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TOP 10 - World Fighter Aircrafts

In today's warfare, very few fights will be left in visual range let alone dog fighting. Skills of Pilots will come down to AWACS taking care of guiding the A2As and the fighters firing at the target and keeping out of enemy's cross hairs.
:coffee:

bt what do you think about us exercises of 2007 when f 22 shot down 142 f 18s and f15s the only f22 which was shot down was by f 16 so i think in these days the mistakes and skills of pilots of pilots matter alot....
 
What IS needed is the ability to evade BVR missiles, the ability to disengage from combat. The F-35 might have the former because of its jamming suite and reduced RCS. It certainly doesn't have the latter two. If you can't disengage, then you need the ability to win a WVR fight.

And you are claiming a platform with no external ordnance, clean as a whistle, with a T/W greater than 1, can't do this?

The acceleration of an F-35 in combat configuration is going to be superior to just about anything out there. And that's not good enough?

Obviously, high off boresight missiles, which everybody will have, help. However, high off boresight missiles aren't a magic aim and shoot weapon.

Actually, they pretty much are. There will be more than enough surplus energy to make the intercept. We considered the AIM-9L to be nearly magical, with a Pk well above 90%.

Thus, getting somewhere in the general direction of the opponents six o clock (to give the missile enough time to maneuver), is still a very useful thing.

No, I'm sorry, there is absolutely no need to get to an opponents six o'clock in anything other than canned or highly unusual circumstances where both fighters are inside each others' turn circle. Modern IR missiles lock, guide, and fuse all-aspect. If I want to kill that guy 3 miles in front of me, I point and shoot regardless of angle-off. I would be a fool to do any extraneous maneuvering, as there is a strong possibility that he has a friend nearby. My maneuvering would waste precious seconds and expose me needlessly.

As I pointed out, high instantaneous turn rate is misleading. Try turning hard enough with an F-35 to evade multiple missiles and you'll find yourself falling out of the sky.

Ask yourself a question... do you think that you will be visually acquiring a modern AA missile, and further, maneuvering in relation to that missile? If you think this is common or even possible, you have been watching too many movies.

One cannot even see a jet the size of an F-5 when it is nose-on, and the range exceeds 2 miles. If I launch a smokeless AIM-9X at you from 3 miles, do you think you'll pick it up, something that is traveling at mach 3 and is 1/100th the cross-section of an F-5? This notion of BFMing a missile is one of the most common misconceptions out there. If a pilot was actually able to acquire that mach 3 sliver, he'd have about 100 milliseconds before it is on him.

As for the Gulf War, most of the kills were made within visual range. Granted, there wasn't much turning involved, but that isn't surprising given that the Iraqis were usually significantly outnumbered and lacked situational awareness due to not having good ground control or AWACS.

You must learn to differentiate between visual range, and turning circles. Visual range, when aided by AWACS and target designotor boxes, and perhaps by fortunate enemy wing flashes, is anything inside of about 8 to 10 miles. At those distances, the enemy can do 9G turns all day and he'll still be a speck right in front of me. It's technically visual combat where turning does nothing. Between 8 miles and 3,000 meters is a zone between BVR and the turn circle, and is a perfect region for point & shoot kills. THAT is where most kills occurred in GW1.

Dogfighting in the idealized sense rarely ever occurred. Most kills during the World Wars were scored by sneaking up on the opponent. This started to change with the introduction of control radar, and we had significant dogfighting during the Vietnam war, but modern day fights won't last for more than a few turns. However, what is needed is the ability to make those few turns as quickly as possible and to retain enough energy to escape. The F-35 doesn't have that ability.

The only reason turning took place in Vietnam was because the missiles did not support the all-aspect fight. You say, "modern day fights won't last for more than a few turns." In reality, they'd be lucky to make it through 180 degrees before the majority of kills take place. There might be a very rare matured turning fight once in a while. I'd parallel this to two foot soldiers in a knife fight.

Any excess amount of treasure and talent devoted to hyper-maneuverability is like spending billions developing a titanium-carbon superalloy bayonet that costs hundreds of thousands of $$. Irrational and foolish. The F-35 will have turning performance exceeding the F-16, and that is all it needs.
 
