Air war: F18s vs. PLAAF

IDonT said:

Y-8 would not get near a CSG to detect it. Once it is detected by E-2 awacs, F-18's will be directed to chase it or shoot it down. Now the fact that there is an E-2 and F-18 operating means that a carrier is nearby, but you still do not know its exact location. Here is an example, if you know the exact location of an E-2, put a 600 nm radius around it and you have the probable location of the carrier. That is a lot of ocean to search. (Approximately 1,130,000 square nautical miles that the carrier could occupy).

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Since this still is F18s vs PLAAF thread, let me interject here. There, you just gave a perfect scenario for the use of f18s. So f18s are sent to chase or shoot down a y-8. But since there are also PLAAFs fighters in the air, the y8 wont be chased away until its fighter cover is destroyed. lets have two scenarios. in first one, there are 8 j11 protecting the y8 and US sends the whatever number of f18s it sees fit. (how many would that be? can we settle on 6? 12?) chinese do not run away but attack. what would happen?

second one: same 8 j11 are protecting but once the f18s are detected they stick to the y8. at the same time, well timed second wave of j11 on afterburners (theyre close to china so they can afford it) flies in to assist just as f18s get in range to start their attack. lets say theres 24 j11s versus those 6? 12? f18s. what would happen? Now, what would happen if the second wave featured not additinal 16 but additional 32 planes? yes, yes, i know its unlikely such a large force would be held in the air in the background, but just bear with me, for the sake of the argument.

the point, in the end, is to evaluate how good/bad would f18s (C and E) do against PLAAF, both when they're matched in numbers and when they're significantly overwhelmed by the number of enemy planes. I am just looking for likely numbers of planes lost on each side, for each version of encounter mentioned here. (6 vs 8?; 12 vs 8?; 6 vs 24?; 12 vs 24?; 6 vs 40?; 12 vs 40?)

yes, of course there are other variables in there, more imporant than numbers of planes but please dont say 'its impossible to tell', offer some figures and explain the process you took to produce those figures. thank you.

bd popeye said:

Miggy..the US is not going to do anything without ECM cover. That's why the USN/USMC team has the Prowlers. They are deploy to Japan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Afghanstian. They suppourt the USAF as well as the USN/USMC team. The Prowler is just not for carriers anymore!

This is the best article I could find about EA-6B deploymnets.

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apparently, everytime i mention the prowler on a carrier, someone says its also land based. when i argue against the land based ones, someone brings up the fact its carrier based.

I KNOW THAT!!!

first off, y-8 electronic warefare vareints would be used in conjunction with plaaf fighters just the same way the ea-6b would be used with f-18s. so its not one sided in the jamming feild.

Well, America's principle is to use sheer numbers along with quality. And China apparently also have lots of those. (While I doubt F-18s from one carrier are really much relative to what China can put out, even right now the F-18 has the edge while the J-10 is on the other side of China.) For that, I won't comment more on this subject directly.

I don't know about the exact efficiency of the Bug, even though from the looks and the paper, it's not good already. And with The F-18C/D, it's probably going to fight like the Bf-109 in Britian.

As for jamming. What about the HQ-9?

MIGleader said:

poeye said that there were ea-6bs in japan america could use. i just shot a hole in that.

of sourse the ea-6b is perfectly carrier capable, but that wouldnt let you do a preliminary strike, as china would expect it.

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EA-6B can be used from any airfield including carriers. And it's range is plenty good. As some has said, it wouldn't act alone. The US has alot of ways to destroy the targets it needs destroyed. Even if China expected it, at this time I doubt if they could adapt.

MIGleader said:

theres absolutly no way to hide a cvbg at sea.

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Yeah, tell that to the Soviets.

sumdud said:

I don't know about the exact efficiency of the Bug, even though from the looks and the paper, it's not good already.

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This is what the Superbug is built for:



Looks like Seapower21 is progressing pretty rapidly. Take a look at SM-6 ERAM plans plus the new capabilities in Hornet weapons delivery. Once you degrade any nations air sortie rate and IADS capabilities enough, the Hornet would be able to do what it does best.

Totoro said:

Seacraft, so are you saying that in your opinion US would NOT use non carrier fighters? So basically we'd have just f18s to battle for air supremacy? Seadog doesn't seem to agree with that...

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The US could use non-carrier aircraft. Depends on things like basing, target selection and logistics and such. At this stage in the game, Chinese fighters would be up against alot of F/A-18C's, F/A-18E's, F-22's, F-15C's, F-14's, F-16's (Taiwan's only), and Taiwanese Mirage fighters. That's a whole lot to deal with over the strait. Moving land based fighters from Japan to Taiwan wouldn't be difficult logistically. With the right fighter suppression and Tanker support, you could use Korea. Depends on a whole lot of factors.

MIGleader said:

apparently, everytime i mention the prowler on a carrier, someone says its also land based. when i argue against the land based ones, someone brings up the fact its carrier based.

I KNOW THAT!!!

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Everytime someone mentions prowlers and ECM, I'm going to mention ARM missiles. Seems like people are forgeting China has these in SAM form (the FT-2000 using the HQ-9 frame, and the FT-2000A using the HQ-2 frame). Since the latter uses the rather ubiqitious and common HQ-2 frame, we can assume that the use of the missile is rather widespread.

