Posted on 11/07/2018 6:42:01 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
The “cobra” is an airshow maneuver, pure and simple. As you note, low energy in air-to-air combat (or avoiding ground threats) gets you killed. That’s a big reason Scott O’Grady was shot down by that Serbian SA-6. He used up all of his energy dodging the first two missiles; when number three popped up, he was out of energy and his ECM pod wasn’t enough to defeat the threat alone.
“IIRC, something similar was tried here and the pilots could not withstand the excessive g-force.”
Nope, nothing to do with G-force in particular. The F-22 still has thrust vectoring. It is considered less important these days because of high off-boresight missiles like the AIM-9X, which can attack targets more than 90 degrees off the nose of the aircraft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Lavi#Design
The delta wing configuration of the Lavi is based on the preceding IAI Kfir which is itself a derivative of the delta wing French Mirage III figther.
Finally, the Chinese deny getting any technical information from the Israelis for the development of the J-10:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Lavi#China_Question
(Bookmark in the article is slightly misplaced; scroll up to see the China Question information.)
So it looks like the F-16 connection being implied in the article is tenuous at best. If I was going to look for an outside source for the J-10 design, I'd look at the Eurofighter Typhoon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurofighter_Typhoon
Just as likely the Chinese got (bought/stole) design information from Great Britain, France or Germany since they have sold the jointly produced aircraft to a number of countries.
It is worth noting where, at the end of the article, the author reports that thrust vectoring control (TVC), although developed and demonstrated for some time now, has not been broadly adopted into 4th and 5th generation jet fighter designs. It may be that, in the era of stealth, advanced radars and sensors, and long range air to air missiles, being able do a lot of fancy close-in dogfight maneuvers is outweighed by the TVCs maintenance downside (compared to regular jet engine exhaust nozzles). It is sort of a latter day jet fighter version of focusing on the WWII IJN Zero's maneuverability. Yeah, the Zero had way more maneuverability in the close-in dog fight fur ball. So what? The USN developed hit and run tactics that favored their Wildcat/Hellcat's speed, ruggedness, and firepower and effectively neutralized the Zero's maneuverability.
Harrier had thrust vectoring in the 60’s.
Yup. But don’t think it was like in modern fighters where used in combat, was it?
The Harrier was primarily an attack aircraft, it did have self defense capabilities.
The Royal Navy had success with them in the Falklands, the Argentines were at their range limit.
The term VIFF (vectoring in forward flight) came from Harriers.
They copied it from some Russian fighters they bought
Always thought the thrust-vectoring in the Harrier was for VTOL & take-off only, not for use in combat flight......
It’s primary function was VTOL, it could use VIFFing in ACM and do things no other aircraft could do.
If you have time to kill youtube has some good videos on the Harrier.
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