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Correction, "another USEFUL aviation channel" meaning one that's not just a video farm that essentially sources from wikipedia in the best of circumstances..... I'm so tired of fake videos that use 3 min of computer generated voice over and 7 minutes of random footage... Thanks to both of you!
@@CaptainDangeax that’s unfair. If even half the the ET used on the F-35 had worked it would’ve been an excellent aircraft. Sadly it’s over hyped, over priced, and the maintenance hours to flying hours ratio is outrageous. The F-35 is a great idea but poorly executed.
@@CaptainDangeax The Rafale is not a great Aircraft. It would lose against the Super Hornet in any conflict, and a squadron of F-35’s would eradicate the entire French Air Force, rather like how Nelson destroyed the entire French Navy. You obviously have no clear understanding how the JSF program was ran and have an ultra nationalist view on the Rafale. The F+35 though a disappointment is still a highly capable multi role platform with only the F-22 as an equal.
Yes sir please, make the video about material fatigue and structural stress in military airplanes... or plataforms ;) Thanks for your videos and lessosn!
Without stealth, the super hornet share the same functions as the F 35C, radar, battle information management. Super hornet is expected to serve at least another 15 years time till the Navy the next gen F/A-XX enters the service. The super hornet is a cost-effective fighter, capable of delivering most of the need in Navy combat expectation.
Stealth is not the threat now. It is a lot cheaper to condition the F/A 18 SuperHornet to be able to do hyper-sonic intercepts which is needed now. That is because Russia who is supplied by China has and will use drones, ballistic missiles, cruise missile and hyper-sonic missile against their enemies like in Ukraine. Dog fighting is highly unlikely but the protecting cities is a big deal. There is no doubt. There is also no doubt that the F18 air frame can be engineered to fly MACH 2.0 and even MACH 2 ++. Look at all the knocks off jets like MiG 29, J17, and etc...We needed the NGAD and F/A-XX with realistic requirements like the "NEED FOR SPEED" as well as Stealth.
The explanation of how the Super Hornet came to replace the F-14 failed to mention the various proposed "Advanced Super Tomcat" concepts Grumman were offering. Concepts which, had the US Navy been left to its own devices might have become a reality. And it wasn't as simple as the Navy wanting a smaller and cheaper replacement (they actually wanted more F-14Ds in service than they ended up with) - much of the decision making was entirely political (Dick Cheney in particular seems to have been hell-bent on scrapping the Tomcat)
The Navy had its own complaints about Tomcats due to the insane MMHPFH it required, and failure-prone systems almost everywhere you looked. It had a cockpit design based on early 1960s technology limits that wasn’t really ideal in the 1970s and 1980s, and was the most difficult aircraft to bring aboard the carrier after the RF-8C was retired. One of the main systems that failed regularly on the F-14 was its primary sensor and fire control, the AWG-9. Further investment into the No Really We Mean it this time Super Duper Tomcat was a very risky consideration, with even more unit and maintenance costs for a fleet of aircraft that was already sucking a huge chunk of the total Navy’s annual operational costs.
@@LRRPFco52 The Navy literally asked the SecDef not to cancel the F-14D. The SecNav made an appeal to the SecDef for at least 132 new build F-14Ds when the SecDef said he wanted to cancel it (he also wanted to cancel the F-15E, V-22, and a few other programs at the time but they had a powerful enough lobby to keep them alive). The previous SecNav during Reagan, who saved the Hornet program when it was almost cancelled, literally said he regretted not cancelling it in his autobiography. So, yes, there's a lot of nuance that is left out, and the reasons given here for why the Super Hornet program went forward is, like a lot of things, oversimplified because it takes too damn long to explain the full context.
@@okisoba The ATF program was very aware of the political atmosphere to program success at the time. Every encounter with the contractors was focused on risk management to the program, which is why they cut the AIRST and supersonic ejection seat from the F-22. F-14D and any Super Duper Tomcat represented significant operational cost risks that had to be factored into the budgetary considerations. Unit cost is not the big deal outside of procurement years. Very seldom do you see that argument being made in these discussions.
