747 as fighter jet

[Toastedlightly]

Originally posted by: tynopik
well needing just one plane to ensure a 100 mile radius of air dominance would be a good start

also the fact that it's bigger means that it can carry more powerful radar (like awacs) which means it can engage enemies further away

and the fact that it would never run low on missiles wouldn't hurt

the massive range means that you wouldn't be limited to vulnerable carriers or relying on a friendly ally to loan you an air base

it also means you can loiter on target for long periods of time, providing immediate ground support to troops in need

the size also means you can carry stuff like counter-missiles and possibly phalanx variants which would protect it from many threats that would scare other planes off

Too cost prohibitive. Thats why we are develolping unmanned fighters and bombers. No need for crew, long range (more fuel space), less losses (no humans in danger), cheaper (less size, "human comfort"). This just wouldnt' be pratical.

 

[Sunbird]

Originally posted by: Toastedlightly
Too cost prohibitive. Thats why we are develolping unmanned fighters and bombers. No need for crew, long range (more fuel space), less losses (no humans in danger), cheaper (less size, "human comfort"). This just wouldnt' be pratical.

Well, they can make an unmanned one, just missiles, engines, wings, radar and computers.

 

[Toastedlightly]

Originally posted by: Sunbird

Originally posted by: Toastedlightly
Too cost prohibitive. Thats why we are develolping unmanned fighters and bombers. No need for crew, long range (more fuel space), less losses (no humans in danger), cheaper (less size, "human comfort"). This just wouldnt' be pratical.

Well, they can make an unmanned one, just missiles, engines, wings, radar and computers.

Then why use the 747 at all? There are more effient shapes that couldn't accomadate humans but would work wonders for this. Think flying wing or something like that.

 

[Sunbird]

He was just using it as a starting premise but nobody around here seems to read (or try to comprehend) posts, in a later post the OP advanced the idea of a diffrent shape/plane type

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: Toastedlightly

Originally posted by: Sunbird

Originally posted by: Toastedlightly
Too cost prohibitive. Thats why we are develolping unmanned fighters and bombers. No need for crew, long range (more fuel space), less losses (no humans in danger), cheaper (less size, "human comfort"). This just wouldnt' be pratical.

Well, they can make an unmanned one, just missiles, engines, wings, radar and computers.

Then why use the 747 at all? There are more effient shapes that couldn't accomadate humans but would work wonders for this. Think flying wing or something like that.

How is the 747 not efficient? We use it to carry passengers and it still is being used after so many years. SImilarly you use it to carry missiles. One 747 could do the work of many "flying wings"

 

[Toastedlightly]

Originally posted by: DLeRium

Originally posted by: Toastedlightly

Originally posted by: Sunbird

Originally posted by: Toastedlightly
Too cost prohibitive. Thats why we are develolping unmanned fighters and bombers. No need for crew, long range (more fuel space), less losses (no humans in danger), cheaper (less size, "human comfort"). This just wouldnt' be pratical.

Well, they can make an unmanned one, just missiles, engines, wings, radar and computers.

Then why use the 747 at all? There are more effient shapes that couldn't accomadate humans but would work wonders for this. Think flying wing or something like that.

How is the 747 not efficient? We use it to carry passengers and it still is being used after so many years. SImilarly you use it to carry missiles. One 747 could do the work of many "flying wings"

Well, if you made a 747 into a personless aircraft, you woudln't need that fuselage. You could use a more effeicent and stronger design (ala flying wing). You could also make it more stealthy, perhaps faster, perhaps more manuverable (beyond the limits of human endurance). use a new airframe if you go unmanned.

 

[Eli]

LOL....

A 747 may as well be a stationary target to a real attack plane.

 

[Toastedlightly]

Originally posted by: Eli
LOL....

A 747 may as well be a stationary target to a real attack plane.

/thread, thanks.

 

[illusion88]

And what happens when it encounters a stealth fighter?

 

[dawheat]

Originally posted by: tynopik
well if you have any constructive criticism i'd be happy to hear it

the survivability aspect seems to have been shot down, but that wasn't a major part of it to begin with

the main arguments seem to consist of:

1. it would be a huge target
2. long range missiles don't exist
3. air-to-air counter missiles don't exist

to last two i would say it's more a case where they haven't been done not that they couldn't be done. there simply hasn't been a need for such a capability in the past so no effort was spent to create them

while there has been a lot of criticism, there has been precious little evidence there this idea is fundamentally unsound

I think the current trend is to move in the complete opposite- relatively small, low cost drone type of aircraft (think Predators on steriods) controlled from the ground holding a relatively small amount of ordinance that can be varied to meet different scenarios.

Why have 1 huge platform when you can have dozens controlled by say, an AWACS aircraft hundreds of miles away. You have much more flexibility, the ability to give a proportional response, and no chance of 1 "freak/lucky" shot taking down your entire arsenal.

