Question regarding Mirage III

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Aussiegunneragain Senty 10/27/2009 6:41:01 AM

I'm going to nitpick here.

I'm glad somebody else can be bothered because I can't any more. Hamilcar either can't read his own sources or thinks the audience here is stupid enough to fall for him misrepresenting them when he posts. There are a couple more examples of that in his last post, I won't bother pointing them out because I'm sure others have already noticed.

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Hamilcar 10/27/2009 5:06:56 PM

I'm going to nitpick here.

1) The success rate of the Sidewinder and Sparrow in Vietnam was abysmal. That was the formal conclusion of the Ault Report, the AIMVAL/ACEVAL tests, and the Red Baron study. So many USAF air battle stories include "I fired two Sparrows and one/both just fell off the aircraft." The Sidewinder generally worked all right, as long as it was fired within parameters, but those parameters were very tight. To be fair, the drawbacks of the early Sidewinders were no different than any other IR missile at the time. But the Sparrow was a huge disappointment.

ROE was part of Sparrow, but the abysmal signal receiver needed a strong paint from the guiding fighter for a good signal return. That and the missile was shock sensitive meant get close and try to guide quick..

2) The Sparrow was always fired within WVR not because of capability, but because of ROE. There was real fear of fratricide--overblown fear--and thus American fighters always had to visually identify their foes before they fired. There was at least one occasion, in 1967 I believe, where two USN F-4s were cleared for BVR shots, but that was an exception. In 1972, the USAF made a number of BVR Sparrow shots due to the presence of Combat Tree, but again, they were rare.

There was no coding of a fighter's radar signal sufficient at that time to discriminate which signal was a true signal in the missile in those days. Stray signals could confuse a Sparrow. Fraticide was a very real worry. In some ways, I wish Hughes might have continued work on the active radar variant of Sparrow, or maybe Italy on an early Aspide line they abandoned die to costs. Both might have reached the USAF in time for a fire and forget missile in the early 1980s. as a mattwer of discussion sucjh a seeker could still be back-fitted on the thousands of Sparrows we still have.

3) Hamlicar's not correct on the AMRAAM being the first true BVR missile. The Phoenix was most definitely BVR (whether or not it was a reliable BVR is a different story, but it was BVR).

OOPs. it had the fly-out, but could it hit you? And what about the AIM 47 Falcon progenitor? Talk about an optimistic/missile!

4) Don't take everything ACIG says as gospel. They're pretty reliable and Tom Cooper is a great aviation historian, but I've caught some mistakes on the Vietnam kill list, and IMHO he takes far too much of what Iranians say as gospel. Pinch of salt.

True but 10% +/- is fairly good accuracy given the crap data we have.

5) Hamlicar, your hatred for Dassault is just as irrational as BW's worship of it. Henry Ford was an anti-Semitic SOB, but I'm not giving up my F-150.

My reasons for hating Dassault products are based on performance fraud as revealed by operational history. They have an unearned, propagandized reputation for excellence they don't deserve. When even your best customer says you are a fraud, its time to pack it in and start the prosecutions.

Fraud as usual. ...

And FAILURE....

Six years after its first competition, however, the Rafale has yet to book its first export dollar. Future prospects are dim--which can't please French taxpayers, who have already shelled out $40 billion-plus in development and production costs. Says Francis Tusa, who edits the London newsletter Defence Analysis, "It's gotten the reputation of being a loser."

The losing streak started in 2002. That's when the Netherlands chose Lockheed's F-35 over the Rafale, even though that plane isn't due to leave the assembly shop until 2011. Six years ago South Korea picked Boeing's F-15 instead of the Rafale for a $4 billion contract. The process to award a big fighter contract stretches out over years, during which political muscles get flexed and inducements get dangled--sometimes on the up-and-up. In the case of the Seoul buy, Senator Christopher Bond (R--Mo.)--the F-15 plant was in St. Louis--leaned so hard on then-president Kim Dae-jung that even the Pentagon was embarrassed. "It was so rude and crude, we had to cover our eyes," says a retired U.S. general. The French still bel

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