This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Cabalamat: Wouldn't it be better to finish this article first outside Wikipedia or in your user space instead of posting it here in such an early draft stage? Things like "Talk here about..." and "Mention..." look rather silly. -- Wik 01:17, Sep 8, 2003 (UTC)
How firm are Chinese plans to manufacture the J-10 and FC-1? My undersatanding is that there have been question marks raised over the viability of the programmes, see for example http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/row/j-10.htm -- Cabalamat 15:18, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Someone, please add such information. Kinda table: F-16 4500 F-15 1500 Su-27 600(do not copy these numbers - it is gues) That would be grait addition to article. TestPilot 15:35, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Recent combat training between Indian AF and the USAF, with Su-30MK and F-15C respectively, showed some interesting results. (in case you haven't heard) Training between the two forces was comparable I think, but the IAF pilots were victorious in the vast majority of engagements. Perhaps this development should be taken into account in your comparisons? mnemonic 10:26, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)
I am a little bit perplex when I see reports like "F15's shot down 4 MiG-29"... Context does mater !
I'll take it a litle bit extreme, but if the MiG are taking off with full load and no Air-to-air weapons, surrounded by dozens of F15s armed with AMRAAM missiles and backed up by AWAKs, there would be little pride to show if you succeed in exterminating the poor MiGs. Pilot training is also important...
Even if you had a full-scale shooting war, it would be difficult to sort out which fighter is the best only by counting the wreckages, so when the statistic is so small, I really have doubts.
This page seems useless. Trying to answer which fighter/tank/army/brand of cheese-slicer is best is like ripping two livers out of their bodies and asking "Which one is best"... where the obvious answer is that neither is best... because they are soon to become decaying pieces of meat unless they are put back into their bodies. A fighter aircraft is a part of a whole where the rest of the whole affects the performance of aircraft.
If this page is to remain, facts must be added that the efficiency of a fighter is dependant on much more than just the performace of the aircraft. Factors that matter:
- Training, experience and current form (tired? hungry? stressed?) of the pilot. - Number of aircraft in the flight (is it a solo flight or a multi-ship flight) - Detection, Command, Control and Communication capabilities of the airforce the aircraft belongs to. - Home or away. - Mission type (CAP, attack, support, escort, CAS etc). - At what time into the flight does the combat happen (lots of fuel left or not?) - Luck.
And this is just trying to figure out combat performance. Then we have things like:
- The needs of the operator. - The infrastructure of the operator. - Financial capabilities of the operator. - Maintenance/turn-around requirements. - Tech levels required for ground crew.
...and so on, and so forth.
For example: Seens from my own country's (Sweden) persective, what's best for us here may not be the best for others and vice versa. An F/A-22 is not the best choice because for us it is too expensive, too specialised, does not fit our infrastructure and does not live up to the requirements laid out by our air defence doctrin. However for the USAF, the F/A-22 may be just what they want.
So why does this page even exist? Fighter aircraft cannot be measured as stand-alone entities. In my opinion, this page should be scrapped or heavilly modified to point out the futility of asking "Who's best?". -- J-Star 12:46, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
As an independent to this discussion -- I found this page to be worthy of existence. It was a question I was asking myself when lookng at the Eurofighter page and wondering "How up to date can a fighter be when they first started planning for it in the early 1980s?". However, I have serious concerns about some of the information on the page. (Please see below section about "details"). 193.129.65.37 07:48, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I am referring to the "Combat Performance" section. Has the USA not actually used fighter aircraft in air-to-air combat since 1993? [n.b. I meant 1999] I'm starting to wonder why our military-industrial complex is spending billions upon billions developing monstrosities like the F/A-22 Raptor if we haven't even used fighters in air-to-air combat in 12 years, and the planes that have been successfully used in air-to-air combat for the past couple decades are the venerable F-15 and F-16—models dating back to the early '70s. NTK 01:45, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The J-10 has already entered production and 20 have been delivered to the PLAAF already. It is a very capable 4.5 generation aircraft comparable to Saab Viggen and Desault Rafale.
This article seems full of speculation. I strongly doubt that any of us, or any of the articles on which the writers of this article based themselves, have access to data such as the radar capabilities of the various warplanes mentioned... :-) David.Monniaux 06:55, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
http://www.pogo.org/m/dp/dp-fa22-Riccioni-03082005.pdf makes let's say less glowing remarks about the F-22's avionics.The article also makes an interesting point about BVR-combat.If the plane can't be identified the fight will still lead to a VR combat situation.
