The Swedish Model: How to build a jet fighter.

On Wed, 28 May 2008 14:47:48 GMT, (Richard
Casady) wrote:

On Tue, 27 May 2008 13:18:55 GMT, Ed Rasimus
wrote:

The FCF profile involves rolls left and right with first half-rate and
then a full-deflection in each direction. It will make your head spin
and if you are not braced, bounce your helmet off the canopy.

It has virtually NO tactical utility.

I should think the opposite, since it wastes energy, and postpones
doing something useful.

Casady

Aileron rolls don't take much energy, and it must be acknowledged that
there is a minimum required amount of rolling agility to be effective,
but after that point increases in roll rate don't offer much.

As for defensive maneuvers, the essential basic is that all defensive
maneuvering must be done with respect to the attacking aircraft.
Failure to consider the position and potential of the attacker when
making any move will quickly lead to loss.

The truism, "lose sight, lose the fight" is basic catechism for
aspiring fighter drivers.

Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
"Palace Cobra"
www.thunderchief.org

Roll rate: 720 degrees per second - what a head-bouncer! We could get
the Zipper to roll a but faster by stomping on teh rudder to yaw it -
the A-model's manual rudder took a good hard stomp, though.
Seriously, rolls are used to set a bank angle so you can change
direction by using the pitch control and piling on G. - some older
fighters do not roll very fast at high indicated airspeed so a faster
roll rate helps you either nail or shake them.
MiG15/17 run into trouble rolling in the transonic area. Unfortunately
all later fighters AFIK do not have this problem.
As for fancy corkscrew maneuvers to shed another guy - if he knows
what he's doing he'll lag you, stay back a ways, refuse to commit, and
wait for you to **** off all your energy and then he will shoot you
down. Besides, even if you do shake him, what has his wingman been
doing all this time? Getting into position on you, that's what. The
other thing - once you turned up in 90 degrees of bank guys 20 mies
away saw you and guys 100 miles away had you on radar.
BTW we trained in and adopted 'loose deuce' back in the 60s - I
should think that is a pretty wide-spread tactic at least in the
serious air forces by now. You might have Lead trapped at six but what
is Two doing???
Walt BJ

On May 9, 1:28*pm, Mike wrote:
The Weekly Standard

The Swedish Model
How to build a jet fighter.
by Reuben F. Johnson
04/30/2008 11:45:00 PM

Linköping, Sweden
ON WEDNESDAY APRIL 23, Sweden's Saab Aerospace rolled out what may
become the fighter aircraft that sets the standard for the future of
the military aerospace business. What Saab is calling the "Next-
Generation Gripen"
(Gripen N/G for short), is a substantially modernized version of its
JAS-39C/D model, the fighter currently in service or in the process of
being delivered to the air forces of Sweden, Hungary, the Czech
Republic, South Africa, and Thailand.

As fighter aircraft go, the Gripen does not have the look of a super-
stealthy, new-age marvel like the two most recent Lockheed Martin (LM)
platforms--the F-22A Raptor or the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike
Fighter (JSF). The new Gripen N/G will also not feature an entire bevy
of brand-new, designed-from scratch on-board systems, although there
are some 3,500 new components that are part of the aircraft's
configuration.

The notable changes to the JAS-39 in its new incarnation are the
replacement of its single Volvo RM-12 engine with one General Electric
F414G, a variant of the same engine used as a two-power plant
propulsion system on the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet--a 25 per cent
increase in thrust. The airplane also will have a new active
electronically scanning array (AESA) radar set, a technology that has
now become a more or less standard requirement for any new fighter
aircraft. (This new radar will feature a Saab Microwave Systems
PS-05 design on the back end of the radar set, with a Thales active
array similar to that used on the Dassault Rafale fighter's RBE2 radar
on the front end.)

But the change that has perhaps the biggest impact on the Gripen's
performance has nothing to do with high-technology weaponry or
sensors. The landing gear have been displaced from the undercarriage
to the main wing pylons. This frees up a large space in the center
fuselage section of the aircraft and provides room for additional fuel
tanks. This gives the new Gripen and unrefueled range of 2,200
nautical miles, 500 more than the unrefueled range of the F-16.