It's possible that an airborne emitter can even draw a Kh-31P fired from an MKK or a YJ-91 fired from a JH-7A or J-8H, for a long range air to air kill. Remember these ramjet missiles can be used against ground or even sea targets as well. Let's not forget that China has Harpies (UCAVs with antiradiation function) and may already have copied them.

first off, y-8 electronic warefare vareints would be used in conjunction with plaaf fighters just the same way the ea-6b would be used with f-18s. so its not one sided in the jamming feild.

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You don't seem to remember that any PLAAF Su-27 or Su-30 can carry an ECM pod that can do multipoint jamming. We see these pods all the time in pictures attached at wingtips and interestingly, these pods are much more often seen in pictures of PLAAF Flankers than in RuAF Flankers.

Airshows have also revealed similar ECM pods intended for domestic fighters.

Did anyone incalculate the insignificant risk you expose yourself too, using a jammer?

I don't know, I just red alot of jamming ECM.

The pilot will have to push alot of buttons on the right time, otherwise it will crash and will take him a lot of time to fire just one missile. It, the F18, has one of the highest crash rates!

Of course they are trained, but they themselves admit that there are alot of buttons which keep them busy for too long!

Maybe someone mentioned it already, sorry if so.

Bytheway, is this topic about going to war with CHina (including every possible system,) or just about something specific?

It was supposed to be about something specific but people just avoid giving their own assesments. I dont really understand why is it hard to provide a number out of your own behind. It's not like if you say 10 j11 will be brought down and then war breaks out tomorrow and exact scenario accidentaly happens and 2 or 22 j11s are destroyed - that then ill laugh in your face and scream 'ha ha, you were SO wrong!'. We're not kids.

There's no exact science here. There are so many variables to consider that no person on earth could give you a realistic assesment of the posed problem. But while some people seem to think that's exactly why one shouldn't even bother with the exact number - i say its only for fun! Make an educated guess and supply a number, then we can talk about it and have some fun...

Ok, how bout this then. No US, no China, forget about them. There are two sides, green and purple. And on a whim they decide to battle for honour, in the middle of the ocean. No airbase can be attacked, only air war is allowed. Basically a deathmatch. green side has a chinese made y8, purple side has american made e2. Green side has 24 chinese made j11s with weapons that would be used by PLAAF today, purple side has 12 F18E, with the weapons that would be used by USN today. Pilots are all robots, clones, whatever you wanna call them of exact same potential skill. Just two scenarios. A) greens close in on purples and attack, B) purples close in on greens and attack. How would each scenario end?

oh and if youre wondering why i picked 24 vs 12 ratio, its just something that seems to be right in order to get a fair and equal fight. but thats just me, i wanna hear your view how such a ratio of planes would decide the battle.

IDonT said:

Enhanced High Speed Processor - To handle the increased radar track file and required expansion of display symbol capacity, a high-speed parallel processor is incorporated into the mission computer which expands the active track file by 400% over Group 0. The enhanced high-speed processor equipped L-304 computer allows the E-2C the capability to process more than 2000 tracks.

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what should I make up of this? that the E-2c can track 2000 targets simultaneously? that's really amazing, given that the phalcon can track (accroding to sino defence) only 60 to 100 targets simultaneously. so how exactly could China expecting to close the gap in AWACS when their future AWACS is only on the level of the Phalcon?
To be honest I have my doubts in the numbers provided by sinodenfence. Does anyone happen to have a more accurate estimate?

Eurofighter said:

what should I make up of this? that the E-2c can track 2000 targets simultaneously? that's really amazing, given that the phalcon can track (accroding to sino defence) only 60 to 100 targets simultaneously. so how exactly could China expecting to close the gap in AWACS when their future AWACS is only on the level of the Phalcon?
To be honest I have my doubts in the numbers provided by sinodenfence. Does anyone happen to have a more accurate estimate?

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I don't know where that 60 to 100 came from, but KJ-2000 should be able to track at least 300. I gave my evidence already. Y-8J can track 100 and it has very limited air capability. KJ-2000 should be superior in performance to A-50 Mainstay, because it uses phased array radar. A-50 can track 300 targets, I would think KJ-2000 is at around 400 level. Does anyone know the tracking number for Erieye Hawkeye?

Also, I would think F-18's opponent would be different depending on how far it is off the cost from China. If it is more than 600 KM away, it's main opponent would have to be the flankers. And then it might face the high speed interception of J-8 after that and then it will face J-10s.

Eurofighter said:

what should I make up of this? that the E-2c can track 2000 targets simultaneously? that's really amazing, given that the phalcon can track (accroding to sino defence) only 60 to 100 targets simultaneously. so how exactly could China expecting to close the gap in AWACS when their future AWACS is only on the level of the Phalcon?
To be honest I have my doubts in the numbers provided by sinodenfence. Does anyone happen to have a more accurate estimate?

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The limitations are probably more from computing/processing capability than actual radar performance. The radar on an AEW aircraft can detect thousands of targets, but your computer might not have the processing capability to track each one and put it on display.

Military spec CPU's have high requirements in fault toerance and reliability. I'm sure you could upgrade the CPU and software to a Phalcon system and increase the number of targets it can track, but from a military operator's point of view, you'd probably rather have a slower but proven system that can function under harsh environemental conditions, than a faster commercial CPU that can track more targets, but reboots when it gets too hot.