International Aerospace Discussion

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ranganathan
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by ranganathan »

That was pathetic display :rotfl: . Looked like a pregnant hippo trying to do a ballet. Very laborious and no grace like the MKI or Mig-29 OVT.
MukulMohanty
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by MukulMohanty »

I thought it was excellent!!

+ I noted something in FT. It has a transparent fibre glass cover over its TVC Nozzles. Its like they have a cover on them... Resulting in the exposed surface area for thermal signature recognition to be much lower...

It seriously is a beautiful plane. Very slick. Apparantly, it landed did an 8 minute maneuvre and then left.
Singha
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Joined: 13 Aug 2004 19:42
Location: the grasshopper lies heavy

Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Singha »

here is an article from back in 1981. read it in a readers digest around 1982
when I was in class4. I was hooked on fighters. for some reason I recalled
it today in the pakfa thread and googled it up.....my mem is still sharp enuf
after 26 yrs.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96feb/745/fallfly.htm

I Fly With the Eagles

"Roger, 90 left, SPAD 2."

"God, no!"

by James Fallows


"You want to fly with the eagles, you got to pay the price," Dick Anderegg told me on the phone. Anderegg is an Air Force major in his middle thirties, a fighter pilot so proficient that until recently he was an instructor at the Air Force's Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base, near Las Vegas. Now he works at the Pentagon, as an aide (or "action officer," in the current phrase) to a general, and it was in that capacity that he became my chaperone for a time early this fall.

The Air Force is well-known for embracing its antagonists with hospitality and with technical displays. I had become eligible for such embrace by writing (in the May issue of The Atlantic) about the harmful consequences of the American military's progression toward more complex, sensitive, and expensive weaponry--of which one of the most complex, sensitive, and expensive specimens is the fighter plane known as the "Eagle," or F-15. After the article was published, the Air Force arranged several meetings with pilots and other authorities who testified about the Eagle's capabilities. At the end of one such session, I commented that if the plane was so phenomenal, it would certainly be interesting to take a ride.

"Done," said John T. Chain, the major general who was at the time the Air Force's director of operations. He passed me into the hands of Major Anderegg, with whom I spent many hours in the following weeks.

The "price" that Anderegg had in mind was the sequence of pre-flight examinations and training that outsiders must go through before they are allowed to ride into the sky. One was an extensive physical, meant to reduce the likelihood that a passenger will die during the flight. Next came "physiological training," a three-hour session at Andrews Air Force Base designed to inform those who will fly in high-performance aircraft about some of the conditions they may confront. Half the time was devoted to a lecture about what happens to the human body when it is subjected to low atmospheric pressure and shortages of oxygen; the other half was spent in a test chamber that simulated those two conditions. Air Force pilots are required to go through physiological training every three years, and they regard it as a bore. Quite a few outsiders have also taken it. "In my time here we've trained twice on Saturdays," one officer told me during my visit, which took place on a Wednesday. "Once for General Allen [Lew Allen, the Air Force Chief of Staff] and once for John Denver."

I spent my time in the chamber under the supervision of Sergeant Clark Mittan, a twenty-four-year veteran of the force. He began by demonstrating the effects of low pressure on the ears and on gases trapped in the nether regions of the body. Inside the chamber, the atmospheric pressure was slowly reduced to approximately that at an elevation of 35,000 feet. In the chamber was a quart jar with a surgical glove stretched across its mouth. At sea-level pressure, the glove hung limp. At 35,000 feet, it was the size of a basketball. My abdomen felt as if it had a basketball inside. Then normal pressure was restored, as a prelude to "explosive decompression"--a simulation of what would happen if the airplane's canopy blew off during high-altitude flight.

As the final item of physiological training, Sergeant Mittan demonstrated the effects of hypoxia, or a shortage of oxygen. Captain Albert Hartzell, in the lecture that preceded the "chamber flight," had listed some of the symptoms of hypoxia--rapid breathing, impaired judgment, a blue tint to the fingertips and lips. This demonstration was supposed to teach me how to make the diagnosis myself. It was not hard. With the chamber's "altitude" raised to 25,000 feet, the sergeant told me to take off my oxygen mask. He then handed me a little worksheet and told me to begin. On the left were columns of numbers to add or multiply, along with mazes and other items demanding reasoning power. On the right was a list of the symptoms of hypoxia. The idea was to start working on the problems, and then to circle the symptoms as they occurred. Within thirty seconds, arithmetic was a challenge. One minute later, I was drawing loose circles around "dizzy" and "sleepy" on the symptom list and was looking forward to a long, long sleep. Sergeant Mittan reached over to snap my oxygen mask back on. The lesson was at an end.

"Have a good trip," the sergeant said. "How come WE never get to fly on those planes?" the captain asked. I was prepared for everything except what actually occurred.

My hope had been to enjoy a spectacle without creating one. The second part of that hope was not to be fulfilled. :) At dinner the night before the flight, I sat in the officers' club at Langley Air Force Base, in Virginia, with two generals and assorted colonels and majors. I made nervous hardee-har-har jokes about increasing my life-insurance coverage and enjoying my last meal.

The delight on my face was all too obvious whenever Thomas Barber, the lieutenant colonel and squadron commander who would be my pilot the following morning, turned down the waitress's repeated offers of wine or after-dinner drinks. The wake-up was set for six o'clock the following morning.

As the clock passed ten, I grew anxious that Barber had not yet been sent home to get a good sleep. I was alarmed when, shortly after eleven, one of the generals asked Barber not to go directly home but instead to swing past the squadron headquarters and pick up a flight suit for me to wear. It was almost midnight when we picked up the suit. In the meantime, Major General John Piotrowski, who accompanied me during nearly every waking hour of my visit, had taken me out to the flight line to watch the late-shift maintenance crew work on the F-15s. Go to bed! I wanted to say when I saw Barber there holding my flight suit and my black Air Force boots. He stood by politely until the general finished his explanations, then we went our separate ways to bed.

