Talk:Fourth-generation fighter/Archive 1

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Cabalamat: Wouldn't it be better to finish this article first outside Wikipedia or in your user space instead of posting it here in such an early draft stage? Things like "Talk here about..." and "Mention..." look rather silly. --Wik 01:17, Sep 8, 2003 (UTC)

Possibly. The document, like Wikipedia itself, is a work-in-progress. -- Cabalamat 02:40, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It's now five months later and you still have this "mention..." nonsense. I'll remove that. --Wik 09:46, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

It would be nice if you made constructive changes to Wikipedia, rather than rubbishing other people's contributions. You might want to consider why the Wikipedia:Conflicts_between_users/Wik page exists (hint: if one person doesn't get on with you, that says something about them; if lots of people don't get on with you, that says something about you), and whether your activities have always furthered the cause of Wikipedia, which I hope is a goal we all want to advance. You might also wish to reflect on the fact that in the time I've been using Wikipedia, you're the first person whose edit I've felt moved to revert. -- Cabalamat 00:10, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

How firm are Chinese plans to manufacture the J-10 and FC-1? My undersatanding is that there have been question marks raised over the viability of the programmes, see for example http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/row/j-10.htm -- Cabalamat 15:18, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Total number of fighter aircraft produced(in service?) to date(by make)

Someone, please add such information. Kinda table: F-16 4500 F-15 1500 Su-27 600(do not copy these numbers - it is gues) That would be grait addition to article. TestPilot 15:35, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Su v. F

Recent combat training between Indian AF and the USAF, with Su-30MK and F-15C respectively, showed some interesting results. (in case you haven't heard) Training between the two forces was comparable I think, but the IAF pilots were victorious in the vast majority of engagements. Perhaps this development should be taken into account in your comparisons? mnemonic 10:26, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)

Historical Performances

I am a little bit perplex when I see reports like "F15's shot down 4 MiG-29"... Context does mater !

I'll take it a litle bit extreme, but if the MiG are taking off with full load and no Air-to-air weapons, surrounded by dozens of F15s armed with AMRAAM missiles and backed up by AWAKs, there would be little pride to show if you succeed in exterminating the poor MiGs. Pilot training is also important...

Even if you had a full-scale shooting war, it would be difficult to sort out which fighter is the best only by counting the wreckages, so when the statistic is so small, I really have doubts.

The point of the Historical performance section is to point out that all this wargaming and number comparison to determine who is "best" is beside the point. Whoever flies home at the end of the battle is "best" and whoever doesn't is quite often dead. Personally I would like to add some crash and shootdown survivability statistics to that section. Rmhermen 13:59, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)

Why does this page exist?

This page seems useless. Trying to answer which fighter/tank/army/brand of cheese-slicer is best is like ripping two livers out of their bodies and asking "Which one is best"... where the obvious answer is that neither is best... because they are soon to become decaying pieces of meat unless they are put back into their bodies. A fighter aircraft is a part of a whole where the rest of the whole affects the performance of aircraft.

If this page is to remain, facts must be added that the efficiency of a fighter is dependant on much more than just the performace of the aircraft. Factors that matter:

- Training, experience and current form (tired? hungry? stressed?) of the pilot. - Number of aircraft in the flight (is it a solo flight or a multi-ship flight) - Detection, Command, Control and Communication capabilities of the airforce the aircraft belongs to. - Home or away. - Mission type (CAP, attack, support, escort, CAS etc). - At what time into the flight does the combat happen (lots of fuel left or not?) - Luck.

And this is just trying to figure out combat performance. Then we have things like:

- The needs of the operator. - The infrastructure of the operator. - Financial capabilities of the operator. - Maintenance/turn-around requirements. - Tech levels required for ground crew.

...and so on, and so forth.

For example: Seens from my own country's (Sweden) persective, what's best for us here may not be the best for others and vice versa. An F/A-22 is not the best choice because for us it is too expensive, too specialised, does not fit our infrastructure and does not live up to the requirements laid out by our air defence doctrin. However for the USAF, the F/A-22 may be just what they want.