What is remarkable about this Swedish product is that despite being
produced in rather modest numbers--and then add in the high rates of
taxation and super-expensive Scandinavian welfare state in which the
plane will be produced--this jet will still end up costing less than
half of the price of a Joint Strike Fighter, perhaps as little as one-
third. Moreover, customers of the Gripen are going to have full access
to the aircraft's software source code and will be able to make their
own modifications and integration of weapon systems.

But, the most interesting fact about the Gripen is what it says about
the fallacy upon which most modern-day military aircraft programs are
based.

There are about six fighter jets in the world that could be classified
as "new-generation designs." The Gripen, France's Dassault Rafale, the
F-22A and F-35, Russia's Sukhoi Su-35 Super Flanker, and the four-
nation consortium (UK, Germany, Italy, and Spain) Eurofighter Typhoon.
(A sixth player that can in some respects be considered a new model is
Russia's modernised version of the Mikoyan MiG-29, which is designate
the "MiG-35,"
although it retains almost the same basic platform as the MiG-29 it
does contain an AESA and a host of other new systems in it its
configuration.)

Of these six aircraft, three of them are designed and built by several
companies or several nations cooperating together. The F-22A is a
joint program between LM and Boeing, with several subsystem
contractors also on board as major partners. The Eurofighter is
largely a product of the aerospace industries of the four original
partner nations. The F-35 is the biggest cooperative program of them
all, pulling in the aerospace firms of the United States and the
United Kingdom, plus industrial partners from many of the other
nations that are also part of the program.

Military airplane programs that are produced by these "teams" of
companies are structured this way because--as the rationale goes--it
is "too expensive for one company or one country to go it alone."
Sharing the costs of designing, testing, building, and validating new
technologies--and giving each country or company that part of the
program where they have a competitive advantage--is supposed to make
these airplanes cheaper to procure for all of the participants.

Except that just the opposite has occurred. The F-35, a single-engine
stealthy aircraft, is projected by a recent report from the U.S.
Government Accounting Office to cost in the neighbourhood of $130
million per copy.
This is a program that, when it was developed, was specifically
designed to be "cheap," as in around $35-40 million per copy, and that
the designers were to make maximum use of commercial-off-the-shelf
(COTS) components in order to achieve that efficiency. So, why does it
end up costing more than three times one of the aircraft it is
supposed to replace-- the F-16--and almost three times the price of
the Gripen? (Not surprisingly, some of the JSF partner nations--namely
Norway--are now talking about bolting from the program in favor of a
Gripen purchase instead.)

The Eurofighter, partially thanks the catastrophic drop in value of
the U.S.
dollar against the Euro (and if you live in Europe as I do and try to
buy groceries and gas with dollars, "catastrophic" might not even be a
strong enough description for the situation), is now well over US $100
million. It suffers from the fact that it was organised and planned
primarily as "welfare for European aerospace and high-tech
industries," as one UK-based analyst described it, "and as a program
to produce a fighter as a secondary consideration."

The economies of scale that the Eurofighter was supposed to benefit
from as a result of being built by a "team" of companies never
materialised. Instead multiple redundancies were created that only
added to the bottom line and caused the progress of the program to
move forward at what seemed like a snail's pace at times. "Don't tell
anyone I ever told you this," said a frustrated Eurofighter test pilot
to me during a private chat at the Le Bourget air show almost a decade
ago, "but there are no efficiencies achieved in this program by having
four separate flight test centres--one in each of the partner
nations." The Eurofigther also has production lines in each of the
four nations, plus ground test facilities, etc.

(Having had the experience of the Eurofighter has not caused European
industry to rethink the viability of this model very much. The new-age
European military transport, the Airbus A400M, will be built in only
one factory instead of four, the CASA/EADS factory in Sevilla, Spain,
but the costs of the program are still expected to make it the most
expensive aircraft of its kind ever built.)

F-22A tops them all, however. The program's development has been long
and expensive. Admittedly, several technologies were pioneered and
matured by the process of designing and testing the F-22A. Many of
these technologies--now that F-22A has "paid the freight"--can be
dialled into numerous other future programs. But, when these
development costs are amortised over the production run of the Raptor,
the aircraft comes in at a whopping US $390 million per unit.

Surprisingly, the three aircraft that are built by one company in one
country--a feat that we have been told for more than 20 years is "no
longer affordable"--all cost well under $100 million. These are the
Gripen, the Rafale, and the Su-35. All of them contain the latest in
on-board systems technology, but they have been designed with stealthy
airframe shaping being far less important and with more reliance on
electronic warfare as a means of keeping them survivable in the air
combat or air defence environment.

