From: Adam <""4thwormcastfromthemolehill\"{at}the field.near
the bridge">

George Sherwood wrote:
> 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.
>

Drone with missiles will do the job better. In fact a missile is a
drone.....so a drone is simply a drone carrying drone...


>> 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.
>

Gold plating is & always has been the problem. At least the F1-E is
slightly smaller than the F14 but it lacks the phoenix or a replacement for
the phoenix.

>
>>> 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.
>

Esp when there are lots of facts wrt the smaller fighters which weren't
presented e.g. the (Sea) Harrier, the gnat, the F5. Time after time they
bested the big gold plated fighters but the MIC wasn't interested in small
& cheap.

Get a sod off great rear door transport e.g. an antonov or a C-5/C17. tie
it into an E3 or similar. Have a bunch of drones as cargo. Loiter. Job
done.

Adam

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5