WI no F-14/F-15 /F-18 with USN and USAF

Khanzeer

Banned
Soviets fielded hundreds of ASM-armed warships by 1980, that was their reply for USN having aircraft carriers.
are you counting the P-15 armed OSA and Komar boats too ?
As outside of that the shaddock was the main ASM in service with long enough range to have a decent chance of success
the P-500 was still very rare in 1980 and almost no Shipwrecks
 

Khanzeer

Banned
Soviets will not be picky in the case of full conventional war - shoot whatever you can and RTB.

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That is a great point you raised , I always wondered too there were so many decent interceptors in PVO, and what is stopping from these regiments to be thrown in to intercept tactical strike planes ? even if they are fighter-bombers they would be loaded with fuel and weapons in strike missions and not exceptionally agile.And the usual GCI controlled hit and run tactics against them would be just as effective in defence.
I'm sure all of PVO would not just sit around waiting for the B-1/B-52 to come over the arctic ?
 

Khanzeer

Banned
BVR - not a contender. WVR - one of the best.
true what I meant was that given the expected heavy use of f-16 for strike/CAS missions in case of a war in europe precious few would be dedicated solely to air-defence , interception duties.
 
are you counting the P-15 armed OSA and Komar boats too ?
As outside of that the shaddock was the main ASM in service with long enough range to have a decent chance of success
the P-500 was still very rare in 1980 and almost no Shipwrecks

Both Osa and Komar were armed with ASMs. Swarms of those hugging the coast of Norway were a thing to consider for the NATO planers from 1960s on.
Let's recall that nuclear-tipped ASMs were in Soviet arsenal.

BVR - not a contender. WVR - one of the best.
true what I meant was that given the expected heavy use of f-16 for strike/CAS missions in case of a war in europe precious few would be dedicated solely to air-defence , interception duties.

Soviets could not be 100% sure that F-16s will be mostly deployed in strike missions, so it was 'better safe than sorry' planing for them.
 
AIM-7, being SARH, required the so-called 'target illuminator'. One such illuminator was carried per fighter, in the nose, sharing the space with radar antenna. MiG-31 used phased array radar to get around this limitation.

The illuminator being the radar emitter itself, basically you lock the beam constantly to one target.



For those curious a nearly 100% accurate complete simulation of the F-14B was just released and here is a brief tutorial on (some) of its radar functions.
 

Khanzeer

Banned
Both Osa and Komar were armed with ASMs. Swarms of those hugging the coast of Norway were a thing to consider for the NATO planers from 1960s on.
Let's recall that nuclear-tipped ASMs were in Soviet arsenal.



Soviets could not be 100% sure that F-16s will be mostly deployed in strike missions, so it was 'better safe than sorry' planing for them.
indeed i have a declassified DoD paper from 1988 that says 25% of big surface ships and as many as 50% of SSGN warheads were nuke tipped

so what you are saying is that even the short range ASM in a littoral enviorment can still be threat despite their short range ?
 
That is a great point you raised , I always wondered too there were so many decent interceptors in PVO, and what is stopping from these regiments to be thrown in to intercept tactical strike planes ? even if they are fighter-bombers they would be loaded with fuel and weapons in strike missions and not exceptionally agile.And the usual GCI controlled hit and run tactics against them would be just as effective in defence.
I'm sure all of PVO would not just sit around waiting for the B-1/B-52 to come over the arctic ?

I'm not an expert, but I think that's quite likely actually. They trained for a different mission, in a different environment, with different aircraft. Intercepting a strategic bomber heading for Leningrad is a very different proposition to intercepting a F-16 doing CAS over the Fulda Gap. And the more aircraft you take away from PVO, the fewer that will be left if the B-1s and B-52s ever do come calling. It doesn't seem like a good risk.
 

SsgtC

Banned
BVR - not a contender. WVR - one of the best.
true what I meant was that given the expected heavy use of f-16 for strike/CAS missions in case of a war in europe precious few would be dedicated solely to air-defence , interception duties.
Except for this to be true, you need to use OTL logic where NATO had far more capable air superiority fighters. ITTL, that's not the case. F-16s would certainly be committed to air superiority roles in far larger numbers. And that would prompt the USSR to respond with their own lightweight air superiority dog fighter, which would prompt NATO to respond with a dedicated air dominance fighter and we're right back to OTL, just taking a round about way to get there...
 

Khanzeer

Banned
I'm not an expert, but I think that's quite likely actually. They trained for a different mission, in a different environment, with different aircraft. Intercepting a strategic bomber heading for Leningrad is a very different proposition to intercepting a F-16 doing CAS over the Fulda Gap. And the more aircraft you take away from PVO, the fewer that will be left if the B-1s and B-52s ever do come calling. It doesn't seem like a good risk.
maybe not a F-16 , but a F-4 /f-104 or Mirage III enroute for deep strike missions may not be a bad target for a mig-23P or mig-25
su-15, i would keep them only for bombers , recon/maritime patrol planes and there would be plenty of those targets in a big war

problem is there might be no SAC bombers coming within range of these short legged interceptors esp with advent of crusie missiles
 
Its hidden things that make the 4th gen fighters worthwhile, like ease of flightline maintenance, ability to generate sorties, reduced pilot workload, reduced part count. All the non sexy stuff that actually creates airpower by making the fighters more than expensive lawn ornaments. These 'fleet' factors push the adoption of advanced aircraft as much or more as speed etc: think of the salaries saved by making the F15 a single seater, or the maintenance time fixing a 1959 design.