You cant be hyper maneuverable with conventional structures, not to mention there is a human body in the cockpit
I mean can you out turn a 60g capable HOBS missile? when just 9G pull has the potential to make pilot unconcious :)

a missile making 60g turns doesn't mean the escaping fighter must make comparable amount of turnings in terms of gs.... to escape a missile making 60g maneuvers a 10-12g maneuver is good enough..... about surviving 9+g force special G-suites are being designed.
 
a missile making 60g turns doesn't mean the escaping fighter must make comparable amount of turnings in terms of gs.... to escape a missile making 60g maneuvers a 10-12g maneuver is good enough..... about surviving 9+g force special G-suites are being designed.
Of course turn rates will favor the aircraft it being slow, but the question is till how long cuz now TVC equipped missiles are robust and have more burn in them to make multiple attempts. Btw its not that easy to evade a highly agile missile given the reaction time in WVR is almost nil.....thats why I like American approach towards combat...let the missile do the turning rather than aircraft.
 
NEARLY ALL THE PDF posters are ranking J10 lower than both F16 & SU30MKI and in deed RAFAEL/TYPHOON.

Yet the J10 is supposed to be the future state of the art PAF fighter to answer both su30mki & mmrca combo.

RATHER REVEALING and worrying i think
 
NEARLY ALL THE PDF posters are ranking J10 lower than both F16 & SU30MKI and in deed RAFAEL/TYPHOON.

Yet the J10 is supposed to be the future state of the art PAF fighter to answer both su30mki & mmrca combo.

RATHER REVEALING and worrying i think

Wait for the J-10B.
 
NEARLY ALL THE PDF posters are ranking J10 lower than both F16 & SU30MKI and in deed RAFAEL/TYPHOON.

Yet the J10 is supposed to be the future state of the art PAF fighter to answer both su30mki & mmrca combo.

RATHER REVEALING and worrying i think

this prooves that posters at pdf are mostly not fanboys and are waiting for actual release of specs to build their point of view


btw-- writing in capital letters is called 'shouting' on the forums -- it is considered disrespectful and in some forums a strong reason to ban a person
 
in my country we use capitals to highlight something.

ban (now thats harsh)

i didnt mean to upset somebody with my observation. re j10
 
in my country we use capitals to highlight something.

ban (now thats harsh)

i didnt mean to upset somebody with my observation. re j10

Generally speaking in the online world, using all capital letters is considered shouting.

If you want to highlight something, use different color, bold it, underline it, italic, etc.
 
At modern times, this list would fail. Perhaps in overall, and history those aircrafts may be top 10, but than i don't see J-10 up there. It would be a crime to not have a Su-35 up there. Su-35s are arguably the most advanced 4.5+ Gen airplanes. Far ahead of the J-10, trust me. J-10 is good as it incorparates a lot of the Su-27, and Chinese technology. But Su-35s leagues ahead. Su-35 has one of the lowest RCS of any planes, has marvelous engines, great avionics, and an impressive payload.
 
And you are claiming a platform with no external ordnance, clean as a whistle, with a T/W greater than 1, can't do this?

The acceleration of an F-35 in combat configuration is going to be superior to just about anything out there. And that's not good enough?

No it isn't. The data shows that the F-35 is severely underpowered at supersonic speeds. It is extremely slow at accelerating, and a flanker with external stores will still be able to out-accelerate it. Besides, the F-35 has a top speed of Mach 1.67. That's way too slow.

Actually, they pretty much are. There will be more than enough surplus energy to make the intercept. We considered the AIM-9L to be nearly magical, with a Pk well above 90%.

No. You're simply wrong here. High off boresight shots severely degrade range and performance against maneuvering targets. As for your nearly magical AIM-9L, 86 of them were fired in Desert Storm, with 13 kills. That's a 15% kill probability in real life.

No, I'm sorry, there is absolutely no need to get to an opponents six o'clock in anything other than canned or highly unusual circumstances where both fighters are inside each others' turn circle. Modern IR missiles lock, guide, and fuse all-aspect. If I want to kill that guy 3 miles in front of me, I point and shoot regardless of angle-off. I would be a fool to do any extraneous maneuvering, as there is a strong possibility that he has a friend nearby. My maneuvering would waste precious seconds and expose me needlessly.

