Your Nation's Air Force Mark II:

[Velkanika]

*AWACS

GCI is essentially the floor for any modern air force, and is hampered in tracking VLO aircraft by usually being in a fixed location.

AWACS would be part of an overall GCI program here. Even the main part. My point was more that external guidance of the combat aircraft that incorporates multiple sensor inputs is the most important.

The buzzword you're looking for is sensor fusion.

[Velkanika]

Yep like the Vampire. Made a rough top down view so you can see better.

(Image)

That is one ugly airplane.

[Velkanika]

CAS. who puts rocket pods and massive gun pods on F15E? It's just not done, you'll desecrate its sexiness

F-15E doesn't use gun pods or rockets because they're pretty useless for what it, and SU-34, are supposed to do.

Air support as they did it in World War Two against a serious foe died the day ZSU-23-4 and SA-7 Grail came out.

A-10 was fine until Tunguska and Buk became largely proliferate in the mid to late 1980's.

Honestly, you could probably use A-10s in a modern war against the Russian Ground Forces just fine. They can fly above their engagement ceilings and rain Mavericks and bombs onto their targets once the Wild Weasels kill all the SAMs that can threaten them.

[Velkanika]

yeah that's totally not how that works, the A-10 wasn't capable of high level precision strikes till fairly recently.

The projected life span for the entire A-10 force against the Soviet Union should the cold war become hot was about three weeks.

It could carry AGM-65s in the 80s, so of course it could do high-level precision strikes 30 years ago.

[Velkanika]

it wasnt except in daytime clear weather with no clouds or haze obscuring the target

whcih was par the course for western attack aircraft thirty years ago sans ultra high tech systems like F-117 and F-111/Tornado/F-15E/A-6 who could do precision attacks in all weather day or night at most altitudes

if the weather is clear for your munitions its clear for enemy air defenses~

Sure, but the vast majority of mobile battlefield air defenses can't engage a target above ~12,000 feet. Bombs and missiles can be dropped accurately from well above that altitude.

[Velkanika]

Those you can suppress.

TELs are extremely difficult to suppress or destroy.

You generally need to find them first.

Their radars are significantly easier to find and destroy, but you have a point. This problem is what the US created the F-35 to deal with, because a Lightening II can just cruise right over the battlefield dropping SDBs and lobbing HARMs, and no SAM site will detect them.

[Velkanika]

OK back to the beginning.

Not enough is known about Casaba howitzers to quantify their effects. What exactly would happen if you pointed one at a ship on the surface and blew it up? We don't know. We don't know how large a warhead would be needed, what kind of lethal effects would predominate, how the shaped charge "beam" would interact with the atmosphere or anything like that. Treating it like a "focused nuke" is fundamentally wrong because nuclear warheads don't produce streams of heavy ions.

It is very possible that the beam would be heavily attenuated by the atmosphere though. An orbit-to-earth casaba howitzer may not be a practical weapon at all.

Saying you killed a carrier with a "casaba howitzer" is, given what is known about them, tantamount to saying you killed it with a "disruptor" or "mind beam".

Thank you for your answer, however, is it not feasible that you could determine these things mathematically? You can easily calculate air resistance and I imagine that there has been enough research done on conventional shaped charges that you can tell how far a kinetic stream would travel in atmo. Much of the research on what type of liner would be used in a weaponized CH has been done. On the off chance you have not already checked it out, read this http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... onvent.php. The SS-18 Satan has a throw weight of around 9.8 US tons, an Orion pulse unit weighed about 1.3 tons. You can easily see how you could scale that up and replace the Tungsten liner with something more effective for in atmo. flight.

The beam would disperse in the upper stratosphere at best, probably sooner given how effective the magnetosphere is at deflecting ionized particles. Casaba howitzers are useless against any target protected by an atmosphere or more than about 300-500 km away due to inverse square law.

As for rods from god which I think I saw mentioned earlier, lifting one rod into orbit would take a Saturn V class booster. To make things better, atmospheric drag would slow the rod down to terminal velocity long before impact unless it descended far too rapidly to survive atmospheric entry.

[Velkanika]

Ok. I keep vacillating between the idea of doing serious upgrades on my military, while keeping it small, or the idea of having a larger military with less advanced stuff.

Ah, the age-old debate of quality versus quantity. The best choice is entirely dependent on your geopolitical situation. Figure out which nation(s) military you are most likely to fight, and then figure out which choice will give you your best chance of taking them apart.

