Internationale fighter ontwikkelingen

Gestart door Lex, 19/12/2015 | 16:32 uur

Sparkplug

In Queue for Perfection: Indonesia to Receive First Russian Su-35 in 2018

Sputnik news | 09 March 2016

Indonesia will not receive the first batch of Russian Su-35 multirole fighters earlier than in 2018 due to the overload of the aircraft's sole manufacturer with domestic and international orders, media reported Wednesday, citing a source in the Russian Defense Ministry.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Earlier in March, Indonesian Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu announced Moscow and Jakarta would sign in April a contract for the delivery of 10 Russian Su-35 Flanker multirole fighter jets to replace Indonesia's fleet of F-5 Tigers.

The manufacturer had produced 14 Su-35, several Su-30МК2 aircraft for Vietnam and modernized Su-27 in 2015, the Russian Izvestia newspaper reported.

"Today, a full transition of the enterprise to the production of modern Su-35 is on the agenda. However, this will not affect the queue. The plant is due to produce 50 aircraft for Russia's Aerospace Forces within five years, and 24 for China. Indonesians could expect to receive two jets in 2018 in a best-case scenario," the source told the newspaper.

The Su-35S is a 4++ generation one-seater, an upgraded version of the Su-27 multirole fighter with features comparable to a 5-generation aircraft. It is characterized by supermaneuverability and is equipped with new avionics, a modern radar and advanced engines. It can accomplish incredible tricks without deceleration and can fly at a speed of 2400 kmph, outpacing all rivals in its class. The warplane is armed with 30mm guns, a huge number of missiles and rockets.

Four Su-35s have been deployed to Syria amid Moscow's counterterrorism campaign.

http://sputniknews.com/military/20160309/1035990763/indonesia-russia-su-35-jets.html#ixzz42RJNV3oy
A fighter without a gun . . . is like an airplane without a wing.

-- Brigadier General Robin Olds, USAF.

Sparkplug

Citaat van: Harald op 11/03/2016 | 12:15 uur
Pratt & Whitney heeft alweer goed de vinger in de pap bij de ontwikkeling van de Northrop Grumman B-21 bomber.

Gaan ze weer voor 1 leverancier voor de motoren ?

Blijkbaar wel. In onderstaande link wordt General Electric in ieder geval niet genoemd.
http://www.janes.com/article/58635/usaf-names-some-b-21-subcontractors-pratt-whitney-as-engine-maker
A fighter without a gun . . . is like an airplane without a wing.

-- Brigadier General Robin Olds, USAF.

Harald

Citaat van: Sparkplug op 11/03/2016 | 11:43 uur
F-35 chief expects P&W's bomber work to reduce F135 cost

Pratt & Whitney heeft alweer goed de vinger in de pap bij de ontwikkeling van de Northrop Grumman B-21 bomber.

Gaan ze weer voor 1 leverancier voor de motoren ?

Sparkplug

F-35 chief expects P&W's bomber work to reduce F135 cost

By James Drew, Washington DC | 10 March 2016

The head of the multinational F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme expects Pratt & Whitney to significantly reduce the cost of the F135 now that it has been named as the propulsion system supplier for the Northrop Grumman B-21 bomber.

Lt Gen Christopher Bogdan would not confirm if the F135 engine core is common with the B-21 powerplant but says there are enough "benefits" to warrant price reductions for the F-35 programme.

The F-35 joint programme office (JPO) has already reached a "handshake" agreement for 167 of the high-thrust military turbofan engines under low-rate production lots nine and 10, but price reductions might come with production of 100 B-21 bombers ramps up in the 2020s. The air force has not said if the stealthy B-21 is powered by two or four engines.

"I think some things we learnt on the F-35 engine with Pratt & Whitney will greatly benefit the long-range strike airplane, and at the same time, I think Pratt & Whitney ought to be looking to drive the cost of the F-35 engine down now that they have that extra business," Bogdan said at a defence programmes forum in Washington DC on 10 March. "We expect them to."


US Air Force

The air force says P&W of East Hartford, Connecticut is one of seven top-tier suppliers for the B-21 programme. It did not confirm Pratt's exact role on the industry team.

