Dragonstriker

We hate entitled little whiners who refuse to do their own homework, actually.

^ Utter nonsense. You clearly didn't read/comprehend what I posted properly...  again.

- The Navy budget link directly covers the Sidekick weapon bay mod that will give all F35A's and Cs from Lot 15 onwards the capacity to carry 6 AIM120/260 internally. This is not controversial.
 
- The pilot being interviewed is necessarily general in his feedback since the data on the specific aerodynamic capabilities of the F35 (eg its EM diagrams) is heavily classified and will remain so for decades to come. I will take his word (and that of numerous other relevant members of the operational community) over yours any day of the week and twice on Sundays.


 
- Your unsupported assertion that the F35 has suffered “various other high profile failures to beat legacy fighters in BFM” is a myth. I suspect it stems from a misleading 2015 blog article by David Axe on a developmental control law test conducted with an F16. In short, it was not a dogfight but Axe tried to spin it as one anyway.
 
- The Su-30MKM never scored a kill in the three engagements depicted in the video I posted. It used TVC to briefly reverse a losing position into a neutral merge* (the pilot/narrator clearly says this at 12:42) only to be gunned again later on. You are literally making things up now.

*The Flanker's nose was pointed too low for a head-on gun shot, which would have been a no-go for both aircraft anyway.  
 
- The US aircraft was a legacy Hornet, not a Super Hornet. Once again you are clearly not examining/comprehending information properly.
 
- The link about the F22 was never supposed to relate to BFM, but to highlight the decisive advantage its VLO features have been providing it for over a decade – precisely as I claimed. This is yet more of you failing to adequately read or comprehend the information being presented.
 
EDIT: Have now added additional quotes, as if there was any doubt about the advantage VLO provides(!).

At this point I have to question whether you are even able to competently engage with what I am posting. It certainly doesn’t seem like it. I think I will leave you to do your own "research" as I can't see any point in persevering here.

Apologies in advance for the length of this post, but I decided to throw this together and I hope everyone finds it interesting/informative. If I have made any mistakes please feel free to point them out and I will be happy to correct them.

At any rate, the issues with APA's Zero One Comparison Table or "ZOCT" are severe and numerous. Here are some of the more egregious ones based on open source information:
 
The Air Power Australia "ZOCT" is wrong about the F35’s radar.
 
- Greater radar aperture is advantageous if all else is equal, but it is not in this case. For example,  the ZOCT does not differentiate between the PESA technology in the Irbis-E on the Su-35 and the AESA technology used in the F35’s APG-81. The table does not adequately account for T/R module or LPI/LPD performance, electronic attack or passive detection functionality, radar sub-modes, ECCM and so on. The ZOCT fundamentally ignores the comparative technological sophistication of each radar, with no analysis of their actual capabilities.

- The ZOCT also incorrectly portrays the APG-81 as having the least capable, “medium power aperture". Generally speaking, a larger radar array on an AESA allows for a greater number of track/receive (T/R) modules, which enhances the radar’s detection capability. The ZOCT table is likely linked to APA’s false claim that the APG-81 only has ~1200 T/R modules.

- In reality, the APG-81 has over 1600 T/R modules, which is higher than their (also incorrect) figure of 1500 for the F22’s APG-77. Note that they classify the APG-77 as a “high power aperture” at only 1500 modules, so - using APA's own reasoning - the APG-81 would qualify as a "high power aperture" as well.

- It is also worth noting that the updated T/R modules fitted to the Raptor’s radar in the APG-77(v)1 upgrade were GaA T/R modules derived from the F-35’s own APG-81 (and not the other way around). Objectively speaking, both radars are world leading in their own right and are generally regarded as offering similar performance overall. You can get a reasonable sense of their dimensional similarity below:
             

 
The relevance of side-looking AESA arrays is debatable for a jet with AN/AAQ-37, AN/ASQ-239 and MADL

Much like thrust vectoring, the importance of side-looking AESA arrays to the F35 is debatable, and AFAIK (contrary to how the ZOCT portrays the issue), there are currently no solid plans to install them in any of the aircraft in the table aside from the Su57. It should be noted that, due to size and space constraints, these “cheek” arrays potentially force the main radar array further forward into the nose-cone, limiting the volume it can occupy.

