JF-17 Thunder Multirole Fighter [Thread 4]

[DARKY]

Had that been the case, then there would not have been any prototyping involved. Super Hornet would have exponentional price difference than its previous models, JSF would not have been materialized ever and Slient Eagle would have been as costly as JSF. Aircrafts evolve continously over the time as the newer technologies, concepts are developed and subsequently integrated.

Do you have any idea of what your posting ?... JSF is a completely new aircraft... SE is modification of Eagle.. I mentioned specifically do-not compare with American Companies(They have a league of their own)... the F/A 18SH had its PT tested so did the SE and F-35... take J-10B as example and calculate the years taken from 1st few J-10A to the 1st few PT of J-10B... and the R&D cost involved.

First of all, to make such a claim, you would have to speculate a specific RCS for any such quasi stealth JFT, it the final RCS figure falls below 1m3 the detection range would reduce, if JFT uses passive sensors and doesn't use its Radar the input received by other aircraft would reduce further. So all it has to do is to do enough that when the other aircraft sees it, it is able to engage that aircraft. Ultimate detection is almost a surety with conventional design if you're not able to defeat three important components 1)Radar 2)RWR 3)Heat seeker and there are certainly ways to avoid them.

To get the RCS figures to be below 1m2 you need to completely redesign the plane right from the wing shaping to fuselage tail, canopy.. etc..etc.. that plane would no longer be a JF-17.. being on passive mode how would it guide its AMRAAM with passive sensors ?... and what passive sensors in 1st place ?... and the big question here is how big would be the Internal weapon bay of JF-17..... even F-35 bays carry only 4 AAM.

Even the Russians are expected to induct PAK-FA around 2015-2017, If our neighbouring airforce is able to induct even MMRCA by then, i would consider it a big achievement (looking at their past record.)

Russian AF would start testing PAK FA as IOC in 2 years.. next year as many as 14 PT would be flying(3 are already flying with 4th almost ready).. by 2015 they would have their 1st squadron... 2017 is the year for PT testings of FGFA until then a couple of squadrons of single seat PAK FA would be bought as initial squadrons as it was done with Su30K and Su30MKI.

There is already alot of activity going on in this direction (see Information Pool for details).

The activity is happening more in the thread... the engineers know what they can do with this JF-17 they cannot use the magic wand and make it some thing which its not.

 

[DARKY]

As expected, an incomplete analysis...

Either you missed the point deliberately for the sake of argument or you are unaware of the fact that JFT prototypes had a significant change---from pt-03 to 04 and this change was already rehearsed on CAD software as well as fly by wire. The latter is a subset of type 634 Quad fly by wire on J-10 which helped the process to gain speed unlike other fly by wire fighters that have taken years to synchronize with various parameters. Wind tunnel testing had already been done for all major planned changes which were mentioned by AVM ( retired) Shahid Latif back in 2004. The aircraft is designed on the concept of modularity which means, its airframe has enough flexibility to accommodate quite a few changes including engines of various type (four types including Russian, Chinese, American/ Canadian) and yet does not exceed overall budget.

It is only a matter of cost efficiency and managing the maximum out of this aircraft within allocated budget. More changes are expected in coming blocks but all will remain within cost performance limits. The point is, within its sphere, according to the plan, all JFT blocks will provide a vital component in PAF's future war strategy. What has been achieved so far, is better than anticipated and the trend is likely to continue.

Last but not the lease, rest of your stats have been answered a hundred times so please bring something new next time.

Those were all primary changes which generally takes place during the developmental phase of any aircraft... any major change like reshaping of wings, tail or fuselage(for the sake of stealth) would have to be verified in 1000s of hrs of wind tunnel testing.. and then real flight testings.

Then comes the changed control surfaces... changes in amount of force they pull out and their limitations.. for which the Flight control laws would have to be rewritten.

And at last you cannot make it stealth enough to be in an advantageous position against enemy Aircrafts with modern ESA radars and AWACS unless you incorporate an internal weapon bay.

Now make a basic assumption of the cost involved... (There a whole lot of changes which could add aswell like a new engine, new set of cockpit material etc..etc..).

 

[Jango]

Hi,

You can rotate them as well or keep them on two bases in sindh---. Karachi and karachi port are the most important assets of the nation----.

Obviously major maintenance would be done at one place---as for the paint coating---not much difference it makes---u s F18 do both type of missions---sea and land---the coating doesn't change much----.

Hi

Who maintains the current fighter aircraft designated for Navy? PAF facilities or does the navy have it's own facility. Like PNS mehran?

 

[SQ8]

Hi

Who maintains the current fighter aircraft designated for Navy? PAF facilities or does the navy have it's own facility. Like PNS mehran?

There are no fighter Acft owned by the Navy..
They are PAF assets, operated and maintained at PAF Masroor..
They only have a primary tasking to provide support to the PN and there is a liason at both ends to provide tasking.

 

[gambit]

Yes! agreed angles would deflect the radar waves away from the source, but what angles?

Like this...

The angled faceting technique was dominant on the F-117 and is still important in later 'stealth' aircrafts. The further away from perpendicular to the seeking radar, the less energy there is available for that seeking radar.

if you attach box shapes under the wings to hide missiles, these boxex would create 90% angles to wing plane and return more of radar waves to facing enemy platforms. Angles along the lines as usually found on diamonds (sort of) do deflect the waves away.

That is a risk you must take if you will make any sort of enclosure. But a relatively uniform enclosure that is precision modeled/predicted and measured for low RCS is far better than this mess...

