Considering most dogfights nowadays are using fire-and-forget missiles beyond visual range, what’s stopping a country from saving money on expensive jets and just putting those missiles on, say, a turboprop?
Sure jets are faster, can fly higher and are theoretically more maneuverable, but missile performance seems to be more relevant than fighter performance now. A country with a smaller military budget could afford to build more turboprop airframes and buy more missiles than advanced fighters, and if they don’t expect to have to ever seriously fight anyone, why not ?
Stealth, in this age of BVR being seen last is key. If we were in the 80s you might've been onto something
Is it possible to make propellers stealthy? It's gotta be better than a helocopter.
Theoretically, you could make fabric turboprop out of wood framing. Or an OSB monocoque like spruce goose.
But jet engines are absolutely buried in any stealth jet. And the rotor shaft of a helo is on top.
A turboprop, it's right out front.
Is a wood-propped turboprop a thing? Is it possible to take advantage of it? Why not use an extremely small turbine way back in the plane and shaft it forward, to bury the hard stuff way inside.
Anyway I can't see no Turcano being stealth that's for sure. You'd have to 'block' away from your target at all times, so useless to approach ever at huge ranges. Only get so far then have to fly sideways to loiter and fire.
cos it would look cringe
Missile performance is better when launched from a jet.
Piston engines are more expensive than jet engines.
Meat in wienerpits is stupid and you've clearly not studied the subject so frick off.
You top OP for moronicness. Frick off.
A cheap jet engine can be built for like a third of the cost of a piston engine.
Proofs?
He might be talking about a pulsejet, which is literally a tube that produces thrust by burning fuel.
Not one with decent fuel controls and longevity you idiot non-jet mech larping cretin. Turboprops are "jets with a gearbox and prop" hence also not cheap.
I worked Broncos (328X0 and CUT qual'ed to do the rest) before you were born and studied bug smashers far more than you ever will.
They’re vastly cheaper than jets, both in capital costs and maintenance costs. Additionally they’re much more fuel efficient at low- and medium-altitude flight. Max performance is poor because a 270-kt aircraft will never beat a 480-kt+ one. But if we’re discussing BVR only there’s no reason why a turboprop can’t carry BVR missiles. A Meteor weighs 420 lbs. An AMRAAM is 350 lbs. PL-15 is around 500 lbs. You don’t need a lot of thrust to carry these things off a runway. If you can get an enemy into the no-escape zone of a modern missile they’re basically screwed regardless of thrust.
Pistons require more regular engine overhauls, but they're significantly cheaper, like $20-30k instead of $150-250k+ for a turbofan jet.
Pistons will need overhauls every ~2000 hours, a jet can probably go ~10000 hours or longer without a complete engine overhaul.
Both need regular maintenance and upkeep from trained aircrew/mechanics which is expensive for either type.
At the end of the day, jets are generally quite a bit more expensive due to their generally much more expensive base cost and how much of that you pay during an engine overhaul when they are needed.
Not to mention all the infrastructure a jet needs
You, uh, you know that you just posted a jet. Right?
IDK about that one bud
> The North American Rockwell OV-10 Bronco is an American twin-turboprop light attack and observation aircraft
You know that a turboprop is a jet engine, right?
barely
> the exhaust jet produces about 10% of the total thrust
only if you're the most autistic of autists would you consider a turboprop a jet.
Most people use jet as a stand in for turbofan dude
And they’d be wrong. Especially when the argument is that “jets are bad because infrastructure” whatever the frick that means
In aviation we don't.
When we talk engines, it's very specific and we think you're moronic if you just say "jet" when referring to an engine.
Categories are:
>reciprocating or recip for short
>diesel
>turboprop
>turbofan (low/high bypass)
>turboshaft
>turbojet
Please use these accordingly.
>$150-250k
Whoa whoa there.
Back the frick up.
A complete O/H on a ghetto PT-6 67B turboprop is $550k - $750k (depending on the age of engine). Light O/H is like $180k - $250k.
Also, a 4-bladed propeller O/H is an additional $25k - $48k (depending on how many blades are out of limit).
A turbofan for a small business jet is about the same, but starts getting significantly more expensive as you start adding compressor and turbine disks. Something like a F-16... would be well past $1M.
>piston
Yes, a O/H for a lycoming O-360 would be around $20k - $35k, but that's not really comparable in terms of horsepower.
Let's take the R1820-76D, pretty comparable to the turboprop I mentioned above. It costs about $60k - $80k for O/H.
t. literally have invoices of this shit on my desk at work
t. Currently doing a O/H on a O360 on personal aircraft
t. Used to work on warbirds that had the R1820-76D
Turboprop is a gas turbine driving a propeller. It's still a jet engine.
