Alan P Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 (edited) I think one of the best examples of doctrinal interference with reality is the USAF air campaign over North Vietnam. With a doctrine based on large-scale conflict with the Soviet Union, the A2A combat lessons of WW2 and Korea were sidelined in favour of rigid formation discipline and single shooter tactics (a version of finger four). Strangely this was just an air force thing. The same mistakes were not made by the US Navy who enjoyed far better results due to their looser, more flexible tactics. The air force abandoned their version of finger four not long afterwards in favour of the Top Gun style, mutually supportive pair. EDIT: I wrote a whole bunch of other stuff, but I said I'd stay out of it! Edited December 30, 2015 by Alan P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steelpillow Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 (edited) EDIT: I wrote a whole bunch of other stuff, but I said I'd stay out of it! and Britmodeller emailed it to me! Edited December 30, 2015 by steelpillow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-Neu- Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 One might have hoped that was one of the advantages back in 1910, there were no past air wars to warp their thinking. However HG Wells' widely-discussed novel The War in the Air highlighted a then-current vision of a vast Zeppelin bomber fleet laying waste to enemy cities, followed by troop-carriers to land an invading army. When the bomber menace actually materialised in a small way, the British were soon able to counter it. Nevertheless, Wells was mistaken in assuming that Zeppelins were cheap to manufacture and his grand vision was wholly impractical. OTOH there are valuable lessons to be learned from the past. perhaps the most widely-cited example was the British forgetting of the German flight unit of two pairs in loose formation - the "finger-four". In recent years we have seen the massed drone attack menace in the form both of cruise missiles, with human-controlled ground-attack drones like Reaper beginning also to multiplying rapidly. While a robotic land army is still in the indeterminate future, drone-on-drone air combat cannot be that many years away (surely during the operational lifetime of the F-35). I wonder whether the finger-four will stand the test in a drone-dominated airspace. F-35s won't operate in the finger four or anything resembling the formations of the past. In reality it will operate in far more dispersed formations that take advantage of communications and sensor advantages to allow the fighters to manage a larger battlespace area than traditional fighters. We already see this with F-22s, and the F-35 will move this trend even further. Moreover of all the options, the F-35 is intended to keep up with many of the developments you're discussing. The US military envisions the F-35 becoming a sort of decision-making nodes for a wide variety of systems in a theater, like drones. It will represent a "centaur" approach of decision making, where pilots work with large computing systems to identify the best strategy possible. In this case this will be a number of drones and other capabilities in an area. There are several advantages to this approach: latency issues are much reduced due to the lack of a need for SATCOM; Better situational awareness due to the controller's proximity to the battle-space, and having another capability in the region. I say all this but I'd also be very tentative about how capable drones will be in the future. Consider your zeppelin analogy: Drones are a lot more expensive than they seem (especially when you start to get into the MALE realm- a reaper requires 180 people to support, Global hawk over 300) and offer far lower reliability rates than other capabilities. Air to air drone operations are possible, but we really are still decades away for anything that can challenge our current generation of fighters. You couldn't have a drone controller fly a dogfight from a ground station: the latency and SA issues are too great to make it workable, so you need autonomy. However that's very difficult to achieve. Probably the best way to understand this is the massive cost required to get sensor fusion working for the F-35: such a system (or something like it) would be required as a precursor for autonomous drones... and even then you would almost certainly desire a man in the loop somewhere. If you can get your hands on this article, it is a very good overview on the subject. Does that mean that the US military has all the answers? No, of course not. However of all the states in the world, its been in the forefront of thinking ahead many of these changes, developing, fielding and testing solutions... often in an operational environment. Nobody is even close on any of these fronts, except perhaps China and even then its difficult to see them investing the money in same way that the United States has done in the past two decades. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bentwaters81tfw Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/2016/01/26/us-air-force-marine-corps-f-35s-appear-uk-air-shows/79355514/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seahawk Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 Plus one of the UK examples as well: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/12122345/Britains-new-F-35-stealth-fighter-to-finally-make-UK-debut-at-air-shows-this-year.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antoine Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 The one thing holding the Rafale back as far as export sales go is its lack of flexibility to anything but French weapons and systems. You can't just buy a fleet of Rafales and hang any weapons on them, you have to buy French gear for it. That's just France shooting itself in the foot with its own nationalism. A bit OT, but I'd be interested if you can elaborate on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhaselden Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 The Rafale can carry standard Paveway II and III LGBs but the remaining weapons are all of French origin which means potential customers can't load up Sidewinders, Mavericks, AMRAAMs etc. (assuming the customer has such weapons in their inventory). The Rafale can't even load other Brit/European weapons like Brimstone or ASRAAM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardPrice Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 The Rafale can carry standard Paveway II and III LGBs but the remaining weapons are all of French origin which means potential customers can't load up Sidewinders, Mavericks, AMRAAMs etc. (assuming the customer has such weapons in their inventory). The Rafale can't even load other Brit/European weapons like Brimstone or ASRAAM. If the primary customer isnt going to use those weapons, why would the primary customer pay to certify those weapons on the platform? So you end up with two options - the manufacturer certifying those weapons at its own (considerable) expense, or a secondary customer certifying the weapons on the platform. Wasn't it Malaysia that certified the AMRAAM on their SU-30MKM's? