Su 27s smoke out F-22 in Taiwan wargame, Su-35s club F-35s "like baby seals"

Oct 4th, 2008 @ 01:43 am › Akhbar Navees
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U 27s smoke out F-22s, New US Fighter Jets [F-35] Clubbed Like Baby Seals’ By Russian Sukhois

There is much controversy brewing about the lack of performance of the F-35s. The Australians and others are raving mad. Now there is news that the F-22s were unable to defend their tankers which keep them afloat in the sky. The F-22 lifeline is critical to the survival of the F-22s.

The F-35s are a total fiasco. Almost all European and Anzus countries are reevaluating their orders and many are talking about the plane being similar to the failed F-111. All these failed planes are now being dumped on third world countries like India–too happy to buy junk as long as the kickbacks go into the pockets of the corrupt Indian politicians.

As for the highly complex electronics to attack targets in the air, the F-35, like the F-22 before it, has mortgaged its success on a hypothetical vision of ultra-long range, radar-based air-to-air combat that has fallen on its face many times in real air war. The F-35′s air-to-ground electronics promise little more than slicker command and control for the use of existing munitions.

The immediate questions for the F-35 are: how much more will it cost and how many additional problems will compromise its already mediocre performance? We will only know when a complete and rigorous test schedule –not currently planned – is finished. The F-35 is a bad deal that shows every sign of turning into a disaster as big as the F-111 fiasco of the 1960s. (Janes Defense Weekly–Full report below)

The Chinese have attained technological independence and are on the their to space exploration as well as creating new aircrafts which they are selling to a host of countries.

Joint Strike Fighter: The Latest Hotspot in the U.S. Defense Meltdown: While its illusion as an “affordable” multi-role fighter-bomber is alive and well in Washington D.C., the F-35 “Joint Strike Fighter” is already a disaster, and the bad news has barely begun to roll in. Internationally recognized combat aircraft designer Pierre Sprey and Straus Military Reform Project Director Winslow Wheeler summarize the many failures in a new opinion piece that appears in the Sept. 10, 2008 issue of Janes Defence Weekly and is reproduced below

The original Su-35 was a derivative of the Su-27

Australian press reported on leaks from a classified computer wargame, Pacific Vision, conducted at Hickam AFB. According to Australian reports. JSFs in combat with Su-35s were “clubbed like baby seals”. Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has apparently sought more details of the exercise, saying that it “vindicated his stance on the controversial fighter.” Fitzgibbon has supported the program but indicated that he wants to see more progress before committing Australia to the new fighter (see Janes report in the Appendix below)Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has demanded details on the performance of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) following a report the jet had performed poorly in war games against a rival plane.

The JSF, for which Australia is likely to pay $16 billion, was comprehensively beaten in highly-classified simulated dogfights against Russian-built Sukhoi fighters, The West Australian reported.

“I’ve asked for a full report from defence and I’ll rely upon that report to come to some conclusion about whether there is merit in the newspaper article,” Mr Fitzgibbon told ABC TV tonight (http://news.smh.com.au/national/fitzgibbon-wants-details-of-jsf-concerns-20080911-4e6u.html)

The latest “Selected Acquisition Report” from the Defense Department is the most definitive data available on the costs for the F-22. The SAR shows a “Current Estimate” for the F-22 program in “Then-Year” dollars of $64.540 billion, which includes both R&D and procurement. That $64.5 billion has bought a grand total of 184 aircraft.

Do the arithmetic: $64.540/184 = $350.1. Total program unit price for one F-22, what approximates the “sticker price,” is $350 million per copy. Consider the Source, What Does an F-22 Cost? By WINSLOW T. WHEELER

Fatal Flaw Of The F-22

October 2, 2008: A recent hot media story featured a “secret simulation exercise” alleged to show that the F-35 was inferior to the Russian Su-27 (as used by the Chinese). That turned out to be a matter of misinterpretation, but there was another analysis that showed the F-22 being smoked by the Su-27. Fortunately, all the particulars for this one were promptly released, thus deflating any attempts at headline grabbing.

That scenario postulated that three regiments of Chinese Su-27s (72 aircraft) went up against six F-22s (hastily flown to Taiwan to stem a hypothetical Chinese onslaught.) Even though the Su-27s were carrying about 900 air-to-air missiles (and the F-22s only 48), the American fighters manage to survive the air battle, and take down over twenty Su-27s. But some of the Su-27s get past them and go after the aerial tankers. That’s critical because the F-22s burn most of their fuel fighting off the Su-27s, and are lost at sea without the tankers.

