Now, the robots might be Russia. They might be China (I personally consider this a bigger threat). But my point is that a lot of people take a lot for granted, and the success that the US has had against weaker militaries have made some (some) assume that victory is a right rather than an attribute one has to work hard on. And that fighting a China or a Russia will be very different from an Iraq, a Somalia or a Grenada. Even on the Baltics we saw how a little country could still come up with ways of using microwave ovens to make the Wild Weasel anti-rad jets shoot Shrikes thinking they were radar sites, or how they managed to shoot down a stealth fighter. Imagine the airspace around Beijing?
Anyway, my post can be ignored. Doesn't matter much. But I wonder when I see spending being wasteful, items like the Raptor cut because they are not needed, or even here on FR people claiming what is needed are more A-10s ( a nice plane, but absolutely not survivable against a modem opponent, which is an opponent the US hasn't face in decades. A joke I heard from some pilot years back was that Apache and Warthog pilots would bet which ones would die first if the Soviets ever went through the Fulda Gap.
Anyway, all I am saying is whenever I see or read that I get imagery from Battlestar Gallactica.
>or even here on FR people claiming what is needed are more A-10s ( a nice plane, but absolutely not survivable against a modem opponent
The A10 wasn’t survivable against the Russians in the 80s either. It’s a CAS platform designed to be used in zones where we control the air, just like all effective CAS planes in history. Like the Apache it was billed as a tank killer to get it through congress but it’s only real role is Close Air Support.
During the time period prior to the fall of the USSR, had the Russian poured the three or four armies with 35,000 tanks through the Gap, helicopter pilots’ life expectancy was 15 seconds ... all pilots would have died - a fools bet.
The Serbs managed to shoot down the F-117 because the orders were to fly the same route, at the same time, on the same course - it was just a matter of time. It was a set up to get a plane into Chinese or Russian hands - part of the Clinton military sell out for campaign cash. There was nothing really special about the shoot down.
The F-22 was canceled because it was ‘deemed’ too expensive by a military hating Dem congress and its fate sealed by the Obey Amendment forbidding export, making the plane’s cost into a self-fulfilling prophecy, while paving the way for an even more expensive plane: the POS, aka the F-35.
Trying to restart either the F-22 or A10 lines is a pipe dream - the tools etc exist for the former, but the expertize is gone, for the later, the company which produced it is gone.
Better to get imagery from ‘Babylon 5’ - a far superior product, and the best Scifi show ever made.