When I reappeared in the officers' club at six-thirty the next morning for breakfast with the general, I was a changed man. I was clothed in the flight suit, a light-weight green overall that had badges and insignia on every available space. These gave my name and indicated my association with the Tactical Air Command, the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing, the 94th Tactical Fighter Squadron--and my assignment, should the need arise, to the Rapid Deployment Force. The 94th Squadron, which Tom Barber commanded, is Eddie Rickenbacker's old unit, and its emblem is Rickenbacker's hat-in-the-ring from World War I. Members of the squadron wear white mock-silk scarves, printed with pale blue hats-in-the-ring. "Wear the scarf," General Piotrowski had told me as he dropped me at my quarters the night before. "The men have a lot of pride in the unit. It'll mean something to them." I had put it on under the flight suit and fluffed it out at the neck in the fashion of an ascot. When I entered the squadron headquarters after breakfast, I saw that my scarf did mean something to the pilots, and what it meant was, This man is a jerk. They wore their scarves draped around their necks, like shawls, with only the thinnest edge visible above the flight suit. I scuttled into the bathroom and re-emerged looking--at least as far as my scarf was concerned--just like everybody else.

Under the guidance of Gerald Gomez, a sergeant in his mid-twenties who had a no-nonsense air, the 94th's equipment crew began suiting me up. I received an oxygen mask, after the length and breadth of my face was measured with calipers; a helmet, complete with visor and moleskin skullcap to absorb the sweat; a parachute harness, which when it is fully connected requires the wearer to walk bent over, like a gorilla; and finally, my G-suit.

The G-suit is an abbreviated set of coveralls that runs from the bottom of the rib cage down to the ankles and that contains several inflatable bladders. The bladders lie over the lower abdomen, the thighs, and the calves of the legs. To make sure the bladders are snug, two of the crewmen stand behind the wearer and haul on laces with all their might, as if they were helping Scarlett O'Hara into her whalebone corset. When fighter airplanes go into violent maneuvers, their crews are subjected for periods of seconds or even minutes to forces several times as great as that of gravity. (Three Gs equals three times the force of gravity, for example.) The effect of high Gs is, among other things, to drive the pilot's blood away from his brain and toward his abdomen and legs, causing him to pass out. The idea of the G-suit is to slow this process down. Inside the plane, the suit is connected to a pneumatic system that automatically inflates the bladders as soon as high-G forces begin. The pressure the bladders exert on the legs and belly is supposed to retard the pooling of blood--and also to remind the wearer to begin the "M-1 maneuver," which involves tensing the muscles of the entire body and making deep grunting sounds. "The G-suit and the M-1, they'll give you an extra G or two of protection," one sergeant said, while lacing me up. "Here's what it's going to feel like." He walked me over to a bicycle pump and inflated the suit. As the bladders swelled around me, I felt like the Michelin tire man.

My education as a flier included one more step, known as "emergency egress training." Like other non-flying chores, such as sitting at the end of the runway to make sure that planes aren't about to land with their wheels still up, this duty is rotated among the pilots in the squadron. The 94th's emergency egress officer was Ed Cantwell, a twenty-four-year-old lieutenant who, like so many other officers, had grown up in a military family. He had gone into the Air Force after graduating from Duke. As a class, fighter pilots tend toward a jauntiness that tempts some of them to look down on even the test pilots, whose world Tom Wolfe glorified in The Right Stuff. No one is shooting at the test pilots, after all. This confidence is most obvious among young pilots, such as Cantwell. At an age when his classmates were swotting for the bar exam or making insurance deals, Cantwell was flying the hottest plane. I pitched him a softball: "I guess it's pretty much the top of the heap to be driving the F-15." "You bet," he said with a grin.

Cantwell drove me to a training hangar that contained a mock-up of the F-15's cockpit. He showed me how to get into the seat, how to undo all the buckles and harnesses if I had to get out of the plane in a hurry on the ground, and which handles I should not touch unless I wanted to blow the canopy off or eject myself while the plane was still on the runway. "We had a nurse do that one time," he said. "DON'T TOUCH 'EM." He said that if we had to eject from the plane at high altitude, my only job would be to lean back and let the automatic systems do their work. A substantial investment of faith would be required if that occurred. When the plane is flying at 35,000 feet, the temperature outside is 65 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and there is virtually nothing to breathe. If a flier has to eject at that height, he is supposed not to deploy his parachute, which would slow him down so much that he would spend too much time in these inhospitable surroundings, but instead simply to drop like a stone until he reaches an altitude of some 14,000 feet. This means a total free fall of about four miles, which takes almost three minutes. A small drogue parachute is supposed to open along the way and provide just enough drag to keep the chair upright rather than letting it tumble end over end. In theory, there is nothing to worry about throughout that long descent, and no reason to rip in panic at the manual parachute release, because special sensors in the new Aces II ejection seat are supposed to send out the parachute at just the right time. I thought that pilots must be a trusting lot.

What remained was the pre-flight briefing, conducted by another pilot, Captain Donald Ross. Ross could have been a figure from a movie about the RAF during the Battle of Britain. Lean and dark-haired, he is in his late twenties, and wears a thin moustache. Ross had recently been selected to join a class at the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis. He would fly one F-15 while I rode behind Barber in the other. Together they would engage two F-4 fighters, which would assume the role of Russian fighter-bomber planes known as "Floggers." For this exercise, the Floggers would be thought of as heading for a target area--a NATO airfield, say--which they would destroy if they managed to reach it unmolested. The role of the F-15s was to "kill" them before they got there.

