And Now For Something Completely Different Part 2

Today's Stop: National Museum of Naval Aviation
As a change of pace, and to allow me time to do some research on a major project I have going right now, I thought we'd get away from the daily grind of smacking down "F-35 Hater" stories and post a series of travel pics from some various museums I've visited in the last year.

These were taken in the middle of last month. I really like the NMNA, it is one of the few around that have sufficient light for most picture taking. This was the first time in 20 years or so that I've been back. The last time, the main building was finished but there were rare treasures sitting in the uncut grass outside. The Chief and I spent 5 hours there this time and we could have spent even more time. We will be back

P.S. If you see 'ghosts' it is because I'm using Photoshop to merge photos into collages and panoramas.



USMC S4C Scout on Floats

 







NC-4 Seaplane. 6 Engines: 3 Pushin', 3 Pullin'



Underneath the seaplane wing we find a Boeing F-4B

 

Sopwith Camel

The Navy obtained six Camels after WWI for experiments performed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, operating planes aboard ship using wooden platforms built over the forward turret guns of battleships.  this plane has markings replicating those of a Camel operating off the Battleship TEXAS.  Normally, launched aircraft were flown ashore, but were also equipped with inflatable air bags underneath the wings to keep the aircraft afloat in the event of a water landing.

 

"Pacific Maintenance", FM-2 Wildcat

I really enjoy dioramas like this one.

 

PBY Catalina

The museum has a great full-size 'cutaway' display of a PBY. Can you imagine loooong patrols with the engines (hopefully) droning? I never knew about the 'penthouse' station at the wing attachment point.

 

A-1 Skyraider

They had a few different versions of the 'SPAD' on display. Note here and elsewhere the tail-hooks of planes past used for sign stanchions. This highlights another great thing about this museum: the ability to get close to the exhibits and REALLY see them.

 





Lockheed TV-2 : Two Seat, Carrier Operable, version of the Air Force P-80



In reality, this is an Air Force T-33 modified to replicate a TV-2. The Navy acquired quite a few of the TV-2s as their first jet trainer, so it is kind of surprising they didn't have a real one available to display. How'd you like to have to polish it while asea?

 

Upper Deck Panorama: Lockheed L-10 Electra Center, JRC-1 Left 

The JRC-1 was the Navy's version of the Cessna T-50, the Army Air Force's AT-17

 

 

Lunch at the 'Cubi Bar Café'

When the Navy shut down operations at Subic Bay, the museum requested some mementos for posterity. What they got was the whole bar, now the museum's restaurant. Food was good, reasonably priced and the atmosphere priceless.

 

Check out the National Museum of Naval Aviation virtual tour here. 

Elitists Lament: Their Kind Do Not Serve (Awwwww)

Andrew Bacevich and Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo Call for Compulsory Service

That means 'The Draft' boyo's  

Hat tip Instapundit (where I pretty much left this post as comment, plus of minus)

Cripes. Not this again...

Some reporter is buying into and spreading Andrew Bacevich's call for the return of the draft/universal service.

      It has been my experience that when this unhinged call for the return of the draft and 'universal' service comes from a Veteran, it invariably comes from draft-era Veterans, almost certainly Army, and usually sporting an advanced liberal-arts degree: all pinin' for those egalitarian days of yore... that never were.
      I enlisted in 1972 at 18, when they were only drafting 19 year olds and up. I entered into an Air Force full of people who didn't want to be there but they were there because they REALLY didn't want to be in the Army. I can't describe how much better it was being in the Air Force after all the draftees who didn't want to be there left. good unit cohesion, high esprit de corps, and generally all around good times, with a miniscule fraction of the number of problem-children, for 20 years --right on through Desert Storm and early Somalia when I retired. NOBODY who ever served in both a draft-era and post-draft era military misses the former. Cucolo wasn't there - he hasn't a clue.

800 Pound Gorilla...
     Which brings us to the 800-pound Gorilla in the room that is REALLY bothering guys like Bacevich: What they really lament deep down in their gut is that those from their neck of the political woods, all the so-called 'elites' (actually self-proclaimed 'exclusives' IMHO) DON'T feel the call to service themselves. So instead of promoting the "everybody in the pool" mentality that will make everyone unhappy, he needs to start finding a fix to the 'wrong' of a political class that by and large does not feel a 'call' to duty of any kind.

'Dorky Pants' Thinking...
     If there is a  gulf between the military and community where you live, chances are you are in a Blue State or a nice big Blue City. Given that most of the military come from the 'Red' states (and Southern ones at that), the problem isn't about the communities where most of the military come from, it's about those who don't join, where they live and WHY they don't. Bacevich's call for universal service falls under what I like to refer to as the Dogbert School of Thought, AKA the 'Dorky Pants Solution'.

Gee Andrew....EVERY "American"? 
     Oh yeah! He 'coincidentally' has a new book out: “Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.”

     Bacevich calls himself a Conservative, because y' know, nothing screams 'Conservative' like COMPULSORY SERVICE.(/sarc). 

     That boy's got a Fascist streak eating away at him that I can't abide.

And Now For Something Completely Different Part 1

As a change of pace, and to allow me time to do some research on a major project I have going right now, I thought we'd get away from the daily grind of smacking down "F-35 Hater" stories and post  a series of travel pics from some various museums I've visited in the last year. I went to the Kimbell last weekend to see the Wari exhibit, but I don't think the regulars here will be that interested in Pre-Incan art so I'll be sticking to just the aerospace museums in this series. Some/most of these should stretch under the sidebar so click on those pics to see unobstructed views,

Here's a few pics, including panoramas I constructed out of multiple photo shots of the Robins AFB Museum in Georgia. These displays are all restored by, and the museum staffed by volunteers.

Enjoy!  

 The F-15 is Featured in the Main Museum Building Hall.

As you can see from the tables, the Museum hosts outside functions

SA-2 5 'Gammon' Missile. Very Big. Flies Very High and Very Fast

Thank goodness they are largely immobile targets, otherwise we'd probably have to deal with later versions evolved from this type. Thanks to new reader RM in the comments for tipping me on my unforced error, corrected 12/22/13. I should have looked more closely at my own picture archive:



Tacit Rainbow. The text below the missile  is a politically-correct (i.e. LIE) version of why it was cancelled


A man never forgets his first REALLY classified program.




The Remaining Specially-Modified C-130 Modified for a Never Attempted Iranian Hostage Rescue Mission (Corrosion Abounds)





 

This C-130 is still doing better than the one tragically lost in Flight Test (Takes you to YouTube video of the accident).


Neither C-130 nor Placard are Not Faring Well in the Georgia Heat and Humidity 

F-35 Critics: Same Sh*t, Different Century

Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One Before

(Update with the missing bits filled in and additional content after the original post below)

Fill in the Blanks:

Despite its ability to dominate the XX arena, the F-XX attracted a vocal and influential group of detractors who continued to fight a battle for small, cheap dogfighters. Gathering advocates from several walks of life, a splinter group of congressmen, journalists, aircraft designers, former fighter pilots, and military analysts marched under the banner of XX XX XX XX to demonstrate the folly of the F-XX…

...The XX who focused on money saw the F-XX as too expensive at $XX million, seven times the cost of an F-XX and twenty times the cost of an F-XX. They further argued that the airplane was XX XX and easy to XX that the pilot of a XX F-XX XX fighter could easily get inside the F-XX pilot’s OODA loop and wreak havoc. Ironically, the very argument XX XX used proved the case against them. The XX was XX, but its XX and superb XX not only gave the F–XX pilot the first chance to observe, orient, and decide, they also gave him the first chance to act. The XX had good arguments, but they were based on old information. A new paradigm XX XX, and it was the paradigm of a very large battlefield, with reliable missiles that could truly “reach out and touch someone.”

Hint: There is no correlation to word length and number of X's, 'XX' was used for every blank.

I’ll fill in the gap and blanks, along with the paragraph that followed and a link to the source tomorrow night.

Everything about warfare changes over time,,,,except 'man' 

And yes, I meant for the panorama pic to 'go wide'. Everything was too small otherwise

*********End of Original Post :: Update Below*********

  

The original of the excerpt above at the source reads:

Despite its ability to dominate the aerial arena, the F–15 attracted a vocal and influential group of detractors who continued to fight a battle for small, cheap dogfighters. Gathering advocates from several walks of life, a splinter group of congressmen, journalists, aircraft designers, former fighter pilots, and military analysts marched under the banner of the Military Reform Caucus to demonstrate the folly of the F–15. James Fallows eloquently expressed their credo in his best-selling book, National Defense. The reformers who focused on money saw the F–15 as too expensive at $20 million, seven times the cost of an F–4 and twenty times the cost of an F–5. They further argued that the airplane was so big and easy to see that the pilot of a small F–5-sized fighter could easily get inside the F–15 pilot’s OODA loop and wreak havoc. Ironically, the very argument the reformers used proved the case against them. The Eagle was big, but its radar and superb missiles not only gave the F–15 pilot the first chance to observe, orient, and decide, they also gave him the first chance to act. The reformers had good arguments, but they were based on old information. A new paradigm was emerging, and it was the paradigm of a very large battlefield, with reliable missiles that could truly “reach out and touch someone.”  

From: SIERRA HOTEL: FLYI NG AIR FORCE FIGHTERS IN THE DECADE AFTER VIET AM  by C.R. Anderegg., Pg 164.

What immediately followed the above was of interest as well:

This did not mean that the day of the dogfight was over—far from it.

Aggressors often found a way to deceive and befuddle Eagle pilots, and the huge F–15s could end up in a tiny furball with the little F–5s. Nonetheless, the battle arena was getting larger, and the training was improving as dissimilar air combat training spread to every Air Force fighter unit. To many, the issue was starting to change from who had the best hands to who had the best head. A new fighter force with new jets, new missiles, and new ideas was starting to define the parameters for aerial combat at the end of the twentieth century.

I've never heard anyone knowledgeable on the subject ever claim that the close in dogfight will never happen - It's just that now it will happen only after a lot of other things that you have to worry about first, that will kill you first, just to even get to the 'merge'

“If you come straight down the snot locker today, I will shoot two Sparrows at you and call you dead. If I am out of Sparrows, I will rip your lips off with a Lima [AIM-9L]before you can get to the merge. Questions?”

In reading Anderegg's accounts (written in 1999) of the relative dogfighting capabilities of the F-4, F-16 and F-15, there is a passage (pg.163) of particular interest to me:

At the F–4 Fighter Weapons School, Larry Keith and his band of radical, firebrand tactical thinkers—led by Joe Bob Phillips, Ron Keys, John Jumper, Dick Myers, Buzz Buzze, Tom Dyches, Jack Sornberger, Dave Dellwardt, and others—pressed hard to devise scenarios that honored the threat of a Sparrow streaking out at long range. Theirs was a losing battle, though, because the Sparrow’s record was dismal on the F–4. In the early 1970s, if an F–4 pilot briefed his adversary that a Sparrow shot from ten miles would be counted as a kill, he would be laughed out of the briefing room with hoots of “Get a grip,” or “You need a tally on reality.”

Gradually, though, the impact of the F–15’s combat capabilities started to sink in across the fighter forces. When F–15s from Langley went to Eglin to shoot missiles in WSEP over the Gulf, the AIM–7F success rate was four to five times higher than it had been on the F–4. Even more astounding was the success rate for the AIM–9L, which confirmed the engineers’ hopes for a one-shot-one-kill weapon.

It was a good thing the F–15 systems proved to be reliable at long range, because the aircraft sometimes did not do well in the classic, roiling dogfights. The F–15 was more powerful and more agile than any other fighter in the world. However, it was also the biggest fighter and very easy to see. When nose on, it had a relatively low visual profile, but as soon as it began turning, its enormous wing could be seen for miles. Some called it the “flying tennis court;” others called it “Big Bird.” F–4 pilots and WSOs licked their chops at the opportunity to get in a fight with Eagles before the F–15 got the Lima. The WSOs especially made no effort to hide their disdain for the new, single-seat jet. One Langley F–15 pilot went on a tour of F–4 bases to brief crews on what the new Eagle could do.

He was stunned to find that F–4 back-seaters at every stop could only focus on how the new jet would die wholesale in combat because it did not have that extra set of eyes to watch for threats.

Ultimately, the Eagle pilots could not be denied. They started walking into briefing rooms and telling their adversaries, “If you come straight down the snot locker today, I will shoot two Sparrows at you and call you dead. If I am out of Sparrows, I will rip your lips off with a Lima before you can get to the merge. Questions?"