The claims that russian planes don't have advanced avionics needs a source.Giving that their planes had infrared sensors way ahead of the west makes me question that remark.
Too be honest this article leans too much toward speculation.Finding a source that doesn't have something to gain about a certain POV is impossible.
Has anyone ever seen any type of comparison or comprehensive analysis of anything in Britannica? This article has a lot of good info, but I have a hard time seeing how it belongs in an encyclopedia. It's not a bad article, but it is misplaced. ✈ James C. July 5, 2005 20:42 (UTC)
even given the speculative nature of this article, it would still be interesting to see some comparison info on the russian SU-37 fighter aircraft
Removed:
If "most experts" really said that it shouldn't be hard to find an actual reference saying it, rather than referring to nebulous "most experts". -- Robert Merkel 13:00, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
I think edits made by 192.88.165.35, 12:02, 28 December 2005 (Altered RCS calculation) should be reverted. IMO. Since that is not a vandalism, asking your opinion first. TestPilot 04:03, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Please be aware that this article should avoid self-references. That is, it should never refer to itself (as it does in several instances).-- cj | talk 13:58, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
The combat performance section is shoddy - produced by someone with an American Fighter bias, with no factual references, and no real numbers. E.g 1. "During the Gulf War, USAF F-15s shot down 5 Iraqi MiG-29s" How many F15s? 2,5,10,20 etc...
2. "On January 17, 1993, a USAF F-16 shot down a MiG-29 in Iraqi no-fly zone. (Some sources claim it was a MiG-23.)" Again how many? What are these sources that are spoken of?
It goes on etc etc....
I think this section should be shot down, unless somebody who knows something about these missions is able to add facts, moreover able to add non American fighters (E.g a list of a number of missions where Mirage, Tornado etc has been in action).
Thoughts?
Why is there no section on the Tornado F3, you have used the Typhoon as the UK's fighter, but it is not yet operational, so would a section on the F3 not be of more use?
This article contains some very useful information... but doesn't explain what it means.
So is a low wing loading or a high wing loading number more desirable? It doesn't seem to say...
"Conversely, on the basis of published thrust-to-weight ratios and wing loading the F-35 is likely to be little more manoeuverable than the F-16." very useful... except the F-16 isn't included in the table so we don't know what this means... same goes for this statement: "Ricconi [1] (PDF) claims that the F-22's wing loading and thrust-weight ratios are actually little better than the F-15C."
There are some significant flaws with this article. First of all, NO 21st century fighters are purely air-superiority, though the F-22A may qualify to some degree. The heyday of the interceptor is over. Nobody has the money to afford pure air superiority fighters anymore, not even the United States.
Second of all, the air to air comparison is also flawed. This is not jousting. You don't start a Rafale in this corner, a Raptor in that one, let them loose, and see which one wins. Air Defense, AWACS, RSTA, EW, all come into play, and a one one one comparison for the purposes of (which beats what) is pointless other than in a "my fighter can beat your fighter" discussion.
What this page can usefully do is provide a cross-category comparison of capabilities so one can understand how aircraft differ in relation to one another in terms of equipment and capabilities, especially as it relates to the mission requirements of their buyers and their devlopment cycle. That is an encyclopedic and worthy entry. I'm diving in and doing this.
-- Mmx1 19:17, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Have thought a bit about the whole intro and how to make the article encyclopedic and concluded that a "comparison of" simply isn't encyclopedic. Proposal:
Change to article simply to "Fighter Aircraft of the 2000's" and make it a survey article like 1920s. Discuss common trends such as multimission and stealth, and have the meat of the article consist of the the existing comparisons. Tie it to a Category "Fighter Aircraft of the 2000's.
I actually feel that rather than splitting into decades, that the history of fighters needs to be split into eras (WWI and before, WWII and before, early jets, modern jets, and postmodern(2000s, maybe Information age?) fighters). Need citable source on that, though. Musn't forget to not stray into OR. -- Mmx1 01:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
This article is really suffering. We have no web pages to link to, information being changed that should be possible to cite, and all in all an article that although the content is interesting the claims are impossible to be confirmed. Can we rework this to include citations, and stop changing the info unless it can be confirmed? For example, 194.185.231.68 has changed some prices of the JSF and F-22 considerably, the F-22 has more than doubled its cost. I don't want to see things changed without good reason first. -- The1exile - Talk - Contribs - 22:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
The basic premise is not wholly encyclopedic; it's a meta-article on a body of encyclopedic information. Also, much of the defense literature which is useful to cite is not free (most of it's dead tree except for some RAND studies). I don't even care about the statistics as it's all speculation anyway. Have some changes in mind that I'll work on tonight.
