EP-3 replacement?

"Doug \"Woody\" and Erin Beal" wrote in message ...
1. The 767 may be a bit more fragile (because it is more efficiently
designed) than the 707, and certainly more rugged than the EMB-145, but I
believe it is more survivable against MANPADS threats than either because it
has pod mounted engines on the wings that burn much cooler than the
(original) 707 engines. Plus, having only 2 engines (vice 4) is good (less
SA-7 targets out there to hit). If the EMB-145 takes a missile in the
vicinity of the engines, you likely lose the tail and the jet.
Good points all Woody, but...
That may well be true when considering just the engines, however even
those high bypass CFMs are sitting out huge amounts of hot air as
well. In the final analysis they may not be cool enough to matter and
numbers may be better. The question I have is, has the analysis ever
been done?
http://www.survice.com/SIPapers/Inte...Assessment.pdf
Of course much about this topic is beyond open source:
http://www.bahdayton.com/surviac/PDF...201%202003.pdf

Also, what about the susceptability to hydraulic ram effects (which
likely ignited the DHL wing)? How about susceptabilty of the
hydraulics, which the DHL lost? As I mentioned in another post, the
latest generation glass cocpit planes are designed to "never" go dark
(civil ones at least). Has the location of bus ties , or no ballistic
protection around E&E bays, or closely collocated cable runs that will
make the airframes such easy pickin's ever been considered.
There is a more fundamental question though. Why MUST the G.I.B.'s be
on the aircraft anyway? I could see why in 1946, or even 1986, but
2006?
You are aware of the initial skepticism towards the 2 man EA-18 and
that by accounts is working out nicely. In this day of UAVs and high
bandwidth do they need to still be there?
A smaller, more manueverable platform would fare much better and the
risk of losing those rare individuals and their sensitve knowledge
should be reduced to the very barest minimum.

2. Despite my personal lack of faith in Airbus and their automation--which
I've never flown... Just heard about through others, I believe that
fly-by-wire jets handle damage better than their direct hydraulic
counterparts. For instance damaged Hornets fly very well. They don't know
that the pieces are missing. They just try to make the airplane do what the
pilots want.
The combat survivability of the fly-by-wire systems was a big topic
early on. Rules are built into the logic of your Bugs' guts to deal
with degraded performance:
http://www.nawcwd.navy.mil/~survive/
How much you wanna bet EADs has no such provisions in their code or
that they or Boeing or Embraer or Gulfstream (actually Honeywell and
Goodrich to name a coupleof the avionic vendors) has even seriously
considered the topic for their civil aircraft?
http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/aircraft/23.pdf

3. I'd think the major reason NOT to pick the EMB-145 (aside from the fact
that it's NOT a U.S. airplane) would be that it's so payload limited.

--Woody
They plan on getting around the foriegn built conundrum by assembling
the aircraft here and tallying up the US made components. You are so
right about payload and why the Navy wants to get saddled with another
short range platform that is land based is a big question.