That WAS, sarcasm, right?

 

Without facial features & inflection it's tough to tell if someone is speaking truth or sarcasm.

Pay attention to COMBAT HISTORY. That shows what works and doesn't. Libya was MOST INSTRUCTIVE about what currently worked and didn't.    

 

That's a HINT by the way.  

HR, haven't you advocated prolonged service for 4th generation fighters like F-16, F-15 and even F-14 ? Few months ago in different thread ?

 

Keffler, there was very little air-to-air in the latest Libyan conflict. I don't see what you mean.

 

An air campaign as I probably have not made clear is a THREE PHASE AFFAIR.

 

   1. Kill the enemy air defense. (That doesn't just mean air to air work. It actually means kill the machines and the people who know how to use them to stop your (2) phase (I'll get to that in a minute) and that means a lot of air to ground work to kill radars, the enemy air raid warning system, SAM sites, AAA, and the telecommunications system. So you actually see the air force do what it is really meant to do>> look around a lot and hunt down stuff dangerous to its ability to fly over enemy territory. That is a lot of recon and bombing.            

 

  2. Looks a lot like phase 1, but this time you are going after national infrastructure such as power, water, and communications in general. You want the enemy blind, cold and hungry, unable to organize a coherent ground defense This involves more looking around and bombing anything that looks interesting or threatening to the air force (and to the army and navy who generally come in at this stage to advise what should be hit prior to stage 3.      

 

    3. Stage 3 is the meat and potatoes. Depending on what the army and the navy needs killed right away so they can go to work, the air force will follow a 'target list' and do on-calls for recon and target servicing so that the army and navy can do their thing without too frisky an enemy bothering them. Again this is more bombing and looking around. That's what air forces do: bomb and look around . If they do it right, you get Desert Storm and Afghanistan.

.        

If you do it wrong (as the French AdA and the USAF did in Libya.) well you get what we have now there.    

 

Turkey alone could 'outgun' Europes entire air contingent, Israel could 'outgun' Europe and Russia together, and U.S. forces? Could 'outgun' the entire world combined... On sheer weight of numbers of flyable modern upgraded 4th gen fighters. Never mind experience, training, sophistication, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, which the Euro's have practically none of.... 

So, keep up the nonsense, its entertaining...

 

As to lack of fighter aces, its a good thing, just re-enforces that the 'heavies' the ones capable of total war, aren't fighting each other. An aerial campaign that involved enough a2a combat to create aces would be a disastrous thing.