--
Mmx1
01:48, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
...sucks, in my opinion. What was wrong with the old one? It was clear to ordinary readers, who would not have a clue what a "4th generation fighter" is. It's not encyclopedic to use ambiguous insider jargon. Grant65 | Talk 04:37, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
There were two problems with the original title. First, it purported to compare fighters 1-1, though there's no citable literature on it, and the article had a 2-paragraph disclaimer on why it's a really bad idea to begin with. The very premise was heavily OR. Second, restricting yourself to the "21st century" is an arbitrary distinction picked to compare the latest fighters; so as a result you're comparing 1970's designs with 1990's designs; motivated by very different philosophies. If you restrict yourself to a particular generation rather than an arbitrary point in time, you can make generalizations, and more importantly, citable generalizations, about themes and common design considerations in that generation.
Face it, the article was originally intended as a "which fighter is better" article. If you want to answer that, wikipedia isn't the place, because the answer is always going to be "it depends on the context". If you want to understand the tradeoffs between them, as backed up by defense analysis, then this is the appropriate article.
We don't pick titles based on what people might search for; that's what redirects are for. This title is accurate, and besides, redirects from the original titles point here.
-- Mmx1 11:11, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Proposed titles:
Rationale:
Discuss
-- Mmx1 05:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
I have added the proposal "4th generation fighter aircraft", because it is slightly more clear and—to my ear—slightly less clunky. I like this title (rather than a more specific one), because it allows a greater variety of interesting information, including a list of such aircraft, in addition to design tradeoffs and important capabilities, while allowing us to include properly sourced, objective comparisons. I would also like to discuss some of the merits of 'fourth generation' as opposed to other schema, and rebut some opposition above.
Ingoolemo talk 20:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Also, I have amended (all emendations are in red) the options above to some variant of 'jet fighter', because the 'generation' scheme refers only to jets, and not to earlier prop-powered fighters. Ingoolemo talk 20:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Just passing through, but I noticed a comment earlier proposing the article be titled "4th and 5th generation combat aircrafts" or something like that. Aircrafts is not actually a word; the plural of aircraft is aircraft, and I'd hate to see that error repeated in articles or titles. :) Nobody wants an encyclopedia that can't be taken seriously! ericg ✈ 04:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Cabalamat: Wouldn't it be better to finish this article first outside Wikipedia or in your user space instead of posting it here in such an early draft stage? Things like "Talk here about..." and "Mention..." look rather silly. -- Wik 01:17, Sep 8, 2003 (UTC)
How firm are Chinese plans to manufacture the J-10 and FC-1? My undersatanding is that there have been question marks raised over the viability of the programmes, see for example http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/row/j-10.htm -- Cabalamat 15:18, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Someone, please add such information. Kinda table: F-16 4500 F-15 1500 Su-27 600(do not copy these numbers - it is gues) That would be grait addition to article. TestPilot 15:35, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Recent combat training between Indian AF and the USAF, with Su-30MK and F-15C respectively, showed some interesting results. (in case you haven't heard) Training between the two forces was comparable I think, but the IAF pilots were victorious in the vast majority of engagements. Perhaps this development should be taken into account in your comparisons? mnemonic 10:26, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)
I am a little bit perplex when I see reports like "F15's shot down 4 MiG-29"... Context does mater !
I'll take it a litle bit extreme, but if the MiG are taking off with full load and no Air-to-air weapons, surrounded by dozens of F15s armed with AMRAAM missiles and backed up by AWAKs, there would be little pride to show if you succeed in exterminating the poor MiGs. Pilot training is also important...
Even if you had a full-scale shooting war, it would be difficult to sort out which fighter is the best only by counting the wreckages, so when the statistic is so small, I really have doubts.
This page seems useless. Trying to answer which fighter/tank/army/brand of cheese-slicer is best is like ripping two livers out of their bodies and asking "Which one is best"... where the obvious answer is that neither is best... because they are soon to become decaying pieces of meat unless they are put back into their bodies. A fighter aircraft is a part of a whole where the rest of the whole affects the performance of aircraft.
If this page is to remain, facts must be added that the efficiency of a fighter is dependant on much more than just the performace of the aircraft. Factors that matter:
- Training, experience and current form (tired? hungry? stressed?) of the pilot. - Number of aircraft in the flight (is it a solo flight or a multi-ship flight) - Detection, Command, Control and Communication capabilities of the airforce the aircraft belongs to. - Home or away. - Mission type (CAP, attack, support, escort, CAS etc). - At what time into the flight does the combat happen (lots of fuel left or not?) - Luck.
