Some of this is not some much airframe number comparision versus numbers of advanced Air-to-Air weapons. Buy enough AMRAAMs and the number of F22 begins to become mote. Don't buy enough and the overall situation changes.
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Some of this is not some much airframe number comparision versus numbers of advanced Air-to-Air weapons. Buy enough AMRAAMs and the number of F22 begins to become mote. Don't buy enough and the overall situation changes.
Books are often but not always correct. However, that book got that obvious truth correct... :cool:Deja vu all over again. Daylight bombing without local air superiority (there is and will be no air dominance...) is hazardous to Bombers. What a surprise. :(Quote:
The B-29s were driven from the daylight skies within range of the MiGs.
The F9F did okay on the rare occasions it encountered Mig 15s. They were rare due to operational location and range (both) considerations, not to avoidance. Several former Panther pilots I talked to, former Brother in law and his friends, had scraps with Mig 15s. They acknowledge its technical superiority but claimed it could be beaten. They and other Navy / MC aircraft were mostly light bombers for a variety of reasons -- I would never suggest that the most significant was that they did a far better job at it and everyone in Korea knew that. ;)Quote:
Navy and Marine aviation were critical of course but they had nothing that could deal MiG-15 either. They were mostly light bombers.
It also was a matter of location and range...Adequate Mass can trump a hugaceous amount, indeed any amount, of quality...Quote:
Mass can trump quality if the quality differential isn't too great.
Pilot quality, maybe? The F9Fs got 5 Migs and the Migs got no Panthers...;)Quote:
The F-84 got 10 MiGs and the MiGs got 18 F-84s.
Ken, this was funny. I read "Meteor" and was still mentally in Korea War history...for a split second I wondered what Meteors and AMRAAMs have in common.
I left out the Vampires (none in Korea to my knowledge but they were arguably better fighters than the Meteors)... :D
Ken,
If you're going to bring up the quantity-over-quality argument, then you really shouldn't leave out zombies. ;)
:D
However, there were Phantoms involved. ;)
Fuchs:
True on the anecdotal. However, anecdotes as antidotes to anecdotes should doted upon if the anecdoter is in his dotage...
As to the 190s and P-51s, the 190 was, IMO, a great bird and the 20mms gave it an edge. It did better than most contemporaries at lower altitude but I suspect most often, the relative numbers were reversed...
If it has a 1300 mile combat radius, that will still cover all the areas I mentioned plus get it down to the straits of Malacca. Why would you need to go around Taiwan? If you are up at 65,000 feet or so going Mach 1.2 and have some ideas of where the missile batteries are you might be able to overfly the place, especially if those missile batteries are destroyed or suppressed by missiles fired from the mainland. If your object was to cut the air route from Guam to Taiwan for example, even if you had to go around the island it would still have the range to do that.
No they don't need to protect every inch of airspace, only that airspace where the things we need are flying, like tankers, transports, AWACS etc. With the small number of F-22s we have we can't cover much. The choice then is don't fly or lose the tanker. They know they need all that you mention and I'll bet they are working on all of it, like say...hacking into ATC computer connections. Once we run out of F-22s, twiddling our thumbs may be all we can do.
True enough we don't know. We may never know for sure until the Chines choose to tell us or demonstrate the capabilities in a practical manner. The problem is if we wait until we know, and the aircraft is as capable as I fear, it will be to late to do anything about it. We could petition the Chinese to give us 15 years to come up with a match but the price would likely be steep. We have to make educated guesses and plan on what it probably can do, not what we are certain it will do.
The Chinese know that too and they plan for it. They have several bases with underground hangers. Do we have any bases like that?
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28260781
The fighter plane in question: Textron AirLand Scorpion
It is being pitched as a lost cost alternative to the current fighter jet fleets. In particular, it is being sold as being suited for COIN like operations in OEF/OIF.Quote:
The Scorpion costs about $20m (£12m) a throw, is built from off-the-shelf components, and went from drawing board to first flight in 23 months.
Thoughts:
With the development of the F15 under the F-X program, the USAF found it impossible to equip every standing squadron with it. This lead to the light weight fighter program with the F16 as the winner. The results was a mix of Hi/Lo or Heavy/Light. Of course, the F16 has evolved into a true multirole combat aircraft. The F35, as the successor, is even further away from the original low.
If we wish to have a Hi(F22)/Med(F35)/Lo mix of combat aircraft, I don't see this filling in the lo. Something like the Golden Eagle from Korea, JF17 from PRC, or a modern variant of the F5/T38 would be far suitable. The first obviously suffer from the "not-made-here", the second is obviously out of question, the third doesn't exist (at least not yet). The obvious fear is that this "new" lo in the mix of three, will again suffer from mission bloat that it will eventually become a new "medium".
For COIN like operations, jets have high speeds to race into position as necessary, but is probably associated with higher operating costs (I'm not an expert in this). Would something like a modernized OV10 Bronco or Argentinian Pucara be a better choice? Apparently, the Pucara was used by government forces in Sri Lanka.
Thoughts?