[Velkanika]

I would love some criticism http://www.nationstates.net/nation=solumnix/detail=factbook/id=501106

Why are you using a turboprop delta when you have a jet version of the same design that is superior? I also suggest dropping the 747 modification, they're far less useful than a bomber built for the military role. You've got an ok build for a large air force, but you have a major deficiency when it comes to dedicated ELINT and jamming aircraft.

[Velkanika]

Why are you using a turboprop delta when you have a jet version of the same design that is superior? I also suggest dropping the 747 modification, they're far less useful than a bomber built for the military role. You've got an ok build for a large air force, but you have a major deficiency when it comes to dedicated ELINT and jamming aircraft.

The 747 cruise missile carrier was a real proposal. The modified 747 could carry up to 100 AGM-86 missiles compared to only 20 for a B-52.





Now if you want something even more crazy, here's a concept for a 747 designed to launch ICBMs in flight:



Edit: for ELINT and jamming aircraft I would suggest the EA-18G and/or EF-111A for jamming and the RC-135C for ELINT.

I'm well aware that it's a real proposal, but it's still not as capable or survivable of a platform as a B-52H or B-1B. You know that payload capacity isn't everything.

Your proposals for jammers and ELINT are part of what I'd suggest, but I suggest taking a look at the EC-130 family and E-8 JSTARS for additional capabilities. The U-2S Dragon Lady is also extremely capable in the ELINT role.

[Velkanika]

Would a Starstreak missile attached to a fighter jet work or would it be stupid?

Starstreak is SACLOS so you'd have to figure out some way to guide it from one aircraft to another, and this is aside from the fact that it's far too small and has too short of a range to be anything resembling a replacement for modern SRAAMs like AIM-9, AIM-132, Python, MICA, R-73, etc.

Just as a further note on top of what you've already said, the AIM-9 is larger than the entire launch tube Starstreak comes in. Combat aircraft and their missiles are larger than they appear at first glance.

[Velkanika]

...

One is a subsonic cruise missile the other is a ballistic missile, there is basically zero overlap in their capabilities and intended missions.

Both are long range atomic bomb carriers meant to allow an aircraft to fire nukes from a long way away. They do the job in different ways but their overall role is the same.

You're stretching it a bit too far, this is an apples and oranges comparison.

In answer to your question in that post, you can bet your ass that range is useful. That much standoff distance lets your bomber force strike targets from either far outside the range of interception or deep inside the interior of the target nation, or both depending on the circumstances. Skybolt was ultimately cancelled in favor of SLBMs, because while strategic bombers have to fly out of large runways and soft-target airfields, submarines are always hidden somewhere in vast areas of ocean until they launch.

[Velkanika]

You're stretching it a bit too far, this is an apples and oranges comparison.

In answer to your question in that post, you can bet your ass that range is useful. That much standoff distance lets your bomber force strike targets from either far outside the range of interception or deep inside the interior of the target nation, or both depending on the circumstances. Skybolt was ultimately cancelled in favor of SLBMs, because while strategic bombers have to fly out of large runways and soft-target airfields, submarines are always hidden somewhere in vast areas of ocean until they launch.

I on the other hand have no subs on account of having no seas to sail them in.

In that case, I suggest TEL-based ICBMs. The Russians use them heavily, and they're a pretty good option for hiding missiles long enough to launch a second or third strike.

[Velkanika]

In that case, I suggest TEL-based ICBMs. The Russians use them heavily, and they're a pretty good option for hiding missiles long enough to launch a second or third strike.

I use those. I also use train based ICBMs, silos and anything else I can think off. I just think bombers are uber cool and want to incorporate them somehow into my atomic fleet.

Aircraft have two options in nuclear warfare; standoff and penetration bombing. Standoff bombing uses cruise missiles to strike their targets from long range, while penetration bombers fly in close and hit their targets with short-ranged missiles or gravity bombs. The US uses a combination of both, with the two primary types being the B-52H and B-1B, with B-2s acting as a specialized counterforce penetration bomber and primarily focusing on hunting down mobile ICBMs before they can launch. In case of an all-out attack on the Soviet Union or Russia, I'd expect that about two thirds of the B-52 force would act as standoff bombers while one third flew in at low level with the B-1Bs. The standoff bombers would fire the first wave of nuclear weapons, with one of their primary goals being the destruction of airfields along the penetration routes for the low-level bombers. The low-level bombers would have large numbers of AGM-69 SRAMs or AGM-86 ALCMs, depending on the era, that would be used as nuclear SEAD to blast any surface threat out of existence as they flew to their launch points to hit targets deep within the interior of the Soviet Union/Russia the standoff bombers couldn't reach from outside the air defense zone. They would also deliver gravity bombs on targets that may or may not have already taken an ICBM hit, as gravity bombs are cheaper than an RV and available in greater numbers which makes them perfect for both hitting targets that aren't worth an RV and making the rubble bounce. Gravity bombs are also capable of delivering much higher yield devices on targets that require additional force.