When dealing with LO opponents, it may well be more effective to retain a single larger and more powerful forward-facing array (to maximise detection range vs low RCS targets) while using 360 degree passive sensors and/or offboard donors (via datalink) to deal with contacts outside of the radar’s field of view. The presence or absence of side-facing radar arrays is arguably more a matter of CONOPS than an outright advantage in every case.
 
The ZOCT is wrong about supersonic weapons delivery

“Supersonic launch of internal weapons, including maximum-speed (Mach 1.6) launch of internal air to air missiles, is a feature of all F35s”.
 
The ZOCT is wrong about the F35’s future engine growth

The potential for growth in the F35’s powerplant is far from limited. As a matter of fact, research into variable bypass engine technology has made the F35 a prime candidate for early implementation.

Pratt and Whitney have already proposed F135 Growth Options 1 and 2, with the latter introducing variable bypass technology that has the potential to decrease fuel burn by up to 20% and increase thrust by up to 15%. This would improve the jet's thrust to weight ratio from 1.07 at 50% fuel and a full weapons load to over 1.2. A completely new powerplant derived from technology found in the GE XA100 and/or PW XA101 variable bypass engines is another distinct possibility that is being actively explored. 
 
The ZOCT is wrong about the F35’s combat ceiling

It is not less than 45,000ft as the table claims, but greater than 50,000ft.
 
The ZOCT is wrong about the F35’s RF stealth features

- The ZOCT’s description of the F35’s stealth features as “partial” is based on the disingenuous claim that its stealth shaping works best from the forward aspect, and is less effective in the beam and aft sectors. What APA neglects to acknowledge is that this is true for ALL the stealth aircraft in the table.

- In reality, both the F22 and F35 are all-aspect VLO designs, optimised to defeat the shorter wavelength fire control radars that are typically used to guide anti-aircraft missiles. Their actual radar cross-section values are of course extremely classified, but those few individuals that DO know what they are have long described them as being very comparable between the two aircraft.

- It is important to note that the ZOCT also completely neglects the vital importance of stealthy sensors and emissions control (EMCON) for stealth aircraft. Compared to the other aircraft in the table, the F35 has extremely sophisticated EMCON and passive sensing capabilities (LPI/LPD radar modes, MADL datalink, passive IR based MAWS, AN/ASQ-239, long range EOTS IRST) that are not adequately accounted for.
 
The ZOCT is wrong about the F35’s non-RF stealth features

The F35’s non-RF stealth features are at least as sophisticated as those found on any of the other aircraft in the table and probably superior to most, if not all (with rough parity perhaps, to the F22). They include:

- The use of divertless supersonic inlets with serpentine inlet ducts to block the line of sight to the engine’s hot interior from the forward hemisphere.

- The use of fuselage air “scoops” to mix cooler outside air with the engine exhaust so as to rapidly cool it and in turn reduce the IR signature of the engine plume
 
- The use of onboard fuel as a coolant alongside IR suppressant coatings (p4) to reduce the IR signature of the airframe itself

- Recessed positioning of the nozzle so that the jet’s tailfins block a direct line of sight to it in all but the aft-most sector.
 
- The use of a serrated nozzle derived from the Low Observable Axisymmetric Nozzle (LOAN) program to further reduce the signature of the engine and assist with mixing cool air with the exhaust plume (p4). Note that this fundamental design approach has been subsequently replicated in new nozzles proposed for the J20, J31, Su-57 and Su-75. 
 


 
The ZOCT is wrong about the F35’s internal fuel.

The amount of fuel the F35 carries is irrelevant on its own. Being able to fly further for longer is certainly advantageous though. Hence, the relevant stat here is range, and the range of the F35 is comparable to that of the F22 that APA endorses. Again, this will only improve with planned enhancements to the F35’s powerplant.
 