In response, adversaries studied the lessons learned by AIMVAL-ACEVAL pilots on how to survive in an all-aspect missile environment. As the reliability of the missiles improved, the culture of long-range missiles slowly spread throughout the fighter force. Of course, clever pilots developed ways to defeat some of the long-range shots, but as they devised one counter, the F–15s developed new techniques based on the lessons of formation discipline, radio discipline, radar discipline, and shot discipline learned in the weapons schools and at ACEVALAIMVAL. The cycle of counter vs. counter vs. counter continued, but the fight did not start at 1,000 feet range as in the days of “40-second Boyd.” The struggle was starting while the adversaries were thirty miles apart, and the F–15 pilots were seriously intent on killing every adversary pre-merge.

The above (and the rest of Sierra Hotel) was interesting to me this time around for different reasons than the first time I read it. It is a fair summary of the difference between air combat capabilities in John Boyd's era and the present. If you read the whole book and a few other sources, you come to start clicking off in your mind things about the F-22 and F-35 that bring the fight to an even higher level. Things like what enables F-16s to even find F-15s in the first place to get a first visual is the radar and ground/AWACs control. This is not an option against the F-22 or F-35 if you are not flying in a 5th Gen fighter. Another is the ability of the F-35 to track, sort, an maintain contact with far more targets at one time without losing lock in the merge: the F-35's sensor fusion removes the ability of one 'Red Force' opponent to 'sneak by' while their opponents are otherwise occupied. I've said elsewhere that a plane with the F-35's capabilities (systems, range, stealth) won't be 'fought' like fighters of the past. Think of F-35s being fought as a pack of "wolves" or "velociraptors": the opponents will see what the F-35 drivers want them to see... and get shot down by the F-35 they don't see.

I 'do' game theory.

One of the most important facets of any game is 'who gets the last move?' Low observability, while employing techniques and hardware that enable you to keep situational awareness at all times, virtually assures you get the 'last move', and outside of bad luck or negligence you should get the first move as well.


Bonus! Know Your Reformer Sidebar:

James Fallows: Just another Liberal, Know-Nothing, Blowhard.

If you had to pick one person to blame for the lingering after effects of the so-called Military Reform Movement, you might have to pick James Fallows, I am in agreement with these parts (and most of the rest) of Marshall L. Michel III's  Doctoral Thesis as it frames James Fallows' role in bringing the Reformer Pox into the public domain and upon us (emphasis mine):

The problems with the F-15 led to heavier and heavier criticism from a small but vocal group of defense Critics who maintained America needed larger numbers of less costly systems, but their calls generally went unheeded until the liberal journalist and neoliberal James Fallows joined the Critics’ ranks in 1979. Fallows was anti-military and a perfect example of Samuel Huntington'’s thesis of significant tension between American liberal beliefs and the naturally conservative military establishment. At the time, Fallows was researching an article for The Atlantic Monthly considering new ideas about how to cut the military budget, and to find those who agreed with this view he went out on the “fringes” of the defense establishment. He became interested in the Critics, whom he found “kookie but convincing.” In the resulting October 1979 article, “Muscle Bound Superpower,” and later works Fallows decreed the Critics were military combat “experts” and unquestioningly took up their basic arguments: the American national defense strategy was flawed because the military leadership was incompetent, the weapons acquisition process corrupt, and high defense budgets were linked to high inflation; what America needed was a new strategy that embraced a much greater number of simple, reliable, and less expensive systems. Unspoken was the idea that the money saved would go into social programs. (Pgs 8-9)

and...

Because Fallows believed that the large defense budgets were caused by “experts,” he eschewed anyone who was seriously associated with the defense establishment because they would understand, if not agree with, the philosophy behind the weapons the military was procuring. He also knew -- or sensed as a reporter that as Samuel Huntington noted, Americans love “defense iconoclasts and military mavericks.” To find them, Fallows later said he “deliberately left the mainstream of defense analysis and moved towards the fringe.(Pgs 295-296)

What a schmuck.

Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki

A most moral use of force.

H/T Instapundit

Glen Reynolds offers two excellent links to outstanding and most timely content content for our review and reflection.

The first, is from the late Paul Fussell, whom I've never quite forgiven for his little book "The Boys Crusade" (a 'stain' on an otherwise quite good collection of work IMHO), but I set that aside to recommend the 'Insta-linked'  Thank God for the Atomic Bomb .

At the second link, Bill Whittle delivers a timeless, crushing body-blow to the 'revisionists' who grow bolder as age and time overtake our WW2 veterans and their memories.

 

Happy 2013!

Hope Springs Eternal...

Smacking Down Gun-Grabber's (Cough) 'Reasons' (Cough)

Hat-tip to Instapundit (who is bumping this story to keep it in view).

Larry Correia.  Source

The author Larry Correia got his start in writing by 'self-publishing' a young adult fantasy best-seller that got the attention of mainstream publishing. But before that, he was firmly established in firearms and law enforcement circles. He's got a GREAT summary of all the intellectually effete 'anti-gun' crowd's so-called 'arguments' once again being trotted out in the wake of the latest mass murder of innocent children and teachers at Sandy Hook elementary.


Correia's blog post can be read in its entirety here, but here's his conclusion: 

In conclusion, basically it doesn’t really matter what something you pick when some politician or pundit starts screaming we’ve got to do something, because in reality, most of them already know a lot of what I listed above. The ones who are walking around with their security details of well-armed men in their well-guarded government buildings really don’t care about actually stopping mass shooters or bad guys, they care about giving themselves more power and increasing their control.  

If a bad guy used a gun with a big magazine, ban magazines. If instead he used more guns, ban owning multiple guns. If he used a more powerful gun with less shots, ban powerful guns. If he used hollowpoints, ban hollowpoints. (which I didn’t get into, but once again, there’s a reason everybody who might have to shoot somebody uses them). If he ignored some Gun Free Zone, make more places Gun Free Zones. If he killed a bunch of innocents, make sure you disarm the innocents even harder for next time. Just in case, let’s ban other guns that weren’t even involved in any crimes, just because they’re too big, too small, too ugly, too cute, too long, too short, too fat, too thin, (and if you think I’m joking I can point out a law or proposed law for each of those) but most of all ban anything which makes some politician irrationally afraid, which luckily, is pretty much everything.  

They will never be happy. In countries where they have already banned guns, now they are banning knives and putting cameras on every street. They talk about compromise, but it is never a compromise. It is never, wow, you offer a quick, easy, inexpensive, viable solution to ending mass shootings in schools, let’s try that. It is always, what can we take from you this time, or what will enable us to grow some federal apparatus? 