[Velkanika]

Basically I figured that TEL's alone could be tracked down and killed by enemy ICBM spam. Especially since Purpelia is like modeled on an European nation. So it's not huge (think Germany or France in terms of size) and does not have much wilderness to hide a TEL in. Like my guess would be that you can probably track the movements of my atomic forces via facebook because somebody is bound to notice them moving down roads. So an always airborne and on the move system makes a degree of sense.

The 1991 Iraqi Scud Hunt is the textbook case of how ridiculously difficult locating and destroying TELs is, even on a flat desert plain that is ideal for searching with radar aircraft. Imagine doing that in mountainous or forested terrain.

[Velkanika]

I on the other hand have no subs on account of having no seas to sail them in.

SSBNs are by far the most important component in any nuclear arsenal. If you don''t border any oceans I would heavily suggest building a naval base in a allied nation that has a coast or building a naval base in the arctic circle somewhere.

I sincerely doubt that is a viable option in his situation due to the rather unpalatable situation of probably being physically cut off from his naval forces in time of war. I also think this specific situation is worth exploring, if only for the fun of imagining a nuclear-armed landlocked nation with a large military budget.

[Velkanika]

The Airforce of Pelgaraus can be found here.
I've done my best to make it as realistic as possible

Did you actually design and prototype aircraft in KSP?

[Velkanika]

By legal definition, space starts at the Kármán line, which is 100km up. IOW you're travelling through space.

True, but just for a short period of time. You boost up into space and then descend back into the atmosphere before gliding over the target. Thus while you're in range of your opponents ABM systems (assuming they are ground or naval rather than space based) you're in the atmosphere, not in space. Also EKVs are designed to operate at much higher altitudes than 100-150 km as ICBMS will generally have a peak altitude of some 1,000+ kilometers.

150 km altitude is extremely close to the minimum stable altitude you can put a satellite in, so close that if you accelerated to 7.8 km/s you could probably orbit a dozen times before drag would pull you down. It's also a bit above the apogee ICBMs typically reach, so both space-based ABM and surface/air-launched ABM, along with many ASAT weapons, can engage there.

[Velkanika]

Is they're any formula for calculating a missile's general range at a certain altitude? I have a hypersonic anti-ship/cruise missile based off the Kh-80 but details on it are a bit vague.

[Velkanika]

Yours are for rockets. While Kh-80 is turbojet.

This works infinitely better for missile.

I didn't know that one. It'll come in handy if I ever properly design missiles for NS, but that's one area I'll probably just handwave a bit.

[Velkanika]

Knowing you've been pinged and knowing who did it and where they are aren't quite the same thing

Surely you would be able to deduce the general location of the radiation source, no?

A plain active-radar-homing missile (like the R-27EA) wouldn't be effective, since the F-22 could just stop using its radar and take evasive action. Anti-radiation missiles in the SEAD role can use inertial guidance to continue flying towards the target if they turn off their radar, but that doesn't work with planes, since they're moving targets.

Perhaps an "anti-stealth" active-radar-homing missile could use electro-optical or infrared guidance as a secondary form of guidance. If the target tries to turn off their radar, continue flying towards the area they are likely to be until you can reacquire them with your secondary methods. The Pk would probably be horrible, but if would this work if the missiles were used in volleys? If this is just silly, please humble me, I'm no expert on these things.

The problem with your idea is obtaining a firing solution. On top of what Vihenia and Akasha have already said, using ESM to target weapons rarely works in an anti-air context. The first thing you'll see when someone switches on a radar is a general range of bearings the emitter might be on relative to your ESM equipment, with an outrageous possible range of distances. It'll take about a minute of continuous monitoring and signal processing before you'll know with 100% certainty which 300 nmi³ section of sky the emitter is in. Narrowing it down from there is contingent on either finding it via another sensor or bearing change, which in the case of an AESA fighter radar is extremely difficult because you can't detect it very well unless it's looking at you, and if it's looking at you it's probably flying or shooting at you.

As far as other sensors go, don't even bother using IRST to track stealth fighters. You have to be close enough that your radar will have already detected them for it to tell you anything useful.

How many men are in a fighter wing of 32 aircraft, approximately?

About 300, probably commanded by a Major.

