Mazz posted:

Found this today:

A report from some budgetary think-tank about Future Air Combat

I didn't have the time to read it front to back yet but from what I have it seems like a pretty great read for those interested. A good history of air combat, engagements with different weapon types in the past 60 years, and the value of poo poo like AWACS and sensor fusion. Develops into a pretty interesting look of future aircraft design based on all that (by interesting I mean actually well thought out and not "YOU CAN"T DOGFIGHT WITHOUT A GUN!!!!")

Cat Mattress posted:

If anyone followed the endless saga of the Indian MMRCA procurement, the negotiations are going so slowly that India just decided to buy 36 Rafale off-the-shelf right now, to buy more time to finalize the MMRCA contract.

Red Crown posted:

Now they have to finance an entire logistics chain for just three squadrons of aircraft. It would make dramatically more sense for them to just buy the full 126 Rafale unless they're planning on an honest to gods shooting war with China.

quote:

14. Government of India conveyed to the Government of France that in view of the critical operational necessity for Multirole Combat Aircraft for Indian Air Force, Government of India would like to acquire 36 Rafale jets in fly-away condition as quickly as possible. The two leaders agreed to conclude an Inter-Governmental Agreement for supply of the aircraft on terms that would be better than conveyed by Dassault Aviation as part of a separate process underway; the delivery would be in time-frame that would be compatible with the operational requirement of IAF; and that the aircraft and associated systems and weapons would be delivered on the same configuration as had been tested and approved by Indian Air Force, and with a longer maintenance responsibility by France.

AlexanderCA posted:

That has me thinking. If you're one of the countries that doesn't develop their own aircraft. Would it make sense to buy/lease a single aircraft from each competing manufacturer and then do your own fly off, instead of these endless paper procurement/development projects? Return/sell the losing aircraft after your done, or stowe em in a museum.

Koesj posted:

I really couldn't get into Hunter Killers, unfortunately. Blind Man's Bluff, which I liked, has the same kind of chronological vignette style going on, but somehow Ballantyne's book put me off stylistically.

What's your quick take on it? I'm definitely interested in a full review since it might help me get unstuck from being only 28% in.

quote:

There's money in a state highway budget that passed the Washington House Thursday to study a one-of-a-kind possible toll bridge fashioned out of retired Navy aircraft carriers.

The idea comes from Washington State Representative Jesse Young. And he's totally serious about it.

"I know that people from around the world would come to drive across the deck of an aircraft carrier bridge, number one,” Young said.

Mazz posted:

That's mostly what happens, except in the countries that want to develop their own industrial base. India and Korea are both interested in buying foreign fighters, but also building them domestically and in the long run building their own indigenous designs after they feel they have gotten to that point.

You see most other nations, like many in South America or SE Asia, put out an RFP and get responses from Boeing, Sukhoi, Dassault, etc with "nationalized" variants of existing fighters. They tend to buy who makes the biggest splash, or bribes them the most.

Sperglord Actual posted:

Mazz posted:

Found this today:

A report from some budgetary think-tank about Future Air Combat

I didn't have the time to read it front to back yet but from what I have it seems like a pretty great read for those interested. A good history of air combat, engagements with different weapon types in the past 60 years, and the value of poo poo like AWACS and sensor fusion. Develops into a pretty interesting look of future aircraft design based on all that (by interesting I mean actually well thought out and not "YOU CAN"T DOGFIGHT WITHOUT A GUN!!!!")

Cippalippus posted:

As long as they have all their nuclear weapons they're still dangerous enough that Nato won't intervene when Russia protects its citizens in Georgia or in Crimea.

Sperglord Actual posted:

Germany to reactivate a hundred mothballed tanks.

ArchangeI posted:

Don't forget that those transport planes will also be stealth.


Somewhere, a USMC general is rubbing his chin and going "hmmmm..."

LingcodKilla posted:

The tanks will begin to be modernised in 2017.

Let's not be hasty here folks...

Mazz posted:

Found this today:

A report from some budgetary think-tank about Future Air Combat

I didn't have the time to read it front to back yet but from what I have it seems like a pretty great read for those interested. A good history of air combat, engagements with different weapon types in the past 60 years, and the value of poo poo like AWACS and sensor fusion. Develops into a pretty interesting look of future aircraft design based on all that (by interesting I mean actually well thought out and not "YOU CAN"T DOGFIGHT WITHOUT A GUN!!!!")