What you're proposing is basically a flying Aegis cruiser with a massive phased array radar and a large missle capacity. The current AWACS aircraft already costs well over 300 million, putting in a next generation phased array radar would be painfully expensive not to mention the weapon systems you're imagining.

Investing that type of system and the necessary crew compliment of well over 20 basically means you're not putting that aircraft ANYWHERE near the center of action. It'll be 200 miles off coordinating dozens of other aircraft.

Being in the center of attention potentially means it's near multiple jamming sources which degrade radar performance, attacked by multiple semi-stealth aircraft, and only requiring a single shot to penetrate to disable/destroy the aircraft. Not a high probabilty of survival for a billion dollar aircraft.

 

[tynopik]

> A 747 may as well be a stationary target to a real attack plane.

so is a SAM site, what's your point?

AWACS planes are basically a stationary target to a real attack plane too, but no one seems concerned about their vulnerability

bottom line: if your missiles can engage the enemy farther out, it doesn't matter what your speed or manoueverability are

> And what happens when it encounters a stealth fighter?

stealth isn't visible to radar, but yes, this is predicated on having good enough sensor suite to detect any stealth aircraft it can encounter or facing an opponent that doesn't have any stealth aircraft

 

[tynopik]

> Why have 1 huge platform when you can have dozens controlled by say, an AWACS aircraft hundreds of miles away.

i also consider this a good alternative, if you could have hundreds of cheap drones, each carrying a missile or two that would be difficult to counter

however this fundamentally has the same difficulty, it can only control out as far as it can see. the only difference is that it has missiles 'prepositioned' further out towards the edge of its sensor range. This makes missile flight time less, but has little other effect

however it would still just take one lucky shot to take down your control aircraft

and there is still the question of range. would all those drone be able to take off from kansas and hit anywhere in the world?

i view the 'flock of drones' approach as more suitable to hitting a local target where you want to saturate possible defenses

 

[dawheat]

Originally posted by: tynopik
> Why have 1 huge platform when you can have dozens controlled by say, an AWACS aircraft hundreds of miles away.

i also consider this a good alternative, if you could have hundreds of cheap drones, each carrying a missile or two that would be difficult to counter

however this fundamentally has the same difficulty, it can only control out as far as it can see. the only difference is that it has missiles 'prepositioned' further out towards the edge of its sensor range. This makes missile flight time less, but has little other effect

however it would still just take one lucky shot to take down your control aircraft

and there is still the question of range. would all those drone be able to take off from kansas and hit anywhere in the world?

i view the 'flock of drones' approach as more suitable to hitting a local target where you want to saturate possible defenses

I agree you still need a major radar platform to effectively use these aircraft, but I think a very high value radar platform should be well out of direct action. Why have we never lost an AWACS in action? They're always 150-200 miles off from the action screened by fighters. Bringing down an aircraft headed into your SAM and fighter envelope is a diferent challenge than bringing a sortie against a target 200 miles out protected by multiple aircraft.

Also a radar pumping out that much energy would make targeting it laughably easy- missiles would simply have to aim-in on the radar signal. No need for active transmissions to get a lock- just fire off everything you have at the multi-million watt radar signal. So SAM sites would have a much higher survival rate since some of them could be actively transmitting as the lure, while screened by others passively tracking your aircraft.

Why do you want an aircraft based on Kansas to attack a target thousands of miles away? Having hundreds, if not thousands, of small low cost drones means you can base them local to any conflict spot and bring about rapid response.

 

[jlee]

Air-to-air missiles are designed to track fighters. In order to design a missile to intercept those, you're talking a huge leap of technology just to counter existing technology. You're assuming that while your technology will become superior, the opponent's will remain the same, no? You're also assuming that radar capable of detecting stealth aircraft would exist before stealth technology would improve again - beyond the scope of the newly created radar system.

Quite a stretch of the imagination.

> A 747 may as well be a stationary target to a real attack plane.

so is a SAM site, what's your point?

The USAF can take out a SAM site. That's the point.

 

[tynopik]

> I agree you still need a major radar platform to effectively use these aircraft, but I think a very high value radar platform should be well out of direct action. Why have we never lost an AWACS in action? They're always 150-200 miles off from the action screened by fighters. Brining down an aircraft headed into your SAM and fighter envelope is a diferent challenge than bringing a sortie against a target 200 miles out protected by multiple aircraft.

well i think you definitely have made the most coherent arguments, i'm still not entirely convinced

the fighter screen works because it fires missiles at you while you're still hundreds of miles away from the awacs, well out of engagement range. in the end, does it matter where the missiles came from? if they came from the awacs itself instead of a fighter screen would they not still be as deadly?