Then regular criminals will go on still not caring, the next mass shooter will watch the last mass shooter be the most famous person in the world on TV, the media will keep on vilifying the people who actually do the most to defend the innocent, the ignorant will call people like me names and tell us we must like dead babies, and nothing actually changes to protect our kids.  

If you are serious about actually stopping school shootings, contact your state representative and tell them to look into allowing someone at your kid’s school to be armed. It is time to install some speed bumps.

As 'they' say, go to the link and read it all.

Gun Control

As chance would have it, yesterday was my Texas Concealed Handgun Law training course and qualification.  Two nights before, I was studying the latest Texas CHL manual online, and wincing as I went over the parts that delineated the 'gun free zone' areas, and thinking, in the wake of the Oregon mall shooting, in most cases it is pretty stupid to create what is actually a 'target rich environment' zone for the sick and twisted who would try and commit mass killing of innocent others.
While the rest of my family spent the day trying to avoid all the 'news' and constant revision thereof, concerning the elementary school killings that happened the day before, one of the first things we covered was WHY Texas was a CHL  'shall issue' state. Surprise! It was largely the result of  a mass killing, the Luby's Cafeteria Massacre on October 16, 1991, in Killeen, Texas, and the efforts of one of the survivors, Suzanna Gratia Hupp. Ms. Hupp's story and energy in making the laws more protective of the individual was a powerful weapon. Her testimony before Congress even managed to subdue the perennially pompous a** Chuck Schumer for a time:

Time will tell if Chuckie starts bloviating again as if the above never happened.

This was my Target and Scoring Used

Texas uses the B-27 target for qualification:

This is the Course of Fire:

Stage 1: Twenty shots (20) will be fired from 3 yards.
A. Five (5) shots fired in a “One Shot Exercise” 2 seconds allowed.
B. Ten shots (10) fired in a “Two Shot Exercise” 3 seconds allowed.
C. Five (5) shots fired in 10 seconds

Stage 2: Twenty shots (20) will be fired from 7 yards – fired 5 stages.
A. Five (5) shots will be fired in 10 seconds
B. Five (5) shots will be fired in 2 stages:
  1. Two (2) shots will be fired in 4 seconds
  2. Three (3) shots will be fired in 6 seconds
C. Five (5) shots fired in a “One Shot Exercise” 3 seconds allowed.
D. Five (5) shots fired in 15 seconds.

Stage 3: Ten shots (10) fired from 15 yards – fired in two 5-shot strings.
A. Five (5) shots fired in two stages:
   1. Two (2) shots fired in 6 seconds.
   2. Three (3) shots fired in 9 seconds.
B. Five (5) shots fired in 15 seconds.

This was my 'grouping':

IMHO, not bad, especially since the 50 rounds represent about a fifth of all the rounds I've put downrange with this weapon. I've decided it shoots a 'tidge to the right and will be adjusting the sight appropriately.

This was my 'score':

Texas only records Pass/Fail. The 249 out of 250 only serves to make this shooter cry in his beer. 'Dang! So close...'.  I took comfort in acing the written though.

The above is an example of  'Gun Control'

BTW, Have you heard? Evidently the Oregon Mall shooter only shot two people before he took his own life BECAUSE he was confronted by a person licensed to 'concealed carry'. 

 

LRS "News"? Pffft -- What is Old Is New Again

Dave Majumdar at Flight Global has commentary (but no link such as this)  concerning an aircraft design patent application by Northrop Grumman. He speculates a bit as to its relevance to a possible Long Range Strike design that NG may, or may not, have in the works.

This design concept is not 'New'.

Popular Science used an artist's concept of the design as a visual aid to discuss (poorly) potential advancements and their relevance:

But before that, (March 2009) John Croft at Flight Global noted the filing of the patent:

And in December 2007, Graham Warwick ALSO had a Flight Global post up commenting on an non-LRS application for apparently the same design: the "Speed Agile" project.:

(The canards make sense for a STOL airlifter more than anything else.)

Modularity Smodularity

As to Dave's "Interestingly, one of the big innovations was that it was designed for modular construction--which could make it less ungodly expensive" line, I note that the design 'modularity' looks almost JUST like the B-2's design approach. Note that MOST of the B-2 was assembled from modules built outside then-Northrop:

In case it needs to be said, again, the reason the B-2 became 'ungodly expensive' is ONLY because of two reasons:
1. The late change in requirements that tasked Northrop to build a bomber that could also fly low-level instead of the initial requirement for only high-altitude operation. This late requirement forced a redesign and stretched the development schedule.
2. The 'buy' getting cut from 132 bombers to 20 bombers. this was by far the biggest cost contributor to the whole program. 
       

Oh Noes! Bill Sweetman Keeps Bringing back the 80's

Looks like another generation gets to deal with the problem child that won't grow up. 

CUDA vs. SHOULDA (NOT)

I'm still working on 'guesstimates' of the performance and design nuances of the LM in-house CUDA missile project. It's not a 'secret program' and from what I can tell, not even a government program. (Though there is almost certainly some classified technology involved about which I won't hazard to even guess about in private). From all indications so far, based upon the verbiage I've seen, the 'difficulty' the LM marketeers are having in releasing info is related to 'Proprietary' concerns. If I find out otherwise, I'll probably drop it and STFU.

Contrast talking about a company-funded concept slow-leaked by the marketing department, with Bill Sweetman's latest offal.

A few observations ought to sufficiently express my... distaste shall we say, with anyone actively trying to delve into national secrets as if it is either some noble public service or even a respectable endeavor.

"Sources"

The 'sources'  who can't be  named should be tried and shot if they're 'credible' at all. If they are 'credible' they are probably Congressional Staffers, or people who have a habit of stroking Staffer egos they should be shot twice.

Texas Sharpshooter Approach 

Sweetman covers a lot of speculative ground concerning what might be black budget activities. he throws enough up against the wall and he MIGHT get something close to right that he can point to later. He's probably hoping he does better than he did in the 80's and 90's. I'm hoping he keeps repeating the Aurora and Stealth Aircraft debacles.

Love/Hate

I usually LOVE Sweetman's retrospectives on historical aircraft or aircraft already in the public eye. That which I don't like is whenever he substitutes 'narrative' for actual 'history'.  It's his speculative stuff that serves no purpose other than to perhaps reveal or point to secrets that those responsible for the defense of the nation have deemed necessary to keep secret, that drove us up the wall in the 80s-00's.

