The War in the Ukraine

Tootensky said:

I think everyone is really overreacting to the idea of F-16s being given to the Ukraine. First of all, the deal hasn't been completed yet, and it wouldn't surprise me if it never is. There is a reason Poland and the US were so sketchy when it came to sending MiG-29s last year. There is only so many times you can poke the bear before it takes a swipe at you. Up till now Russia has actually show remarkable restraint when NATO sent mercs, AA systems, artillery, but sooner or later even Russia is bound to reach it's limit and will escalate.

Second, just how much use will these F-16s be. This is a weapon system. It needs a place to take off and land. It needs to be supplied with parts, engines, fuel, bombs, missiles. How about a competent ground crew who know what they're doing? Perhaps you can take a Su-27 pilot and train him at Nellis for a month or two to operate the plane, but what about the ground component for maintaining an unfamiliar weapons system? When a couple of screws come loose or a pipe comes off somewhere deep in the plane making the machine unable to fly, will it just be written off? Will they push the plane couple hundred kms to check it in Poland?

Third, is the question of what F-16s will be sent. They won't be the newest planes (block 50/52 and up). They'll be F-16 MLUs, planes which already have been ridden hard for decades. The youngest of those planes will be what? 30-35 years old? And if NATO decides to send anything more advanced, it will be depriving itself of usefull assets. Will Poland send theirs and basically deprive itself of a combat air force? Will Greece weaken itself vis-a-vis Turkey, when Turkey is inching closer and closer to leaving NATO? Or will the Americans stretch themselves even thinner?

What's curious to me is that the Americans seem to be OK with F-16s being sent do the Ukraine, while at the same time being so opposed to sending long range weapons which might be used to strike against Russian soil. Who wants to bet how many F-16s will get shot down while trying to bomb the Kremlin? I can already see the western media OOOh-ing and AAAh-ing when Zelensky proudly anounces that the first-ever F-16 has flown over Russian airspace (completely ignoring the fact that it cost the pilot's life).

Given how many resources these F-16s would require (on top of 4 types of tanks to be sent and God knows how many artillery systems already being sent) I wouldn't be surprised if the next logical step for Russia was to start concentrating their missile attacks on railway lines coming through western Ukraine.

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MarKoz81 said:

In the south - where NATO ISR has greatest access an F-16 equipped with a datalink can launch AMRAAM without using its own radar being guided entirely by AWACS.

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Totoro said:

That I could see working with an AWACS. In the sense that the F-16 has its own radar completely silent, and an AWACS points the F-16 in the right direction. And then the AMRAAM is fired in bearing mode.

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Totoro said:

Also @Patchwork_Chimera

Is this talking about bearing mode for amraam? Where AMRAAM is fired with its own radar seeker on, trying to lock onto any target in the general direction?
That I could see working with an AWACS. In the sense that the F-16 has its own radar completely silent, and an AWACS points the F-16 in the right direction. And then the AMRAAM is fired in bearing mode.

I am not saying MarKoz's post is suggesting it, but I want to add that I looked for *direct* AMRAAM AWACS datalink compatibility for years and haven't found sufficient evidence for that. So I am not sure that F-16 can launch an AMRAAM and then have the AWACS send midcourse corrections directly to the missile in flight. In fact, most circumstantial indications seem to be going against it. The datalink array on AMRAAM looks fairly buried, right under the exhaust, optimized for receiving data coming from the rear. Also, It's quite small in size, and thus likely optimized to work with X band, which would be suitable way for F-16 to send the course corrections through. For example using its own radar. That could also ensure the sidelobe emissions are fairly manageable and the source of the course correction data stream is not very detectable to the enemy.

E-3 radar antenna works in S band so it would likely need a separate array to send course corrections. Plus, operationally speaking, the E-3 may quite rarely be in the right position, behind missile's tail, to actually send correction data.

Anyway, I've never seen a publication or a similar source claiming E-3 Awacs being able to guide AMRAAMs directly. Of course, I would love a link to a publication which shares more information on it all.

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tankphobia said:

I'm surprised it's taken this long for fpv drones to start making appearances:
View attachment 106184
Don't get fooled by the appearance, those drones are perfectly capable of lifting rpg warheads due to extremely high power to weight ratio with short (<15 minutes) endurance.

If they're even capable of going at half the speed that fpv drones usually do (150km/h+), they'll be far harder to shoot down than normal suicide UAVs, due to unpredictable pathing, while also probably costing peanuts to make.

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tankphobia said:

If they're even capable of going at half the speed that fpv drones usually do (150km/h+), they'll be far harder to shoot down than normal suicide UAVs, due to unpredictable pathing, while also probably costing peanuts to make.

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tankphobia said:

I'm surprised it's taken this long for fpv drones to start making appearances:
View attachment 106184
Don't get fooled by the appearance, those drones are perfectly capable of lifting rpg warheads due to extremely high power to weight ratio with short (<15 minutes) endurance.

If they're even capable of going at half the speed that fpv drones usually do (150km/h+), they'll be far harder to shoot down than normal suicide UAVs, due to unpredictable pathing, while also probably costing peanuts to make.

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sheogorath said:

Do they go fast enough to arm the fuse of an RPG-7 rocket?. They are inertia activated to avoid accidental detonation if mishandled and a standard RPG has a launch speed of 1060km/h.

Otherwise, it won't do much.

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Tam said:

This looks to me that the control links to the drones can be jammed and the purely commercial AliExpress sources components does not guarantee much range.

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