You point and shoot at the guy in front of you, but he's going to be flaring, and will have a chance at evading the missile. Besides, there's only a small window of opportunity to actually shoot down a head-on aircraft with a sidewinder. If you fire too early, he can turn away out of the missile range. If you fire too late, the LOS rate is very high because of the speed of closure. If you want a reliable kill, then you have to shoot from the general rear direction of the target.

But of course, there's more to WVR combat than getting on your opponent's six. If you can enter combat with an altitude and speed advantage, then your missiles (wether Aim-9s or Aim-120s) are going to go farther than his.

Ask yourself a question... do you think that you will be visually acquiring a modern AA missile, and further, maneuvering in relation to that missile? If you think this is common or even possible, you have been watching too many movies.

One cannot even see a jet the size of an F-5 when it is nose-on, and the range exceeds 2 miles. If I launch a smokeless AIM-9X at you from 3 miles, do you think you'll pick it up, something that is traveling at mach 3 and is 1/100th the cross-section of an F-5? This notion of BFMing a missile is one of the most common misconceptions out there. If a pilot was actually able to acquire that mach 3 sliver, he'd have about 100 milliseconds before it is on him.

I was talking about evading medium range missiles in BVR combat. You have plenty of reaction time, considering that these missiles go active around 10km (and that's assuming your missile launch warning doesn't pick up the launch flare because the missile was fired from far away).

Btw, the Aim-120 is not smokeless (and neither is the Aim-9X for that matter). They are just smoke less.

You must learn to differentiate between visual range, and turning circles. Visual range, when aided by AWACS and target designotor boxes, and perhaps by fortunate enemy wing flashes, is anything inside of about 8 to 10 miles. At those distances, the enemy can do 9G turns all day and he'll still be a speck right in front of me. It's technically visual combat where turning does nothing. Between 8 miles and 3,000 meters is a zone between BVR and the turn circle, and is a perfect region for point & shoot kills. THAT is where most kills occurred in GW1.

Your point? You still need those sustained G and acceleration capabilities to evade missiles at that range.

The only reason turning took place in Vietnam was because the missiles did not support the all-aspect fight. You say, "modern day fights won't last for more than a few turns." In reality, they'd be lucky to make it through 180 degrees before the majority of kills take place. There might be a very rare matured turning fight once in a while. I'd parallel this to two foot soldiers in a knife fight.

Any excess amount of treasure and talent devoted to hyper-maneuverability is like spending billions developing a titanium-carbon superalloy bayonet that costs hundreds of thousands of $$. Irrational and foolish. The F-35 will have turning performance exceeding the F-16, and that is all it needs.

Most combat will likely happen at a few kilometers. You still need turning and acceleration performance at those ranges.

And stop talking about "hyper-maneuverability". I'm talking about basic performance here.
 
Of course turn rates will favor the aircraft it being slow, but the question is till how long cuz now TVC equipped missiles are robust and have more burn in them to make multiple attempts. Btw its not that easy to evade a highly agile missile given the reaction time in WVR is almost nil.....thats why I like American approach towards combat...let the missile do the turning rather than aircraft.

That's not American approach. That's Russian approach. They invented it with the helmet cuing system and vectored thrust missile for the Mig-29 and Su-27. America didn't pick up on it until decades later.

Anyways, you miss the point, which is that even if you have a missile that is maneuverable enough to hit at close range, your opponent might be able to shoot you down at longer range. The range at which your missile can get a kill degrades significantly with your opponent's maneuvering ability.
 
Of course turn rates will favor the aircraft it being slow, but the question is till how long cuz now TVC equipped missiles are robust and have more burn in them to make multiple attempts. Btw its not that easy to evade a highly agile missile given the reaction time in WVR is almost nil.....thats why I like American approach towards combat...let the missile do the turning rather than aircraft.

Now the High maneuvering fighter can also have a high maneuvering missiles..... What I want to point out here is that if your soldiers can carry hand guns, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't carry knife and learn hand to hand combat..... there's a big reason why Americans put more importance on missiles and BVR kills...... and justify it by their experiences in wars faught after 80s.
 

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