Ross went to a blackboard and indicated with his pointer the area of the exercise, a circle roughly thirty miles in diameter over the Atlantic Ocean. The Floggers would take off from North Carolina, and the F-15s would go and get them. The obvious purpose of the exercise was to show off the virtues of the F-15's electronics and radar systems, which can detect other planes at great distances and send a variety of radar-guided missiles to destroy them. In real combat, it might be difficult to tell which of the blips on the radar screen was friendly and which a foe--indeed, this is one of the central criticisms of the plane's high-cost radar systems. No such difficulties would affect this demonstration: since the exercise was to be run in a special restricted air zone, anything that showed up would be the enemy.

In the first two simulated attacks, the F-15s would rely on their radar missiles. In the third, Ross and Barber would start out using radar but then convert to a "visual" approach--that is; they would wait to see the other planes before shooting at them. In place of real missiles, the planes in the exercise would carry "pods" full of sensors that would record minute details of each plane's movements and its position relative to all the others.

These readings could then be combined in a computer and stored on tape. After the flight, we would see all the action replayed on a four-foot-square, full-color computer screen, which would offer views of each engagement as it appeared from above (the "God's-eye view"), from the side, or from the cockpit of each airplane.

At last it was time to march out to the planes. The F-15, though large by the standards of fighter aircraft, looks small to laymen accustomed to commercial planes. It has a double tail, a large "bubble" canopy, and rectangular air intakes roughly four feet by two feet on either side of the cockpit.

"You'll see how roomy she is," Ed Cantwell told me as I jackknifed my way into the rear seat. (The F-15 usually flies with only one pilot, but one or two planes in each squadron of twenty-four planes are modified to include a second seat.)

Tom Barber, who had been taciturnity itself before stepping into the airplane, suddenly came to life, radioing commands and going through his pre-flight checklists, telling me to get my knees out of the way as he moved the joy stick in his cockpit making the one in the rear seat move in sync. Cantwell told me to take off my scarf, already the source of so much annoyance, because it would constitute a fire hazard during flight. As I tucked it into a pocket on one leg of my G-suit, I saw that Barber had already removed his scarf. I had not realized until then that the scarves were purely for esprit de corps, and could not be worn when the pilots were doing their job. Soon everything was buttoned up--helmet fastened with chin strap, oxygen mask clipped onto helmet, canopy cover lowered onto the plane. As Ed Cantwell had suggested, I pushed the button that raised my seat until I could survey the surroundings from high up in the canopy. Barber told me to lower the tinted visor on the helmet, and we were off.

The two F-15s--code-named "SPAD 1" and "SPAD 2" (after the French planes that Rickenbacker flew) for this exercise--taxied to the end of the runway and lined up side by side. They started rolling down the runway together and lifted off in perfect parallel. "What's the separation here?" I asked Barber, as I looked to my left and saw Ross's plane almost close enough to touch. "Ahh...ten feet at the wingtips," he said. For about a minute, the planes climbed together at a steep angle, constantly gaining speed.

"Piece of cake," I thought, as we traveled out over the ocean and the planes moved farther apart. The airspeed was about 550 miles per hour, but so far all the acceleration had been straight ahead, producing a sensation that was much stronger than but otherwise no different from what the passengers feel when a car in which they are riding speeds off from a standing start. The large, clear canopies gave the effect not of looking at the atmosphere but of being out in it. Everything was quiet and smooth.

I watched as Barber adjusted the radar scan to cover different altitudes and distances and to look for the blips that would be the "enemy" planes. Once the blips appeared, the ensuing steps would be like those of "Space Invaders" or other computerized video games. Barber would position a targeting marker over the blip he wanted to destroy. A set of indicators on the right-hand side of the radar screen would tell him when the target was within firing range. When everything was lined up, he would push the firing button. In real combat, a radar-guided missile would be released; in this case, a computerized command center that was monitoring the exercise would get the indication that Barber had fired. The missile would presumably track down the target. The enemy blip would disappear from the screen.

As Barber finished explaining the procedure, the radio crackled. Ross, in SPAD 1, had seen the Floggers in the area he was watching. The engagements began.

Of the next fifty-five minutes I have only the most confused and distressing of memories. When the exercise was over and I could watch it all replayed on the computer screen, I could discern the logical pattern of events. The F-15s turned to intercept the Floggers; the Floggers turned in response; the F-15s got within range and fired their (simulated) missiles. All went as planned. Even the last engagement, the dogfight in which the F-15s chased down the Floggers to very close range, seemed clear and comprehensible on the screen. But in the air, it looked much different.

During our drive from Washington to Langley Air Force Base, Dick Anderegg, the combat pilot, had said, "I think you'll be surprised at what sheer physical labor it is to fly in these planes." Surprise was hardly the term. Nothing in normal life approximates either the effect of the high G-forces or the disorientation caused by the repeated, sudden changes in course. The highest G-forces occur when the plane makes a sharp turn, and the longer the turn is sustained, the longer the pilot must "pull" extra Gs. The effect is the same as when children fill a pail of water, attach a rope to the handle, and then swing it around with the rope. As the pail moves in a circle, the constant acceleration creates the centrifugal force that holds the water in the bottom of the pail. As the airplane moves through a curve, the acceleration creates the high G-forces that drive the pilot toward the bottom of his chair. G-forces are technically described as making your body feel as if it weighs several times more than its normal weight.

To me, it felt as if I were being held in a giant fist and squeezed. At 5 Gs, my head was driven down onto my chest. For days after the flight, the muscles at the back of my neck ached from their futile attempt to resist that pressure. At 6 Gs, the flesh over my cheekbones was pulled down toward my chin. The G-meter showed that the maximum force during the flight was about 7 Gs, which we held for just a few seconds. Barber said that the F-15 can sustain a 4- or 5-G turn until it runs out of gas, and that pilots may have to "pull" those G-forces for as long as a minute. ("It feels like all day.") Pilots who fly the F-16 must withstand forces as high as 9 Gs. All the while, of course, they are guiding the airplane, selecting targets, and trying to avoid being destroyed by enemy planes.

More discomforting than the sustained G-forces was the accumulation of sudden turns. After the flight, in an attempt to lift my spirits, some of the pilots told me that even they grew queasy when forced to ride in the rear seat, where they are not in control of the plane's movements and are therefore caught by surprise by each turn.

