F-4E Phantom II. Happy now? (if you were a USAF general)
Posted on 08/10/2009 9:31:47 AM PDT by khnyny
There’s a nice little piece over in today’s Wall Street Journal authored by General Merrill McPeak, expressing his dismay at the premature termination of the build-out of the originally-planned fleet of the F-22 Raptor - the kick-*ss air-superiority fighter pictured above.
The piece is rather good, so I’ll let you go read the whole thing via the link.
I’ll just note a couple of things here:
The future air combat capabilities we should build are based on the F-22, a stealthy, fast, maneuverable fighter that is unmatched by any known or projected combat aircraft.
….
It’s been more than half a century since any American soldier or Marine has been killed, or even wounded, by hostile aircraft….
That first item is simply a statement of fact, while the second is a truly-astonishing description of an unparalleled military achievement.
(Excerpt) Read more at redstate.com ...
Yes and no. IMHO the bottom line is about eliminating the USAF entirely.
Historical note:
“- June 1967: Israeli Dassault Mysteres attacked the Liberty, leading to 34 crew dead. Of those brave crew, 2 of them were US Marines.”
I was working at NSA when this story appeared in the NYT - the article was cliped, posted on a cork board, and stamped Top Secret (Code Word).
No one was supposed to know how this actually occured. Was too embarassing, exposed how befuddled some in the COC actually were.
Yikes!
But not in 1984! The point being that swarms of unmanned vehicles can, until the enemy develop countermeasures, overload defenses. My son, who was a cavalry scout but was atop gun at Tank school, will never forget when he saw how an IED knocked the turret off of an Abrams tank.
Plus new developments can quickly render old weapons system obsolete. Witness what happened to wooden ships after the ironclads of the American Civil War, or the quick dispatch of the two British Battle ships by carrier planes. during the battle of Singapore. Or in an much earlier time, see how the use of the stirrup made cavalry so much more effective.
While we lost aircraft from missiles, and the occasional NVA MiG, no NVA aircraft ever bombed or strafed our ground forces. This is what he meant.
F-4E Phantom II. Happy now? (if you were a USAF general)
The Gen 4 legacy Eagles and Vipers will perform not so well in the opening moments of a massive air war campaign against top-notch adversary air forces such as the VVS and PLAAF, while the Gen 5 F-22 Raptors would be so heavily overused, and taking into account that only ~120-130 Raptors are in combat squadrons, the rest in OT&E and training squadrons.
There is no way the USAF would win an air war with those amounts of aircraft although they can still inflict some damage on its adversaries.
He said no soldiers or Marines were killed by hostile aircraft.
A fair number of pilots and airman died defending the soldiers and Marines.
My suspicion is that, should anything happen in the next few years, given our level of training and experience with using our tech against what's "out there" we would give better than we would get.
There would be losses as there always are, but thanks to Gates and obama, we are depleting our aging inventory and not replacing what we retire the way our generals wanted to when their proposals to Congress were written.
We would feel those losses more than we should and weaken more than we should. And so would our allies, with our losses and theirs.
Su-35BM Flankers make highly potent Raptor adversaries.
F-22 Raptor of the 52d Fighter Wing, Spangdahlem AB, Germany. This fighter will make a good A2G plane as well.
The biggest danger is an administration that has no stomach for war, except grudgingly colonial war, such as in Afghanistan. Obama represents that spirit that regrets what happened in the 1980s, both foreign and domestically. To them as much as Putin the collapse of the Soviet Union was a disaster. To them the TRA of 1986 was disasterous for their hopes of socializing America. Now their hopes have been revived.
No Marine infantry. Marine aviators died from NVA aircraft.
Would you want to relive the Reaganesque ‘80s sometime next decade or two?
The U.S. military was being beefed up an up and up, Libya was being confronted by the military machine the superpower had to offer, an administration that recognized the value of a strong military against an evil empire, the list goes on.
I wish it would happen.
Actually we are oil rich, and perhaps, if the leftist ever let is drill, we could buy some to defend ourselves after Hussein & Co finish destroying the defense industry?
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