US Air Force planners want irreguar warfare wing

[siesta3]

Uhm... what are you talking about? Those weren't, like, in the same war.

First, I think Vietnam was a little bigger deal than Serbia.

You might want to check up on the history of the service of the Skyraider over Vietnam. It was just a bit impressive.

Second, what exact threat did those Serbian MiGs provide to, well, anything? How many of them did we shoot down? A couple? Among other things, do we really need anything more expensive than F-16s to deal with those? Or with Iran's F-14s, which were delivered when I was still watching The Electric Company in my feetie pajamas?

Third, what good will an F-22 do in a war like Iraq? And against which enemy that we are likely to face will it do any good? Long story short, we ain't going to war against Russia or China, who are the only players even close to "peer" status. Period. The idea that we ever would, over anything, is a fantasy. And if we did, it'd turn into a nukefest in about five minutes - say goodbye to Taipei, Seoul, and San Diego. Step off on China and your F-22s would be heaps of radioactive slag in the glowing hole that used to be Kadena before the President's speech announcing the start of the war was over, rendering the whole subject pretty moot. We know it. They know it. Sorry guys, that's reality.

So who are we going to go after? Either fourth-rate chumps like Saddam's Iraq, or brushfire wars like Afghanistan and present-day Iraq. For this we need fighter planes costing 200 million dollars apiece? Of course not. The Sky Corvettes have no mission, and aircraft that would have a mission in a war like Iraq aren't being adequately developed or funded. I read a story not long ago in USA Today about how they can't get Predators into Iraq fast enough. The Predator is the breakout star and real success story of AF operations in the middle east - and is another low, slow, cheap, "small" weapon. Predators cost $4.5 million apiece. Even if we take the face-value cost of an F-22, $120 million (as opposed to the real per-unit cost based on number of aircraft divided by program cost, in which case the real price is something closer to 340 million apiece), that means you could have 24 Predators for every F-22. Ask anyone on the ground in Iraq which would be more valuable for them to have in the skies right now - one F-22 or two dozen Predators.

Or for another example, witness Israel's recent humiliating bloody nose in Lebanon. Dan "Schlemiel" Halutz, air power advocate, promised Ehud "Schlimazel" Olmert that his spiffy new F-16Is would clean up Hezbollah in no time. Air power would save the day - trust me. What'd Israel get for following that sage advice? It got run out of Lebanon with its aura of invincibility destroyed - maybe irreparably.

America's military is by and large a modernized version of exactly the same force that fought World War II, as if we're expecting the Imperial Japanese Navy to rise from the bottom of the ocean, buy a few nuclear supercarriers while we're not paying attention, and steam towards Hawaii again. It's just not going to happen.

Last month a guy I had trained way back in Desert Storm called me up for drinks in Tampa. He had just come back from Iraq and gave me an account about how his unit got out of a bind. He just finished his tour as Air Force terminal controller attached to the army. Earlier this year they encountered one of the few convoys that the army still uses and right before they got there IEDS went off and insurgents began peppering them with small arms fire and RPGs. As the fire fight continued he called in for air support. A larger convoy was being watched by an F-16 in the south and imediately came to their aid. Once the F-16s showed up the insurgents fled. They would later be killed in their hideout by another set of F-16s with LGBs. And yes - the army guys are HAPPY to have sky corvettes over their heads along with predators and A-10s.

Everday since the start of OIF F-16s provide CAS for troops in Iraq with fighter squadrons at Balad- they have expanded their mission profiles and they work in conjunction with predator drones which by the way are still in their infancy as far as being the preferred CAS asset (I'm sure if you ask someone on the ground in Iraq what would get there FASTER and who would provide more firepower - a predator drone with two hellfire missiles or a F-16 with up to 4,000lbs of guided bombs?????) I don't know where you got the idea that F-16s and F-15s are irrevalant since we have them over Iraq and Afghanistan everyday. Maybe you should tell the Dutch and Norwegians or even the French that their F-16s and Mirages are useless in Afganistan? Oh and for the record .. there are A-10s in both Iraq and Afghanistan so there is no shortage of those planes that you feel are needed over there.

