Beowulf wrote:The Umerians would have bought the Mark III version in the '90s, probably modified to use some of their native avionics and missile systems which were finally getting up to snuff around then. They would not be shopping for the J-12 or other similar stealth fighters, placing all their eggs in their own fifth-generation fighter project's basket. Which more or less worked, though the teething problems were a PAIN.
No worries. I actually just wrote that yesterday. Mark III would be the second upgrade program? Not the one with the glass cockpit.
Er, no, sorry, I meant Mark IV but lost count. Purchases or license production in the mid-1990s, to both complement the prospective fifth generation fighter and provide backup capability if the design turned out to be a flop.
I'll go into more detail on some of these later, but right now, the Umerian Air Force consists of:
Typhoon: Swept-wing turboprop bomber, a Umerian name for an aircraft purchased from overseas. Inferior to the B-52 in performance. Very old; the recent 'Vimana' program was inspired in large part by the fear that if Umeria had to operate its Typhoon fleet under wartime conditions, the things might physically break apart and fall into the sea even before the enemy started slaughtering them with long range missiles.
Spectre: Swing-wing aircraft otherwise similar to the F-4 Phantom. Again a foreign purchase, but the country the Umerians bought it from has probably stopped making them. Still in limited use because it makes a pretty good 'dumb attack' aircraft.
Comet: The Umerian variant of the Tianguonese J-10. Currently, the entire active force has been replaced by the 'Super Comet,' the updated 90s version of the J-10 with modern avionics. The Super Comet, unlike the J-10D, fires a native Umerian air to air missile.
Snow Leopard: License-produced VTOL aircraft broadly analogous to a 1970s-era Harrier. Dunno where it comes from. Umeria has Issues with mass purchase of a San Doradan fighter or I'd work with Siege to gin up one of theirs.
Chariot: Currently the dominant frontline fighter in the Umerian military. Entered production in the mid-80s, comes in conventional, short-takeoff, and VTOL variants. Probably the Umerians' attempt to get the performance of the Vixen without having to rely on Helix Industries for basic defensive needs.
_____________*: Umerian stealth fighter. Mostly designed for strike, not nearly as hot-shit at air to air combat as, say, the F-22. Umerian military doctrine is of the opinion that the real reason for stealth is to blow up the enemy's stuff on the ground before he even knows you're there; if you find yourself fighting large scale air battles against enemy stealth fighters you're doing something wrong. Entered production around 2005.
Vimana: First Umerian strategic bomber since the Paisley Age. Runs at somewhere north of Mach 2, flies high, swing-wing, big, nasty, pretty. Looks about as much like a Tu-160 as a Tu-160 looks like a B-1, for the same reason: there are only so many ways to design an aircraft with that mission role.
There are about four of them. Hopefully more than four will be finished within a year of game start, but realistically there will never be enough of these to pose a major strategic threat all by themselves in a world without nuclear weapons.
*Don't actually have a name for this one yet; it's driving me nuts.
Everything since the Chariot, the Umerians designed for themselves. It's a nationalism thing. They make an exception for the Super Comet, and it bugs them, and frankly whatever fighter they roll out in the 2020s would probably be something fully capable of replacing it in its designated role of being a helluva fast interceptor.
I'm not sure if Tianguo's ready to sell the J-12 to anyone yet. The Shinra line for it may be though, for other people who are interested. And I think I may have been confused by the tech year being different from calendar year, (2014 tech with 2000 game start?) which would push all those dates down by 14 years.
Yeah, I'm confused too. So far I've been proceeding on the assumption that the game starts in 2014. Any statement I make about the '80s or '90s or whatever is based on that.
Until we get an official timeline (at least a sparse one) in the "mod pronouncements' thread, I'm going to continue with that assumption, and assume that the basic technological level of the world is roughly consistent with that we see in real life in the 2010-2015 timeframe.
Otherwise I might have to revise some of what you see above. The one thing that
won't change is the Umerian classroom.
[/me resists urge to ramble from hobbyhorse]