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhaselden Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 Agreed but it's a side-effect of the long-standing interoperability challenges between France and NATO. Clearly, it's a customer decision on whether to just buy French weapons or to pay for certification of non-French weapons onto the airframe. However, either option could be a mark in the negative column for any nation that currently has stocks of sidewinders etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 I've edited the title to this one, as it was annoying me. It immediately starts the discussion with a negative spin, as if it's ever going to get cancelled due to a few moaning aviation journalists & modellers. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bentwaters81tfw Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 Good idea. It's a general heading for the 'project'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhaselden Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 I've edited the title to this one, as it was annoying me. It immediately starts the discussion with a negative spin, as if it's ever going to get cancelled due to a few moaning aviation journalists & modellers. Thanks Mike. You must have a spirit level permanently affixed to your cranium, you're so level-headed. Notwithstanding the original negative title, it's still pretty impressive that we've reached Page 17 on this thread without it being shut down! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 It's what happens when people behave like grown ups (for the most part) 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhaselden Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 We do try...honest, guv'nor. For the record, I think you do a great job as Senior Grown-Up! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antoine Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 The Rafale can carry standard Paveway II and III LGBs but the remaining weapons are all of French origin which means potential customers can't load up Sidewinders, Mavericks, AMRAAMs etc. (assuming the customer has such weapons in their inventory). The Rafale can't even load other Brit/European weapons like Brimstone or ASRAAM. Well, I usually appreciate a lot your imputs, Mark, but what are we talking about exactly here? Leaving aside the fuel tanks (in most case specific to an aircraft type), the AAR Douglas pod (of US origin!!!), the Thales recce pod (Why would you want another?), the Damocles designation pod (already compatible with most of US LGB), we will also forgot the nuke ASMP-A, and the Exocet block III (Appart from the Harpoon, what else do you want?). On the A2G side, there's a wider choice, let's have a look. We have the AASM Hammer, but if you don't like it, there's still the usual US paveway II and III. There also for more stand-off the possibility to load MBDA Scalp-EG/Apache/Storm Shadow, shared with Eurofighter and Tournedos, IIRC. MBDA, remember, a British/Italian/French consortium. By the way, Brimstone is envisaged. What's next, A2A? Well, again from MBDA (European, remember?), Rafale will be set from the beginning to fire the Meteor long range A2A missile. So what's left now? MICA-IR and MICA-EM. Yes, so far, AMRAAM and AIM-9X are not allowed on the Rafale. Is it definitive? No, Rafale is in conformity with Mil-Std-1760 (as the F-15/16, etc...) so in principle, no current US missile integration is impossible. But then why do Rafale customer would want AMRAAM instead of MICA? So in the end, what are we talking about here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alex Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 Considering what the Tiffy can carry, it's a lot. Still missing some SEAD capabilities (AGM-88), which would be nice to have. But I agree with Antoine, from Buddy refuelling, precision and long range strikes up to a nuclear badda-boom it's a really true multi-mission platform. Alex Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antoine Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 I must admit I forgot about SEAD, but I don't know AdA and Aéronavale doctrine to deal with SAM site, as the MARTEL is no more. And SCALP seems to be a bit expensive to play AGM-88. Still the HARM could be a potential weapon, a bit old, but easily integrated. Remember the first F-16 Weasel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 We do try...honest, guv'nor. For the record, I think you do a great job as Senior Grown-Up! It's all an act Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhaselden Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 To Antoine, I'm not dinging Rafale - it's clearly a very capable platform. It's just a question of horses for courses. If the potential customer has already invested in large stocks of weapons that can't be loaded on Rafale, then clearly that factor must be considered in the procurement process. It may put off some customers while others may not care. It all comes down to cost, schedule and risk - standard procurement assessment factors. Cheers, Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Homerlovesbeer Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 (edited) I'll post a few youtube vids tomorrow you guys may find interesting. Edited January 28, 2016 by Homerlovesbeer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raguk Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 Guys and Gals, With relation to the earlier posts about the F-35 at RIAT heres the link to the RIAT site, Buy your tickets now! http://www.airtattoo.com/news/2016/jan/26/f-35-confirmed-for-2016 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PLC1966 Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 Guys and Gals, With relation to the earlier posts about the F-35 at RIAT heres the link to the RIAT site, Buy your tickets now! http://www.airtattoo.com/news/2016/jan/26/f-35-confirmed-for-2016 Sorry but I thought we had already established earlier in this thread that single engined jets couldn't safely fly across the oceans..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bentwaters81tfw Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 Has to be a good reason to stay away. I have a picture somewhere of the plastic one at RIAT many years ago. Had a chat with the LM publicity guy about it. Have to admit I was not over the moon back then, and thought it would end up as a stepping stone to something better. Chap was impressed with my assessment, and gave me a gold F-35 tie tack, which I still have, in it's ziplock bag. As an aside, looking at the list, only the Swiss have confirmed apart from the F-35. I wonder if participants are hanging back pending the Shoreham inquiry, or as a Military event, it's exempt? If they invited the Russians, I would go. Love to see the TU-95, 160, 22, MiG 31, Fitter Su-24 and 33, 34. That would make it worth the trip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan P Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 The general tone of this topic could be summed up as "I have an opinion, stop trying to influence me with facts." 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duncan B Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 It's hopeless! That metallic shiny paint will be awful to paint and I bet the stickers will silver too. I'll get my Duncan B (bringing it down to my level) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts