It seems that Ukies are really getting out a lot out of the Mig 29. For comparison, the israelis were able to achieve 4 sorties per day.
Recently an A-10 squadron managed to get 205 sorties in 3 days, averaging 3 sorties per pilot each day.
They're flying 6 sorties a day. Holy shit.
https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/116729/fighter-squadron-produces-205-sorties-in-three-days/
B-but... every time a plane goes out it has to be inspected fpr damages and have some parts replaced right? Do they just forfeit that or what?
Our fighter squadrons have waaaay more aircraft, manning, funding, and logistical support
What I want to understand is... if each aircraft does 6 sorties a day. how do they manage to do it without turning them into flying coffins.
The same way B52s are still flying. Proper maintenance
A sortie is literally "out and back". If they fly balls to the wall, drop munitions and return quickly they have not stressed the airframe, and can do a "hot pit" where the aircraft is refueled while running, and rearmed while running. Rise and repeat. Basic carrier ops methodology.
How the frick can they do it with the shit life of those russian engines?
Even with good airframes and good maintenance, those things weren't designed to last so much in a high intensity conflict.
They must be rotating and refurbishing engines between several planes.
>P&W F100 has very similar dimensions to the klimov RD-33
i wouldn't worry about it.
Large if factual. I want to believe, but I doubt it.
That poor mig in the OP video looks like an absolute Ship of Mikoyan, with all sorts of parts and replacement pieces cobbled on.
I'd hate to be one of those poor maintainers. They've been working nonstop 24 hours since day zero trying to figure out what they can do to make shit work. The pressure must be unbelievable, a plane lost to the enemy is bad enough but one going down due to mechanical failure would be devastating.
First off anon
>Mig of Theseus
But yeah at this point they have western compatibility for HARMs, JDAMs, and maybe AMRAAMs.
Western engines and AESA coming soon
Imagine being the average ukie mechanic/maintainer. Not only did they have to Black person rig western munitions to their aircraft, the ground guys had to learn how many western ground vehicles? They must be up to 10+ new vehicles that were donated between the spags, ifvs, and tanks.
>That poor mig in the OP video looks like an absolute Ship of Mikoyan
No, Anon. That's how a plane that was "mothballed" for 30 years looks like. It's just decay
This. The new jets will go when the AA is down. they are on 50% 402/800 but its a lower priority than MLRS/Artillery because that's the phase for removing Russia airpower. Also removing Russian airpower can be done when the ground is wet and they need the ground wet to stop the Russian routing with the remaining APCs
Or the checks for airframe integrity, their flight times are probably past life at this point.
Wonder if they're doing those checks and fixing any microcracks.
Thinking they're probably rotating engines since they're down to 6 birds but have a ton of maintainers.
Giant pile of unlimited spares, short range requirements for strike. Basically what the mig was made for. Problems can be alleviated with beefup plates and drill stopping cracks. It gradually adds weight to the plane, but this is wartime, the airframes are gonna be clapped out by the end so they will be used hard and all measures to keep them flying in quick order will be undertaken.
Frick, during the gulf war americans used coke cans and speed tape to patch holes in F-15s. They got painted over on the outside and forgotten about till a depot cycle discovered the patches and laughs were had.
One of our f16s returned with an epoxy patch lmao. One of the guys had it on hand cause they ran low on strip plates(?, not sure what they're called maybe patch plates, was a 3d1x2 not a MX guy) and speed tape during the initial push before logi could finish the main troop drops.
That makes a lot of sense for the shortrange aspect, especially for the amount of sorties they're doing they're experiencing less distance/flight time on the frame compared to us having to do longer treks and longer missions.
F16s would unironically do so much for them in that regard. Viper is a perfect platform for quick sorties and turning and burning(not including significantly better SEAD/DEAD capabilities and a nuclear leap forward in avionics and sensors). Which is benefited by the honestly insane scale of F16 retrofit/refit/spares/upgrades we've developed for 40 years.
I'm a eagle fanboy but have to love the viper as well.
having worked both of them. The F-16 is...not for me. We did a lot of engine in maintenance, changing ECS valves and even a fricking fire loop. The F-16 has a tiny, almost friendly machine soul all sorta common, even across blocks. Like a good dog. The F-15, I fricking swear, be around them long enough and you will learn each one has a personality, and strange needs. F-15 wings are full of hateful alcoholics, and about 10% of the plane's weight is in dried maintainer blood. As you go on, you learn that the blood is what makes the plane work. The parts swapping and repair is just ritual for the sacrifice.
The only planes darker in soul that I got to meet were the B-52s. You will meet them, and know they simply want to end life while they wait to end the world.
oh also: if you are doing any sort of deeper MX, just always pull the fricking engine unless it's an emergency.
>you will learn each one has a personality, and strange needs
Couldn't have said it better myself.
