What's going on in India?

[Smitty-48]

Shot down with a Vympel R-73M. Old plane fires new missile, 60 degree off boresight cooled IIR seeker.

Sounds like it was quite the fur ball, 24 Pak jets got bounced by 8 Indian in an ambush.

The Indian Mig-21 shot the F-16 down, then another F-16 shot him down with an AMRAAM.

Shit is on.

May have been Chinese JF-17s involved
https://thediplomat.com/2019/02/has-pak ... -dogfight/

It was Pak F-16's, JF-17's, and Mirage III's

[Smitty-48]

On the Indian side is was four Sukhoi Su-30MKIs, two Mikoyan MiG-21BIS, and two Dassault Mirage 2000

Those are upgraded MiG-21's, the airframe is old, the avionics and weapons are all new.

[Smitty-48]

The MiG-21 is still good for one thing; high speed interceptor.

The Indian Wing Commander apparently dove into the fur ball, saw an F-16 and went after it with the R-73M, two more F-16's turned into him at the merge, he was warned that they were up in the saddle, but he pressed his attack home, which is how the AMRAAM got heem.

He got his A2A kill, but now he is a POW for it. Russian ejection seats are actually excellent.

[Smitty-48]

This is why we don't want the F-35 polluting the USAF. This single-engine budget aircraft that's never really cheap at the end of the day deal is garbage.

F-35 wouldn't even merge, the Paks wouldn't know they were there, they would be watching the Paks through the EODAS, then just hang back and pick them off BVR with the AIM-120C7 using the data link, all passive, the Paks wouldn't even get a hit on the RWR before the missile was no escape zone.

If the F-35 was offensive, the Indians wouldn't see it coming nor going, shit would just blow up and they would be wondering where the fuck that was coming from.

If they sent fighters up, F-35 would just pounce on those as they climbed blind into the kill zone, blam, blam, blam, romeo tango bravo. Like shooting fish in a barrel, the Indians wouldn't even get a vector, death would come from the darkness without warning.

The Panther is a flying assassin, it doesn't bother with dog fights, no need to pull g's when they can't see you.

Panther doesn't fight fair. It's not a sport. The purpose is simply to kill.

If you can do it from a rocking chair, because you can see them, but they can't see you, all the better.

[C-Mag]

What a mishmash of aircraft. 50's early jets to 21st C jets.

We should find us a Claire Chennault character and dust off some old F-4's or F-5's.

[Smitty-48]

There's no 21st century jets.

The best here are Viper, Flanker & Mirage 2000, which are 4th generation from the 1970's

JF-17 is 4th gen too, more 70's tech.

There are only two 21st century jets, Raptor and Panther.

[Smitty-48]

The 21st century jets are information warfare fighters, they don't dominate by dogfight, they dominate be seeing everything without being seen, and having all that they see processed for them, automated OODA loop.

The avionics on the 4th gens are archaic in comparison, 5th Gen is iPhone, 4th Gen is Pong.

F-16 pilots are looking at the same game of Pong they were in 1976, and having to figure all that out in their heads, like it was 1976.

5th Gen is the iPhone presenting all the targets at once and asking you which ones would you like to shoot and in what order, or if you can't make up your mind because you're busy, just say "shoot" and the jet will do it for you.

[brewster]

5th Gen is the iPhone presenting all the targets at once and asking you which ones would you like to shoot and in what order, or if you can't make up your mind because you're busy, just say "shoot" and the jet will do it for you.

Sounds like a strong case for the pilot finally being superfluous. Why not F-35 drones, then there's no pilot to lose to the enemy for them to use as propaganda. If they can jam the coms, can't they jam the coms giving the F-35 superiority anyway?

[Smitty-48]

5th Gen is the iPhone presenting all the targets at once and asking you which ones would you like to shoot and in what order, or if you can't make up your mind because you're busy, just say "shoot" and the jet will do it for you.

Sounds like a strong case for the pilot finally being superfluous. Why not F-35 drones, then there's no pilot to lose to the enemy for them to use as propaganda. If they can jam the coms, can't they jam the coms giving the F-35 superiority anyway?

Because the AI is still more expensive than birthing, raising and training a pilot.

There's nine million lines of code in the sensor fusion engine, taxpayers are already saying that that is too pricey, to make fully autonomous, would be exponentially more lines of code and so exponentially more expensive.

Once the price of AI to do this job comes down, then the pilot will be replaced, but contrary to popular sentiment, that is still a couple decades away, because the AI has to be fully militarized.

[Smitty-48]

Bear in mind, the F-35 was mandated to be F-16 price range, so less than $100 million 2019 dollars per unit flyaway cost, Commander Data would be the most expensive pilot America could buy, so it would far exceed the price point mandated, you'd probably be talking a billion dollars per jet right now, if it was flown by Commander Data.