@@LRRPFco52 What risk management are you talking about? All the stuff you're talking about in your original response to Solidboat is addressed in the F-14D (digital avionics/radar/flight control system, upgraded engines, etc.) . It's like if I limited the conversation, when comparing the Eagle and Hornet to other aircraft, to the avionics, engines, weapons, flight performance, etc of the original F-15A and F/A-18A. The cost of bringing the Tomcat to the desired level of capability we've been trying to give the Hornet would likely have been less compared to what we have and will spend on the Hornet over time as we transition to real next gen aircraft. One of the things some analysts in the 70s, 80s, and 90s complained about WRT the Hornet is that people keep saying the Hornet is a low risk/low cost alternative to the F-14, but in reality it's not. We had to completely overhaul the Hornet for it to overcome some of its weaknesses. And it wasn't "low risk" when you consider it was taking over virtually every mission for the carrier airwing. It had problems with its wing design (wing drop issues that, without a lot of aid from software, would still be a significant issue), issues with pylon angles and others. And we continue to keep pumping money into it to make up for its short comings. The spiel about MMH and complexity was originally used for both the F-14 and F-15 by the "fighter mafia", but that narrative continued to be used and stuck onto the F-14 because the Navy wasn't completely sold on what was being pushed on them (the F/A-18). Our legacy Hornets have similar availability and MMHs that Tomcats were having with airframes reaching 20 years of age, and that's with a program that got way more political and financial support. Some of the other reasons, other than maintenance, for why the Hornet is one of the best things since sliced bread keep morphing from, "oh, fleet defense isn't important anymore cuz no more USSR; oh, we're only going to fight littoral conflicts against non-peer threats so we don't need long range fighters or stealth planes; oh, flight performance isn't as important because networking will make us nearly unstoppable." There is/was some truth in all of those points , but flight performance such as speed and endurance is still important as the host of this channel sort of indicated when he mentioned that last point, as is long range air defense thanks to China. Defense contracting/procurement is complex and annoying, and if I had to guess, the prospect of overseas sales of the Hornet/Super Hornet was a huge factor as to why some people in the Pentagon went with it over other options. It's a lot easier to sell than a "Super Duper Tomcat" or some high tech stealth Navy tactical jet. So, in that respect, I guess it was a good decision for the U.S. economy.
@@okisoba Fleet Defense was also provided with ship-launched missiles, not just thrown out because of the collapse of the Soviets. The variable risk factor with F-14D and MMHPFH was also driven by it not having DFLCS, and the same complicated and maintenance-heavy flight control system as the original 1969 birds. Bringing the Tomcat back to the carrier was very difficult and not a natural evolution in training from the T-2 or T-45A, so loss rates were high. The Hornet and especially the Super Bug are some of the easiest fighters ever to bring back. My initial reaction to the Tomcat retirement and shredding was the same as every other Tomcat fan, until I separated emotion and started looking at the big picture to understand why. After looking at FMC rates over its life, I was kinda shocked how low it was year-to-year. The Navy was paying way more than they bargained for and getting very low availability with unsustainable mx efforts, while often being humiliated by the performance of the other teen fighters.
I'm always a bit skeptical whenever someone says that CFTs free up wing stations for additional weapons. When you look e.g. at Vipers (and even Strike Eagles) carrying CFTs, they almost inevitably always carry wing tanks as well. There is hardly any picture available of a Viper with CFTs and stations 4 and 6 carrying weapons for example, even the Block 52+ and 70. Considering that the history of the Hornet as always been one of needing extra range/loiter time (which is why the Super Hornet is a thing in the first place), and that it's always compared negatively to the Tomcat and Intruder in that sense, I expect the same will hold for the Block 3 Super Hornet.
Well if you are very kind you can say so but I would say it it is a gen 4+++ aircraft since the RCS is large and it can not supercruise while for example Jas 39 E is a 4, 5 generation plane due to low RCS, supercruise capacity.
This plane came from the YF-17 Cobra which was much faster and more manoverable... And the F-16 kicked its ass.. Its a modernised legacy Hornet which in turn is a what the Navy developed from the YF-17 dating from the 1970s.. So its no more 5th Gen than a fuckin F-5..
yeah it's tough when you spend a fortune on creating weapons to fight a certain foe and that foe suddenly disappears, you end up wasting a huge amount of money and end up with powerful and specials weapons that you can still partly use ineffectively, but all common foe's need to be forced to sign a contract committing them for 50 year blocks so special weapons designed for certain foes are still usable, i mean countries go to great lengths cooking up powerful weapons for certain foes and if that foe goes bankrupt and leaves the game then everybody is stuck with brilliant powerful weapons and no body to use them on, russia is a bad culprit, it just quit the qame in the 90's and at least 10 to 20 different weapons platforms became useless, you cant kill Iraqis or iranians with weapons built to kill russians, thats not how the game works, you can use any old generic weapons to kill Iraqis or irainians, but you need very costly, specially designed weapons to kill russians, it would be an insult to kill a russian with the same weapons you kill Iraqis or iranians with, the kremlin would have a fit, after all they themselves go to some lengths to design special high tech weapons