What makes Military Systems competitive?

hello everybody and welcome back to military aviation history annuals bhismaka today I am joined by a Bernhardt from military history visualised once again definite proof that we are not the same person now recently I got a comment essentially saying on the mig-21 that this aircraft this jet is still fast by modern standards and I'm not quite sure if it was implied but maybe it was saying you know it's it still is competitive in that regard and it still has you know the speed to keep up with all these modern machines and because they haven't really gone beyond this sort of speed levels that make 21s a doubt and I think this is quite an interesting discussion actually because we can talk about sort of the saturation points and technology and how useful certain aspects of equipment military equipment is in terms of a jet maybe speed in terms of tanks maybe are more firepower something like this when it comes to you know the development of a weapons platform so I would say I'll go quickly go into the mig-21 I'll hand it over to you then as well so we have to make 21 yes it is absolutely a very incredibly fast machine and if you look at actually if you track the speed increase in aircraft from let's say the second world war over into the 1960s and 70s you see a big increase yeah I mean we're going from essentially subsonic to supersonic work they're not hypersonic I was about to go hypersonic but yeah this was essentially 600 kilometers an hour than 900 kilometers an hour and just below Mach 1 and we go above that and then we very quickly cold you know to make 21200 the 2100 kiltie kph or something like that we're reaching a point where speed is well it's it reaches the saturation point because after that we start seeing sort of a drop-off the f-35 which essentially the next generation is actually one of the slower jets out there but then the question is does it actually need a speed is maybe endurance but more important is considering that we now have be VRS or beyond range engagements where you fire your missiles before you actually see visually see an enemy aircraft you know you just have it on the radar scope do you really handy to have that speed are certain other aspects maybe not more important and is speed actually not perhaps getting in the way because the mig-21 also one of the problems there is that it has limited loiter time it really is just you know start you go quickly to a high altitude you engage the enemy bombers or yeah I mean that was one of the year issues why they make 21 was built higher altitude engagements and interceptions you land rinse and repeat essentially I don't want to say it's a point defense system because it does have a certain amount of range but it is not exactly something like let's say a pan a via tornado which was meant for a completely different row but then for example by the British adopted for also a fighter role because it had that loiter time where it could patrol around the coastline of the US and intercept they are subs now Russian Soviet and then Russian they rose there we go so if we had it over maybe to go out combat you might have something to say there as well when it comes to tanks I was still with the aircraft I was thinking like stuff is also an issue yes so so with with tanks usually have to Trinity basically of um protection mobility and firepower right where's for for aircraft you probably have stuff there as well for instance because whatever time for tanks you can use basically if you look at the design in Cold War design the leopard one it was actually rather weakly armored in comparison especially to the Panther and the tiger and in the Second World War because at that point they assumed okay we can't really prevent to get hit unless we move around so there was a lot more focus on mobility and I think with planes you can probably go the same where you can say okay I go with speed or I go with stealth I guess and speed at one point was very important just prior to World War two one of the things was get as much speed as possible out of aircraft I additional bomb bogans it right there we go also with fighters you know getting them up as fast as possible climb rates were expertly important still important arguably and then certain aspects were sort of pushed to the way to the side whereas nowadays I mean you mentioned the trying Trinity there I don't forget Trinity can be applied as much to an aircraft you can could maybe go speed maneuverability and firepower maneuverability instead of armor you said wouldn't wouldn't you add stuff I mean that mean protect ability it's more like because that's why I was going to add because now you do have stealth so you can apply that sort of it's not longer Trinity at that point so the basic thing is it's any sort of hard stats in a major weapons system it's not a linear development it's not always going to get better or faster a protection you talked about armor if we were to track a linear development from the most heavily armed tank in World War two can we count the mouse as something that's justice yeah well yeah anyway we would now be talking about machines that have 300 millimeters of armor ain't gonna happen so it always depends how how things develop how technology develops what new weapon systems come out what new platforms come out what new equipment comes out so just because a jet from the Cold War period is still competitive in certain regards where speed and so on doesn't mean that it will hold up in a modern engagement or maybe it will I mean I mean I would look here at completely at the point on how you want to employ and use your system system because from what I understand and where little so correct me if I'm wrong but what you mentioned to me make 21 was basically building an interceptor an interceptor you need in a cold war scenario a way of an cement symmetric warfare so large