So why does this page even exist? Fighter aircraft cannot be measured as stand-alone entities. In my opinion, this page should be scrapped or heavilly modified to point out the futility of asking "Who's best?". --J-Star 12:46, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The subject matter of this page is that of an oft-asked question. That is, the question of fighter comparison seems to come up often. The point of the page is not to do analysis itself, but to present the results of analysis by others. The article itself delivers only numbers, and then makes reference to the results of external studies. Specifically, the DERA study has been used quite often in trade publications and articles, so I think the relevance of having it here is quite strong. However, I do think this page is in need of a layout overhaul at the least. -Joseph (Talk) 13:30, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

To me, the most important parts of the page are the prices and the combat performance (stuck down at the bottom). Is it true that there has been no aerial combat between modern fighters in fuve years? If so, can we keep it up for another five and another? Rmhermen 15:23, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Depends on how you define 'modern' fighters. There was aerial combat between the French Air Force and the Sierra Leone Air Force (hired Belarussians) earlier this week. -Joseph (Talk) 15:34, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

If you mean the Ivory Coast, their air force was destroyed on the ground by French infantry this week. www.globalsecurity.org doesn't list anything happening in Sierra Leone recently. And by modern I had meant those countries able to fly the planes mentioned on this page although, of course, it would be good to see all conflicts decrease. Rmhermen 16:48, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Oops. Of course I meant Ivory Coast. End all conflicts? What sort of military buff are you?! Just kidding. -Joseph (Talk) 17:06, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

As an independent to this discussion -- I found this page to be worthy of existence. It was a question I was asking myself when lookng at the Eurofighter page and wondering "How up to date can a fighter be when they first started planning for it in the early 1980s?". However, I have serious concerns about some of the information on the page. (Please see below section about "details"). 193.129.65.37 07:48, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Contemporary usage

I am referring to the "Combat Performance" section. Has the USA not actually used fighter aircraft in air-to-air combat since 1993? [n.b. I meant 1999] I'm starting to wonder why our military-industrial complex is spending billions upon billions developing monstrosities like the F/A-22 Raptor if we haven't even used fighters in air-to-air combat in 12 years, and the planes that have been successfully used in air-to-air combat for the past couple decades are the venerable F-15 and F-16—models dating back to the early '70s. NTK 01:45, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There have not been any other fighter versus fighter engagements that we are aware of since the 1999 Kosovo War as listed. Please look and try to find any we may have missed. As to the why, the main idea is intimidation. During both Iraq wars, the Iraq air force would not engage American forces. During the second, they didn't even try to fly. Rmhermen 02:07, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I figured as much. The question of course is how much intimidation is enough that we can start spending money on things like, I dunno, healthcare or social services (or even healthcare & social services for veterans). Of course that is way outside the scope of this article so I won't go any further with that thought. Still I am amazed at the lack of any attempt to engage American air-power, at least from the air. That the U.S. airforce vastly out-classes potential enemies should not be a surprise to anyone. NTK 02:15, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Why is the J-10 not include?

The J-10 has already entered production and 20 have been delivered to the PLAAF already. It is a very capable 4.5 generation aircraft comparable to Saab Viggen and Desault Rafale.

It should also be included. Do you have some good references on this plane?--Robert Merkel 01:49, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

From my Googling, from what is known about it, it's the descendent of the Israeli Lavi program, and is regarded even by the Chinese as not as good as their Russian-built Su-27's and Su-30's. No mention of stealth-enhancing features either. --Robert Merkel 02:03, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You do know we have an article on it, right? Chengdu J-10 Rmhermen 02:13, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Yes. It's not all that enlightening, given the limited amount of solid info about the thing. --Robert Merkel 03:18, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Being on a public computer right now, I'm not signed in, but the Chengdu J-10 does indeed have a stealth variant that is projected, twin engined I believe. The article does mention it, but whether or not it has entered production is highly classified. And can you find any mention of Chinese comparisons to the Su-27's and Su-30's? Otherwise this is just speculation. --212.85.15.115 13:41, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Speculation

This article seems full of speculation. I strongly doubt that any of us, or any of the articles on which the writers of this article based themselves, have access to data such as the radar capabilities of the various warplanes mentioned... :-) David.Monniaux 06:55, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this article is full of speculation, because that's all there is available. Until, heaven forbid, there is combat between these planes, nobody really knows for sure who'd come out on top - and, even then, whether it was the planes themselves or factors like AWACS coverage that decided the result of the engagement. I thought the article made the fact that it's all speculation abundantly clear.

