Which modern nation has highest potential in aerospace?

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by RG_Lunatic

I think it will still be another 20+ years before we see AI drones with full combat capability patrolling boarders - they are just much too likley to end up shooting down passenger jets (espeically if spoofed by the enemy/terrorists).

=S=

Lunatic

AGREED

[delcyros]

All possible. I rate the drones potentially as important as the development of jet engines. Jamming is always possible, but the war of even our days is more a war of informations than anything else. Unmanned drones doesn´t automaticly exclude a team to controll them or set the mission parameters.KI doesn´t need to reach human capabilities (however they will, and probably they will surpass them in a couple of decades...) for an effective armed drone. Fighterpilots may be smart, but they doesn´t represent the pinnacle of human minds, they do have knowledge optimized for their purposes, I assume this for the next generation of armed drones, too. And at least they will be spoofed, jammed or misleading, no doubt, that´s war (someone knows about friendly fire or colleteral damage), no reason to exclude them from the battlefield, or isn´t it?

[lesofprimus]

U know, people gasped and screamed when someone strapped some rocket pods to the sides of a helicopter........

And if i recall correctly, the GREAT United States of America just smoked one of Osamas captains using a drone armed with a Maverick Missle......

Whoo Hoo.....

Awww......... Im sorry we werent able to notify this poor unfortunate terrorist........ Not very fair was it?????

I got a whole box of kleenex for the tears.....

[evangilder]

Well, if that box is in your house, Les, it won't be used for this occasion anyway. I might need to borrow it for my allergies later though!

Lets get real here for a second folks. Fairness is never a word I would use on a battlefield. You want a fair fight, take up boxing, or fencing. When you get into the field of battle, you don't want a fair fight. You want overwhelming superiority. The objective is to crush your enemy and demoralize the reserve forces. The faster you can do that, the sooner you can get the messy business over with and get back to some sense of normalcy. War isn't fair, it isn't pretty and it isn't sport. People DIE. The objective is to make as many of the other guys do that and as few of your own. If that means using a drone to take out some sorry sum'bitch, so be it.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by lesofprimus

U know, people gasped and screamed when someone strapped some rocket pods to the sides of a helicopter........

And if i recall correctly, the GREAT United States of America just smoked one of Osamas captains using a drone armed with a Maverick Missle......

Whoo Hoo.....

Awww......... Im sorry we werent able to notify this poor unfortunate terrorist........ Not very fair was it?????

I got a whole box of kleenex for the tears.....

That Drone should be hung in the Air and Space Museum!

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Unfortunatly Osama was not where that missle hit.

[ozumn]

Raptor bah, has any of you flown the most over ratet plane ever?

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by ozumn

Raptor bah, has any of you flown the most over ratet plane ever?

No - the first F-35 hasn't rolled out yet!!!

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by ozumn

Raptor bah, has any of you flown the most over ratet plane ever?

No actually I have not, but have you? So how can you say it is? What compares to the F-22 out there. Nothing.

[R988]

Just to correct an error made earlier, India does not have MiG31s, AFAIK only Russia and PRC have small numbers of MiG31s. India has Su30MKs, a sort of export version of the Su-35.

I would say Britain has the second highest potential for aerospace development, as it always has done. BAe is heavily involved with the Typhoon and also helped Saab with the JAS 39 Gripen (which also uses a licence built F404 (F/A-18 Hornet) engine from the US. France also has a reasonably well maintained aerospace industry, so europe as a whole would be second best, the main problem being sorting out all the bureaucratic red tape that strangles all their projects.

Japan mainly uses US technology with it's own contributions, like most nations, India isn't that much different nor is China, though both are maturing by developing their own indigenous aircraft.

Russia could make some top class stuff if they actually had any money. Their missiles are some of the best in the world currently, and their combat aircraft are probably some of the best in the world if you consider value for money. They are suffering from lack of investment though, and I would say their industry is in decline for the time being, any talent they have is likely to be lured to somewhere one of the other countries these days.

[davparlr]

Comment on this discussion

1. Stealth will be a surpreme advantage for the F-22 and F-35. You can forget that sparrow stuff (I suspect that is large by todays stealth technology). Anyway, it will take a POWERFUL radar to find a sparrow, even going 600 kts., before it could launch an AMRAAM up your butt or even a sidwinder, a radar that probably won't be available on fighters for 20 years. I predict that all fighters presently flying will be made second rate due to stealth when these two planes become operational. Its just too hard to spar with an invisible boxer.

2. I suspect the F-22 has a higher stealth level than that of the F-35 and thus will be more effective in that realm. Roles will be similar to the present F-15/F-16. The F-35 will be MUCH cheaper (including the European competition but not Russian) and I suspect there will be an international sales version made available to F-16 customers.

3. Dogfighting capability will not be important in future combat. Paramount will be detection, identification, designation, launch, destruction. This is the kill chain. Manueverability will reside between the launch and destruction link.

4. Political and cost ramifications of personnel in the war space, especially captured troops, is too high. All effort will be to get them out. Autonomous and semi-autonomous UAVs will be soon prevalent (20 years). Internetting information and target recognition algorythms will change the battlefield totally. Presently, you could put the avionics of a global hawk (an autonomous UAV) into a B-2 and have an unjammable and practically unstoppable unmaned weapon delivery platform.

5. Jamming and counter-jamming is a back and forth battle. Presently, it is very difficult to jam satellite datalinks (important since all of our GPS guided weapons depend on it).

6. The US has 40% of the worlds defense spending. Tough competiton. I am not sure even the EU has the ambition to spend the necessary money to compete here. Several EU countries have great techincal capability and the international mixing is more common place. Israel could lead in low cost UAV field. Desparation leads to genius.

[syscom3]

The country that deploys UAV's designed specifically for air-to-air that are autonomous, will own the airspace over the battlefield.

[ozumn]

Originally Posted by R988

Just to correct an error made earlier, India does not have MiG31s, AFAIK only Russia and PRC have small numbers of MiG31s. India has Su30MKs, a sort of export version of the Su-35.

I would say Britain has the second highest potential for aerospace development, as it always has done. BAe is heavily involved with the Typhoon and also helped Saab with the JAS 39 Gripen (which also uses a licence built F404 (F/A-18 Hornet) engine from the US. France also has a reasonably well maintained aerospace industry, so europe as a whole would be second best, the main problem being sorting out all the bureaucratic red tape that strangles all their projects.

Japan mainly uses US technology with it's own contributions, like most nations, India isn't that much different nor is China, though both are maturing by developing their own indigenous aircraft.

Russia could make some top class stuff if they actually had any money. Their missiles are some of the best in the world currently, and their combat aircraft are probably some of the best in the world if you consider value for money. They are suffering from lack of investment though, and I would say their industry is in decline for the time being, any talent they have is likely to be lured to somewhere one of the other countries these days.

BAe helped SAAB how? what plane have Britain made since the awseome Hawker Hunter? i think the next big EU fighter will be a joint EU-Russian one.

[pbfoot]

well if you look at the link for the gripen website you provided there is a link for BAE as a partner the gripen may be fine a/c but as stated earlier it does not have very good range it'll be interesting to see how many times it will require air to air refuelling on its crossing the pond to go to red flag I'll estimate 6

[ozumn]

Partner for sales yes. when we visit the red flag in 2003 we didnt have air to air refuling so we did it in this order, scotland-Iceland-greenland-Canada, then different locations in the US