That may be true; all I know for certain is that, having started the flight in robust good health, I was reduced after twenty minutes of maneuvering to a state of paralyzing nausea.

There was, in fact, some warning of the turns. Over the radio, I would hear Barber tell Ross, "90 left," which meant that the planes would make sharp right-angle turns to the left. More simply, they said, "Goin' at 'em," which meant a screaming dive toward the Floggers. By the time I'd had enough experience to know what a 90-degree turn would be like, I was able to join in the chatter between the planes:

"90 left, SPAD 1."

"Roger, 90 left, SPAD 2."

"God, no!"
:rotfl:

From the physiologist's perspective, it was a case of the fluid inside the three semicircular canals of the inner ear being set in too-rapid motion and producing the sensation of nausea. From my perspective, it was an acute practical problem. Before I left the squadron building, a young sergeant had laid down the law "You puke in your mask, you clean it out." As the plane leveled off between passes, I clawed at the bayonet clamp that held the mask to the helmet, determined at all costs to get the mask away from my face. In a pouch near the bottom of my G-suit, Dick Anderegg had thoughtfully tucked away four plastic bags for just such a contingency. I got one out and placed it to my face just in time--and then, in a fool's paradise, imagined that because there was nothing more in my stomach, I'd be safe for the rest of the flight. The truth was less pleasant. For the last twenty minutes of the flight, I worked a carefully coordinated two-handed maneuver. In the left hand, I held my oxygen mask, which I slapped to my face for occasional breaths. (The cabin's internal pressure was such that I didn't really need the mask, but the oxygen was cool and felt good.) In my right hand was the bag, which alternated places with the mask, in a retch-breathe-retch-breathe pattern.

As I was getting the pattern down, Barber's voice came through the intercom:

"How ya doing?" .

"Okay," I said in a strangled voice.

"Want to see what she can do?"

"Sssssuuuuuure." I had come this far, and (I had recently decided) I would never be here again, so why not see the whole show?

Up we went.

The F-15 weighs some 40,000 pounds. Its two engines can generate a thrust of about 22,500 pounds each, for a total of 45,000 pounds. The result is a "thrust-to-weight" ratio of greater than 1, which means that the plane, unlike most in the world, can not only travel virtually straight up but can, under certain circumstances, gain speed while doing so. Barber showed me some of these "vertical maneuvers." We climbed in what seemed like seconds from 15,000 to 38,000 feet--an ascent of more than four miles. We went back down, then began a nearly straight-up climb, at the top of which he leaned the airplane over onto its back, and then came around for a nearly straight-down descent. Outside the canopy the sky and sea twirled around and around.

Some of these acrobatics were quite exhilarating, as opposed to the wrenching, zigzag turns of the rest of the flight.

Either just before or just after the vertical maneuvers--all recollections are blurred--it was time for the third engagement, the one in which the F-15s were supposed to hunt down the Floggers and shoot them at close range. This involved the hardest (i.e. the most sickening) maneuvering of all the engagements, and it demonstrated yet another of the physical demands placed upon the pilots. The F-4s that were acting as Floggers are supposed to be particularly ill-suited to daytime air combat, since their engines emit smoke trails that make the planes visible from miles away. Experienced F-4 pilots complain that the smoky engine makes them forfeit the all-important ability to catch other planes by surprise. The difference between smoking and smokeless engines is crucial to the pilots but virtually undetectable by the untrained eye. By normal standards, my eyesight is fine.

But when I heard Ross and Barber saying, "There's the smoke trail," "Yep, I've got him," and then looked outside, I could see nothing but sky. Barber kept asking me, "See him? See him?" I said I couldn't, so he drove on the F-4 until from his perspective he was about to fly up the other plane's tailpipe. At that point, I could make out a small craft nearby, barely distinguishable against the background of blue.

With the Floggers thrice destroyed, and the vertical maneuvers out of the way, SPAD 1 and SPAD 2 turned for home. Barber offered me my moment of glory, asking, "You want to take the stick?" He soon inquired politely whether I could see the horizon, since I kept pushing the plane into a leftward dive. I felt fortunate that he could not turn around and see me behind him, so he did not understand that the bias in my steering was caused by my wracked, slumping posture in the back of the plane.

"She's all yours," I said, as I reached for the bag again; he brought us in the rest of the way.

As the planes neared Langley, they lined up once again in parallel, a distance that seemed to be inches but was actually a few feet separating their wings. At such close range, I could see with perfect clarity every move that Don Ross made as he sat, erect and jaunty, in the cockpit of his plane. I considered the scene that presented itself to him when he turned to glance at us: one figure in the front seat, calmly guiding the aircraft toward the runway, and in the rear a limp rag doll, sweat pouring down his face, trying to preserve his dignity by reconnecting his oxygen mask as his head bobbled weakly up and down.

Before the flight, an Air Force photographer had taken countless pictures of the smiling visitor as he walked across the tarmac and climbed into the plane. Those were printed and ready by the time we landed, including one mounted on a plaque commemorating my new status as an "Eagle Driver." General Piotrowski pressed these "before" pictures--and their negatives--into my hands after I stumbled down the ladder from the cockpit. I noticed the same photographer nearby, snapping "after" pictures of a man with blotches of sweat all over his flight suit and a yearning-for-death expression on his face. Those photos, and their negatives, remain in the Air Force's merciful hands.
:twisted:
I did not go to Langley just to have fun. There was an instructional purpose to the visit, which was to hear the Air Force's rebuttal to criticisms of the excessive cost, sensitivity, and complexity of its most "advanced" planes.