If you're arguing that the entire article text should be replaced with "who knows?" I have some sympathy...--Robert Merkel 07:17, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm a bit suspicious of certain claims. Consider:

The avionics systems of the various fighters vary considerably. In general, American avionics are viewed as by far the most technologically sophisticated. The F-22 and F-35 have a unified avionics design, with most processing performed in a central aircraft computer and with very high-speed interfaces to individual components. The Rafale and Eurofighter have much less sophisticated internal networks,

I mean, what do we know about the internals of the F-22, F-35, Rafale and Eurofighter? "Are viewed..." => by whom? Jane's? Some airplane enthusiasts magazines?

I don't have anything against speculation on such topics, provided we can provide some proper attribution or at least some indication as to whom pretends what. This is especially true in an area where the press of each country may be sympathetic of the locally produced hardware and dismissive of foreign hardware just out of national pride. David.Monniaux 08:35, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

OK, the bit about the avionics architectures is indeed known. The Eurofighter, for instance, a standard military data interface and relatively old, slow processors for its avionics. The F-22 uses much more powerful processors and all the processing is done in what they call the CIP, which has very high-speed data interconnects between its components. Now, that's by no means the end of the story (the Eurofighter page some custom chips for number crunching), but more than 20 times the raw CPU horsepower and high-speed data sharing has gotta come in handy... --Robert Merkel 09:34, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I'm glad to see some "harder" information on this. I'm actually surprised that they boast a centralized computer — this smells a lot of "single point of failure" (but, hey, I know about civilian fly-by-wire systems, which have to be really redundant in order to be granted certification).

It depends a lot how you structure your network. If you have a small "fusion" box and a number of external appliances doing most of the heavy lifting, then you may not need much horsepower in the "fusion" box. Conversely, if you centralize everything to a few boxes, then you need those boxes to be fast. David.Monniaux 16:12, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, the F-22 has dual CIP's and expansion space for a third. They're more powerful than anything in any other fighter, but they're as "state of the art" as a Pentium 3. ✈ James C. July 5, 2005 20:58 (UTC)

By comparison, the Eurofighter has 68020's in it :) --Robert Merkel 6 July 2005 00:47 (UTC)

http://www.pogo.org/m/dp/dp-fa22-Riccioni-03082005.pdf makes let's say less glowing remarks about the F-22's avionics.The article also makes an interesting point about BVR-combat.If the plane can't be identified the fight will still lead to a VR combat situation.

The claims that russian planes don't have advanced avionics needs a source.Giving that their planes had infrared sensors way ahead of the west makes me question that remark.

Too be honest this article leans too much toward speculation.Finding a source that doesn't have something to gain about a certain POV is impossible.

Precedents

Has anyone ever seen any type of comparison or comprehensive analysis of anything in Britannica? This article has a lot of good info, but I have a hard time seeing how it belongs in an encyclopedia. It's not a bad article, but it is misplaced. ✈ James C. July 5, 2005 20:42 (UTC)

Would you consider information on the merits and weaknesses of the respective fighters to be appropriate material for the articles on each fighter? That's why I contributed to the page; to save having the same discussion thrashed out a dozen times, to probably a dozen different conclusions (as French contributors sing the praises of the Rafale, Poms the Eurofighter, and so on...), and that's why I think it's appropriate. As an article in itself it's slightly odd; if you view it as something people who read information about the various fighters and want to know if that plane is the "best" going around, it makes a bit more sense. --Robert Merkel 6 July 2005 11:12 (UTC)

Comparisons are excellent and useful adjuncts to main articles. Our purpose here is to inform laymen, and comparative analysis is a natural question that people immediately come up with, as in "Who would run faster, Superman or the Flash?" By the way, Britannica isn't actually the standard we try and measure up to. Tempshill 17:39, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

SU-37

even given the speculative nature of this article, it would still be interesting to see some comparison info on the russian SU-37 fighter aircraft

Nobody's committed to development or ordering any yet; who knows whether they will, or what form the final aircraft will take? Interesting that they continue to work on thrust vectoring and the like at a time when some people are claiming maneverability is no longer useful. --Robert Merkel 02:01, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Unsourced commentary

Removed:

Most experts agree that the results of this study are questionable and seem tailored to further the export chances of certain fighters such as the Eurofighter Typhoon against it's primary rival- the Dassault Rafale.

