The F/A-18 Hornet ushered in a new generation of ultra agile, ‘glass’ cock-pitted multi-role fighters. We spoke to former US Marine pilot Louis Gundlach about flying and fighting in the F/A-18 Hornet. 

Which aircraft have you flown and with which unit? “I was a Hornet guy my whole career. I flew the F/A-18C (Lot 11) attached to VMFA-232 twice. First tour was from 1995 to 1998 and the second was from 1999 to 2001. I was one the Marine Air Group (MAG) – 11 Weapon and Tactics Instructors for seven months and I flew F/A-18Cs and F/A-18Ds. I moved on to VMFA-323 where I flew F/A-18Cs (Lot-15) from 2001 to 2003. I finished up my career at VMFAT-101 (F/A-18 training squadron) and I flew F/A-18As, Bs, Cs, and Ds.”

How do you feel about the aesthetics of the Hornet? “I grew up by El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in California. The Marine Corps received their first F/A-18s in 1983. My Dad was a retired Marine so we would go on El Toro quite a bit, many times because I would bug him to take me so I could look at the jets. To a 14-year-old, the F/A-18 looked like a spaceship compared to the F-4s, A-6s, and A-4s that were also based there. The Hornet was sleek and new and did not have all the blisters and bumps that the older jets had. Obviously, I have been biased about the Hornet for a long time and I still am. It is still a cool looking jet.”

What were your first impressions of the F/A-18? “I wrote about my first impression as a kid above. My first ride in a Hornet was cool. While waiting to go to flight school I was able to spend three months at El Toro attached to VMFAT-101. I got three rides in the Hornet while I was there, and it was amazing. The first ride was in a new F/A-18D. Getting in the jet, the cockpit still had a little bit of that new jet smell (like a ‘new car smell’ but in a jet!). The cockpit was overwhelming with the two DDIs (Digital Display Indicators) and the MPCD (Multi-Purpose Color Display). Taxing out I felt very high off the ground and like I was sitting out on the end of a stick. The takeoff was amazing, especially to someone who had only flown a Cessna 172 to that point. When you add power to the Hornet and hold the brakes to do a quick pre-takeoff checklist the jet will squat a little bit on the front nose wheel.

The noise, the jet shaking just a bit, the other Hornet to our left on the runway was so cool. The takeoff roll started and then after a couple of seconds the pilot selected afterburner and felt like someone kicked that back of my seat. We were airborne quickly and the other Hornet joined up. The flight was a basic formation flight but to me it left a lasting impression. It was perfect California day over the Pacific. At one point in the flight when the instructor had the student doing break up and rendezvous maneuvers, the pilot asked me if I wanted to go Supersonic? I said yes but I remember being a little apprehensive. The pilot selected afterburner for about 10 seconds, the Mach meter went through Mach 1, and that was it. There was no boom, or shaking, or anything, just the number changing. I even got to fly a little bit from the backseat. I wanted to fly Hornets since the first time I saw the airplane, getting a ride in the jet had me sold.

Which three words best describe it?

Fun: The Hornet was fun to fly. I often said that I cannot believe they pay me to do this. Every flight was a blast.
Reliable: It always got me home. A few times single engine, but it was always was reliable.

Accurate: A lot of people focus on air to air, but the Hornet was a fantastic bomber. When I first got to the fleet, we were almost exclusively training to dumb bombs and the Hornet was so accurate. Put the designation or the CCIP (Constantly Computed Impact Point) cross over the target, be smooth during the release, and the jet would do the rest.

What is the best thing about it? “The Hornet was reliable. The systems, for the most part, were almost always working. The Marines working on the aircraft did a tremendous job keeping the Hornets flying and the systems working. Often at austere locations. This is not only a testament to the Marines who worked tirelessly on the jets but the reliability of the Hornet itself.”

And the worst thing? “The lack of fuel, at least around the carrier. I flew the Hornet for a long time in a land-based squadron. I did not really understand the critique of the legacy (F/A-18 A thru D) Hornet not carrying enough gas. Fuel becomes a lot more critical when the runway is only open for 15 minutes every hour and a half or two hours. When flying missions that ended up at a runway, we would plan for having 2,000 pounds when we landed. We would fly our mission and when we hit bingo fuel (Fuel left was the 2,000 poundsds plus the fuel required to fly back to base) we would fly home and land. Carrier operations are much more complicated. At the ship, we would plan on landing at the max trap weight and depending on what we were carrying that could be 4,500 to 5,000 pds of fuel. Daytime carrier operations we could land with a lower fuel weight, if I remember correctly it was 3,500 pounds, but that 1,500 pounds is still more than 10% of your fuel load with two external tanks. Add to the fact that you had to wait for the ship to start recovery operations, you often would need to cut your mission short to conserve fuel so you would have fuel to hold and then land. For carrier operations the Hornet could have used more fuel.

How you rate the F/A-18 in the following categories?
Instantaneous turn

“The Hornet’s instantaneous turn was as good or better than any jet that I flew against.”

Sustained turn

“The Hornet had a good sustained turn, but it was outclassed by jets with better thrust to weight like the F-15C and F-16. This was especially true at higher altitudes or when the Hornet was loaded with drop tanks and pylons. A completely slick Hornet was a dog-fighting machine, but more on that later.”
High alpha

“The Hornet was excellent at high alpha flying. The Hornet was better than any jet I flew against in high alpha manoeuvring flight.”

Acceleration

“Hornet was fair but outclassed by many other jets.”

Climb rate

“Once again the Hornet was OK, but outclassed by F-14Ds, F-15C, F-16. The F-16s out at Buckley ANGB in Denver would do an Immelmann at the end of the Runway on takeoff. They had to hit a certain altitude which I believe was above 11K MSL. I tried to do it in a Hornet once (F/A-18C with a centerline tank and two pylons)… nope, I did not make it. I was wallowing around at 10K ft and 100kts trying to comply with Departure’s new instructions. Good thing the Hornet was forgiving and was good at high alpha flight.”

Dissimilar air combat training (DACT)

“My first squadron was an F/A-18C squadron, VMFA-232, that would deploy to Iwakuni Japan for six-month deployments. We did Close Air Support and air-to-air training for over 90% of our training. We did not have to do the endless flights of Field Carrier Landing Practice or all the other months of workups the squadrons attached to a Carrier Air Wing had to. We also did not have to do all the Tactical Airborne Controller – Airborne and Forward Air Controller – Airborne (TAC-A and FAC-A) that the two seat F/A-18Ds had to do. We did a lot of air to air training, both similar and dissimilar. When we deployed to Iwakuni, the lack of air to ground ranges made us schedule even more air to air training. A few of the more senior pilots in the squadron were Desert Storm vets and grew up with the Hornet. They taught us how to fight the Hornet against the other 4th Generation fighters, the F-14s, F-15s, and F-16s.  The game plan against other teen fighters was pretty much the same, we wanted to get our nose on the opposing fighter first to either get the first shot or to cause the opposing fighter to react by matching our turn thus getting into a slow speed fight where the Hornet excelled. Transitioning to a one circle fight, usually at the initial merge or the second merge was the game plan. Some of our older pilots really pushed fighting in the vertical also. As one of the Desert Storm vets put it, “Going over the top in a fight you will quickly find out if your opponent is part of the BFM (Basic Fighter Manoeuvring) club”. There was a lot of learning to go with this advice. How to judge the other fighter’s position, energy, separation, etc. all had to be taken into account. Experience is the best teacher and we got a lot of air to air experience in my first squadron.

The problem with game plan with the Hornet against the other teen fighters is that even though you could beat another 4th Generation Fighter by forcing it to fly where the Hornet had the advantage, manoeuvring around at below 200 kts in a rolling scissors or flat scissors is a terrible place to be in a multi-fighter engagement. A slow fighter is an easy kill for your opponent’s wingman and when you are dogfighting it is difficult to keep situational awareness (SA) of what is going on outside the visual arena. Through experience I found that keeping your speed up, getting a quick kill and leaving an engagement was a much better way to stay alive than getting in a turning engagement in a multi-bogey environment. A dogfight in a multi-fighter engagement will bring all the players to the fight like moths to a flame and if you are the guy fighting a one versus one at 180 knots in the middle of that fight, you are going to quickly find yourself on the receiving end of a missile shot.”

What is the best way to fight an F-14? And the worst? Which aircraft has the advantage?

“My history of fighting against the Tomcat is broken into two parts. My first year in a fleet squadron flying against F-14As and then later in my career flying against F-14Ds. F-14As and F-14Ds were different airplanes. When I fought against the F-14As, they were really starting to show their age. The F-14A had TF30 engines which were unreliable, smokey and did not provide much thrust. The F-14A also had the AWG-9 radar which the Tomcat aircrew complained about, mostly for being old and unreliable. The F-14D had GE F110 engines which were much more reliable, did not smoke, and gave the Tomcat much better thrust. My first year in a fleet F/A-18 squadron we flew against F-14As based there and then on my first deployment to Iwakuni, Japan we flew against the F-14As based out of Atsugi NAF. The F-14 is a big aircraft and the Hornet’s radar could detect it and keep track of it at a considerable range. The F-14A’s smokey engines made tally’s (Visually picking up the jet) possible outside of 20nm. Having a Tally at range meant you could setup the merge to execute the Hornet’s WVR game plan. Usually this meant merging low to high and pulling aggressively in the vertical in a one circle fight. Usually the vertical maneuver would have an oblique aspect to it so we would be 45 to 60 degrees nose high and aggressively pulling to put our nose back on the adversary. I liked going in the oblique vertical vice the pure vertical because it gave me a chance to counter a jet that might also be coming in the vertical but was out turning your (usually another Hornet in a similar WVR fight). In my first fight against an F-14, which I think was my first fight against an dissimilar 4th Generation fighter (F-14, F-15, F-16) I came over the top and was surprised to see I had weapons separation for a missile shot. A quick Fox 2 (simulated missile shot) from me and a continue call from the Tomcat pilot. The F-14 pulled up to my altitude and we entered a flat scissors. The Hornet outclassed the F-14A (Flat scissors is a High Alpha Fight) and I was quickly above and behind the Tomcat when the F-14A pilot called knock it off (Stop the fight).
The first time I flew against an F-14D was several years later, on a training detachment (or det) to NAS Key West. I was had a lot more experience by this point in my career. I was a recent graduate of Top Gun and had over 1,000 hrs. of F/A-18 time. You could say I was in my prime. We also flew completely slick Hornets. No pylons or drop tanks, just a training AIM-9 and a TACTS (Tactical Air Combat Training System) pod. This was the only time I fought the Hornet with nothing on it. A slick Hornet was a BFM machine. I found it amazing that the removal of the centerline tank and the wing pylons would make such of difference, but it did. The Hornet accelerated much faster and its ability to fight in vertical was even more pronounced. To say the Tomcat, even a newer one with better engines, was at a disadvantage, would be an understatement. I only had one sortie against the F-14 during the det but I remember one of the sets pretty well, it was an abeam setup. On an abeam setup, the two fighters would setup at the 3 or 9 O’clock position of the other fighter. Distance would usually be 1.5 to 2 nautical miles, at a designated altitude, and between 300 to 400 knots. I was the flight lead for this fight, all BFM sorties designate a lead to control the setup, the fight, and ensure safety. The comms would go something like; “Speed and Angels on the right.” (I am at the briefed speed and altitude on the right) “Speed and Angels on the left”. “Check tapes on, turning in” (Check recording device on, turn toward each other), “Tapes on, turning in”. The two fighters would turn toward each other and at the merge (When the fighters pass each other) the fight would be on. On the fight that I remember, at the merge I turned hard across the Tomcat’s tail and then went into a max G oblique turn about 45 degrees nose up. The Tomcat matched my oblique turn and we had a second merge in the vertical inverted. The Tomcat was slightly out in front of me. His wings were fully forward, and he had a lot of vapes (vapors) coming over the wing roots. Being in a slick Hornet I was able to start and second climb, this one pure vertical and the Tomcat turned across my tail and then started a descent in a left hand turn to try and get his speed back. At about 70 degrees nose up I had enough separation and I executed a rudder pirouette to the right, I got the nose on, a lock on, and called two simulated missile shots. I remember the pirouette because it was so crisp. A slick Hornet was an amazing machine. Too bad you would never actually take a slick Hornet into battle.

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I also fought against F-14Ds while on cruise on the USS Constellation. This was totally different. Our Hornets had two tanks and all four pylons. We had one tank on the Centerline and one on the wing. We called it goofy gas. This put some limitations on the Hornet’s maneuvering. The Hornet in this configuration was a bit of a pig but it could still formidable if flown properly. As a more senior guy I fought against the more junior Tomcat pilots and held my own by sticking to the Hornet game plan. I altered the game plan a little bit by not going as high in the vertical so I would not get too slow and so I would have nose authority to pressure the Tomcat. The danger with the F-14D was that if you were not pressuring it, it could accelerate quickly and get airspeed to go into the vertical and get a shot on an opponent that does not have the air speed to match the vertical maneuver. The more senior Tomcat pilots did this to our junior pilots. It would have been interesting to fight some of the “Old Hand” Tomcat pilots, especially in a goofy gas configuration that was not advantageous to the Hornet. The Tomcat CO (Commanding Officer) on that cruise had a reputation of being an excellent BFM pilot and he could make the Tomcat maneuver in ways that most Tomcat pilots could not. Unfortunately, I never got the opportunity to see him fight the Tomcat firsthand.”

What is the best way to fight an F-16? And the worst?

“Throughout my career I flew against F-16s many times and in my opinion, it was the hardest of the 4th generation fighters to beat. It was small, had a lot of thrust, and a very impressive 9G turn. The F-16 had a turn rate advantage and much better thrust to weight when compared to the F/A-18C. The F/A-18C had a better turn radius and could fly at a higher angle of attack (AOA) than the F-16. The best way to fight an F-16 is in a 1 circle fight, usually in the vertical. Getting the Hornet’s nose on first to try and get an early shot, whether with a missile or the gun. The key would be to get the F-16 reacting to the Hornet, bleeding energy, and getting slow. At slow airspeeds, the F/A-18’s AOA advantage meant I could point my nose easily and get a shot. The worst way to fight against an F-16 would be two circle fight on the Horizon. The F-16s 9G turn and superior thrust to weight would give him a better turn rate and the F-16 would out turn the Hornet. If an F/A-18 tried to match the F-16 turn rate, the Hornet would get bleed energy and its turn rate would continue to be less than the F-16.