to kill americans with, because the know that when the americans find out how the did it, they will appreciate being killed top notch, space age russian weapons that were made to kill americans and only americans, it's a form of mutual admiration, nobody wants to be killed with an old rusty gun, a secret russian lazer gun is an honorable way to go, i mean what russian wants to be shot down with a common chinese replica missle, even americans demand that they get shoot down by no less than a russian hyper missile, a real one, not one stolen and copied by the chinese, dam chinese, they came to the game late and dont know how the game is played, they hope to go to war with a bag of reverse engineered weapons, mostly stolen from the russians, they dont have a single specially designed american only killing weapon at all, they just want to kill everybody with nock off weapons, nor do they appreciate when the americans started makeing special chinese killing weapons, al they wonted to do was steal it and copy it, why steal a chinese killing special weapon and copy it, it was designed to kill chinese, the Americans would never use a chinese killing missile on a russian fighter jet, that would be an insult, well maybe the russians can sort the chinese out and get them to play be the rules and stop trying to kill americans with generic weapons and quit coping everthing, your allowed to steal but make it look your own, dont steal a russian missile design and copy it exactly, even withthe sames manufacturing errors on the missle, why steal a faulty russian missile and copy it exactly faults and all and make a thousand faulty russian missile copies and try to kill everybody with the same missiles, you need special american killing missiles only to be used on americans and you make but hid the special russian killing weapons until it's time to stab moscow in the back, dam chinese they just dont understand the game at all
The YF17 Cobra was interesting to the Navy because it had 2 engines for higher probability of getting your plane back (some early F16s were lost due to engine failure in fact at least 1 F15 was lost due to dual engine failure). The Navy did not trust Northrop to build a carrier plane after GD's F111 Naval variant had too many problems. So McDonnell got the prime contract. The fuselage structure was made on giant mills at Hawthorn (the biggest milling machines I ever observed and fun to watch). The F18 A was a small light weight compliment to the F14 air superiority fighter. Phasing out the A6 after cancellation of the futuristic A12 led to proposals for modified existing aircraft. As one of the designers told me, Northrop stuck a plug in the fuselage to make it longer. The Grumman F14 bomb cat required less redesign work as all that was needed was add bomb racks and bombing electronics. The F14 Bomb Cat also had significantly longer range. The F/A18 E/F has much shorter range than the A6 and lower bomb carrying capability. I was convinced that the Bomb Cat would beat out our plane because it was a better choice for long range missions. For Northrop the Navy's cost saving and hate for the high maintenance F14 led to the F18 being chosen. This ment no more F14 production and allowed us to buy Grumman. The 2 big prizes was Grumman avionics which led to the EF18G to replace the EA6 and a pile of money the Navy had to pay us for the close out of the F14 program. Because we at Northrop had gone through close out processes, we understood better than anyone else about what the pay off would be. With a bridge loan from Carlyle we did a hostile take over Grumann. After a few years when we got the F14 closeout money we paid off Carlyle had the Grumman assets and a lot of cash. It meant Northrop survived to keep pushing new variants and new aircraft and do other business. During the F17 F18 lifetime I was a student, worked at Northrop and am now old enough to retire. The aircraft went from being designed with slide rules and blue prints to computer design without paper. The most obvious external change are the air inlets which are beautiful curves in the beginning to rectangular now. To me the development of the Blisk (one piece disc and blades) for the engine shows the fabrication and design advances. The F18 is no longer a light and inexpensive aircraft. It is a lot less expensive than an f35 and probably more reliable.
As one who knows the Northrop Aircraft Division is similar to the Marine Corp. "The are no ex NAD employees" and we will take Jack Northrop's YB49 Flying Wing BS and the F-17/F-20 BS to the grave. NAD knew how to design a fighter, the F5E is the evidence. The Navy bought a bunch of them as Top Gun Adversary fighters from Switzerland (with modified wings that gave you two more Gs) that were housed since the late 1970s in caves and rarely flown. To this day if two of those impossible to see Swiss F5Es with L snakes mounted on their wing tips get on your F-18 six the general conclusion is that your dead meat.
nice video as always, just to conclude: No f-18 E/F block3 is NOT a 5th gen fighter, it's 4.5 or 4++ if you wish. Only 5th gen fighters in service now are F-22, F-35 and J-20 (supposedly). Maybe F-18X would join them too but most probably she will end up at 4.5
Short answer: no. Long answer: NOOOO! Longer Answer: If Flankers and Eurofighters and Rafales are 4th or 4++ gen, so is this plane. It has none of the distinguishing features of 5th gen. Anti-radar shaping? not even close. Supercruise? not to my knowledge. IR signature minimization and IR seeker jamming? no. All-internal or stealthy conformal weapons and fuel? not even close. Thrust Vector Control and post-stall supermaneuverability? No.
The whole "5th generation" is just Lockheed marketing to begin with, taking specific attribute unique to their product(s) and listing them as requirements, *without* any proof of those features will be regarded as standard functions of the era. IN comparison, here are some actual generational stuff: * transition from biplanes with external supports to monoplanes with internal wing support. * going from propeller propulsion to reaction engines. * shifting from analogue to digital avionics.
