Happy Birthday F-4 Phantom!

The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II flew for the first time fifty-six years ago this week.  

The "Flying Brick" Foe some most important western fighter of the postwar period, more than 5,000 F-4s were built between 1958 and 1981.  The aircraft began life as the F3H-G naval strike fighter and was adapted to meet a Navy requirement for a fleet defense fighter in 1955.  A two-seat multirole fighter, it demonstrated performance levels far above anything then flying.  Navy Phantoms set 16 world records which stood until the F-15 Eagle appeared in 1975.  The first confirmed Phantom air-to-air victory of the Vietnam War took place on June 17, 1965, when an F-4B from Fighter Squadron TWENTY ONE (VF-21) downed a MiG-17.  Of the 57 Navy aerial victories in Vietnam, 36 were in Phantoms!  The Air Force and Marine Corps operated the F-4, as did air forces of 11 other nations.  Variants of the Phantom in reconnaissance and Wild Weasel configurations were also employed.

US Navy F-4 escorting a SR-71

The McDonnell two-seat, twinjet, all-weather F-4 Phantom II, with top speeds more than twice that of sound, was one of the most versatile fighters ever built. It served in the first line of more Western air forces than any other jet. Just 31 months after its first flight, the F-4 was the U.S. Navy's fastest, highest-flying and longest-range fighter. It first flew May 27, 1958, and entered service in 1961.

It was named Phantom II on July 3, 1959, during a ceremony held at the McDonnell plant in St. Louis, Mo., to celebrate the company's 20th anniversary. It remained in production until the company's 40th anniversary. By then, the numeral "II" had been discontinued; it had become the only Phantom.

The F-4 established 16 speed, altitude and time-to-climb records. In 1959, its prototype set the world altitude record at 98,556 feet. In 1961, an F-4 set the world speed record at 1,604 mph on a 15-mile circuit. By the end of production in 1985, McDonnell had built 5,068 Phantom IIs and Mitsubishi, in Japan, had built 127.

Modifications incorporated improvements to weapons, avionics, radar and engines. The RF versions were equipped with cameras and surveillance gear for aerial reconnaissance. Armament ranged from cannons to missiles.

F-4s saw combat in both the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm and served with the air forces of 11 countries in addition to the United States. Both U.S. military flight demonstration teams, the Navy Blue Angels and the Air Force Thunderbirds, flew the Phantom II from 1969 to 1973.

The 5,000th Phantom was delivered on May 24, 1978, in ceremonies that also marked the 20th anniversary of the fighter's first flight, and McDonnell Douglas delivered the last St. Louis-built Phantom II in October 1979.

 By 1998, approximately 800 were still in service around the world. With the upgrades already performed and those under contract, the F-4 Phantom II will probably still be flying in 2015 -- nearly 60 years after its first flight.

RAF Phantom, XV404: Tiger Meet Aircraft, now sadly scrapped:

To British aviation enthusiasts, XV404 was the most strikingly painted F-4 Phantom in Royal Air Force service. But unfortunately, the famous markings were short lived. Seen here during its final days at RAF Wattisham, the aircraft was unceremoniously shredded in 1993 to satisfy Cold War arms treaties.

The FGR.2 model Phantom had been painted in special “Tiger” markings to commemorate the disbandment of 74 Squadron as an F-4 unit in October 1992.

Tellingly, even the scrap dealers couldn’t bring themselves to destroy XV404. The fuselage, with wings removed, lay in the yard at Chelmsford in Essex (below), for a year before the Ministry of Defence demanded it be cut-up once and for all.

Specifications

First flight: May 27, 1958 (prototype YF4H-1)
Wingspan: 38 feet 5 inches
Length: 58 feet 3 inches
Height: 16 feet 6 inches
Ceiling: 56,100 feet
Range: 1,750 miles
Weight: 55,597 pounds
Power plant: Two 17,900-pound-thrust General Electric J79-GE-17 jet engines
Speed: 1,485 mph (max.)
Accommodation: Two crew
Armament: 15,983 pounds of weapons, including 20 mm nose-mounted M-61 "Vulcan" cannon

F 22 Raptor in Top Gun Moment with Iranians

F 22 Raptor in Top Gun Moment with Phantom F4's from Iran

Earlier this year, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said that an IRIAF (Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force) F-4 Phantom combat plane attempted to intercept a U.S. MQ-1 drone flying in international airspace off Iran.
As we reported back then, one of the two F-4 Phantom jets came to about 16 miles from the UAV but broke off pursuit after they were broadcast a warning message by two American planes escorting the Predator.