It’s all about fuel management. As a rule of thumb, a fighter can take its total flying range and divide it into thirds: one third for going out (“operating radius”), one third for coming back and one third for combat. A typical modern fighter can cruise at 900 kilometers per hour. The F-22 can cruise faster than that, and has a theoretical flying time of three hours. However, high-performance fighters obtain their speed by having an engine that can increase its fuel consumption enormously for short periods. For example, at cruise speed, fighters burns .5-.6 percent of its fuel per minute. By kicking in the afterburner, cruise speed can be more than tripled, and fuel consumption increased more than twenty times. At full “war power” an F 22 can burn 30 percent of its fuel in a few minutes. It can also escape from unfavorable situations using a sudden increase in speed. A less experienced pilot will abuse the high performance of his aircraft to get him out of one tight situation after another. Once a fighter reaches BINGO fuel (just enough to get home), combat must cease. Otherwise the aircraft will likely run out of fuel before reaching its base, and be just as useless as if shot down by the enemy. It’s a common tactic to try and force the other guy into more high fuel consumption maneuvers. Eventually he will run low on fuel and try to break away. At this point he becomes desperate and vulnerable.

The F-22 uses its speed advantages to avoid getting hit, and to get into a position to knock down opponents. The fuel is like ammo, when it’s gone, you are in trouble. And if your aerial tankers are not there, you either find a place to land, or bail out. (Strategy page)

Northern Europeans Seeking Alternatives to the F-35 By Chris Pocock Aircraft September 16, 2008

Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway are all formally investigating alternatives to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to replace their F-16s. On September 1, Saab bid a package including 85 Gripen Next Generation (NG) fighters to the Netherlands, offering a “fixed acquisition cost” and “significant savings over 40 plus years operation.

Two weeks earlier, Boeing delivered a proposal for 48 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets to Denmark, touting “a good balance of capability, cost and risk. The Gripen NG has already been offered to Norway.

All three of these northern European nations are helping to fund the system design and development (SDD) phase of the F-35. Moreover, the Netherlands has already bought its first F-35, one of 19 in the third batch of low-rate initial production (LRIP) aircraft.

The UK is also funding its first two F-35s within this batch. Other international partners who will buy some LRIP aircraft are Australia (beginning in 2011); and Italy and Turkey (starting in 2012).

Canada, Denmark and Norway are not due to start buying F-35s until 2014, when international multi-year procurement (MYP) starts. Lockheed Martin officials still say that the MYP aircraft will cost about $45 million (CTOL version, in 2002 prices).

By 2014, however, Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and the UK will have already bought at least 87 aircraft under the much more expensive LRIP contracts, according to the current production schedule. At the recent Farnborough airshow, a British procurement officer said the F-35 program was “grappling with the efficient build-up of production.

Lockheed Martin promised to explore whether MYP can start earlier, and make a revised proposal in January. AIN Online

However, there’s also been some not-so-good news and comment swirling around the JSF in the past few days. The Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee eliminates two JSFs from 2009 and three from 2010, threatening to disrupt the start of the steep ramp-up in production that the program office plans, in part in order to keep the F-22 line warm for the next administration.

The Center for Defense Information (CDI) – no friend to most defense programs – released a hostile analysis by Pierre Sprey (one of the “Fighter Mafia” credited with initiating development of the F-16) and analyst Winslow Wheeler. The analysis drew a long and detailed rebuttal from the program leadership.

Last week, too, the Australian press reported on leaks from a classified computer wargame, Pacific Vision, conducted at Hickam AFB. According to Australian reports. JSFs in combat with Su-35s were “clubbed like baby seals”. Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has apparently sought more details of the exercise, saying that it “vindicated his stance on the controversial fighter.” Fitzgibbon has supported the program but indicated that he wants to see more progress before committing Australia to the new fighter.

The leaks have boosted Australian domestic opposition to the JSF, where the independent Air Power Australia group has published some critical analysis of JSF’s capability against the Su-35.

“Joint Strike Fighter: The Latest Hotspot in the U.S. Defense Meltdown”

by Pierre M. Sprey and Winslow T. Wheeler

Politicians in the US are papering over serious problems in the country’s armed forces. Equating exposure of flaws with failure to ‘support the troops’, Congress, the presidential candidates and think-tank pundits repeatedly
dub the US armed forces “the best in the world”. Behind this vapid rhetoric, a meltdown – decades in the making – is occurring.

The collapse is occurring in all the armed forces, but it is most obvious in the US Air Force (USAF). There, despite a much needed change in leadership, nothing is being done to reverse he deplorable situation the air force has put itself into. The USAF’s annual budget is now in excess of USD 150 billion: well above what it averaged during the Cold War. Despite the plentiful dollars, the USAF’s inventory of tactical aircraft is smaller today than it has ever been since the end of the Second World War.

At the same time, the shrunken inventory is older, on average, than it has been ever before. Since George W Bush came to office in 2001, the air force has received a major budget ‘plus up’, supposedly to address its problems. In January 2001 a projection of its budgets showed USD 850 billion for 2001 to 2009. It actually received USD 1,059 billion – not counting the additional billions (more than USD 80 billion) it also received to fund its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With the ‘plus up’ of more than USD 200 billion, the air force actually made its inventory troubles worse: from 2001 to today, tactical aircraft numbers shrank by about 100 aircraft and their average age increased from 15 years to 20, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Not to worry, the air force and its politicians assert, the solution is in hand; it is called the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. It will do all three tactical missions: air-to-ground bombing, air-to-air combat and specialised close air support for ground troops – and there will be tailored variants for the air force, navy and marines. Most importantly, it will be ‘affordable’ and, thus, the US can buy it in such large numbers that it will resolve all those shrinking and ageing problems.