P&W maintains two plants in Connecticut that produce its main civil and military engines, including a 140,000m² manufacturing space in Middletown and 74,000m² space in East Hartford. The company produces the F100 for legacy Boeing F-15 and Lockheed F-16 fighter jets, the PW4062 for Boeing's KC-46 Pegasus and recently wrapped up work on the F117 for the Boeing C-17.

Bogdan did not say if the B-21 would boost production of F135 engine cores. He did, though, confirm that overhead costs would at least be shared. "I would expect that prices for F135 to come down," he reiterated.

The bomber programme remains classified despite the air force naming the top seven suppliers and releasing the military designation and artist's impression of the bomber.

Lockheed and P&W have committed to reducing the price of the conventional F-35A from 100 million today to $85 million for orders placed in fiscal year 2019.

A spokesman for the engine manufacturer declined to comment on the B-21 or Bogdan's comments, referring all question to the air force. F135 assembly is scaling up as the F-35 fighter acquisition gathers pace, with output jumping 110% between lets eight and 10.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/f-35-chief-expects-pws-bomber-work-to-reduce-f135-423013/
A fighter without a gun . . . is like an airplane without a wing.

-- Brigadier General Robin Olds, USAF.

jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)

F-35 Chief: Think Very, Very Hard Before Making Another Joint Fighter

12:03 AM ET By Marcus Weisgerber 

Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan has a bit of advice for Air Force and Navy leaders envisioning their next tactical aircraft.

Perhaps the only thing U.S. military leaders know about their next fighter jet is this: they want the program to go better than the F-35's did.

The sixth-generation fighter effort is still in its infancy; the aircraft it produces may not fly for decades. The Pentagon hasn't even decided whether to build separate planes for the Navy and Air Force. But the services' leaders are already cooperating to figure out how the futuristic fighter will fit into the battlefield of the future — and how they can avoid another tactical aircraft program that winds up so late, over budget, and short of its goals.

Ask the F-35 program's current director for advice, and you'll get this gentle warning: joint programs are hard.

"I'm not saying they're bad. I'm not saying they're good. I'm just saying they're hard," Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan said Thursday. "[Y]ou ought to think really hard about what you really need out of the sixth-generation fighter and how much overlap is there between what the Navy and the Air Force really need."

When the F-35 was conceived in the 1990s, the goal was to buy a common plane for the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and even America's allies. The Air Force version would fly from traditional runways, the Navy version would operate from aircraft carriers, and the Marine version would be built to take off from short runways and land vertically. The goal was to have all three have 70 percent of their parts in common, which was meant to save billions of dollars in development and logistics costs.

But engineering changes have produced three variants that have only 20 percent of their parts in common, Bogdan said at a conference sponsored by McAleese and Associates and Credit Suisse.

If Pentagon leaders do choose to build a multi-variant plane to serve multiple sets of requirements, he says, the services will have to embrace compromise to a greater degree than happened in the $400 billion F-35 program.

"Man, is [compromise] a hard thing to do when you're spending billions of dollars," he said, "You want what you want, [but] hopefully get what you need."

And indeed, some top military leaders are hinting that another joint, F-35-like project is not in the works.

"We will have some different requirements for what we need based on the different things we are expected to provide for the joint force," Lt. Gen. James "Mike" Holmes, Air Force deputy chief of staff for plans and requirements, told reporters last month. "We will use common technologies and maybe some common things, but at this point we think it will be a different enough mission that it won't be the same airplane."

Asked Thursday whether the Navy would work with the Air Force to buy a new sixth-generation aircraft, Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, said, "It's really too early to make a conclusive statement in that regard."

Richardson said the two services, which are already discussing the key capabilities of a fighter that might first see combat in the 2030s, will keep talking with one another.

"Even in the early stages, [the Navy is] committed to working with the Air Force on that so that we kind of learn from each other as effectively as we can," the admiral said at the conference.

For now, Richardson said, the Navy is more focused on figuring out how to fly drones alongside manned aircraft on its aircraft carriers. "There's just so much to learn about integrating unmanned aviation into the carrier air wing right now, but I just want to get started," he said.

In the meantime, defense firms have been pitching concepts of their own for nearly a decade: planes armed with lasers, special engines that don't give off heat, and more. Now if they can just come up with a way to help keep the program itself on track.