The USNavy didn't upgrade the F-17 into the F-18. Mainly, McDonnell Douglas did. Which at that point in time, was by far the preeminent fighter aircraft design & manufacturing hub of the US. Adding considerable improvements to reliability, ease of maintenance, all weather capability, adding extensive naval & land surface-attack capability, upgrading it's engine package (with GE) for considerably better thrust to weight ratio, adding payload capacity, significantly improving AoA performance, increasing it's resistance to damage, on-board power generation (to make flame-outs far less threatening), More fuel capacity, greater wing area, more aggressive wing control surfaces, and making it's structure and landing gears robust enough to be able to handle carrier operations (and then some). The original YF-17 was sort of a "Super F-5", after being worked over by McDonell Douglass, it was more of an "F-15-light", including a number of features which McD wished they had put on the F-15 in hindsight. The engineers at Northrup felt they had created a massive upgrade over the old F-5 as it's starting point, and they had. McD engineers viewed the YF-17 as a starting point for changes though, which I think helped to raise the ambition bar for the design rework. When you've already made something much better than what you started with, it can make you reluctant to scrap ideas and redo elements of it. Nobody wants to take a hacksaw to their own artwork. Also Grumman was in a position to not feel strongly interested in threatening the F-14's job, McD did not share this consideration. The F/A-18A was such a massive upgrade over the YF-17, that it essentially inspired the USAF to seek out an upgraded F-16C, to replace the F-16A, to technologically catch up with the Navy's new plane. Unfortunately for the F-16C, this didn't include a thrust upgrade until the 1990's, so for quite a while, the added weight of the technological upgrades undercut it's dogfighting performance vs. the A model. The Thunderbirds didn't just fly the A model to save money, it's more agile than the C. At least until the new F110 GE engines became available in the 90's, at which point in time I think the F-16C finally caught up with the F/A-18C in overall capability. And then came the F/A-18E/F... essentially the US's only "production" gen 4.5 plane. Not to just gush over the F-18 or McD. I really liked the F-14D SuperTomcat prototype. And I think the F-35 is great as well, not to mention the F-22 (although, I think the F-23 could have been the better choice). The Rafale is fantastic. The Archangel series are my favorite (SR-71 being the best known of that lot). I think the Fulcrum and Flanker are truly inspired designs from an aerodynamics & maneuverability standpoint. Hell I even like the Saab Draken and the F-106. But McDonnell Douglas is generally grossly under-credited for the US's mid to late cold war, and post cold war, air power advantage. To be fair, that's partly that's due to "under-publishing of capability" though. The F-15 for example, wouldn't have a 104:0 win/loss ratio in air combat based purely on what you can read in Jane's. Domestic versions of gen 4/4.5 Russian fighters also have undisclosed premium features.
The F-16C systems development for Block 25 was largely driven by the open nature of the F-16 MSIP program and tons of pilot requests for certain things. The F-16A cockpit has the issue of the Radar display down between your legs, so they were constantly looking down-up-down-up-down-up with the HUD, getting repetitive motion problems. Display technology had matured by that point to have MFDs, so that’s what drove the cockpit configuration on the C Model. The APG-68 was a pretty large jump over the APG-66, and one of the main things opened up with the C model was BVR missile integration, IFF, and more ground attack modes. I was very close to F-16C avionics development in the 1980s, and never got the impression that it was driven by the Hornet. There was a large gap between USAF and USN multirole cultures and communities that were just emerging in those days. The Navy was looking for F-18s and A-18s to replace the F-4N, A-7E, and A-4M. As computer processing and data storage increased, they were able to combine the F-18 and A-18 into one aircraft where the pilot could swing-role mid-mission if necessary, with the flip of a switch. It had very good human interface with most of its systems, with a lot of leveraging of computing power over individual manual inputs. The impetus for a lot of that software and hardware architecture came from the F-15 and its HOTAS with integrated weapons cueing, radar mode selection, and HUD mode all working together when the pilot selected one weapon from another. The F/A-18 was definitely the beneficiary of many lessons-learned and technological maturity being the last of the teen fighters, as well as concurrent development of the F-15E Strike Eagle once the Strike Eagle was awarded with the win by the USAF. The F/A-18A had all kinds of problems though, aerodynamic, structural, and avionics that all needed to be addressed with retrofits and the new F/A-18C at the time. They lost 100 airframes and had 20 fatalities within its first 10 years of service.
"The F/A-18A was such a massive upgrade over the YF-17, that it essentially inspired the USAF to seek out an upgraded F-16C, to replace the F-16A" The F-16C was introduced for the new radar and avionics required to support the Sparrow missile and the upcoming AMRAAM, not because of anything the F/A-18 had or didn't have. "And then came the F/A-18E/F... essentially the US's only "production" gen 4.5 plane." I don't know where you get off calling the Super Hornet 4.5 gen. By that definition, almost every American 4th gen fighter flying today is 4.5 gen because they have similar capabilities to the Super Hornet and are also still in production. "But McDonnell Douglas is generally grossly under-credited for the US's mid to late cold war, and post cold war, air power advantage." I'm not sure why they're under-credited. A2A, compare the F-15C kill record to the F/A-18s. A2G, compare F-16 sorties to the F/A-18. Neither are even close. The F/A-18 has been a relatively minor participant in every significant air campaign since it's introduction. That's not a knock against the design, but they aren't around in significant enough numbers or present at the right bases and times to be a primary contributor. "The F-15 for example, wouldn't have a 104:0 win/loss ratio in air combat based purely on what you can read in Jane's." Not sure what you mean. The F-15C's (assuming you mean the C, since that's what the ratio is associated with) kill:death ratio is widely acknowledged as fact by every major military history, not just Jane's, and widely credited to a combination of extremely-good training and the NCTR capability. [Edit: just realized you might have been including the F-15 with the F/A-18 in your reference to McD, might have misread the last few sentences]