The Cognitive Dissonance of  Lamenting High Defense Budgets While Subverting Defense Program Objectives

Has Bill Sweetman EVER pondered how much of the utility of the U-2 and  SR-71 and their relatively long service lives were due to the secrecy that surrounded them? Has he ever postulated how many weapons programs didn't NEED to be developed, so long as the SR-71 was effective?

The Next Generation Warrior's Burden: It's 'CRAPTASTIC'!

Looks like an entirely new generation of weapon system developers and secret squirrels gets to deal with Sweetman's overwrought hand-wringing ( Is There Too Much Secrecy? Answer: NO.), perennial heavy-handed fishing expeditions, and fanboy fellow-travellers propagating his mythology across the world wide web.

BTW: I winder if ole' Bill even noticed the irony of sharing the byline on this piece with a guy... in China?  Who needs Wikileaks when we've still got AvLeak?

Air Force Magazine on the Latest From the F-35 Program Vaults: Part 3

Part 3 of what looks like...yep, 3

Part 2 Here

Solomon over at SNAFU! posted a piece centering on an excerpt from an Air Force Magazine article “The F-35’s Race Against Time” (November 2012 issue). I had read it already, and didn’t see anything ‘earth-shattering’ at the time. But with Sol’s posting, it occurred to me that it would probably become more interesting to people the further you got away from those familiar with the current state of aeronautics, and it may draw secondary comments from the anti-JSFers to boot.

 Situational Awareness? You need Data AND Understanding  (Source: www:SLDinfo.com)

Networking & Situational Awareness

As F-35s criss-cross enemy airspace, they also will automatically collect vast amounts of data about the disposition of enemy forces. They will, much like the JSTARS, collect ground moving target imagery and pass the data through electronic links to the entire force. This means the F-35 will be able to silently and stealthily transmit information and instructions to dispersed forces, in the air and on the ground.

I don’t think at this time we can possibly overemphasize how the F-35 systems allow a pilot to gain and exploit superior situational awareness relative to legacy systems nor how much an edge it gives to any F-35 on the network. So I’m going to refer to Barry Watts’ excellent McNair Paper “Clausewitzian Friction and Future War” (Updated PDF version here) for insight on what this means in terms of reducing Clausewitzian Friction for F-35 drivers while increasing the same for their opponents. In the early part of his Chapter 9, Watts leans heavily on R.L. Shaw’s classic "Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering,"but there is much after it that I’ve read nowhere else.

I’m asking for a slight indulgence here. I’m going to beat a dead horse to again drive home a point the advocates of simple lightweight and ultra-maneuverable fighters NEVER come to grips with: ‘first look’ (almost always) equals ‘first kill’. [To keep clear which quotes are from where, Watts quotes are normal font and the AF magazine quotes are in italics]

What factors have tended to drive engagement outcomes in air-to-air combat? Surprise was linked to general friction in chapter 6. Air combat experience going at least back to World War II suggests that surprise in the form of the unseen attacker has been pivotal in three-quarters or more of the kills. In writing about his experiences flying long-range escort missions over northern Europe with the U.S. Eighth Air Force, P–38 pilot Mark Hubbard stressed that “90 percent of all fighters shot down never saw the guy who hit them.” Hubbard was by no means alone in observing that friction in the form of the unseen attacker from six o’clock played a dominant role in engagement outcomes. The American P–47 pilot Hubert Zemke (17.75 air-to-air kills in World War II) stressed that “few pilots are shot down by enemies they see.” Similarly, the German Me-109 pilot Erich Hartmann, whose 352 kills during World War II made him the top scorer of all time, later stated that he was “sure that 80 percent of kills never knew he was there before he opened fire.”

Subsequent technological developments in the means of air-to-air combat did not change the basic pattern observed by Hubbard, Zemke, and Hartmann during World War II. These developments include the shift to jet fighters for air superiority during the Korean War, the advent of infrared air-to-air missiles by the mid-1950s, and the appearance of radar-guided air-to-air missiles in time for American use in the Vietnam War. The best combat data are from the American involvement in Southeast Asia. From April 1965 to January 1973, American aircrews experienced more than “decisive” air-to-air engagements, meaning encounters in which at least one U.S. or North Vietnamese aircraft was destroyed. These engagements produced some 190 aerial kills of North Vietnamese fighters against 92 American losses. Detailed reconstructions of the 112 decisive engagements from December 18, 1971, to January 12, 1973, revealed that 81 percent of all aircrews downed on both sides either were unaware of the attack, or else did not become aware in time to take effective defensive action. In the jargon of contemporary American aircrews, such failures to be sufficiently cognizant of what is taking place in the combat area around one to avoid being shot by an unseen or unnoticed adversary have come to be described as a breakdown of situation (or situational) awareness. In an air-to-air context, situation awareness (or SA) can be understood as the ability of opposing aircrews to develop and sustain accurate representations of where all the participants in or near the air combat arena are, what they are doing, and where they are likely to be in the immediate future. This understanding of situation awareness is, of course, crucial to appreciating that the driver in 81 percent of the decisive air-to-air engagements in Southeast Asia from December 1971 to January 1973 involved more than just the “element of surprise,” although this was the interpretation at the time. Surprise can certainly affect combatant situation awareness on either side…

… Even without the evidence from subsequent tests like Air Combat Evaluation (ACEVAL) in the late 1970s and the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) Operational Utility Evaluation (OUE) in the early 1980s , combat data from Europe in World War II and Southeast Asia during 1965–1973 not only confirm the contention in chapter 8 (proposition I) that general friction can dominate combat outcomes, but indirectly quantify what the term “dominate” has meant in historical air-to-air combat. If some 80 percent of the losses have resulted from aircrews being unaware that they were under attack until they either were hit or did not have time to react effectively, then a relative deficit of situation awareness has been the root cause of the majority of losses in actual air-to-air combat. A deficit in situation awareness accounts for four out of five losses. While this statistic may not measure frictional imbalances directly, it does reflect the influence friction has had on outcomes over the course of large numbers of air-to-air engagements.

“You’re only about one-third as efficient as you think you are [at sorting in complex engagements], which is why you go out with a sexy missile and lose your ass anyway.”

