MiG 29 OVT video

[alert5]

The MiG-29 OVT was demonstrated at Zhukovsky recently. This is a video of that demonstration.

The OVT has new all-axis thrust vectoring nozzles.

http://www.alert5.com/2005/08/mig-29-ovt-demo-video-wmv.html

[Conan the Librarian]

Stunning... the last minute or so shows one nozzle doing its' stuff on the ground after the display and it is mesmerising.

I wonder what those nozzles might do on the Typhoon? Well worth the download.

Conan

[adr]

Thanks, alert5. I concur: well worth viewing.

Caveat for those on slow connections: it's 38MB (estimated 90 minutes to download via 56k dialup).

adr

[ZH875]

Great video, but sure looks like they missed a few bolts out of the tail end.

Wonder how many anti chuckup pills you need to fly in it.

If only I had worked harder, If ........

[saudipc-9]

I don't think the ground crew will have much hearing left after all that!

[alert5]

MiG-29 OVT will be renamed MiG-35 (http://www.alert5.com/2005/08/russia-to-offer-mig-35-to-indian-air.html)

[John Farley]

Conan

TVC would not really be appropriate for the Typhoon because it was designed to be unstable in pitch to reduce trim drag when manoeuvring at high IMN. Such instability requires a minimum airspeed for aerodynamic control to be retained. As I am sure you are aware the benefits of TVC are not available to any aeroplane at medium or high speed where high sideslip or AOA would cause structural failure.

Of course in theory you could use TVC to control low speed instability and expand the Typhoon envelope to lower speeds but that would not be a minor mod to the flight control software and would make normal TVC and engine operation essential for safe flight in that regime – giving rise to a pretty complicated reliability case.

It all makes you realise how much the world has moved on from when the Russians and the West started designing these fighters as a means of national defence. Today the extremely potent Apache is rendered almost impotent near a place where bad guys live in case it gets spotted by one with a WWII RPG (costing a few quid) and none of the old Cold War based aircraft solutions are any help defending Central London from things individuals can carry in a rucksack.

With 20/20 the Cold War was a wonderful period - easy to understand, easy to live through and in reality very safe for ordinary folk to go about their business. Sorry to wander off topic.

[Conan the Librarian]

Thanks John - that helps my fevered mind no end :-) I must be honest, I had a picture in my mind of the Typhoon some 20 years hence, when even Fraggle Rock may be armed with some "Son of Flanker" derivative and was thinking more towads the mid life scenario, where as a mature system, its performance is beginning to look a bit more ordinary by comparison and it like myself, may have gained weight (Ounces in my case - honest Guv') ccompared to the carefree days of youth. I really cannot remember a combat (or service) aircraft that has maintained its lithe form through its intended lifespan. Apart from maybe the Sloggi balloon, that is.

I note and understand your comments re: the advantages of TVC at the lower end of the envelope, but would a MLU including TVC be feasible, desirable or indeed possible in years to come? I wonder?

Conan

[Tarnished]

TVC can only be a paliative for poor weapons integration.

Greater minds than ours decided that Typhoon plus ASRAAM plus a HMD with which to slew it to high off-boresight angles was they way to go. As JF points out TVC really only has an effect at slower speeds, a clever party trick if you will but no defence for an AMRAAM or AMRAAMSKI or AIM9X.

If you are not going at the speed of heat (if you've decided to come to the merge in the first place) you are effectively a sitting duck, not generating any sightline or displacement.

Early positive ID, supportive ROE and sensors and weapons that you can fire from BVR, if you need to merge do it at M1.6+ and slew the missiles with the HMD.

TVC for directional control to allow you to get rid of the fin and the drag and the RCS might be a slightly different arguement, but I don't believe it would be worth it.

Tarnished

[Jackonicko]

It's like the Cobra or the tailslide though, Tarnished. It's a jaw-dropping, show-stopping, attention grabbing piece of showbiz flummery, and it stops anyone from questioning that aircraft's 'agility'.

[Tarnished]

The only folk that end up questioning the agility are the uninformed or ill informed that think that what they can see from the outside is all there is to it.

Agreed, Cobra, Tailslide and this "corkscrew" are all impressive man beating the laws of physics, gravity and aerodynamics, but if the man in the cockpit does not have the sensors, weapons, controls and displays suitably integrated and refined and a favourable set of ROE then all is lost.

Tarnished

[Conan the Librarian]

Aah - my befuddled memory goes back to an F-16 based programme in the 70s. Was it AFTI? From the limited information that I gleaned, it was a case of pilot overload and knowing what the hell the thing was trying to do and having to chase it mentally, rather than t'other way around.