If "most experts" really said that it shouldn't be hard to find an actual reference saying it, rather than referring to nebulous "most experts". --Robert Merkel 13:00, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Reverting edit of 192.88.165.35

I think edits made by 192.88.165.35, 12:02, 28 December 2005 (Altered RCS calculation) should be reverted. IMO. Since that is not a vandalism, asking your opinion first. TestPilot 04:03, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Avoid self-references

Please be aware that this article should avoid self-references. That is, it should never refer to itself (as it does in several instances).--cj | talk 13:58, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Poor stats

The combat performance section is shoddy - produced by someone with an American Fighter bias, with no factual references, and no real numbers. E.g 1. "During the Gulf War, USAF F-15s shot down 5 Iraqi MiG-29s" How many F15s? 2,5,10,20 etc...

2. "On January 17, 1993, a USAF F-16 shot down a MiG-29 in Iraqi no-fly zone. (Some sources claim it was a MiG-23.)" Again how many? What are these sources that are spoken of?

It goes on etc etc....

I think this section should be shot down, unless somebody who knows something about these missions is able to add facts, moreover able to add non American fighters (E.g a list of a number of missions where Mirage, Tornado etc has been in action).

Thoughts?

These are the facts. There is no bias because these are the only known instances of air-to-air combat involving opposing pairs of these very modern aircraft. I can add some of the sources though. As for 2. "a" means one, that is one F-16 shot down one Mig-29. For 1., it is pretty unlikely that there were multiple F-15 simultaneously shooting the same airplane. I suppose it is theoretically possible, but... Rmhermen 22:44, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Tornado F3

Why is there no section on the Tornado F3, you have used the Typhoon as the UK's fighter, but it is not yet operational, so would a section on the F3 not be of more use?

This article is about planes that were in production in the 2000's. The last Tornado appears to have been built in 1998. Rmhermen 20:42, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Wing loading and details

This article contains some very useful information... but doesn't explain what it means.

So is a low wing loading or a high wing loading number more desirable? It doesn't seem to say...

"Conversely, on the basis of published thrust-to-weight ratios and wing loading the F-35 is likely to be little more manoeuverable than the F-16." very useful... except the F-16 isn't included in the table so we don't know what this means... same goes for this statement: "Ricconi [1] (PDF) claims that the F-22's wing loading and thrust-weight ratios are actually little better than the F-15C."

This article does use a lot of technical vocabulary. Life would be easier if we could just look at planes and say "This plane is manoeuverable, this one isn't" but we can't, its not practical. Thrust to weight, wing loading and delta wings all affect agility, but in different circumstances. In answer to your question about wing loading, Wikipedia has a useful article on wing loading, but wing loading is usually reflective of how much weight the plane can take off with (I assume this is not applicable for VTOL, where thrust to weight would be more accurate) and how much speed is needed. Low wing loading, big wings, less speed required to take off, more prone to weather (and I would assume radar detection). High wing loading, small wings, more speed required, less prone to weather, however greater speeds are possible, partially due to drag (preferable in modern fighters). Of course, bigger wings also bring more weight, see power-to-weight ratio for a problem with weight. --The1exile 16:34, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Revisions

There are some significant flaws with this article. First of all, NO 21st century fighters are purely air-superiority, though the F-22A may qualify to some degree. The heyday of the interceptor is over. Nobody has the money to afford pure air superiority fighters anymore, not even the United States.

Second of all, the air to air comparison is also flawed. This is not jousting. You don't start a Rafale in this corner, a Raptor in that one, let them loose, and see which one wins. Air Defense, AWACS, RSTA, EW, all come into play, and a one one one comparison for the purposes of (which beats what) is pointless other than in a "my fighter can beat your fighter" discussion.