A jet engine is one which propels the aircraft via a high-velocity stream (i.e. jet) of [typically] exhaust, such as a rocket or turbojet.
A turboprop is, unsurprisingly, a propeller powered by a turbine. It is specifically not a jet because the exhaust stream produces little or none of the propulsive thrust.
Super tuc runs a gas turbine jet engine, it just uses the power to turn a propeller instead of firing thrusters
A jet is not only much better equipped to actually launch the missile, as the Anon above said, but it's also much better at avoiding them too. The more you try to make BVR missiles on a prop plane work the closer you get to a SAM site.
You had this thread last month or the month before.
As was said last time, those small planes have no performance to even get within range of faster jets to fire their missiles.
Those missiles will be fired from a significantly slower speed, meaning they have to expend more of their fuel to get themselves up to a fast enough speed to intercept a target, which will drastically reduce their effective range when compared to an identical missile fired from a fast moving modern jet.
tldr; you're still moronic just like the last time you made this thread.
>you're still moronic just like the last time you made this thread.
Whether you believe it or not, that wasn’t me
I could imagine cheap turboprop drones being used to supplement an ASM engagement quite easily to be honest.
Particularly if they're hugging treetops anyway.
Sure, you lose the height advantage for the missiles potential energy but they're still decent against a slightly weaker peer.
BVR, not ASM, my brain at 4am is fricking moronic.
Though ASM's are also viable it's not what I meant.
it's not about the height advantage you mong it's about the velocity of the launching platform. basic physics.
>decent against a slightly weaker peer
what the frick do you think this is, a video game?!
Its both you moron.
You absolutely can add an extra booster to BVR missiles to get them up 800m/s to 1200, anon.
Why is it every moron with a dumb opinion keeps calling my posts videos games. It's like these people only ever play videogames and it's all they think about.
In a proper war where we are desperate for aircraft there absolutely will be propeller aircraft potentially firing BVR, super Tucano's and the like.
The speed difference between a turboprop and a high-subsonic fighter is 7% of the AMRAAM's speed.
I'll help you anons out. 7% is not much of a difference. There's another 93 percents, you'd need at least 50 percents to make shitall.
>7%
Tuscano goes 370mph
F35 goes 1200
Do the maths properly Black person.
>Those missiles will be fired from a significantly slower speed, meaning they have to expend more of their fuel to get themselves up to a fast enough speed to intercept a target, which will drastically reduce their effective range when compared to an identical missile fired from a fast moving modern jet.
kek no.
>Turboprop @ .54 Mach
>F-16 @ .81 Mach
>Amraam @ 4.0 Mach
I think you are bad at math anon, and this is assuming all jets fire their missiles >600mph, which just ain't the case. I bet it's a minority of cases in air to air combat.
CAn one of you propeller heads clear that up, not that it matters.
>dogfights
>fire and forget beyond visual range
Stupid questions, stupid answers
Because once you stick in all the electronics that you need to get more than a “maybe” percent chance of a hit, your cheap airplane isn’t cheap anymore
Jets need to GTFO of manpads. Prop plane would be a honey pot for manpads.
homie they've been touting this no need for dogfighting myth since the 60's. but Vietnam taught us... well.. we still have dogfights, and if we built our aircraft entirely on BVR, well, we suffered a lot of losses to dogfights as a result in the Vietnam war.
Thats why Air Superiority Fighters became a focus.
Now we're falling for the myth again just because we've been fighting sand Black folk who have no airforce.
Don't bother trying to speak such truth to /k/ommandos. Talk of anything outside the realm of consumer-grade small arms on this site might as well be fiction. For example, we have people here who sincerely believe that China has hypersonic weapons.
Yeah let's learn those lessons from 60 years ago in Vietnam instead of the lessons we learn at Red Flag 4+ times a year every year, the most important one being that without training rules limiting BVR shots, air to air combat will be decided BVR.
what would you rather have
spending more to have dogfighting capabilities you might not ever need
or.. going against China or Russia and losing pilots in dogfights because you decided to cut corners?
Like any other weapon, you want to have capability than you expect to use, rather than come into a situation where having that capability would be really nice, but because you were unprepared you don't have it and now you're dead.
The guns of an aircraft barely shot down anything on both sides. It's more a defensive measure than anything else.