@@Jester-uh9xg Sparrows existed long before the F-16, so I'm not sure of your angle there. The F-18 illustrated for the USAF the limitations of the F-16A's scope of design ambition. An anemic radar may save money, but it's very costly in terms of an aircraft's capability. So the C got all weather, improved radar, more hard points, BVR capability, expanded ground attack capability... making it much more like the 18... Arguably the very strong performance of the AMRAAM was a significant factor in dictating the need for BVR capability though, so it's not just F-18 envy. But it is pretty clear the USAF came to decide they went slightly "too cheap" with the F-16A's. Thus the C's were designed with more capability (with more price), rather than just say seeking to make them cheaper or more reliable. The F-18E/F is the only 4.5 gen US production plane. I'll stick with that. Which is to say it is the only "major" overhaul in design to adopt modern/21st century features/tech. Sure there's block updates for a variety of aircraft. And many aircraft have or are seeing advanced avionics & sensor upgrades. But the F-18E is the only one which went through an extensive airframe redesign to reduce it's radar signature, and had many significant airframe changes to re-purpose it's capabilities. I wouldn't call it a stealth plane, but much like the Rafale, it "leans that way". There were other planes proposed, and in some cases flown as prototypes, which could be called 4.5 gen. But the F-18E is the only one which went into production. This is largely due to the US Navy being dubious of whether a carrier capable F-22 would actually materialize (they were correct). The other strong option was the F-14D "Super Tomcat". Frankly, both designs had some great benefits. Other notable examples (not in production) are the "Silent Eagle" and possibly the "STOL/MTD". One could argue that the F-15X / EX might be called 4.5gen, but I don't think the design changes are really quite extensive enough to call gen 4.5. It's more a major block revision on the F-15, and the modifications are backward compatible to existing legacy aircraft without doing major surgery to the airframe. The USAF shunned 4.5gen because they (probably rightly) feared congressional defunding of gen 5 programs if other options were on the table. The US Navy on the other hand was facing a serious deployment gap for modern tech, so they had a 4.5gen plane competition, and picked the 18E. Russia on the other hand embraced gen 4.5, they have quite a few models which I think qualify as 4.5. I think the Rafale, J-20, and a few others probably also qualify. Really the whole "generation" thing is woefully arbitrary and ill defined though. I wouldn't compare the F-18E to the F-16C in K:D ratio, one simply hasn't seen a lot of combat. Same vs the F-15. I mean, the F-22 has a 0:0 KD, but we wouldn't say it's a weaker performing plane because of it. Even the F-15C's K:D ratio isn't a clear picture of aircraft performance, since a fair number of those were against rather under-trained pilots in countries which flew planes from Russia without the "premium goodies" under the hood. And other variables like the AWACS can really factor heavily as well. It may have been a poor choice to use KD ratio as an example to make a point. I think all the F-18's K:D stats show is that the Navy is tepid about putting carriers near combat arenas unless it's really necessary. You completely misunderstand my comment on the F-15 and Jane's. I'm saying that the capabilities of US aircraft are "understated" (to no small degree) in official publications. And that based on the published numbers, one wouldn't expect a 104:0 K:D for the F-15, I mean, if Jane's stats on it's turn rate, etc. are accurate, that seems implausible. But... I cited that figure as evidence that the published numbers are watered down. That's really all I was saying there. This applies to aerodynamic capability, airframe tolerances, range stats, max G-loads, electronic capabilities, etc. Generally the better the hardware, the more watered down the public stats are. Also the less likely they are to be used in hot-spot firefights (which is most air combat in the time frame we're looking at). It's not too surprising that the best aircraft see the least fighting when all of the conflicts are lower priority, which tends to beg for more expendable planes. I mean, just one example of 'official stats' being pretty far off the mark, which I'll point out only because it's too sloppy and careless to take seriously, is the B-2's range. Officially it's 6,000nm unrefueled, and 10,000nm with in flight refueling. But if you stop to weigh the validity of that assertion, it falls apart. It takes some fuel to climb to operational altitude, and after that it can go 6,000nm... So why then when it's topped off when already at altitude, can it go only 10,000nm, instead of 12,000nm or greater? Is a fully fueled B-2 on the runway able to go 6,000nm, but a fully fueled B-2 at 35,000ft only able to travel 4,000nm? Somebody failed badly at making their watered down official publications plausibly consistent there. I get that you can't wait to in-flight refuel when the tanks are exactly empty, but that's half again the range missing (4000 vs 6000). The F-16's claim to fame in AA engagement is it's very sharp turn rate. However, F-15/F-18/F-14 can all turn at a rate which is sufficient to black out the pilot. I know of an F-15 which pulled over 12G's (without blackout surprisingly, it's hard to account for adrenaline), with a 12,000lb bomb load still on it. Granted the rate of speed is a factor in this, the G force of a turn is relative to the speed of the aircraft. Being able to maintain a very high AoA at a lower speed could give a turning advantage, even if G force limitations are equal. But I wouldn't take too seriously the idea that the F-18, a carrier capable plane (a mission profile requiring very high AoA and lift at low speed), and an airframe which must be more robust to handle carrier impac...i mean 'landings', has less turn rate potential than the F-16. Officially? yeah, sure, that's the published numbers. In reality though? All the "good" modern fighter planes out there can squish the pilot, so they need to look to other capability metrics to manifest a competitive edge. I think perhaps I was taking a jab at DCS as much as anything else. Anyway, the F-16 is an excellent fighter. No shade there. But it was a bit of an underdog in capability until it got the C/D upgrades, and then later the F-110 engine update which negated the weight gain of the C/D upgrades, with some thrust left over. In all of it's forms though, the F-16 has always been a very cost effective fighter which punches above it's price point.