UAVs are the wave of the future but it's still not at this time as good as a guy up in the air who you can talk on to a target or using a laptop and ROVER to see what he is seeing to drop bombs and get you out of a bind. So I don't know where you read or formulate your ideas but since the inception of the Air Force tactical and non traditional forces have always been part of the Air Force. There is alot more going on then trying to get predators into Iraq and or that thinking everything is going to go nuke in the first round.

[Cobrahistorian]

Nergol,

Obviously your concept of the new UAV wonder weapon is a bit skewed. The Predator (Warrior in Army speak) is a corps-level asset. Covers a BIG area. The guys on the ground aren't depending on data from a Predator feed. They have three other echelons of UAVs overhead to deal with that. They couldn't care less if a Predator is overhead. They have Hunters, Shadows and Ravens to provide them timely intel and then CAS aircraft overhead to sock it to the bad guys.

This idea that the Predator is this invincible, unseen aerial killer is ridiculous. Sure, it carries two Hellfires and the Reaper carries 4. I can carry sixteen and I can see what I'm shooting at because I'm there, not in a cubicle 5,000 miles away.

UAVs are great for intel, not for striking targets. Until they're sentient (god forbid) they are not going to be CAS platforms.

Jon

[Vesper]

Word on that Cobra B)

Ves B)

[ChernayaAkula]

Damian has built just the aircraft for that mission! B)

<...> at means you could have 24 Predators for every F-22. Ask anyone on the ground in Iraq which would be more valuable for them to have in the skies right now - one F-22 or two dozen Predators.

22 Predators are NOTHING without said single F-22 to protect them, even when facing a moderate threat. The Serbs shot down a couple of UAVs. One was shot down by flying alongside in a Mi-8 and blasting the UAV with a door-mounted PKM.

And there's a great many Mi-8s and even more PKMs in action around the world. B)

Couldn't an F-16 get those? Sure it could! But could it get them when the Mi-8s are protected by SA-10s and Fulcrums and Flankers? Sure, but the risk of losing not only the UAVs but the F-16s as well is much higher!

Variatio delectat! Diversity delights!

You need both the UAVs and the F-22s! Thus you won't be caught with your pants down should the enemy field something beside AKs and RPGs.

Edited July 4, 2007 by ChernayaAkula

[Trigger]

Uhm... what are you talking about? Those weren't, like, in the same war.

Wow, nothing gets by you, does it? Hey, you were the one that used the A-1 as a gold standard of aviation technology over the battlefield and said that the Sky Corvettes weren't needed

First, I think Vietnam was a little bigger deal than Serbia. You might want to check up on the history of the service of the Skyraider over Vietnam. It was just a bit impressive.

I'm probably better versed in the A-1s service over SEA than you are about the role of the Predator.

Second, what exact threat did those Serbian MiGs provide to, well, anything? How many of them did we shoot down? A couple? Among other things, do we really need anything more expensive than F-16s to deal with those? Or with Iran's F-14s, which were delivered when I was still watching The Electric Company in my feetie pajamas?

What threat did those Serbian MiGs present? How would I know, they were shot down by F-15s and F-16s

So F-16s are the end-all be-all of fighter technology, huh? (I know that right now the Flanker Mafia is laughing at that idea, and for a very good reason) So you think that an air force should just strive for solutions that are "adequate" or "good enough." And what do you base that off of?

Third, what good will an F-22 do in a war like Iraq?

What good will a Predator do against a MiG-29, or a MiG-25 for that matter?

And against which enemy that we are likely to face will it (F-22) do any good? Long story short, we ain't going to war against Russia or China, who are the only players even close to "peer" status. Period. The idea that we ever would, over anything, is a fantasy. And if we did, it'd turn into a nukefest in about five minutes - say goodbye to Taipei, Seoul, and San Diego. Step off on China and your F-22s would be heaps of radioactive slag in the glowing hole that used to be Kadena before the President's speech announcing the start of the war was over, rendering the whole subject pretty moot. We know it. They know it. Sorry guys, that's reality.

No, the reality is, you don't know the future. If you did, you'd have changed your avatar to a tarot card, crystal ball or magic eight-ball, picked the winning Powerball numbers and would have retired to a tropical island somewhere, being served drinks by beautiful topless women. You're taking what you read in USA Today and what's going on in the world right now to determine what will happen tomorrow. Yes, the COIN mission is back, but that doesn't mean you give up Air Dominance.