The ZOCT is wrong about the F35’s internal hard point stations

New F35s will have 6 internal hard points with the Sidekick weapons bay modification, not 4 as the ZOCT claims.
 
The ZOCT over-emphasises arbitrary aerodynamic features 

It is true, for example, that the F35 does not feature super cruise or thrust vectoring, but neither feature is a requirement for its specified mission set. The general consensus is that the F35’s aerodynamic characteristics combine the excellent low speed controllability of the Hornet, with the excellent subsonic acceleration of the F16. Unlike either of those aircraft, however, the F35’s ability to carry all of its weapons, EW gear and sensors internally means that it maintains its aerodynamic performance at full combat loads. Current indications are that this kinematic profile is extremely capable.
 
Due to its flawed binary design, the ZOCT gives equal weighting to features that are not "equal".

Compare, for example, TVC to VLO. APA have long claimed that non-TVC teen series fighters like F16 and F/A18 variants (along with the F35) ought to be an easy meal for a late-model TVC equipped Flanker, especially in the low speed BFM domain where TVC should be most useful. After years of DACT conducted with Flankers of this type, though, the advantage provided by TVC may not be nearly as decisive as APA would have us believe: 

Legacy Hornet Beats TVC Su-30MKM 3-0 in BFM

In reality, BFM is a highly nuanced, complex artform that favours the pilot who is most effective at playing to the strengths of their own aircraft. TVC may be useful here, but it does not appear to be a panacea - pilot training, experience and skill seem to be the real differentiators. Now compare this to the well documented effect that VLO has on a tactical aircraft’s lethality and survivability and it becomes clear that the weightings allocated to each category in the ZOCT are deeply flawed:

""I can't see the [expletive deleted] thing," said RAAF Squadron Leader Stephen Chappell, exchange F-15 pilot in the 65th Aggressor Squadron. "It won't let me put a weapons system on it, even when I can see it visually through the canopy. [Flying against the F-22] annoys the hell out of me."

“We took off out of Madison (to join the fight),” said Lt. Col. Bart Van Roo, 176th FS commander. “We went to our simulated air field out in the far part of the air space. As the two ship from the Northern half of the air space we turned hot, drove for about 30 seconds and we were dead, just like that. We never even saw the F-35A.”

"Everything they see becomes the F-35 out there. Every radar hit, every communication is about the stealth jet. They want to illuminate or eliminate a threat they can't handle. It has nothing to do with their skill or technology. They're at such a technological disadvantage. I've seen guys in F-18s turn directly in front of me and show me their tails cause they have no idea I'm there. It aggregates to a completely inept response to what we're doing in the air. People are so hellbent on shooting down the stealth fighter that they invariably make mistakes that I can exploit."  Retired US Marine Corps Maj. Dan Flatley
 
The ZOCT is missing important data

APA have also omitted a plethora of features that are just as (if not more) important than many of those listed in the ZOCT. For example

- Multi-spectral sensors - this refers to having RF sensors PLUS infra-red, EO and laser range finding. This is a feature that the F35 has and the F22, for example, does not.

- Spherical FLIR and missile cueing - AN/AAQ-37 provides the F35 with a permanent passive missile lock on every aircraft around it within visual range (and possibly further). This means the F35 can fire on an enemy aircraft regardless of where the F35’s nose is pointed or where the bandit is coming from - even if it is behind the F35. No other aircraft in the table (aside, possibly, for the J20 with its DAS clone) has an equivalent system.

- Sensor fusion - this refers to the capacity of the aircraft’s onboard computers to collect, assimilate, analyse and present data from the aircraft’s sensors to the pilot in a way that streamlines their workload and enhances their decision making. This data can also be shared via;

- An LPI, jam resistant, high throughput datalink - (eg. MADL on the F35 or the older IFDL on the F22) which, when combined with sensor fusion, allows for;

- Cooperative Engagement - the high quality of the F35’s sensor fused targeting data combined with the capacity of the MADL datalink allows it to share targeting information with other platforms (eg. Aegis vessels, Army/USMC MLRS units or other F35s) and subsequently use it to fire on desired targets without relying on their own onboard sensors.