Composite photograph

The episode happened in March 2013, few months after a two Sukhoi Su-25 attack planes operated by the Pasdaran (informal name of the IRGC – the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution) attempted to shoot down an American MQ-1 flying a routine surveillance flight in international airspace some 16 miles off Iran, the interception of the unmanned aircraft failed.

After this attempted interception the Pentagon decided to escort the drones involved in ISR (intelligence surveillance reconnaissance)  missions with fighter jets (either F-18 Hornets with the CVW 9 embarked on the USS John C. Stennis whose Carrier Strike Group is currently in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility or F-22 Raptors like those deployed to Al Dhafra in the UAE.

Airshow image of relative size (F 4 in the lead)

New details about the episode were recently disclosed by Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh who on Sept. 17 not only confirmed that the fighter jets providing HVAAE (High Value Air Asset Escort) were F-22 stealth fighters but also said that:

“He [the Raptor pilot] flew under their aircraft [the F-4s] to check out their weapons load without them knowing that he was there, and then pulled up on their left wing and then called them and said ‘you really ought to go home’”

If the episode went exactly as Welsh described it, it was something more similar to Maverick’s close encouter with Russian Mig-28s in Top Gun movie than a standard interception.

It would be interesting to know how the Raptor managed to remain stealth (did they use their radar? were they vectored by an AWACS? etc.) and why it was not the E-2 most probably providing Airborne Early Warning in the area to broadcast the message to persuade the F-4 to pursuit the drone before the Iranian Phantoms and the U.S. Raptors got too close in a potentially dangerous and tense situation?

Anyway the U.S. pilot achieved to scare the Iranian pilots off and save the drone. A happy ending worthy of an action movie.

This post originally appeared at The Aviationist. Copyright 2013.

Ironic that the Iranians were flying US built aircraft that  supplied to the Shah's regime before the Islamist revolution. F- 22 on F4s. No chance. I would also go home!

Low vs High capability Aircraft. F 4's not even on the list!

Stealth Aircraft: Fighters and Bombers, History and Conceptual planes

Stealth Aircraft

Stealth aircraft are designed to avoid detection using advanced technology to reduce reflection/emission of radar, infrared, visible light, radio-frequency (RF) spectrum, and audio signals.

Development of stealth technology likely began in Germany during World War II.

Well-known modern examples of stealth aircraft include the United States' F-117 Nighthawk (1981–2008), the B-2 Spirit, the F-22 Raptor,  and the F-35 Lightning II.

N aircraft is totally invisible to radar, but stealth aircraft make it difficult for conventional radar to detect or track the aircraft effectively, increasing the odds of a successful attack. Stealth is the combination of passive low observable (LO) features and active emitters such as Low Probability of Intercept Radars, radios and laser. These are usually combined with active defenses such as chaff, flares, and ECM. 

Complex design reduces the ability of an opponent's sensors to detect, track, or attack the stealth aircraft. This also takes into account the heat, sound, and other emissions of the aircraft that could be used to locate it.

Full-size stealth combat aircraft demonstrators have been flown by the United States (in 1977), Russia (in 2010) and China (in 2011). The US military has adopted three stealth designs, and is preparing to adopt the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II.

Most recent fighter designs will claim to have some sort of stealth, low observable, reduced RCS or radar jamming capability, but there has been no air to air combat experience against stealth aircraft.

History: 

Germany developed the Horten Ho 229 flying wing fighter-bomber close to the end of WWII. In addition to the aircraft's shape, the majority of the Ho 229's wooden skin was bonded together using carbon-impregnated plywood resins designed with the purported intention of absorbing radar waves. 
(I intend to do a whole post on the Horten at a later stage)

Testing performed in early 2009 by the Northrop-Grumman established that this compound, along with the aircraft's shape, would have rendered the Ho 229 virtually invisible to the top-end HF-band at the time, particularly the 20-30 MHz primary signals of Britain's Chain Home early warning radar. Provided the aircraft was traveling at high speed (ca 550 mph (890 km/h)) at extremely low altitude (50–100 feet).

In the closing weeks of WWII the US tried to capture as much advanced German weapons research as possible, and also to deny that research to advancing Soviet troops. A Horten glider and the nearly complete Ho 229 V3 third prototype airframe were secured and sent to Northrop Aviation for evaluation in the United States, who much later used a flying wing design for the B-2 stealth bomber. 

During WWII Northrop had developed a large wing-only long-range bomber (XB-35) based on photographs of the Horten's record-setting glider from the 1930s, but their initial designs suffered control issues that were not resolved until after the war. Northrop's small one-man prototype (N9M-B) and a Horten wing-only glider are located in the Chino Air Museum in Southern California.

Modern History

Modern stealth aircraft first became possible when Denys Overholser, a mathematician working for Lockheed Aircraft during the 1970s, adopted a mathematical model developed by Petr Ufimtsev, a Russian scientist, to develop a computer program called Echo 1. 