And this is just trying to figure out combat performance. Then we have things like:
- The needs of the operator. - The infrastructure of the operator. - Financial capabilities of the operator. - Maintenance/turn-around requirements. - Tech levels required for ground crew.
...and so on, and so forth.
For example: Seens from my own country's (Sweden) persective, what's best for us here may not be the best for others and vice versa. An F/A-22 is not the best choice because for us it is too expensive, too specialised, does not fit our infrastructure and does not live up to the requirements laid out by our air defence doctrin. However for the USAF, the F/A-22 may be just what they want.
So why does this page even exist? Fighter aircraft cannot be measured as stand-alone entities. In my opinion, this page should be scrapped or heavilly modified to point out the futility of asking "Who's best?". -- J-Star 12:46, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
As an independent to this discussion -- I found this page to be worthy of existence. It was a question I was asking myself when lookng at the Eurofighter page and wondering "How up to date can a fighter be when they first started planning for it in the early 1980s?". However, I have serious concerns about some of the information on the page. (Please see below section about "details"). 193.129.65.37 07:48, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I am referring to the "Combat Performance" section. Has the USA not actually used fighter aircraft in air-to-air combat since 1993? [n.b. I meant 1999] I'm starting to wonder why our military-industrial complex is spending billions upon billions developing monstrosities like the F/A-22 Raptor if we haven't even used fighters in air-to-air combat in 12 years, and the planes that have been successfully used in air-to-air combat for the past couple decades are the venerable F-15 and F-16—models dating back to the early '70s. NTK 01:45, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The J-10 has already entered production and 20 have been delivered to the PLAAF already. It is a very capable 4.5 generation aircraft comparable to Saab Viggen and Desault Rafale.
This article seems full of speculation. I strongly doubt that any of us, or any of the articles on which the writers of this article based themselves, have access to data such as the radar capabilities of the various warplanes mentioned... :-) David.Monniaux 06:55, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
http://www.pogo.org/m/dp/dp-fa22-Riccioni-03082005.pdf makes let's say less glowing remarks about the F-22's avionics.The article also makes an interesting point about BVR-combat.If the plane can't be identified the fight will still lead to a VR combat situation.
The claims that russian planes don't have advanced avionics needs a source.Giving that their planes had infrared sensors way ahead of the west makes me question that remark.
Too be honest this article leans too much toward speculation.Finding a source that doesn't have something to gain about a certain POV is impossible.
Has anyone ever seen any type of comparison or comprehensive analysis of anything in Britannica? This article has a lot of good info, but I have a hard time seeing how it belongs in an encyclopedia. It's not a bad article, but it is misplaced. ✈ James C. July 5, 2005 20:42 (UTC)
even given the speculative nature of this article, it would still be interesting to see some comparison info on the russian SU-37 fighter aircraft
Removed:
If "most experts" really said that it shouldn't be hard to find an actual reference saying it, rather than referring to nebulous "most experts". -- Robert Merkel 13:00, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
I think edits made by 192.88.165.35, 12:02, 28 December 2005 (Altered RCS calculation) should be reverted. IMO. Since that is not a vandalism, asking your opinion first. TestPilot 04:03, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Please be aware that this article should avoid self-references. That is, it should never refer to itself (as it does in several instances).-- cj | talk 13:58, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
The combat performance section is shoddy - produced by someone with an American Fighter bias, with no factual references, and no real numbers. E.g 1. "During the Gulf War, USAF F-15s shot down 5 Iraqi MiG-29s" How many F15s? 2,5,10,20 etc...
2. "On January 17, 1993, a USAF F-16 shot down a MiG-29 in Iraqi no-fly zone. (Some sources claim it was a MiG-23.)" Again how many? What are these sources that are spoken of?
It goes on etc etc....
I think this section should be shot down, unless somebody who knows something about these missions is able to add facts, moreover able to add non American fighters (E.g a list of a number of missions where Mirage, Tornado etc has been in action).
Thoughts?
Why is there no section on the Tornado F3, you have used the Typhoon as the UK's fighter, but it is not yet operational, so would a section on the F3 not be of more use?
This article contains some very useful information... but doesn't explain what it means.
So is a low wing loading or a high wing loading number more desirable? It doesn't seem to say...
"Conversely, on the basis of published thrust-to-weight ratios and wing loading the F-35 is likely to be little more manoeuverable than the F-16." very useful... except the F-16 isn't included in the table so we don't know what this means... same goes for this statement: "Ricconi [1] (PDF) claims that the F-22's wing loading and thrust-weight ratios are actually little better than the F-15C."