- Cooperative EW - eg. cooperative jamming where members of a flight of aircraft can alternate/coordinate jamming emissions to enhance jamming effects and prevent hostile assets from pinpointing the source of the jamming.

- RF threat triangulation and geo-location (p6) - eg. networking the passive ESM equipment on multiple members of a flight of aircraft to passively triangulate and geolocate threat emitters like SAM sites, ISR assets and fighter aircraft.

- Cooperative IRST - eg. using a passive FLIR like EOTS cooperatively in conjunction with MADL provides another method of triangulating the location and range of hostile assets/aircraft without emitting any RF signals.
 
Suffice it to say that the F35’s unique combination of features is extremely potent:
 
 

I actually figured it out, turns out the CX-950 IC plate was made out of silicon carbide, not alumina. I found out by checking out the only VPAM 10 certified plate made by tencate, the CX-850. I knew this one was already made out of SIC because denmark protection group's level IV plate has the same thickness and weight, and they openly advertise the material. Also, not only is the naming similar, but dividing the CX-950 IC's weight by the CX-850 IC gives exactly 1,5. I also had to account for the corners. Thus, the ME against RHA is exactly 3. It's around 2.4 against HHS. It still seems quite high, but I'm willing to believe it considering tungsten carbide often passes through steel very easily. 
 
 
Check out my explanation above for the extreme values. Turns out I got the material wrong. 

Also, that ceramic in the picture seems very good, even with the marketing. You mentionned Stanag Level 3, which rules out boron carbide since it needs to resist WC. Do you have any ideas what it's made of?

Hey guys, this is F-35 bash "thred". I think you had lost your way on your way to 31 page. So I will add some good old fashioned hatred back into this thread!
 
F-35 is only good as an export piece in a day of shrinking budgets. F-35 is bad aircraft in every field. As a air superiority fighter it is bad. As ground attack aircraft it is bad. As close air support aircraft it is bad. As interceptor it is a bad aircraft. Any new aircraft specializing in any of those roles would easily demonstrate how inadequate F-35 is. The only thing which its defenders cling to is that this is the only new generation aircraft and thus they can directly compare it to older generation aircraft head to head like A-10 and say it is not all that bad. That is not only unfair, but also shows how deep divide is between same generation planes like F-22 or Su-57 and F-35 in air superiority role. F-35 is nothing more as an export piece designed to be acceptable and able to perform any role and thus drive costs down by allowing one plane to do all the roles instead of having several more specialized planes doing their own each thing. F-35 is jack of all trades and a master of none and thus I despise it for it. Sadly, due to lack of investment in R&D in modern day we are rather starved for choice. Only now minor nations are starting their own fifth generation aircraft programs and they are highly uncertain affairs with questionable possible results. There isn't anything better to purchase at the moment than F-35 and thus we all have to acquire this expensive travesty. I would much rather buy F-22 or Su-57 in its stead and use 4'th generation aircraft to do all other tasks.
 


 
Source: http://www.ausairpower.net/jsf.html
 
Though source is a little bit older and F-35 might became little less shit during two decades of development, but it still highlights why I dislike this aircraft. It is just so limited when compared to more specialized aircraft.
 
 

We discussed this a bit on teamspeak.  Military reformists went from Boyd's theory of specific excess power, which is a simplistic but still fairly sophisticated description of fighter maneuverability, to complete nonsense like saying that wing loading is the only important factor in fighter maneuverability.
 
Which is why the Mirage 3 can stomp an F-16 in DACT.  Oh wait, no, that's completely backwards.  It turns out that things like parasite drag, wingtip vortex losses, non-linear lift interactions and static margin matter.  It's almost like fluid dynamics is complicated, and simplifying your mathematical models of complicated phenomena will make them correspond less to reality.
 
But if influence and fame and a spot on CNN is what you crave, you can't get it by taking something like specific excess power on the road.  You've got to dumb down your message so that the filthy ignorant dirt peasants who watch that crap will understand.
 