What this page can usefully do is provide a cross-category comparison of capabilities so one can understand how aircraft differ in relation to one another in terms of equipment and capabilities, especially as it relates to the mission requirements of their buyers and their devlopment cycle. That is an encyclopedic and worthy entry. I'm diving in and doing this.

--Mmx1 19:17, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

And if you read the article you should have noted that all of those points came up in it.

As far as air-to-ground goes, if you read where this article is linked from it's used in the context of "what happens when modern air forces go up against each other air-to-air". Once air superiority is gained and SAM launchers are destroyed, air-to-ground seems to be basically a matter of target identification and logistics for which F-16's are perfectly adequate. --Robert Merkel 00:46, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Those points came up as a sidebar. My point is that those points are not just a sidebar concession to reality, but explain why the original purpose of the article is flawed. Purely comparing air to air is done by noone other than armchair Generals (I should know, I used to be one). And while the article made concessions to reality, the central driving theme that I drew from it (and especially from the intro) was "this article intends to settle the question of which fighter can beat all the rest". I've yet to modify the rest of the article much, as the material is mostly pretty good; but the intro really needed changing.

I don't know "where this article is linked from", I would appreciate a link. In any case this article must be able to stand on its own.

"Once air superiority is gained and SAM launchers are destroyed, air-to-ground seems to be basically a matter of target identification and logistics for which F-16's are perfectly adequate." I'm sorry, don't take this personally, but this is the remark of an amateur. Short of the US pummeling Iraq, true air superiority is rarely achieved, and destruction of air defenses even less likely. If there really were no threats to air-ground forces, a C-130 rolling bombs out the back would be adequate (which was how the MOAB was designed). Even so, there are still issues of target acquisition, terminal guidance, and air-ground coordination that are not trivial in practice. The reality is that fighters today are purchased to pursue ground attack missions in hostile airspace in addition to dominating control of the airspace. --Mmx1 01:03, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, you are quite correct in that the rationale of the F-22 and JSF is at least partly to cope with SAMs, for instance here. But, in any case, American military doctrine has been quite amply demonstrated over the past decade or so - before you invade anywhere, you achieve air supremacy. In fact, that has been the case more often than not since the Battle of Britain, certainly in the Western tradition of warfighting. Anyway, if you want to expand the scope of this article to point out the role of the modern fighter, be my guest, but the question of "if a Su-30 goes up against a Typhoon, who wins" is still a very interesting and relevant question, even if the answer is most likely "who has AWACS or other radar support". --Robert Merkel 02:53, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

We also get into the question of Original Research. There's not that much 1 on 1 comparisons in the literature. And while the question is interesting, wikipedia is not the place to speculate. There are, however, citable pieces of literature that discuss, for example whether Britain should purchase with the JSF vs Navalized Typhoon vs Super Hornet.

As far as air superiority, I do not believe that was the case in a number of the Arab-Israeli wars. It wasn't in Vietnam, the Falklands, or the Iran-Iraq war. US purchasing for 40 years was driven by the Cold war, not beating up Iraq, and we were certainly not counting on air superiority in a conventional outbreak of the Cold war. The fact that the record is overwhelmingly pro-US is merely as a result of the conflicts we picked. And we certainly didn't do too hot in Vietnam. --Mmx1 03:09, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Rename

Have thought a bit about the whole intro and how to make the article encyclopedic and concluded that a "comparison of" simply isn't encyclopedic. Proposal:

Change to article simply to "Fighter Aircraft of the 2000's" and make it a survey article like 1920s. Discuss common trends such as multimission and stealth, and have the meat of the article consist of the the existing comparisons. Tie it to a Category "Fighter Aircraft of the 2000's.