 

[monitor]

If i am not wrong Gambit is first time replying in JF-17 thread i and may be other members too would like to see a vivid analysis of JF-17 potential .

 

[gambit]

To get the RCS figures to be below 1m2 you need to completely redesign the plane right from the wing shaping to fuselage tail, canopy.. etc..etc.. that plane would no longer be a JF-17..

Either that or it would be a very poorly flyable JF-17.

Gents,

All this talk about making the JF-17 'stealth' should stop. It is not technically impossible but there is a point where the financial cost to reduce an existing airframe's RCS does not match the physical gain of said reduction.

From the above illustration that is common to ALL designs, the major sources of EM radiation under radar bombardment are:

- The plate
- The corner
- The tip
- The edge
- The Keller cone
- The surface waves

The financial cost is where you must control the EM behaviors that comes off those structures. Complete absorption is not yet here and will not be for many years, even for US. So the problem will be on how to control those behaviors. If you control them while the aircraft is still under paper, then the cost will be minimal, but not when the aircraft is already built and deployed.

Is RCS reduction TECHNICALLY possible? Yes. And I will call anyone a liar if he says no. But is it financially worthwhile? If it is, it would have been done a long time ago.

 

[Donatello]

Either that or it would be a very poorly flyable JF-17.

Gents,

All this talk about making the JF-17 'stealth' should stop. It is not technically impossible but there is a point where the financial cost to reduce an existing airframe's RCS does not match the physical gain of said reduction.

From the above illustration that is common to ALL designs, the major sources of EM radiation under radar bombardment are:

- The plate
- The corner
- The tip
- The edge
- The Keller cone
- The surface waves

The financial cost is where you must control the EM behaviors that comes off those structures. Complete absorption is not yet here and will not be for many years, even for US. So the problem will be on how to control those behaviors. If you control them while the aircraft is still under paper, then the cost will be minimal, but not when the aircraft is already built and deployed.

Is RCS reduction TECHNICALLY possible? Yes. And I will call anyone a liar if he says no. But is it financially worthwhile? If it is, it would have been done a long time ago.

Long story short, go back to drawing board and design a stealth plane....rather than cutting JF-17 into one.

Cool.

 

[Storm Force]

The USA has had partial success with conversion of a contemporary fighter to a SEMI STEALTH fighter with F15SE...

The russians and chinease simply designed brand new fighters

 

[SQ8]

The USA has had partial success with conversion of a contemporary fighter to a SEMI STEALTH fighter with F15SE...

The russians and chinease simply designed brand new fighters

Which incurred a lot of expense.

 

[Jango]

The USA has had partial success with conversion of a contemporary fighter to a SEMI STEALTH fighter with F15SE...

The russians and chinease simply designed brand new fighters

Which defeats the whole purpose of JF-17, as Oscar and other people have been pointing out in the last 2 threads.

US can afford to have this much overcost with it's huge budget, while PAF cannot.

 

[Viper0011.]

Which defeats the whole purpose of JF-17, as Oscar and other people have been pointing out in the last 2 threads.

US can afford to have this much overcost with it's huge budget, while PAF cannot.

Guys - you guys are not reading things right. Go read many of my posts or Gambit's explanation above. I'd rather have a jet with much lower RCS than either create a new one or have a mess underneath the wings that can get me locked upon from over 120 Miles without me even knowing it in some cases. What I've been proposing, Mastan Khan's being chiming in and Gambit's put into visuals makes sense. It is cost effective, requires precision and reduces the rcs and it is a much affordable solution vs. redesigning the whole thing or creating a new jet!!!

 

[Jango]

Guys - you guys are not reading things right. Go read many of my posts or Gambit's explanation above. I'd rather have a jet with much lower RCS than either create a new one or have a mess underneath the wings that can get me locked upon from over 120 Miles without me even knowing it in some cases. What I've been proposing, Mastan Khan's being chiming in and Gambit's put into visuals makes sense. It is cost effective, requires precision and reduces the rcs and it is a much affordable solution vs. redesigning the whole thing or creating a new jet!!!

Giving it small tweaks is one thing, calling it stealth is another.

 

[Storm Force]

I wonder if the everyone else wil make a few tweaks to their fourth gen fighters to make them cost effective stealth or reduced rcs.

I was being sarcastic sorry pdf...

To get stealth you need internal weapons bay....huge change to.full composite build ......and massive ew suites and jammers with very powerful ppwer sources.....

F15 is large enuf to carry internal weapons....

Jft is a tiny plane. Where you going to carry weapons and how much load reduction wil this be

One of the early criticisms of f35 lightening is it.carries half the .combat load of a f16 and once it launches weappns it gives its location away

 

[Dazzler]

And repeatedly mentioning JFT doesn't make you understand that I am refering to the same?




Obviously you don't because the point was that you can't convert a 4th gen fighter design like JFTs into a stealth design afterwards, you can only reduce the RCS to a certain point and I gave examples what could be done with JFT as well (if the required fundings would be available). That's why all the talk about stealth in regard to JFT is simply wrong, because it never will be even close to have stealth capabilities.

Where in my post did i say JFt can be converted into Stealth?? No need to put words in my mouth only to prove that you know it all because it is obvious you dont, in fact, no one does. The term in discussion is by no means "Stealth" but in this case, it is the "RCS reduction" . Measures have been taken and can be seen in the first block unless you deliberately ignore them to prove your two pennies. RCS reduction is done at some critical parts/ stages in JFT's case and this had been verified by those who fly the damn thing. No one is entangling in a discussion of Stealth in this case because it is irrelevant.