The question to me as a lay person, still remains. If we move 20 or even 30 years on, then how "current" is Typhoon going to be and what is kept up the sleeve for that point in time?

Yes, the World has changed enormously. We couldn't have dreamt of this when EFA was first mooted. Third, fourth and maybe fifth generation fighters are going to appear in all sorts of places, even if we discount China. When Typhoon is fat, happy and bloated, what capability is left up the sleeve other than tactics?

A diversion here - Why are the Tiffie' burners so incredibly bright? Is it just temperatures, jetpipe length or what? They are magnitudes brighter than anything else I can think of, but I suppose, there again, the Jag, with that pale blue, "Calor gas" flame, is rather reminiscent of the thing that burns your kebab to death and unlikely to be visible more than 50 yds up the High Street.

Again - I am a Lay person - please indulge me :-)


Regards to all,

Conan

[Tarnished]

CTL,

The thing to bear in mind is that there are a huge number of people employed all over the world looking into exactly the question you raise. Trade off studies are going on all over the place. If I pay x to increase my radar detection range or I pay y to give my missile longer legs what will it get me at a campaign level. Lots of people with pointy heads and coke bottle bottom glasses with slide rule, algorithms and CFD models (computational fluid dynamics) {I used to have the first one, the second is a "big sum" and the third is a room full of computers} They are all crunching numbers which are fed back to the planners and Operational Requirements folks to decide what they are going to spend an ever decreasing budget on to make sure the political aspirations of the country can be best supported.

For Typhoon in the future, ASRAAM, Meteor still with a good HMD possibly a radar upgrade but not TVC. Stormshadow, Brimstone and Paveway IV.

The burners are stunning, all to do with the laws of thermodynamics, put more coal on the fire and you get a bigger fire. Engines are pretty far aft too.

Tarnished

[Onan the Clumsy]

the last minute or so shows one nozzle doing its' stuff on the ground after the display and it is mesmerising I'm trying to choose between faintly disconcerting and disturbingly erotic :uhoh:

[FLCH]

Onan, may I humbly suggest you try to smoke a cigarette, while trying to decide ??

[Conan the Librarian]

Errr.... Onan is right to raise this issue... It has been bothering me too. As soon as I saw the video, it reminded me of something in the distant past. I have been trying, ever since posting originally to work out what it was - and now, I have!

This is going back a long, long time... over 30 years in fact, but who remembers the "Orgasmatron" in the film Barbarella? Cheers Onan!

Thanks for your replies peeps. Keep 'em coming.

Conan

[OFBSLF]

"Orgasmatron" in the film BarbarellaThat was not in Barbarella. It was in the Woody Allen movie "Sleeper".

[Devil's Aardvark 8]

OFBSLF!

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Orgasmatron" in the film Barbarella
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That was not in Barbarella. It was in the Woody Allen movie "Sleeper".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was, in fact an Orgasmatron in the film Barbarella. I have not seen the Woody Allen movie "Sleeper", so I can't tell you whether or not they were the same model of Orgasmatron or even made by the same manufacturer.

[Tarnished]

Tangent warning.

But I still want to know where does a tangent actually begin,

Tarnished

[Onan the Clumsy]

A tangent theoretically has no beginning or end, just a middle. It is infinite in length.

I thought there was an entire film called Orgasmatron. I'll have to check next time I'm at the video store.

[BEagle]

The 'Orgasmatron' appeared in the movie 'Sleeper'. In 'Barbarella', the device was called an 'Excessive Machine'. But it didn't cope with Jane Fonda's lustiness and whilst she was being 'pleasured' in the machine by the arch villain, it became overloaded and was destroyed. Ms Fonda (a most savoury babe indeed back in 1968, for those too young to have known) clearly enjoyed the experience considerably!

There was also a movie called 'Orgazmo' in which an 'orgazmorator' was used to generate multiple orgasms in the victim.

I don't imagine that Motörhead's 1986 album 'Orgasmatron' had a similar effect!

How did we get from MiG 35 to Motörhead via Jane Fonda? Tangential indeed!

[Nige321]

I'm worried...

Beagle seems to know far too much about this sort of thing...:8

Nige

[The Rocket]

Ah, the delights of google eh BEags?:p

[BEagle]

Indeed - but précised for those who don't want to wade through the whole guff on Google!

But I vividly recall the look on Jane Fonda's face as she writhed around under the fiingers of that machine....:D

[Conan the Librarian]

So BEagle, you for one know exactly how that Mig 35 nozzle triggered my memory bank!


Conan

[BEagle]

You mean this?

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a341/nw969/Internet/excessivemachine.jpg

[Onan the Clumsy]

That's a very big kleenex she's holding.

