, you don't really need to as long as the drone can stay airborne long enough to send off a missile which will home in on the jammer.
Re:Saw it Coming (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not so sure about the Australian Over THe Horizon radar being unable to be used by SAM's for targeting.
My uncle used to be SAM commander (or whatever it's called) and he said there were plenty of times when they would lock on and fire at aircraft way over the horizon, when engaging in war games with the US. This was despite AWACS and similar.
Though he did say that most of these were with active radar, however when they (the US) started running stealth fighters in the games, they weren't able to track them. However, almost straight away all of the SAM sites were quickly sent down to the DSTO for upgrades, and each one came back with a special little switch which they would flick when ever certain conditions were met. He surmised that this allowed them to track and lock on aircraft using stealth technology using the OTH system.
They get taught about every single switch, how it works and what it does, so that they can fully understand the system, and ensure that it operates no matter what, or can recognize when somethings wrong. However, when this new switch was installed, it was kept quiet, they weren't told anything but "When this happens. Flick this.", and so they did, and from then on it was able to track and lock on any of these stealth fighters.
I could have my information wrong, but it sounds valid to me. I'd be interested to hear if anyone knows any details or has any other information on this system.
5th Gen (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Put it this way, despite the might of the US military, they still haven't found/dealt with some arab dude by the name of Obama living in a cave. Advanced weaponry is not the be all and end all of combat. Another example is Vietnam - the ROE simply did not permit the more advanced hardware to be fully utilized due to BS political reasons (i.e. air-air required visual ID, thus totally negating the USAF's BVR missiles and forcing pilots into close range dogfights to which the MiGs were generally better suited)
Argenties are bad pilots? (Score:4, Interesting)
Which only worked because the Argentinians weren't very good. Against a proper adversary, slamming on the brakes in a fight is an extremely bad idea and will get you killed rapidly. As they say, speed is life. It doesn't really help all that much to be behind the other guy when he has a couple hundred knots on you and is zooming away.
That's an outrageous claim. The Argentineans were not bad pilots in fact considering their equipment and the ineptitude of some of their leaders they gave the Royal Navy a proper spanking. The Argentines would not have succeeded in inflicting such heavy losses on the Royal Navy if they were bad pilots. The British were plan lucky they didn't loose any carriers. These guys were flying from bases on mainland Argentina to the Falklands which was at the very limit's of their range. The Argentine strikers were laden down with bombs, they had no effective ECM assets and very few air to surface missiles which meant they had to go in with dumb bombs and that made them fairly easy meat for SAMs. Since they didn't have any escorts either they also suffered heavily at the hands of the Harriers. Any attempt by the Argentines to operate fighters over the islands failed because once they got there the supersonic Mirage couldn't use the considerable speed and power advantages it had over the subsonic Harriers (read: the Harrier had no afterburners and the Mirages couldn't use theirs) because if they had done that the MIrages would have run out of fuel before getting home. Effectively the Argentinean Mirage pilots had 10 minutes max over target area before they had to return to base. All of this gave the more maneuverable Harrier a huge advantage. If the junta had actually had the brains to land heavy construction equipment along with the initial invasion forces and extended the Port Stanley runway ASAP (which foreign observers considered to be the obvious thing to do) the boot would have been on the other foot since it would have allowed for the forward deployment a portion the sizable fleet of Argentine AF Mirage fighters to the Falklands and they would have had no performance or patrol time restrictions. It has been argued that extending the runway would have been impossible because of local conditions. However, the British extended the Port Stanley runway after the war to allow F-4 operations out of Port Stanley so that argument is BS.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Guess what the Mig-31 can do? (Score:4, Interesting)
You have a poor understanding of the systems.
Datalink is capable of two way communication, yes. But that is by no means it's main strength. It's main strength lies in it's ability to work with other aircraft, while one or more aircraft cruise undetected at a higher "stealthiness" level. They can get their data from other F22s, AWACS, ground stations, or other aircraft with similar systems once they come online.
So picture a CAP flight of four F-22s. Two are flying forward, with a 5-10 Nautical mile separation from the trailing pair of aircraft.
The lead planes are radio silent, they are on passive sensors only, and all the other features that make an F-22 as stealthy as possible are in use.
Meanwhile the two trailing aircraft are lit up like Christmas trees. Active radar, data link, talking to each other, talking to AWACS, ect, etc, etc.
The "stealthed" planes aren't blind. They have a composite of their passive sensors, the uplink from both of their flight mates, AWACS, and possibly dozens of data points. They don't *need* radar, they can see just as well without it, through the (for them) passive data link.