Also interesting to note that model d tomcat had IRST BACK IN 2000! and even a couple years before that actually. It worked so well in that aircraft due to the advanced data link and sensor fusion capabilities of the APG 71 radar. The size of the Tomcats knows aloud for the largest radars at all times, and it was capable of being slaved to the IRST and the RIO could change search and track parameters in a multitude of different arrays and formats as a result of the increased sensor. The situational awareness in that aircraft was well ahead of its time, with the capability to be a quarterback in the sky, running, active, sending, and receiving sensor information from passive assets that were data linked. It was really an early iteration of what you have today with the F 35.
Back in my college days I use to hangout in the archive section of the college library. This was in the early 1980s. One of the things I use to do was to go through old Aviation Week magazines. I do remember reading that the US Navy was supposed to adapt the winner of the LWF competition. The USN did an evaluation of the YF-16, where, if I remember correctly, Vought was the Primary subcontractor. The short story is that the Navy found other deficiencies in the performance of navalized F-16 which led to them looking at the YF-17.
@@ObsydianShade And yet they enthusiastically adopted the A-7 against other dual-engined options. Something says to me that having 2 engines wasn't really what attracted the USN to the YF-17.
@@vickydroid According with the people involved with the restoration of the second YF-16 unity in a museum, the landing gear itself is unique, not sourced from the A-7 (looks like it but isn't). What was taken off the shelf, were the wheels/tires of the nose gear of the B-58, that was put on the main gear of the YF-16. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MeM0K2ODUz8.html
@@magoid thanks, I probably misremembered, had to pull out a 1975 copy of an aviation book which described the YF16 and subsequent F16A\B and I recall LTVs involvement in the navalised proposal, couldn't find more but not sure if that's where I got my association with the A7 landing gear, LTV being the manufacturer and all, but thanks for pointing this out.
Wanted to complement you on a great channel, and great edification value you bring to those of us who find weapons fascinating. You are thoughtful and informative. Unlike some of those other channels who know nothing, repeat Wikipedia articles and are blatantly wrong about things, like Matsimus, for example. Appreciate all the work, hope you make money out of all of this. Keep it up!
Matsimus at least is up front that he is not a expert and welcomes being corrected, that is good in my opinion. The channels that piss me off ar the ones that tried to make themselves out to be experts, while telling the most stupid bs "facts" that anyone who has half a brain can figure out to be BS if he does like 15 minute reading on the basics of what os been talked about and put 2 and 2 together! Is matsumus the best source of information not by a long way but he is honest about this and I respect that.
@@vladimirmihnev9702 Matsimus is intellectually challenged, kid level intellect. the guy not that bright. at the bottom of it all, he understands that. he tried to be an expert, but not one. a real disgrace, we are forced to watch things produced by retards
That IRST placement on centerline drop tank is the best solution for every matters considered. Integrating internal IRST to Super Hornet requires heavy modification to the jet's nose section as the nose is already occupied by radar and cannon. The Navy also don't want to lose the centerline drop tank, because if they do that, they need to put the tank(s) anywhere in the other weapon stations, reducing the payload available.
I think she grossly oversimplified the way/reasons that the Tomcat was canceled and the politics over capabilities story. The ST-21/SF-14 are super interesting and would still be top of the line!
Another nice video! 👍 One thing I’d like to add though. @12:48 there is no need to jettison a centreline fuel tank in combat: not even the MiG-21 needs to do that, and we all know how draggy that delta is 😉 Wing tanks are an entirely different matter obviously: jettisoning those in combat is quite sensible in certain situations.
Well its past 5 in the morning for me, I should be asleep. But a new informative video on a in my opinion boring plane, but informative none the less. The info about the data linking IRST is interesting, makes me wonder what progress the Russians and Chinese are holding close to their chest in this area. Payloads over platforms will be the way forward for 4.5 gen fighters as we have seen. Fantastic video, makes up for the string of failures I just had in Escape from Tarkov.
Here is question. The McDonald Douglas F15 has flown without one wing. Can the F18 fly without a tail rudder with its digital flight controls? One of the largest radar return are those tail rudders. Removing them....
The Hornet is severly limited by a small sweep-angle of its main-wings, crippling it already in high-SUBsonic speeds, thus irrelevant against any similarly equipped (avionics, weapons) 4G fighters or even upgraded Mig-21bis (let alone Kfir), perhaps not even vs. Phantom-2000. The Hornet is a fighter-bomber replacing the A-6 and A-7 in bombing 3rd world countries aka gunboat policy. The F-35 is more of the same, yet more agile while also falling apart.