Echo 1 made it possible to predict the radar signature an aircraft made with flat panels, called face. Lockheed Skunk Works found that an aircraft made with faceted surfaces could have a very low radar signature because the surfaces would radiate almost all of the radar energy away from the receiver. Lockheed built a model called "the Hopeless Diamond", so-called because it resembled a squat diamond, and looked too hopeless to ever fly. 

Because advanced computers were available to control the flight of even a Hopeless Diamond, for the first time by the late 70s, designers realized that it might be possible to make an aircraft that was virtually invisible to radar.

Reduced radar cross section is only one of five factors the designers addressed to create a truly stealthy design such as the F-22. The F-22 has also been designed to disguise its infrared emissions to make it harder to detect by infrared homing ("heat seeking") surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles. Designers also addressed making the aircraft less visible to the naked eye, controlling radio transmissions, and noise abatement.

The first combat use of stealth aircraft was in December 1989 during Operation Just Cause in Panama. On 20 December 1989, two USAF F-117s bombed a Panamanian Defense Force barracks in Rio Hato, Panama. In 1991, F-117s were tasked with attacking the most heavily fortified targets in Iraq in the opening phase of Operation Desert Storm and were the only jets allowed to operate inside Baghdad's city limits.

The  design of a stealth aircraft is always aimed at reducing radar and thermal detection. It is the designer's top priority to satisfy the following conditions; some of which are listed below, by using their skills, which ultimately decides the success of the aircraft:-

• Reducing thermal emission from thrust

• Reducing radar detection by altering some general configuration (like introducing the split rudder)

• Reducing radar detection when the aircraft opens its weapons bay

• Reducing infra-red and radar detection during adverse weather conditions

Operational Use: 

The U.S. is the only country to have used stealth aircraft in combat. These deployments include the United States invasion of Panama, the first Gulf War, the Kosovo Conflict, the War in Afghanistan the War in Iraq and the 2011 military intervention in Libya. The first use of stealth aircraft was in the U.S. invasion of Panama, where F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft were used to drop bombs on enemy airfields and positions while evading enemy radar.

In 1990 the F-117 Nighthawk was used in the First Gulf War, where F-117s flew 1,300 sorties and scored direct hits on 1,600 high-value targets in Iraq while accumulating 6,905 flight hours. Only 2.5% of the American aircraft in Iraq were F-117s, yet they struck 40% of the strategic targets, dropping 2,000 tons of precision-guided munitions and striking their targets with an 80% success rate.

In the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia two stealth aircraft were used by the United States, the veteran F-117 Nighthawk, and the newly introduced B-2 Spirit strategic stealth bomber. The F-117 performed its usual role of striking precision high-value targets and performed well, although one F-117 was shot down by a Serbian Isayev S-125 'Neva-M' missile commanded by Colonel Zoltán Dani. The, then new, B-2 Spirit was highly successful, destroying 33% of selected Serbian bombing targets in the first eight weeks of U.S. involvement in the War. During this war, B-2s flew non-stop to Kosovo from their home base in Missouri and back.

In the 2003 invasion of Iraq, F-117 Nighthawks and B-2 Spirits were used, and this was the last time the F-117 would see combat. F-117s dropped satellite-guided strike munitions on selected targets, with high success. B-2 Spirits conducted 49 sorties in the invasion, releasing 1.5 million pounds of munitions.

During the May 2011 operation to kill Osama bin Laden, one of the helicopters used to clandestinely insert US troops into Pakistan crashed in the bin Laden compound. From the wreckage it was revealed this helicopter had stealth characteristics, making this the first publicly known operational use of a stealth helicopter.

A recent use of stealth aircraft was in the 2011 military intervention in Libya, where B-2 Spirits dropped 40 bombs on a Libyan airfield with concentrated air defenses in support of the UN no-fly zone.

Stealth deployment in Guam during North Korean Sable rattling

Stealth aircraft will continue to play a valuable role in air combat with the United States using the F-22 Raptor, B-2 Spirit, and the F-35 Lightning II to perform a variety of operations.

 Sukhoi PAK FA fifth-generation stealth multi-role fighter

The Russian Sukhoi PAK FA stealth multi-role fighter is scheduled to be introduced from 2015, to perform various missions.

The Sukhoi/HAL FGFA, the Indian version of the PAK FA is scheduled to be introduced from 2017 in higher numbers, also to perform various missions.

The People's Republic of China plans to introduce the Chengdu J-20 stealth multi-role fighter round 2018. A prototype was flown in early 2011

Sources: Various internet, including Wikipedia
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