I actually feel that rather than splitting into decades, that the history of fighters needs to be split into eras (WWI and before, WWII and before, early jets, modern jets, and postmodern(2000s, maybe Information age?) fighters). Need citable source on that, though. Musn't forget to not stray into OR. --Mmx1 01:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree, but we might need some extra sectons in there. For example, jet propulsion didn't immediately hit it off straight after WWII, so you might need an article covering the propellor driven arcraft post WWII. --The1exile 22:52, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Citations and OR; this article really need fixing

This article is really suffering. We have no web pages to link to, information being changed that should be possible to cite, and all in all an article that although the content is interesting the claims are impossible to be confirmed. Can we rework this to include citations, and stop changing the info unless it can be confirmed? For example, 194.185.231.68 has changed some prices of the JSF and F-22 considerably, the F-22 has more than doubled its cost. I don't want to see things changed without good reason first. --The1exile - Talk - Contribs - 22:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

The basic premise is not wholly encyclopedic; it's a meta-article on a body of encyclopedic information. Also, much of the defense literature which is useful to cite is not free (most of it's dead tree except for some RAND studies). I don't even care about the statistics as it's all speculation anyway. Have some changes in mind that I'll work on tonight. --Mmx1 01:48, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

The new title...

...sucks, in my opinion. What was wrong with the old one? It was clear to ordinary readers, who would not have a clue what a "4th generation fighter" is. It's not encyclopedic to use ambiguous insider jargon. Grant65 | Talk 04:37, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The previous title was more appropriate and encyclopedic --Spartian 04:49, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Yep, it sucks. --Robert Merkel 05:34, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

There were two problems with the original title. First, it purported to compare fighters 1-1, though there's no citable literature on it, and the article had a 2-paragraph disclaimer on why it's a really bad idea to begin with. The very premise was heavily OR. Second, restricting yourself to the "21st century" is an arbitrary distinction picked to compare the latest fighters; so as a result you're comparing 1970's designs with 1990's designs; motivated by very different philosophies. If you restrict yourself to a particular generation rather than an arbitrary point in time, you can make generalizations, and more importantly, citable generalizations, about themes and common design considerations in that generation.

Face it, the article was originally intended as a "which fighter is better" article. If you want to answer that, wikipedia isn't the place, because the answer is always going to be "it depends on the context". If you want to understand the tradeoffs between them, as backed up by defense analysis, then this is the appropriate article.

We don't pick titles based on what people might search for; that's what redirects are for. This title is accurate, and besides, redirects from the original titles point here.

--Mmx1 11:11, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Mmx1, Wikipedia has a philosophy of "principle of least surprise" in articlle titling. Your move violates that. On the basis of the number of people objecting I'm moving it back. --Robert Merkel 11:38, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Sigh...I'd discussed it above, though the orginally proposed title was "Fighters of the 2000's". I then proposed using generational terminology, and got one agreement and no dissent for a month. Do you have any objections to the new title (which for posterity, is "Fourth generation fighter design considerations"), other than that "it sucks" and that it's not what people would search for?--Mmx1 11:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

The very notion of "comparison of fighters" is worthless without context. Go to a defense analyst and ask him which fighter is better, and he'll ask you to define the context and your assumptions. Conventional cold war US-Russia? Conflict between US carrier groups against China? Iraq-Iran? The answer to the question is vastly different depending on the context, so unless you set that off the bat, you can't answer the question, period. The notion of a 1-1 comparison exists solely in internet General's minds as a "my fighter can beat your fighter" pissing context. Rather than ask a futile question and throw your hands up at the difficulty of it, phrase the topic correctly "design considerations", not "comparison", lay out the relative advantages and strenghts of the various designs, and let readers set their own context and come to their own conclusions. --Mmx1 11:53, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Would you prefer "analysis of 2000s fighter aircraft" - or even "analysis of modern air combat" which is really what the article is discussing and avoids the implication of a victor like a car magazine comparison, and avoids too much wanky terminology in the title. Finally, moving a page is one of the most dramatic edits you can make, and one you should really propose on the talk page first. --Robert Merkel 12:19, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I propose "4th and 5th generation fighter aircrafts", and also similar articles for previous generations. It is confusing for a reader now that in an article about 4th gen. planes, alot of the discussion is about 5th generation planes. SlowSam 16:19, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

The Fighter aircraft article discusses generations briefly although it unhelpfully adds a generation 4.5. Rmhermen 16:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I was planning to move the fifth generation stuff to "later developments" or a similar title as most of it starts with the later planes of the 4th (e.g. supercruise on the Typhoon, lower RCS on the Typhoon and Super Hornet), and start a fifth generation article eventually. My aim is to separate the two, which is another problem with the current article. There's information about aircraft that have been in service, and then rampant speculation about the aircraft replacing them, many of which aren't in service or even production yet.