Like all fighters, most of the ability of a fighter plane to fight is dependent on the skill of the pilot. The F-16’s performance, much like the Hornet’s, would suffer if it was carrying external stores. A slick Viper (F-16) flown by an experienced pilot was a beast and was always a tough fight. There was a Air Force reserve squadron out of Luke that was full of experienced pilots, all of them had at least a thousand hours in the Viper. They always flew slick Vipers and they were a tough fight for an F/A-18C which always had at least one external tank and two pylons. This reserve squadron also went on that Key West Det. From what I saw and experienced, in a pure visual fight a slick Hornet was better in the visual arena than a slick Viper. I rate the F-16 pilots from that reserve squadron in Luke as the best I ever fought and in the visual arena the Hornet more than held it’s own on that Key West det.”

What is the best way to fight an F-15C Eagle? And the worst?

I do not think I ever fought a USAF F-15C in a pure 1 v 1 dogfight. We would always fight the F-15C in BVR fights that might end up in a multi-plane visual engagement. In the visual arena, the F-15C’s large size made it easy to keep sight of and keep situational awareness (SA) of all the bandits (bad guys) in a visual fight. I remember, on different engagements, being able to switch from one F-15 to another and get a shot outside my own fight, across the circle because I could keep SA on multiple F-15s.

I can tell you by experience the worst way to fight against an F-15 in to attempt a turning engagement up at 40,000ft. The Eagle, with its big wings and big engines has no problem turning up at 40,000ft, but the F/A-18C, with its little wings and smaller engines has trouble turning up at that altitude. On one fight out of Kadena AFB in Okinawa, Japan, when I was a junior pilot, I merged with a couple of Eagles above 40,000ft. I turned across the outside fighter’s tail and quickly found my turn rate was not very good at that altitude and I was bleeding energy quickly. The F-15s were able to keep a fair rate of turn and I quickly found myself defensive heading downhill.

I did fly many 1 v 1s against Japanese Air Self Defense Force (JASDF) F-15Js. The one circle, vertical manoeuvre game plan was very effective against the JASDF pilots. Often, I was able to get a shot on the F-15Js as I came over the top and then I could transition to offensive BFM on the Eagle.”

DACT
“Of the aircraft you have flown DACT with, which was the most challenging?
The F-16. It was small so it was difficult to see. Its 9G turn was eye watering and if you did not keep the pressure on a Viper it would out accelerate you and either out turn you or out climb you. If the F-16 pilot was experienced at dogfighting, it was always going to be a tough fight.”

What was it like fighting RAF Tornados? “I flew against GR1s, the ground attack version. Most of the flights we did were large engagements with many different types of aircraft. The Tornados flew strike missions during that exercise. I got a shot on one visually and it attempted to defend into me. The turn was not that impressive, but these were ground attack Tornados loaded with tanks and bombs. Air to Air was not their mission and the load-out was not conducive to manoeuvring.

D. Which foreign air force impressed you the most? The British and the Australians were just like flying with Americans, just with funny accents. Their professionalism and preparedness were the same as our air forces. I flew two DACT sorties against Singapore Air Force F-16s based out of Luke Air Force base. These sorties could have had a US instructor or exchange pilot in in the formation, but with a limited sample size, I was very impressed. The Singapore’s tactics and aggressive flying were equal to what we would see from the U.S. Air Force F-16s.”

Would you have felt confident going against in Flankers in a real-world situation?

“Yes, especially 15 to 20 years ago. We had a better missile with the AMRAAM, and the Su-27 was inferior as far as a weapon system, except for maybe the electronic warfare systems at the time. The big reason I would have felt confident was because of training. We felt that our training would have given us the advantage against any potential adversaries at the time. We felt we had much more experience in realistic situations than potential foes. The current Flankers and their weapons from both Russia and China are different aircraft the original versions of the Su-27. They are much more deadly. It still depends on the pilot and his training though. Some famous dead guy once said, ‘The quality of the box matters little. Success depends upon the man who sits in it’.

Operation Iraqi Freedom

How did you feel when deployed to war? “Being a Marine, we have a different mindset. Nobody wants to go to war, but if your buddies are going you want to go with them. It is was we train to do. I also was fairly senior and had to volunteer to extend to go on cruise to the expected combat zone. I had watched Desert Storm as a brand-new Second Lieutenant on TV from school in Quantico, Allied Force as a Captain from another school in Quantico. I did not want to watch another conflict on TV while my friends were over there fighting. I also felt the readiest I would ever be. I had been flying F/A-18s for over eight years. I was a graduate of Top Gun and MAWTS-1 (Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One) Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI) course. I felt that I would never be as ready to go to combat as I was when I deployed on the USS. Constellation.

What was your most memorable mission and why?

“Probably the most memorable mission was a strike mission that got re-rolled to a Close Air Support mission on the outskirts of Baghdad. We launched as a section (two aircraft) loaded with three GBU-31s (2000 pd JDAM) each. I actually was the wingman and my lead was a brand new Section lead. This was his first mission as a Section Lead. I do not remember what our original target was but as we flew into Iraq we were switched to Marine Controllers. We were then tasked with supporting the Marines as they pushed into Baghdad from the east. When we switched up to the Forward Air Controller (FAC), he had an urgent target for us. The Marines were taking artillery fire from Iraqi positions along a highway that went into the city. The target coordinates were derived from counter battery radar. We had never practiced Close Air Support using counter battery radar coordinates. Even though I was not the flight lead I questioned the FAC to make sure he knew we had 2000 pd bombs on board. The FAC understood and cleared us in to drop. The weather was crappy that day. Layers of clouds all the way up the 35,000 ft and the bottoms were around 4,000 ft. We flew inbound in and out of the clouds and release all six of our GBU-31s on the coordinates given. I detached and flew down to just below the cloud bottoms. I broke out of the clouds about two seconds before the bombs hit. My FLIR had a good picture of where the bombs hit. When we reviewed the tapes back on the ship, we could make out six different artillery positions next to the highway. The FLIR we used during OIF was pretty antiquated and did not have great resolution, but we could make out a smaller star shaped blobs next a square shaped blobs. (Artillery with trucks next to them.) The GBUs hit right where the artillery was. When we checked out with the FAC, he said the artillery fire had stopped and gave us a “Good Job.” I was there to protect my fellow Marine, that Lance Corporal on the ground. It was good to have that gratification during a mission that you helped your fellow Marines.
11. Does a sailor or airman reserve the right to refuse a mission if he doesn’t agree with a war? Has your own personal morality ever been challenged by a mission?
I am sure you could refuse a mission once. You probably will not get the opportunity to do it again because I figure you will be taken off the flight schedule. My personal morality was never challenged by a mission. My ethos, as with most Marines I knew, were flying so that 19-year-old infantryman could make it home. The more of the enemy we took out and the more of his equipment we destroyed, the more of my brothers would stay alive. I never had an ethos problem during OIF because of this belief.

 Was there a piece of equipment or weapon that you wish the Hornet had during OIF? “I wish I had a better FLIR. Our FLIR was the AN/AAS-38 Nite Hawk pod. It was pretty old and it was built to hit buildings and bridges, not vehicles. The F-16s and the AV-8Bs had the Litening Pod. What a great piece of gear that was. I watched an F-16 tape from the Air National Guard guys from Buckley, Colorado. The F-16 pilot was finding a shed , behind a True Value store, in a little town, out in Colorado. From over fifty miles away, you could make out cars, stop lights, people. With the Nite Hawk I could not tell the difference between a tank and a truck even if I was right over it. We (my squadron) had a few missions where the AV-8Bs were finding targets and guiding our bombs to the targets because of their much better FLIR.”

How good were the aircraft’s sensors?
“The Hornets sensors were good but not great. The radar, APG-65, was reliable but it was getting older and it was a mechanical scan radar with limitations. Nothing like an AESA today. The FLIR was reliable but like I talked about above, it was becoming outdated. Our Electronic Warfare suite was adequate for the Iraqi threat, but I would not have wanted to bring it against a more advanced threat. For the conflict, the Hornets sensors were adequate to get the job done.”

Was the range sufficient?
“Our carrier was usually tasked with supporting the U.S. Army in western Iraq. We could make it there but our on-station time was usually pretty short. Near the end of the fight against the Iraqi Army, North of Baghdad, we started carrying three external tanks. Range was good enough, but we could have always used a lot more.”

Which weapons (if any) did you use and were there any surprises in how they worked in actual combat?
“No real surprises for me. I dropped JDAM and Laser Guided Bombs, along with shooting the gun. Our squadron did shoot a couple of SLAM-ER (Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response) missiles. The SLAM-ER were sophisticated and had a large pilot workload. The SLAM-ERs fired by my squadron worked as advertised and flew right into the target. The last frame of one of the missile’s recording was a close-up image of the tyre belonging to the target.”

Looking back, how do you feel about this time?
“I am proud of my service. As a Marine, my mindset separates me from the politics and the hindsight. If Marines are going to war, as a Marine I need to be there with them. I was highly trained and experienced at the time. If I did not go, someone less experienced would have probably taken my place. I was there to provide the best support to US forces on the ground. If even one of our soldiers, airman, sailors, and Marines made it home because of my actions, it was worth being there.”

How does the Hornet community generally feel about the F-35?

“The USMC Hornet community has always been supportive of the transition to the F-35. The F-35 is a huge step up in technology and capability, especially for the USMC Hornet community which did not buy the Super Hornet. I have a quite a few friends who have transitioned to the F-35 and there are no major complaints. I have had them talk about the performance and unlike what you hear in the press, it is an impressive airplane. It is not a Raptor, but it is not a dog either. It is the systems onboard the F-35 that makes it a quantum leap above what a legacy Hornet was. The only complaints I have heard is that the F-35 is not optimised for Close Air Support or Recce missions as it could be.”

 Is there a difference in tactical thinking in USMC aviation to the Air Force or Navy?
“There is a big difference in USMC aviation compared to the Air Force and the Navy and you probably can see it from my answers above. U.S. Air Force Tactical aviation is the center of their tactical thinking. Navy aviation, especially tactical aviation, has been the primary striking arm for the U.S. Navy with only Tomahawk Land Attack Missile adding to the strike capability during the last 30 years. In the Marine Corps, our mindset is different. It starts with all officers going to The Basic School where we learn how to be a Marine Officer and we learn infantry tactics. After our first tour, most aviators either go back to school, where they learn more about the tactical and operational level of war, from a ground-centric mindset, or we do a tour with ground units as a Forward Air Controller. USMC aviation exists to support the Marine on the ground. As a Hornet pilot, the ground Marines do not see us as much as the AV-8B force who deploys on Marine Expeditionary Unit deployments. Also, the Hornet missions of air-to-air and deep strike are unseen and under-appreciated by the ground units. It took me awhile in my career to realise that I needed to be a bit of a salesman, and explain why having the ability of shooting down enemy planes is important and why destroying enemy reserves or rear units (like artillery) was important to the USMC ground unit.”

What is the biggest myth about the Hornet?
“Around the aircraft carrier the Legacy Hornet could have used more gas, but compared to other land-based fighters, the Hornet had more fuel endurance. When fighting against F-16s, AV-8Bs, and F-5s we would have gas left over when those aircraft were “Bingo” (low enough fuel that they had to head home). This was often after flying farther to the training range and having farther to fly home.”

What should I have asked you?
“I am surprised you did not ask about the Canadian T-33s. I figured that was so far outside the norm that it would have been a question. The Canadian T-33s were still used for training into the 2000s. A detachment of them were down in Yuma, Arizona during the winter of 2001. They were part of some large force exercise we were a part of. On one of the strikes I was on, the T-33s were providing Red Air along with some F-16s and F-5s. The T-33s were simulating MiG-17s, which was pretty rare by that time. My division (four ship) were strikers and we had sweepers in front of us. As we headed down range the sweepers did pretty good work against the other Red Air and there was only one leaker that our Division lead shot with a simulated AMRAAM. We were up above 20,000 ft and as the radar cleared a ridge up a head, it broke out four contacts at low altitude. One was hot, one was cold, one was turning to the right and one was turning to left. (All this is relative to my radar) It was a perfect MiG wheel, an old Vietnamese Air Force tactic. It was very cool to see. The APG-65 radar did not have any problem breaking this out and at closer range a simulated AMRAAM was not an issue. Our Division shot all four with ease. Being a student of aviation history, I knew this tactic played havoc against the F-4’s radar and AIM-7 Sparrow missile during the Vietnam War. Add to the fact with laser guided bombs we did not have to descend to an altitude like the strikers in Vietnam where a MiG-17 would be able to climb and ambush us. This tactic had been passed by technology and time. It was still cool to see though.”

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Jet engines need to breathe air that is travelling slower than the speed of sound, so how do you do that on an aircraft intended to travel far faster? We asked Jim Smith to take his torch and look up the intakes of the modern fighter aircraft. 

Three main considerations drive the type of intakes used for supersonic aircraft.

The first is that the air delivered to the compressor face of the engine has to be subsonic (slower than the speed of sound). The reason being that supersonic airflow would create shock waves to form across the fan and compressor blades, which would not only severely disrupt the normal flow through the engine, but could cause destructive vibrations which could destroy the engine.

The second is that, to maximise engine thrust, the energy losses in slowing the air to subsonic speed must be minimised. Finally, for some recent aircraft, radar signature must also be minimised. A fourth general consideration is that the intake must be able to operate satisfactorily over a wide range of flight parameters, including not just speed and incidence, but also pitch, roll and yaw angles and rates.

The management of shock waves by the intake system is one of the key ways in which the supersonic flight airflow is reduced to subsonic speed at the engine face.

Intake forms

Pitot Intake

The simplest form of intake is the simple pitot intake, examples of which can be seen on early jet fighters such as the MiG-15, Dassault Ouragon and F-100 Super Sabre. At supersonic speeds a shock wave forms across the front of such intakes, and this form of shock wave is known as a Normal Shock (because the shock wave is at a right angle to, or Normal to, the flow).

This type of intake is very simple, has no weight penalty, and is relatively insensitive to flow direction, at least partly because there are no fuselage surfaces ahead of the intake to provide disturbances of the flow, and no boundary layer from such surfaces, which can provide another source of flow disturbance into the intake.

Why don’t all supersonic aircraft use these intakes? Well, as the flight Mach Number increases, the strength of the Normal Shock increases. This means that the pressure drop through the shock wave increases, reducing the efficiency of the intake. In addition, the temperature of the airflow will also rise. Both these factors reduce thrust, and aircraft with pitot intakes are only really efficient at Mach numbers up to about 1.6.

Variable Geometry Intakes – Cones and Ramps

Considering the discussion above, we can see that shockwaves are an important mechanism for reducing the intake airflow to a subsonic speed at the engine, but that a single Normal Shock becomes too strong and loses efficiency. What is needed is a means of producing the weakest possible shock system that still enables subsonic flow at the engine face. Shaping the inlet duct can assist in this, but generally some form of variable geometry is required so that the flow to the engine can be efficiently delivered over a range of Mach numbers.

