On 6 Mar 2004 10:06:24 -0800, (monkey) wrote:

i don't want to insult you ed, but fighters have changed a lot since
you flew them.

I'll be the last to flaunt my currency. The last systems I flew were
F-23, MiG-29, MiG-31, ASF (a notional Advanced Soviet
Fighter--paralleling ATF development) and F-15C, but those were all in
the multi-player interactive domes at Northrop--not real airplanes.
So, you've got the advantage on me.

yes i'll give you that british guys are ok, but ask any
contemporary fighter pilot and he/she wil tell you that as a whole the
RAF has been lacking any kind of significant single seat experience.
Jag guys are great, but lets face it, it't got jack **** power and no
radar - you just can't fight in todays environment with an airplane
like that.

So, drawing from that endorsement of SS experience, you must wonder
how the USAF made the transition from year of F-4 dominance to be able
to handle Egos and Vipers? And, how did all those Hun drivers manage
to handle the F-4, coming from an under-powered, no-radar airplane?
And, how were the F-5 Aggressors able to teach so much Air/Air to
those over-powered Iggles and Snakes with their cosmic radars and
greater than 1-to-1 T/W ratios?

The point is you CAN fight in today's environment with a power
deficiency (as long as you can sustain a comfortable 7G and maintain
smash near corner at your chosen altitude). You can fight in today's
environment with a minimal sensor suite if you've got some data fusion
and a big brother on the horizon.

And, if you think fighting in today's environment is about
turning/burning and rolling your socks over the top of your boots,
you've missed a lot of the lectures.


I also learned to fly fighters from brits among pilots from
many other nationalities, and i feel that they were the weakest of all
the europeans.

Whose better among Euros? While a lot of the countries have some good
drivers in specialties, the RAF seems to have the highest consistency
across the tactical spectrum. Germans are good, Italians are pretty
good, Danes and Norwegians are pretty good, French will tell you they
are great, Spanish have some good ones...


I'm sure many of the folks here have seen nothing other
than unclassified performance numbers for a lot of these aircraft, nor
have they done a whole lot of military flying. What I'm trying to say
here is this - first, the US jets in general are very well designed,
the whole package - from the long range BVR sort/shot to engaged
maneuvering. So what, some F-15s (allegedly) got beat (lets not get
into the whole unbriefed engagement,/tr violation discussion here).
The fact of the matter is that the Eagle is very beatable in the phone
booth, because it wasn't designed to ever be there. Eagle drivers are
the kings of the BVR game.

Sorry, but Eagles from day one were designed to be pretty darn good in
the phone booth, but that means mutual support and fluid attack. They
also are darn good BVR and got a helluva lot better when AIM-120 came
along. Their capability to search, sort and allocate revised the
tactics of the previous 25 years.

When I talk about a neutral setup
I mean beak to beak, butterfly split type thing. I'm sorry I've seen
the numbers and the F-22 is one mean turning machine.

If you butterfly split, for beak-to-beak, you never go BVR, hence you
never employ all your systems, never get any mutual support, never
exercise any defense against all-aspect, never worry about F-poles,
etc. You don't integrate with AWACs, don't play ECM and simply pull
on the pole. If you call that "train like you fight" you must be
operating in a different military.

As for "mean turning machine", it's an aerodynamic fact of life that
stealth and agility are often mutually exclusive. Any airplane is a
compromise and the Raptor is no exception.

Given an effective 9G sustained limit on human physiology, then a
corner of 350 to 400 defines the limits of agility. To become a better
air/air fighter you broaden the envelope of your weapons. So, don't
look for any 1-v-1 marked superiority until there is some great
breakthrough in basic physics.

As a matter of
fact I'm of the opinion that a good guy in a Hornet or big mouth 16
charlie will be able to do just fine against the typhoon. I'll send
you a hud tape to prove it if we ever get to exercise with these
guys...

You probably won't get any HUD video of Raptors in a Bug or Viper,
since full weapons system exercise will mort you before the merge.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8