The problem with "modern" is that it's not fixed. What happens in five years? or 10? When aircraft become retired do we remove them from the page? At what point do we rewrite the article when UAV's come around and shift the dynamics of air combat? In encyclopedic usage, any term that changes with time is best avoided. Note that "Modern Art" doesn't describe art through today, but in fact a specific period from ~1900-1970. Better to specify a fixed slice of time and identify the common threads. Decades are obvious but very arbitrary delineations. What differentiates 1980's planes from 1990's? It's not really clear. Better to identify "generations" or slices of time based on shifting doctrine. This was all explained above under "Rename", it appears only exile read it. --Mmx1 22:26, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

New Title - collecting points from above

Proposed titles:

• "4th generation jet fighter"
• "4th generation jet fighter design"
• "4th generation jet fighter design considerations.
• "4th generation jet-powered fighter aircraft"

Rationale:

1. The question "who would win if a Typhoon and a Su-37 went 1-1?", while an interesting question, is not one wiki can answer, as there's no citable literature - the question is pointless without context. The limit to which wiki can answer this question are defense studies that set the context - which plane should Australia purchase to replace the F-111? What would be the result of a conflict in the Taiwan sea if we purchased JSF's? For that reason alone, the notion of a "comparison" article is, not to put too fine a point on it, crap.
2. Failing that, what wiki can do is lay out design considerations and various defense analyses and let the reader draw their own conclusions.
3. To properly discuss design considerations, you need to specify a timeframe (1950's design tradeoffs being vastly different from 1990's tradeoffs). A title of "contemporary" or "Modern" needs to shift with the time, and qualifications of modern are very hard to distinguish.
4. A common technique in history is to divide into periods of commonality( Baroque, Renaissance, Enlightenment, etc) to make it possible to tie together similar ideas and themes. There is existing literature for such a division for (at least jet) fighters, in the generational scheme. The majority of the article discusses the fourth generation.
5. Renaming the article should be focused on a name that best describes the content of the article. Other articles or redirects can be created to address what people may search for, but the idea is to salvage a body of good text with no clear intro or raison d'etre.
6. If we rename to 4th generation, stealth and supercruise will be discussed as late developments (e.g. Superhornet and Typhoon), and a 5th generation can be created...eventually. 5th generation is difficult to discuss, as they're still in development. So beyond design considerations, there's not much to be written.

Discuss

--Mmx1 05:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I vote for 4th generation fighter Good luck keeping it neutral, free of original research, and away from the "my Typhoon can beat up your mom's Rafale" vandal camp. - Emt147 ^Burninate! 04:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

But the F-22 is now in production (and is probably as combat-ready as the Typhoon and Rafale), and so should be included in this comparison. Otherwise it's kind of the missing elephant in the room. --Robert Merkel 10:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Personally don't I like seeing "4th generation", or any other "generation", in the title at all; it's subjective and means nothing to readers who have no pre-existing knowledge of the subject. Grant65 | Talk 10:49, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, by its very nature it implies that the F-22 and JSF are superior to anything else out there; it seems to be viewing the situation very much through an American prism. --Robert Merkel 12:27, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

"Baroque" is a subjective term, too, but you don't see articles on "art of the early 17th century". However, if you go to "Western art history", it will explain all the periods for the lay reader.