So who are we going to go after? Either fourth-rate chumps like Saddam's Iraq, or brushfire wars like Afghanistan and present-day Iraq. For this we need fighter planes costing 200 million dollars apiece? Of course not. The Sky Corvettes have no mission...

Okay, I'm going to stop you right there - the same arguments (cost) was made against the F-15 back in the 1970s and how many kills has that "Sky Corvette" notched up over it's career? Oh yeah, that's right - 100 kills to no losses.

But I guess someone forgot to tell all those Eagle Drivers that they had no mission.

and aircraft that would have a mission in a war like Iraq aren't being adequately developed or funded.

Did you miss or did you choose to intentionally ignore Waco's comments about the A-10C upgrades, or the awarding just last week of a $2B contract for all new A-10 wings. Or what about the new AH-64Ds that just came off the line? Or the fact that every time you see an Apache that's on deployment, it's sporting new countermeasures, be it plume detectors or exhaust shields.

I read a story not long ago in USA Today about how they can't get Predators into Iraq fast enough. The Predator is the breakout star and real success story of AF operations in the middle east - and is another low, slow, cheap, "small" weapon. Predators cost $4.5 million apiece. Even if we take the face-value cost of an F-22, $120 million (as opposed to the real per-unit cost based on number of aircraft divided by program cost, in which case the real price is something closer to 340 million apiece), that means you could have 24 Predators for every F-22. Ask anyone on the ground in Iraq which would be more valuable for them to have in the skies right now - one F-22 or two dozen Predators.

Predators performing CAS? LMAO!!!!!! I really can't say anything more than what Siesta3 and Cobrahistorian have already contributed except that you don't know your CAS from a hole in the ground. Just because a Predator can fart off a couple of Hellfire, doesn't mean it's going to be flying top cover for some Marines somewhere. CAS has been performed by AH-1, AH-64, A-10, F-14, F-15E, F-16, F/A-18 and the B-52; what matters is, which aircraft with bombs can get to the scene the fastest. Both of the following are 50 miles away: a supersonic F-22 with a of belly full of 250lb SDBs and eyes in the cockpit, or a 100 mph R/C plane with between 2-4 of Hellfire being flown by someone looking at a screen somewhere?

So what, kill the Raptor now and all that money will reappear to buy more Predators? "Well, we're starting to get Raptors now." "Hold on, we don't need them against a bunch of guys with RPGs." "But, they've got 40 years of airframe life left in them and they're already paid for" "Doesn't matter, we don't need them at the moment." "Right, well, off to the scrapyard then!" Yeah, now there's money really well spent. B)

Or for another example, witness Israel's recent humiliating bloody nose in Lebanon. Dan "Schlemiel" Halutz, air power advocate, promised Ehud "Schlimazel" Olmert that his spiffy new F-16Is would clean up Hezbollah in no time. Air power would save the day - trust me. What'd Israel get for following that sage advice? It got run out of Lebanon with its aura of invincibility destroyed - maybe irreparably.

How is the weather there in Rio Linda today? So it was just the fault of the F-16I huh? That didn't have anything to do with the Israeli government's position of "we're trying, for the first time, to go with international opinion and actually care about not inflicting civilian collateral damage, so we aren't going in and killing just anyone. We're trying to being precise and taking out the right people at the right time. Oh, and by the way, since the world was so appalled at how we even did that, we stopped, just so you'd stop whining." There were so many factors in last year's conflict in Lebanon that to try to simplify it by blaming the outcome on that aircraft is lackadaisical.

America's military is by and large a modernized version of exactly the same force that fought World War II, as if we're expecting the Imperial Japanese Navy to rise from the bottom of the ocean, buy a few nuclear supercarriers while we're not paying attention, and steam towards Hawaii again. It's just not going to happen.

Obviously you were never a Boy Scout. That's because it's well known to have long been the doctrine to be able to fight two major wars on opposite sides of the globe as the same time. You can sit there and say that won't happen, but who know back in 1935 that it would. You don't know what tomorrow holds, you don't know.

