Israel strikes on Iran
- Thread starter yahya
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I did wonder if that was the case, but always useful to remind people of the exceptions to the rules if they may not know them.
Israeli Strikes Knocked Out All Of Iran’s S-300 Air Defense Systems: Officials
The apparent destruction of the last three Iranian S-300s would pave the way for expanded Israeli airstrikes. The apparent destruction of the last three Iranian long-range S-300 systems would help pave the way for more Israeli airstrikes.www.twz.com
I had never realized before that Iran only had four S-300 systems. And now they have exactly zero.
Smart move from Israel: a) they respected US red lines "don't strike nuclear nor oil facilities" but b) they are now asking Iran "how does it feels to be very naked and very vulnerable ?"
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Yet another cost cutting measure. From what I understand, the assumption was that there would always be tanker aircraft and friendly airfields available, so drop tanks and the like were unnecessary. Needless to say, that was one of many ideas from the time that did not age well.
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Though the Israelis apparently slightly tweaked that by agreeing to not attack active nuclear sites. One of their targets was reportedly a currently mothballed (though likely to have been reactivated in the near future) nuclear test range that had been used for testing conventional explosive components and the like of nuclear weapon designs and which was still being used for other military purposes.
Dilandu
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Well, they brought only four divisions of S-300PM in 2010s. According to officially published data, they specifically insisted that they wanted S-300PM, despite the fact that it was already out of production, and there were more advanced versions available. Eventually they got S-300PMU-2 that were initially ordered by Syria, but not delivered due to Syrian civil war starting.
Colonial-Marine
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There were originally plans for the two inner pylons to be able to carry drop tanks but at some point, I think the US (and other operators) lost interest. It became evident that safe drop separation would require a new design rather than just reusing something already in the USAF or USN inventory so paying for that probably wasn't a high priority. I think the new design they were looking at was somewhat bulbous towards front like EFTs for the Rafale and Mirage 2000. It's possible that about the time those plans were abandoned the USAF was becoming more interested in the idea of reduced-RCS tanks like we've seen tested on the F-22, so they might have figured that they'd do something like that if/when the money became available.
As far as I am aware the plumbing is still all there for those two inner pylons to carry external tanks on all F-35s. So, if reporting is to believe Israel built and fielded some EFTs of their own.
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Colonial-Marine
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That was the design they were looking at, but I don't think it had any LO design features. I was just theorizing that perhaps the USAF and others decided to forgo building these in the hopes we could make a "better" reduced-RCS tank later, similar to what has been tested on the F-22 recently. There were other priorities for the F-35 program to resolve before fielding external drop tanks anyway. Only so much money to go around.
BullpupRafale
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This article is written by someone that knows next to nothing about Iran's military.Israeli Strikes Knocked Out All Of Iran’s S-300 Air Defense Systems: Officials
The apparent destruction of the last three Iranian S-300s would pave the way for expanded Israeli airstrikes. The apparent destruction of the last three Iranian long-range S-300 systems would help pave the way for more Israeli airstrikes.
Especially when there are considerably more competent domestic SAM systems.
Judging from the results, it seems the domestic SAMs did not react well also
BullpupRafale
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The F-35 was originally intended to use drop tanks. In fact, it was to use the Navy 480 gal tanks used on the F-18. Lockheed found that this would be problematic. The F-35 was designed to use the two inner hard points for fuel tanks. Some F-35s were delivered with some of the required "plumbing" but some others apparently were not.
There were problems safely separating both the tanks and the ordinance on other hard points. This paper goes into detail on the second problem and a redesigned tank and pylon that were studied as solutions:
The problem there is that with the 480 gal F-18 tank dropping anything off the other pylons would have an unacceptable risk of striking the tank. Having a JDAM hit your drop tank is not a good thing.
This would have required a customer to invest in the development of the new tanks and pylons, which would not have been inexpensive. Many of the F-35 operators - including Israel - expressed interest in external tanks, but none of them were willing to pay the development cost. Really, it would have taken investment from the largest F-35 customers (USAF, USN) to make it happen.
Because of that, the software to support dropping tanks was never finished. There are also no Lockheed-approved pylons that could support an external tank.