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/03/f-35-chief-think-very-very-hard-making-another-joint-fighter/126587/

Sparkplug

Pentagon worried about dwindling USAF fighter numbers

By James Drew, Washington DC | 10 March 2016

US deputy secretary of defence Robert Work has expressed concern about the size of the US Air Force's tactical fighter force, which has dropped from 88 squadrons before the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to just 54 squadrons today.

Speaking at a 9 March forum in Washington DC to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, Work questioned the wisdom of moving to an all fifth-generation fighter force at the expense of higher overall fighter numbers, saying the air force will probably need to maintain its Lockheed Martin F-16s and Boeing F-15s into the 2040s "and possibly beyond".


US Air Force

Work admits that the air force "has taken the brunt of the defence drawdown" since 2001, which has seen more spending on counterterrorism and stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at the expense of procurement and force modernisation.

He says since 2001 the Army has gone from 480,000 soldiers to 450,00 today and the number of marines has increased from 172,000 to 182,000. The US Navy, meanwhile, has dropped from 316 ships to 308.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the air force had 134 tactical fighter squadrons in its inventory, but those numbers dropped sharply as airframes like the General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom and Lockheed F117 were withdrawn from service.

Meanwhile, Lockheed F-22 Raptor production was truncated at 187 aircraft – well short of the 750 aircraft the military planned to buy when production began in 1994.

The F-35, meanwhile, is running well over cost and about six years behind schedule, and Work worries about the air force cutting its planned A-model production rate in this decade from 80 to 60 and now just 48 Lightning IIs per year – historically low production volumes.

"Without question, the part of the joint portfolio which has taken the brunt of the defence drawdown is the US Air Force and our capacity in aerospace combat power," says Work, who describes fifth-generation fighters as "battle network" or BN aircraft. "Now, the problem is that we truncated the BN-22, and the ramp rate for the BN-35 is now at a point where the air force was trying to stay at 80 per year, then we dropped down to try stay at 60, and now our programme is 48 per year. The mere fact is, we're going to have a mixed fifth-gen and fourth-gen fleet for a long time."





US Air Force

Evenif the department were awash with cash, Work says he doesn't know if it would be wiser to pump that money into legacy fleet upgrades or into buying more F-35s.

"I really worry about the size of the air force," he says. "If you told me we were going to go down from 54 tactical fighter squadrons to 45 but they'd all be F-35s, I'm not certain I'd say that's a good thing, simply because the air force's operational tempo right now is driving the force into a bad place."

Congress has passed legislation banning the air force from dropping below 1,900 fighter aircraft, of which, 1,100 must be combat-coded. The service currently funds 54 fighter squadrons in its base budget, and one F-15 squadron is funded through the Pentagon's European Reassurance Initiative (ERI) fund "primarily because it's the only dual-capable aircraft we can move without causing problems with [Russian president Vladimir Putin]".

The air force says it is also hamstrung when it comes to fighter pilots, with officials saying at a congressional hearing this week that the service is 511 fighter pilots short of its requirement. That deficit will grow to 834 by 2022 without intervention.

America currently faces the end of F-16, F-15 and Boeing F/A-18 production as the services pursue three variants of the F-35. The navy and air force are currently studying sixth-generation fighter options that would enter service in the 2030s.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/pentagon-worried-about-dwindling-usaf-fighter-number-422996/
A fighter without a gun . . . is like an airplane without a wing.

-- Brigadier General Robin Olds, USAF.

Sparkplug

Citaat van: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 09/03/2016 | 23:17 uur
Of het nu de GAU-8/A betreft of een nieuw vergelijkbaar systeem incl. de capaciteit van het vliegtuig om een gelijksoortige hoeveelheid munitie mee te torsen maakt mij niet zoveel uit als het maar minimaal gelijkwaardig of beter is en dat zie ik een lichte vervanger vooralsnog niet doen.

Het is maar net hoe groot het ontwerp is en ook waar behoefte aan is. De voorganger van de A-10 was de A-7D Corsair II. Deze had weliswaar 'slechts' een M61A1, maar wel met 1000 stuks munitie.

Een ontwerp met een munitiecapaciteit van bijvoorbeeld 500 stuks 25 mm APEX munitie zou ook niet al te slecht zijn.
A fighter without a gun . . . is like an airplane without a wing.

-- Brigadier General Robin Olds, USAF.