To the Air Force, the F-15 is a symbol of the advances in computer systems, radar, and propulsion that are necessary to repel the Soviet force. But to those who argue against excessive complexity and cost, it represents high-technology weapons that are more impressive in theory than they would be in the chaotic conditions of real combat. This analysis concludes that it is time to tip the balance back toward larger numbers of simpler, cheaper weapons that are easier to maintain and that offer more training time for the troops. The A-10, which is designed to destroy tanks, is one example of such an airplane; a fighter called the F-16 is another.

I heard the reasoning behind the Air Force's outlook during several long sessions at Langley. One was a formal briefing that consumed much of the day before my flight, in which two young officers stood behind lecterns and took turns reading from a script and narrating slides and filmstrips, while I sat at a big table with two generals and a half-dozen Colonels. Another was an interview with William Creech, a four-star general who is commander of the Tactical Air Command. This took place shortly after my experience in the sky.

In defending the performance of their most complex weapons, the officials made several reasonable points. They remarked that the reliability records of complex planes such as the F-15 are starting to improve. Two and a half years ago, about 44 percent of the F-15 fleet was classified as "not mission capable"; now the rate is about 40 percent. This is a modest change, but it is in the right direction. Similarly, the F-15s have shown a slight increase in their "sortie per day" rate. (Simpler planes, such as the A-10 and the F-16, have also improved in reliability, and they are still ahead of the F-15.) The biggest reason for the improvement, according to General Creech, is that the Air Force now has more spare parts on hand. He and other officials said that they would not repeat the mistake of shortchanging the spare-parts account. In saying so they concede a central argument made by one of their main critics, a civilian official in the Pentagon named Chuck Spinney, who contends that the military has chronically underestimated the amount of money it needs to operate and maintain its ever more complex weapons.

General Creech and others also pointed out that when they agree to sacrifice quality for quantity, in order to enlarge the force, the Congress often forgets the "quantity" part of the bargain when the time comes to buy more planes. For example, the Air Force reluctantly accepted the F-16 (instead of extra F-15s) on the assumption that it would be able to add seven new "wings" (of seventy-two planes each) of these less-expensive fighter planes. "Unfortunately, only one of those wings has materialized," Creech said. "This makes me skeptical of the cheaper-and-more-numerous solution."

The Air Force officials made several other arguments, though, that struck me as weak and disingenuous. The officials at Langley implied that anyone who criticized the Eagle harbored a secret desire to return to the P-51 and the Spitfire, if not to the Piper Cub. The formal briefing contained several straw-man formulations, such as "Some critics would suggest that we return to the simple aircraft of the past"--followed by a slide detailing the mediocre performance of various planes used in World War II. It is as if American auto manufacturers had contended that the only alternative to the large, heavy domestic cars of the mid-1970s was the Edsel or the Model T.

Beyond these debating points, of course, lie certain perceptions of the world. After the briefings, I thought that three premises could explain why the Air Force's outlook is so different from that of its critics.

The first concerns "the threat"--the nature of the adversary's force. Generals Chain and Creech both stressed that the reformers pay too much attention to American forces and too little to those of the Soviet Union. According to the Air Force's presentation, the Russians are producing roughly 1,350 fighters and bombers every year, or ten times as many as our annual additions to the F-15 and F-16 force. "And those are superb, highly sophisticated aircraft," one of the generals said.

In specific, the Air Force emphasizes the threat in Central Europe. All but a handful of the charts and slides that accompanied the briefing illustrated the theoretical array of forces in a sustained battle that might rage through Germany. They showed how many tanks and aircraft the Russians could use to mount an invasion, and how few resources we would have to stop them. The briefing officers said that the Russians have developed forces capable of rolling around the clock and in bad weather; therefore, we must have airplanes that, like the F-15, can carry the fight to the enemy even if it is raining or dark. The weak spot of a Soviet assault would be the "second echelon" of supply trucks and camps that lie behind the advancing tanks; to exploit this weakness, we need planes that, like the F-15, can penetrate the defenses. The Russian Air Force is trained not for dogfights but for quick, low-altitude approaches to a target area and equally rapid departures; therefore, we need not bother with dog-fighters such as the F-16 but instead should concentrate on planes like the F-15, which can use its long-range radar missiles to "fight outnumbered and win." Several other assumptions about the threat are so deeply embedded that they are rarely stated; that a Russian invasion of Western Europe is a plausible danger; that plans for a prolonged European battle should determine the basic structure of our forces; that land and air battles might rage in Europe without forcing the Americans or the Russians or even the French to resort to nuclear weapons. If you conclude, as the Air Force does, that these are reasonable assumptions, their attempt to concentrate more of their resources on the F-15 makes sense.

The second premise concerns the perfectability of human contrivances--whether things will work as planned. The Air Force's plans take for granted the performance of many new machines. The F-15's system for shooting down planes as soon as they show up on the radar assumes that there will be a way to tell whether the blip is a Russian or an American (or a Belgian or a Polish) plane. The data links that will connect the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) radar planes with the fighters and the ground bases will work only so long as they are immune to enemy jamming. Radar-guided missiles will be worth their great cost only if they can be depended upon to find their targets.

In all of these areas, the Air Force officials said that the hardest technical problems have been solved. They said that with the radar in an AWACS, they could watch a Russian plane from the moment it left the runway and could therefore tell the F-15 exactly which blip it should shoot down. They said that a variety of communication systems, with names such as "Have Quick" and "Wild Weasel," would ensure that our messages would go through unhindered, while we could count on destroying the coherence of the rigidly centralized Soviet force by jamming their communication lines. They said that although radar-guided missiles performed quite poorly in Vietnam, the new generation would be more effective. "We had our problems with the early missiles," General Creech said, "but then there are problems with early anything." If the assumptions are right, the policies make sense. If they are wrong, the policies may prove to be disastrous.