A simple way of doing this is to provide a conical surface in the inlet, which can be moved to generate a shockwave at an angle to the flow (typically between the point of the cone and the intake lip). This oblique shock allows a weaker and more efficient Normal Shock at the intake lip. This type of design is seen in the MiG-21 and BAC Lightning, and a similar approach can be implemented for side intakes using a moveable half cone to generate the oblique shock wave, as seen, for example, on the Mirage series of aircraft, from the Mirage III to the Mirage 4000. The side intake may be desirable if a large nose-mounted radar is to be carried.

These variable geometry intakes are capable of working effectively up to speeds around Mach 2.2.

Another way of generating an oblique shock wave system allowing efficient flight at high Mach numbers is to use variable ramps ahead of, or inside, the inlet. This achieves the same effect as the variable Mach cone, but can achieve higher efficiency. Because it is possible to use more than one ramp, and to vary the angles of ramps to suit the flight speed, multiple oblique shockwaves can be formed, reducing inlet airspeed as required, but minimising pressure and thermal losses.

This type of engine intake is used in many aircraft, but the F-4 Phantom provides a good example of a variable ramp intake. The efficiency which can be achieved is perhaps exemplified by Concorde, capable of super-cruising (flying supersonic without the use of afterburner) at Mach 2.02 and 54,000 ft. Another high-speed aircraft using this type of inlet is the MiG 31, which is capable of very high speeds – the maximum permitted Mach number is reported to be Mach 2.83 (Janes 1992-3).

The SR-71 is an example of a multi-shock conical inlet, with the multiple shocks arising from a combination of cone position, which locates the oblique shock, and inlet cone and duct shaping, which positions the Normal Shock. The variable geometry inlet was supplemented by auxiliary doors for lower speed flight, and a variable by-pass engine to ensure efficient flow through the engine at high speed. The complexities of coupling the variable geometry inlet to a variable by-pass engine resulted in a propulsion system capable of delivering very high cruise speeds in excess of Mach 3, but which could be very sensitive to varying conditions, leading to occasional engine ‘unstart’ issues.

Boundary Layer Diverters, Diverterless Intakes and Radar Signature Reduction.

Maintenance of stable flow conditions over a broad range of manoeuvre angles and rates is essential in a fighter aircraft. The development of early supersonic aircraft was plagued by engine-inlet related issues including shock wave ‘buzz’, adverse effects of gunfire, inlet flow instabilities, and unexpectedly low installed thrust.

For aircraft with side-mounted intakes (most aircraft not using a pitot intake) some of these issues arose from interactions between the flow on the aircraft fuselage and in the engine inlet. As a result, it was found desirable to stand the intakes off from the side of the fuselage, creating a passage to allow the fuselage boundary layer to flow past the intake without entering it and disturbing the flow to the engine. In many cases, further protection was achieved through the use of a splitter plate to ensure the separation of the boundary layer flow from the intake flow.

This type of arrangement, which is clearly visible on almost all jet aircraft with side intakes, is known as a boundary layer diverter. While this approach ‘does the job’ it also creates a deep channel alongside the intake which can increase significantly the radar signature, particularly in head-on aspects.

Head-on radar signature is particularly important for fighter aircraft because this is the aspect they generally present to opposition fighters and Airborne Early Warning aircraft. In addition, if untreated, the head on radar signature is likely to be large because of the fighter’s own radar, intakes, inlets and engines, cockpit, other sensor apertures and boundary layer diverter.

Treatments exist for many of these items through shaping, coatings and other measures, and, for a fighter with low observable aspirations, once the obvious major contributions have been addressed, the boundary layer diverter can become an issue.

In developing the F-35, Lockheed-Martin has developed a diverterless supersonic intake, consisting of a shaped ‘bump’ on the fuselage side, which acts like a ‘rock’ in the fuselage boundary layer ‘stream’, causing the boundary layer flow to part and avoid flowing into the intake. The ‘bump’ is coupled with a forward swept intake cowl, and it is claimed this offers a light-weight solution to providing an efficient intake for a supersonic aircraft, with the added advantage of avoiding the radar signature of a boundary layer diverter. This approach has also been used on the Sino-Pakistani JF-17 Thunder aircraft.

It is, perhaps, worth noting that neither the intake, nor the diverter system has any variable geometry. Consequently, the intake system is likely to act like a pitot system in some ways, limiting efficient flight speeds. This is perhaps less of an issue for the F-35, because it has very low signature, and also because it will be limited to about Mach 1.6 by wave drag. One might wonder, however, about the trade off for the JF-17, where perhaps a F-20 Tigershark-like intake with a variable ramp might, with a suitable engine, allow higher performance in the Mach 2 range.

It is worth noting that the F-22 Raptor retains a boundary layer diverter, doubtless treated with RAM, combined with a number of other measures to reduce intake and engine signature in the forward aspect. The quoted maximum speed of Mach 2.25 is extremely creditable for an aircraft with a fixed inlet. The inlet itself is at an oblique angle to the airflow, and this, together with careful shaping of the internal duct may not only to reduce signature, but also increase the efficiency of  pressure recovery compared to a simple pitot intake, like the intakes of Concorde and the MiG 31, but without a variable internal ramp.

Interestingly, the intake of the YF-23 was also diverterless, but this was achieved using flow control rather than the geometric bump featured on the F-35. A technique called boundary layer suction was used to remove the boundary layer from the relatively short surface ahead of the intake. This is not a new technique, and indeed, is used on the boundary layer diverter plates of some aircraft, including the Typhoon. The end result for the YF-23 was a notably clean and simple looking intake. Like the F-22, one would expect shaping of the internal duct to be used to control the position of the oblique and normal shock waves and achieve an efficient intake system.

References: Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators NAVWEPS 00-80T-80 Naval Air Systems Command;

Janes All the Worlds Aircraft (various)

Lockheed SR-71 The Secret Missions Revealed, Paul F Crickmore

Wikipedia on JF-17 and F-22

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We all love Nordic things. These nations’ sensible, progressive laws, epic countryside, the lovely cars and the way they seem to get modernity just right. But could this love of Scandinavia be a trifle rose-tinted — and could it be affecting the way we consider their fighter aircraft, the Saab Gripen? 

In ‘The Almost Perfect People’,  Michael Booth, takes a look at the complex – and often dark reality behind the myth of a Nordic utopia. He finds a region in the grip of stifling conformism, with an alarming number of extremists. Of the Nordic nations, Sweden is the best at public relations. The fact that we even have a common idea of a nation with a population less than the city of Jakarta is a sign that they are indeed very good at public relations. Leaping to the obvious, we may even consider the popularity of IKEA furniture, despite the sagging sadness of the Billy bookcase (and the company’s sinister origins and use of forced labour) in the corner of your room. It’s enough to make you wonder if the almost universal aviation press approval of the Gripen is equally biased or if this tiny fighter really is as good as they say it is.

Sweden is an oddball plane-making nation. No nation this small makes world-class fighter aircraft. In fact, very few nations make their own fighter aircraft. There are only six nations that make (mostly) indigenous fighter aircraft: the United States, Russia, China, India, France and Sweden. There’s a good reason for this: it is very expensive to make a fighter aircraft and they are made in small numbers, so buying them off the shelf or sharing the effort with a friendly nation makes sense. Of course no aircraft are completely indigenous in terms of design, production and all components – but some do come pretty close. Sweden’s policy of neutrality has driven their indigenous fighter, and it’s been making its own warplanes for a long time, and they’ve generally been excellent. Whereas France’s industry has been fortified by a nationalist socialism forged in a traumatising military defeat, Sweden’s has been built on social democracy, tactical neutrality and the presence of a worrying superpower neighbour. And tradition.

Sweden leapt into the jet fighter age with alacrity: the SAAB 21R first flew in 1947, six months before the US’ F-86 Sabre. This was impressive – it was even one year ahead of the first French jet fighter, the Ouragan. A SAAB J 29B Tunnan broke the world record for the 310 mile (500 km) closed course in May 1954. The record had been held by the F-86 Sabre at 590 mph (950 km/h) but the Tunnan raised it to 607 mph (977 km/h).* The Lansen was next, followed by the Draken which achieved a great deal on half the installed thrust of the British Lightning, then the Viggen – which was probably more survivable than mere top trumps stats might suggest – and the tiny Gripen, which entered service in 1996. With a 6800 kg empty weight, the Gripen was a very different proposition to the European fighters that followed it: the Rafale enter service in 2001 and had an empty weight of around 10000 kg, the Typhoon (2004) was even heavier at 11000kg.

Yet the Swedish midget would face-off against these far larger rivals in international competitions, a sign that it could punch above its weight. In 2008 the three Eurocanards (the European Gripen, Rafale and Typhoon all have a tail-first ‘canard’ configuration) fought to be procured by the Swiss Air Force.

*In January 1955, two Tunnan S 29Cs gained the world record for the 620 mile (1000 km) closed course achieving an average speed of 560 mph (901 km/h).

Swiss evaluation

Arguably, leaks are the only way we can get meaningful information on how capable a warplane actually is. The manufacturers are only interested in sharing positive stories about their aircraft. The degree of honesty expressed by the operators varies  — they must balance the power display of deterrence with not looking naive or insane, and the fact that some of assessments are in the public domain. Boasting about your aircraft’s abilities often goes down well with a domestic audience, but if too silly will encourage international ridicule — as was the case with the Iranian IAIO Qaher-313. The media is generally interested in either a nationalistic chest-thump or a left-wing damning of the cost and folly of all military hardware. National competitive evaluations of foreign types do tell us something, but are all too often swayed by corruption and steered by political allegiances. The specialised press, badly paid and overworked, generally only have the time to reword a press release. So, for the nations that don’t have honest assessment results in the public domain this leaves us with leaks as the sole source of useful information… well, that and physics or a knowledge of budget size. Of course leaks happen with motive — and as we will see it’s not too hard to imagine who was behind the leak of the Swiss fighter evaluation results of 2008. This competition pitted the Gripen against the larger Typhoon and Rafale. The results were a savaging of the Gripen, which was seen to be inferior to the aircraft it was intended to replace, the F/A-18, in many key areas (though notably the Gripen’s electronic warfare systems performance was described as superior to the Typhoon). It needs to be noted that the Gripen has half the engine power of the Hornet*, the two types use the same US engine, the F404, but the Hornets have two per aircraft, Gripens only one. This should equate to lower running costs, and certainly does in the amount of fuel that will be consumed. Even factoring this in, the results were rather humiliating for Gripen. Chris Pocock quoted the assessors as saying “endurance, aircraft performances and aircraft weapon load were among the main limiting factors.” …before noting…“The evaluators said there was no sensor data fusion between the radar and EW suite, although the latter “was among the strong points of the Gripen.” 

*It has slightly more than half, Gripen C/D has 54 kN (12,000 lbf) in dry thrust dry and  80.5 kN (18,100 lbf) in reheat; Half of Hornet C/D thrust is 11,000 lbf (49 kN) thrust dry, 17,750 lbf (79.0 kN) with reheat. 

Despite this the Gripen won, the Rafale being dismissed on cost grounds. Boeing believed from the outset that the conclusion had been made before the evaluation and had prematurely withdrawn its Super Hornet from the contest, probably a good decision  considering the result and following leak. The Gripen procurement didn’t happen though. The contest was then relaunched, but the nascent Gripen E was not eligible as it was immature at the time, and Saab pulled their offer in 2019. 

(The Gripen probably was the best fit for Switzerland, in terms of both cost and deployability, and in reality not much is asked of the Swiss Air Force anyway. It is  incapable of maintaining a state of 24/7 readiness due to limited budget and lack of staff  and is operated from 06:00-22:00 local time only. Hopefully potential enemies will respect office hours. Italian and French fighters are permitted to enter Swiss airspace to handle potential threat.)

How Swedish is it? 

Leaked diplomatic cables from 2008 show Swedish requests for the US to supply AESA radar technology for the Gripen. As this potentially upgraded Gripen would have been a rival to the F-35, especially in the Danish competition, Sweden was keen to show the US that Gripen sales would be mutually beneficial. The report noted that Gripen contains 50 percent U.S. content, including engines, avionics and weapon systems. With this in mind it is clear that the Gripen is not as autonomous from US wishes as is often suggested. This has been since improved to some degree with the addition of the European Meteor (and European AESA for Gripen E/F).

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A place for surplus love

A friend of mine, a seasoned aviation writer, had an interesting theory: the British love of Swedish fighters stems, at least partly, from an absence of British fighters. British children, particularly boys, read books and play with toys which celebrate Britain’s glorious aeronautical past and the cult of the Spitfire. But Britain stopped making fighters when the last BAC Lightning rivet was screwed in for Saudi Arabia. so where could this surplus enthusiasm go? Let’s have a look at the likely candidates —French aircraft? The sting of envy was too great. US aircraft? Too gauche, and no underdog appeal. Soviet? Yes, but they’re the baddies so can’t show too much love. Chinese? Not very good and somehow absent of emotive appeal. Which left this notional British man of the 1970s with one strong candidate: Sweden. Their great cars, made by the same damn company that made the enormously charismatic Viggen, were a  gateway- (or perhaps ‘gateguard’-) drug to mainlining Volvo jet noise.  Added to this, is the connoisseur’s desire to avoid the obvious, steering them well away from American offerings. Sweden’s aircraft are pleasingly leftfield, and no-one outside of Scandinavia is offended by Sweden’s foreign policy (or even knows what it is).

Interview with a Gripen pilot here

Interview with a Viggen pilot here

10 most beautiful Swedish aircraft here 

But it is actually pretty good

The Gripen is relatively cheap to operate and can do the vast majority of missions a modern air force requires from it. Its electronic warfare suite is highly regraded, in a Hush-Kit interview, Justin Bronk noted:

“Against the Su-35S (a very capable heavy Russian fighter aircraft) Gripen would rely on the cutting edge EW capabilities which Saab builds the Gripen (especially the new E/F) around to hide the aircraft from the sensors of the Russian jets in much the same way as the Raptor relies on x-band stealth. These EW capabilities are so highly classified that there is simply no way to assess their effectiveness in the public domain. Having said that, RAF pilots who I have talked to with experience of the Saab fighter’s EW teeth first hand say that the ability of the aircraft to get alarmingly close without detection thanks entirely to EW is very impressive.”

Gripen offers great autonomy for operators than the F-35, less maintenance burden than the Typhoon, more commonality with widely used weapons than the Rafale. Against the F-16, for some parts of the world, it offers a less controversial allegiance. We asked a Gripen pilot how confident he would be fighting an F-16:

“Absolutely. I can’t think of anything the F-16 would be better at, if we don’t count ease of refuelling (F-16 is refuelled with a boom and the boom operator does much of the job). Of course, there’s a lot of details and circumstances here, but generally the Gripen is a step or two ahead, especially in my favourite areas. As mentioned, I really like pilot UI and large screens, and F-16 is lacking a bit in that area, so maybe I’m a bit biased. I do like the F-16’s side-stick though! I have flown an F-16 and I loved the stick. It didn’t take many minutes to get used to the stiffer stick, and it’s more ergonomic for the pilot in high-Gs (and probably for long missions) to have it on the side. Flying in close formation with another fighter was almost as easy as with the Gripen.”