Harald

Hoe zal dat gaan straks in de overgangsfase bij Nederland als we zowel met F-16's als F-35 vliegen. Data uitwisseling kan dus niet via LINK16 vanaf de F-16 naar de F-35.  Hierbij gaat het grote voordeel van de F-35 Situation Awareness verloren.
Moeten wij dan ook extra pods bestellen/leasen ? 

En hoe zit het met de "Data verbinding" naar andere type toestellen en toestellen van andere landen, te denken aan :
- coöperatie met de Belgische F-16's o.a in missies en QRA
- Eurofighters
- Rafale
- Gripens
- ...

maar ook andere eenheden binnen de NL defensie; bijvoorbeeld fregatten, grond eenheden, e.d.  moeten hiervoor ook andere apparatuur of upgrades aangeschaft worden ?

Harald

USAF wants its IRST pod to have data sharing capability between 4th & 5th gen. fighters

H/T to Milaerospace. In a sources-sought notice published on Mar. 8, the U.S. Air Force's Life Cycle Management Center announced that the infrared search and track (IRST) pod for the F-15C must have a "5th to 4th Gen Gateway" capability.



A key requirement for the pod is that it must talk to the F-22's Intra-Flight Data Link (IFDL) and the F-35's Multifunction Advanced Data Link (MADL) via Link-16 and create a "Common Tactical Picture (CTP)."

http://alert5.com/2016/03/10/usaf-wants-its-irst-pod-to-have-data-sharing-capability-between-4th-5th-gen-fighters/

jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)

#372
Citaat van: Sparkplug op 09/03/2016 | 22:55 uur
Dan houdt het wat de GAU-8/A betreft (voorlopig) op. General Electric heeft het merendeel aan General Dynamics overgedragen en bijvoorbeeld de M134 Minigun aan Dillon Aero.

Of het nu de GAU-8/A betreft of een nieuw vergelijkbaar systeem incl. de capaciteit van het vliegtuig om een gelijksoortige hoeveelheid munitie mee te torsen maakt mij niet zoveel uit als het maar minimaal gelijkwaardig of beter is en dat zie ik een lichte vervanger vooralsnog niet doen.


Harald

Citaat van: Harald op 09/03/2016 | 23:04 uur
Helaas, Scorpion heeft alleen aan de vleugels, totaal 6 stuks ophangpunten voor wapens.
Maar er zijn wel mogelijkheden voor gun pods, alleen niet bekend welk kaliber.

http://www.scorpionjet.com/different-direction/

Harald

Citaat van: Harald op 09/03/2016 | 21:15 uur
Misschien kan die in de middellijn onder de Scorpion gehangen worden ? Of de 25 mm van de F-35, GAU-22/A
Helaas, Scorpion heeft alleen aan de vleugels, totaal 6 stuks ophangpunten voor wapens.

Ace1

Citaat van: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 09/03/2016 | 22:53 uur
Ook niet onbelangrijk van de GAU-8/A

Bron: Wikipedia:

"The gun's 5-foot, 11.5-inch (1.816 m) ammunition drum can hold up to 1,350 rounds of 30 mm ammunition, but generally holds 1,174 rounds"

En zo groot is de GAU-8/A.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger#/media/File:GAU-8_meets_VW_Type_1.jpg

Sparkplug

Citaat van: Ace1 op 09/03/2016 | 22:37 uur
De  GAU-8/A  was eind jaren 90 begin 2000 al uit productie dat heb ik vernomen van iemand die bij Thales Nederland werkzaam is, dat was de reden dat Zuid-Korea een licentie kochten van de GAU-8/A   om toch de Goalkeeper als CIWS te kunnen gebruiken en mijn bronnen zijn betrouwbaar.

De overige landen die een Goalkeeper gebruiken hebben een GAU-8/A  van  General Electric.

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNNeth_30mm_Goalkeeper.htm

Dan houdt het wat de GAU-8/A betreft (voorlopig) op. General Electric heeft het merendeel aan General Dynamics overgedragen en bijvoorbeeld de M134 Minigun aan Dillon Aero.
A fighter without a gun . . . is like an airplane without a wing.

-- Brigadier General Robin Olds, USAF.

jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)

Ook niet onbelangrijk van de GAU-8/A

Bron: Wikipedia:

"The gun's 5-foot, 11.5-inch (1.816 m) ammunition drum can hold up to 1,350 rounds of 30 mm ammunition, but generally holds 1,174 rounds"