Own Your Own Fighter Jet 222
gimmebeer writes "The Russian Sukhoi SU-27 has a top speed of Mach 1.8 (more than 1,300 mph) and has a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1 to 1. That means it can accelerate while climbing straight up. It was designed to fight against the best the US had to offer, and now it can be yours for the price of a mediocre used business jet."
Re:Pain at the pump (Score:3, Informative)
actually, TFA says "The jets are the “UB” variant of the SU-27, never intended for combat, so they aren’t fitted with weapons." Way to make up a quote so you could pretend like you read it though.
Re:Pain at the pump (Score:3, Informative)
Bill
Re:Pain at the pump (Score:5, Informative)
does it still have weapon hardpoints on the wings? TFA doesn't really address that, it just says "They don't have any weapons."
These are Su-27UBs, also known as the Flanker-C. They were not fitted with weapons and were used as trainers, and were also used in the Soviet version of the Blue Angels or Thunderbirds.
Flight HRS v. Maint HRS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
Bull, but nice try at humor. If they were to put surplus F4s on the market, there would also be a glut of spare parts. The F4 is one of the most plentiful in the boneyard.
He said F-14, not F-4. The Tomcat, not the Phantom. The only F-14s still in operation are located in Iran, and they were the sole purchasers of F-14 spare parts after the aircraft was retired in the US. This is why the production and sale of F-14 parts was halted back in 2007.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
I remember a story from almost 10 years back that you could buy a Mig-21 for $14k
Here are some fighter jet stories from 2006: Buying A Fighter Jet? [airliners.net] and another from Wired: Building Your Own Air Force, One Mig at a Time [wired.com] [2005]
Re:Ummm... hangar space? (Score:3, Informative)
Okay, now that I got it, where the heck do I store it? Under the carport? Unless the sucker has the best folding wings ever, the HOA fines are gonna be a bitch.
Wired wrote an article last week about fly-in communities.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/01/spruce_creek_airpark/ [wired.com]
Blatant Slashvertizing (Score:2, Informative)
There's probably a refId for Slashdot somewhere...
Re:It IS safe! (Score:3, Informative)
Russian fighter's ejection seats are far more safe than the US ones - you can eject at over Mach 2 and survive!
And Blackbird crews using Western seats have ejected at over Mach 3 and survived...
What really matters for ejection is dynamic pressure, not airspeed: a Blackbird ejection at Mach 3 at 80,000+ feet is equivalent to around 400mph at sea level. I doubt, for example, that a Russian fighter pilot could survive a Mach 2 ejection at sea level if they could actually reach that speed.
Re:Pain at the pump (Score:3, Informative)
"The aircraft arrived here in a completely de-militarized condition -- all weapons systems and military-related hardware had been previously removed, in full compliance with U.S. and Ukranian laws."
http://www.prideaircraft.com/flanker.htm [prideaircraft.com]
Re:It IS safe! (Score:4, Informative)
I think the difference in speed you are referring to is that the Russian seat is measured in kilometers and the US seat is in Knots. The Russian design is rated to about 1400kph, while the US design is 600 knots. If you do the simple math, that doesn't make them equal, until you realize that 600 knots is much much faster at altitude (because of air density,) where kilometers is a fixed distance. 600 knots at sea level is about ~1100kph, but at 35,000 feet, it is ~1400kph.
Remember, the limiting factor isn't the seat itself, it's that soft squishy part that the seat is design to hold. Russian or US designs don't differ in that respect.
Bill
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that, but the US has even been pissy about salvage efforts. Technically, "Property of US Government" is a label that is legally binding unless they sell it to you. People interested in old warbirds for example will go out and drag up wrecked World War II fighters to restore. Some out of jungles, some out of the ocean - wherever they can find them, but they're pretty much all just junk heaps that will need a fortune sank into them to make them flyable again. IIRC, while the Navy and Marine Corps is somewhat lenient on the issue (there was no Air Force around back them), the Army has still been known to confiscate the 70 year old junk heaps claiming that they're still US Army Property.
If they're being that picky with piston engine prop-powered planes, they're definately not going to let you privately own a US military fighter jet.
In reality though, when you compare fuel burn and such, aside from pure coolness factor, it's not remotely economical for a private citizen to own a fighter jet for personal recreational flying. Besides, once you actually get into flying, most pilots find it more satisfying to fly much slower (since I, and most other private pilots I know, fly more for fun and scenery than to actually travel anywhere). A Kitfox for example is pretty close to my dream plane. High wing, small, good fuel economy, stalls at about 35MPH, and top speed is between 95-120 MPH depending on what engine it's using :).
Re:Pain at the pump (Score:3, Informative)
The USAF routinely hosts warbird collectors at base airshows, and there are plenty of MIGs. Go to the next open house in your area, it's very cool.
Anyone wanting to blow up shit and kill people could just as well rent a cargo plane, pack it to the gills with expedient explosive, and bring MUCH more to the game than a few thousand lbs of ordinary bombs.
Re:It IS safe! (Score:3, Informative)
"who's going to try stopping a jet traveling Mach 2?"