>red ball line 6 for radar
>hey, Anon, 9901 is doing that one thing
>tell the pilot to pull CB A11 and push it in 10 seconds later
>airplane works again
>shoot a bajillion wires and change the only 3 parts that could possibly cause the problem
>works for a week then comes back
This is what happens when you keep throwing mods on an aircraft that was built 40+ years ago. The body may be fine but the soul is in pain. There's a reason the B-52 sucks the life out of the people working on it.
Why airflight mechs talk like techpriests?
We must communicate in very dense terms, in order to say a lot, but specifically, and quickly.
A lot of words are dropped, combined, or abbreviated. Using it all day for 12-14 hours a day, both written and spoken, begins to change you.
"Removed component, and replaced the component, no refurbishment, electrically disconnected, reconnected, tested, in accordance with AFI XYZ.XYZ.XYZ. page, section, para."
or
"R2 XB3 "Relay", electro-disco'd, reco'd, test good."
Words like "Comply.", "Disregard.", "Unsat.", "Sat." are all common.
I worked Avionics. All you do is technology; science is how the jet does its job. There were deep guides on how the systems talk to each other, how they're wired, how the jet knows something's wrong, etc. You cling tight to that science, as it is concrete and infallible.
That is, until you start to notice that the aircraft is doing things that defy your science. Parts that don't have a single wire or signal to each other cause problems between them. Wires stop transmitting despite having perfect continuity even as you shake it violently to re-induce the malfunction. One of the radios just stops working and every single part of the system is changed down to the wire with no change.
Eventually, you understand that your science only does so much. You must accept that there are problems outside of rational thought. The jet is alive, and it craves the sweet release of a grave in Tucson.
>guitar is acting up
>think it's the volume pot
>take it apart, pot looks fine and tests fine
>put it back together, works like new
>week later volume pot starts acting up again
I'm glad I don't have to work on jets, audio equipment is hard enough sometimes
>You must accept that there are problems outside of rational thought.
Usually that's because someone did something stupid and lied about it.
Now I understand how ukies are achieving their insane sortie rates.
It's the planes. Their machine spirits desire to destroy the enemy and refuse to break down until their purpose is served to the utmost extent possible.
Praise omnissiah.
from E&E to you:
Rare occurrence: Female pin is installed backwards on wire at the cannon plug. During cycle of CB micro arc temporarily reconnects pin to the side of the faultily installed female. Landing/ in air vibration results in temporary disconnect/ reconnect while literal temperature fluctuations cause expansion of the metal just enough to sorta make it keep working.
tl/dr: Make someone fully inspect the cannonplug female side to make sure one pin isin't backwards. If that doesn't work, burn a black copy (tome) of the AFI-21-101 which has just been A paged by your newest airman. Capture the smoke in a trashbag and release the smoke into the lowest levels of the plane. After this a drunk AGE troop must "run over" the airman with a tiger truck at a speed not to exceed 8mph. Complete the ritual by calling the individual a "homosexual." while prosuper rubs his balls on the individual's head during the middle of the mid shift. Lastly the MX officer must let the entire squadron know that mandatory 14s are in effect, with obligatory weekend duty, and no notice blues inspection for a DUI that someone know one knows has gotten.
Not a plane, but I drove a FAASV that was inexplicably faster than the others.
They were all the same type of vehicle, made at the same factory, with the same engine and the same armor.
But for whatever reason, she would routinely pull too far ahead in wedges, even though we were all going at top speed.
Vehicles are like this.
I don't know why.
Thanks for the experience anecdotes, it's always funny learning about the weirdness of the jets we utilize, I felt that with the GCS systems I was working with. Crypto ATM switches are a fricking N I G H T M A R E.
I've never seen a piece of tech not only work so flawlessly yet fricking break at even the most minor of inconvenience. Oh your clock skew is 1.5ms over 12 months? No warning, get fricked, I'm dropping the trunk, Mq9 flying blind have fun moron.
Don't even get me started on those bullshit global timezone clocks I genuinely want to find the creator and do shit that would make Dirlwanger blush.
Do miss the f16s afterburner rattling the chest on takeoff, sucks we swapped to the reapers but I got to watch strikes all day everyday for 4ish years so can't complain.
And I used to think tech priests were silly
>coke cans and speed tape to patch holes in F-15s.
Sauce?
not all things are sauceable, some data exists as tacit knowledge, gained by mk 1 eyeball and passed down and eventually lost to history. For what its worth, this lore comes from RAF lakenheath. It comes across like an old episode of macguyver, but sometimes you make do with what you have. Plane can't fly with hole? ok. Why? Aerodyanic drag/ instability. Ok. speed tape is rated for? Nope. Alumium can? Quick call to structures, sheet metal, or metals tech, follow up with maybe AFETS on a "hey in THEORY as a thought exercise..."
In Afghanistan/ 2010 an F-15 had it's wingtip temporarily rebuilt with a locally manufactured equivalent, with the intent to replace it when it got back to base during it's next homestation phase. Normies won't learn all the military lore, sometimes you just gotta be there.
