The War in the Ukraine

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gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
An S-400 missile battery has more range than the land attack weapons they are supposed to use the F-16s for. Including the cruise missiles. Even Buk-M3 has 70 km range which is more than any of the PGMs in use by the US.

As an air to air platform the old F-16 being provided to Ukraine is utterly outclassed by the Russian Su-35 or MiG-31BM. It uses a planar array radar with upgraded electronics, and the Russian aircraft use upgraded PESA radars with much higher area and power. Those Russian radars have similar performance specs to the AESA radars in the latest versions of the F-16 of which there are limited numbers in service.

Plus, like I said before, the Russian aircraft can use the R-37M missile which has twice the range of the AIM-120C AMRAAM.
 
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Right_People

Junior Member
Registered Member
gelgoog said:
An S-400 missile battery has more range than the land attack weapons they are supposed to use the F-16s for. Including the cruise missiles. Even Buk-M3 has 70 km range which is more than any of the PGMs in use by the US.

As an air to air platform the old F-16 being provided to Ukraine is utterly outclassed by the Russian Su-35 or MiG-31BM. It uses a planar array radar with upgraded electronics, and the Russian aircraft use upgraded PESA radars with much higher area and power. Those Russian radars have similar performance specs to the AESA radars in the latest versions of the F-16 of which there are limited numbers in service.

Plus, like I said before, the Russian aircraft can use the R-37M missile which has twice the range of the AIM-120C AMRAAM.
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It may be even simpler than that, I don't know if it was here or somewhere else someone posted a link to a Twitter thread from a former F-16 repair technician.
He talks about the multitude of problems in getting and maintaining the aircraft in Ukraine, I found it of particular interest that even the F-16 needs well maintained runways in perfect condition, this is really incompatible with the "aerial guerrilla warfare" tactics that Ukraine uses and for which the Soviet aircraft are so well suited.

The Migs apparently have systems that prevent particles from entering the engine on take-off, the F-16 lacks all of this and what is worse, it has only one engine, so take-off damage that materialises once at altitude could easily kill the aircraft and the pilot.
And if operating from Poland, the aircraft simply won't have the range to reach eastern Ukraine.

The only real advantage is that the F-16s could pose some threat to the Black Sea fleet.
 
vincent

vincent

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
gelgoog said:
It is true that there was a lack of investment of small PGMs in Russia before the conflict in Ukraine started.

Most of the funding was put into strategic or theater level precision weapons like cruise missiles. The Russians created the Zircon, Kinzhal, modernized older missiles like Kh-22, Kh-55, Oniks, mass produced the Kalibr, Kh-101 cruise missiles. They also put into service several Iskander brigades and are pretty close to having replaced all older systems. Outside of strategic and theater weapons they also put the Krasnopol laser guided artillery round into mass production. The Russians had to substitute production of the laser guidance package in the Soviet era Krasnopol which prior to 2014 was made in Ukraine.

What isn't true is that this situation did not change after the conflict started. Less than a year after the conflict started, the Russians put into use the glide kits effectively turning the dumb bombs into PGMs. The Lancet was put into mass production, Geran-2 is also widely available. They started using the LMUR. Usage of LMUR is still limited due to lack of compatible launch platforms since it is operator guided in flight and needs a control console. What is still mostly a no show is serial production of the Kh-59MK2, Kh-38, and Kh-36 Grom-E1/E2. In at least the case of the Kh-38 the missile had to be redesigned so it would fit inside the stealth weapons bays of the Su-57 while still keeping the cost down. Other programs might have had similar delays.
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Russia should produce something like HJ-10
 
A

Atomicfrog

Major
Registered Member
Right_People said:
It may be even simpler than that, I don't know if it was here or somewhere else someone posted a link to a Twitter thread from a former F-16 repair technician.
He talks about the multitude of problems in getting and maintaining the aircraft in Ukraine, I found it of particular interest that even the F-16 needs well maintained runways in perfect condition, this is really incompatible with the "aerial guerrilla warfare" tactics that Ukraine uses and for which the Soviet aircraft are so well suited.

The Migs apparently have systems that prevent particles from entering the engine on take-off, the F-16 lacks all of this and what is worse, it has only one engine, so take-off damage that materialises once at altitude could easily kill the aircraft and the pilot.
And if operating from Poland, the aircraft simply won't have the range to reach eastern Ukraine.

The only real advantage is that the F-16s could pose some threat to the Black Sea fleet.
Click to expand...
With is mouth to the ground and small landing gear, F-16 is ill prepared to unmaintained runways. Mig-29 and Su-27 have loovers for unprepared highway.

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Mig-31 over Crimea could kill whatever fighters going above water over the baltic from Ukraine with R-33/R37 without big risk of retaliations.

F-16 is doable because of the amount of them in Europe that could be attritable and not because it would be a solution to Ukraine defences. F-16 would certainly help, nobody can rule them out of helping the situation for them. Ukraine air force is depleted, anything will help but the situation is so bad for things flying over it will end depleted but a moment later.

Sending them old Jaguar, Tornado even old f-4 Phantom would do the same for Ukraine air forces.
 
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R

Right_People

Junior Member
Registered Member
vincent said:
Russia should produce something like HJ-10
Click to expand...
Actually today they said they are testing the Hermes, which is kind of similar, lets see if they can move from "testing" to "production" fast enough, that is different topic ...


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Atomicfrog said:
With is mouth to the ground and small landing gear, F-16 is ill prepared to unmaintained runways. Mig-29 and Su-27 have loovers for unprepared highway.

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Mig-31 over Crimea could kill whatever fighters going above water over the baltic from Ukraine with R-33/R37 without big risk of retaliations.

F-16 is doable because of the amount of them in Europe that could ba attritable and not because it would be a solution to Ukraine defences. F-16 would certainly help, we cannot rule them out of helping the situation. Ukraine air force is depleted, anything will help but the situation is so bad for things flying over it will end depleted.
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The problem is if the ships have to approach Ukraine to use the Kalibr, they might not be so protected, but I don't really know.
It seems that the Migs have internal screens.


I highly recommend this thread:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1659757686764761089




In other topics, the Belgorod party ended bad for the AFU, I wont share the photo of the ukranian KIAs, but there is many.
2 Maxx Pro captured and others destroyed, all for a photo.
photo_2023-05-23_17-31-33.jpgphoto_2023-05-23_17-31-32.jpg
 

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A

Atomicfrog

Major
Registered Member
Right_People said:
The problem is if the ships have to approach Ukraine to use the Kalibr, they might not be so protected, but I don't really know.
It seems that the Migs have internal screens.
Click to expand...
With 1500-2500 km of range, Kalibr could launch from Sochi and practically anywhere in Ukraine... they are going out at sea near Sevastopol and launch at sea just to protect facilities from a mishap...they don't wander far and need to apprauch Ukraine at all.
 
Deino

Deino

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
Right_People said:
Actually today they said they are testing the Hermes, which is kind of similar, lets see if they can move from "testing" to "production" fast enough, that is different topic ...


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The problem is if the ships have to approach Ukraine to use the Kalibr, they might not be so protected, but I don't really know.
It seems that the Migs have internal screens.


I highly recommend this thread:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1659757686764761089




In other topics, the Belgorod party ended bad for the AFU, I wont share the photo of the ukranian KIAs, but there is many.
2 Maxx Pro captured and others destroyed, all for a photo.
View attachment 113169View attachment 113170
Click to expand...


Well ... other sources claim and show recent images including several ones stating they progressed even further!
 
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