Jim Smith, in assessing Gripen’s combat effectiveness, opined: “‘suppose you have a small-ish nation, where the government does not have global dominance in its agenda. … For such a nation, Gripen/Meteor might be the ultimate air defender, especially if you have a well-integrated air defence system”

Away from high Gs (but equally important) is faith that the chosen contractor can deliver on time and budget. What is most impressive about Saab is its efficiency. It is less bloated than its American rivals, less prone to pork-barrel politics and the Swedish approach does not financially reward programme delays in the same way as the British and US aerospace systems. Its factories are small and lean. This efficiency is very unusual, and probably unque. When Hush-Kit spoke to respected aviation reporter Bill Sweetman, we asked him the following:

The Typhoon, F-22 and F-35 programmes have all received a great deal of criticism; can you give an example of a well-run military aircraft project? “Almost anything from the land of blondes, aquavit and IKEA.”

The world knows this and everyone wants to jump into bed with Saab. An example being the Boeing/Saab T-7 Red Hawk and the UK’s attempts to seduce Saab to join project Tempest. But promiscuity may be Saab’s undoing — can it effectively firewall its uniquely functional culture from the corruption of the political- military -industrial mess in other countries? Another point: the US does not tolerate international competition. One way to quash potential rivals is to collaborate until the majority of the employees and orders are held in the US. Collaboration could be Saab’s undoing in the longterm.

Ethical?

Ethical arms exportation maybe a ridiculous (arguably oxymoronic) idea in most cases but how does the Gripen do in relative terms? Let’s have a look. (The common counter-argument for arms export limitation that “if we didn’t sell weapons to nation X, other nations would.”, doesn’t bear any scrutiny as a moral position). I have chosen the 2012 Human Freedom Index as the information is readily available and it seems a reasonable date point in the history of Gripen exports. Exports counted if some payment has been received and delivery is likely.

Gripen export operators ranked by position in 2012 Human Freedom Index (variation where better source available)

Brazil – Ranked at 82

South Africa – Ranked at 70

Thailand – not viewed as full democracy, in the 2012 Human Freedom Index  it was ranked at 86 of 152. *see notes 

Hungary – at 36, is pretty good.

Czech Republic – 21 (very good)

Lower score best

295 divided by 5

Average score: 59

Typhoon export operators ranked by position in 2012 Human Freedom Index 

Saudi Arabia -141

Oman – 45

Austria – 12

Kuwait – 59

Qatar – 140

389 divided by 5

Average score: 77.8

Though officially Saudi Arabia sales are suspended due to German insistence, Eurofighter continues support with RSAF and continues courting for further sales.

Rafale export operators ranked by position in 2012 Human Freedom Index 

Egypt: 136

India: 75

Qatar: 114

Average score:

325 divided by 3

108.33

Ethical export score

Rafale: 108.33 (worst)

Typhoon: 77.8

Gripen: 59

But Sweden does sell military aircraft to Saudi Arabia, but instead of a highly conspicuous fighter-bomber deal has supplied the extremely effective Erieye Airborne Early Warning and Control System. Also, judging only the winners of international contests seems questionable; Gripen was offered to Saudi Arabia in the mid 1990s and failed to get an order. Though admittedly this took place when Saab had an arrangement with BAe.

Green fighter  

Much like ‘ethical weapons’, the notion of Green weapons seems bizarre. Weapons are for destruction, not preservation purposes and war is a last resort, so surely a Green consideration is meaningless? Well not really, as most weapon’s use is in training and/or as a deterrent. Sweden is very good at this, and has led the way in lead-free ammunition.

The Gripen uses the smallest engine (and only one per aircraft) of fighters in its class so this should mean it used less fuel for a given mission. But this must be balanced against other aircraft being able to carry more weapons for a single mission — this is rather complicated, and factors to consider when assessing this would be how frequently other aircraft (for example the larger Typhoon) expend all munitions in real missions. It appears likely that for a given mission objective Gripens would use less fuel, but in reality it is very hard to work this out. One further complication being the Gripen’s ‘short legs’ mean it is may be more dependent on air-refuelling aircraft than other aircraft.

Gripen pilot discusses Gripen E and C here. 

As the Gripen was a little earlier than the Rafale and Typhoon, it employs a more old-fashioned use of materials. Only around 30% of the Gripen is composite, compared to 82% for Typhoon. This means it may have sacrificed a weight saving (though this may be less clearcut than is commonly understood due to safety considerations) but is probably less hazardous in the case of a crash. When composite materials (including carbon fibre, fibreglass and kevlar) are involved on fire, they release toxic fumes — and
fibres may be released in the smoke plume. This is a significant hazards at accident sites and has been compared to the effects of breathing asbestos fibres. From this perspective 30% is better than 82%.. but still an issue.

One also wonders at which altitude aircraft exhausts are most environmentally deleterious — does the fact that the lower-powered Gripen spends less time at ultra-high altitudes than the Raptor and Typhoon make it Greener?

* I appreciate this is a very crude methodology (the top trumps stats for fighters never features an ethical angle so we’re inventing one here). But it tells us something, or at least starts a conversation. On this metric, the Rafale or rather Dassault, does particularly badly and the Gripen is a little better. Where more relevant, entries from different years/categories have been used. Again: this is a very rough-and-ready ‘prototype’ approach.

Gripen E interview here. 

I have no conclusion, just the rather jumbled musings above. What is worth considering is the language and preconceptions we bring when discussing aircraft of different national origins, especially when the aircraft comes from our own country. Away from this rationality, the romance of these rare characterful machines shaking the snow from the trees in the far north remains as compelling as ever.

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“If you have any interest in aviation, you’ll be surprised, entertained and fascinated by Hush-Kit – the world’s best aviation blog”. Rowland White, author of the best-selling ‘Vulcan 607’

I’ve selected the richest juiciest cuts of Hush-Kit, added a huge slab of new unpublished material, and with Unbound, I want to create a beautiful coffee-table book. Here’s the book link to pre-order your copy. 

I can do it with your help.

From the cocaine, blood and flying scarves of World War One dogfighting to the dark arts of modern air combat, here is an enthralling ode to these brutally exciting killing machines.

The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes is a beautifully designed, highly visual, collection of the best articles from the fascinating world of military aviation –hand-picked from the highly acclaimed Hush-kit online magazine (and mixed with a heavy punch of new exclusive material). It is packed with a feast of material, ranging from interviews with fighter pilots (including the English Electric Lightning, stealthy F-35B and Mach 3 MiG-25 ‘Foxbat’), to wicked satire, expert historical analysis, top 10s and all manner of things aeronautical, from the site described as

“the thinking-man’s Top Gear… but for planes”.

The solid well-researched information about aeroplanes is brilliantly combined with an irreverent attitude and real insight into the dangerous romantic world of combat aircraft.

FEATURING

• Interviews with pilots of the F-14 Tomcat, Mirage, Typhoon, MiG-25, MiG-27, English Electric Lighting, Harrier, F-15, B-52 and many more.
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I’ve selected the richest juiciest cuts of Hush-Kit, added a huge slab of new unpublished material, and with Unbound, I want to create a beautiful coffee-table book. Here’s the book link .  

I can do it with your help.

Why are almost all warplanes grey? We wanted to know more, so we approached the RAF Museum.

Grey is a miserable colour. It is the colour of desolate industrial areas, the sky on an unlovely Tuesday afternoon in England, or else the tone of faceless bureaucracy or unhappy vagueness. According to colour historian Eva Heller, “grey is too weak to be considered masculine, but too menacing to be considered a feminine colour. It is neither warm nor cold, neither material or spiritual. With grey, nothing seems to be decided.”

It is among the least popular colours – that is outside of the field of combat aircraft paint-schemes. In other times, warplanes were painted brilliant blue, left in the glorious shine of unpainted aluminium or resplendent in jungly green camouflage. Then everything went grey. Even the roundels –– those once colourful markings that show you which air force is operating the machine flying past – became washed out.

First World War origins

It was in the First World War that the application of camouflage became virtually universal for armed land forces, partly due to the threat of aerial reconnaissance. Likewise, aircraft needed to hide from each other, from anti-aircraft fire, and from being spotted on the ground by enemy aircraft while on the ground. Various schemes were used including the very distinctive German lozenge pattern, all-over olive green and even the application of transparent fabrics. Grey was also used. It is perhaps unsurprising, as grey (or grey-blue) already had a strong military association for ground forces. Early 19th century firing trials in Austria concluded that grey was a more effective camouflage for soldiers than green. A study carried out by Captain Charles Hamilton Smith came to the same conclusion in 1800: grey was a better than green at “a distance of 150 yards.” (advice ignored by the British Army which instead opted for green).

Grey dyes were also inexpensive and easy to manufacture, something pivotal to the adoption of grey uniforms within the Confederate forces in the American Civil War. The German Army wore feldgrau (‘field-grey’) uniforms from 1907 right up until 1945, chosen for their camouflaging qualities at great distances – something that had increased in importance with a new generation of accurate long-range rifles and machine-guns. The French army lagged a little behind, with the ‘horizon-blue’ blue-grey uniform (so-called as it was thought to prevent soldiers from standing out against the skyline) approved on 10^th July 1914, and making the French dangerously conspicuous from day one in their blue and red uniforms.

From uniforms to aircraft 

It’s likely that this culture influenced the choice of aircraft colour. Conversely, Britain had learnt the benefits of drab green, and particularly ‘khaki’, from its colonial fighting in mid-19th century Punjab. This unattractive style, went out of ‘fashion’, but returned due to it excellence as a camouflage. By 1902, both the British and American land forces had gone khaki, something echoed in many of their aircraft in World War I.

In World War I, Germany and France both had some grey military aircraft. Examples of the former include the LFG Roland C.II, and of the latter, the Nieuports. A light blue-grey Nieuport 11 was flown by the French ace Georges Guynemer, which he named Oiseau Bleu (Blue Bird) — and some Voisin IIIs were painted in the same colour. By mid-1916 a silver-grey aluminium dope became the standard for French Nieuports until it was phased out in favour of a more disruptive scheme. Some Austro-Hungarian aircraft, for example, were painted with grey-based ‘lozenge schemes’.

The most successful fighter pilot, the ‘Red Baron‘, painted his aircraft red. This not only aided visual identification among allies, a vital factor in a fast chaotic dogfight where fractions of a second matter, but also offered the psychological advantage of scaring enemy pilots aware of his reputation. It is interesting that the most effective ‘dogfighting’ pilot spurned camouflage. I asked the RAF Museum about this:

Considering the Red Baron had a red aeroplane, is there an argument that bright colours offer advantages over camouflage; is quick identification friend-or-foe sometimes more important than the advantages of camouflage?
“The Red Baron’s red aircraft and other highly decorated aircraft of the flying circus obviously made the aircraft easily identifiable, it could also be seen possibly as intimidatory to the opposition, however, Austro Hungarian ace Julius Arigi, abandoned his highly decorative aircraft as he found that it drew the attention of the enemy.”

‘Sand and spinach’

By World War II, Britain’s fighter aircraft had disruptive two-tone uppers of earth and green, with a white (or black and white, or sometimes sky blue) lower half. In 1941, the Luftwaffe switched tactics: more fighting was taking place at higher altitudes where British schemes were dangerously visible. The Air Fighting Development Unit at Duxford considered the problem and concluded that the scheme should be toned down. The dark browns should be replaced with ‘Open Grey’ and the underside should be ‘Sea Grey’. A trend had started. Clearly, grey would be of the greatest benefit to the aircraft that spent the highest percentage of their missions at higher altitudes. With this in mind I asked the RAF Museum, if (as Thomas Newdick of AFM) believed, the all-grey scheme was first applied to the Welkin high-altitude fighter. ‘Welkin’ is a noun for the sky or heaven).
What was the first application of all-over grey as camouflage, was it the Welkin?
“It would appear that the first all grey trial occurred in May 1941 when a PRU Mosquito at RAF Benson was painted with a Medium Sea Grey/ Olive Grey scheme. It proved very effective, but it was felt it would be difficult to introduce to existing aircraft as the workload of stripping, priming and applying the new scheme would be too much work.
The first grey scheme to be used operationally was in June 1943 when it was approved for use on high level fighters, this included Spitfires, Welkins and some prototype aircraft.”

How was grey decided upon?
“Grey was adopted for high altitude fighters on upper surfaces as when viewed from above the ground looked grey due to cloud or dust particles in the air below.”

What is the advantage of grey?

RAF and Luftwaffe aircraft markings in World War II moved away from dark colours towards paler, greyer tones. One exception, though, was the Luftwaffe’s move towards darker, more disruptive schemes than ‘ground camouflage’ as they began to lose the war.

A P-38 wearing ‘haze paint’.

Low-viz markings: a mystery solved

Six years ago we tried to explain the mystery of ‘low-visibility’ national markings on military aircraft. Essentially we couldn’t understand why markings, something supposed to be clearly visible, were increasingly low-key on modern military aircraft. The idea of camouflaged markings seemed oxymoronic to the point of madness, but finally we can answer the question, thanks to the RAF Museum:

Considering national insignia are intended to be seen, why are modern national markings painted in low observable colours? Is there a legal requirement to carry them?
“The reason for low-observable markings is to reduce the risk of compromising the aircraft camouflage paint scheme, aircraft rarely come into visual range nowadays and aircraft are most likely to be identified by IFF. Yes, it is a legal requirement under the Chicago Convention.”

Ah, so these markings are paying lip service to a law! So what was the Chicago Convention? It was a convention on International Civil Aviation, drafted in 1944 by 54 nations. The stated aim was to promote cooperation, friendliness and understanding around the world. The US government invited 55 states (some of whom were still occupied) to attend an International Civil Aviation Conference in Chicago. Travel for many of the attendees was very dangerous (the war was ongoing in many places), but all bar one managed to attend (we’re not sure which country failed to send a delegate – answer in the comments below if you know). By the end of 1944, 52 states had joined the convention, and by 2019 there were 193 members. Find out more about the Chicago Convention here.

Has the convention been broken? Well, various nations have operated unmarked state military or para-military reconnaissance and transport aircraft. The conflicting needs of camouflage and identifying markings have a parallel in the natural world – for example, in the balance between camouflage and breeding plumage in birds.

