The tactical geniuses said that about the F-4C during Vietnam when they took the guns off and replaced them with missiles. We were getting our asses shot off until the guns went back on. Mano a Mano is still viable as is the CLOSE support of ground troopers.
Revive the A-10 Warthog, with updates and line improvements. Virtually a flying tank, its practical application in close ground support is unrivaled by anything we have now. Able to take tremendous damage and still cripple home, it can deliver a bomb load with low-level pinpoint accuracy, and with the cannon mounted in its airframe, it can blow heavy armor apart. It can fly in and out of the most rudimentary of airfields, and do so with reliability and with enough redundancies built into its systems to assure the pilot will return to fly another day.
And give it to the Marines. Use it to substitute for gunship heliocopters for Army Airborne, and make sure the Israelis also have a supply of them.
The enemy then shall not only fear us, they will tremble at the approach of these compact dreadnaughts.
Wow, that article is packed.
I will have to read that again, thanks for posting.
If air-to-air combat is no longer relevant, why do we need an Air Force with all its beaurucratic tail and headquarters? Air-to-air stemmed from the need to protect manned bombers from other fighters. No with all the so called smart munitions, unmanned aircraft (which could be bombers), long range missiles, etc, why do we need an Air Force? Let it revert back to the Army, and in some cases to the Navy. DOD would save a whole hell of a lot of taxpayer money. I know that never crosses the mind of many in the Pentagon. It is too entrenched in old beauracracies and keeping traditions over saving money. The age old slogan continues...if you don’t spend it you lose it.
Excellent and thought-provoking article. Nicely ties recent cyberattacks (probably Chinese) to the F-35 and Situational Awareness. I hadn’t connected those two seemingly-independent things before. Considering the HUGE numbers of Chinese engineers graduating and their excellent math and science skills, our superiority is going to be seriously endangered in the coming years and decades. When you factor in our lack of political will and recent propensity to surrender before the first shot is fired, we are in big trouble.
Wow, this is how USA entered Vietnam. Therein we were taking large losses from Migs and we got smart again. Back to stupid.