The flight sees a flight of four unfriendlys off somewhere and vectors to engage. The unfriendlys see this, and figuring they have numerical advantage turn to engage.
Meanwhile, the two aircraft they do see are cruising toward them nice and slow at say, 400 knots or so, while the two stealthy aircraft have gone supersonic. They're in weapons range before the enemy aircraft even know they exist. With a little luck, they're out of the sky before with know they exist too.
This is just one very simple, basic tactic that uses this concept. There are many more tactics you can build on this new technology.
As it comes into it's own, Air Forces will adapt, and come to expect these tactics, and they will have to evolve further. But it's still an edge.
To answer your point about the MiG-31: Data links have existed in American inventories for years as well. The F-22s use a new standard called Link 22, which replaces a roughly 10 year old standard called Link 16. Link 4 was introduced in the 1950s... But they've never been this mature, nor well integrated, or "smart". I don't know much about Russian MiG-31 data systems, but I believe you may be referring to the MiG-31BM [globalsecurity.org] variant. It's only about 10 years old, and exists in very few numbers. It's possible the Russians have had data link capability longer than that, but again, the existing of data links themselves are not what people who understand this plane are excited about.
Even so, the West has trailed behind the Soviets / Russians in other ways in the past. The passive sensor suites on the MiG 29 for example shocked western analysts when we finally got our hands on them. They weren't out of our capability to produce, but they far outstripped anything we had deployed. Vectored thrust is another area they've lead. The F-22 is the first serious production attempt at vectored thrust by the U.S., where the Russians have had several aircraft in production for years that utilize it.
All this is besides the point though. Data link is nice. Stealth is really nice. Having both in a well integrated package along with well trained pilots who understand how it works, who can coordinate attacks together to exploit it's advantages? That's a potential game changer.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect that you might draw to many conclusions from your game playing - but you certainly make one very good point. Television and movies are total bullshit. There have been precious few movies that portrayed the use of cover and concealment in a combat situation. The heroes always strut around the battlefield like a bunch of banty roosters, the enemy can't hit the heroes with anything, and the heroes can't miss the most difficult shot. Oh yeah, no one ever runs out of ammo either - each soldier must have a pickup truck keeping up with him to shoot up as much ammo as our heroes do.
Anyway - addressing the more important part of your post: I think there will always be manned fighter and attack craft, for the same reasons that there will always be grunts on the ground. The machines and the technology are cool, but they can't occupy a territory, they can't impose their will on the occupants of a territory, and in fact, they lack any will to be imposed.
No matter how advanced warfare gets, the grunts, the sailors, and the pilots will still be out there.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:2, Interesting)
Morality is a human invention, so we have a few billion years of natural selection working against us. If you're a creationist then I suppose you could look at human history (IIRC there are only ~100 years of global peace) and decide that either we're made to be violent, or some ever-present thing makes us violent. IMHO the natural world is violent (e.g. ants, cats), and subsequently the most intelligent creatures tend to be the most sadistic (chimps have tribal wars and dolphins kill for entertainment).
Combine that with some game theory and I'm rather surprised at how peaceful we are. Perhaps modern philosophy, civilization and instant communication help, or it could be that our weapons got too effective for a reasonable person to take lightly (i.e. give a person what they think they want and they might realize that they don't want it anymore).
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you think the world will see serious war against major powers in the near future? When was the last time we had real out-and-out dog fights? Gulf War I? I keep thinking that the future of warfare is basically going to be these anti-terrorism wars, where global powers are fighting villagers getting financed by someone.
The lack of a world war since 1945 isn't exactly stunning evidence, two in ~30 years had better be an exception. Maybe we should at least outlast the Roman empire [wikipedia.org] with 200+ years of essentially peace first. I don't see many credible scenarios for WWIII though as the US and EU won't, Japan, Russia and India I think can't and that really only leaves China and some kind of pebbles-into-avalanche Muslim vs Christian war. Sure, India and Pakistan might have another go, Israel and the Arabs likewise and there's room for wars in Africa and South America but it wouldn't be a world war of any sort. Still, I'm sure it's looked many times in history like we've become "too civilized" for war...
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:2, Interesting)
And there's the rumor that it doesn't work in the rain. And the unconfirmed story of it being bitchslapped by some Typhoons The F22 has been surrounded by the stink of failure for years.
At least there is the F35. That looks like it is going to be an exceptional aircraft and all round winner.
Re:Dangerous Thinking (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me be a little more verbose. If by "reasonably equipped enemy" you mean "enemy that a) has nuclear weapons and b) has a delivery system that can reliably penetrate the Aegis air defenses", I think there are very few "reasonably equipped enemies" to worry about.