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1976-1985: The beginning of the end

In 1976 the F-15 Eagle entered service. It would define the Air Superiority fighter for thirty years, and was originally delivered in ‘Air Superiority Blue’. By 1978, though, new ones were being delivered in a ghostly two-tone wraparound grey, and repainting of old ones was well underway. Former F-15 pilot Paul Woodford, in conversation with Hush-Kit, noted- “Blue was too easy to see (we called it “tally ho blue”), gray was harder to spot”

This action led to the blandest revolution since the introduction of the USB, the Great Graying. The Eagle was followed by the equally blandly painted F-16 and F/A-18. With these aircraft, especially the Hornet and Eagle, the two tones appeared so similar in some light conditions they may as well have been all grey. Which raises the question, what was the first fully grey one-tone grey fighter of the modern age? I thought the RAF Tornado ADV that entered service in 1985, was a strong candidate, but on closer inspection I noticed it had a pale belly. This was followed soon after by Spain’s all-grey Hornets. If you know of earlier examples, let me know in the comments section.

Soviet origins?

I’ve avoided the Soviet part of the story as it’s a story in its own right. The USSR had some grey fighters in World War Two and continued this with the early jets. Some MiG-17s were certainly allover grey, as were the aircraft of several export nations including Pakistan. The main motive for the grey paint on Soviet air defence fighters and interceptors may have been corrosion protection rather than concealment.

Mud-movers go grey

Western ground attack tactics crystallised in Desert Storm in 1991, favouring medium altitude attacks with precision-guided weapons to low-level operations. Two-tone disruptive schemes, intended to make it hard to see an aircraft from above against the background of ground terrain were now on the way out. This furthered the universality of grey, and by the mid-to-late 1990s, the RAF’s Tornado GRs had gone grey (albeit a darker shade than their air defence brethren). The same was not true of Russian Air Force aircraft, though, and many have retained disruptive tactical schemes.

Today, Western air powers remain in thrall to grey, though fortunately many African and Asian air forces have not abandoned colour.

Special thanks to the RAF Museum’s researchers. 

Following on the heels of its four competitors, Boeing has released artworks of its candidate for the U.S. Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) programme. Equipped with a hingeless rotor and pusher propeller the design is reminiscent of Lockheed’s failed AH-56 Cheyenne first flown in 1967. We asked We asked Ron Smith, former Head of Future Projects at Westland Helicopters, for his thoughts on the return of a yet another futuristic, yet familiar, configuration.  

“All FARA contenders are constrained as follows (this information via Vertiflite, magazine of the Vertical Flight Society):

40 ft (12m) maximum rotor diameter
Maximum length 46.5 ft (17.2m)
Max gross weight 14,000 lb (6,350 kg)
180 kt cruise speed
3,000 shp GE T901 Improved Turbine Engine
Hover out of ground effect at 4,000ft, 95F
20mm Cannon and ability to integrate ‘current and future weapons’ (therefore presumably meaning Hellfire, possibly in both RF and laser guided forms).
Capability for “air-launched effects”
Modular Open Systems Architecture.
One can assume that other capabilities such as crashworthiness, the ability to operate in sand, dust, snow, etc. will also be incorporated, along with wire strike protection and so on. Operation in built environments (the so-called urban canyons) may throw up a number of challenges – not least co-ordination within and between units operating in the same areas.
The Boing aircraft has tandem seats (with a large expanse of cockpit glazing). It features a shaped fuselage and a rotorhead fairing, both reducing radar cross-section and (for the hub) parasite drag. A retractable undercarriage and internal weapons carriage is featured.

[Thus far, there is little that was not anticipated by Westland 45 and 47 some 35 years ago, which had a very similar gross weight]

There is an electro-optic sensor under the nose, and a 20mm cannon. There is a canted tail rotor to the rear and the tail of the aircraft has a pusher propeller. This latter has three potential advantages:

1. By providing propulsive thrust, less main rotor cyclic and collective pitch range is required, and the rotor flight envelope will be improved (delaying the point at which stall flutter is encountered).

2. The ability to provide forward and reverse thrust will enable acceleration with only limited fuselage attitude change and increased deceleration capability, without encountering rotor overspeed in autorotation, where pitch attitude limits restrict the maximum deceleration that can be achieved.

3.  It may well be that limiting the amount of fuselage pitch attitude change with speed and acceleration / deceleration will simplify gun control and potentially increase the firing envelopes of other weapons.

The large area of cockpit glazing may create glint and specular reflection issues. One assumes that the crew will be equipped with helmet mounted displays and that the aircraft will be network-enabled and able to share target information (including identity / rules of engagement compliance data) with other ISTAR assets.

Without this capability, there may be a mismatch between weapon range and the ability of the on-board sensors to obtain positive identification of potential targets.”

Hush-Kit notes: Boeing hopes that their fly-by-wire experience with the Defiant and Comanche will overcome the kind of control issues suffered by the Cheyenne fifty three years ago. The compound helicopter, a helicopter equipped with an additional  propulsion system purely for forward flight, dates back to at least 1962 (the Lockheed XH-51 and Piasecki 16H Pathfinder being early examples) but as yet none have entered actual service.

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We thought it was about time we had a regular columnist and so we turned to Sam Wise, a man who travels the world driven by an unquenchable desire to stand in the shade of vast aluminium, steel and titanium machines. In the first of what we hope becomes a monthly column, here is his report from arguably the best aviation museum in the world, Monino, home of the Central Air Force Museum in Russia. 

“Stalinist architecture is fascinating. Littering the former USSR and its satellite states are
hundreds of brutal, monolithic monuments to communism and Stalin’s ego, utterly striking in their scale and form. The Socialist-Realist movement was all-encompassing in the completely controlled artistic world of the Soviet Union, especially in the early years of the Union when the new country was keen to celebrate the success of the proletariat in the class struggle – and later the Red Army’s supreme victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War.

Stalin, the exemplar egomaniac, was hugely in favour of enormous testaments to his, and the USSR’s, power and influence, especially to his own people.
At its heart, this scale of architecture was intended to both impress and impose,
simultaneously inspire awe and dread at who was in charge. Much of Soviet art was like this – when we see posters, paintings and the like from the country it can seem drearily conformist – well, largely this was the intention. Too much individualism or creativity, and people start getting ideas.

Many such monuments are a glorification of socialism, communism and the leaders of the Bolshevik revolution that changed global history – giant statues of Lenin and Stalin (the latter mostly gone now), idealised tributes to labourers and workers that perhaps didn’t quite reflect the attitudes or opinions of those that built them. Even if you didn’t like them – hated them even – you knew they were in charge of your every move and you’d better play ball. Just look at the chilling and blankly named Rear-front Memorial looming over Magnitogorsk

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But who could fail to weep at the majesty of Батьківщина-Мати in Kiev, the Mound of Glory (quiet at the back!) outside Minsk or, most breathtaking of all, the gargantuan Родина-мать зовёт! on the outskirts of Volgograd, site of that most bloody of battles.

After all the USSR suffered at the hands of the German war machine – about 27 million people killed, or more than one in ten of the population – you can’t blame them wanting to shout to the heavens about their victory. The monuments to the war dead have tended to stay preserved but outside of Russia many of those other reminders of an unhappy past have become, justifiably, the subject of defacement and destruction, their illusions of a powerful and prosperous union no longer effective.

Aircraft engineers are somewhat more constrained by the physics of aerodynamics than
Soviet sculptors and so it’s rare to find an aircraft conforming to the ideals of
Socialist-Realism. When you look at the Myasishchev M-50, ignominiously dubbed the
‘Bounder’ by its NATO opponents, however, it’s hard not to imagine that Stalin’s ghost came back to influence its designers in some way. Only one ever flew and only one survives, as unique as any other testament to the Soviet Union’s prowess, and this now languishes in the famous Central Air Force Museum at Monino.

Even in a field of giants it towers over the rest of the museum, its bow proudly soaring into the sky unlike any other design there. It truly does look like an artist’s imagining of a
warplane of the time, unblemished curves and wildly placed wingtip engines, at once
beautiful and space-age.

It’s quite hard to picture it flying – even just as an aeroplane its size and form belies any ability to take flight, particularly with the aforementioned engines sitting ungainly on the end of the wings. Somehow it fits the style. If it were carved from stone on some hill overlooking Plovdiv, or Novosibersk, or Kaunas it would look completely and wonderfully in place, a Soviet Monument to the Long-Range Aviators or some such title, deliberately designed to look imposing and formidable to those who saw it.

You really can’t shake the feeling that it was designed from the outset to make an aesthetic statement about the USSR’s new nuclear outfit despite all the impracticalities that that would entail for the jet.

Then again, that doesn’t sound completely wide of the mark either, does it?
Perhaps it’s vaguely fitting that the M-50 had no real impact on aviation history. For all the disinformation at the heart of Soviet sculpture, so too was the M-50 a Soviet failure. It didn’t set the world on fire and as a bomber didn’t go anywhere.

Even in the museum, you’ve got much more successful bombers on show – the M-4 Bison behind it started the so-called bomber gap panic, the Tu-16s in front still fly in some form with the Chinese Air Force and, of course, the Tu-95 is very much at the frontline of Russian long-range aviation today. It came at a time when ICBMs rendered the nuclear bomber all but obsolete and it’s almost a wonder this unique and irrelevant airframe was preserved by the USSR. Despite how totally suitable it looks it’s a touch of serendipity that it looks so at home among the pantheon of Soviet Socialist-Realist monumentalism, in its own way reminding us of a culture and a mindset totally divorced from our own in the West.

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Due to AWOL judges and other issues, this is a very late article. But, I guess delays are entirely appropriate for fighter projects. In 2019 we asked you to design a fighter-bomber aircraft using only technology available in 2019. The aircraft must have a range of at least 400 nautical miles. It must have a minimum top speed over Mach 1.6. It should carry at least one cannon and four air-to-air missiles/and/or 7000kg of munitions. The type should be relatively cheap to build, easy to maintain, and should enjoy a short development period.

Jim Smith

Jim Smith had significant technical roles in the development of the UK’s leading military aviation programmes from ASRAAM and Nimrod, to the JSF and Eurofighter Typhoon. He was also Britain’s technical liaison to the British Embassy in Washington, covering several projects including the Advanced Tactical Fighter contest. His latest book is available here.

Thomas Newdick

Aviation writer and Editor of Air Forces Monthly. Author of many aviation titles including Aircraft of the Cold War 1945-1991. Thomas has a particular interest in Russian aviation and allegedly has a collection of Su-11 parts at a secret location in Suffolk.

Hush-Kit

Introduction by Jim Smith
What might be being sought here? Well, my interpretation is in the F-16/Classic Hornet replacement class. Compared to the F-16, Rqt 570 is expected to carry 30% more external stores but have slightly less speed and less range than the clean F-16. Compared to the Classic (F/A-18 C/D) the external stores load out is similar, and clean aircraft range is less. I do wonder whether the range of 400nm quoted should have been a mission radius of 400 nm. For M 1.6 max speed, it is not necessary to go beyond a simple pitot intake, but 7000kg of external stores is going to require some significant hardpoints, and probably at least 1 of these could usefully be ‘wet’, i.e. capable of carrying an external tank.
Given the requirement to be relatively cheap to build, easy to maintain, and with a short development period, I am expecting to see neither LO aircraft nor exotic configurations. This is not to say that measures to reduce radar and IR signatures should be absent – just that the design should not be dominated by these requirements. I would expect a capable Defensive Aids suite – after all, this is a fighter -bomber, and must be expected to survive AAA and MANPADS. So, a Gen 4.5-ish aircraft, with smart sensors, good defensive aids, plenty of hardpoints, but expected to operate in a relatively permissive environment. The range and speed requirements are relatively modest. No field requirement is stated, but with a cannon and four AAM, good manoeuvre performance and a radar are implied.
Assessment
 I will assess on:
Aesthetics – my biased opinion on the look of the aircraft. Tough, purposeful and practical are the sort of adjectives that are desirable.
Originality – In this competition, I do want to see something different from an F-18E or a souped up Jaguar. But going too far into exotic configurations will risk losing points elsewhere. This is my special category, Thomas Newdick will judge the aircraft on its ability to replace a Jaguar, Hush-Kit on the aircraft as a display aircraft.

Effectiveness – In this context I mean Mission Effectiveness. Can the aircraft carry enough, far enough, with appropriate defensive aids to survive in the fighter-bomber role?
Cost/Risk – Cheap to build, easy to maintain, with a short development period. Here’s where the super exotic designs will lose points.
I’m going to allocate 25 points to each of these.

F/A-28 Lanna-Morgan

— David Machado

Aesthetics

Jim ‘Sonic’ Smith

my biased opinion on the look of the aircraft. Tough, purposeful and practical are the sort of adjectives that are desirable.Tough and purposeful – yes, scores reasonably here. But somehow the design does not look right. The moment arm for the rather low sweep fin does not look sufficient, and the lack of a radar will not only reduce effectiveness in the air combat role, it also gives a less than purposeful look to the front end of the aircraft. Also, there appears to have been not the slightest nod given to area ruling, which is likely to increase wave drag and possibly limit max speed. Appears to have a simple pitot intake, but it is not clear whether the engine face is directly exposed.
Overall, a modest 10.

Thomas Newdick 

Combination of orthodox and more unconventional design features leaves it a little hard to determine how this one might handle. Extra point for a Jolly Roger on the fin. 8

Hush-Kit

Looks awkward. Can’t quite imagine how the undercarriage would unfold but it would likely look even gawkier on wheels. Imagine that when old and dirty it might have a kind of ‘ugly beauty’ in the same manor as the Greek A-7s. As it stand it looks a 80s BBC Micro computer had a child with a Jaguar.

A generous 9

Special category 
JS: Originality 

In this competition, I do want to see something different from an F-18E or a souped up Jaguar. But going too far into exotic configurations will risk losing points elsewhere. This is something like an uglier F-16 with no radar and relatively small leading-edge strakes. The design is a little derivative, without being avant garde, and appears to have accepted the challenge of making an F-16 look ordinary.
Perhaps a generous 15.

HK: Aerobatic team mount 

My special category is how good it would be as the mount of a fourship display team. The noise of four AL-37 would be pretty good, you can get an idea from the similarly engined five-ship Chinese August 1st J-10 team. The draggy shape and higher wing-loading of the F/A-28 may suggest a less spectacular but distinctive team. 14.

Would I swap my Jaguar for this?

TN – Put a radar in it and a Western engine, and we might have a deal. 26

Effectiveness

JS – Good points here are mission equipment, pylons and defensive aids. I would have preferred to see a radar fitted, because the aircraft has to be able to target its AAMs, and with relatively modest energy performance (due to relatively high drag configuration and external stores) these would best be used BVR, thus implying a radar, or very capable connectivity with third party targeting. The range requirement is quite modest, and should be achievable, although an external fuel tank might be needed if the range is to be achieved when both stores and missiles are carried.
With pros and cons, a provisional score of 16.

