Air Supremacy; USA vs Russia

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EagleDominance RE:Air Supremacy; USA vs Russia 12/6/2002 5:12:32 PM

Wrong. The F-22 is in production. 10 were ordered this year for Nellis AFB, NV. 23 are tasked for 2003 Tyndall AFB, FL. 23 more are tasked for the following year for Langley AFB, VA. How many Su-37s can the Russians even afford?

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macawman RE:Air Supremacy; USA vs Russia 12/7/2002 8:46:25 PM

The question is how many F-22s can the US afford? The numbers are being racheted downward on a yearly basis as costs go up.

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human6 RE:Air Supremacy; USA vs Russia 12/8/2002 7:55:18 PM

Can any plane in the US arsenal do what a SU-37 can do? Check it out: link

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VaeVictis RE:Air Supremacy; USA vs Russia 12/31/2002 10:13:53 AM

Really, the SU-37 is a damn good fighter but what good does such agility really give you? A human being can only handle at max 9-10 G's while a missle can handle 30 and up. The russians should be focusing on stealth, a missle cannot hit what it cannot see. Also within the next decade the US will have a small constellation of laser satellites up capable of hitting targets near the ground and up, how can fighters resist that? It's the ultimate high ground. Not to mention hround based lasers under development that have been tested very successfully even destroying artillery rounds in flight. Seems to me the Russians are chasing a golden goose with the Su-37 they should be focusing on a counter for stealth and lasers and how it will change forever the face of war.

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Final Historian RE:Air Supremacy; USA vs Russia 12/31/2002 10:01:47 PM

Well said. Far better for the enemy to have trouble seeing you than to have trouble hitting you. If anything has been proven in this information age, its this: What you can see, you can hit. And what you can hit, you can kill.

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Jay RE:Air Supremacy; USA vs Russia 1/2/2003 12:48:32 PM

The F-22 is the most combat capable air to air fighter in the world right now. The rumblings I hear about the JSF are less complimentary, one gets the impression it's the proverbial jack of all trades and master of none. But even the oldest US fighters still in service possess a secret weapon which puts them head and shoulders above their Russian counterparts. Fuel.

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Phoenix Rising RE:Air Supremacy; USA vs Russia 1/2/2003 1:08:19 PM

LOL Nice one, Jay. Of course, if a real war reached Russian soil, Russia might have to step on a few commercial contracts to get fuel, but if they really need it, they have it. My punch line would have been "pilots." --PR

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Final Historian RE:Air Supremacy; USA vs Russia 1/2/2003 10:00:05 PM

Thats funny, mine would have been "spare parts." It seems that they haven't made any since the USSR, and the latest war in Chechnya used up all of their spares. So they can only fly a small percentage of their air force at any time, because they had to cannablize the rest of their planes.

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human7 RE:Air Supremacy; USA vs Russia 1/5/2003 4:26:13 PM

Careful guys, the greatest weapon our enemies possess is American Arrogance. What happens when these highly maneuverable Su-37 become stealth? Historically speaking, it seems as soon as the US comes out with new technology, its not long before the Russians top us. And they do it without budgets of Billions of dollars...

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displacedjim RE:Air Supremacy; USA vs Russia 2/1/2003 12:44:12 AM

If you don't want to talk about the F-22 and F-35 because they're not in production, then don't talk about the Su-37 either, for the same reason. Swell, the Su-37 can bleed off all its energy by stalling out and hanging in space--I hope to God that's exactly what all enemy pilots always do whenever we go to war. We'll gladly match their "Cobra manuver" against our Sidewinder or AMRAAM every time, and then it's back to the club to shoot their watches off while showing the other fighter jocks about their kills that day. The F-22 is in limited production, and may or may not remain that way. Meanwhile, the F-35 will enter massive production within the next couple years. Not only will the F-35 have the best air-to-ground radar in the world, it will have the best air-to-air radar, with the possible exception of the F-22's. It will carry the best air-to-air missile in the world. It will be the stealthiest air-to-air fighter in the world by a wide margin, stealthier than even the F-22. It will have plenty of legs, and be plenty fast (rumor has it it may be able to go supersonic without afterburner). Oh, and also we're going to have over 2000 of them! And, to acknowledge other posts, we'll have the trained pilots, fuel, and spare parts to fly them. And all of this is legislatively a done deal, unlike the F-22 program. Jim Habermehl

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mustavaris RE:The stealth vs stealth question. 2/2/2003 3:24:13 AM

Stealthiness won�t guarantee supremacy for long time to come. Within 5-15 or so years ground based defences have solved the problem when they commonly start to use 4 or more radars at once against stealth aircraft- one is transmitting and others are receiving the signal and voil�; you know the exact coordinates of the "stealth" plane. Ok, you might use RAM coating instead of counting (more) on the shapes of the aircraft; but basically you must make the plane to absorb all radar signals because with better radars and software they can almost track birds with recent equipment- what its going to be in the future? AND radars - which are the Key because they can direct any weapons- are a lot of cheaper to develope than planes and faster too. Planes require some 10-20 years before they are fielded, an new radar takes few years and only with the fraction of the money used in plane R&D. And sooner or later they start to use multiple radar technology on aircraft too. I am quite sure that stealth hype is going to go down and become a thing that is taken for granted in aircraft, like chaff and flares. But the real revolution is coming when unmanned aircraft start to do most of the work. They can be made to pull 30+G turns, they can be made stealthier and completerly coated with RAM (there�s no RAM coating that can be seen thru). They will change the face of modern aerial warfare. Meanwhile if there is going to be stealth aircraft vs stealth aircraft fights they�ll be done with IR-missiles I guess and pilots are playing hide and seek. Cobra�s and other maneuvers are meant for dogfight and when you add Archers with great off-boresight firing capability and back-ward firing ones with excellent aircraft maneuvering with 10-12G turns; then you have very little chance to survive in dogfight. Everyone should get his/her eyes on the su-37 video where they demonstrate planes agility- it cannot be emulated with any western plane. And its a 30+ ton monster doing that. Russian pilots have been able to pull 10-12G turns for a long time. Its due training and better suits and pilots who have been chosen from those who naturally resist G-forces. Of course- each time you go over 8 Gs you�re in great risk, but its true that Russians have planes and pilots who can do those 12G turns- in experimental areas, because there�s no Su-37s in field units and won�t be soon. Basically well timed and done maneuver with chaff and flares makes you evade the incoming missile were it AMRAAM or Archer or anything. Some are harder to avoid but certainly none are impossible. And Archers can be shot at incoming missiles so the kill is all but sure. But on other aspects here; its definately true that Russian training, spares etc cannot match US�. No one�s can. Ok, maybe Israel�s but they are dependant on the USA.