conventional forces facing each other or conventional in the sense that they know a symmetric but not they are nuclear capable or something but what what what nowadays happens is basically all asymmetric warfare if you look at it there's not the sword the United States not fighting the Soviet Union or Russia or China the United States is for most of the parts finding more third-rate armies yeah and their loiter time is more important speed well it doesn't make too much a difference now if is even better because if you can't hit you at all so I would look more at this aspect so we are is the speed is nice but all everything know at the time range Rajasthan how much how much weapons you can carry you payload capacity what different kinds of payments you can have problems weapon pods ECM or what you can put all up there on the technology adaptability because I think I assume in the Cold War since it was way more you had dedicated button weapons platform and the f-35 I think is a multi-role fighter by it but that's aspect it depends really what is the weapon platforms how things evolve just you know the new helmet that the f-35 pilots use that already is you know some people have said them you know a game changer in itself because it allows the pilot to do things that no other pilot was able to do before like look down and see the virtual reality you could say that yeah ok that's neat it's it's it's pretty awesome it's also for example when the mig-29s for training again the German b-29s after we unifications were training against NATO aircraft the NATO realized that it has to actually change their pilot tactics to actually extend the engagement arrangements because the mig-21 was obviously going to be superior in a close-range engagement and because the helmet of the mig-21 pilot 29th eyelets was able to in certain angles quickly acquire a target and then immediately get a lock and fire just by hit the pilot essentially looking at it and which NATO was at that point not able to do and they they now had just look at this technology like wow this is pretty cool and then integrated it I'm pretty sure they were working on something like this as well but it's certainly accelerated sort of the the development of that on an innate or countries so yeah so a seamless that is it's always the context is important I would say yeah yeah and again I mean India is still using make 29 at book 20 once may have mix them up there again so many mix with 20 ones and they have a lot of them and four point offense especially in the environment that they are yeah I mean also in some case if you don't have anything else it's better to have something yeah and assume I might be terribly wrong but I think mig-21 is probably like similar to the t-55 so basically that it's it's a modern it's already checked versus the t-55 was basically main battle tank which can be operated with a reasonable lower amount of maintenance and everything else yeah because I mean is there some order Chet this because because the thing is like with if you look at the t-55 yeah Regular Army laughs about a t-55 yeah but if you're fighting in Civil War something where there's no regular armies and t-55 is a game changer yeah and I'm not sure if this is live because if plane it's way more there's a lot more infrastructure narrow field but maintenance hours but the thing is with the mig-21 the Soviet Union essentially gave that plane after a certain amount of time where they really just kept it in the Soviet Union Finland was lucky I think you must lavey I got some and then it sort of proliferated on the one the more shop countries and obviously they gave it also to you know third countries around the globe trying to get some concessions to get them on their side it's a whole go Cold War dynamic that's happening there but for yet it is intensive especially for a country that happened use jets before but compared to some platforms that NATO feel that at the time I mean the mig-21 was some relatively simple there so and df1 second look the f5 Tiger tool you know that play was essentially provide you could say was developed as an export attempt by the United States give it to third countries to provide a cheaper easy to maintain yet which countries that didn't have the same infrastructure as the United States could then operate and with the f5 Tiger to to the in Vietnam what will crystalize there is that the the 5s at the US I flew their maintenance hours especially compared to the f4 phantom - just a small fraction of it I mean per a per flight hour so this is important of course and the mig-21 that proliferated so much that I I think you can make an argument that for a country that didn't maybe have that infrastructure today superpower would have was an incredibly good machine so probably the if you look at the lower end of maintenance personnel yeah it can handle at t-55 and when it comes to aircraft which I think that the level is a bit higher compared to the tank mechanic probably you still could use a mig-21 as well probably so yeah you have you're you're basically you a Kalashnikov of the sky pretty much I mean that's pray oh they were given ours there we go all right anyway thanks for the question it was an interesting discussion it kick-started us into going into many many things keep them coming as always thank you very much for your support on patreon subscribe stuff for your channel memberships as well you guys keeping it alight going if you enjoyed the show please consider supporting our channels and as always have great a good hunting thank you for being here Bernhard thank you for having me and seeing you in the sky thank you for watching and see you next time bye

Channel: Military Aviation History

Views: 48,823

Keywords: MiG-21, Competitive, Military Aviation History, Systems, Aircraft, Tanks

Id: zwuO4CXHzMw

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 05 2020