So you simplify your original concepts to the point of meaninglessness.  Computer simulations useless for design tradeoffs?  How does this cretin think gas turbine engines are designed?  Oh, that's right; this is the same person who said that increasing turbine inlet temperatures just makes engines more expensive and doesn't improve their performance.  Screw thermodynamics! What has thermodynamics ever done for us?
 
Which is the final point of the descent of the military reformists; when all else fails, just lie.  How many absurd howlers are there in that presentation?  The M1 can't depress its machine guns?  They're coaxial, same as the M48!  The A-10 has a 30mm cannon, but the F-15E is only capable of carrying four maverick missiles?  M48 and M1 have the same battlesight accuracy?  Maybe in terms of mechanical dispersion, but "battlesight accuracy" means firing without the use of rangefinders, and the much greater MV of M829 would be very telling.  M1 more flammable than M48?  Jet fuel is substantially less flammable than gasoline, because it's very nearly the same thing as diesel.

Ow wow that presentation. That dude is going places. Places, but not useful places.
 
Does anybody know when was the last him he was near a military weapon (system)?
 
I'm thinking of burning that presentation down sentence by sentence, but I have better things to do. Like picking my nose and flicking the booger in the general direction I expect Pierre Sprey to be. Muslims pray towards Mecca, I flick boogers towards Pierre Sprey.

If you aim for the stars and miss, you'll still hit the moon die in the cold, unforgiving vacuum of space.

If a small arms range advantage is going to matter, it would matter in defensive engagements.
 
There are a few stories from the Boer War where the Boers knew where the British would attack, and could arrange their defenses accordingly.  They even went so far as to place large, white rocks at 100 yard intervals so range estimation could be done faster and better.
 
Somehow this wasn't a dead giveaway to the British that it was a prepared position they were attacking frontally.  Too many years of fighting people armed with dried grass.

Maybe now, but back in the day running over infantry and or anti-tank guns was considered a valid tactic. 

They wouldn't be terribly useful if any yahoo with a pipe bomb could immobilize them, now would they?

Overrated: Patton

But the Southern USA doesn't have any similar bizarre sexual predilections.  I mean, they obviously have a reputation for being into whips and chains, but that is for entirely different reasons.

One could argue that the US was not the most influential force in the war. None can argue with any authority that the US was not the most significant power of the war.

If the US had fought a total war the likes of which Russia actually did, the whole world would have bent the knee, or burned.

I personally find it quite amazing to step back and go "you know, one side of this massive conflict was able to simultaneously prosecute a land war and naval/land war on the other side of the world, land and supply multiple armies based entirely overseas, gain almost total naval domination over two oceans, gain air dominance over every theatre it fought in and develop half a dozen wonder weapons - including an actually war-winning one. And all without sacrificing the home front to any great degree. Even basic equipment and supply quality for the soldiers it had scattered all over the world never dropped in quality."
 
At which point you realise just how dominant the US was during this conflict - nobody even came close. I think even some bizarro-world matchup where the UK, USSR, Japan and Nazi Germany all have teamed up against the US would still have ended with them getting curb stomped.

This is a thread I wanted to post in for a while, and now I'm getting around to it. Spoilered to avoid wall-of-text syndrome.

*weapons-grade naval autism warning*
 
The reason the US carriers are the size they are is pure capability. The 90kton carriers have significantly more capability than their smaller bretheren, for a few reasons.
There are a few notes I want to address on this point.
1. Deck size
 

 
2. Survivability
 

3. Force concentration
 

4. Why then, if big is so good, aren't they larger?

5.  Are carriers the future? 
 
There is more to say, and I may have a follow-up post at some point.