Generations don't imply that individual aircraft are superior, just that they reflect later design considerations. For example, the Yak-38 or harrier (gen 3) is probably inferior air-to-air than most of the gen 2 fighters. The JSF is in a similar boat. It's primarily a strike fighter and is probably inferior to the top air superiority fighters of the 4th generation. However, between similar types (e.g. air superiority fighters), yes, the generational gap does generally indicate superiority. It's a pretty fair assumption to say the JSF is superior to the hornet (or they wouldn't be replacing it). E.g., the UK Ministry of Defense estimates in even in a worst case scenario (against the F-22) that the loss ratio will be 2-1 in favor of the F-22 against the Eurofighter. This is a pretty good estimate as 1) the British have had full access to the F-22 and have been offered sales (the first British pilot just flew it), and 2) a worst-case scenario is a good way to set bounding conditions. Haven't put it in the article as I've only heard this from a British contractor (had to coax that out of him) and don't yet have a cite for it. If you stack all supporting elements against something and it still wins, it's a very strong correlator. That's not to say the US is the only dog in the fight, there's a few Fifth-generation Russian designs (Project 1.44, PAK FA) that might give the F-22 a run for its money, but as details are sketchy, it's really pointless to speculate. --Mmx1 15:46, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I have added the proposal "4th generation fighter aircraft", because it is slightly more clear and—to my ear—slightly less clunky. I like this title (rather than a more specific one), because it allows a greater variety of interesting information, including a list of such aircraft, in addition to design tradeoffs and important capabilities, while allowing us to include properly sourced, objective comparisons. I would also like to discuss some of the merits of 'fourth generation' as opposed to other schema, and rebut some opposition above.

1. 4th generation is more accurate than 21st century, in that some aircraft in this category (namely the F-22) were in the air before the 21st century.
2. It broadens our ability to write similar articles. 21st century does not provide a useful template for generating other articles for different time periods, but 4th generation does.
3. We are not inventing the notation '4th generation'. The idea of a set of generations has precedence outside Wikipedia. By adopting the 'generation' notation, we are merely picking up a very useful division between different types of fighter. It may be arbitrary, but so is the concept 1st, 2nd, 3rd generation warfare, yet these concepts are extremely useful and widespread among military scholars. Also, adopting this scheme for our title does not mean that we are ignoring other schema—we can always detail those in the article. And, as Mmx-1 noted above, generations of fighters imply changing design priorities, not necessarily air-to-air superiority.

Ingoolemo ^talk 20:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Also, I have amended (all emendations are in red) the options above to some variant of 'jet fighter', because the 'generation' scheme refers only to jets, and not to earlier prop-powered fighters. Ingoolemo ^talk 20:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm hesitant about the use of "jet fighter", and I still have reservations about the use of "4th generation" when we clearly should be talking about the Raptor as well. But if we are to use the 4th generation notation, I would think that "fourth generation fighter aircraft" would be the simplest option. --Robert Merkel 23:06, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

The trouble I have with simply 'fourth generation fighter aircraft' is that it implies that the first generation was early biplanes, which is most definitely not the case. (However, if we do articles on every generation of fighter, a navigational template to be placed in the upper-right of the introduction would do nicely to clear up this misconception. This would also obviate the need for the admittedly clunky addition of 'jet-powered'.)

Having now read Fighter aircraft, I understand the distinction between the generations. I agree with Robert that we should be discussing the F-22 in addition to the fourth generation fighters. It might even make sense to rename this article 'Fourth and fifth generation jet-powered fighter aircraft'. Ordinarily I would oppose such a merger and advocate a separate article for each. In this case, however, the fifth generation is only in its infancy, and both fourth and fifth generation fighters are in service in contemporary militaries, which makes such a merger much more palateable.

If and when we do create articles on other generations, it may be worthwhile to include comparisons on the air-to-air combat capability of the best planes in one generation to the best planes in another. Ingoolemo ^talk 23:47, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed on the addition of "jet". Am somewhat distasteful of the merge but I suppose it suffices as a temporary measure instead of a fifth generation stub. In pushing for "design considerations", I was doing a preemptive fork off the imagined "4th generation jet fighter aircraft" article. I suppose that this will suffice for the body of the latter --Mmx1 17:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

a note on grammar

Just passing through, but I noticed a comment earlier proposing the article be titled "4th and 5th generation combat aircrafts" or something like that. Aircrafts is not actually a word; the plural of aircraft is aircraft, and I'd hate to see that error repeated in articles or titles. :) Nobody wants an encyclopedia that can't be taken seriously! ericg ✈ 04:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)