There is something to be said for the fact that the emphasis on a
stealthy, low radar cross section (RCS) aircraft shape does a lot to
increase the costs of the F-22A and F-35, and that this is a
technology that is the competitive advantage that the United States
has over its adversaries. What is sobering to realize, however, is
that the one U.S. aircraft that was built with RCS being its primary--
in fact, perhaps its only--consideration was just retired this week
after one of the shortest service lifespans in the modern jet age: the
Lockheed Skunk Works F-117A Stealth Fighter.

The F-117A is now regarded as "old" technology where its RCS reduction
methods are concerned and no longer as effective ("its survivability
has been eroded" is the operative term) as it once was. Its missions
will be taken over by other more modern stealthy aircraft, such as the
F-35. One has to ask the question, though, given the significant
advances by Russia, China, and other nations in counter-stealth
methods and air defence, will the ultra-expensive F-22 and F-35 face
similarly truncated service lives?

(The fact that the F-117A design is said to be outmoded and made
obsolete by these newer model fighters did not keep the US Air Force
from continuing to engage in needlessly silly security arrangements.
The world's most famous and experienced air-to-air aircraft
photographer, Katsuhiko Tokunaga of Japan, was barred from the
retirement ceremony on the grounds that "no foreigners at all are
allowed." This despite the fact that he has flown more than 1,000
hours in the rear seats of almost all U.S. fighters and has completed
some of the most extensive air-to-air photography of the--supposedly--
much more advanced F-22A.)

On Monday the Indian Ministry of Defence accepted bids from six U.S.
and foreign competitors for the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (M-
MRCA) program. The $10 billion-plus program is the PowerBall lotto of
fighter aircraft sales and will be the largest procurement of a
military aircraft by a export customer in more than three decades.

The JAS-39, ...

read more »

A basic thing to remember a.

A simple test again who knows the answer?

What maneuver can attach to the wing of the trailing opponent and
deflect the ailerons?

A certain supesonic maneuver will generate a class of wake that will
always attack the trailing aircrafts ability to maintian control.

A canard aircraft will always appear to fall out of the sky, btw. It
will stall the front first. Flying into a sonic front as a rule was
always to worry the pilot because some people can intentionally form a
special wake front for you.

Dan wrote:
I never made any of those statements.

Nor are you the only guy who posts to the group using
the moniker "Dan."


Jeff

"Jeff Crowell" wrote:

Dan wrote:
I never made any of those statements.

Nor are you the only guy who posts to the group using
the moniker "Dan."

I wish somebody would change the header. Every time I see "Swedish
Model" I start salivating and panting at the prospect of seeing an
ash-blonde Nordic goddess. All I get is this inane banter .....

Eugene L Griessel

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors--
and miss.

- I usually post only from Sci.Military.Naval -

On May 29, 8:15 am, (Eugene Griessel) wrote:

Eugene L Griessel

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors--
and miss.

-

Alan Alda The Moonshine War

Note to American Presidents: Find jobs for all employees who leave the
White House

On Thu, 29 May 2008 12:15:23 GMT, (Eugene
Griessel) wrote:

"Jeff Crowell" wrote:

Dan wrote:
I never made any of those statements.

Nor are you the only guy who posts to the group using
the moniker "Dan."

I wish somebody would change the header. Every time I see "Swedish
Model" I start salivating and panting at the prospect of seeing an
ash-blonde Nordic goddess. All I get is this inane banter .....

And the down-side is? Take it as a reminder to head over to
youtube and search for "Swedish Model."


Peter Skelton

Douglas Eagleson wrote:
On May 9, 1:28 pm, Mike wrote:
The Weekly Standard

The Swedish Model
How to build a jet fighter.
by Reuben F. Johnson
04/30/2008 11:45:00 PM

Linköping, Sweden
ON WEDNESDAY APRIL 23, Sweden's Saab Aerospace rolled out what may
become the fighter aircraft that sets the standard for the future of
the military aerospace business. What Saab is calling the "Next-
Generation Gripen"
(Gripen N/G for short), is a substantially modernized version of its
JAS-39C/D model, the fighter currently in service or in the process of
being delivered to the air forces of Sweden, Hungary, the Czech
Republic, South Africa, and Thailand.