Mazz's article posted:

Superior speed is also useful in disengaging from combat after a successful attack. This advantage, however, is likely to diminish as weapon and sensor ranges continue to grow while aircraft top speed remains relatively fixed. Against an adversary armed with directed-energy (DE) weapons, it would likely be of little value in improving the prospects of successful disengagement.

Biffmotron posted:

TheFluff posted:

I got the impression that as long as they stuck to low-intensity pretending-to-be-separatist thing everything was very slow (see: the siege of the Donetsk airport lasting months), but once they got fed up with nothing happening and deployed some real mechanized troops in force they just rolled over the Ukrainians and advanced very quickly for a bit just before the "ceasefire".

Godholio posted:

I still haven't had a chance to read it, but Soviet tactics definitely made use of the "high/fast flyer." It not only gives a huge boost to missile kinematics, it makes an intercept much more difficult for their enemy. If it works, you kill the high value target you're charging. If it doesn't, you may have pulled so much of their attention off the rest of your plan and probably pulled several of their fighters out of position so you still haven't lost yet.

Biffmotron posted:

The policy proposal is that the upcoming Long Range Strike Bomber should also have built in self-defense capabilities, and may even be able to take over the fighter role.

quote:

It's interesting and very well researched, and they make a strong case that guided missiles have developed enough that this time its different, but I can't help but think of the mediocre combat record of historical heavy fighters like the Bf-110 or the F-105. Is this the future, or is it the F6D Missileer II?

Dejan Bimble posted:

It's really frightening that Putin has created a mechanized corps that's invisible to satellites as well as standard cameras

TheFluff posted:

I'm not sure what you're being passive-aggressive about here. Are you trying to say there are no Russian mechanized forces in Ukraine or are you just calling me out for having an incorrect understanding of the war? Feel free to elaborate in case you run out of oneliners.

Biffmotron posted:

Okay, I read this last night because reading white papers is what all the super cool kids do on a Friday night. The historical summary is that air-to-air combat is all about striking with surprise and maintaining situational awareness. Getting into a dogfight is a sucker's game that smart pilots avoid. Back in the old days of canvas airplanes and the Mk I eyeball, this meant aces stalked enemies from out of the sun or from behind and below. These days, this means radar, AWACS coverage, and beyond visual range missiles. BVR missiles did pretty poorly in Vietnam, but seekers and rules of engagement have gotten a lot better, and for modern air combat (everything from Desert Storm on), the BVR missile is king. The worst possible outcome in air to air combat is being killed by an undetected enemy. Modern guided missiles have added to that a 'mutual kill' where both sides launch guided missiles and neither escapes.

From this, the author concludes that what matters in a fighter aircraft is quality of sensors, low signatures in both radar and infrared, and the ability to carry a large number of long range guided missiles. Somewhat counter-intuitively, speed and maneuverability don't really matter. Going supersonic creates so much heat that you'd light up every IR sensor in range, while agile "dogfight" missiles like the AA-11 and AIM-9X with helmet-cued sights make maneuvering into firing position less important at close range. Building aircraft for speed and maneuverability has significant trade-offs in range, cost, sensors and signature. Worse, the Western Pacific is really really big, large enough that the F-22 & JSF will need aerial refueling to do pretty much anything. China and Russia are working on very long ranged missiles designed to take out AWACS planes and tankers, which means that future fighters might have to operate without as much close support. Moreover, since WW2 bomber ranges have increased dramatically compared to fighter rangers, so that in the future bombers will be going in pretty much alone. They close by offering a scenario where a single manned stealth bomber coordinating a picket line of stealthy Unmanned Combat Air Systems wipes the floor with a larger number of PAK-FAs.

The policy proposal is that the upcoming Long Range Strike Bomber should also have built in self-defense capabilities, and may even be able to take over the fighter role. A lot of it seems to make sense, the situational awareness model of air to air combat is backed by data rather than testosterone. A stealthy subsonic plane with plenty of electrical and thermal capability to run sensors, and payload for fuel and weapons is doable, since it's basically a B-2 but with a "hey guys, this time don't make them cost $1 billion apiece" price tag. With the right rules of engagement, long range missiles are terrifying, and up close the AIM-9X could mean that dogfighting is over.

