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On August 14, fighters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) and the so-called “al-Fatah al-Mubin” operations room shot down a Su-22 warplanes of the Syrian Air Force in the southern part of Idlib province. On August 15, the Syrian Defense Ministry reported that militants had used an anti-aircraft missile to target the warplane. MORE HERE
It’s an equivalent of F-4 Phantom… Could you imagine US allies would still use it!?
I can and there’s no need for imagination, we can stick to reality.
Japan has and operates a sizable F-4 fleet, more than 70. Greece, Egypt, South Korea, Turkey and… the US also have and use these planes. Not to mention Iran, all other are US allies and each have a meaningful number of these birds flying.
Why throw out a perfectly good airplane? Provided, key components are upgraded to keep up with the modern requirements. The exact same thing that Russia is doing. However, if the replacement is free for a country or even they are paid to replace their birds, they may replace their F-4 fleet with F-15, what country might that be? Hmm… Hmm…
Some airplanes suffer from inherent flaws in their designs which force operators to either replace them completely (like F-104) or modify and upgrade them (like MiG-25 into MiG-31). Don’t pay attention to the hype, it’s just to milk money. A hype caused US to throw out the amazing F-14 and replace it with a much, much weaker F-18 and the same hype is doing the exact same thing to F-18. Karma’s a bitc# they say! And not just F-18, but E-2, F-16, A-10, B-1, the list goes on…
Lt. Col. John Boyd himself said the Mig-17 could defeat the F-4. The F-4 just happened to be what McDonnell managed to sell to the Navy and Air Force. Boyd wrote the book on fighter tactics and even ground warfare. He was very involved in developing the F-16 and the F-15. Also F-100s and F-105s were used extensively in Vietnam. The F-8 and A-5 were used in the early years, but were phased out. The A-4, A-6, and A-7 came into their own in Vietnam. The F-14 was a typical hunk of junk from Grumman. Like the F-4, you never knew if it would fly from one day to the next there were so many systems breakdowns. That was typical of the US Navy in that era. Radios constantly failed, the bomb computers constantly failed, instruments were unreliable from one flight to the next, if you wanted to fly at all, you flew with up-gripes and had to balance the probability of the aircraft making it back. The YF-17 was an impressive aircraft, the first with fly-by-wire and the F-18 developed from that. Kick the tires and light the fire was back in style with the rock solid instrumentation and self-checking systems of the F-18. It is very sensitive to fuel loading on landing, true, but at least it is in an up status most of the time as opposed to its predecessors.
Not really, the Phantom is far more versatile and can carry a heavier payload and despite a larger turning circle is a pretty good dogfighter with Sparrows, Sidewinders and the Vulcan 20mm cannon.. The Su-22 was basically a ground attack aircraft and barely got to Mach 1.5 at top ceiling. It did not fare well against Iranian F-4E in the only know air to air engagements.
The Su-22 is a very old aircraft. It was said the F-4 was proof positive that a brick could fly with big enough engines.
http://ausairpower.net/APA-PLA-GBU.html
1. The Syrian pilots should not bring their fighter jets lower than 6Km.
2. For precise target hits Syrian government needs target pods to fit in every fighter jets.
3. Similarly for bombs Syria needs smart kits to fit on every bomb.
China produces and sell these both products on very low cost. This will save pilots lives and fighter jets. Chinese officials in an official visit to Syria expressed their interests to Syrian government to supply military hardware and military training facilities.
I’m not sure if Russian’s do those high precision “smart kits” at all. They have better solution than U.S. Russia has built in new targeting system in their planes that improves lot precision of “dumb” gravity bombs. They use that system themselves in Syria, because gravity bombs, as we all know, are much cheaper than high precision guided bombs. I think that Russians are quite pleased with the results so they never tried to upgrade their gravity bombs with the high precision kits. The price performance ratio is very good as it is with upgraded targeting. Does Syria have those targeting systems and if yes on how many planes, I don’t know. High precision “smart kits” are more U.S. style how they upgrade their standard gravity conventional and nuke bombs.
I don’t know about the Russian technology. I just know about the Chinese kits that Pakistan uses. The Chinese these kits is also effective which can hit enemies targets without risking pilots and fighter jets.
