The B-52????  you want the fighter community to have the most advanced a/c for a2a, but are going to relegate a2g to a forty y.o airframe?  I see, only the best will do for a2a, but any OLD airframe will do in the realm of a2g....

 

The B-52...all 76 airframes?  So let's see, we need 250-400 HUNDRED F-22's, but we can achieve national ends with 76 airframes?  Desert Storm generated 1,000-plus tactical sorties per day...we are going to need a lot more sorties per day for a scenario that involves Korea, Taiwan, or Iran than we are going to get from the B-52's?

 

The B-52?? So even though the B-52 was vulnerable to the air defenses of North Vietnam in 1972, suffering heavy losses, the B-52 won't be vulnerable to the heavier, more capable defenses of the PRC or DPRK?  Even after the plaintive cries, of some on this board, about motherless children and dead pilots, of F-15's brought down by sophisticated SS-Teens over the Taiwan Strait, the B-52 will achieve our national ends?

 

The SEAD mission is more than jamming...as the Israeli so famously said, "The best counter-measure is a 500 pound bomb on the radar van."  The F-22 and the EF-18G aren't going to be the bomb platforms to defeat an air defense system.

 

Your posting shows the problems with the increase in F-22 production...it comes at a cost, to a balanced air force and a balanced military.  You would have hundreds of F-22's but the a2g campaign, the CRITICAL portion of achieving national ends, they have to "make do."  Ask yourself this, who dominated the skies over Vietnam?  Who won those campaign?  Who dominated the skies over the battlefields of Korea?  How many US/ROK/UN servicemen died, in spite of that absolute aerial control?  A2A is only part of the picture, even for an air force....

 

The problem with that statement is that the difference in lives on the ground between air superiority and air parity is much greater today than it was in 1942/43. For several reasons:

 

One, our ground forces today depend vastly more on air assets as force multipliers than they did back then.  Intel of all sorts from UAVs, JSTARS, Guardrail, Project Liberty, P-8/P-3s, to say nothing of course of all the A-10s/F-16s/F-15Es / various helos.  And the intel assets are always high demand / low density -- losing one F-16, as bad as that is, won't necessarily derail your operations, but lose a couple of ISR systems, or threaten their airspace so they can't provide continuous coverage, and you have a problem.

 

Two, we aren't the only ones with the above assets or their equivalents.  Sure, ours are more developed at this point, but we won't always be in the position of being the only kids on the block with those types of assets.  Being able to cut through the fog of war is even better if the other guy can't.  So you need to not only ensure you have use of the air, you need to deny it entirely to the other guy.

 

Three, the lethality of close air support is vastly greater now than it was in WWII.  The amount of casualties you can take from just one strike getting through to your ground forces is huge compared to what a flight of Stukas or the like could do back then.  A few Su-34s or Su-30s with ISAR/GMTI and some PGMs can give a company of M-1s a real bad day.

 

Bottom line, our warfighting strategy today relies on total control of the air, to the point where we can orbit 400mph drones and turboprops at will over our forces.  Remember that in WWII the troops with the highest casualty rates were bomber crews.  The idea that we would expect our air assets today to operate under that level of threat simply isn't feasible.

Do you think no secretary who had the favor of their immediate boss, the President, has resigned or been canned due to a public outcry?

Damn, I was merely pointing out that a big goddamn slob like the B52 can function in an environment as long as the threat of SAM's and enemy aircraft were eliminated. There was no air superiority in Korea as the Mig-15 and F-86 were evenly matched and most aircraft losses in Vietnam were due to AA fire. I hardly expect a 50 year old fleet of B-52's to be the forefront of our A2G mission requirement, however the aircraft that I mentioned previously should be more than capable. Ask yourself a question, could a large enough fleet of F-22's eliminate all aerial threats and neutralize air defenses with SBD's, paving the way for Strike Eagles and 16's to do their dirty work? Someone tell me this is not even close to being a possibility and I'll shut up.

No, it could not. You need to start thinking at the systems level if you want to understand this. The F-22 IS NOT the end all be all of combat aviation. Anymore F-22's cuts into other things we need to fight and win wars. In other words, more F-22's will definitely increase our air to air combat power while simultaneously DECREASING the effectiveness of the DoD in other mission critical areas. I'm sure you want proof so here it is:

Note the last words. MUST DO. As in it isn't optional compared to the OPTIONAL F-22s. 

-DA 

I also enjoyed Former Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne's take on the Gates cuts.

PROFOUND MISUNDERSTANDING...

...The highlighted text is very scary considering the source. Anyone familiar with OIF knows that Iran was up to their eyeballs helping to fuel the insurgency. What a lot of people don't know is why. Why is because Iran's worse nightmare is an Iraq capable of starting another war with them. It's important to remember, The Iran-Iraq war is to Iranians what the VietNam War was to many Americans. THe difference however is that Iraq is actually bordering Iran and could inflict casualties on Iran proper IIRC there were over a million deaths in that war. So Iran after facilitating the removal of Saddam, manipulated events in Iraq to generate an Iranian backed and influenced insurgency that would bleed the United States so much that we would lose stomach and get out of Iraq before a US friendly Iraqi Government could rise out of the ashes of Saddams Iraq and threaten Iran once more. The proxy war almost worked as you all no doubt remember the pressure GWB was under to get out. Only, rather than throw in the towel, GWB actually "Surged" a force large enough to be called a surge but definitely not large enough to actually  do much beyond slight increases in local security. This frightened the hell out of the Iranians because GWB made it very clear with his actions the USA was committed to OIF no mater what. This chain of events cause the Iranians to reevaluate their position based on the demonstrated reality that Americans might always be in Iraq. So the Iranians very much so "Quaked in their boots" because of stability forces.