Your arguments for the Predator and against advancing fighter technology and capability ignore political leaderships' decisions regarding the use of force, expectations of said use of force, the proliferation of 4th generation fighter technology around the globe, the emergence of 5th generation platforms while at the same time ignoring one of the basic tenants of military history that one rarely knows where/when the next conflict will happen next. The government of a nation that is friendly to the US, but operates 4th generation fighters (F-16s, Mirage 2000, MiG-29 or Su-27), may fall overnight and suddenly those aircraft aren't friendly anymore. You have ignored what has been said here in the past be people who actually are in the air combat business and instead choose what the writer of a USA Today article as the basis of your hypothesis and you're basing your outlook on fighting the most immediate last war when what the Air Force appears to be doing is looking at the range of conflicts it has been in over the course of its 60 year history and is increasing their flexibility and preparedness to fight any type of war in the future, be it a low-level insurgency or a major regional conflict.

Edited July 4, 2007 by Trigger

[Trigger]

Damian has built just the aircraft for that mission! B)

I like it!!!!

[Trigger]

oops. double post. LOL, I just really liked the look of that F4U as a Sandy!

Edited July 4, 2007 by Trigger

[Vesper]

Anyone here wanna go for a Dr. Pepper? I'm buying B)

Ves B)

[Nergol]

Last month a guy I had trained way back in Desert Storm called me up for drinks in Tampa. He had just come back from Iraq and gave me an account about how his unit got out of a bind. He just finished his tour as Air Force terminal controller attached to the army. Earlier this year they encountered one of the few convoys that the army still uses and right before they got there IEDS went off and insurgents began peppering them with small arms fire and RPGs. As the fire fight continued he called in for air support. A larger convoy was being watched by an F-16 in the south and imediately came to their aid. Once the F-16s showed up the insurgents fled. They would later be killed in their hideout by another set of F-16s with LGBs. And yes - the army guys are HAPPY to have sky corvettes over their heads along with predators and A-10s.

Everday since the start of OIF F-16s provide CAS for troops in Iraq with fighter squadrons at Balad- they have expanded their mission profiles and they work in conjunction with predator drones which by the way are still in their infancy as far as being the preferred CAS asset (I'm sure if you ask someone on the ground in Iraq what would get there FASTER and who would provide more firepower - a predator drone with two hellfire missiles or a F-16 with up to 4,000lbs of guided bombs?????) I don't know where you got the idea that F-16s and F-15s are irrevalant since we have them over Iraq and Afghanistan everyday. Maybe you should tell the Dutch and Norwegians or even the French that their F-16s and Mirages are useless in Afganistan? Oh and for the record .. there are A-10s in both Iraq and Afghanistan so there is no shortage of those planes that you feel are needed over there.

UAVs are the wave of the future but it's still not at this time as good as a guy up in the air who you can talk on to a target or using a laptop and ROVER to see what he is seeing to drop bombs and get you out of a bind. So I don't know where you read or formulate your ideas but since the inception of the Air Force tactical and non traditional forces have always been part of the Air Force. There is alot more going on then trying to get predators into Iraq and or that thinking everything is going to go nuke in the first round.

So... we need 200 million dollar air superiority fighters like the F-22... to do convoy escort and close air support (which were the missions you described)?

Didn't we do those missions pretty good with Skyraiders, AC-47s, and A-37s in Vietnam?

Or better yet - stop thinking of things as a zero-sum game. The point is that for every F-22 or B-2 you don't build, you can buy a bunch of other aircraft - things that were designed for CAS and are good at it, for example. How about A-10s or AC-130s for a start? Then you can fill up grid squares with them so one is always available. In South Vietnam, all you had to do was holler for an airstrike and something would show up in short order because there was always something airborne and waiting to drop bombs on somebody.

Or just as nice, for that kind of money you could have had enough AT-6s available that your buddy's convoy could have had one of its very own assigned to protect it. Or, hell, how about a couple of Apaches? Weren't they designed to do stuff like that?

And sorry, yes, if we went to war with China over Taiwan, it would go nuke in the first round. The Chinese have said so explicitly (Check out: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/28cfe55a-f4a7-11d9...00e2511c8.html). Not of course that it'd get that far anyway - all the Chinese would have to do to make us shut up and go away would be to threaten to dump their T-Bills, which would drop the dollar right down the toilet. Then it's 1929 all over again. Taipei? Forget it - if the Chinese did that, we'd have our hands full trying to keep Cincinnatti and Detroit in one piece. We know it. They know it. So America will do zip over Taiwan.