Every single ton of carrier you put into a single hull gives you more capacity than the last one. It takes a lot of tonnage to be able to launch even one plane, let alone launch, maintain and arm one plane. If you compare the air wings of light carriers to supercarriers, the latter have a lot more air wing per ton because things like maintenance, seakeeping, launch facilities and deck space are amortized over more planes. Big missile batteries end up on their own platforms with their own superstructure optimized for radar and so on for very good reasons because the USN can afford the tonnage to make their carriers part of a task force. Lastly, VLS cells are a non-trivial cut in the flight deck, which is part of the strength deck and has to have four long cuts in it for catapults, as well as the cuts in the ship girder for the hangar exits onto the elevators. The cuts that already exist are only possible due to classified structural shenanigans of the deep wizardry sort. The Charles de Gaulle has to have a weak spot in her deck because the reactor needs refueling more frequently. As a result, when their new short catapult designs turned out to only work with literally neck-breaking accelerations, they had to cut down to two cats, and the island is way the hell forward, which sucks because that's prime real estate for spotting planes before launch. The Zumwalts are the first missile focused ships to not need the VLS cut to be in prime centerline real estate, and the way they talk about that development indicates that it's bigger than you'd think.

Ships haven't been tonnage critical since a little bit after WWII, instead they're volume critical. That's why a modern warship is an apartment building full of computers and coated in radars on top of a hull full of missile and engine. (Also this is a major factor in armor being obsoleted). Discounting the VLS and AEGIS is also probably a mistake. It allows very rapid engagement by a single coordinated system rather than Soviet/Russian style multiple systems, and packs a huge wad of missiles ready to go rather than having to wait for them to be readied from the magazines. You also get things like the Standard Missile being useful in offensive and defensive roles by dint of being a good long range anti-air missile with a lot of energy.
 
Also the USN is more worried than any other navy afloat about things like being able to spend as much time as possible at sea. Steaming to and from their destination is time spent with sailors and ships being used but producing none of the value that's their reason for existing. So seakeeping is a huge priority for the USN, and they tend to take it very seriously.
 
Given the proud tradition of secondary navies tending to use a greater fraction of displacement for armament and sitting in port until needed, the USN is doing pretty well.
 
 
Entirely agreed, but don't neglect to multiply those putative 'sorties' that lesser carriers manage by some fractional factor to represent how a ski jump leaves you choosing between a reasonable range or an actual weapons load (and if you take the latter by the former, multiply out by a factor to represent the fantastic odds of your carrier being close enough to be found and killed by real opponents).
 
 
It's probably worth considering that the battleship was obsoleted by the Essex class. Why, you might ask, is an evolutionary design what put the battleship out of business rather than some revolutionary new system that ? 24 hulls. By the end of that class, naval power was capable of tangling with land based air power if it was concentrated and well run. Coordinating with land based air was and is a huge help, but without that, the critical mass to just hunt and utterly destroy a battleship wasn't necessarily there and things like a guerre de course with battleships going into important areas at night (There's a reason Guadalcanal was a nightclub par excellence for surface fleets) were honestly totally viable.
 
The thing is that by 1945, the war wasn't about weaksauce raids into and out of enemy air cover, and careful island hopping, it was about "fuck you, we're the USN, and we're going to deploy the first proper integrated air defense setup on the high seas and dare you to come at us enough to make it count, which means mass attacks by guided munitions (human or otherwise)" And after the war, either you're deploying with or against that massed naval air power, or you don't matter (Sorry Argies but you got taken down by the British. The British. That's a geopolitical corgi-mauling considering what passes for a carrier over there).

US supercarriers have modest point defense systems, but they are going to traveling as part of a strike group that contains at least one aegis cruiser.  Smaller navies which can only deploy smaller strike groups have thicker defenses mounted on the carriers themselves.  INS Vikrant has short and long range SAMs, 76mm autocannons and 30mm CWIS, for example.
 
The tradeoff is that the Nimitz/Gerald R. Ford class carriers utterly dwarf all other carriers in sortie generation rate.  The Nimitz class can surge to 230 sorties per day for four days and sustain 120 sorties per day for extended periods.  The Navy was initially optimistic that the Gerald R Ford class could manage a 33% increase in sortie generation rate, but some newer sources are saying that it will only manage a 25% increase, at least initially.
 
