I remember the ‘think tanks’ that claimed for fifteen years the M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank was ‘inferior’ to the T-72’s. They said effective kill ranges were less than 1,500 yards, yada yada yada.
Then we saw what took place in the first Gulf War, and afterwards duly noted 1)We had tank kills up to approaching 4,000 yards and 2) It was tougher at the training center against the Op For.
I don’t take this seriously as a result.
as long as all the good secrets are hidden from the whitehouse, we’ll be OK
Head in sand BUMP
Well yeah, just look at the awesome performance of the Russian air defense system in Syria. When the American jets from Israel tried to take out the nuclear weapons production facility, the Russian air defense system well, uh. . .
wait, um, never mind.
Well, the budget for 700 F-22’s now looks cheap compared to Obama’s bailout bill. But at best it would buy us a decade, then these Russian/Chinese systems would evolve far enough to beat the F-22, also. Manned fighters are as dead as the battleship in 1941 - it’s just going to take a tragic battle outcome to prove it to a certain caste of knuckleheads. The future is UAVs, satellites, and cyberwars conducted from bunkers deep beneath Nevads and Colorado.
Weapons systems and countermeasures are in a neverending game of leap-frog. Always have been and always will.
Didn't the Syrians employ these systems when the Israelis flew clear across their country and took out TWO strategic assets.
I repeat--the Israelis flew clear across their country
These folks need to google the term “disinformation”.
Colonel, USAFR
Nobody in the world can approach the combined skill of the US military in terms of using their weapons to their full potential. Nobody else trains like we train; they can't afford it.
Hmmm, Euro-weenies should have thought of that when they were splurging on their economy-busting social programs while snubbing their noses at us.
Ironic, huh?
This think tank report states that an F-35 can’t get through the Russian Integrated Air defense. Uhm - the F-35 can carry internal stores JUST like the F-22, at which point it is likely stealthy enough to do the job just FINE thank you very much. They start carrying on external hard points ONLY after we have Air supremacy.
Look at the campaign during Gulf War I - F-117’s went downtown, but other systems were used to blow holes in the “integrated” air defenses of Iraq before the rest of the air armada (and that name really fit in this case) came through to do their jobs. There were Apaches that came in and did Nap of the earth to take out Radar sites, and Cruise missles with similar missions. Then finally you had wild-weasel missions for anyone that chose to lite up their radar. They didn’t live long.
Gulf War 1 was 99% conventional aircraft! This report is just hot air.
Kremlin must decide on sales of S-300 to Iran - Rosoboronexport
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2178255/posts
Manned aircraft are a flexible weapons system. Once the attacker has command of the air, they can do other things — like supporting ground troops. SAM systems are counter-weapons. They are designed for certain pre-imagined scenarios. At times they can be very good. Good enough to blunt an attack. More often, counter-weapons are defeated by improvised tactics. Then it is back to the drawing boards for the designers.
All that being said, I think that manned tactical aircraft are nearing the end of their days. It may take a serious bloody nose for the USAF to come to that conclusion, however.
I doubt there will be any public dispute that would reveal the american version of the plane's capabilities.
Obama has talked about taking the current F-22’s out of service as not to “Destabilize” the current world situation.
Perhaps I’m wrong.
But I suspect anything you read in AW&ST or Janes, if you read something about American tech, it’s already like two generations behind the curve.
That’s the stuff they use to train the rookies.
the US fleet of F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18s, as well as the planned Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), are not capable of surviving against these systems and unless the Americans build another four hundred-plus F-22s, they will lose the strategic advantage they have held since the end of the Cold War....of course, it's irrelevant, because some Russian touch-hole just said the US will collapse by 2010. :') Apparently, no one involved in this "report" takes UAVs into account, or pays close attention to little irrelevancies such as the Israeli destruction of that Syrian nuke site.