Imagine claiming that the fighter plane mafia had anything to do with the F-16 if they would have gotten their way it would not have: Radar, Radio, Drop Tanks,
I appreciate Jenny‘s analysis, but I do want to make a comment regarding some things glossed over in regards to the replacement of the Tomcat. The tomcat model D was actually still the superior aircraft in almost every way on the carrier deck in 2006 when it was retired. it was in every way shape and form a multi roll aircraft much like the superhornet. In fact, some of the best work, the tomcat ever did in active duty was in missions. It was originally never intended for like FAC-a and CAS as well as strike bombing (bomb at iteration). Issue for them at that moment in time was that the Grumman factory had been relieved of all of its Tomcat building equipment and molds. Everything was destroyed after the US decided that they couldn’t risk parts getting back to Iran, the Walker aspiring, played a role in this, but there was a lot of politics and diplomatic issues involved. I think it’s silly that they chose to destroy a perfectly good aircraft that were pretty much brand new and had new air frames, but by the same token, they needed a new aircraft because there weren’t enough Tomcats. So I guess the distinction I’m trying to make is that it’s not that the super tomcat model D didn’t do the job at the superhornet did, because it actually did it better, it just cost more per plane, more per hour to maintain, and there weren’t enough of them to go around so they were going to have to get a new aircraft and train people in it anyways. Why not just transition from the hornet to all super hornets.
They need super cruise ability to be considered gen 5 I've heard of alot of tech upgrades made to it JUST not new engines that gave it SC Capability....
Do I have money to except ' Universal exports of 5th generation jets' for sacrificing our climate change intelligence data to Colorado servers or SVR servers? 'Small world project' for the artists.
Hey I just wanted to say I enjoy your videos a lot and please make a video on the Arramacci MB-339 Italian trainer jet. It has seen combat as part of the Eritrean Airforce in the war with Ethiopia.
The only thing this video got right was that the F-18 was a multiple failure of a design and that it has received the most money and upgrades of any other aircraft that has ever flown in all human history, give it another twenty years of service and two more complete ground up rebuilds and it could maybe just maybe be a better plane than the proposed Tomcat 21 would have been back in 1991 assuming of course that Tomcat never got so much as a new screw in replacement parts that is.
IR technology is not as expensive as you might think. The only thing making it more expensive here is the prefix "Military". Even a rotary or linear cooled IR head with megapixel class (above currently mounted technologies) class would be less than $100k. The modern IRSTs look like IR heli-gimbals inside. They are inherently gyro stabilized and fast. And they use a lot of e-stabilizer to get things really rock steady. Their balanced weight mean that forces on the head is actually pretty small compared to what they could have been, although all the mountings do feel the sum of the force. But this is essentially the same technology for Helis, Tanks, Fighters. Not any rocket science. I would say the disadvantages would be cooldown time (5-15 minutes), know spectra, rather easily fooled, countermeasures are pretty effective, atleast in close combat. Also. A lot of IRST do have rangefinders. So while the single IRST cannot triangulate, it sure can fire a rangefinder. I'd be surprised if the modern IRST don't have rangefinders. Actually. I'd expect all modern IRST to know the range to locked target at all times.
yeah laser rangefinders are mounted on most IRST devices I Believe. Some planes also have laser warning receivers mounted. So you lose the ambush element if you use the rangefinder.
Now ruggedize it for high G, high altitude, impacts, extremely wide operating temp range, NBC environment, EMP shielded electronics, high salt, high humidity, high dust/sand, and limit parts manufacture to the US/UK/NATO for raw materials, subcomponents, final assembly. If you ever look at what a military contract entails from a compliance perspective, you start to see why it costs what it does. Some of it really is rocket science, and most companies don’t want to deal with all the hassle of submitting for a contract, just to lose out.
@@LRRPFco52 : There is little difference between an IRST for a tanks, helis and jet fighters. Jet fighters have extremely low G requirements. Their hardware requirements are similar to those in helicopters. Temp range is not more than anything else military. Tanks have several hundred Gs as shock. Jet fighters seldom experience more than a dozen G. Temp range usually exceed those in jet fighters because jets have access to active temperature management directly as air-mass to the equipment. Tanks usually don't. By comparision, jet fighters have no special hardware requirements. If you've ever been near the cooling system for a modern jet fighter you'll know.
@@adambratt9902: Exactly. Also, new techniques are used to blind the IRST passive sensor by lighting it up. Since the sensor is so sensitive, you'll require very little power to completely blind it.
@@christianm1533 Oh so it works by burning the "camera eye"? Like how staring into the sun is damaging to our eyes? Sounds close to radar jamming only that passive IRST don't have ranging information to jam so you are just marking your direction unless you damage the sensor by burning it. But if you have that capebility, why not just aim for the pilots eyes instead? Surely a blind pilot is pretty detrimental to the planes combat ability?
You would think by Block 3 they would have figured out a way to mount the ordinance parallel with the centerline of the airframe instead of continuing to drag it through the air canted sideways. Anyone who has stuck their bladed hand out of the window on the freeway knows what this does for parasitic drag.