Watts goes on to iterate the ‘surprising’ (to some) AIMVAL/ACEVAL and the AMRAAM OUE results, then follows up with a discussion that hints as to what the F-35’s SA advantage brings to the mix (Boldface mine):

By 1984, Billy R. Sparks, a former F–105 “Wild Weasel” pilot with combat experience over North Vietnam, had been involved in analyzing or running three major humans-in-the-loop tests: AIMVAL/ACEVAL, the AMRAAM OUE, and the Multi-Source Integration test (also conducted in simulators). Yet, in reflecting on all that experience, Sparks felt that he had not once witnessed perfect sorting in 4-v-4 and more complex engagements. “You’re only about one-third as efficient as you think you are [at sorting in complex engagements], which is why you go out with a sexy missile and lose your ass anyway.” As Clausewitz wrote, in war “the simplest thing is difficult,” and it is hard for normal efforts to achieve even moderate results. Such observations go far to explain why even small SA deficits relative to the opposition have been statistically more dominant in engagement outcomes than differences in aircraft, weapons, force ratios, or other conditions such as having help from GCI. It also strongly suggests that friction’s influence on outcomes in air combat during World War II was not noticeably different in Korea’s “MiG Alley,” the Vietnam War, the Middle East in 1967, 1973, and 1982, or even in Desert Storm. In this sense, general friction’s “magnitude” does not appear to have diminished noticeably over the course of all the technological advances separating the P–51 from the F–15.

Could information technology be used to mitigate this longstanding pattern of very low sorting efficiencies in complex engagements arising from seemingly small lapses in situation awareness? Early experience in 4-v-4 and more complex engagements with the recently fielded Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) indicates that the answer is “yes.” JTIDS not only provides integrated, all-aspect identification of friendlies and hostiles based on available information, but even displays targeting decisions by others in one’s flight. The aggregate gains in air-to-air effectiveness resulting from these improvements in situation awareness and sorting have been nothing less than spectacular. During Desert Storm, F–15Cs, aided in most cases by E–3A Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) aircraft, downed 28 Iraqi fighters without a single loss, including 15 kills from engagements that began with BVR shots. When JTIDS–equipped F–15s flew against basically the same fighter/AWACS combination that had done so well in the Gulf War, the JTIDS “information advantage” enabled them to dominate their opponents by exchange ratios of four-to-one or better. Hence technology, properly applied, can certainly manipulate the differential in friction between opposing sides to one’s advantage at the tactical level.

The F-35 MADL capability adds another dimension beyond the JTIDS/LINK16 capability: More information and more kinds of information integrated and synthesized for easy (i.e. transparent) operator consumption and shared over a more secure link for use while skulking about in ‘Indian Country’. The system ‘sorts’ for the pilot. (Now you know why Northrop Grumman bothered with highlighting this capability in producing this video.)

Hey, Here’s That ‘Maneuverability’ Thing Again!

Because it was designed to maneuver to the edge of its envelope with a full internal combat load, the F-35 will be able to run rings around most other fighters, but it probably won’t have to—and probably shouldn’t.

"If you value a loss/exchange ratio of better than one-to-one, you need to stay away from each other," said O’Bryan, meaning that the fighter pilot who hopes to survive needs to keep his distance from the enemy.

He noted that, in a close-turning dogfight with modern missiles, even a 1960s-era fighter such as the F-4 can get into a "mutual kill scenario" at close range with a fourth generation fighter. That’s why the F-35 was provided with the ability to fuse sensor information from many sources, triangulating with other F-35s to locate, identify, and fire on enemy aircraft before they are able to shoot back.

The F-35’s systems will even allow it to shoot at a target "almost when that airplane is behind you," thanks to its 360-degree sensors.

According to O’Bryan, the F-35 also can interrogate a target to its rear, an ability possessed by no other fighter.

If you survive a modern dogfight, O’Bryan claimed, "it’s based on the countermeasures you have, not on your ability to turn."

I think that last comment is a slight overstatement. You want to be able to get out of a jam if you get your self into one. The fact that the F-35 probably won't lead you into a bad spot, doesn't mean it won't keep a really determined pilot from getting into one on his own.

Options… Options…

If the situation demands a turning dogfight, however, the F-35 evidently will be able to hold its own with any fighter. That is a reflection on the fighter’s agility. What’s more, a potential future upgrade foresees the F-35 increasing its air-to-air missile loadout from its current four AIM-120 AMRAAMs to six of those weapons.

Since the F-35’s biggest advantages (that are talked about publically anyway) in going up against large numbers of adversaries are its Stealth and its situational awareness provided by on-board/off-board systems, I’d say even the 4 AMRAAM loadout should be seen as ‘sufficient’ for otherwise pretty scary “bad guy/good guy” ratios of 3-4 to one. A 6 AMRAAM (or follow-on missile in perhaps greater numbers) loadout? Even better.

The F-35, while not technically a "supercruising" aircraft, can maintain Mach 1.2 for a dash of 150 miles without using fuel-gulping afterburners.

That works out to about 12 ½ minutes of ‘dash’ at 30K feet. The fact there is a time limit indicates that supersonic drag is slowly pulling the plane down to subsonic at Mil Power. The fact that it would take about 12 and a half minutes at 30K feet is indicative the plane is pretty slick aerodynamically without external stores. Even if the reason has to do with having no external stores and nothing else, that makes the F-35 far superior to any alternative that would be dragging around external stores.

"Mach 1.2 is a good speed for you, according to the pilots," O’Bryan said.

This is a mildly interesting data point, as M1.2 is commonly understood as the point where the definition of “transonic” ends and true “supersonic” begins (see chart below).

At Mach 1.2, you are usually still high on the supersonic drag rise. Source: DESIGN FOR AIR COMBAT,, Pg 46,  Ray Whitford   Update: Graphic now showing drag rise for swept wing configuration vs. straight wing.

 If Mach 1.2 is a ‘good speed’, then I would deduce that probably means that the F-35 supersonic aerodynamic drag, the F-35 installed thrust, or simply the F-35 thrust/drag ratio is among the best possible for a fighter operating within the laws of physics and given current propulsion/airframe technologies.Though may not be a ‘worldbeater’, it will hold its own aerodynamically, and it definitely means the F-35 is nowhere near a ‘dog’ as some might fear (or hope).

A Questionable Advantage (AKA “4th Gen Fighter Think in a 5th Gen World”)

The high speed also allows the F-35 to impart more energy to a weapon such as a bomb or missile, meaning the aircraft will be able to "throw" such munitions farther than they could go on their own energy alone. 