Baloney. When the first official cost and quantity estimate for the F-35 showed up on Capitol Hill in 2001, the Department of Defense (DoD) predicted 2,866 units for USD 226 billion. That is a not inconsiderable USD 79 million for each aircraft. The latest official estimate is for a smaller number of aircraft (2,456) to cost more (USD 299 billion). That represents a 54 per cent increase in the per-unit cost to USD 122 million, and the deliveries will be two years late. The Government Accountability Office reported in March that the US can expect the costs to increase some more – perhaps by as much as USD 38 billion – with deliveries likely to be delayed again, perhaps by another year. That is just the start of the rest of the bad news. The price increases and schedule delays cited above are for currently known problems. Unfortunately, the F-35 has barely begun its flight-test programme, which means more problems are likely to be discovered – perhaps even more serious than the serious engine, flight control, electrical and avionics glitches found thus far.

Take the F-22 experience; it was in a similarly early stage of flight testing in 1998. Its programme unit cost was then USD 184 million per aircraft but it climbed to a breathtaking USD 355 million by 2008. Considering that the F-35 is even more complex (19 million lines of computer code compared to 4 million, and three separate service versions compared to one), the horrifying prospect of the F-35′s unit cost doubling is not outlandish. The last tri-service, tri-mission ‘fighter’ the US built, the F-111, tripled in cost before being cut back to barely half the number originally contemplated.

The DoD currently plans to spend more than USD 10 billion to produce fewer than 100 F-35s per year at peak production. USAF leaders would like to increase the production rate and add in a few more F-22s. That plan is irresponsibly unaffordable (which contributed to the recent departure of the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff). The unaffordability will become even more obvious when the unavoidable F-35 cost increases emerge. The inevitable reaction, just as in past programmes, will be a slashing of annual production, the opposite of the increase the air force needs to address its inventory problems. The DoD fix is simple: test the F-35 less and buy more copies before the testing is completed. Two test aircraft and hundreds of flight-test hours have been eliminated from the programme, and there is now a plan to produce more than 500 copies before the emasculated testing is finished. This approach will not fix the programme but it will help paper over the problems and make the F-35 more cancellation proof in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.

It gets even worse. Even without new problems, the F-35 is a ‘dog.’ If one accepts every performance promise the DoD currently makes for the aircraft, the F-35 will be: “Overweight and underpowered: at 49,500 lb (22,450kg) air-to-air take-off weight with an engine rated at 42,000 lb of thrust, it will be a significant step backward in thrust-to-weight ratio for a new fighter. ” At that weight and with just 460 sq ft (43 m2) of wing area for the air force and Marine Corps variants, it will have a ‘wing-loading’ of 108 lb per square foot. Fighters need large wings relative to their weight to enable them to manoeuvre and survive. The F-35 is actually less manoeuvrable than the appallingly vulnerable F-105 ‘Lead Sled’ that got wiped out over North Vietnam in the Indochina War.

With a payload of only two 2,000 lb bombs in its bomb bay – far less than US Vietnam-era fighters – the F-35 is hardly a first-class bomber either. With more bombs carried under its wings, the F-35 instantly becomes ‘non-stealthy’ and the DoD does not plan to seriously test it in this configuration for years. As a ‘close air support’ attack aircraft to help US troops engaged in combat, the F-35 is a nonstarter. It is too fast to see the tactical targets it is shooting at; too delicate and flammable to withstand ground fire; and it lacks the payload and especially the endurance to loiter usefully over US forces for sustained periods as they manoeuvre on the ground. Specialised for this role, the air force’s existing A-10s are far superior. However, what, the advocates will protest, of the F-35′s two most prized features: its ‘stealth’ and its advanced avionics? What the USAF will not tell you is that ‘stealthy’ aircraft are quite detectable by radar; it is simply a question of the type of radar and its angle relative to the aircraft. Ask the pilots of the two ‘stealthy’ F-117s that the Serbs successfully attacked with radar missiles in the 1999 Kosovo air war.

As for the highly complex electronics to attack targets in the air, the F-35, like the F-22 before it, has mortgaged its success on a hypothetical vision of ultra-long range, radar-based air-to-air combat that has fallen on its face many times in real air war. The F-35′s air-to-ground electronics promise little more than slicker command and control for the use of existing munitions.

The immediate questions for the F-35 are: how much more will it cost and how many additional problems will compromise its already mediocre performance? We will only know when a complete and rigorous test schedule –not currently planned – is finished. The F-35 is a bad deal that shows every sign of turning into a disaster as big as the F-111 fiasco of the 1960s.

In January the US will inaugurate a new president. If he is serious about US defences – and courageous enough to ignore the corporate lobbies and their minions in Congress and the think-tanks – he will ask some very tough questions. These will start with why an increased budget buys a shrinking, ageing force. After that the new president will have to take steps – unavoidably painful ones – to reverse the course the country is now on.

The man who best deserves to be inaugurated next January will actually start asking those questions now.