The third premise concerns economic realities. Those who worry about complex weapons assume a world of tight economic limits. Each weapon that is built means that another weapon can't be--to say nothing at all of the nation's nonmilitary needs. Each increase in a weapon's complexity requires more training for maintenance men and a larger supply of spare parts. These constraints exist not because there is some abstract limit to the amount the nation "should" invest in the military but rather because, in any conceivable peacetime American society, there is a limit to how much it WILL spend. It is one thing to argue, as many military men do, that the nation should be devoting more of its resources to defense. It is something different, and very dangerous, to base plans on the assumption that more money will in fact be there to spend. Air Force planners allude to economic constraints, but their first instinct is to ask for what they think we need, regardless of cost. It is proper that they do so. It is also proper that the rest of us understand the many other dimensions of the choice.

At the end of the day, I had learned very little about the F-15 that I had not known before. My experience with fighter airplanes was limited to this one trip. I knew what it was like to ride in the back seat of an Eagle, but I could not say with any confidence how different the maneuvers would have been in a Tomcat, a Foxbat, or, for that matter, a B-52.

But I did feel that I had learned something about the human beings who fly the planes. For months I had heard pilots and aircraft designers emphasize that, even in this most technically sophisticated of the military services, the machines themselves are often less important than the spirit, skill, and training of the people who fly and maintain the planes. Having seen the thousand opportunities for disaster that a sloppy maintenance crew might create, having glimpsed the physical and mental stress that pilots must endure, I understood more fully what I had been told. The Air Force may have failed, in my case, in its attempt to inspire greater loyalty to its machines, but that effort was misguided. Our loyalty should go to the men who fly them.

Copyright © 1981 by James Fallows. All rights reserved.
Avinash R
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Avinash R »

US fires long-range missile in missile defence test
Saturday 19 July, 2008

The United States fired a long-range target missile over the Pacific to test an array of radars and other sensors in its missile defence system, the Pentagon has said.

The test was supposed to have involved an attempted intercept, but that was delayed until December following the discovery of a flaw in a device used to gather telemetry and other data from the interceptor missile, the head of the Pentagon's Missile Defence Agency said earlier this week.

The target missile was fired from Kodiak Island in Alaska at 2247 GMT (0417 IST) with a mock warhead and countermeasures, the agency said in a statement on Friday.

"This was the most challenging flight test of the missile defence system's command and control software to date," the agency said.

"It required the system to process complex data from multiple sources simultaneously and develop an engagement solution necessary to intercept a threat-representative long-range ballistic missile target," it said.

The target missile was tracked by radars on an Aegis destroyer; a deployable mobile ground based targeting radar, sea-based targeting radar, and an upgraded early warning radar at Beale Air Force Base in California.

The agency said command centres were able to successfully generate an intercept solution, and operational crews simulated the launch of an interceptor missile from Vandenberg Air force Base in California.

US navy operators also simulated an intercept using an SM-3 missile fired from a US Navy ship, the agency said.
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by rkhanna »

Attack Helicopter Enters New Era- Apache Block III


An unmanned aircraft sails through the night sky, watching enemy soldiers plant roadside bombs ahead of an approaching convoy of American troops.

The craft fires a missile at insurgents, sparing what would have been certain U.S. casualties. The pilot in control of the craft is safely 50 miles away, aboard an Apache helicopter.

By 2011, crews will be able to do just that from the next generation of the aircraft. Remote-control piloting is one of the features of the new Apache, which was unveiled this month in Mesa, Ariz. Boeing Co.’s Mesa factory will begin making 634 of the ultra-high-tech aircraft in 2010.


As good as the existing aircraft is, the new $30 million Apache, known as Block III, is substantially better. It has 25 major improvements.

The aircraft will contain some reused parts from existing Apaches to reduce costs but will have a new body, a more powerful engine and a redesigned transmission.

Composite rotor blades make it better able to maneuver in the thin air of high-altitude Afghanistan.

Better sensors and computers will allow pilots to view, at close range, terrain miles ahead and send streaming videos to other aircraft and command posts on the ground.

Sensors will monitor the health of the aircraft and alert the pilot when something needs attention.

The cockpit will have controls for an unmanned aerial vehicle that can fly ahead of the Apache, relaying back video of combat conditions 50 miles ahead. The UAV will carry missiles that can be fired by the Apache’s gunner.

The aircraft will link to the Army’s network, letting voice, data and video communications move freely among the Apache, ground forces, other aircraft and combat command centers. The software also can be constantly upgraded and modified as technology and conditions change.


http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/07/g ... he_072108/



30 Million a Helo !!!!!! .. Since India is also kinda interested this would be an overkill. THe Ka-52 cost around 18Mil and with Israeli Upgrades (as proposed to Turkey) probably would be a better cost-benefit bet.
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Sanjay M »

Joint Euro-Russian Manned Spacecraft Unveiled:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7519723.stm
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Paul »

Singha: I remember this article well. I thought that article used "Vomit" in place of "Puke".

There was another article in the Reader's Digest - 1982 describing the spread of the global arms trade and superpower influence. Would like to get hold it now if possible,
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by andy B »

Gentlemen,

I just got my hands on the latest airforces monthly....it has a very interesting article on awacs of the world. Its not that technical but more so informative about various operational awacs and op-testing awacs.

Admins would you like for me to scan it and post it for BR fites to read?

I think it is a good article in general to read.
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by k prasad »

Rahul M wrote:well this is not all laughing matter.

there was actually a text called the vaimanika shastra.
I read a book on ancient flying objects in India sometime back which had a lot of the details.
Some of it was certainly intriguing but overall it was inconclusive, to say the least !

will post excerpts in a couple of weeks hopefully, if you guys are interested.
DRDO scientists have, and continue to seriously study the vaimanika shastra. No kidding here.
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Kartik »

ranganathan wrote:That was pathetic display :rotfl: . Looked like a pregnant hippo trying to do a ballet. Very laborious and no grace like the MKI or Mig-29 OVT.
you might want to temper your hatred of everything American. give credit where its due. the Raptor has more than adequate power to perform most maneuvers and not find itself a sitting duck.
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by andy B »

Admin,

Are we allowed to scan and post an airforces monthly article???
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Sanjay M »

Diesel-powered flight
Whirlybirds go green

Jul 23rd 2008
From Economist.com
Diesel engines could make helicopters—and other aircraft—more efficient and cleaner
Austin
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Austin »

Anand Barve wrote:Admin,

Are we allowed to scan and post an airforces monthly article???
Nopes , Copy Right and all that stuff will follow , onleee tit-bit allowed , as a work around you can scan and upload it some where and just give a link here.
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by andy B »

Austin thank you.