Theres a b-52 that flew over vietnam at the dayton AF museum you can walk through the bomb bay. Bring a machinist scale and start measuring rivet spacing on some of the patches. Totally fricked but kept it in the air.
This plane, in op's video, was the spares. I've been to museums and "graveyard" airfields, the planes there looked exactly like this. Hell, maybe this plane was one of them.
"Can Bird." Short for Cannibalization bird. You start pulling parts and spares off existing airframes to keep others flying. Usually on a plane that will be "down" for a long time, waiting on something big.
Other times it is a terminal process where an airframe is gradually stripped of major non consumable components like engines, weapons, avionics/ radar, various wire harnesses, valves, heat exchangers, tubing, etc. Oh. landing gear.
The structural shit like ribs, panels, wings, flaps, rud, stabs, etc. are usually left last because they don't really break too often. That shit is good for when you need to Frankenstein a plane back together. In this war, they will also serve as decoy assets, you paint them up, truck them around the flightline and throw a diesel heaters in the engine bays for IR signature and a baofeng in the wienerpit for your electrical signature.
I do wonder if any of those Migs are some of the foreign donations like the german/polish 29Gs and if they can keep up better.
This is how: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Лyцкий_peмoнтный_зaвoд
They basically can make new RD-33s
Jesus. Must be literally flying the wings off them.
The wings aren't the problem on the MiG-29, it's the single use only engines.
They only have 6 planes left, so they've got 25 mechanics per plane now.
>They only have 6 planes left, so they've got 25 mechanics per plane now.
6 lol
>Recently
Probably because they have less planes. Less planes in the air means the pilots will have to do extra work in their sorties.
It helps that MiG-29 sorties are 15-20 minutes maximum.
Well simply because they go to the combat zone, fire their missiles/bombs, and then return to be re-armed
….what? Last I read sometime last year Ukies we’re flying around 20 sorties a day and Russians were like 200 a day.
200 sorties a day for a squadron/wing
But to be positive, MiGs can take that abuse while a Western plane would have fallen apart or become prohibitively difficult to maintain and get grounded.
dude, shut the frick up.
If this war has taught me anything, it's that Soviet equipment was nowhere near as good as we were told.
Could be worse, you could be the "owner" of a Eurofighter Typhoon, where you don't actually have any say about your purchased vehicle at all. Imagine the scummiest BMW/Mercedes car dealer times ten.
wat
>Training of Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighters has not yet started.
>Spokesman for the Air Force Command Yurii Ihnat said this on the air of the United News telethon, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
Doesn't sound like they'll get those planes until maybe sometime next year for their next big counteroffensive lol
Of course that's assuming that they'll start training next week, that there aren't any further complications and that the pilots are exceptionally fast learners even when compared to western men.
I'd really like a comfy TV show about the daily life of a Ukie squadron in this war
these guys are legendary tbh
Pajeets like to clown about le Ghoost of Keeev, but the Mig-29s of the 40th Aviation Brigade almost certainly saved the country during the first week of the war. The commander was one of the few that took western intel seriously and ordered the wing airborne right before the invasion, which saved it from the Russian missile saturation. They spent the day chasing off IL-76s and Frogfoots which would've done serious damage to the TDF on the ground. Finally, the airbase ground crews at Vasylkiv had to fend off a VDV airdrop on the base to allow the planes to land and winchester safely.
I can't wait for the war to end and people start telling all the really juicy stories about what went down.
>I can't wait for the war to end and people start telling all the really juicy stories about what went down.
this so much
give the ukies some eurofighters already
no point now. they're getting f16 and maybe gripen if shit really drags on. typhoons were only ever relevant as an escalation gambit for getting buy-in.
Aint no one ''giving'' mfing F-16 for free bro EFT's on the other hand..
>Aint no one ''giving'' mfing F-16 for free
why does that matter? it's not something i said.
the biggest roadblocks with typhoons are that they're already spread thin across the nations that operate them and the logistics network just pales in comparison to what can be provided for a US airframe.
gripens are built for austere conditions and minimal logistics support, but sweden's NATO drama and the issue of quantity again worked to frick up the early suggestions to shove those into the KPS's hands while longer lead-time decisions on shit like F16 were planned.
the whole saga has really underscored that the US is stupidly overpowered in matters of airpower and really the only NATO partner capable of solving ukraine's airforce problems in the longer term.
the UK did assess whether they could peel off some of theirs, and the verdict was no. ben wallace reported the exact figures at some point, and i believe justin bronk and RUSI have other hard numbers on eurofighters and ukraine.
the primary comparative advantage of typhoons is the meteor missile, and one of the very glaring problems with any UK-led typhoon roundup is that they would be drawing from an inventory of airframes that aren't meteor-capable.
mig29 is reliable airplane
ass status of americ**ts: wiener in ass