There are some significant flaws with this article. First of all, NO 21st century fighters are purely air-superiority, though the F-22A may qualify to some degree. The heyday of the interceptor is over. Nobody has the money to afford pure air superiority fighters anymore, not even the United States.
Second of all, the air to air comparison is also flawed. This is not jousting. You don't start a Rafale in this corner, a Raptor in that one, let them loose, and see which one wins. Air Defense, AWACS, RSTA, EW, all come into play, and a one one one comparison for the purposes of (which beats what) is pointless other than in a "my fighter can beat your fighter" discussion.
What this page can usefully do is provide a cross-category comparison of capabilities so one can understand how aircraft differ in relation to one another in terms of equipment and capabilities, especially as it relates to the mission requirements of their buyers and their devlopment cycle. That is an encyclopedic and worthy entry. I'm diving in and doing this.
-- Mmx1 19:17, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Have thought a bit about the whole intro and how to make the article encyclopedic and concluded that a "comparison of" simply isn't encyclopedic. Proposal:
Change to article simply to "Fighter Aircraft of the 2000's" and make it a survey article like 1920s. Discuss common trends such as multimission and stealth, and have the meat of the article consist of the the existing comparisons. Tie it to a Category "Fighter Aircraft of the 2000's.
I actually feel that rather than splitting into decades, that the history of fighters needs to be split into eras (WWI and before, WWII and before, early jets, modern jets, and postmodern(2000s, maybe Information age?) fighters). Need citable source on that, though. Musn't forget to not stray into OR. -- Mmx1 01:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
This article is really suffering. We have no web pages to link to, information being changed that should be possible to cite, and all in all an article that although the content is interesting the claims are impossible to be confirmed. Can we rework this to include citations, and stop changing the info unless it can be confirmed? For example, 194.185.231.68 has changed some prices of the JSF and F-22 considerably, the F-22 has more than doubled its cost. I don't want to see things changed without good reason first. -- The1exile - Talk - Contribs - 22:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
The basic premise is not wholly encyclopedic; it's a meta-article on a body of encyclopedic information. Also, much of the defense literature which is useful to cite is not free (most of it's dead tree except for some RAND studies). I don't even care about the statistics as it's all speculation anyway. Have some changes in mind that I'll work on tonight.
--
Mmx1
01:48, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
...sucks, in my opinion. What was wrong with the old one? It was clear to ordinary readers, who would not have a clue what a "4th generation fighter" is. It's not encyclopedic to use ambiguous insider jargon. Grant65 | Talk 04:37, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
There were two problems with the original title. First, it purported to compare fighters 1-1, though there's no citable literature on it, and the article had a 2-paragraph disclaimer on why it's a really bad idea to begin with. The very premise was heavily OR. Second, restricting yourself to the "21st century" is an arbitrary distinction picked to compare the latest fighters; so as a result you're comparing 1970's designs with 1990's designs; motivated by very different philosophies. If you restrict yourself to a particular generation rather than an arbitrary point in time, you can make generalizations, and more importantly, citable generalizations, about themes and common design considerations in that generation.
Face it, the article was originally intended as a "which fighter is better" article. If you want to answer that, wikipedia isn't the place, because the answer is always going to be "it depends on the context". If you want to understand the tradeoffs between them, as backed up by defense analysis, then this is the appropriate article.
We don't pick titles based on what people might search for; that's what redirects are for. This title is accurate, and besides, redirects from the original titles point here.
-- Mmx1 11:11, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Proposed titles:
Rationale:
Discuss
-- Mmx1 05:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
I have added the proposal "4th generation fighter aircraft", because it is slightly more clear and—to my ear—slightly less clunky. I like this title (rather than a more specific one), because it allows a greater variety of interesting information, including a list of such aircraft, in addition to design tradeoffs and important capabilities, while allowing us to include properly sourced, objective comparisons. I would also like to discuss some of the merits of 'fourth generation' as opposed to other schema, and rebut some opposition above.
Ingoolemo talk 20:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Also, I have amended (all emendations are in red) the options above to some variant of 'jet fighter', because the 'generation' scheme refers only to jets, and not to earlier prop-powered fighters. Ingoolemo talk 20:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Just passing through, but I noticed a comment earlier proposing the article be titled "4th and 5th generation combat aircrafts" or something like that. Aircrafts is not actually a word; the plural of aircraft is aircraft, and I'd hate to see that error repeated in articles or titles. :) Nobody wants an encyclopedia that can't be taken seriously! ericg ✈ 04:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)