Carlo Kopp (Air Power Australia)

John Boyd wrote a paper about air combat, "Aerial Attack Study". Boyd was never defeated in air-air training combat. http://www.ausairpower.net/JRB/boydaerialattack.pdf There's also the classic Dicta Boelcke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicta_Boelcke

I second this book recommendation. Reading one of Boyd's more epic slide decks might be interesting to some: http://www.ausairpower.net/JRB/poc.pdf The priority placed on tight OODA loops jibes well with the Lean Startup doctrine, I think. Of course, since there's always an aggressive competitor for resources in Boyd's field, he emphasizes messing up their OODA loop as well.

To be fair, initial stealth technology wasn't even THAT expensive. The initial development of 'true' stealth (Pave Blue/F-117) cost about 2 Billion USD in R&D and a total of about 7 Billion for all the planes and everything else. Furthermore, it wasn't even that implausible. Some Soviet physicist already wrote the paper telling us how to calculate Radar Cross Sections. The initial prototyping was a huge success (pretty much matched up exactly what their expected/calculated values). Now, the B2. That's a different story. It's very hard to justify 2 Billion dollar bombers, no matter how you spin it. Linkie here: http://www.ausairpower.net/Profile-F-117A.html and also Ben Rich's excellent (though somewhat biased) book Skunk Works.

“with a platoon-sized crew and several support vehicles (radar and command trucks) needed to fire the thing” — not really. That Russian thing is actually autonomous: http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-9K37-Buk.html#mozTocId210497 You see? Transporter Erector Launcher _And Radar_. Wikipedia says: A transporter erector launcher and radar (TELAR) is the same as a TEL but also incorporates part or all of the radar system necessary for firing the missile(s). Such vehicles have the capability of being autonomous, greatly enhancing their effectiveness. With this type of system, each vehicle can fight regardless of the state or presence of support vehicles. “quite likely the operators mistook the Boeing 777 for a large Ukrainian military transport aircraft” — yeah, I also think so. The important difference with Flight 655 and MH17 is USS Vincennes was there legally. The cruiser wasn’t smuggled to some international terrorists who say they’re independent freedom fighters, like it happened with Buk M1 which downed MH-17.

There's a story of the US war machine making a bunker buster bomb back during the first Gulf war doing something similar... https://www.ausairpower.net/GBU-28.html

The link as it is currently leads me to a page containing garbled characters: "SPQÙûáÔ=iµ {h¤,œ¿¿\ÿ0-Ûq=ßö™iýÿþlVùto‡íx„ÈY¢««"(Yr»Ër©". When I add www. to the front of it I get the page about S300: http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Grumble-Gargoyle.html

not sure where the proclivity to underestimate Russian military technology comes from. it certainly was a sterling hallmark of US leadership at the time of the cold war. Russia has been making in-house AESA for a decade. they started with APAR radar in 1963, just a few years off from the US. http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Zhuk-AE-Analysis.html they also sell the only radar capable of (on the open market) detecting hypersonics, the 59Н6-ТЕ mobile radar.

>> Sweep a physical occluder across the lens, measure abatement? > So you want your lens covered 99.9% of the time, just in case someone points a laser at it? Don't some missile seekers already work that way? https://www.ausairpower.net/TE-Sidewinder-94.html: > The Sidewinder's seeker used an ingeniously clever optical arrangement, with a Cassegrainian mirror fitted with a tilted secondary mirror. The secondary mirror rotated in unison with a reticle, projecting the whole instantaneous field of view of the mirror through the reticle onto a filter/detector assembly. Because the mirror secondary was tilted, rotating it about the missile's axis swept the cone of the mirror's field of view about the missile's axis in a fashion analogous to a conical scanning radar seeker (see diagram).

"To achieve lower costs the JSF accepts notable aft sector stealth limitations, especially when tackling deep or layered air defences with fighter threats - an acceptable tradeoff for shallow littoral and FEBA area battlefield strikes against predominantly short range mobile air defence systems. The aim in the JSF is to use newer materials technology than the F-22A does to reduce stealth costs, although we are likely to see this technology migrate across to the F-22A in later blocks." http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-JSF-Analysis.html

The real gold is the article linked halfway through http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2011-03.html

nah. as sensor packages and missile technology advances, so do countermeasures, while the good ole bullet is harder to fool. "The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter proponents’ riposte has been that the AIM-120 is a 100% reliable and 100% kill probability missile, so each F-35 carrying four AIM-120’s will account for four Sukhois or MiGs. This is a dangerously naive assumption. Operationally, the AIM-120 has achieved 10 BVR kills from 17 shots – a Pk or “kill probability” of 0.59 (59 percent) against benign or “dumb” targets. The AIM-120 has been tested in over 200 test firings, with a reliability of about 85 percent, so statistically speaking, about one of those four AIM-120s will be a dud." > http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-070109-1.html also, once the 6-10 aa missiles you carry are spent, if you aren't faster than the enemy you cannot just disappear.

While that was designed in 1984, the US DoD had successfully tested laser weapons over a decade earlier: 'The first was in 1973 when the USAF shot down a winged drone at their Sandia Optical Range, New Mexico, using a carbon dioxide GDL and a gimballed telescope. Subsequently, in 1976, the US Army employed an electrically pumped HEL to destroy a number of winged and helicopter drones at the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. The USN, in March 1978, then engaged and destroyed an Army TOW missile in flight' [1] The first targets destroyed from an airborne platform (KC-135) were in 1979. [1] http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-DEW-HEL-Analysis.html

More info: MS stands for Maritime Strike http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Bear.html

Are you certain? This would be news to the world. For reference, here's what an ABM transporter looks like: http://www.ausairpower.net/PVO-S/53T6-SH-08-Gazelle-ABM-TL-1S.jpg Or this: http://www.ausairpower.net/PVO-S/Gorgon-ABM-Transporter-Loader-1S.jpg Here's what a portable ICBM looks like: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Moscow_Parad_2008_B… Or this: http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/images/rs24tel.jpg

There is some more information on GPS jamming at http://www.ausairpower.net/TE-GPS-Guided-Weps.html.

Who is this Joseph Trevithick guy anyway? His linked in profile says "Journalist and researcher with experience using various open source and public domain resources", "Acted as an on call military history consultant for various miniatures gaming products." I feel a lot of the reasoning seems a little dubious. > Russian radars, such as the one on the new Sukhoi Su-35, at least match the JSF’s APG-81, according to data compiled by Carlo Kopp at Air Power Australia. While the specific details remain secret, Kopp estimates ... Air Power Australia have a MASSIVE axe to grind when it comes to the F-35. They also have a history of publishing things that look like F-22 fanfiction (e.g. an article saying that navalizing the F-22 should be a piece of cake, http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-230209-1.html). > But take a look at the F-35’s engine nozzle. It’s round. Highly stealthy planes such as America’s B-2 bomber and F-22 fighter both boast flat engine nozzles that spread out their exhaust plumes, I think they are flat mostly to shape radar reflections. I think the fact that the B-2 exhaust nozzle is on the upper half of the aircraft also is supposed to help the IR signature, but does the flatness really affect anything? > Even with its radar off, an F-35 could struggle to hide from enemy planes ... “You can’t stealthify against long-wavelength radars” Sure, but this affects every airplane, it's not a weakness of the F-35. > The F-35’s limited weaponry was one of the…