Hundreds of pilots currently sitting alert would get a huge woody at the chance to put an AMRAAM or two into a MIG.
If it gets in, it still has to escape over water or lightly inhabited areas. It could punch off a simple pod to deliver drugs (the common USAF travel pod is an old napalm cannister with a door in the side and (obviously, because it would scatter valuable golf clubs) no fuses, but the aircraft could still be presumed hostile and shot down. Any nation defending its borders has every right to kill aircraft that refuse to land when so directed.
Re:It IS safe! (Score:1, Informative)
Eh a knot is a knot, i.e. one nautical mile per hour. It's got nothing to do with density altitude. You may be thinking about the difference between true airspeed and indicated airspeed.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Range? (Score:3, Informative)
But it probably didn't do it at Mach 2. If it's just at sub-sonic speeds, it's not much of a replacement for a Concord for trans-atlantic travel.
Re:Certification (Score:5, Informative)
There's nothing stopping you from owning and flying surplus military aircraft- even fighters. There are tons of them out there, especially cold war trainers from both sides (think t-38). There are even a few people out there flying their own p-51's, although each time one crashes the number goes down permanently. There are private businesses that will even fly you around in one.
Here's one:
http://millionairesconcierge.com/fighterjets.htm [millionair...cierge.com]
Here's an extensive list of businesses:
http://www.thirtythousandfeet.com/rentride.htm [thirtythousandfeet.com]
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Yes, you are correct that you would be limited to mach .9 just like our own military. The air force stopped flying supersonic over the mainland shortly after this fiasco:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_sonic_boom_tests [wikipedia.org]
The primary reason these surplus jets would be unrealistic to own is the maintenance involved. You could do it yourself, if you knew every aircraft-specific system well enough to sign off on your own repairs. You'd spend a few weeks doing maintenance for every flight hour. Finding parts would be a nightmare. The engine alone would keep you on the ground for seemingly minor issues. Or you could hire a crew to do your maintenance, and put your life in their hands. The going rate for a freelance certified NDI tech with his own equipment is about $200-400/hr. Maintenance costs many, many times the original price of any fighter aircraft.
I work in air combat combat command aircraft maintenance, fwiw.
-b
Re:Airport Security (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know if you're being serious or not about the first question, but the answer is no. You'd drive to your hangar or charter company, walk right in, and fly away. These facilities are usually located a good distance away from the commercial terminals. There might be a security gate or something, but that's more to protect the private property than to screen you.
I've been flying in military aircraft for years, and we never deal with that bs. Park and ride, and the only trade-off is hauling your own luggage.
As for the second question: These aircraft never had weapons. They were trainers.
-b
Re:One can dream... (Score:4, Informative)
yep, the F-16 and later have used fly by wire (basically the same as your desktop flight sim joystick) for controls, rather then the hydraulics used in something like the F-4.
btw, the claim about anything after WW2 being unstable by design is not really true. Even the F-16 was supposedly designed for being stable rather then unstable. Its the most recent generation (rafael, eurofighter, gripen, F-22, possibly mig-29 and su-27) that have that feature. And those make use of fly by wire for stability if ever the pilot lets go of the stick (early accidents related to gripen was related to control computers and pilot getting into something of a race condition when trying to recover from stall like conditions, iirc).
From what i have read, the F-16, for example, is so stable that if the nose is pointing towards the horizon, and the pilot where to eject, the plane would continue on until it ran out of fuel.
You fundamentally misunderstand this.
The plane is made unstable by design. This is basically to inbuild a level of 'agility', I guess you can compare this to a car that gets a very short wheelbase or similar things that can be done to alter physics. The aircraft is then made stable by the flight control systems. Computers that continually make adjustments to keep the aircraft stable - something that can't be done by hand. The fact that a pilot ejects out is meaningless. So long as the flight conputer is working/active, the aircraft would fly on until it runs out of fuel, or until it veers out of control naturally
The fly by wire is an added area that is simply made to improve the pilot to system interface. You have no choice on this, as the computer has to have priority over control.
Re:Nothing new (Score:2, Informative)
I'm curious why
It has to do with CC (combat coded) designators for the aircraft in question. CC coded aircraft operated by other than the USG agency authorized to fly them have to be specifically exempt by Congress to be allowed to fly in U.S. airspace. As I understand it, older generations of aircraft, properly de-mil'd from being able to deploy weapons, can have the CC designation removed. "Newer" aircraft such as the F-4 still represent a threat (albeit small) and therefore we probably won't see many F-4s (or F-111s, F-14s, AC-130As, F-16s, F-15s, etc. all of which are in the boneyard at AMARC) flying in private hands in the near future.
AMARC= Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center, a tenet of Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona. They maintain them in a storage condition until the owing major commands authorize their re-generation for the primary or other USG agencies, sale to other nations, or processing through DRMS, the Defense Reutilization Marketing Service, usually for scrap metal.
Re:It IS safe! (Score:4, Informative)
Civilian operated aircraft in the US aren't allowed to have ejection seats. All of the privately owned warbirds have to have their ejection systems removed or rendered inoperable.