TN – Thrust-vectoring engine is a nice touch but of dubious value for the assigned mission – although it may be needed to help the pilot slave the upper-fuselage conformal LANTIRN pod onto the target. LANTIRN is a bit old hat by now, and could clearly do with a radar. 10

HK – The absence of a radar is notable here, leaving the aircraft very vulnerable and with limited SA unless it is well served by data-linking from other platforms. Whereas a low observable aircraft could further enhance its stealth by omitting a radar, this slab-sided conventionally tailed design is definitely not a stealth aircraft. 13.

Cost/Risk

Cheap to build, easy to maintain, with a short development period. Here’s where the super exotic designs will lose points.
The design scores well here. The ‘for but not necessarily with’ optional and re-configurable sensors and weapons loads provide considerable flexibility. While effectiveness, particularly in the fighter role, may be questionable, the development looks relatively straightforward, although there is likely to be some risk in making the cockpit displays reconfigurable to optimise use of the various optional weapons and sensors. If this is ‘all done by software’, which is probably the correct mission system answer, development time, risk and cost will all increase.
A genuine effort has been made here, so 20 points is awarded for this category.

TN – Looks affordable, but the combination of Russian and Western technology could prove a stumbling block in terms of support and maintainability.  13

JC – It could conceivably be cheap, as it is technologically and aerodynamically conservative. 14.

Chimera

This entry was designed by committee through a series of polls by the anons of the Ace Combat General, aka /aceg/, on 4chan’s /vg/ board. I have submitted it on behalf of the thread to the contest, but I have played as big a part in its design process as any other anon who participated in the polls. As such, it should be credited to /aceg/ as a whole.
— Gabriele Princiotta.

“Chimera was designed to bring together the latest innovations in armament, avionics, and propulsion into the cheapest package possible. Its large compound delta wings, combined with its monstrous Aurelius engines, give it excellent manoeuvrability despite its size, while its immense payload and state-of-the-art WonderEgg radar allow it to accomplish any mission one could conceivably think of.”

Crew: 1
Length: 75 ft (22.86m)
Wingspan: 48 ft (14.63 m)
Height: 15ft (4.57 m)
Wing area: 757 ft² (70.33 m²)
Empty weight: 41,000 lb (18,600 kg)
Loaded weight: 59,350lb (26,921 kg)
Max. takeoff weight: ~91,000lb (41,277 kg)
Fuel capacity: ~20,400 lb (9,250 kg) internally
Powerplant: 2 × Aurelius MA21 Afterburning turbofans with 3D thrust vectoring
Dry thrust: 27,000 lbf each (120.1 kN) each
Thrust with afterburner: 38,000 lbf (169 kN) each

Maximum speed: Mach 2.2 (1,450 mph, 2330 km/h)
Cruise speed: 850 mph (1370 km/h)
Combat Range: 650 mi (1,050 km)
Service ceiling: 65,000 ft (20,000 m)
Rate of climb: 60,000 ft/min (300 m/s)

Armament
Guns: 2× 25 mm GAU-22/A 4-barrel rotary cannon, 360 rounds each
Hardpoints: 18
2x Wingtip Hardpoints – 350lb capacity each
2x Underwing Hardpoints – 5,000lb capacity each
12x Nacelle Hardpoints – 600lb capacity each
2x Centreline Hardpoints – 5,000lb capacity each

Avionics and miscellaneous:
WonderEgg R18 AESA radar (430km/1,5 m^2), IR8 FLIR/IRST
Pan-Ea ALERT Airborne Defensive System (ESM, RWR, ECM, LWR, MAW, chaff and flares)

Jim Smith
Aesthetics

JS: my biased opinion on the look of the aircraft. Tough, purposeful and practical are the sort of adjectives that are desirable. Well, Chimera is a sensational looking aircraft. It is, of course, with its vast size and huge equipment list, going to be ruinously expensive to develop, operate and acquire. The look is very attractive, with the exception of the tail fins, which look as if they are trying to be stealthy, without the benefits of being edge-aligned with anything else.
There is no doubt a high score is justified – on looks alone, it’s superb.
I’m giving it a 20, largely because the fins let it down.

TN – Looks great and I like the 1970s Luftwaffe-style camouflage. Wait, are those Burmese Air Force markings? 21

HK: Lots of YF-23 and Su-57 in there, with a Blackbirdy nose all contribute to a high score. Weird and sleek, and most importantly doesn’t look like an F-16 or an F-35.

Score 22.
Originality
Well, what’s not to like in a Sukhoi 27 derivative with F-16XL wings and the tail of the XQ-58 Valkyrie? Quite a lot. Yes, the look is superb, yes, it’s going to comfortably exceed all the performance requirements, but no it’s not original, and it’s going to be ruinously expensive. The particular pieces may not have been joined together in the one airframe, but this is an assemblage of other aircraft.
I’m being generous and giving it a score of 10.

Aerobatic team

A good-looking (extremely loud) aircraft with spritely performance – this should be a fantastic display aircraft.

21

Would I swap my Jaguar for this?

Only if my country has enormous previously undiscovered gold reserves. 10
Effectiveness – In this context I mean Mission Effectiveness. Can the aircraft carry enough, far enough, with appropriate defensive aids to survive in the fighter-bomber role?
There is no doubt that this sort of configuration would deliver the sort of performance claimed. The large blended wing and the fuselage can hold the claimed fuel, and coupled with low wave drag, big engines, variable geometry intakes etc, Mach 2+ performance for the clean aircraft would be a breeze. The hardpoint capacity exceeds the requirement by 80%, two guns are carried where one is required, and the combat range exceeds the requirement by 60%. If I were going to be picky with the claimed performance, I would expect even greater range, and possibly somewhat lower climb rate. But who cares – it will accomplish all the requirements with ease.
No real option but to give this 25.

TN – I am going to take the word of the designer on this, and assume it can accomplish any mission I can conceivably think of. So, 25.

Cost/Risk

JC – Not cheap. High risk. Massive overkill for the requirement 9

JS – Here’s where the super exotic designs will lose points.
In Treasury acquisition circles it is well known (and widely disputed by us tech types) that weight = cost, and that there is a reliable correlation at constant technology between Basic Mass Empty (Empty Weight) and cost. On which basis, the Chimera will come in at about 66% more than a Typhoon, or 50% more than an F-35A. And, notwithstanding the many arguments raised by both Industry and the development and acquisition agencies, no-one has yet demonstrated the Treasury mass-cost correlation to be wrong.
There is not the slightest way the Chimera could be described as cheap to build, easy to maintain or quick to develop. It is, in fact, a gold-plated solution to a relatively modest requirement.
No option but to score this a zero. It does not come anywhere near meeting the requirement. In many ways, the aircraft has much in common with the Mirage 4000. It looks sensational, can undoubtedly do the advertised job, but no one is going to buy it.
The Chief Judge may rule that a zero means that the aircraft automatically places last. But if not, my provisional score is 55, its performance and aesthetics offsetting to some extent its woeful cost/risk, and modest originality, scores. 0

TN – Could be overly complex for a mud-moving mission and could be vulnerable to ground fire. Twin engines is a boon, but then they are thrust vectoring, for added complexity.  Twin rotary cannon has not been done before, but why not. 16

The F-14 fighter garnered global fame as the star of the extremely American Top Gun film, but in an unlikely twist of fate, the vast bulk of the Tomcat’s air combat experience actually took place in the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force. Col. Mostafa Roustaie (ret.) flew the formidable Tomcat in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) in which he shot down five Iraqi Mirages and MiGs. He spoke to Hush-Kit about flying and fighting in this awe-inspiring fighting machine. 

What were your first impressions of the F-14A?

“I believe the first time I set my eyes on an F-14 was during my undergraduate pilot  training (UPT) in the United States in the early ‘70s. There was a massive amount of hype about the F-14A and the F-15 Eagle at the time. Our gut feeling was that the then ruler of Iran, His Majesty the Shah, would eventually choose one of these two beautiful birds. The F-14 was on a US-wide test run and tour visiting all US military bases. It was then in Laughlin AFB that some of us Iranian cadets were allowed to see the F-14 for the first time. I got a chance to check the cockpit out. I was wholly impressed. Believe me, I fell in love right there and then with this beautiful jet, and even more so with its roomy cockpit. After completion of my UPT training in the United States, I went back to Iran to complete my fighter pilot training with the Imperial Iranian Air Force on the F-4E Phantom II (which was a brand new aircraft in our fleet of fighters). Believe it or not, even though I was a full-time F-4E pilot, I could not stop thinking about the Tomcat. I dreamed about it every night, hoping to be able to fly it some day. The requirement to fly and train in the Iranian F-14A demanded around 1000 hours of flight hour on the F-5, or about 1500 hours on the F-4 Phantom II. Those were amongst the most challenging years of my life as I worked hard to be chosen for the F-14 slot.”

Three words to describe the Tomcat? 

“So hard to just choose three. Maybe those three words would not do it justice. Due to my intense interest in the F-14, I would devour anything that related to it. I would constantly speak with my old instructor pilots who had by then been assigned to F-14. The F-4 Phantom II in its time was one of the best fighter aircraft in the world. Flying it was definitely a privilege and a chance of a lifetime. Flying the F-4 made you proud. And I say this now as a former F-4 pilot, but Grumman’s Tomcat was a cut above. It was something else. F-14 was ‘the last word in the fighter business.’”

“I wanted to kill this guy by then. Adrenaline was pumping through me. I was full of rage, disappointment and excitement. I thought if it comes to it, I am gonna have to ram this guy. Maybe he read my mind, I don’t know. At this point, for reasons I will never understand this Iraqi pilot made a rookie mistake. Instead of climbing to clear a ridge, he turned and impacted the hillside at high speed as we flew over.”

What is the best thing about it?

“When (and if) you get to intimately know the F-14, you realise that it is a very forgiving and steady airframe. My honest experience tells me that majority of mishaps are due to pilot error. However, the F-14 was generously forgiving of one’s mistakes… so long as the envelope is not pushed beyond what the airframe and aircraft are designed for.”

What is the worst thing about it?

“I can only speak from my own experience, and in comparison to the aeroplanes I flew (such as the T-37, T-38, and F-4D/E). But I am willing to say that there are no or very few negative issues about it. The F-14 was the ultimate fighter aircraft. It was the result of years of research and combat experience. A generation of fighter design thinking that culminated in the production of Grumman’s Tomcat.
Maybe, since we were an air force and were used to backseat stick and control, the addition of a stick to the backseat would have been desirable (I am saying this only from a training perspective). Although this was not much of hinderance. Our superb US Navy, and IIAF training proved that the Tomcat was a flawless design. It was proven in combat. All in all, it seriously was excellent. Absolute perfection”

How do you rate the F-14 in the following categories?

Instantaneous turn: “I would give it an A+. If you paid attention and watched your angle of attack, stall indicators and whatnot then the instantaneous turn rate was better than great. Although as you know, every airframe has its own G-limits and we made sure not to stress the airframe beyond what was asked of it.”

Sustained turn: “Again I would give it the same rating if not better. 95 out of 100. If you observed the above notes (and I must add it put G pressure on the plane and the pilot which is an extra thing to worry about) then it had no problem. It was good at it. As I will shortly explain, I had an intense aerial duel with a MiG-21, and the F-14 proved more than capable in flying regimes that were not possible in any other fighter at that time. I personally can attest to the F-14’s amazing qualities in the proverbial ‘knife-fight in a phone-booth’.”
High alpha: “The AOA in Tomcat was easily controllable provided you made the right inputs and speed corrections. In fact, the F-14 was great at high alpha flying. I would give it an A+.”
Acceleration: “Never seen an aircraft accelerate this quick. Even with the notorious TF30 engines on our F-14s. Its powerful engines, and its five zones give an experienced fighter pilot a sense of superiority in the sky that is unmatched. I loved it. 100 out of 100 for this one.”

Climb rate: “I would refer you to what I said about acceleration. Same deal. I urge your readers to watch dozens and dozens of video clips out there showing F-14’s superior climb rate in the airshows and displays.”

Sensors: “We are talking about 1970s technology in 2020. For its time in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and well into the 1990s, it was superior to anything that was out there in the Eastern or Western bloc. We proved this in the war against numerous Iraqi Mirage F1 fighters, MiG-23, and in one instance a MiG-29. Its capable radar, jammers and receivers were a world ahead of its contemporaries. It felt like Tomcat designers had gone to war once before and knew what a fighter pilot needed (and desired to have) in combat. Compared to the F-4E, it was light years ahead. The AWG-9 radar and control system was a miracle. I could fly over the northern Persian gulf and could see the movement of Iraqi aircraft as far as Baghdad on my radar scope. This boggled my own mind every time. Its radar warning receiver was excellent. Night flying or flying in weather were a joy.”

Performance: “In general, the aircraft was unrivalled. It was well equipped, and in the hands of a decent fighter pilot who could use all that it offered, it was a great machine.”

Man-machine interface/cockpit?

“The switchology was excellent and thoughtful. I was pretty elated and shocked when I sat in the front seat of an F-14A for the first time. It felt like I was sitting on top or out of the aircraft. I mean it was like sitting atop the jet. It offered the pilot and RIO an unmatched view of the surroundings. I remember when I was an F-4 pilot, my helmet would bang the cockpit each time I wanted to look down and I would end up rolling the aircraft to get the desired view down low. The F-14 was totally different. Each switch was placed in its correct position, was accessible. The seat itself was easily adjustable, and the environmental control system was my favourite.”

Situational Awareness

“My take is that you have to be present in the cockpit to to know what is going on around you. By that, I mean you had to have your mind present and be focused. There are many systems in a fighter aircraft that constantly feed you all kinds of data to keep you alive. A fighter pilot that does not know what is going on around him/her, or isn’t aware of its systems will end up as a guest at Azrael’s (angel of death) evening party. A fighter pilot must have all his six senses tuned to his/her systems while engaging those very senses outside of the cockpit to survive combat. In essence, a fighter pilot has not gone to the park for a walk. He’s gone to war and that is his job. He has to do his job flawlessly to survive.”

Tell me something I don’t know about the F-14?

“I think a lot of ordinary people do not and can not fathom the awesome capabilities the F-14 brought with it. I was an F-4 pilot with hundreds of hours of flight time and despite my affection for the F-14, I really did not know much beyond what others told me and what I had read about it. It was only during training and then actual air combat when its true capabilities came to the fore. There was no peacetime limitations on what I could or could not do with this aircraft. I was told to defend the skies and I did what it took to do so.”

How good was the AIM-54A, what was your experience with the weapon system?