The surge rates for the Queen Elizabeth class and the Charles de Gaulle are something like 120/day and 100/day respectively.  So even going all out, the next biggest non-US carriers can't even match a Nimitz's sustained sortie generation rate, much less a Gerald R Ford's.  Kuznetsov and her kin are lower still.  Not sure about the new Vikrant.
 
There appears to be an economy of scale that heavily favors really big carriers.  The US supercarriers appear to roughly match the best of their smaller peers in terms of maximum sorties per day per tonne of displacement, and appear to pull far ahead in terms of sustainable sorties per day per tonne of displacement (the figures for the CDG's latest cruise in Syria are not flattering, 12/day or something).  On top of that, the US supercarriers are a few knots faster than all the other carriers.
 
In short, giant, nuclear-driven American firepower for the win.
 

I would argue that larger carriers are more suited for offensive warfare than smaller carriers.
 
Being able to have 'force multipliers' like electronic warfare and airborne early warning aircraft while still having an effective strike compliment will make or break your ability to go toe to toe with peer opponents.
 
 

what time are these photos taken? is it a bradley with a new suspension?

To clarify a little on the above post, the paper from which those screencaps are considers everything moving at a velocity less than 2 km/s not part of the jet.

"Demolition Mechanism and Behavior of Shaped Charge with Reactive Liner", Xiao et al.
 
But a 1 kg jet is rare. a (really) rough estimation on a liner with a diameter of 110 and an internal angle of 50 degrees gives me ~380 grams for a 2 mm liner, ~500 grams for a 3 mm liner, and ~750 grams for a 4 mm liner. And we know that not all liner material will go into the jet or slug and we know that the jet itself has a very low weight compared to the slug.
 
Using the following info:

(Liner material is copper)
 


 
I'm getting an RE factor of 2.39. (500/50 = 10 kJ per gram for the total jet, TNT is 4.184 kJ per gram -> 10/4.184=2.39)
 
Yes, you're wrong. It's so destructive because a reactive liner literally blows the fuck up, a normal liner doesn't do this.

So, recently I stumbled upon something fairly interesting. Most of the people here know about shaped charges and how they work, the principles behind it are fairly well known. Recently however, there has been research about a new 'class' of shaped charges: Reactive Liner Shaped Charges. As the name implies it's a shaped charge with a liner made out of a reactive material.
 
Please note that I still do not fully understand the workings of Reactive Liner Shaped Charges, this post may be changed or updated depending on new information and/or discussions.
 
What is a reactive material, you say? One of the papers explains it like this:
(Demolition Mechanism and Behavior of Shaped Chargewith Reactive Liner, Jianguang Xiao et al., 2016)
 
In simple terms, it's a material that only explodes when you hit it really really really really hard with a hammer. Or when you fire it into a solid material at several kilometers per second. I dunno. It's one of the two.
 
What this amounts to is a shaped charge which forms an exploding jet. Neato.
 
But... why should you care? We already don't fire explosives at an armoured target because it's not very efficient, so why suddenly care now? To answer that I have to compare it to normal shaped charges and explain a few things about explosives. The most important thing to understand is that no explosive detonates instantly, there is always a slight delay. This delay is (almost) negligible at normal projectile velocities, but become important at high velocities. Think hypersonic velocities, like with... shaped charge jets!
The main thing I am not completely sure about is whether the detonation of the shaped charge initiates the liner, or the impact with the target. The self-delay of the reactive material used in most of the tests is ~0.85 and depending on the liner angle the jet can move 2.8 to 5.2 meters before actually exploding. Of course this distance will be a lot less when penetrating because the material slows down. A reactive material with a too low self-delay might detonate during the formation of the jet, or before it actually managed to penetrate the armour (but this only applies in the situation where the reactive liner is initiated by the shaped charge). This is of course not something you want, you want the liner to detonate inside the target to do the maximum amount of damage.
 
And that's the main reason you should care about shaped charges with reactive liners. They do a fuckton of damage.
 
