Re: Way OT :o) Stealth and Countermeasures...

On Sat, 4 Dec 1999, Geoffery R wrote:

> It reminds me of a passage I read in a book titled "Heavy Losses"
about the 
> American military equipment developement and procurement 
> programs/industries. When the comment was made that one F14 cost the
same as 
> three F4's the reply was that the F14 would shoot down the F4 every
time in 
> simulated air combat. Of course what wasn't mentioned was that the
same 
> simulations had shown that three F4's would shoot down one F14
everytime 
> too. The point is how many assets is a side willing to risk?
Especially 
> expensive, valuable and hard to replace ones?

But the F4 didn 't have the ability to run interference on 12 Bear 
Bombers at 1400 nm at the same time. The F14 did. It was built around
the 
ability to carry the Phoenix. 

> If I follow your argument your saying that there is no difference
flying 
> from a major perminant airbase in the USA with all the modern
conveniences 
> and operating from a single bare bones runway 10,000 kilometers away
in some 
> Jungle with NO other facilities.

The point of his argument was that we don't need a 3 month lead time to 
ship everything over we need to begin ops. We can do it in 12 hours. SAC

practiced this sortof thing with Loadmasters and B36's back in the 50's.

Surely you dont think that they tossed this whole concept out the windo 
do you?

> The previous post is saying that there is a vast difference in the
resourses 
> expended for the returns gained and I agree.

possibly, you'd prefer we build the same quality of aircraft as the 
russians and have fewer pilots to fly them? One whole doctrine issue 
missed is that we don't have 16 million people wanting to fly in the 
airforce and navy. We have a select few. We train our pilots far more 
than the chinese do. Talk to Ed over on sci.military.naval and 
rec.mil.aviation. He'll tell you first hand the importance of training. 

> Thats not to say that it couldn't carry out successfully but not by
many and 
> not at a Hideous expence.

I'd rather spend lots of money and few lives than less money and lots of

lives like we did in WWII. Human waves were tried in Korea, we figured 
out how to deal there (you throw everything you can into their assembly 
area and throw more at them when they attack). Motiviated professional 
troops are the way to go. Not half trained conscripts with rifles and 
aircrat from the 60's. 

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- Ryan Montieth Gill	  NRA / DoD# 0780 (Smug #1) / AMA / SOHC -
- ryan.gill@turner.com	    I speak not for CNN, nor they for me -
- rmgill@mindspring.com 	     www.mindspring.com/~rmgill/ -
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