“As you know, the origins of AIM-54 dates back to the missile system that was envisioned for the A-12/YF-12 supersonic interceptor. And we all know the F-111B story. Then it morphs into, and gets finessed to what we now know as the AIM-54A and C variants of the original concept. So it began its journey as a powerful, heavy long-range missile that was to intercept Russian long range bombers threatening US Navy carrier strike groups. But what gave it the lethal punch was the combination of then the AWG-9 system with the missile itself. I personally believe the Iranian kill rate using the missile was above 90 percent. A handful malfunctioned on launch and dropped off the jet cold. Overall it was a reliable and effective weapon system.

Let me add an important note to this whole thing. Our air force’s maintenance squadrons with their highly capable weapons and armament shops (which I might add were all US-trained) provided us with reliable missiles and systems to use in combat. All this could not have been achieved without their dedication in eight years of conflict with Iraq. I personally launched four of those AIM-54A missiles at enemy aircraft. Three performed flawlessly and scored hits giving me three confirmed kills. But the fourth one is most likely a probable. I could not see what it did and so I can not take credit for it. Although after we had landed, our intelligence reported a heightened radio traffic on the enemy side and our SIGINT/ELINT units confirmed search & rescue activity in the area of the probable hit, but I could not visually confirm anything. In order to increase the chance of a hit, we were instructed to launch within 40 miles. It was a proven lethal long range platform. Our F-14A kill ratio is still jaw-dropping. A few Tomcats brought down by friendly fire but that is for another day. ”

What was your toughest opponent, and why?

“I had a few dogfights. I mean very close encounters with an enemy aeroplane. The ones that are known as ‘phone-booth knife fights’ in fighter pilot jargon. Twice against French -built Mirage F1, once against a MiG-23, and one time against a MiG-21 over the town of Ilam in western Iran near the Iraqi border. I had hurried his number 2 back to Iraq, but ended up in a breath-taking four to five minute-long flying duel against their flight lead. He was a superb and capable pilot. And if I may say so here, I still mourn his loss as a flier, an expert. Now more than 38 years after that day, I don’t see him as an enemy. Here is what actually happened. I struggle a lot inside with this one incident.

Hours earlier I had landed around 2030 local time and took a bit of time to debrief. As I was leaving the squadron building around 2230, I saw the next day flight schedule and my jaw dropped. They had set me with 1st Lt Reza Tahmasabi as my RIO for an early 0530 launch. When I got home, I passed out on the sofa while I was eating. And all I remember is the flight scheduler’s call shortly after to remind me that the squadron’s shuttle was en-route to pick me up. It was early morning of October 26th, 1982. The armed conflict that Iraq had commenced against Iran in September 1980 was still raging, and in its third year.

“Seconds ago, I wanted him dead. Now he was dead. But my heart broke for him. Maybe I even shed a tear. That pilot was incredible.” 

Reza and I launched in an F-14A (serial No. 3-6078 BuNo 160376 callsign ‘Captain One‘) around 0530 AM local time and came under the control of Dezful air base’s Ground Control Radar in SW Iran. The area was calm and our radar scope clear. We would run to the vicinity of our border with Iraq under Dezful air base’s radar control and then would head back. This would go on a few times. One time we would turn right, and next we would turn left. In the middle of my last right turn, Reza my RIO strangely (and impatiently) asked me to halt my right bank and hold it. A second later, he called out a high velocity contact on radar fifty miles out. Radar calmly asked us to hang on a second, as it could be friendly aircraft. Seconds passed, and the radar operator calmly told us that there were no friendlies in the area and asked us to watch out. My senses were now in a state of heightened tension. I could tell something was up. Moments later Reza said “… don’t have whatever it was on my scope any more, but it was for real..” He had not finished his sentence when Dezful ground radar officer came back on and told us there were a pair of enemy aircraft 30 degrees to our left, low, with a heading of 180 probably on a bomb run against the Iranian towns of Ahwaz or Dezful. I pushed down low while talking to my trusted radar intercept Officer (the ‘back-seater’ or RIO).

The radar controller kept giving us the updated track, heading and speed of these ‘bandits’ closing on us. Reza was also urging me to keep a tight left turn as he warned me of the closure rate and distance. I reached out and flipped the switches for a heat-seeking AIM-9 missile launch. At first, I got a glimpse of the number 2 in trail, and moments later his number 1 came to view as well. It was hard to tell the type of the enemy aircraft but a guessing game ensued. Was it a MiG-21, or an Su-22 strike aircraft? Unsure, I pressed on, while Reza my good RIO kept an eye out for others. The Number 2 aircraft noticed us and banked so hard to the right I thought to myself that maybe its pilot had gone mad. Now the flight leader was mine. I was prepared to launch the Sidewinder (my guess is that we were about three miles out) but he noticed us either through his fleeing wingman or somehow managed to see us, dropped his ordnance plus fuel tanks as he dove down hard to the right. He entered into a valley and flew fast and furious over a riverbed towards Iraq. We gave chase about 200-300 feet above him and entered the valley. This pilot seemed to know the area quite well. He weaved and whirled so well it enraged me. It was really difficult for me to accept that a 1950s MiG-21 was giving me a run for my money in my modern F-14. A few instances he came close to within range of my heatseeking missile but each time he would turn so sharply and timely as though he could read my mind. This Iraqi pilot was for sure a miracle worker. I was in awe of his superior airmanship. In a nimble MiG-21 he flew brilliantly. I was chasing and admiring when my back-seater Reza called out our fuel level which made me come out of afterburner and give an audible sigh. I was like “Oh man we have come this far for a kill, and now we have to go back due to low fuel.” I wanted to kill this guy by then. Adrenaline was pumping through me, I was full of rage, disappointment and excitement. I thought if it comes to it, I am gonna have to ram this guy then. Maybe he read my mind. I don’t know.

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At this point, for reasons I will never understand, this Iraqi pilot made a rookie mistake. Instead of climbing to clear a ridge, he turned and impacted the hillside at high speed as we flew over. Seconds ago, I wanted him dead. Now he was dead. But my heart broke for him. Maybe I even shed a tear. That pilot was incredible. An exceptional airman. Even though I was unable to shoot him down, the kill was later credited to us as a manoeuvre kill. 38 years after and I am still sad that a good pilot had to pass-on that way. He did not deserve to perish like that. Our fuel level was now critical and finding the airborne tanker was a challenge. However the tanker pilot had heard our plea over the radio and had decided to abandon its track to meet us for a much needed air-to-air fuel transfer. We made contact with them and got home safe.”
What was life like in your unit during the war? What were the biggest highs and lows?

“At the onset of the war, we had very little combat experiences. Our peak adrenaline rush was mock basic fighter manoeuvre (BFM) sorties or air combat manoeuvring (ACM) sorties done under tight pre-determined rules by the air force brass. And then the war broke out. I had not seen a live AIM-54A Phoenix missile until the first night of the war. We had practiced with CATM-54A missiles and such, but never before had I seen an armed missile. On top of this, the stress of combat was felt across our families. My wife ran the family. While I acted like a trained military puppet, day and night roaming the base and preparing for what was then a fully-fledged war with a neighbouring country. Family life was on hold, and military orders were the priority. As there were not enough F-14 pilots available, so we had to fly long hours to cover the skies and provide combat air patrols (CAP) for the nation’s critical infrastructure including ports, major cities and oil facilities. Thankfully, the Shah’s foresight had prepared us for the day we would go to war and as a result the former Imperial Iranian Air Force had acquired several squadrons of aerial tankers. We were well trained in the art of air refuelling and our KC-747s, and KC-707 (Boeing 747-100, and 707-300s) could sustain us in long flights. There were occasions where I personally flew eight–nine hour long missions providing CAP to ocean-going oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. I know of a few pilots who flew even longer hours. The camaraderie was great. Despite all the sacrifices, our families were there for us and they’re the ones who should be thanked. The biggest highs were when there was no fatality or incident in our wing, and the lows were when we’d lose a friend or an aircraft.”

 Tell us about your kills

“I have five kills under my name. One MiG-21 that I maneuvered to impact with the ground, or rather he impacted with the terrain as I was chasing him. Two Mirage F1 jets, and two MiG-23 Flogger strike jets.”

How did you feel going into combat in the F-14A?

“Certainly, the confidence I felt (and I think every one in our squadron surely felt) was very high. That we were in the world famous F-14 with its cutting-edge technology (combined with the training we received from our Iranian and US Navy instructors) made us feel invincible. Given all the challenges we felt as F-14 pilots in post-revolution Iran, I believe the aircraft and its crew overall performed marvellously.”

F-14 combat effectiveness and importance in the war

“Psychologically speaking it was always a boost to know I was in an F-14 facing hostile forces. Having an F-14 in the skies over friendly forces was also a morale booster. I must add that an interceptor is incomplete without its controllers. Some of our ground controllers were so good that we’d blindly go wherever they told us to. I can recall Captain Pezhman, or Major Asem. These two were my own favourites whom I trusted and could tell they had my best interests in mind.
And as a fighter pilot I definitely knew I had the best technology available to me and we were well trained. I had a great number of flying hours by then and my confidence level had risen drastically. All that was needed was a bit of luck to own the skies. I want to say thanks to the person who actually purchased the F-14 for the air force. He chose well.”

What is the biggest myth about the Iranian F-14 fleet?

“There are a few. The biggest lie, I suppose, is that given the chance Iran should have acquired the Eagle. I disagree. Many of my fellow pilots in the Iranian AF would agree with me on this, I am sure. Iran is a vast country with a unique geography. High mountain ranges, deserts and its proximity to the Soviet Union during the Cold War left us no choice but to go for a long range interceptor with a capable radar and deadly armament. The F-15 is a superb dogfighter and its current versions are significantly better than those of the mid 1970s. But looking back, the F-14 offered Iran what the F-15 could not: the ability to deter Russian overflights, and engage multiple targets from unbelievable distances while providing radar coverage for other friendly aircraft. This proved important as the Shah’s attempt to buy the E-3 AWACS never materialised due to the 1979 revolution. The F-15 matured a bit later.

Another myth is that F-14 is indestructible and invincible. I disagree with this assessment a little. The F-14 is like any other weapon system — and  is prone to mishaps, human errors and technological advances that can defeat it.”

What else should I have asked you?

“I can’t think of anything at the moment. Everything that needs to be said about my experience with it has been said here, and there are hundreds of books and documentaries about this venerable aircraft. Maybe I should hint at the TF30 engines. Many comments have been said about these engines. Yes, it is not perfect and a lot has been said about its stall characteristics in certain flying regimes, but in the hands of a stable, well-trained and knowledgeable pilot, these engines are never a problem.

What was your most memorable mission and why?

“Two missions will always stand out in my mind. One was the dogfight with the MiG-21 in 1982, and the other one, a compressor stall incident which took place during a mission I undertook on May 5th, 1985 in central Iran over the city of Kazeroun while tanking after an exhausting CAP sortie.

We were at 24,500 ft performing our second aerial refuelling of the day. Once our aeroplane was full, I pulled the throttles back gently. Quite suddenly, there was frightening noise in the cabin and all went silent. Fog filled the cockpit and I could barely see. At first I thought it was smoke, but when it subsided I realised it was not. My ears were hurting with a kind of pain I’d never experienced before. The aircraft went nose down, and the front control panel blinking like a Christmas tree. Every warning light was on except the ones for ‘fire’. A quick glance at the engine gauges told me all I needed to  know. We had two basic options: get the engines back, or ‘punch-out’ (eject).

My back-seater, that fateful day, was Captain G. Mardani. He started reading the emergency checklist as I was attempting an air start. It was so quiet I could hear my own breath. I told my RIO to be prepared to bail out once we reach 11,000 feet.
From then on, I focused on air start procedures, but then I quickly realised it can only be done under 13,000 feet. Perhaps three or four minutes must have passed but it seemed like three to four centuries to us. Passing 13,000 feet, the ‘Master Caution’ light came on. That meant electrical power was restored to the aircraft, meaning one of the engines was now back on line. Believe me, I could not bring myself to tell my RIO not to punch out. Words would not come out. I mustered all that was left in me and shouted— “Do not punch out!” repeatedly. And he quickly barked back — “Yeah I know. Calm down. I can feel one of the engines running.” It feels like you have hit the jackpot. The right engine came back up, but the left just did not budge, I declared an emergency and returned to Shiraz Air Base for a barrier arrested recovery using the F-14’s hook to catch the cable in order to slow and halt the stricken jet.”

Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions.

“My pleasure. I should thank you for reaching out. Special thanks to Mr. Kash Rayan for conveying my sentiment and words to your esteemed readers. I should hereby say that the Iranian air force combat record is one that gets ignored by western observers for various reasons. It shouldn’t be. I hope more and more of your readers, aviation enthusiasts and academics study this conflict in depth away from the politics of today’s world. The Iranian Air Force used existing western military doctrine to fight a Soviet trained adversary in the air, on the ground and at sea. And a fair study of the war in the air, and at sea at least shows the (albeit slight) triumph of the Western doctrine. It is a great case study for Cold War historians.

Once again, many thanks for giving me an opportunity to speak about my experiences.”

Details of Colonel M. Roustaie’s aerial kills
Date: 15th January 1981
Aircraft: F-14A Serial No: 3-6027
Weapon: AIM-54A Mfg Serial No: 40215/8
RIO: Captain A. Jalal-Abadi
Callsign: Vulture 3
Location: Khuzestan province of Iran.
Target destroyed: MiG-23 Flogger
Date: 5th Oct 1981
Aircraft: F-14A Serial No: 3-6036
Weapon: AIM-54A Mfg Serial No: 6/40261
RIO: 1Lt. Ahmad R. Fereydouni
Call sign: Dragon 4
Location: SW Iran. Slightly west of the port city of Mashahr
Target: MiG-23 Flogger
Date: 26th Oct 1982**
Aircraft: F-14A Serial No: 3-6078
Weapon: None. Manoeuvring Kill
RIO: 1Lt. Reza Tahmasbi
Callsign: Captain 1
Location: West of town of Dezful
Target: MiG-21 Fishbed. (Aircraft wreckage and pilot’s body found).

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4 & 5:
Date: 7th August 1984
Aircraft: F-14A Serial No: 3-6055
Weapon: AIM-54A Mfg Serial No: 40230
RIO: Capt. Hossein Sayyari
Call sign: Khofash (Bat) / Scrambled flight / QRA
Location: 70 miles west of the island of Kharg in the Persian Gulf
Targets: 2 Mirage F-1EQ
One dead Iraqi pilot was snatched from the sea by Iranian Navy helicopters. The other one crashed inside Iraqi airspace. SIGINT reports combined with 6th air base radar data indicated a crash of a Mirage F-1EQ inside Iraqi territory. Later on, Iraqi air force POWs confirmed the loss of one such jet on that specific date to their Iranian debriefers.
**My own note on the third kill…
The logbook shows the date of that kill as October 26th 1982, but during the phone interview the interviewee mentions November 5th as the date. To ensure reliability and honesty, I have chosen to report the logbook date. I must note that the Persian calendar (solar calendar) is obviously different from the Gregorian (western) calendar. So discrepancies in the reports are expected.

