From: "George Sherwood" 

On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:57:38 -0400, Monte Davis wrote:

> "George Sherwood"  wrote:
>
>>according to them the F-86 would be the
>>best fighter ever built.
>
> Umm... no. They're saying that *since* the F-86, all but a few designs
> have concentrated design effort/$$$ on some Good Fighter Attributes
> instead of (or even at the expense of) other Good Fighter Attributes
> -- and that the latter are better correlated with air superiority in
> combat, rather than in contractors' Powerpoints.

Seems to me that they concentrated too much on the dog fight which has over
the years dropped in importance.  There hasn't many air to air battles for
a long time.  I still think their data is skewed by that fact.

>
> Of course an F-22 could take out a gaggle of F-86s; at those prices,
> it damn well better. The question is, given the much greater unit cost
> in real dollars... and given that as a result we have fewer and fewer
> units... have we been getting our money's worth? Could the trend lines
> be better?

As you can probably quote better then me, fighter design through time has
been part of a react to the enemy cycle.  The other day I was crawling
around on a MIG-25 and thinking just about that cycle and how came about
the MIG-25 really for a threat that never came to exist.  The F-22 has
quite a bit of that in it and hopefully that trend line will be pushed down
some with the F-35.  We will have to see what is the final unit cost.


>
>> The organization itself hasn't supported any major weapons purchase
>> since before the B-1.
>
> A little Googling on the two authors should dispel any idea that
> they're knee-jerk anti-military types. The CDI is a "loyal opposition"
> think tank with a *lot* of military experience in its ranks.

Truthfully when any one starts off with a bunch of slides trying to tell me
look how smart I am with perfect hind site and how stupid all those
Generals look who were making decisions without that benefit, I lose
interest fast. For better or for worse, it doesn't look to me that the
author is truly looking to present only the facts.

George

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