22 Predators are NOTHING without said single F-22 to protect them, even when facing a moderate threat. The Serbs shot down a couple of UAVs. One was shot down by flying alongside in a Mi-8 and blasting the UAV with a door-mounted PKM.

F-22s to protect them... from what? From Mi-8s? For this, nothing but a 200 million dollar aircraft will do?

So we need F-22s to protect our Predators from Mi-8s that are protected by Su-30s? Huh?

Yes, the Serbs and their big mean Air Force shot down a couple of Predators. Guess what - Predators are cheap and expendable, which is why we built them in the first place. We send them to do dangerous, dirty work so that when they do get blasted, we don't have to start digging a rectangular hole at Arlington. So they'll get blasted every so often - that's life, and nothing that F-22s would, could, or should do anything about. Nor, I'm sure, was providing CAP for Predators high on the list of the jobs that the Pentagon had in mind when they ordered the F-22.

Besides, Predators seem to have done okay without fighter cover (to protect them from what, again?) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The threat in places like Iraq and Afghanistan - to Predators and everyone else - is much more likely to come from SA-18s than from Su-30s. And an F-22 or B-2 will be able to do jack all about that.

This idea that the Predator is this invincible, unseen aerial killer is ridiculous. Sure, it carries two Hellfires and the Reaper carries 4. I can carry sixteen and I can see what I'm shooting at because I'm there, not in a cubicle 5,000 miles away.

I think you may have misunderstood me. I'm not suggesting that 24 Predators would be there to do the same job as an F-22, or as an A-10 or an AT-6 or an Apache. I'm saying that there's more of a mission for 24 Predators in Iraq and Afghanistan (or Pakistan, or Columbia, or the Mexican border) than there is for one F-22.

[Trigger]

If the Pentagon acted on the advice of every armchair who had an opinion on these matters, we'd all end up with a bunch of B-52s powered by outboard motors.

[Cobrahistorian]

Nergol,

The point is, you have next to zero knowledge about sensor capability and what each piece brings to the fight. You're seeing the Raptor as an "air superiority fighter" when its capabilities far exceed your conventional line of thinking. You're calling for more Predators, when the ones that are in service are plenty capable of their mission and we don't NEED more of them. Not to mention, do you have any statistics on how many Predators have been lost due to "lost signal"? Most of them that have gone down, in fact. And an SA-18 is no threat to a Predator. It can't reach that altitude.

Whether the Air Force gets more Raptors will have minimal impact on whether or not we get more Apaches. We've got 150 new ones coming into the fleet that started last week.

As for there being "more of a mission for 24 Predators in Iraq and Afghanistan (or Pakistan, or Columbia, or the Mexican border) than there is for one F-22", just goes to show that you have no understanding of what the F-22 does.

Jon

Edited July 4, 2007 by Cobrahistorian

[Nergol]

Wow, nothing gets by you, does it? Hey, you were the one that used the A-1 as a gold standard of aviation technology over the battlefield and said that the Sky Corvettes weren't needed

I'm probably better versed in the A-1s service over SEA than you are about the role of the Predator.

What threat did those Serbian MiGs present? How would I know, they were shot down by F-15s and F-16s

A lot of what you cover I went over in my post of a few minutes ago, so no need to repeat.

I'm not arguing that the US should have no air superiority fighters at all, just that there's a huge overemphasis on them and an underemphasis on weapons that would be useful in the wars we actually fight. Sorry, but the epic struggle against the vast and overwhelming Serb Air Force is not much of a story compared to Iraq and Afghanistan.

What good will a Predator do against a MiG-29, or a MiG-25 for that matter?

None. But an F-22 will do just about as much good against the enemy we're actually fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, or against any enemy we are likely to fight in the foreseeable future. The Iranians have gotten smart and invested in SAMs instead of fighters. Anyone else either wouldn't present a threat to our current fighter assets, or are forces we just aren't going to war with.

The problem is that the US Air Force has a skewed vision of what it's there to do. The Russians are a little more realistic - they do and always have seen their Air Force as being there to support their ground forces. The US Air Force sees its mission as flying sexy-looking supersonic jets and becoming fighter aces. The USAF needs a reality check - there's little chance of fighting the enemy they're prepared to fight, and as for the enemy we actually are fighting, the USAF isn't as adapted to fighting them as they need to be.