You still want them anyway, as missiles have minimum ranges, you don't want to be the pilot in a less maneuverable plane that has no guns against a more maneuverable and faster jet that does have guns. They'll get too close for you to use missiles and just gun them down, But barring guns, sidewinders are still used and are a shorter range weapon for dogfighting.
Red Flag training exercises are just that
exercises
not actual combat.
Don't cut corners just because training exercises say you can get away with it.
Also go with what happened in actual combat.
I mean look at the Russians actually, they're doing terrible in Ukraine because they cut corners not expecting to ever go against an enemy that can fight back.
I'd much rather overprepare than underprepare and just think "we never fight SU-57's anyway why do we need something that can hold its own against one?"
the cost cutting that has gone on with the idea that we're fighting sand Black folk not Russia and China might bite us in the ass someday
and with the way things are going with China squaring off against Taiwan and Russia being pissed that we keep sending arms to Ukraine and have blocked rail and road access to Kaliningrad, that could be sooner rather than later.
We should aim for what is needed for victory against our most dangerous possible enemies, not just the current third world countries we attack.
Sprey is dead and you will follow. Post dogfight losses, go on, number them and tell me how bad the F-4 was you stupid fricking piece of shit. Surely you have even a single fact to back up a claim that literally every military aviation advancement since the Vietnam war totally misunderstood this dog
fighting truth you're so tapped into.
Probably the only reason we won't be seeing F-35's shot down by SU-57's in dogfights is that the Russians can't afford to make the fricking things
But I do wonder about the F-35 vs the J-20
I suppose we'll see soon.
Turboprops are more fuel efficient and cost nothing per flight hour compared to military jet engines. If it’s just carrying A2A missiles I don’t see the problem. Yes you’re going to be wrekt by A2A fire yourself but I’m assuming that if you’re going this far to save money that you’re going to have to take chances.
What's the point of having a pilot? Just make it a drone while you are at it.
it'd have to be a drone, if you're trying to cut corners like that you're risking pilot lives, because the plane will have 0 maneuverability against missiles fired at it.
It's the future of 70% of air warfare. There will always be a place for manned helicopters and fighters but an armed platform with a dwell time of 9-24 hours that can fire over the horizon and can be flown by multiple people in shifts clearly has advantages. The big one being less loss of experience men if one is shot down. The major drawback being reaction time.
turboprops are slow, would get annihilated in any fight. what you want in a fighter is an afterburning turbojet or even a so called 'turboramjet' for the highest speeds you can get.
rumors are that the new american fighter can supercruise at over mach 2 which offers a massive advantage.
>supercruise at over mach 2 which offers a massive advantage.
"Supercruise" is a meme. In order to achieve a supercruise design goal you have to include a massive engine which produces a huge amount of high-velocity thrust without the afterburner being engaged, which means you pay a weight and fuel consumption penalty ALL THE TIME, not just when you you want to exceed the speed of sound. In real life, military aircraft go supersonic in combat approximately 0% of the time.
The alternative is to build an engine which produces high efficiency lower-velocity thrust for subsonic cruise, with a big fuel-hungry afterburner for when you need to go fast. This means an engine which is lighter, smaller, and more fuel efficient, advantages which are working for you ALL THE TIME because that fuel-hog afterburner is going to get shut off once the gear come up and not get re-engaged until the next takeoff.
The new Adaptive Cycle engines going into the Block 4 F-35s will have the best of both worlds while also being lighter and have a little more maximum thrust.
super cruise is no meme, afterburners are far less efficient than a super cruising engine. and you afterburn after your big supercruising engine to go even faster in combat
>what’s stopping a country from saving money on expensive jets and just putting those missiles on, say, a turboprop
radar guided missiles
>and if they don’t expect to have to ever seriously fight anyone, why not ?
The only thing that's an argument for buying is nothing.
name? Please
Adding on to what others have said, avionics on current aircraft are limited by electrical power generation. A turboprop will not generate as much power as a jet
That's an A-29 Super Tucano
Faster jets = faster missiles
>if they don’t expect to have to ever seriously fight anyone
that's a great way to have to fight someone but at a huge disadvantage
Turboprop cant do air policing, cant catch up with jet airliner or something like that.
Turboprop on pick doesn't have place for good radar and cant lift proper missile load/
The PC-12 radar arrangement would like a word with you.
But I agree with what you're saying.
Roaches so sad they try it
Manned Props still cost more than drones and most cheap drones won't fire the most capable missiles.
>me notching in a turboprop and getting ass blasted cause I can draw a missile out as fast
>we don't need a fighter, just a mobile missile playform
>replace the jet with a turboprop
>make the whole thing remote controlled
we could call it a "drone"