> Why do you want an aircraft based on Kansas to attack a target thousands of miles away? Having hundreds, if not thousands, of small low cost drones means you can base them local to any conflict spot and rapid response.

because high value radar platform couldn't be based anywhere

maybe have the drones based locally and have the awacs pick them up en route to the target? that's an interesting idea

> You're assuming that while your technology will become superior, the opponent's will remain the same, no?

i am assuming that we could develop something better than what they could come up with, i mean if we can't maintain technical superiority, this whole exercise is moot

however, remember this is only a backup system. the primary defense is knocking the enemy out before they can get in range to even fire a missile

 

[aigomorla]

first off whats this nonsense about how a 747 can take a missle hit and still fly? i highly doubt it, ur comparing a stinger which is a missle fired from a sholder mounted launcher vs something like a sidewinder, thats like comparing a 30-06 to a .22 cal rifle, ur mixing oranges with tangerines. Also, u ever hear of depresure? the moment the 747 got shot, the whole plane would lose stability, and presure forcing the 747 to drop below 10k feet, thats if it even survived the missle.

Lastly, a simular question was brought up on the sr-71, lets equipt it with missles and make it a fighter! The only problem with this was at full speed the sr-71 would actually outrun the missle hence destroying the whole purpose of arming it, cant shoot something down that goes faster then the missle tracking it.

Your giving ground based sam's too little credit. Sams arent easy to take down like how we see in the movies, by the time the 747 even discovered a hidden sam, its too late, and having that plan travel less then mach 2, good luck running from it.

If this plan was highly cost effective, they would of done it on the b-52's a long time ago. Lastly having a stealth shoot it down is highly unlikely as the US is one of the only countries that even possess stealth.

 

[So]

Newsflash: they tried exactly this at the beginning of WWII -- they thought "hey, if we build a bomber with CRAZY defenses, we have no need for fighters" -- this is what you are describing. Guess what? They had a ~50% casualty rate. The fighters ALWAYS find a way to get through.

 

[Imaginer]

You seriously think that a 747 type of aircraft and airframe can handle the payload you are asking for? AWACS equipment, weapons bays for missiles or bombs, crew and fuel???

Not to mention, the capacity of said weapons wouldnt be much. Despite what you think, if you were to fit all of that on one platform, you will not have enough missiles to keep fighters at bay, missiles can be outmaneuvered, fighters can run circles around the 747 while making swiss cheese of it....

I hate to see such a plane and its takeoff and landing requirements. It would not be that deployable in remote bases and having limited fuel to fly that much stuff would probably limit its range.

 

[0roo0roo]

yup 747 with a frikkin laser beam

 

[Velk]

Originally posted by: tynopik
> A 747 may as well be a stationary target to a real attack plane.

so is a SAM site, what's your point?

SAM sites have a couple of advantages over a 747 like, oh, 30ft of reinforced concrete armor and an exactly 0% chance of falling out of the sky regardless of how much damage they take. They also actually *do* have the advantages you envision with long range missiles and powerful radar and they *STILL* get destroyed by aircraft.

 

[ForumMaster]

Originally posted by: NatePo717
It would be impossible to make a 747 a fighter jet due to it's manuverability. It could be used for long range support but never as a fighter.

true. 747's are slow, and take a lot of time to change direction.

 

[bluestrobe]

Fighters based on simply missles work well. Worked great for the F-4 Phantom in Vietnam using no guns. Ohh wait, thats wrong.

 

[GamerExpress]

Originally posted by: MasterAndCommander
I believe that the US Air Force is using modded 747's the platform for their airborne laser missle defense system.

Yep they are, I watched a show on it the other day on the history channel.

 

[EagleKeeper]

What is being proposed is the equivalent of the Navy carrier.

Not the carrier does not operate on its own. IT has power but has limitations also.

The same would be with an airborn battle ship.

If you want to play theory; read up on some of Dale Browns's Flightof the Old Dog series.
Has what you want to describe based around a B-52

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Originally posted by: tynopik
> I agree you still need a major radar platform to effectively use these aircraft, but I think a very high value radar platform should be well out of direct action. Why have we never lost an AWACS in action? They're always 150-200 miles off from the action screened by fighters. Brining down an aircraft headed into your SAM and fighter envelope is a diferent challenge than bringing a sortie against a target 200 miles out protected by multiple aircraft.

well i think you definitely have made the most coherent arguments, i'm still not entirely convinced

the fighter screen works because it fires missiles at you while you're still hundreds of miles away from the awacs, well out of engagement range. in the end, does it matter where the missiles came from? if they came from the awacs itself instead of a fighter screen would they not still be as deadly?

> Why do you want an aircraft based on Kansas to attack a target thousands of miles away? Having hundreds, if not thousands, of small low cost drones means you can base them local to any conflict spot and rapid response.

because high value radar platform couldn't be based anywhere

maybe have the drones based locally and have the awacs pick them up en route to the target? that's an interesting idea

> You're assuming that while your technology will become superior, the opponent's will remain the same, no?

i am assuming that we could develop something better than what they could come up with, i mean if we can't maintain technical superiority, this whole exercise is moot

however, remember this is only a backup system. the primary defense is knocking the enemy out before they can get in range to even fire a missile

What exactly do ou do for a living? I want to know so I can stay the hell away. You obviously have even less of a clue about tactics than the average person on the street.