Re: Wasting US$billions on wrong fighter ?
sac...@omen.net.au
> The Singapore pap government has contributed a few hundred US$millions
> to take a stake in the development of JSF F-35. This will give Singapore the
> right to buy a few squadrons of these when they are finally produced. This
> fighter is supposed to replace all the aging fighters in the Singapore
> Airforce
> and will be the main line of defence of Singapore sky. The total expenditure
> will eventually be in the tens of US$billions.
> It is now emerging that this JSF F-35 is not a match to the modern Russian
> and Chinese fighters Sukhoi-27, Sukhoi-30 and Sukhoi-35. That is the
> conclusion of a top secret war game conducted in Hawaii Hickam airbase in
> August. A leaked document prepared by RAND Corp warns that the JSF
> F-35 is now"double inferior" to the modern and much improved Russian and
> Chinese fighers in close range air combat. They assessed the F-35 to have
> "inferior acceleration, inferior climb, inferior sustained turn capability"
> and
> "also has a lower top speed." They also cost many times more than the
> Russian and Chinese jets.
If you are refering to "Pacific Vision", you need to understand that
with any fighter aircraft, it can be operated in a manner that puts it
at an advantage or a disadvantage. One of the basic parts of the art
is to operate your aircraft to obtain the best from it.
Pacific Vision had engagement scenarios that took away the advantages
of the JSF in low observability and BVR engagement by requiring visual
ID of targets before engagement. A similar set of parameters in the
development of the F-15 in the early seventies also assessed no
advantage to the F-15 versus the MiG-21.
These are not real world scenarios and do not reflect the merits of
the aircraft. In the real world, the JSF has the capability to
identify the MiGs and Sukhois in this scenario BVR and destroy them
long before they are even aware that an engagment has commenced.
The JSF is not intended for close in ACM in the air superiority role.
As its name suggests, it is a strike fighter, not an air superiority
fighter. Nonetheless, in the real world, against the adverseries in
Pacific Vision, you could reasonably expect the adverseries to be
destroyed before they knew what was happening. This is very
different from the Pacific Vision scenario, which only looks at close
range dog fighting. Double-Inferior is a fair description for it in
that role.
But that is not the aircrafts role, and the ability of the JSF to
destroy such adverseries long before they get to that range means that
only limited conclusions should be drawn from Pacific Vision.
Beyond that, your assertion that the JSF "will be the main line of
defence of Singapore sky" is mistaken. The JSF is being purchased
for the strike role, whilst the F-15SG is for the air superiority
role. The JSF is intended to be a second tier in the air defence
strategy, not the first tier.
Nonetheless, its real world capabilities make it a powerful addition
to Singapores Air Defence.
Remember, it was never intended to be a dog fighter - the scenario in
Pacific Vision is the equivalent of someone with a gun going against
someone armed with a knife and then deciding to drop the gun so that
they can have a knife fight. Sensible people don't do that in the
real world.
Cheers,
Paul Saccani
> So there is a chance that Singapore may be spending US$billions buying a
> dud.
There is always that chance.
me_daw...@yahoo.com.sg
I thot the F-15SG performs the same role as the JSF, except that the
former has less advanced avionics and capabilities. Hence, it was
speculated at one time that the F-15SG purchase was an interim
measure; to better familiarise RSAF pilots on strike combat tactics.
Eventually, these will be replaced by the JSF.
If the RSAF was shopping for a air superiority machine, I think they
would have gone for the Eurofighter, or even the Sukhoi-35, which the
Russians lobbied very hard on us....
[snip]
>