No, the reality is, you don't know the future. If you did, you'd have changed your avatar to a tarot card, crystal ball or magic eight-ball, picked the winning Powerball numbers and would have retired to a tropical island somewhere, being served drinks by beautiful topless women. You're taking what you read in USA Today and what's going on in the world right now to determine what will happen tomorrow. Yes, the COIN mission is back, but that doesn't mean you give up Air Dominance.

Again, I don't propose scrapping fighters entirely, just of removing the overemphasis on them and shifting emphasis to the support of the ground-pounders, which is what we actually need in the wars we're actually fighting.

Okay, I'm going to stop you right there - the same arguments (cost) was made against the F-15 back in the 1970s and how many kills has that "Sky Corvette" notched up over it's career? Oh yeah, that's right - 100 kills to no losses.

But I guess someone forgot to tell all those Eagle Drivers that they had no mission.

How many of those kills were in US service? How many of them have come since the Iraq insurgency started? How many were over Afghanistan?

Did you miss or did you choose to intentionally ignore Waco's comments about the A-10C upgrades, or the awarding just last week of a $2B contract for all new A-10 wings. Or what about the new AH-64Ds that just came off the line? Or the fact that every time you see an Apache that's on deployment, it's sporting new countermeasures, be it plume detectors or exhaust shields.

That's great.

Predators performing CAS? LMAO!!!!!! I really can't say anything more than what Siesta3 and Cobrahistorian have already contributed except that you don't know your CAS from a hole in the ground. Just because a Predator can fart off a couple of Hellfire, doesn't mean it's going to be flying top cover for some Marines somewhere. CAS has been performed by AH-1, AH-64, A-10, F-14, F-15E, F-16, F/A-18 and the B-52; what matters is, which aircraft with bombs can get to the scene the fastest. Both of the following are 50 miles away: a supersonic F-22 with a of belly full of 250lb SDBs and eyes in the cockpit, or a 100 mph R/C plane with between 2-4 of Hellfire being flown by someone looking at a screen somewhere?

As I said to someone else, I think you misunderstood me. I don't propose that the Predator do CAS, just that the Predator has more of a mission in Iraq and Afghanistan than the F-22 does.

And what's important is not necessarily who can get the bombs there fastest, but who can deliver them most accurately where they need to be (and not deliver them where they need to not be). Check the headlines (like this one: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idU...0?feedType=RSS) - inaccurate air strikes that kill dozens of civilians at a time are costing us the support of the population in Afghanistan, and even of the government there (http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/23/news/afghan.php). We can't afford this. Minimizing civilian casualties in a guerrilla war is not a humanitarian nicety. It's a strategic necessity.

How is the weather there in Rio Linda today? So it was just the fault of the F-16I huh? That didn't have anything to do with the Israeli government's position of "we're trying, for the first time, to go with international opinion and actually care about not inflicting civilian collateral damage, so we aren't going in and killing just anyone. We're trying to being precise and taking out the right people at the right time. Oh, and by the way, since the world was so appalled at how we even did that, we stopped, just so you'd stop whining." There were so many factors in last year's conflict in Lebanon that to try to simplify it by blaming the outcome on that aircraft is lackadaisical.

I'm not blaming it on the F-16I specifically, but on the idea that big bombs dropped by supersonic jets = victory. It didn't.

Your arguments for the Predator and against advancing fighter technology and capability ignore political leaderships' decisions regarding the use of force, expectations of said use of force, the proliferation of 4th generation fighter technology around the globe, the emergence of 5th generation platforms while at the same time ignoring one of the basic tenants of military history that one rarely knows where/when the next conflict will happen next. The government of a nation that is friendly to the US, but operates 4th generation fighters (F-16s, Mirage 2000, MiG-29 or Su-27), may fall overnight and suddenly those aircraft aren't friendly anymore. You have ignored what has been said here in the past be people who actually are in the air combat business and instead choose what the writer of a USA Today article as the basis of your hypothesis and you're basing your outlook on fighting the most immediate last war when what the Air Force appears to be doing is looking at the range of conflicts it has been in over the course of its 60 year history and is increasing their flexibility and preparedness to fight any type of war in the future, be it a low-level insurgency or a major regional conflict.