As I noted in the comments at Sol’s SNAFU! site, I really don’t see a very large benefit here. I do see an artifact of the ‘speed is life’ religion.

'Fairly Easily'?

There is a major extension of the fighter’s range if speed is kept around Mach .9, O’Bryan went on, but he asserted that F-35 transonic performance is exceptional and goes "through the [Mach 1] number fairly easily." The transonic area is "where you really operate."

Agreed.
But I wonder about the earlier ‘warning signs’ that the transonic acceleration time KPPs were unlikely to be met? Perhaps this hints at changes to the KPP? If so, I believe it would be completely justified: The spec was originally written to surpass or equal those of legacy systems, but as far as I can determine, all legacy aircraft performance was verified/validated using a clean, unarmed configuration.
Since there is no aerodynamic difference between the F-35 in its primary unarmed or armed configuration (internal stores only), the KPP should have been written to be one that was based upon legacy platforms combat capabilities with loadouts comparable to the F-35’s internal load. This would have kept the relative measure comparison an ‘apples to apples’ exercise. A potential side-benefit of changing the KPP might be the entertainment value from inducing know-nothings to whine about the F-35 ‘cheating’ on KPPs…again.

More Range? Mo Bettah!

In combat configuration, the F-35’s range exceeds that of fourth generation fighters by 25 percent. These are Air Force figures, O’Bryan noted. "We’re comparing [the F-35] to [the] ‘best of’ fourth gen" fighters. The F-35 "compares favorably in any area of the envelope," he asserted.

Conclusion:

The F-35 is an all aspect low observables, net-centric systems, long-range, yankin’, bankin’, killin’ machine.

Works for me.

THE DESTROYER MEN: A Veteran's Day Tribute

The evolution of a WW1 tribute to destroyer crews.

(Something different for Veteran’s Day )

Berton Braley is little heard of today, but early in the 20th Century he was quite a celebrity…and prolific poet. I wonder how much his obscurity today is due to him being a commercial success AND a ‘Philosopher of Freedom’? I discovered him quite by accident, trying to track down the origins of a poem titled “Destroyer Sailors” that my Grandfather had scribed in the back of his ‘Cast Iron College’, aka Machinists Mate School, notebook in 1926. He attributed the work to ‘Sunset Red the Poet’. Using that as a starting point, trying to find who wrote the original turned into an interesting journey: it appears the poem has been adapted to different eras, with slightly different titles, and attributed to various people as it has been handed down through time. The original poem was written during World War I, titled The Destroyer Men, and back when ‘destroyers’ themselves were relatively new:

Source: Navy.mil

 
THE DESTROYER MEN
There’s a roll and pitch and a heave and hitch
To the nautical gait they take,
For they’ re used to the cant of the decks aslant
As the white-toothed combers break
On the plates that thrum like a beaten drum
To the thrill of the turbines might,
As the knife bow leaps through the yeasty deeps
With the speed of a shell in flight!

Oh ! their scorn is quick for the crews who stick
To a battleship s steady floor,
For they love the lurch of their own frail perch
At thirty-five knots or more.
They don t get much of the drills and such
That the battleship jackies do,
But sail the seas in their dungarees,
A grimy destroyer s crew.

They needn’t climb at their sleeping time
To a hammock that sways and bumps,
They leap kerplunk ! in a cozy bunk
That quivers and bucks and jumps.
They hear the sound of the seas that pound
On the half-inch plates of steel
And close their eyes to the lullabies
Of the creaking frame and keel.

They scour the deep for the subs that creep
On their dirty assassin s work,
And their keenest fun is to hunt the Hun
Wherever his U-boats lurk.
They live in hope that a periscope
Will show in the deep sea swell,
Then a true shot hits and it s "Good-bye, Fritz"
His future address is Hell!

They’re a lusty crowd and they’re vastly proud
Of the slim, swift craft they drive ;
Of the roaring flues and the humming screws
Which make her a thing alive.
They love the lunge of her surging plunge
And the murk of her smoke screen, too,
As they sail the seas in their dungarees,
A grimy destroyer s crew!

The Poem Evolves

As you can tell from the original, it would have been quite dated post-WW1 if it hadn’t been allowed to evolve. Here is the version of the poem again as my Grandfather put it to paper less than a decade after WW1, titled ‘Destroyer Sailors. I submit this is may be the earliest record of the post-Braley versions, as it is the earliest I could find.

Read more Berton Braley online here, or more about the man and his works here.

The F-35: What Will Happen While Exploring ‘High Angle-of-Attack’, Part 4

‘Old School’ F-15: Entry to the modern world of ‘High-Performance’

Part 4 (and last) in a series of posts where we document The Profound Truth of High Angle-of-Attack (AoA) flight testing of high performance aircraft. What is “The Profound Truth”?

Discovery and rectification of undesirable aircraft behaviors during High Angle-of-Attack testing of High Performance Aircraft is not only the ‘Norm’, but those behaviors needing rectification/mitigation are usually complex, sometimes bizarre, and often ‘spectacular’.

The F-15 and AoA: A Surprisingly Short Story

My whole family had just moved to Antelope Valley to be near my Dad while he worked another flight test program at Edwards AFB-- only the month before the F-15’s first flight at the same location. I joined the Air Force before the whole family moved back to Texas six months later (Dad would often refer to himself as a “migrant aerospace worker” or “Aero Bracero”).



F-15 First Flight, July 1972 With Square Wing Tips Shown to Good Effect (US AF Photo)

I joined the Air Force before Dad’s assignment ended, but still got to see the first F-15s in the skies over Eddy and the AV quite a bit before I left. In a way, the F-15’s ‘career’ began the same time mine (paying anyway) did, and I got to watch most of the F-15’s maturation, successes, and evolution in ‘real time’ before and after I retired in 1993.

From knowledge gained going way back to the early 70’s and the heady days of the F-15’s flight test and OT&E, I thought I’d just be able to search up some early scholarly papers using a select few keywords like ‘F-15 flutter’ and ‘F-15 buffet’ and then just quote the source data as to what actually ‘happened’. But my research surprised me. There was almost NOTHING written in peer-reviewed or official literature on F-15 High AoA exploration and behaviors while they were being discovered that I could find in the public domain.