This is your brain: This is the result of a shaped charge with an aluminium liner:

 
This is your brain on drugs: This is the result of a shaped charge with a reactive liner:

To give a sense of scale, that's a 1520 by 1520 mm concrete cylinder. The shaped charge had a diameter of... 81 mm.
 
As you can see the reactive liner does a fuckton more damage compared to a normal liner, this is because the jet literally detonates when it's inside the armour. Concrete is one of the materials that cannot deal with certain forces, which makes it weak versus explosives detonating inside of it. Steel for example cares a lot less about it, but even steel will suffer more damage from a reactive liner than a normal copper liner. The entry hole for a reactive liner is around 0.65 CD whereas for a copper liner it is 0.5 CD. A paper also states the following:
The paper however does not show or describe the "tremendous increase in steel target damage". It does however give some basic information and show photos of the entry holes:
 

 

 
The penetration capabilities of reactive liners in steel targets were "sacrificed slightly" compared to copper liners, but the paper does not elaborate any further.
 
Here's some more information and pictures about the effectiveness of reactive liners against concrete targets, just for shits and giggles:

A 'Bam Bam' is the same warhead as the 81mm one (1.8 kg) from the first photos, except scaled to 18.1 kg. The 81mm charge is called Barnie, by the way. The target is the same ~1500 mm too.
 

As you can see the Bam Bam charge is capable of fucking up massive parts of asphalt roads/runways. A 21.6 cm shaped charge completely destroying around 42 square meters of asphalt.
 

 
But hey, a 21.6 cm charge is fucking massive, lets tone it down slightly.
 
Charges:

 
Test setup:

 
Results:

Sadly there's a bunch of information missing in the tables. It is highly likely that different liner thicknesses were used, but these aren't given in the tables.
Results can be found in the full version of Table 1:

...that's around 9-10 square meters of concrete fucked up by a ~1 kg warhead. That's fucking insane.
 
 
Some other things to note is that due to the materials used in these tests (an aluminium-polymer mix) the jet velocity is significantly higher and the jet length longer than comparable copper liners:

 
So the reactive liner used (26% Al, 74% Teflon) has a jet tip velocity that's around twice as high for shallow charges, but drops to around 1.6 at higher angles. The difference in jet tip velocity is most likely due to the lower density of the reactive liner. This is what Wang et al. said about this:
This poor ductility also increases the probability of fragmentation (jet break-up), which can be seen here:


 
So because the reactive liner has a lower density, it forms a jet quicker, but because of its poor ductility it starts to break up very quickly. Tests have shown that a stand-off that's longer than 2 CD is undesirable, whereas normal liners do not really care about a longer stand-off.
 
However! The research done to make the Barnie warhead show that it is undesirable to have cavitation during the formation of the jet. This cavitation is visible in the above simulations, but can better be seen in this one:

It is very well possible that Wang et al. had a sub-optimal liner design, since the final Barnie jet looks like this compared to a comparable aluminium liner jet:

They are quite similar and the Barnie jet does not have the 'blobs' visible in the simulations from Wang et al..
 
 
 
And last but certainly not least, Xiao et al. calculated the TNT equivalence (RE factor) of the reactive liner:

 
In simple terms, the kaboom-effectiveness of this reactive material is 3.4 to 7.7 times as high as TNT. But since these values on their own are kind of meaningless, lets compare them to other RE factors!
The RE factor of C4 is 1.34.
The RE factor of RDX is 1.6.
PETN? 1.66. 
Torpex? 1.3.
Amatol? 1.1.
ANFO? 0.74.
The explosive with the highest detonation velocity (Octanitrocubane)? 2.38.
THIS FUCKING ALUMINIUM/TEFLON MIX!? MOTHERFUCKING 7.77.
 
Interestingly the theoretical energy contained in the aluminium/teflon mix is only about 4 times as high as TNT. The higher values are most likely due to the addition of kinetic effects.
 
 
So yeah... huzzah for reactive liners. 
 
I might add some stuff to this post later, depending on whether or not I forgot something.

Oh, good.  So they were on the same page of arms design as the country that has fought literally nobody since 1847.