Sorry, I'm not ashamed of basing my outlook on "the most immediate last war". I actually do believe that we should have the weapons that are right to fight the war we're actually fighting, not the war we fought in 1944 or a hypothetical one we might fight in 2053.

[Keith Diamond]

There isn't much I can add that hasn't been addressed by Trigger, but Nergol, you're missing the basic point. You are addressing the issues of a conflict between the US and a small, relatively primative force, and neglecting the issues of a conflict between the US and a more advanced military, especially ones with the size and technological might of China, or Russia. And I know Trigger and others have already addressed this, but the goal of the US military is to have a flexible force that can take on an enemy of just about any size, shape or form. Basing future military acquisitions needs on the conflicts from recent memory, and neglecting the realities of great potential enemies, is a tragic mistake.

[Rapier01]

Sorry, I'm not ashamed of basing my outlook on "the most immediate last war". I actually do believe that we should have the weapons that are right to fight the war we're actually fighting, not the war we fought in 1944 or a hypothetical one we might fight in 2053.

I find this statement simply astounding. I'm just glad for the sake of the country people with your lack of foresight aren't calling the shots.

Edited July 4, 2007 by Rapier01

[Rapier01]

double post.

Edited July 4, 2007 by Rapier01

[General Grievous]

I suggest replacing all combat aircraft (yes, even the Super Hornet) with this!

[Cobrahistorian]

If we were fighting the war we fought in 1944 our tanks would be sorely outmatched and our bombers would have to be escorted to their targets, where 1000 of them MIGHT be able to take out the targeted building. ONE F-22 can do that, undetected, with a single SDB with minimal collateral damage. So how are we fighting the war we fought in 1944?.

Edited July 4, 2007 by Cobrahistorian

[f14peter]

Nergol, with all due and sincere respect, there's just plainly no way to perdict what future wars will/may be fought.

To say that the US/West will never go to battle against a peer/near-peer could be placed with such comments as ...

- The British White Paper stating manned aircraft are a thing of the past

- The AAM pundits in the 1950s that declared a gun was no longer required for an air combat fighter

- The machine gun/artillery would end wars because it made the battlefield too dangerous

- WWI would be the war to end all wars

Things change ... alliances, governments, geo-political thinking, the list goes on. One-time allies are now enemies, or one-time enemies are now allies. The reason Iran even got modern aircraft such as the F-5, F-4, AH-1, and F-14 in the 1960s/70s was that they were considered a stable, solid, and long-term ally at the time.

Incidently, regarding Iranian F-14s ... their true capability lies somewhere between the "They have dozens and dozens and dozens fully operational" and "None of them fly anymore" arguements. Iran has a fairly sophisticated aerospace industry, and they've proven to be quite adept at reverse-engineering components, as well as some "creative acquisition" to keep their aircraft operational, along with the fact that the Shah was provided with an over-abundance of munitions and spares relative to the number of aircraft they acquired.

Mainland China's ambitions toward Taiwan are long and well-known. Few know that a full-on invasion had nearly reached the jumping-off stage (Troops, muntions, and transport assembled, full planning completed) and probably would have launched within a month until Uncle Josef asked Mao to postpone that and help him out with this little brushwar he was supporting. After that little endeavor was taken care of, the USSR would give China full backing (militarily, economically, and politically) to taking Taiwan ... that little brushwar was Korea. China does want to be a player on the world stage ... economically, and militarily. China's statement they would go automatically nuclear if the US/West interferred with taking Taiwan isn't a done-deal. Sounds like the posturing of the Cold War and they're well aware of what the rest of the world could due if they push the button.

Many think of the former Soviet Union as a broken power content to stay in the geo-political background, but there's many in the Kremlin that long for the status and enfluence they had during the Cold War.

The "warfare by proxy", which was so common during the Cold War has not been forgotten.

India and Pakistan ... whew, what a potential cauldron that could be and it would inevitably draw in other nations, possibly the US/West or Russia or China. Venezuela, rich with oil is making all sorts of noise, most of it of an anti-US, anti-West nature. It may only be the fact that the US/West is such a large customer of said oil, and the risk of losing that income, that is keeping Hugo Chávez from being even more vitriolic.

