Glider
Captain
And the A6, A10 and A7 could only complete those missions with control of the air, a luxury that the future may not allow for.
The F15 and F18 can operate wherever they like and mix it with the best the opposition can currently field.
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The A6, A7 and A10 all performed well because they were designed from the outset to drop bombs as a primary mission.
A dedicated attack plane ("front-line bomber"), well protected, maneuvrable even when loaded, in league of A-10/Su-25 could be a good idea, but I guess there is no military budget today for new designs.
Two things 'bout the 5th gen fighters:
-the proliferation of more advanced FLIR/IRST sensors is likely to go way up
-the usage of supercruise would not be such a great advantage: the plane traveling Mach 1,5 some time would heat up the surface skin and present itself like a glowing torch even for today's IRST/FLIR
Why?
Personally I believe an aircraft like the A-10 is always needed. Current plans have the A-10 around until 2028.
It is quite possible that you could have a portion of a fighter carry that much heat on its surface, but think what it would be around the engine! Still 60C would dissipate pretty quickly against 60 below.Tnx for the info, but I wouldn't started the whole thing if I haven't read some 10 years ago that modern planes' skin heats to 60 deg Celsius when traveling at Mach 2, and 200 deg when traveling Mach 3*. If you could point me to the good source covering temperature vs. speed, it would be neat.
Joe, wasn't the same said for the F-15, that it was going to remain around until 2020 or 2025?
It is quite possible that you could have a portion of a fighter carry that much heat on its surface, but think what it would be around the engine! Still 60C would dissipate pretty quickly against 60 below.
Different animal and I knew you were going to mention that. The SR-71 is much higher and faster than what we're talking with, almost at the edge of space. The SR-71 is dealing with an environment that an object would see as if it was re-entering the earth's atmosphere.
Indeed it would, but it's still 60 deg
OTOH, the FLIR cameras have been capable to notice the objects at 'normal' temperatures (10-20 deg) against a background that also has some moderate temperature, and those were capable of that some 25 years ago (cameras for LANTIRN, Maverick co). The new technology beats their performance, of course.
So the plane radiating IR (even if the skin temperature is moderate, 20-30 deg perhaps) would be even more likely noticed because the background (as seen from under that plane) is hardly emiting any IR rays.
For that to happen (similar or same IR signature) the 'target' plane would need to be at lower altitude then the FLIR sensor (both aircraft surface mounted), making the 40 000 ft (or even 10 000 ft) alt out of the question.
OTOH, the heavy clouds tend to hamper performance of FLIR/IRST for both sides, so the 'target' plane could put those to good use vs. such sensors.
I was talking about passive sets all the time.
Any good info about IR antennae - so far I thought only RF requires one. But I guess the bigger CCD of IR sensor, the better performance.