This, at some point you can only do so much with older design and you have to move on. One of the other issues in addition to what Riain brought up is that each newer generation of aircraft tends to make average pilots better pilots. There is a quote from one of the early USAF F-15 pilots who commented that he had over 3000 hours in the F-4 including combat time and he said he was already deadlier in a F-15 on his sixth flight than he ever was in a F-4.

Another way of looking at it is like this, the F4F Wildcat was a fine fighter plane for its time and the later General Motors FM-2 variant was in fact quite a bit more effective than the earlier Grumman Dash 3 and Dash 4 variants but it still was not as effective as the Hellcat, and while it may not have mattered much for guys like Jimmy Thach and Joe Foss, but your typical line pilot named Ensign Bob Smith USNR is much deadlier in the Hellcat than he is in any version of the Wildcat.
 

Khanzeer

Banned
Except for this to be true, you need to use OTL logic where NATO had far more capable air superiority fighters. ITTL, that's not the case. F-16s would certainly be committed to air superiority roles in far larger numbers. And that would prompt the USSR to respond with their own lightweight air superiority dog fighter, which would prompt NATO to respond with a dedicated air dominance fighter and we're right back to OTL, just taking a round about way to get there...
lol true , or maybe NATO will produce more F-4 or F-104S interceptors to make up for the gap
 
There comes a point of diminishing returns on the increasing need to totally redesign the internal spaces for the avionics and engines that became available.
At some point it's simpler to just start from a clean sheet of paper.

Thats right, even something as simple as the HUD had a huge impact on fighter design and required advances in engines to really get the most out of such a design philosophy a HUD allows.

The Phantom was a 'heads down' aircraft, where the crew were to place heavy reliance on their weapons systems to fight. This meant that there wasn't much need for a huge canopy for crew vision, so it was low slung to reduce drag. Unfortunately Vietnam was a 'heads up' A2A environment making the Phantom design a liability.

This problem was solved with the HUD, allowing the crew to do what was formerly heads down fighting heads up. To make the most of this the teens had big, bubble canopys providing fantastic views, however these generate a lot of drag. Turbofan engines dealt with this problem by providing fuel efficiency in dry cruise flight and massive afterburner power to overcome drag in highly supersonic flight. You just can't rig this up in a phantom, lightning or mirage iii.
 
F4 of 1965 would be very diffdifferfrom f4 of 1980
Plus its biggest threat numerically is the much maligned universally hated mig23

Who hates the Mig 23? It was built in the thousands and had a weapons system improved from the mig 21 with bvr and wvr missiles, it has to be engaged and defeated not just laughed off.
 

Khanzeer

Banned
Who hates the Mig 23? It was built in the thousands and had a weapons system improved from the mig 21 with bvr and wvr missiles, it has to be engaged and defeated not just laughed off.
I could not agree with you more infact I would say that judging the Mig-23ML/P/MLD versions based on performance of mig-23MS in face of overwhelming superority of numbers, with no functioning GCI , against fighters that were a generation ahead and had the best pilots in the world is a huge injustice.
I was being sarcastic
But that being said, the phantom had parity in terms of numbers with mig-23 by 1980 so the advantage is defiantely in its favor even with newer flogger versions
 
You don't win wars with parity, and as has been pointed out there are diminishing returns to hotting up old fighters. There are a range of reasons why wealthy countries with advanced militaries don't do it.
 
Having read through this thread, I was surprised to see no mention of the F16XL. Without the F15E and needing a new strike aircraft to replace the F111, might we see the XL in the role of a modern multi-role aircraft? The immediate alternative would be the F/A18, though I suppose a ‘new’ F4 might be viable. I think a Tornado purchase would be unlikely without a US partner (got to keep the US aircraft industry happy).

Although only single engine, might the F16XL make a viable interceptor (better suited radar, swap bombs for missiles) as a replacement F106? Possibly as an interim - it’s the single engine that’ll count against it.

The whole point of th F16XL was that it was supposed to be capable of supercruise, which it wasn't.
 
Who hates the Mig 23? It was built in the thousands and had a weapons system improved from the mig 21 with bvr and wvr missiles, it has to be engaged and defeated not just laughed off.

The 23 was really fast on the deck but the Tornado F3 was quicker and the Buccaneer S2 was in that odd space where it was subsonic but fighters needed to go into burner to keep up with it. The other problem with the 23 was that it was a horrible thing to maintain, overly complex and not great to fly, it is one reason why most operators dumped them after the end of the cold war whilst they were happy to keep and upgrade Mig 21's and SU22's.
 
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