Also remember that the full might of the US/West may not be able to be brought to bear on an enemy. It's already been stated that the goal is the capability to conduct two warfare operations at the same time and in this day and age, it appears that two operations are likely to be going on at the same time.

As the US/West can not hope to be a quantitative match to every enemy, qualititative superiority is a must. Besides, a technological edge must advance to maintain that edge, lest it be lost by technological breakthroughs by an adversary (Real or potential). How lucky is Europe that in 1940 Germany considered its Luftwaffe to be so qualitatively superior to the rest of the world that advanced weapons were either cancelled or restricted in development.

[jmel]

we'd have our hands full trying to keep Cincinnatti and Detroit in one piece.

Have you been to Detroit? Trust me. It's not worth saving. I live in Cincinnati, and I can tell you it's not much better.

Jake

[jmel]

Could this lead to A-10's leaving the boneyard to equip this new unit?

I don't think there are any salvageable airframes left, Mark. Most of the jets with decent wings have already had them installed on current, in-use A-10s, while those retired airframes remaining aren't even in good enough shape to use as wing donors.

Jake

[Skull Leader]

Nergol, it's obvious you should apply for a post under the SECDEF. You obviously have insights that the rest of is (even those in the military, who have been on the scene) do not.

I'm sure the SECDEF would love to hear how things should be going... since he and everyone else involved in the decision making process evidently have no clue what they're doing.

[Trigger]

I'm done arguing; multiple people here have said the same and/or similar in response to his theories on air power and he continues to stand by his assertions with very little to back them up with. I realized that I could get a better conversation with the river otters so I'm going to load up my kayak and head to the nearest river to enjoy this lovely afternoon.

I don't know why the AF is even bothering considering the purchase of NEW COIN aircraft, when their needs would be best met by bringing the Bronco back. The Bronco does everything these new planes are supposed to do, and it can also drop off and retrieve five SpecOps troopers, or 3200 pounds of cargo.

The basic Bronco design, yeah - but it's OOP; so if you're going to get someone to build new ones, might as well put in new (more powerful) engines, new sensors, countermeasures.... yeah... I'm thinking of a new Whif Bronco build now. :)

You guys are laughing at the COIN F4U but it would be just as effective against a bunch of guys with AKs and RPGs as an F-16 would be......imagine an F4U with a sniper pod and 2 GBU-38s?

I'm not laughing at it as a joke, I really do like what he did with that build! It's a great little What-If "Sandy."

[Cobrahistorian]

I'll second that! A COIN Corsair is an awesome idea (and isn't it faster than the A-10?) :)

[Gerard]

Or, if you wanted a small, cheap jet, which is already "known" in the US military....

Bring back the A-37. New avionics for GBU-38 / -39, it can already fire rockets, guns, drop Mk-82.... Got 2 sets of eyes for looking at the targets.

Or if that's too hard.....why not buy some of the BAe Hawk Mk.128 series ?

They're for the RAF and some others. The Australian version got wingtip AIM-9 rails. You got the centreline, and 2 pylons per wing. Small, cheap, easy to fly. Two crew.

I've seen photos of an older Hawk with 2 bombs per pylon. So, maybe GBU-38, or a 4-rack of GBU-39.

Is there any real ( non $ ) reason why the OV-10A/D Broncos cannot be brought back ?

Or, why not use the PC-7 / -9 / 12 / Tucano family ? The Irish AF got them with gun pods, and 7-round rocket pods. Several AF got armed versions of the.

Or, why not just put the A-1 Skyraider back into production ?

BUT, you still got to have all the F-22's, and ideally, double it's numbers.

I'm worried that the people in charge are waaaaay too fixed on low-level wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, and are almost ignoring the need to plan for a serious threat-tech-level enemy.

Regards,

Gerard

[Keith Diamond]

Or, why not use the PC-7 / -9 / 12 / Tucano family ? The Irish AF got them with gun pods, and 7-round rocket pods. Several AF got armed versions of the.

Already being considered according to the original article

"One possible candidate for the light strike role is the air-to-ground modified [beechcraft] AT-6B. Other candidate aircraft include the [Embraer] Tucano or Super Tucano," the AFSOC paper states.

The AT-6 will probably win out since the T-6 was chosen over the Tucano for the training role, and because of the commonality between the T-6 and AT-6.