I knew I would set alarm bells off so I thought I would ask. Which site would u suggest I upload the article on. Its basically an article on all the worlds awacs in the latest issue of airforces monthly. I just think it would be a worthwile read for BR.

Regards
Nitesh
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Nitesh »

Anand Barve wrote:Austin thank you.

I knew I would set alarm bells off so I thought I would ask. Which site would u suggest I upload the article on. Its basically an article on all the worlds awacs in the latest issue of airforces monthly. I just think it would be a worthwile read for BR.

Regards
Yaar, scan the articles, upload it on rapidsahre, yousendit and provide the link here zimple.
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by andy B »

Dude I would love to upload it today but i cant bloody access BR from home for some weird reason its been the same for the last almost 6 months I just did a post on the suggestions forum asking for help its driving me NUTSSSSS!!!!

Anyhow if I am not able to upload it, then i can just send them to you to upload if u dont mind...
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Neshant »

U.S. wants counterterror funds for Pakistan F-16s

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080724/pl_ ... 9C0lBvaA8F
Sanjay M
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Sanjay M »

Wow, this guy is made of strong stuff, pulling over 9 G's repeatedly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Fjsc90364
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Nitesh »

Rahul M wrote:
Nitesh wrote: Anand, I had already mailed you, but if still not able to access then try the anonymous proxy.
nitesh and anand, guys please acknowledge when you have solved your communication problems, I'll clean up the thread.
ASAP, please.
regards,
Rahul.
Rahul, I just recieved his email he was not able to access I just given him some anonymous proxy site names and told him to try, I request you also could contact him. Seems his ISP addresses are blocked by you guys.

thread cleaned up.mail sent to anand.
Rahul.
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Nitesh »

courtesy anand, kindly find the article he is mentioning:

http://rapidshare.de/files/40093281/Awacs_Info.zip.html
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Gerard »

SpaceX will attempt another launch of its Falcon 1 vehicle tomorrow, carrying
Trailblazer and two CubeSats for the American Air Force and MDA, and for Malaysia's ATSB. Launch will occur from Omelek Island at Kwajalein Atoll. A Celestis Space burial payload, Explorers, including the remains of astronaut Gordon Cooper, Star Trek actor James Doohan, and 206 others is also being flown. If the launch is successful, it will be the first privately funded liquid propellant rocket to reach low Earth orbit.
Video of a previous (failed) launch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CwuIQ9d5D8
the stage separation and payload fairing separation is impressive stuff

The vehicle is semi-cryo (SpaceX's LOX/Kerosene Merlin engine)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX

The Falcon 9 uses nine Merlin engines and aims for 5 tons to GTO. They already tested a 5 engine cluster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jil39th ... re=related
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Raveen »

That was pathetic display . Looked like a pregnant hippo trying to do a ballet. Very laborious and no grace like the MKI or Mig-29 OVT.
Right...the Migs ans Su can gracefully fall to planet earth with no clue what hit them when they go against the F-22
Learn to give credit where it is due!


edited.
Last edited by Rahul M on 30 Jul 2008 23:43, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Edited to normal font size.
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Raveen »

Raveen wrote:
That was pathetic display . Looked like a pregnant hippo trying to do a ballet. Very laborious and no grace like the MKI or Mig-29 OVT.
Right...the Migs ans Su can gracefully fall to planet earth with no clue what hit them when they go against the F-22
Learn to give credit where it is due!

Raveen,
you have been asked before not to use large sized fonts.
Please don't.

Rahul.
I was never asked not to Rahul, but thats fine now that I know, I wont!
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Rahul M »

Raveen wrote:
Raveen wrote: Right...the Migs ans Su can gracefully fall to planet earth with no clue what hit them when they go against the F-22
Learn to give credit where it is due!

Raveen,
you have been asked before not to use large sized fonts.
Please don't.

Rahul.
I was never asked not to Rahul, but thats fine now that I know, I wont!
well, I vaguely remember editing a post of yours in the recent past, in a thread of the strat fora IIRC. of course you may not have seen it.
in case I'm wrong please accept my apologies for the mistake,
regards,
Rahul.
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by khukri »

Neshant wrote:U.S. wants counterterror funds for Pakistan F-16s

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080724/pl_ ... 9C0lBvaA8F
It ain't over till the fat lady sings - and she appears to have a sore throat!
U.S. Moves to Suspend Pakistan F-16 Upgrade Money
By agence france-presse
Published: 29 Jul 21:00 EDT (01:00 GMT) Print | Email

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Congress moved July 29 to suspend a bid by President George W. Bush's administration to shift millions of dollars in aid to Pakistan from counterterrorism programs to upgrading Islamabad's F-16 fighter jets.

"We have requested a hold on the administration's planned reprogramming pending additional information," said a joint statement by Democratic lawmakers Howard Berman and Nita Lowey, who head key panels in the House of Representatives. "We are concerned that the administration's proposal to use military assistance to pay for the F-16 upgrades will divert funds from more effective counterterrorism tools like helicopters, TOW missiles and night-vision goggles," said Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Lowey, chairwoman of the appropriations subcommittee on foreign programs.

Related TopicsAmericas
Asia & Pacific Rim
The White House said last week that it wanted to shift $230 million in aid to Pakistan from counterterrorism programs to upgrading Pakistan's aging F-16 fighter jets.

The move, it said, was aimed at easing fiscal pressures faced by the Pakistani government stemming partly from soaring food and energy costs.