There are some things that worry me, and that I don't think were properly addressed. My totally open source knowledge may be behind the times, but the future vision scenario assumed major advances in IRST and line-of-sight datalinks to do the sensor fusion. These things aren't physically impossible, but having a system that requires high-bandwidth unjammable and undetectable datalinks doesn't seem like something to rely on 100% of the time. Combat aircraft also need to be ready for situations where the sensor network breaks down. The enemy in the scenario played very dumb, supercruising at mach 1.8 when subsonic speeds might have reduced their signature to the point where they and the UCAS picket line detected each other at approximately the same time. And while gallivanting around at supersonic speeds might be a bad idea most of the time, it does expand options for entering and exiting a fight compared to a strictly subsonic aircraft. Kinematic boosts to missiles still matters. On the cost side, engines, stealth airframes, and sensors don't get cheaper because they're not man-rated. Any UCAS as described is probably comparable in cost to a manned stealth aircraft, and expensive enough that commanders wouldn't want them assigned to 'expendable' picket lines.

It's interesting and very well researched, and they make a strong case that guided missiles have developed enough that this time its different, but I can't help but think of the mediocre combat record of historical heavy fighters like the Bf-110 or the F-105. Is this the future, or is it the F6D Missileer II?

Dejan Bimble posted:

It's really frightening that Putin has created a mechanized corps that's invisible to satellites as well as standard cameras

TheFluff posted:

p sure the guy is just driveby trolling but I'll readily admit I haven't really been paying all that much attention to the specifics, so if someone wants to elaborate on the use of mechanized forces in eastern ukraine in the last six months that'd be cool

Mortabis posted:

So there's basically no party in Canada that's willing to fund the Canadian Forces?

MrYenko posted:

And all of this can be totally obliterated by an ROE that requires visual identification of targets.

Nebakenezzer posted:

A rare bit of good news in Canadian mil procurement, with an asterisk of incompetence: we have a new C-17 (CC-177 in metric):



I've always thought we could use more of these things, and they are apparently well built. NATO in general could use more of these as well: Canadian C-17s were helping out big five nation France with their operations in Mali a while ago. Canada now has five C-17s.

The asterisk is this: the list price of a C-17 is around $200 million, and Canada paid $415 million. The Canadian Department of National Defense stuck with its "never releasing any information ever to voters, the media, or Parliament because you incompetence shame us" and said that the extra cost was due to extra...things bought with the new airplane. These included a "spare engine, ancillary equipment, under-sealant to prevent rust, special Boeing floor mats, and a matching C-17 tank cozy.” Since they positively refuse to give any sort of breakdown to costs, I can only assume incompetence is to blame, with political fuckery riding a close second. Maybe the Cons opted to pay 150 million in contract penalties by not paying Boeing until some arbitrary financial year closed? Possibly more knowledgeable people here have a better idea what's behind this.

mlmp08 posted:

Watching multi-role flights with responsibility for interdiction and air defense dump every shred of extra fuel and ground ordnance they have in order to try to react to a HFF is a pretty good lesson on just how much the HFF can gently caress up your plans.

Mr. Showtime posted:

AESA ISAR can give you pretty good images of aircraft. Couple that with EWS RF emissions, IRST, and traditional JEM NCTR and it's not at all unreasonable to expect BVR PID. Sensor fusion is pretty much a necessity for 5th-gens for a reason -- look at that report from a while back about F-35 training wherein SAM systems intended to play the role of more advanced threats couldn't because the aircraft correctly dismissed the spoofing attempts and identified them as the older systems they were, and then keep in mind that that works for aircraft, too.

Godholio posted:

The problem isn't the inability to make long-range identification, it's political/legal wrangling. More technological options are always helpful because sometimes you just can't get the right data, but restrictive ROE is completely unrelated to that.

iyaayas01 posted:

Finances are of course a murky world, doubly so when you're talking military procurement, but on the face I can think of several reasonable justifications why Canada spent what they did on the fifth tail.

e: Here's a pretty decent overview/timeline of Boeing's CLS work on the C-17.

Mr. Showtime posted:

break out the Vincennes once or twice.