Su-35

[Paddy]

[scooterscot]

It's a massive beast of an fast jet.

[administrator]

Pretty amazing moves. Must consume a heck of a lot of power to be able to bring the plane almost to a hover?

[northernladuk]

They must have put a lot of regulation on what they can do at airshows now. There are quite a few other clips where they really chuck the thing about, flipping the tail under and tumbles that aren't on this one. Guess they are not allowed to go too overboard now with the history of airshows.

[quackhandle]

Very impressive.

Similar moves to the Eurofighter Typhoon I saw at Cosford last year - my eardrums are still recovering now.

qh

[Dominic Connor]

Drones

Question is if you were fighting an enemy, which would you fear most ?

a) 50 drones
b) One really cool jet

A top tier fighter over 10 years in service will cost at least 50 times that of a drone /RPV

Politically they're cheaper too, so you can attack well defended targets without loss of pilots.

To me the biggest plus is more subtle.
Because each one is cheap, it doesn't matter so much if it is crap.

"Crap" in this context means, you build it to fight an enemy whose tech you think you know.
Turns out when you do fight it is against someone you didn't expect who has different tech.

History shows that predicting who you will fight in the next war is a mugs game.

Yet...
The RAF has pathetically low diversity in its manned aircraft, the Eurofighter and before it the Tornado try to be all things to all men and that makes them both stupidly expensive at the same time as not optimised for any given task.

We don't have any serious bombers, no a/c capable of launching from carriers because we don't have any carriers, an almost risible anti-tank capabilty again an enemy that can shoot back (ie anything better than an Arab army).

I read how they are already planning the upgrade to the Typhoon in 10 years, because this thing is so amazingly expensive, they don't bin them, just kludge until votes can be bought by throwing it all away and because the projects are so expensive they don't start unless they're "sure" they will succeed regardless of cost.


That means you don't get innovation, low risk taking means low rewards, but with cheap drones, it matters a lot less if you (for instance) build a drone that's tulip hot at taking out fast light boats attacking a big ship and it doesn't work or you never get attacked by them.

Instead what we do is try and hang that capability on a 70 million quid jet that costs £17,000 quid an hour to run, to shoot a boat we don't expect to be attacked by any time soon.

But we *may* have to deal with little boats, or jungles or defend a shipping lane against an enemy with subs which currently we can't really do any more and as above, if the RAF had to attack someone with proper air defences we'd have to buy a new air force afterwards.

[AtW]

Question is if you were fighting an enemy, which would you fear most ?

a) 50 drones
b) One really cool jet

I'll put my money on Death Star

[scooterscot]

Question is if you were fighting an enemy, which would you fear most ?

a) 50 drones
b) One really cool jet

A top tier fighter over 10 years in service will cost at least 50 times that of a drone /RPV

Politically they're cheaper too, so you can attack well defended targets without loss of pilots.

That being said, do drones carry air-to-air missiles? A manned fast jet could surely take out a fleet of drones with guns without much hassle, no?

[AtW]

That being said, do drones carry air-to-air missiles?

Yes.

A manned fast jet could surely take out a fleet of drones with guns without much hassle, no?

No.

[scooterscot]

Yes.



No.

"Predators had been armed with AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missiles, and were being used to "bait" Iraqi fighters, then run. In this incident, the Predator did not run, but instead fired one of its Stingers. The Stinger's heat-seeker became "distracted" by the MiG's missile and missed the MiG. The Predator was hit by the MiG's missile and destroyed.[52][53] Another two Predators had been shot down earlier by Iraqi SAMs, one of them on September 11, 2001.[54]"

General Atomics MQ-1 Predator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes, but can a drone match the evasive of a maned A/C? And win? I'm not so sure.