Some of this void could be due to the time frame: we were going toe to toe with Russian fighter designs in Vietnam until at least six months into the F-15’s flight test program, and the Cold War was still ‘freezing’. Absence of hard data could also be due to the priorities given to the challenges, controversies, and manufactured scandal surrounding the F-15’s engine development history. That was always in the news at the time, and the news was (usually) wrong about what was really happening with the F100 engine and why.

From forensic examination of the larger body of available ‘retrospective’ literature, it seems for the most part the Air Force was just extremely happy to be able to do what the F-15 design was intended to do: fly much deeper into the High AoA regions before onset of buffeting and stall at higher speeds than its predecessors.

In the past 10 years, U.S. military aviation has progressed from the generation of F-4/F-8 air superiority fighter to that of the F-15/16/18 aircraft, which are demonstrating significant improvements in maneuver performance. These improvements result from more sophisticated aerodynamic design, lower wing loading, and higher thrust-to-weight ratio, and they permit the newer fighters to maneuver as well at 7 to 8 g’s as the earlier aircraft did at 4 to 5 g’s. The limited assessment to date of the newer fighters indicates that they also track as well at 7 to 8 g’s as their predecessors did at 4 to 5 g’s. This is attributed largely to their improved aerodynamics and more sophisticated control systems, which permit them to operate at higher load factors with lower levels of buffet intensity and wing rock than their predecessors. – Precision Controllability of the F-15 Airplane, T.R. Sisk and N.W. Matheny, NASA Technical Memorandum 72861, 1979.

Sisk and Methany’s 'Precision Controllability of the F-15 Airplane' is particularly valuable to our examination because it recounts NASA’s experience exploring F-15 handling qualities using a pre-production F-15 (Airframe number 8). Sisk and Methany offers some insight into what needed to be ‘fixed’ on the early F-15s and why, when after 6 of 10 Gunsight Tracking tests, key systems had to be upgraded to ‘production standard’. The ‘Gunsight Tracking’ test involved making a windup turn from 1 g (trimmed) to the “maximum allowable load factor or angle of attack”.
That “adverse pilot comments concerning the airplane’s handling qualities” in the early tests drove the testers to upgrade the control system to “meet production standards with regards to friction, hysteresis, and breakout forces”, ‘replace roll and trim actuators”, and replace the ARI (Aileron-to-Rudder Interconnect) with a production unit, among other changes is a pretty good indication that the first F-15s were hairy (or at least hairier) beasts at higher AoAs.

Findings of particular note are 1) that the F-15’s buffet as experienced in the cockpit is considerably higher than that experienced in the YF-16 and YF-17 prototypes and 2) the F-15 wing buffet is “severe” at higher AOAs, with mild to moderate wing-rock at airspeeds of interest when the AoA is above “Approximately” 10 degrees.[This raises an interesting question: If the comparison holds for F-16s and F-18s, and the F-35 exhibits buffeting somewhere in between the spread, may we expect F-15 pilots transitioning to the F-35 to think of the F-35’s buffeting as “meh” and pilots transitioning from the F-16 or F-18 react to the same as “OMGWTFO!”?].

A key point to remember here is that the F-15 has no lift augmentation devices, either trailing or leading edge, so there is no way to alter wing high AoA performance without redesigning the wing itself or tweaking your primary flight controls.

Fighter Weapons Center F-15C with Conformal Fuel Tanks and Speed Brake Deployed. When I was at Nellis in the late 70s, F-15 Crew Chiefs were kept 'moist' with cases of beer that pilots would have to buy them after pushing their aerodynamic braking 'show' too far and dragging their tail feathers.

Obvious Changes as a Result of Initial Flight Test

The two most obvious changes made to the F-15 as a result of flight testing were the wingtip design and the speed brake design and operation. I can find no detailed scholarly or otherwise authoritative references to the hows and whys behind the changes were made, but the reasons seem to just be presented now in the ‘everybody knows’ matter-of-fact manner. It is common to find references to the raking of the wingtips due to transonic flutter after the third F-15 was built, but only some sources mention the flutter was occurring at higher g’s and AoAs.

The speed brake design changed at some time during the F-15’s fielding, but I haven’t found an authoritative source I can corroborate as to exactly ‘when’. It is now apparently common knowledge that the dual changes of increasing the size of the speed brake and greatly reducing the angle it can be raised on a different schedule allows the same effectiveness at higher AoAs without adding to the F-15s total buffeting.

Other Issues for Perhaps Another Time

There’s a lot more ‘back story’ on the F-15 development and later discovery of peculiar flight characteristics that have nothing directly to do with ‘just’ high angle of attack. There is the twin vertical stabilizer buffeting issue [1], that seems to affect ALL twin-tail fighter designs to one degree or another, but caused severe cracking and redesign of the F-15 vertical surfaces. There is the “Bitburg Roll” [2] phenomenon, whereby the effects of aerodynamic asymmetry caused by having the 20mm Gatling gun only on one wing root “first surfaced in 1990 as an uncommanded yawing and rolling motion on a F-15C at Bitburg” Air Base in Germany. The Bitburg Roll manifests itself as either an uncommanded roll “up to 60 degrees per second” to the right or yawing motions at higher altitudes between 250 and 350 KIAS. There is also the horizontal stabilator flutter problem [3] that was ‘solved’ by putting a ‘snag’ in the leading edge of the stabilators. The solution was found by trial and error in a wind tunnel, and only recently has the art of computational fluid dynamics reached a point where, 40 years later, it is believed the ‘why’ of the solution can be understood.

There's more back story, but the point is made that:

Operation and test has shown that aerodynamic performance can and will remain unpredictable to any exactness when aircraft are operated in regions where non-linear (the definition of ‘turbulent’) airflow occurs.

__________________

Note: Apologies for the posting drought. I've been way 'out of pocket' part of the time on business travel and been working killer hours at work and home catching up on priorities that could wait no longer.

[1] F-15 Tail Buffet Alleviation: A Smart Structure Approach; Georgia Institute of Technology; WPAFB Contract Number F33615-96-C-3204; 1998.

[2] An Investigation Into The Effects Of Lateral Aerodynamic Asymmetries, Lateral Weight Asymmetries, And Differential Stabilator Bias On The F-15 Directional Flight Characteristics At High Angles Of Attack; D.R. Evans; AFIT/GAE/ENY/96M- 1; 1996.

[3] Flutter Mechanisms of a Stabilator with a Snag Leading Edge; R. Yurkovich; 19th Structures, Structural Dynamics and Materials Conference, 4 - 7 April 2011, Denver, Colorado; AIAA 2011-1847