I have verified his logbooks and corroborated with another fellow pilot from a different squadron and his account is verifiable..

Colonel M. Roustaie is also the only Iranian air force pilot known to have trapped aboard a US Navy aircraft carrier. He trapped aboard USS Midway in the backseat of a US Navy F-4. during Midlink-77 exercises involving Iranian military assets and US forces in the Persian Gulf and sea of Oman.

Biography: Born 1951. Entered Imperial Iranian Air Force in 1970.
Training: US Air Force UPT. Laughlin AFB, TX. (class 74-04).
F-4D/E Phantom II pilot with 2200 hours.
F-14A Tomcat pilot 2086 hours
Aircraft flown: T-37, T-38, F-4D/E, F-14A
Iran AF’s 6th Tactical Fighter Base deputy of operations.
30 years of service. Honourably retired.

Kash Ryan a native of Iran, hails from a military family. Both his father and grandfather were professional service members. His father served in the Iranian Air Force retiring as a Lt colonel. Kash served mandatory service in the Iranian Air Force in the late 1990s.
Growing up on an air base planted the seeds of curiosity about aviation and aircraft in him. He is a qualified private pilot currently splitting his time between Canada and the United States. As a military history enthusiast, he was compelled to bring several fascinating combat memoirs of the Iranian Air Force pilots to a wider audience in the English-speaking world for the first time.

We’ve interviewed a bunch of warplane pilots- here are some them:

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Saab JA 37 Viggen

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21

Mikoyan MiG-27 ‘Flogger’

BAE Systems Hawk 

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 ‘Foxbat’ 

Sukhoi Su-15 ‘Flagon’

Panavia Tornado GR.1

Panavia Tornado F.Mk 3

BAe EAP

Mil Mi-24 ‘Hind’

North American F-86 Sabre

North American F-100 Super Sabre 

McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II

BAe/Md Harrier GR.Mk 7/9

Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet 

McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle 

Hawker Sea Fury

Boeing B-52 Stratofortress 

Saab JAS 39 Gripen and here too 

Eurofighter Typhoon

Boeing RC-135

Dassault Mirage 2000

English Electric Lightning

Boeing KC-135

How do you destroy an unwanted aircraft from the ground? The first anti-aircraft weapon, the Ballonabwehrkanone (balloon defence cannon) or BaK was deployed in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.  It was a simple concept, consisting of a modified 37-mm cannon mounted on a horse-drawn carriage for the purpose of shooting down French communication balloons. Since then people have defended themselves from far more alarming aircraft, many hellbent on the destruction of cities, with a bewildering array of unlikely weapons. Here are ten of them. 

7. Unrotated Projectile (1940) ‘Loony Lindemann’s lemon launcher’

In the late 1930s, Britain was sorely lacking in a medium to close-range anti-aircraft weapon to supplement the Quick-Firing 3.7in AA gun (the main land-based anti-aircraft gun of British land forces) and the Quick-Firing 2-pounder gun, (the main naval anti-aircraft gun throughout the War at sea). Winston Churchill was never one to let a lack of expertise in any subject stop him from contributing, and so it was with naval anti-aircraft weaponry, leading to an unfortunate diversion into the vaguely named ‘unrotated projectile’ (UP) that might just have ended far more Allied lives than enemy ones. Churchill had long had the ear of Professor Frederick Lindemann, a physicist, eugenicist and inveterate tinkerer in just about anything, who had developed an entirely amateur interest in aerial defence. Sadly, Lindemann was more Barnes Clueless than Barnes Wallis. One of his big ideas was an aerial minefield which could be laid in front of an oncoming raid. Lindemann latched onto solid-fuelled rocket research that had been conducted since 1938, with the notion of using the rockets to fling a barrage of floating ‘mines’ into the air, from where they would slowly descend, suspended on long cables beneath parachutes. The idea went that aircraft would run into the wire, then the drag of the parachute would pull the mine towards the aircraft and detonate when a proximity fuse was triggered.

Churchill forced the Committee for the Scientific Study of Aerial Defence (the Tizard
Committee), which famously promoted the development of RDF or radar, to include
Lindemann. He promptly attempted to sideline radar and push his own ideas, including the aerial minefield, to the extent that the Committee for the Scientific Study of Aerial Defence had to dissolve itself and form a new organisation just to get rid of him. Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, was however in a position to push the Royal Navy to develop the aerial minefield as an anti dive-bomber weapon before he became PM. The result was the Unrotated Projectile (UP), a name that was supposedly non-descriptive to avoid giving secrets away but was probably just applied out of embarrassment. The UP launcher was a battery of 20 smoothbore tubes for the ‘projectiles’ to be loaded into, and launched up to 3,000ft into the path of oncoming aircraft.

The UP took two minutes to load with a salvo of 20 rockets, and it needed many such 20-rocket salvos to lay a big enough ‘aerial minefield’ to have any chance of successfully catching enemy aircraft.This took an age to create, and the flock of parachutes descending gently in the breeze were highly visible to aircraft and easy to avoid. Bizarrely, the fuse could only work under certain light conditions. Furthermore, the launcher was large and heavy (4 tons), and needed large ready-use ammunition lockers nearby. The RN grudgingly fitted it to a few capital ships from June 1940, and in the short time it was in service, it was not known to have caused the loss of any enemy aircraft. Churchill was still convinced of its benefits, and when HMS Illustrious was bombed to near oblivion by Stukas in January 1941, he demanded to know if the RN had been driven out of the central Mediterranean due to the lack of adequate defences and insisted on further consideration of the UP. Just four months later, however, HMS Hood was sunk during the Battle of the Denmark Strait. She had five UP launchers mounted, four of them on the shelter deck, and the ready use ammunition was
seen to be on fire when catastrophic explosion that caused her loss with the most of her
crew took place. Some at the Admiralty blamed the UP ammunition for causing a fire that spread to the magazines. In truth, it was more likely that one of Bismarck’s shells simply penetrated the magazine, but the writing was on the wall and the UPs were removed from all other ships in their next refits. The truth was that the UP was a bad solution, though at the time the RN had nothing else between the 0.5in Vickers machine gun and the Pom Pom. More sophisticated ammunition for the Pom Pom, and later the 40mm Bofors and 20mm Oerlikon autocannon solved the problem. The rocket research led to the altogether more effective 60lb rocket projectile, the P Catapult, and RATOG. Lindemann ‘failed upwards’ and was elevated to the peerage.

Matthew Willis is a writer and historian of aviation and naval matters. Here is a link to his books.

6. Vickers QF 127/58 SBT X1 Green Mace (1956) ‘The Green Gobbler’

The Green Mace was a 28-ton monster, a 102-mm (some sources say 127mm) calibre cannon capable of firing 96 giant darts a minute that would have been able to shred aircraft eight kilometres away. It was developed in Britain in the 1950s, but by 1957 it was clear that longer range anti-aircraft defence was now the preserve of guided missiles.

5. SAM-N-8 (later RIM-50) Typhon (1961) ‘Cursed rimshot’

A radical effort to field a replacement to the US Navy’s Talos, Tartar and Terrier surface-to-air missiles that had been developed under the ‘Bumblebee’ programme, the Typhon (the name coming from a monstrous serpent from Greek mythology)  ditched the earlier weapons’ clunky beam-guidance for a futuristic weapon-control system that – some 20 years later – would form the basis of the AEGIS.

Work on the SAM-N-8 (later RIM-50) Typhon began in the 1950s and centred on an active-radar-homing missile combined with a Westinghouse electronically scanned array radar – remarkable technology for the time. This would ensure that – unlike its predecessors – the Typhon would be able to engage multiple targets simultaneously. Equally ambitious was the missile’s planned quarry – high-altitude air-breathing targets as well as other rockets and missiles, travelling at up to Mach 4. On top of that, it was expected to take out Soviet warships if required – employing either a high-explosive or nuclear warhead.

Both medium- and long-range versions were planned, the latter reaching a maximum speed of Mach 5 on the power of its Bendix integral ramjet motor.

The Typhon was expected to be so good that it would need to be fielded aboard far fewer ships than the earlier T-series (thereby saving money), its multiple-target capability still ensuring protection against saturation attack. But the US Navy was not completely convinced. With an eye on the poor reliability and hefty price tag of the earlier ‘Bumblebee’ SAMs, penny-pinching Defense Secretary Robert McNamara decided to ditch the Typhon in late 1963. The money saved was spent trying to iron out the inadequacies of the earlier T-series SAMs.

— Thomas Newdick, Editor of Air Forces Monthly & writer

 4. Dr. Gustav Rasmus’ Hearing missile ‘The exploding ear’ 

Dr. Gustav Rasmus, a San Diego patent attorney, suggested the guided surface-to-air missile in 1931. Whereas real-world SAMs rely on optical, infra-red, radar or command guidance, Dr Rasmus’s weapons relied on sound: the missile was to have four ‘ears’ – accurate microphones that could locate an aeroplane and guide the rocket-propelled missile to destroy it. The weapon did not come to fruition, perhaps because of the technical difficulties of acoustic guidance.

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3. M247 Sergeant York (1979) ‘Shoddy shilka’

Take a tried-and-tested auto-cannon, fit it to a tried-and-tested armoured vehicle chassis, add a tried-and-tested radar and you’ll get an excellent weapon system for destroying low-level aircraft. The Soviets achieved this with the superb ZSU-23-4 ‘Shilka’, which entered service in 1965. The US wanted something similar and set about a competition in the 1970s. Prior to this they had been lacking in this crucial role, since anti-aircraft guns had gone out of fashion in the late 1950s. The overly ambitious Mauler failed and was replaced by the underwhelming Chaparral-Vulcan Air Defense System.

In 1977 the need was so desperate that it was announced that the new Division Air Defense (DIVAD) requirement should be met by a self-propelled artillery vehicle using as much off-the-shelf content as possible. Ford Aerospace combined the readily available M48 Patton chassis with two 40-mm Bofors cannon (a weapon that proved indispensable in World War II) with the radar of the F-16 fighter.

After a dodgy evaluation exercise, the Sergeant York (named for a World War I hero) was named the winner. It was awful. It was too slow to keep up with other armoured vehicles, too heavy, and the detection and targeting system proved unreliable and suffered massive cost overruns. Though it was made of tried-and-tested parts, they had not been adequately proven as a combined unit. Even for a late Cold War project, this was too bad a programme, and it was very sensibly cancelled in 1985.

2. Teleforce ‘Telsa’s steamy death slug dispenser’

The Serbian-American genius Nikola Tesla proposed a radical weapon that could have been used for the anti-aircraft role. The Teleforce proposal would have harnessed electrostatic repulsion in a vacuum chamber to propel pellets or ‘slugs’ at a great speed. Tesla noted, “Many thousands of horsepower can thus be transmitted by a stream thinner than a hair, so that nothing can resist.” 

The idea of Teleforce ‘death-beam’ weapon was publicly revealed on Tesla’s 78th birthday, July 10, 1934, in the New York Sun. In this article he claimed a nation could deal shoot down massed aerial forces 250 miles away.

In a 1934 letter he noted,” I have made recent discoveries of inestimable value… The flying machine has completely demoralised the world, so much that in some cities, as London and Paris, people are in mortal fear from aerial bombing. The new means I have perfected afford absolute protection against this and other forms of attack. … These new discoveries, which I have carried out experimentally on a limited scale, have created a profound impression. One of the most pressing problems seems to be the protection of London and I am writing to some influential friends in England hoping that my plan will be adopted without delay. The Russians are very anxious to render their borders safe against Japanese invasion and I have made them a proposal which is being seriously considered.”

Britain considered paying $30 million for the device, hoping that the deterrent effect alone might be enough to discourage German aggression, but by 1938 they had lost interest. As with many of Tesla’s ideas, Teleforce was so advanced (and far-fetched) for its time it was hard to tell the plausibility of the device.

1. Gothaer Waggonfabrik Rammflugzeug ‘One-hit Wundes’ sticky stinger’ (1944) 

A remarkable number of outlandish aviation-related patents were filed by Gothaer Waggonfabrik during the Second World War. From towed gunship gliders to armoured ground-attack rocket aircraft, Gotha had them all – but even among the company’s wilder ideas the ‘Rammstachel für Flugzeuge’ or ‘ram sting for aircraft’ stands out.
Design by prolific ‘wonder weapon’ inventor Oberingenieur Walter Wundes it was an anti-aircraft weapon like no other, combining a manned rocket-propelled rammer with a detachable explosive ‘sting’. Although Wundes’ patent outlining the device is undated, he produced a wide range of similar concepts during mid- to late-1944 and it shares many of their features.

At this time the American daylight bombing campaign over Germany was reaching its zenith and a multitude of unlikely concepts were formulated in a bid to destroy the seemingly endless formations of B-17s and B-24s. Wundes had already dreamt up a teardrop-shaped manned rocket-rammer intended to bludgeon its way through lightweight bomber airframes, but now he decided to add a spiky or possibly sticky pop-up explosive device to its back which could prolong its usefulness.

According to the patent: “A ramming aircraft should approach as close as possible to the aircraft it is attacking and destroy it by damaging flight-important airframe parts. Due to the collision, the ramming aircraft itself is usually so heavily damaged that another attack is no longer possible.

“In order to allow the destruction of the enemy aircraft without direct collision, it is proposed to attach to the ramming aircraft a protruding arm (spike) in which one or more explosive projectiles are installed, and which breaks off when touched with the enemy aircraft and with the help of barbs, a tack or ropes that loop around parts of the enemy aircraft, it remains hanging.

“The sting with the explosive bullets is now stuck to the enemy aircraft and it cannot shake it off or remove it. The subsequent explosion will bring the enemy plane to crash. The protruding arm is usually folded into the aircraft, so as not to cause drag, and deployed just before the attack. In addition, several arms can be provided, which are extended one after another, so that various attacks can be performed.”

The rammer would approach the enemy bomber stream, flip its explosive ‘sting’ up into a vertical position, then fly close enough to an individual bomber so that the ‘sting’ snagged on it and then became embedded – detaching as the rammer flew away. The explosives would then detonate, destroying the target. Assuming that the patent’s final provision was followed, the rammer would then simply flip up another ‘sting’ and perform another attack.

In practice, setting aside the ludicrously dangerous nature of such a mission, missing a target narrowly enough to embed the sting would have been extremely tricky even for a skilled pilot. Fortunately for all concerned, the idea went no further than the patent office.

— Dan Sharp, author of Britain’s secret projects 5.

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