Well it is nothing complicated. Instead of using “kits” for upgrade Russians have upgraded their targeting system which is cheaper option since they now do not have to upgrade any of their classic bombs but to use them as they are. With their new targeting system every bomb becomes “smart bomb” Take look at the plenty of photos from Khmeimim Air Base in Syria. Very often you’ll see plenty of old gravitational bombs carried by Russian airplanes. They use them because they have plenty of them and because they are much cheaper than “smart bombs”. And in all those videos where we can see buildings destroyed with direct hit they use those ordinary bombs with their new targeting device installed on airplane to upgrade the precision of those bombs.
If a bomb cannot manoeuvre then how that can hit a target precisely.
I don’t know. My lucky guess is that it must be related to knowing exact speed + distance + height of the plane + bomb weight and with all that input calculate trajectory related to GLONASS target coordinates. And that is job of small computer to calculate and give immediate release of the bomb in the right moment, speed and distance. How ‘else do they calculate exact target trajectory for distances of sniper bullet with bullet speed, weight, wind speed, humidity of air etc… to get where exactly that bullet is going to land on precise distance? Only like that can they hit targets on 1,5 to 2 km distance.
LOL very big program.
It is set of pre-calculated alogarithms so no need for “big program”. That “program” is something ordinary in use specially for the very long range snipers or modern tanks today. It is becoming ordinary to calculate ballistic trajectory to be very accurate on very long distances. Every modern Western, Russian, Chinese tank has that. Here on the picture is an example of ballistic targeting system for sniper. One reads the numbers and dials them in his sniper optics to re-ajust the targeting to every specific target. You probably never heard of it so you find it funny. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d3ef60786e0ad4bb95df86cb617903f0b2654862c242bfff38fe6eb6c45cbb80.jpg Some “computers” are built in in sniper optics directly. Here with the laser range finder Ballistic Targeting System if you want to buy one. https://sitelite-lasers.com/BTS.html
Thanks for sharing this information. May be you know there are some tank’s and howitzer’s bullets that has ramjet engine. When that is fired towards any target then that will hit that differently. Its range is also double than the normal bullets. This bullet is called self propelled bullet. Its speed is three times faster than normal bullets.
Russia does use “Smart” bombs, and have used them several times in Syria.
Russia name their bombs differently than NATO; FAB-250 means, fragmentation, aviation bomb 250kg, KAB-250 means Corrected (guided) aviation bomb 250kg. An “L” indicates laserguided; KAB-1500L and an “S” indicates GLONASS/sattelite guided KAB-1500S
But never underestimate a skilled pilot and a dumb bomb, depending on the flight parameter and release parameters, a dumb bomb can be place in a cup of coffee, if that cup is big enough.
I recommend Piotr Butowski book “Russias airlaunched weapons” ISBN 978-09973092-1-8
You got it all wrong. I didn’t say that Russia doesn’t use “smart” bombs but “smart kits”. “Smart kits” are not “smart bombs”. They are “kits” to upgrade classic gravitational bombs into the modern high precision guided bombs. US is using “smart kits” lot to upgrade their older gravitational bombs (nukes also) into the modern guided high precision bombs.
I dont think i did. I know what smart kits are, they are a relative cheap alternative for upgrading old dumb bombs, making dumb bombs guided, ie your smart bombs, guided/corrected = smart.
Lots of Mk82 and Mk84 in NATO and western supplied contries got new life and use thanks to upgrade kits and the rest of the world also saw the use and jumped on the train.
The correct term would be guided/corrected bombs, smart is just a fashion term invented by western media and used by the military because no one understands the meaning of guided/corrected, if you call something smart, politicians and civilians would give you a carte blanche for it.
OK Braian I take it back You do know what smart kits are. And all the rest. And I admit being influenced by tainted western media I also use some inaccurate “fashion terms” like “smart”. ;-)
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/did-russia-really-build-smarter-smart-bomb-15484
Russia also use smart bombs in which guidance system is integrated. But Russia also use unguided bombs for which they use a computer called SVP-24 in the fighter jet. For this the computer guide the pilot to bring the fighter jet to a specific point to release the bomb. If the pilot miss the point then computer will not release the bomb. Second for SVP-24 the fighter jet should be close to the target for precise target. Therefore, with this system the fighter jets are targeted by MANPADs.
While with JDAM kit your fighter jet does not need to be precisely on a particular point to release the bomb. You can target any point from altitude 100 km.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Direct_Attack_Munition JDAM is a kit
Suddenly you pretend to be an expert?! So you did your Google-ing I suppose. Anybody can collect info’s later on pretending to know the subject that he didn’t just few moment s ago. No sense in such conversation and no point talking to you. I don’t like people like you I will not answer any of your comments in the future.