U.S. lawmakers were reportedly angered by the move. They felt that Pakistan did not use its F-16s in support of the campaign against fighters in its remote tribal areas out of a fear that civilian casualties could fuel support for extremists.

Bush held talks with Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on July 28 focused on cooperation to fight Taliban and al-Qaida extremists and easing Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions.

Gilani, whose new government has been facing intense U.S. pressure to crack down on Pakistan-based militants, told reporters after the meeting that Pakistan was committed to fighting extremists.

The package for the F-16 fighters would run about two-thirds of the $300 million that Pakistan will get this year in U.S. aid for military equipment and training, The New York Times said.

The 2008 fiscal year state and foreign operations bill that passed Congress last December specifically required that military aid to Pakistan be used for counterterrorism and law enforcement activities directed against al-Qaida and the Taliban, according to lawmakers Berman and Lowey.

The hold requested by the legislature would "provide time for Congress to make a more considered judgment in consultation with the administration and the government of Pakistan," their statement said.

Requests for a hold by lawmakers are usually abided by the administration, congressional aides said.

Berman and Lowey also said that they were proposing that Congress provide $200 million in economic assistance to Islamabad to relieve some of Pakistan's budgetary constraints.

"This will help Pakistan set its own spending priorities while preserving U.S. military aid for its intended purpose - counterterrorism activities against al-Qaida and the Taliban."

"We are committed to helping Pakistan's new democratic government address the current economic crisis, brought on by rising food and fuel prices, which has impacted its ability to fund its F-16 upgrades," the lawmakers said.
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Raveen »

Its all good Rahul sir
I appologize for using oversized fonts
regards
- Raveen
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Gerard »

Engine test for Falcon 9 rocket
The latest testing saw the first nine-engined firing of the Falcon 9's first stage ... SpaceX said the engines, at full power, consumed 1,500kg (3,200lbs) of fuel and liquid oxygen per second, and generated a thrust of 3,700 kiloNewtons (832,000lbf) - four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft.
Gerard
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Gerard »

SpaceX launch fails a third time
A private rocket carrying three satellites, including a Nasa space sail, has failed to reach orbit.

It is the third unsuccessful launch attempt for the Falcon 1 rocket, built by private space firm SpaceX.

The vehicle's two stages failed to separate two minutes and 20 seconds into launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
Video of the launch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxSbVnShYx0
Raju

Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Raju »

Unidentified crash Near Vegas - Military Grabs It Fast

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awGOXaAA0Ts
Gerard
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Gerard »

Europe's Ariane rocket must develop or die: ex-CEO
Europe's Ariane rocket is headed for oblivion without new investment to equip it with a more powerful launcher
"No one today can seriously question the urgent need to lift the performance of Ariane 5 from nine tonnes to 12 tonnes," he said.
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by JaiS »

Vick
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Vick »

From AFP
Saudi Arabia Eyes More BAE Eurofighter Jets

LONDON - Saudi Arabia has begun discussions to buy a second batch of Eurofighter Typhoon jets from BAE Systems and could double its fleet to 144, the Financial Times said Aug. 11.

"The Gulf kingdom could buy up to 72 more of the multirole aircraft, an adviser to the Saudi government confirmed [Sunday] night," the FT added.

BAE and Saudi Arabia last year signed a 4.43 billion-pound deal to supply 72 Eurofighter Typhoon planes to Riyadh.
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super-secret new Chinese ballistic missile

Post by kit »

What is this new missile ? Any ideas anyone .. some one is taking it damn seriously.. of course partly the reason for the indian missile shield

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i= ... =FEA&s=CVS
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by andy B »

kit wrote:What is this new missile ? Any ideas anyone .. some one is taking it damn seriously.. of course partly the reason for the indian missile shield

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i= ... =FEA&s=CVS
Ummm this is probably another of Unkil's little tricks, Using the threat analysis on this they will put more and more funding for SM6 with the amraam seekers and for future versions.

AFAIK the Chicoms were trying to mod the actual warheads to penetrate BMD and target carriers. They were still using their existing ballistic mijjiles to carry those warheads.

In terms of putting the amraam seeker on the SM6 one thing that stood out for me is the diameter of the aim120 is quite small compared to the sm6 so is the aim120 seeker being upsized for the larger diameter of the sm6....gurus any thoughts???
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Avinash R »

Missile false alarm goes off
TOKYO (Reuters) - A missile attack warning went off in local government offices in central Japan Wednesday, but officials realized it was a false alarm before disaster teams were mobilized.
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by KiranM »

Anand Barve wrote:
kit wrote:What is this new missile ? Any ideas anyone .. some one is taking it damn seriously.. of course partly the reason for the indian missile shield

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i= ... =FEA&s=CVS
Ummm this is probably another of Unkil's little tricks, Using the threat analysis on this they will put more and more funding for SM6 with the amraam seekers and for future versions.

AFAIK the Chicoms were trying to mod the actual warheads to penetrate BMD and target carriers. They were still using their existing ballistic mijjiles to carry those warheads.

In terms of putting the amraam seeker on the SM6 one thing that stood out for me is the diameter of the aim120 is quite small compared to the sm6 so is the aim120 seeker being upsized for the larger diameter of the sm6....gurus any thoughts???
The seeker need not always be big as long as the aperture gives required coverage. (Note: I may be wrong, not really knowledgeable in this area.)
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Gerard »

Japan gets first home-grown commercial communications satellite
Mitsubishi Electric Corp. announced Friday that it had successfully launched Japan's first domestically produced commercial communications satellite. The Superbird-7 blasted into space on a launcher made by European consortium Arianespace earlier in the day from the Guiana Space Center, before successfully separating from the rocket, the company said in a statement.
Gerard
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Re: International Aerospace Discussion

Post by Gerard »

Iran launches satellite carrier
Iran says it has successfully launched a rocket capable of carrying its first domestically built satellite.
Locked