As fighter aircraft go, the Gripen does not have the look of a super-
stealthy, new-age marvel like the two most recent Lockheed Martin (LM)
platforms--the F-22A Raptor or the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike
Fighter (JSF). The new Gripen N/G will also not feature an entire bevy
of brand-new, designed-from scratch on-board systems, although there
are some 3,500 new components that are part of the aircraft's
configuration.

The notable changes to the JAS-39 in its new incarnation are the
replacement of its single Volvo RM-12 engine with one General Electric
F414G, a variant of the same engine used as a two-power plant
propulsion system on the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet--a 25 per cent
increase in thrust. The airplane also will have a new active
electronically scanning array (AESA) radar set, a technology that has
now become a more or less standard requirement for any new fighter
aircraft. (This new radar will feature a Saab Microwave Systems
PS-05 design on the back end of the radar set, with a Thales active
array similar to that used on the Dassault Rafale fighter's RBE2 radar
on the front end.)

But the change that has perhaps the biggest impact on the Gripen's
performance has nothing to do with high-technology weaponry or
sensors. The landing gear have been displaced from the undercarriage
to the main wing pylons. This frees up a large space in the center
fuselage section of the aircraft and provides room for additional fuel
tanks. This gives the new Gripen and unrefueled range of 2,200
nautical miles, 500 more than the unrefueled range of the F-16.

What is remarkable about this Swedish product is that despite being
produced in rather modest numbers--and then add in the high rates of
taxation and super-expensive Scandinavian welfare state in which the
plane will be produced--this jet will still end up costing less than
half of the price of a Joint Strike Fighter, perhaps as little as one-
third. Moreover, customers of the Gripen are going to have full access
to the aircraft's software source code and will be able to make their
own modifications and integration of weapon systems.

But, the most interesting fact about the Gripen is what it says about
the fallacy upon which most modern-day military aircraft programs are
based.

There are about six fighter jets in the world that could be classified
as "new-generation designs." The Gripen, France's Dassault Rafale, the
F-22A and F-35, Russia's Sukhoi Su-35 Super Flanker, and the four-
nation consortium (UK, Germany, Italy, and Spain) Eurofighter Typhoon.
(A sixth player that can in some respects be considered a new model is
Russia's modernised version of the Mikoyan MiG-29, which is designate
the "MiG-35,"
although it retains almost the same basic platform as the MiG-29 it
does contain an AESA and a host of other new systems in it its
configuration.)

Of these six aircraft, three of them are designed and built by several
companies or several nations cooperating together. The F-22A is a
joint program between LM and Boeing, with several subsystem
contractors also on board as major partners. The Eurofighter is
largely a product of the aerospace industries of the four original
partner nations. The F-35 is the biggest cooperative program of them
all, pulling in the aerospace firms of the United States and the
United Kingdom, plus industrial partners from many of the other
nations that are also part of the program.

Military airplane programs that are produced by these "teams" of
companies are structured this way because--as the rationale goes--it
is "too expensive for one company or one country to go it alone."
Sharing the costs of designing, testing, building, and validating new
technologies--and giving each country or company that part of the
program where they have a competitive advantage--is supposed to make
these airplanes cheaper to procure for all of the participants.

Except that just the opposite has occurred. The F-35, a single-engine
stealthy aircraft, is projected by a recent report from the U.S.
Government Accounting Office to cost in the neighbourhood of $130
million per copy.
This is a program that, when it was developed, was specifically
designed to be "cheap," as in around $35-40 million per copy, and that
the designers were to make maximum use of commercial-off-the-shelf
(COTS) components in order to achieve that efficiency. So, why does it
end up costing more than three times one of the aircraft it is
supposed to replace-- the F-16--and almost three times the price of
the Gripen? (Not surprisingly, some of the JSF partner nations--namely
Norway--are now talking about bolting from the program in favor of a
Gripen purchase instead.)

The Eurofighter, partially thanks the catastrophic drop in value of
the U.S.
dollar against the Euro (and if you live in Europe as I do and try to
buy groceries and gas with dollars, "catastrophic" might not even be a
strong enough description for the situation), is now well over US $100
million. It suffers from the fact that it was organised and planned
primarily as "welfare for European aerospace and high-tech
industries," as one UK-based analyst described it, "and as a program
to produce a fighter as a secondary consideration."