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displacedjim RE:The stealth vs stealth question. 2/3/2003 3:05:35 PM

To add to, yet in some ways disagree with, Mustavaris: Stealth is not invisibilty, but signature reduction. Foremost emphasis is on radar cross section reduction, since radar is the dominant sensor currently. Yes, developments like bistatic radar and plot fusion from multiple sources can go a long way toward countering radar stealthiness. Theoretically, all aircraft are detectable, it's just a matter of getting enough signal return to the receiver. Although there's no indication Iraq ever even detected any F-117s during the First Gulf War, they theoretically could have. Obviously the Serbians were able to at least once! However, there's an important difference between detecting an airplane and tracking an airplane, and an even more important difference between tracking an airplane and being able to commit a weapon against that track. The radar cross section of an object is a function of several parameters, one of which is the radar's frequency. Due to other factors, radars useful for long range early warning operate at lower frequencies (e.g., VHF) while those used for target tracking operate at higher frequencies (e.g., SHF). Stealth technologies typically are more effective as frequency increases. Thus, while it may be that some countries will soon develop ability to detect and even track stealth aircraft using radar, it will be quite a while before they will be able to actually engage them using radar. Yes, it's true that high-AOA maneuvers and missiles capable of launch at those attitudes and/or with high off-boresight tracking capability are deadly in dogfights. That's why pilots should stay away from dogfights: a guy could get killed that way! Thankfully enough, America has the solution: Information Dominance. Our pilots have vastly superior battlespace awareness and are far more likely to see and lock-up the bad guys long before the bad guys see us. While pulling missile breaks could work against early SAMs and AAMs if you saw them in time, it only works in relatively small parts of the engagement envelope for today's AMRAAMs and Sidewinders. We do agree on the other, perhaps more intangible aspects of aerial combat. Flying a better airplane is always desirable, but no guarantee. Thankfully, we've got both the best aircraft and the best force multipliers, too! :-) Jim Habermehl

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mustavaris RE:The stealth vs stealth question. 2/3/2003 5:44:04 PM

As far as I know it Serbian radar was modified Soviet 50/60�s era low frequency radar with one transmitter and 2+ receivers. They had software (computer) based signal processing to detect the plane with other receiving radars and their missile scored a lucky shot- * but its not exactly known how lucky they were and one source tells that they got "about" location by radar and more precisely with modified IR-tracking sensor (maybe MiG-29�s??). Then they launched SA-3 missile which was TV-guided Yugoslavian model and the stars were favourable. * After this everything may be crap.Dunno. Back in reality; I dont know much about exact radar physics and I have to make a hypothese, feel free to correct me: basically when you transmit radar pulse against stealth aircraft the no1 thing is that very little of the energy goes back to the transmitting radar- the rest is scattered away from it. But now we got three other radars + the transmitter, we know their relative positions and have computer based signal processing; its just basic trigonometry, with 2 receivers you got 2 possible locations, with 3 receivers you got the exact location. And if your technology allows it, you can switch transmitting radars to avoid anti-radiation missiles and if the technology is better you can move your radars. Why high frequency radars cannot be used this way? They are accurate enough to direct weapons. Russians, Ukrainians and Serbs already have more less efficient low-frequency radars that seem to be able to see "stealth" aircraft. Why there won�t be high-frequency one in near future? Think about: ZSU-XXX or equivalent combined with long range mobile missile unit, 4-6+ mobile gun/missile platforms with a few long range detection radars and many short range radars for directing the weapons. I think that the future challenge for americans comes from the ground, in aerial combat you won�t find a worthy opponent for at least next one or two decades. Other aspects: nothing to add nor complain about:)

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Hellfire RE:The stealth vs stealth question. 2/7/2003 6:52:49 AM

The F-35 will have the ability to supercruise. From what I heard, its supercruise speed will be around mach 1.3. Thrust vectoring would be great for the F-35. The high number of aircraft produced would make this feature cost effective. Nevertheless, if I had the choice, I would rather have a sort of super-AMRAAM than thrust vectoring. A 100km+ ramjet AMRAAM would be perfect. Its manoeuvrability should be significantly improved to kill any super-manoeuvrable aircraft at first shot.

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Hellfire RE:The stealth vs stealth question. 2/7/2003 7:06:27 AM

Against stealth fighters, you need more radar power and more interception platforms. Since the price of fighters is prohibitive, wouldn't the solution be UCAVs? UCAVs are more manoeuvrable, more stealthy, much less expansive, and have longer range. I'm talking here about the 2015-2020 timeframe when UCAVs will have been tested for many years. These air-to-air UCAVs would also have full air-to-ground capabilities.

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