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Thread: F-16 Replacement

  1. #101
    Council Member TAH's Avatar
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    Default Its the Weapons Load-out Not the Airframe

    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.

  2. #102
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Quantitative quality...

    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    One of the books I have says that the success of MiG units varied on how many experienced pilots were in the units as they rotated through.
    Books are often but not always correct. However, that book got that obvious truth correct...
    The B-29s were driven from the daylight skies within range of the MiGs.
    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.
    Navy and Marine aviation were critical of course but they had nothing that could deal MiG-15 either. They were mostly light bombers.
    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.

    It also was a matter of location and range...
    Mass can trump quality if the quality differential isn't too great.
    Adequate Mass can trump a hugaceous amount, indeed any amount, of quality...
    The F-84 got 10 MiGs and the MiGs got 18 F-84s.
    Pilot quality, maybe? The F9Fs got 5 Migs and the Migs got no Panthers...

  3. #103
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Unless the other guy has a Meteor or something similar,

    Quote Originally Posted by TAH View Post
    Buy enough AMRAAMs and the number of F22 begins to become mote. Don't buy enough and the overall situation changes.
    then the number of AMRAAMs one possesses becomes moot...

    Not to mention countermeasures...

  4. #104
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Default

    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.

  5. #105
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Vampires...

    I left out the Vampires (none in Korea to my knowledge but they were arguably better fighters than the Meteors)...

  6. #106
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    Ken,

    If you're going to bring up the quantity-over-quality argument, then you really shouldn't leave out zombies.
    Supporting "time-limited, scope limited military actions" for 20 years.

  7. #107
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    Pilot quality, maybe? The F9Fs got 5 Migs and the Migs got no Panthers...
    Such very small data samples have only anecdotal, no real empirical value.

    16 Fw 190A hunted 4 P-51's over the beaches of Normandy during Overlord and destroyed some of them. Now guess how representative this sample was...

  8. #108
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Uh uh. You are not getting me to encraoch on Slap's territory...

    Quote Originally Posted by Entropy View Post
    If you're going to bring up the quantity-over-quality argument, then you really shouldn't leave out zombies.


    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...

  9. #109
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Entropy View Post
    Line of sight distance from the Chinese airfield to Guam is about 1800 miles. They would realistically need more like 2000 miles to avoid flying directly over Taiwan. Conceivable? Yes. Likely? No. Consider that the F-111, originally designed as a long-range interceptor, had a combat radius of about 1300 miles.
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Entropy View Post
    Secondly, F-22's don't need to protect every inch of airspace. Chinese fighters can't simply interdict air-routes willy-nilly at those ranges - they need some kind of intelligence or queuing from radar, or something. It's not like we'd be twiddling our thumbs while the Chinese launch their aircraft to intercept.
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Entropy View Post
    We don't know the J-20's capabilities. We don't know when, if ever, it will reach IOC, much less be fielded in significant numbers. We don't know how many the Chinese would ultimately build. The claim that we can't field a force that can match the J-20 is a bit premature considering the J-20 isn't fully developed (much less deployed), has unknown capabilities, etc.
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Entropy View Post
    Plus, there is more than one way to skin a cat - ie. kill the aircraft on the ground, blind the aircraft by taking out C2 and GCI systems, etc. There is a lot more to winning an air campaign than a simple comparison of airframes.
    The Chinese know that too and they plan for it. They have several bases with underground hangers. Do we have any bases like that?
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  10. #110
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    Default Missiles are an issue...

    Quote Originally Posted by TAH View Post
    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.
    TAH-

    The F-22 can carry 6 AMRAAMs and 2 Sidewinders. While you could carry more externally, you sacrifice some stealth.

    That is one of the big problems with 187 Raptors... not enough jets and missiles.

    V/R,

    Cliff

  11. #111
    Council Member Kiwigrunt's Avatar
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    Nothing that results in human progress is achieved with unanimous consent. (Christopher Columbus)

    All great truth passes through three stages: first it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
    (Arthur Schopenhauer)

    ONWARD

  12. #112
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    http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28260781

    The fighter plane in question: Textron AirLand Scorpion

    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.
    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.


    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?

  13. #113
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    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    The Chinese know that too and they plan for it. They have several bases with underground hangers. Do we have any bases like that?
    Those bases can be killed by:
    1. Destroying ventilation/utilities/logistics shafts.
    2. Exit points for the aircraft to launch

    We don't have to kill bases outright.

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