The economies of scale that the Eurofighter was supposed to benefit
from as a result of being built by a "team" of companies never
materialised. Instead multiple redundancies were created that only
added to the bottom line and caused the progress of the program to
move forward at what seemed like a snail's pace at times. "Don't tell
anyone I ever told you this," said a frustrated Eurofighter test pilot
to me during a private chat at the Le Bourget air show almost a decade
ago, "but there are no efficiencies achieved in this program by having
four separate flight test centres--one in each of the partner
nations." The Eurofigther also has production lines in each of the
four nations, plus ground test facilities, etc.

(Having had the experience of the Eurofighter has not caused European
industry to rethink the viability of this model very much. The new-age
European military transport, the Airbus A400M, will be built in only
one factory instead of four, the CASA/EADS factory in Sevilla, Spain,
but the costs of the program are still expected to make it the most
expensive aircraft of its kind ever built.)

F-22A tops them all, however. The program's development has been long
and expensive. Admittedly, several technologies were pioneered and
matured by the process of designing and testing the F-22A. Many of
these technologies--now that F-22A has "paid the freight"--can be
dialled into numerous other future programs. But, when these
development costs are amortised over the production run of the Raptor,
the aircraft comes in at a whopping US $390 million per unit.

Surprisingly, the three aircraft that are built by one company in one
country--a feat that we have been told for more than 20 years is "no
longer affordable"--all cost well under $100 million. These are the
Gripen, the Rafale, and the Su-35. All of them contain the latest in
on-board systems technology, but they have been designed with stealthy
airframe shaping being far less important and with more reliance on
electronic warfare as a means of keeping them survivable in the air
combat or air defence environment.

There is something to be said for the fact that the emphasis on a
stealthy, low radar cross section (RCS) aircraft shape does a lot to
increase the costs of the F-22A and F-35, and that this is a
technology that is the competitive advantage that the United States
has over its adversaries. What is sobering to realize, however, is
that the one U.S. aircraft that was built with RCS being its primary--
in fact, perhaps its only--consideration was just retired this week
after one of the shortest service lifespans in the modern jet age: the
Lockheed Skunk Works F-117A Stealth Fighter.

The F-117A is now regarded as "old" technology where its RCS reduction
methods are concerned and no longer as effective ("its survivability
has been eroded" is the operative term) as it once was. Its missions
will be taken over by other more modern stealthy aircraft, such as the
F-35. One has to ask the question, though, given the significant
advances by Russia, China, and other nations in counter-stealth
methods and air defence, will the ultra-expensive F-22 and F-35 face
similarly truncated service lives?

(The fact that the F-117A design is said to be outmoded and made
obsolete by these newer model fighters did not keep the US Air Force
from continuing to engage in needlessly silly security arrangements.
The world's most famous and experienced air-to-air aircraft
photographer, Katsuhiko Tokunaga of Japan, was barred from the
retirement ceremony on the grounds that "no foreigners at all are
allowed." This despite the fact that he has flown more than 1,000
hours in the rear seats of almost all U.S. fighters and has completed
some of the most extensive air-to-air photography of the--supposedly--
much more advanced F-22A.)

On Monday the Indian Ministry of Defence accepted bids from six U.S.
and foreign competitors for the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (M-
MRCA) program. The $10 billion-plus program is the PowerBall lotto of
fighter aircraft sales and will be the largest procurement of a
military aircraft by a export customer in more than three decades.

The JAS-39, ...

read more »

A basic thing to remember a.

A simple test again who knows the answer?

What maneuver can attach to the wing of the trailing opponent and
deflect the ailerons?

A certain supesonic maneuver will generate a class of wake that will
always attack the trailing aircrafts ability to maintian control.

A canard aircraft will always appear to fall out of the sky, btw. It
will stall the front first. Flying into a sonic front as a rule was
always to worry the pilot because some people can intentionally form a
special wake front for you.
horsecrap

Eugene Griessel wrote:
I wish somebody would change the header. Every time I see "Swedish
Model" I start salivating and panting at the prospect of seeing an
ash-blonde Nordic goddess. All I get is this inane banter .....

It's a fair cop.


Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors--
and miss.

Love those Heinlein tags.



Jeff

"Ed Rasimus" wrote...
The two fastest 'rollers' Iknow of are the F104 Starfighter and the F5
series.
The 104 clocks out at about 420 degrees per second
The F5 series is credited with 450 degrees per second.

The T-38 roll-rate is listed at 720 degrees per second.

The A-4 is also 720 deg/sec. I can vouch for it!