The sky-high aircraft and aviation thread

That would end very badly for the pilot pulling the Cobra. It puts them into a ultra-vulnerable low energy state and the opposing pilot can easily counter with a defensive slice which will put them directly behind the aircraft that performed the Cobra.

I'll point out that those techniques aren't even included in the Russian air combat doctrine and are only done by demonstration pilots.

That's where the Kulbit comes in. Same stall-type maneuver using thrust vectoring but is much more practical as it puts you right back into the original heading you were at.

Again no. Same, problem. It eats up energy and if you just pulled the Cobra you have no energy to pursue other maneuvers until you regain momentum and the Kulbit has next to no value either. The limited size of the loop basically makes you turn in on your own position and puts you in the same situation. Airplanes using a classic loop need a lot more room to actually make it useful. The classic loop would leave it with not only maneuver room but more energy on manuever completion.

All the other guy has to do is maintain short missile range and wait for the pilot to pull the stunt and offer themselves as a bullseye.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Nov 10th 2018 at 11:27:00 AM

Plus, I understand that some of the newer fighter jets can launch missiles at targets behind them. I feel like trying to pull either of those maneuvers would just be asking to get clay pigeoned by a Sidewinder.

All games have taught me is that if someone Cobras in front of you then you just open up with the cannon and shred them.

Edited by Deadbeatloser22 on Nov 11th 2018 at 10:43:27 AM

Russian jets have been able to do that since the cold war, it was one of those often reported capabilities that no one in NATO believed until after the iron curtain fell, and it turned out that yes... yes they could fire missiles off bore.

It would not suprise me at all if it has been coppied since, hell I would expect it actualy... thats not a good thing to leave just your opponent capable of doing.

x5 Yeah, same issue as the Cobra. Both maneuvers return the pilot to their original heading afterwards, and both put the aircraft in a very vulnerable position. Post-stall maneuvering is pretty much suicidal in a fight, like I mentioned they don’t actually even permit those moves to be used in combat situations.

Yeah, we’ve had off-boresight launching for a while now. The Russians had it since the 70s. It never seems to work quite well for them any more, though.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 11th 2018 at 3:57:39 AM

I have to wonder if that's gotta do with the electronics in the planes they have these days or if it's a problem with the missiles themselves.

I read a thing from an Air Force pilot who cross-trained on East German Mig-29s in the 1990s and he said the off-bore targeting system of the Mig worked first time, every time and was remarkably simple to engage and use. (All you did was plug a cable in from your helmet into a port.)

It was a complete wake-up call for the West as training exercises would repeatedly have the OpFor Migs using that whup the crap out of Western jets using more traditional dogfighting maneuvers.

That possibility is still very much existent in the present day Russian Air Force.

Edited by MajorTom on Nov 11th 2018 at 6:18:20 AM

They’ve had persistent technical issues with those systems in recent years, which is what I was mentioning.

It’s unlikey in the extreme that the Russian Air Force would be able to whup any western Air Force these days.

I don't know, many of the European NATO states have horrifically poor readiness rates right now. The German Luftwaffe for example can only get maybe 30 planes in the air on any given day.

Edited by MajorTom on Nov 11th 2018 at 1:09:14 AM

And what is the readiness level of the VVS these days?

Yeah, not a whole lot better. Their fleet is in pretty rough shape as well. They also have trouble surging airpower to the front lines.

Either way, any conflict with a western nation would all but guarantee a whole bunch of other western nations jumping in, and that would be the end of it. The Russians have no counter to high-end assets like the F-22 and F-35, and probably wouldn’t fare too well against our last-gen assets anyways.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 11th 2018 at 3:32:19 AM

Don't the Russians also are stuck with practically no 5th gen fighters and only 30 to 40 4.5 gen fighters with varying levels of readiness like the Su-35?

Apparently they don't like to use the Su-35s because the engine maintenance needed after deployment is just obscene.

Doesn't seem that different from having to repair the Mi G-29 engines all the time.

Its called no longer having the same amount of resources the Soviet Union did.

IIRC, I've always read reports of how Russian jet engines, even during their height in the Cold War, were always troublesome to maintain.

Specially their high performance aircraft like the Mi G-25 and Mi G-31 having issues with engine service life or tearing themselves apart when trying to hit their maximum combat speeds.

China has finally showed off their J-20's internals:

• Fox News

• CNN article

She's a big bitch. Those missiles are air to air, but there is enough room for air to ground ordinance.

She's not completely stealthy, but stealthy enough to kill the PAC-2, HAWK and AEGIS systems that the neighbors have.

Taiwan: gib F-35 pls.

Lock-Mart is cutting steel on the test bed "Quiet Super Sonic Jet"

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Nov 20th 2018 at 5:57:11 AM

Oh man, can't wait to see how the new tech is gonna be adopted. Noise pollution was one of the reasons why the Concorde got retired (along with cost inefficiency), so this should go a long way towards making supersonic travel practical. Hope that they'll test the platform with low-emission and renewable power plants as well.

So how are they gonna do it? Cover the engines with a jet engine sized sound suppressor?

Nothing to do with the engine, everything to do with the aerodynamics. The issue with aircraft crossing the sound barrier is that it starts travelling faster than the sound waves it generates, causing them to smash into each other and leading to the overpressure that we hear as a sonic boom. NASA has been working with Lockheed since the '80s to find a way around it. Looks like their solution is to shape the leading edge in a way that ensures that the laminar airflow over it stays subsonic even as the plane goes supersonic. It should also eliminate turbulent flow on the wings, improving the craft's flight performance.

Weren't most of the noise pollution regs mostly about spite after the US SST project fell apart?

Because during climbout at least Concorde wasn't actually that much louder than any other plane.