Let me put this another way: The people who actually think about carrier deployment for a living have probably at least a passing familiarity with the notion of weapons that might go boom near carriers, and some rudimentary notions about how to prevent such a scenario.
Re:5th Gen (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember my old history teacher saying "Old technology becomes obsolete, until someone figures out a better way to kill with it."
Yeah he was right, sure the battleship is obsolete now because of what it was designed for at the time. Surface, and fleet engagement. You can knock a billion dollar ship out of the water with a $400k missile. That doesn't make surface fleets obsolete either. I figure oh 10 years, and you'll see the reintroduction of battleships in long-range bombardment and support. As the use of missiles will become obsolete from surface ships. Easier to shoot down a missile with a laser, than it is to shoot down a metal slug traveling 50x the speed of sound hurtled by a battleship's railgun.
Re:In Flight School (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No thanks. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that's stranger than fiction.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Long term (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
That is correct. VIFFing, or vectoring in forward flight, is rarely used in air combat, because it results in a complete loss of airspeed, leaving the Harrier a sitting duck. The RNAF cleaned the Argentinian's clocks using AIM-9L missiles, which did not require being anywhere near the enemy aircraft's six o'clock. They could hit them head-on. (The Argentines, on the other hand, still needed to engage from behind)
Modern missiles are so lethal that dogfights today are the exception, not the rule. Our pilots still train for them, because we went into Nam thinking it was all about missiles, and learned the hard way that their reliability had been oversold, and that lesson resulted in Top Gun and Red Flag. But today's missiles really ARE deadly accurate, so until everyone has stealth, most air to air engagements are likely to be one-sided, long-range affairs.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
There is only one problem. UAVs on their own are pretty useless or we are talking about skynet teritory, but any kind of remote control is pretty easily distracted by good old white noise. Lots of it. And I am rather sure that good ol boys in their hidden cities have long ago figured out how to drown out all those fancy frequency-hopping/multi-modulation/line-of-sight radio signals that these things do rely on.
Re:No thanks. (Score:3, Interesting)
At what point does a fictional character die? When their death is written, when it is published, or when the reader reads it? If I haven't read about the character's death yet, are they still alive to me? Or are they already dead, and I'm simply not aware of it?
I suppose it depends where the character is considered to live. We could say that the character lives within the story -- but what life does the story have if no one is reading it? I think that the story and its characters take on life within the mind and imagination of the reader. Therefore, the author destines a character to their demise, and the reader brings that destiny to fruition.
F-35 is MEANT to be exported (Score:3, Interesting)
The F35 is a global project with several countries footing the development bill, and many US allies purchasing it for their own air forces...
Not only that, but some allies will be building it themselves. Turkey will produce most of their F-35's at their own factory, and Israel has expressed interest in doing the same thing.
The only stumbling block in exports seems to be the software code. The UK threatened to pull out of the program at one time because the US wouldn't completely share the source code. The Department of Defense thought the UK's export controls weren't strong enough, and that they'd end up sharing secrets with unauthorized countries.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
We never learn (Score:3, Interesting)
I very much doubt that maneouverability will become irrelevant. The last time someone put all their trust in weaponry at the expense of maneouverability it did not go so well [wikipedia.org] for them.
I've got an even more recent example for you of "technology X makes practice Y obsolete", and it also deals with fighter planes. In the late 50's, various eggheads in defense think tanks said that the era of dogfighting was over, that air to air missiles were all that mattered. They said turn rate, acceleration, energy manueverability, and guns were no longer factors. So the Navy didn't even put a canon in the F-4.
Ten years later, "obsolete" MiG-17's were shooting down F-4's, often armed with nothing more than a canon. Seems our missiles had a nasty habit of missing their targets, and then our pilots, with no dogfighting skills and no canons for close-combat, were getting chewed up by 20 year old fighters that had no missiles and no radar.
USAF put a canon in their version of the F-4, the Navy started Top Gun to teach dogfighting again, and in the wake of the Vietnam War, we took the lessons learned and produced the Teen series of fighters... the F-14, F-15, and soon after, the F-16 and F/A-18, the finest fighters ever made. The Vietnam experience also shaped the A-10, the best ground attack aircraft ever made, period.
And now... once again, we're tossing aside lessons hard-learned, and buying into the notion that a new technology will make dogfighting obsolete. The Navy and Marine Corps/Royal Navy versions of the F-35, once again, will not even include a built-in canon.
We never learn.