I liked Jenny very much but her goofy high pitched music made it almost impossible to focus on her words. Please get rid of the music or give me a way to turn it off. Please
Cannot tolerate videos that have music playing over the top of or in the background of people narrating/talking. Turn up the music then and let me listen to the tunes, what you have to say must not be that important.
Given that the relative size of combat aircraft is a known quantity, it should be relatively easy to find an approximate range for an aircraft shown on an irst. Also you can use laser rangefinding, which shouldn't be detectable as long as the pulse is short and relatively inconsistent.
Sir can you make a video series of attack helicopters that include from begining to the modern atack helicopters. İ would like to see platforms non US made also. Thanks for every valuable information that you teach us. Love from Turkey. T-129 is looking after your videos.
I erased this comment. Realized I had left out too much information and it was misleading in someways. I’ll take time to elaborate when I have time later.
Thanks for another interesting video, system architecture and integration isn't the most rivetting subject but flying an aware aircraft in a multi threat environment is probably more valuable then most aircraft enthusiasts think, so having a well understood and reliable platform with sophisticated but simple (for the pilot) to use sensors might top out sheer aircraft dynamic performance. Alas we all like to see new fighter types, myself included and I remember the YF16/17 competition.
Along with increased cost both for purchase and operating, not exactly the best option for a country running debt approaching 30 trillion. Fixed wing setups offer better durability and lower cost over variable wing geometry aircraft.
I see in the FAQ slide that Linux is mentioned apparently as a "primary" operating system. I think (I'm an IT/Linux guy) could be interesting also some history/analysis about usage of operating systems in military hardware and environments. I can remember that many, many years ago the US Navy tried to control a ship via a windows NT system. The ship stopped as a sitting duck in the middle of the Ocean.. ;-) In case, if needed please consider me available also for some sort of cooperation. And, apologies for my English, it is not my mother tongue (Italian is). Apparently, also Space X rockets are somehow Linux based (at least for the non strict-real-time part).
No aircraft currently integrates Linux as a hard flight-control operating environment. Most modern fighter architectures split the system between critical ones and less critical ones. Less critical could be something like RADAR, IRST, EW-system etc. If you have a failure there it won't mean the bird will drop out of the sky. You can restart that system or get back to base without much issue. So no. You won't find happy hacking inside avionics control. :)
@@christianm1533 So much mission critical real time runs on Linux, since 2010 60% of mobile networks for example. Defence is following suit ie Zumwalt-class destroyer is full of IBM blades running Linux
@@phoneticau : Nope. It does not. Linux handles 3GPP MoMs and configuration. Realtime is handled by ASICs. The small requirements that are configuration changes at a pace can be more than adequately handled by a soft-rt configuration like a pretty vanilla Linux.
Glad to hear the audio back to its usual quality. Much appreciated! The Rhino always struck me as having a “that’ll do” mentality. Despite this (or because) it’s became an incredible workhorse.
3:40 I wouldn't say the failure of the YF-17 mattered at all in the F-18. Even if the F-17 had won the Air Force fly-off, we'd still have an F/A-18 based on it, I think. I also haven't heard the F-16 was too fragile for carrier operations; its frame is good for 9.4G and the landing gear was recycled from a heavier aircraft, I believe. Instead I think the single engine was the sole reason to reject the F-16. I'm not saying this based on facts, specifically, rather just reasoning as an engineer from first principles. Also I'm curious why the Navy didn't weigh in on the fly-off. If the Navy had said, before the Air Force had made a decision, that they'd hop on board an F-17 order sharing the eventual R&D spend 50/50, would have swayed that decision? Sure there'd be differences in the models but the various F-35's share a huge number of the actual components.
@@Millennium7HistoryTech ok I think I mixed it up with super hornets advanced version but can u make a short video on weapon pods and thier usefulness, demerits and merits
A navalized Raptor.. Ahhhhhhh, can we dream just a little bit? US Navy completely botched last 30 years of naval aviation development.. I know that the times were such that a true replacement for the F-14 wasn't needed, but as we can see, the geo political situation can change dramatically in a decade or two. Their last major mistake was the cancellation of USLASS program where Northrop's X-47B promised to change the naval aviation paradigm and make the Navy's super carriers relevant once again. But instead of pursuing autonomous strike UAV, Navy decided to shut the program down and develop a half ass stealthy tanker UAV. Pathetic. Hopefully their FA/XX program that tries to develop a true long range fleet defense aircraft will end up with something meaningful and advanced..
If Australia was going to stay American then we should have continued using the F-18 platform. We need an all rounder and not a expensive specialist like the F-35 and we need two engines not one. And that's just for starters, pilots need to gain experience in the air, the running costs of the F-35 alone make it unacceptable. But we had to get on the bandwagon didn't we.
Ha what a surprise , Jenny Ma made a great appearance =] I do how ever hove to say that, I love the uncut, slower tone of your videos. Definitely an untapped way of presenting here on RU-vid, and especially on the military aircraft topics. P.s. Also not getting a voice actor to narrate , because of accent concerns or what ever, really makes it that much more personal, as a viewer.