That he would make that statement to mean he is desperately trying to defend a flawed procurement policy and has a profoundly different perception of the past compared to actual history. To miss something like that? Wow. Just a logical consideration of Iranian IADS will demonstrate no need for F-22's to strike anywhere and our F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18E/F would already slaughter the Iranian AF. Increasing the amount of Raptors is irrelevant to Iran.

-DA  

Probably, but the Iranian Air Force isn't exactly the varsity.  We could probably take them out with the USAF we had in 1991, let alone the war-trained one we have now.  (And that's not counting the Navy, of course.)  The F-22 is meant to deal with the varsity, i.e. air forces who don't rely on 1960s-era tech and F-5 retreads, i.e. China.  And we'll leave that conversation where it is, since we've already been there and fought over that.

 

JFKY, your WWII analogy is flawed.  If you want air parity a la Tunisia '42/'43, you really don't give a damn about the poor bastards in the mud.  "Air parity" means "Stukas bombing Kasserine Pass" and "Bf 109s running Patton into a ditch".  You should also remember that bombers didn't kill the Luftwaffe; P-47s and P-51s did. 

 

The Irony of that is that while the Iraqi AF was taken out of the fight very quickly, Iraqi BMs weren't. Primitive SCUDs killed U.S. Troops and struck back throughout the region. We were fortunate they only carried conventional warheads. Manned Fighter-Bombers searched in vain to find them laking the endurance to be effective. 

-DA 

No probs :)



I can only go off Armitages speech in 2004.  He made ir clear to us that the platform availability if AustGov wanted it etc... was not an issue.  Be that as it may, I am a strong proponent that even if the US didn't have Obey and Congress in the mix, they should not export their primary manned air dominance asset.  

Again, the US military is not a one trick pony.  They are the only gane in town that has physically produced generations of manned and unmanned LO aircraft - and done it in multiple generations.  They were the first to develop LO surface vessels (long before the Swedes) - and I'd argue that their nukes and sig management technology for large blue water nukes is without peer.  Add in what the USAF and USN are doing with high speed and high volume (bandwidth) comms and the speed of those projects coming to a gold release - I think the US is a golden mile ahead of any near peer threat. Even if by some stroke of fortune the red air threat became a LO solutiion, there are too many other holes in their capability and infrastructure that don't make that capability complete.

It's always more just than being about the widgets - its about the coherency between those widgets and how they converge into various lethal response opportunities

Thats why (IMO) the JSF/F-22/Rafale/Typhoon/Gripen/F15/FA/18nn "sucks" or are "superb" discussions are in really brutal terms,  ventures in onanism and sophistry.  It''s about the widgets, but it's also about logistics, persistence, projection, precision etc etc... and being able to do it, and prosecute with intent, day in and day out until the other bloke sticks up his hand.  Nobody on the planet has that capability but the US.  OTOH, what the US lacks is consistency of political will and intent - and thats what the red air owners have in spades..

 

I'm sorry GF - I failed to adequately explain my question.  I'm aware Australia is not interested in the F-22 from your numerous replies to earlier questions on this topic.  Let me try again and hopefully I can more clearly state my question.

No probs :)

Does anyone believe we (US) have found a way to detect LO/VLO platforms?  Could or did we find methods while we were developing the F-117, B-2, or F-22?  

Nothing is undetectable - it's all a matter of time and teconilogy - it's why development is an expensive business trying to stay ahead of the curve

GF, as you have stated on threads on DT regarding stealth, you only export systems you know you can defeat. So, assuming there were no legal barriers to F-22 exports and a country wanted to purchase the Raptor, would US refusal be an indication we don't have a way to detect such platforms?

I can only go off Armitages speech in 2004.  He made ir clear to us that the platform availability if AustGov wanted it etc... was not an issue.  Be that as it may, I am a strong proponent that even if the US didn't have Obey and Congress in the mix, they should not export their primary manned air dominance asset.  

Perhaps Secretary Gates feels 187 Raptors is sufficient because 1)we can detect LO/VLO aircraft, and 2)by the time Russian and China can field such a capability we will have other solutions in place such as hypersonics.

Again, the US military is not a one trick pony.  They are the only game in town that has physically produced generations of manned and unmanned LO aircraft - and done it in multiple generations.  They were the first to develop LO surface vessels (long before the Swedes) - and I'd argue that their nukes and sig management technology for large blue water nukes is without peer.  Add in what the USAF and USN are doing with high speed and high volume (bandwidth) comms and the speed of those projects coming to a gold release - I think the US is a golden mile ahead of any near peer threat. Even if by some stroke of fortune the red air threat became a LO solutiion, there are too many other holes in their capability and infrastructure that don't make that overall delivery capability complete.

It's always more just than being about the widgets - its about the coherency between those widgets and how they converge into various lethal response opportunities

Thats why (IMO) the JSF/F-22/Rafale/Typhoon/Gripen/F15/FA/18nn "sucks" or are "superb" discussions are in really brutal terms,  ventures in onanism and sophistry.  It''s about the widgets, but it's also about logistics, persistence, projection, precision etc etc... and being able to do it, and prosecute with intent, day in and day out until the other bloke sticks up his hand.  Nobody on the planet has that capability but the US.  OTOH, what the US lacks is consistency of political will and intent - and thats what the "red air" owners have in spades..