[Velkanika]

Thrust vectoring allows for more rapid direction changes by redirecting the center of thrust relative to the center of mass. This of course leads to rapid energy loss, which can easily result in a lost fighter in a dogfight.

[Velkanika]

WIP for a 4th-generation large air superiority fighter, made for another member of my region, with F-15 and Su-27 added in for scale. If all goes well, it will be my region's equivalent to the Su-27. It's only in the early stages now, but it's far enough along that the basic outline is there, and because modern aircraft are not my strongest area I thought I'd drop in here for feedback.

Among these: is the gun (6x20mm) in an okay location? Is there anything else I can add to the space it would take up on the other side? Does it look terribly unbalanced or un-aerodynamic? Is it too big, compared to the scale and the other fighters pictured below? Are the vertical stabilizers too big or too close together? Does the landing gear look okay?

Generally speaking, are there any crippling problems with this I should fix in the early stages before going back to add detail?

(Image)

I'm getting a general MiG-25 vibe from this, but more like the one the West got before we knew it was an interceptor. This definitely looks the part of an extremely agile air superiority fighter in the vein of the Eagle or Flanker, especially with those variable-geometry intake ramps.

The gun is in a great location, and don't worry about adding something to the other side. If you've got to balance it out, use lead or steel weights welded to the airframe. The vertical stabilizers are a bit oversized, but that may be a good thing as the extra height will prevent sideslip at higher angles of attack than with a smaller pair.

The overall size isn't too far out there, but it needs more area ruling.

[Velkanika]

it needs more area ruling.

While I understand what this is in principle - maintaining the same cross-sectional area along the length to improve transonic airflow - I don't know how to apply it in practice to anything more complex than a coke bottle with a delta wing. Is there anything more specific you would suggest? e.g. widen the forward fuselage, bulge out the profile of the "hump," adjust the shaping of the wing roots or landing gear fairings?

In the CYOE thread someone mentioned enlarging the intakes and leaving a little more space between the engines themselves, would you second this?

Reduce the length of the dorsal hump, or at least increase the rate at which it disappears into the upper wings.

Larger intakes aren't necessarily needed. The engines can only use so much air, so base the intake size off of their thrust. RL 4th generation fighters from the major US and Russian manufacturers did a good job of this so I'd use them as reference. Just remember to match thrust within about 5,000 lbf.

[Velkanika]

Update on the jet fighter:

- Even though nobody told me to, I moved the 6x20mm cannon from the wing root to the side fairing/landing gear bulge. This was partly because I noticed extra space there, and partly because it would leave more room for RWR/jammers/miscellaneous EW equipment in the wing roots. Any problem with this?
- In accordance with Velk's advice, I reduced the size of the dorsal bulge. I also widened the intakes and forward fuselage a bit, and redid the transition from the wing trailing edge to the stabilator leading edge. Improved?
- Added an in-flight refueling probe. Because the fuselage is so narrow forward of the intakes, I had to copy a layout I'd seen on some late-build Su-27s, with the probe retracting straight into the space between the radar and the canopy (it's the panel to the left of the IRST). Is this workable, or should I find some way to squeeze in an angling-out probe on the left side of the cockpit instead?
- Finally, for extra lulz to test the available space I added an example A2A loadout, with twin-end pylon additions on some hardpoints. Any thoughts on whether to go with 4 or 3 hardpoints under each wing, considering twin pylons are available and the wingtip weights double as launch rails? Any way I can cram in extra hardpoints under the fuselage?

Overall, while it's still an obvious WIP, I'm increasingly satisfied with the way it looks so far. It's a little less "lanky" than before, but it still seems unique enough that it doesn't look like an obvious ripoff of the Su-27 or F-15. But, given my continuing uncertainty, I'm putting it here for extra feedback before I go back to add all the rivets and panels.

(Image)

I really like that configuration, nicely done. The probe is fine, and I think the transition between the horizontal stabilizer leading edge and the wing trailing edge is perfect. You also have a sufficiently area ruled fuselage now, which is honestly where a fair bit of the sexiness is coming from. As a general rule of thumb, the more like a paper airplane it looks the more likely the USAF is to actually buy it sexier it is.

I hate to break it to you, but you've just fallen into the biggest pit when making an NS fighter. Don't go overboard with the payload, and remember that a loadout of 4 short-range missiles and 4 medium to long-range missiles is considered fantastic for the era this aircraft will enter service. If you completely fill the difference between the Loaded Weight and MTOW, the aircraft will require a ridiculous amount of runway to get airborne and will sacrifice its agility.