GastonGlocker wrote:Gen 4.5 good enough? Silent Eagle a bridge not too far? It's always about the money. Would rather have enough of a 90% solution vs not enough of a 100% solution.
I think with advanced jammer, stealthish lines and incorporating the Gen 5 sensors and engines, we could extend the Gen 4's quite a bit.
https://news.vice.com/article/do-israel ... vicenewsfb
That was a good article about balancing 4/ 4.5/ 5th generation fighter fleets (as they come with different price tags and the 4th gen are not going anywhere before they will have served their 30 years). Aviationweek has some similar reporting from the Singapore Air Show (I just wonder why the throw-back to an observation from 2012 was needed in it?):
"[USAF] spending billions on upgrades to their 30-to-35-year-old F-15Cs.
It will be some time, in any scenario, before stealthy aircraft are a big part of the Asia-Pacific fighter inventory, but the Sukhoi family also forces adversaries to look at two other aspects of fighter capability: electronic warfare and weapons.
In October 2012, the supercarrier USS George Washington paid a visit to Malaysia that included a photo-op formation of Super Hornets and Su-30MKMs. Hanging on the wingtips of the Sukhois were fat cylindrical pods – Russian-made KNIRTI SAP-518 active jamming systems. The SAP-518 is not only big and powerful but uses state-of-the-art digital radio-frequency memory (DRFM) technology. Maybe it can beat an attack by an AIM-120C advanced medium air-to-air missile (Amraam) and maybe it can’t, but . . . Do you feel lucky today?
The proliferation of DRFM jamming – the Russians design the DRFM chips but have them made in foreign foundries, which are where you’d expect them to be – triggered renewed U.S. attention to EW self-protection systems after decades of neglect: aside from the Super Hornet’s ALQ-214, the Pentagon hadn’t sponsored a new active jamming system for a fighter since the 1980s.
Israel, Singapore and others had seen that gap earlier, which is why the various warts and excrescences on the Singapore air force fighters here bear examination. The F-16D has a self-protection suite by Elbit’s Elisra subsidiary. The F-15SG’s digital electronic warfare system is also reportedly from Israel.
The F-15SG has a more jamming-resistant active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar and, if the adversary’s EW is still a problem, an infrared search and track (IRST) system. The U.S. Air Force is now funding AESAs, IRST and new EW for its F-15s. The Rafale’s presence is a reminder, too, that Dassault, Saab and the Typhoon partners addressed the EW issue from the outset.
The Sukhoi fighters’ agility challenges weapon design. That the jet is a difficult target for Amraam is beyond serious dispute: the range at which Amraam has a high kill probability declines sharply as targets become more evasive. It was why the MBDA Meteor was developed in the first place.
All the Euro-canards are getting Meteor (it will be fully operational this year on Gripen)."
OK, I reread it and I guess the 2012 observation was the starting shot for results that can be displayed today (and are being rolled out). Amraam type of missiles have their maximum range halved against highly manoeuvreing targets.Add an AESA seeker head to Meteor (which is better from get-go anyway) and you have a real winner.
- the news of next gen US A2A missile come and go, but the belief in no-escape zones working for sure seems to have been eroding, hence the drive to double missile loadout, on these lines (an older piece of reporting, also fro aviationweek):
"... Lockheed Martin’s Cuda, a so-called “Halfraam” weapon about half as long as an Amraam and compact enough to fit six missiles into each bay of the F-35 or F-22. Cuda draws on the hit-to-kill technology used on the PAC-3 missile, is designed to have a radar seeker and has both movable tails and forward attitude control motors for high agility. The company is not disclosing Cuda’s design range, but one variation of the concept is a two-stage missile with a similar total length to Amraam, presumably with the goal of covering a wide range envelope with a single missile design."
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)