[tonker]

An a/b model F18 was retrofitted with similar nozzles in the late 90's, and i'm sure in dogfights with similiar aircraft it won 38 to nill including a few 2 on 1 fights!

[Tarnished]

Nobody in the right mind wants to get into a friggin' dogfight!! What about that concept is so difficult to understand.

Too much machismo and testosterone, bound to end in tears, one small mistake and you are toast.

Better to shoot BVR and run away bravely to fight another day

A jet doing back flips, half pikes and double nelsons or whatever, is still in the same bit of sky. Something that can do the speed of heat and still manoeuvre with some decent sensors and decent weapons and ROE that allow it to shoot will always win the day.

Now, airshow crowd pleaser..... thats a different matter. But if I were CAS or PM I know what I'd want.

Tarnished

[BEagle]

Or just hoof off a nuclear-tipped AAM and vapourise a cubic mile of sky plus anything contained therein?

Wasn't it over-reliance on missiles and BVR philosophy which led to the Naval Fighter Weapons School at Miramar?

"On March3,1969 the United States Navy established an elite school for the top one percent of its pilots. Its purpose was to teach the lost art of aerial combat and to insure that the handful of men who graduated were the best fighter pilots in the world.

They succeeded.

Today,the Navy calls it Fighter Weapons School.
The flyers call it:

Top Gun "

(....run music, cue credits...)

Take your point though. Even back in the late '80s the initial Fox 1 was disregarded when doing MLPIs; 150 ARA with front AIM7 BVR and rear hemisphere AIM9 was the 'standard' attack. But we didn't have enough fatigue left to do much in the way of doggers except for maybe a week at Alconbury with the Aggressors and another at Deci on the ACMI range.

[Tarnished]

Back in the days when we did blip track analysis to figure out the geometry, things like ASRAAM and Helmet Mounted death rays would have save all the fatigue. We used have have a fatigue monitor, who would keep track of what we used on MLPIs LLPIs etc and you could see the guys who could actually work out the geometry and those who were ham fisted and yanked it round like a mad man.

Tarnished

[Exmil]

Having worked on some future studies I would agree with the majority of views: if you can stay out of sight and get a kill, that's the best option (the targets' phrase is "where the f*%k did that come from?"). If you have to trade shots, you'd better have a capable weapon SYSTEM (not just the Mx); if you are in a dogfight you've porked it. It might be fun, but should not be necessary. The only rider to that is for older a/c (I have done blip track analysis). On exercise over N Sea met an Aardvark which threw the scanner into the stops so hard it stayed sulking in the corner and with no 'winders left it was time for a hopeful unlocked guns on camera, coupled with the phrase "jam that you b*5t*rd".

[Conan the Librarian]

BVR was touted in the mid 50s as being the answer to all, but even now, there seem to have been very few BVR kills Worldwide, compared to intercepts.

As I have said many times in this thread, I am a lay person, so please bear with me - but it does seem to me that in potential future scenarios, ie peacekeeping, that it is more than possible that the Politicos are probably, in their helpful ways, going to hobble the blue side with Rules of Engagement that insist on a positive visual identification, before being cleared to fire. If this is so, then the beauties of speed of heat and even Meteor seem to be a bit optimistic. If this should happen, then as various posters have already pointed out - then you are into a visual, short range arena, like it or not.

The systems might be fabbo - but they did say that with the Phantom and Lightning, some 45 years ago. So - Where does Typhoon stand in that lot when even the unlikeliest of opponents are going to be armed with either the SU 30MK or the Mig 35?

This is an age old argument I know. But what are the realistic 21st Century answers?


Conan

[Tarnished]

Conan

Imagine if you will the CBLF being required to provide the visual confirmation of (hostile) target. Two scenarios present themselves depending on the geometry you can make and the number of good guys you have. The phrase "eyeball and shooter" describes the tactics employed.

If the ROE say positive visual ID then there are optical and IR devices to give you the eyes of Superman which still effectively preserve your BVR capability.

If he "might be hostile" and you are brave enough (or are told to) get within his weapons range to make sure of his ID then you better have two of you. One out front at the speed of heat who shouts hostile and keeps going to get the most separation ASAP, the trailer has been watching all this on his sensors and hoofs off a missile at a point when frat is low risk.

If you are a solo then speed of heat until you ID him, if that is in front of you then a missile with minimum range to arming would help (but beware fragging yourself). After the merge, max rate/min radius turn plus HMD, plus high off-boresight missile will give you the quickest shot.

These work for either head on or tailchase geometry.

After that just f@ck off out of Dodge and home for tea and medals.

Did I miss anything?

Tarnished

ASRAAM + Meteor(AMRAAM)+HMD+ High SEP is a good combination