phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (02/28/85)
Seems like everyone here wants to talk about improving their flying
technique. Does anyone want to talk about warplanes and dogfights
and such? Questions like, wouldn't an AWACS with a bunch of Phoenixes
(which are reputed to have a range of 100 miles) be able to control
the sky even against F15s? If two modern fighters released their
missiles at each other at the same time, would both go down? Would
having a tail gun be of value in dogfights without missiles?
The harrier is reputed to be very tricky in a dogfight due to its
ability to use vectored thrust to do things no normal fighter can.
How would it fare against an F15? etc.
--
Why, that's more useless than the left thumb of a touch typist!
Phil Ngai (408) 749-5720
UUCP: {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra}!amdcad!phil
ARPA: amdcad!phil@decwrl.ARPAdavid@infopro.UUCP (Buckaroo Banzai) (03/01/85)
According to a friend of mine, who is associated with the aerospace
industry, with a very limited number of
them in the world, AWACS tend to stay well back from the fighting.
They are always used in defensive scenarios and are too expensive and
delicate to use against fighters.
--
Dave Fiedler
{harpo,astrovax,whuxcc,clyde}!infopro!dave People Phone: (201) 989-0570
USMail: InfoPro Systems, 3108 Route 10, Denville, NJ 07834wolit@alice.UUCP (Jan Wolitzky) (03/01/85)
> Seems like everyone here wants to talk about improving their flying > technique. Does anyone want to talk about warplanes and dogfights > and such? Questions like, wouldn't an AWACS with a bunch of Phoenixes > (which are reputed to have a range of 100 miles) be able to control > the sky even against F15s? If two modern fighters released their > missiles at each other at the same time, would both go down? Would > having a tail gun be of value in dogfights without missiles? > The harrier is reputed to be very tricky in a dogfight due to its > ability to use vectored thrust to do things no normal fighter can. > How would it fare against an F15? etc. The first question is easy: there are a lot more people on this net (like me) who fly light planes and want to exchange info about technique than there are fighter jocks with first-hand experience. However, if you want to armchair it... An AWACS with a bunch of Phoenix missiles would be a pretty sorry dogfighter. For that matter, so would any other plane (like an F-14, for instance) that relied on the Phoenix for dogfighting, or any plane (like the F-15) that relied heavily on any radar-guided missile (yes, the F-15 can also carry the IR-guided Sidewinder which, current reliability problems aside -- nearly a third of the Sidewinders in the USAF inventory were recently found to be not combat-ready -- has a pretty good record in combat). The reason for this is that a radar transmitter can be detected at a far greater range than it is effective at -- all you need is a fancy Fuzz-Buster. Because of this, whoever turns on his search radar first in a dogfight usually loses big: it's like two guys in a dark room, each carrying a flashlight and a gun -- whoever turns on his flashlight to find the other becomes a sitting duck. And you have to admit that without radar (and radar-guided missiles), an AWACS is nothing but a very expensive 707. That's why they need lots of fighter escort. Radar is also pretty expensive and unreliable compared to passive techniques like IR and eyeballs. In dissimilar combat exercises run by the USAF and the Navy, F-5's with guns and IR-missiles usually beat the pants off F-15's and the like, especially when the numbers are anything like what could be expected in a NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation. A tail gun would probably be a real effective weapon, as long as you had a tail gunner to man it (I would hate to have to fly an F-15 while looking in the rear-view mirror, and a radar-guided gun probably wouldn't work well enough to be worth it). Take a look at intercept photos of some current Soviet bombers some day in Aviation Week -- a lot of them carry tail guns. Harriers did pretty well against modern supersonic Mirage fighters during the Falklands fiasco. They used cheap, effective Sidewinders (see above) and the ability to get an opponent off one's tail -- and get on *HIS* tail, which is the only reliable way to score a kill -- by "VFF-ing", which is what the British pilots called using vectored forward thrust to stop on a dime, so to speak. If you want to read a very good account of the relative merits of cheap, simple weapons versus expensive, fancy ones, see James Fallows' "National Defense," which came out about three or four years ago, I believe. -- Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ; (201) 582-2998
wanttaja@ssc-vax.UUCP (Ronald J Wanttaja) (03/02/85)
> Seems like everyone here wants to talk about improving their flying > technique. Does anyone want to talk about warplanes and dogfights > and such? Questions like, wouldn't an AWACS with a bunch of Phoenixes > (which are reputed to have a range of 100 miles) be able to control > the sky even against F15s? Odd you should mention that. I saw some of the output from an unclassified study, here at Boeing, where an armed AWACS 747SP was examined as a fleet defense aircraft. It had an AWACS rotodome on top, and two rotating missile launchers (a la bomb bay in B-1) mounted internally fore and aft, each with 18 Phoenix missiles. This would give it the firepower of six F-14s, in a mission where maneuverability is not critical (although what it would do agains Libyan SU-22s is anyone's guess :-) ). Never saw any of the data that resulted from the study, just happened upon an extra drawing on someone's desk and asked about it. The folks at the commercial aircraft division just love it when we at BAC come up with another use for their aircraft... witness the mini-shuttle air-launched from a 747, etc... Ron Wanttaja (ssc-vax!wanttaja) "Faith, sir, 'tis true... you have the looks and manners of a hangman..."
tggsu@resonex.UUCP (Tom Gulvin Root) (03/12/85)
> > Seems like everyone here wants to talk about improving their flying > > technique. Does anyone want to talk about warplanes and dogfights > > and such? Questions like, wouldn't an AWACS with a bunch of Phoenixes > > (which are reputed to have a range of 100 miles) be able to control > > the sky even against F15s? > > Odd you should mention that. I saw some of the output from an unclassified > study, here at Boeing, where an armed AWACS 747SP was examined as a fleet > defense aircraft. It had an AWACS rotodome on top, and two rotating > missile launchers (a la bomb bay in B-1) mounted internally fore and aft, > each with 18 Phoenix missiles. This would give it the firepower of six > F-14s, in a mission where maneuverability is not critical (although what > it would do agains Libyan SU-22s is anyone's guess :-) ). Never saw > any of the data that resulted from the study, just happened upon an extra > drawing on someone's desk and asked about it. The folks at the > commercial aircraft division just love it when we at BAC come up with > another use for their aircraft... witness the mini-shuttle air-launched from > a 747, etc... > > Ron Wanttaja > (ssc-vax!wanttaja) > > "Faith, sir, 'tis true... you have the looks and manners of > a hangman..." AIM-54A/C - wonderful missle. Hughes - wonderful company. In the mid to late seventies, the Navy complained that the missles cost too much. ~$500,000. Hughes said don't worry - we'll redesign a 'much-lower-cost' version - AIM-54C. Production started about 1982 - AIM-54A still cost about $500,000 then. Go read Aviation Week - we just bought a truck load of AIM-54Cs for >$1,000,000 each. Tom Gulvin - Resonex, Inc. - Sunnyvale CA.