On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 16:58:34 -0800, Mary Shafer
wrote:

On 14 Dec 2003 22:11:39 GMT, (BUFDRVR) wrote:

5th Generation (???) - MiG 1.42, Su-30 series or FA/22, F-35

Fourth.

Hmmm, okay Mary what would a 5th Generation fighter be? They are using that
term fairly regularly when discussing the Su-30 family.

I thought they were calling it the four-and-a-half-th generation or
fourth-generation plus. I know that some third-generation fighters
were touted as really being "half a generation more advanced"
(although not for any good reason that I remember).

Maybe they won't have guns.

To be honest, I don't know what's left in this evolutionary sequence.
Maybe remotely piloted? Having the pilot literally plug in the
airplane, with some sort of "think it, fly it" or "think it, fire it"
system? Artificial intelligence, with the pilot as supervisor? None
of these sound very practical to me. Maybe the piloted fighter with
the flock of "assistant" semi-autonomous vehicles.


Just my two cents but if we follow the trend my guess would be a
fighter with two 60k engines, an airframe somewhat larger than the
F-22, more wing area, and the ability to make brief excursions up to
Mach 3. Mach 2 supercruise wouldn't surprise me and on the UCAV
front, the ability to carry and control 4 Minions or their equivalent.
A distrbuted AESA with clusters of modules on several areas of the
airframe or the "smart-skin" thing they talked about several years
back. An all around IRST like on the F-35. I don't know, until they
get those communications links 100% foolproof or give the UCAV enough
brains to fight effectively in a dogfight on it's own, I don't see the
fighter plane disappearing. It would be nice if they came up with a
combined cycle engine that could operate up to Mach 6 like Rascal's
F100s supposedly will but it uses LOX to cool things down and add O2
at high speeds/altitudes so I'm not holding my breath. I am skeptical
about the thought controlled interface unless they can get it to the
point where it can act FAST. For example when playing racquetball or
boxing or anything really that requires good hand/eye coordination,
you don't really think about what you are doing, you just do it. You
practice over and over and over so when you're in competition you act
and react almost without thought. From what I've seen on the good old
Discovery channel (yeah I know) they aren't even close to that.




I can also remember hearing people advocate the great simplification
of the all-up modern fighter to being a weapons carrier only. That
is, the AAMs would have all the integration and avionics and stuff and
these smart missiles would be carried and launched from relatively
unsophisticated (and inexpensive) platform aircraft.

That would *seem* to be the most expensive way to do it. Wouldn't you
just be throwing away your avionics with every shot? I could see
using the IIR seeker on -9X so you don't have to have a built-in IRST
but I'd think you'd have to rework it some. In Gulf War I A-10 pilots
were told not to use Mavericks for this very thing (though they
generally did anyway) because of wear and tear on the seeker.