Re: Stealth and Countermeasures...

Just to chime in on a few notes here:

The trend with most Air Forces recently is to NOT put much faith or
ability 
in a fighter radar than you absolutly have to. If a fighter lights up in

combat he's a target. So doctrine and practice is to light up ONLY to
allow 
lock on and launch. The prefered method is to use someone else's radar
beam 
to ride on. One reason you have a good amount of escorts between your
E-3's 
and the bad guys :o) The lean today is towards putting your targeting
and 
guidence radars on another platform. 

As for the Flanker radars, they are bigger and more powerful so they can
burn 
through any EW in the way, and since the EW escorts are not really
anywhere 
NEAR the stealths, you also get to waste time burning through multiple 
envelopes of EW, trying to decide if you want to fire on the flock of
birds 
that MIGHT be a B2, or shut off your radar before the F-15's, F-18's,
and 
F-16's buzzing around decide to punch an AMRAAM (or even an AIM9 ) up
you 
wazoo.
I might note that China has a few of the "copy" E-3's. (Forgot what they
are 
called :o) EW's is being used for the most part to counter the larger
ground 
and air radars. Stealth is being used to allow folks to get away from
having 
to carry bigger and bigger EW counter measures in the fighters
themselves

The F-22 HAS data-link and the operational use was to be one fighter
uses 
it's radar for the entire squadron. The AF didn't need an extended range

AMRAAM due to the tactic being the FIREING aircraft were forward of the
radar 
aircraft. Due to the lowered RCS, and by reducing speed to lower the
leading 
edge IR sig, the fireing F-22's would be able to slip in closer. Once
the 
radar went on, the enemy would usually increase speed towards the radar 
source to take it out.
This is also a reason both the B2 and F117 fly slow in combat zones. 
 
As mentioned the problem with a large array on seperate aircraft is the 
increase in both electronic emmisions and communications between
aircraft. 
The idea of one fighter using it's radar to guide missiles and the
airborne 
inferometer is way different. The F-22 does not need to communicate 
constantly with it's squadron mates during missile fireing, just a burst
send 
to set the guidence frequencies that the missiles will follow. Once the 
missiles are set they launch and look for "thier" radar returns and home
in 
on them. The fireing F-22's then continue to close to short range
missile 
range while the bad guys are scrambling to dodge the long range attack.
The 
inferometer requires large amounts of data in constant contact. Plus
you've 
got to have the computing ability to actually interpret and colate the
data. 
It would be more likely that several dozen aircraft would feed data to
an 
AWACS type aircraft. A waste of the Flankers. 
 
>> Hey I got a great idea.  You take one Valley Forge CVA with 6
squadron
>> of ultra heavy fighters that can be configured at your desire to be
>> attack, interceptors, or standard.  Note you can reconfigure them
during
>> play if they spend one turn on the carrier. 

The problem with this idea is that it ignores all the nice escorts in
the 
Carrier Battle Group. (Which would also be in a Battleship Battle Group
:o)
NOw run the scenrio with the CVA and 6 land base's. Note that the CVA
can 
move around and the land base's can't.
(It should also be noted though that the CVA will NOT be operating on
it's 
own. YOu should also include about 4-5 squadrons of "off-board"
aircraft, but 
then you'd have to increase the number of land base's and squadron's
that you 
have and it soon gets to be no fun to play anyway and you end up like
the 
folks at Eglin who do nothing but play wargames all day and HATE em :o)
 
>China doesn't have carriers. And I'll bet that the longer legged better

>trained and better equipped force will win. 

True to a point. However, China proved to us in the past that "human
wave" 
attacks by less well equiped and trained forces CAN win. They just
couldn't 
win the war that way. In an air war it might, (might) bag them a carrier
and 
it's battle group, but it will lose them the war in the long run as it
is 
much more expensive and harder to replace the aircraft and men that such

tactics would cost them. 
 
  > way, at least 6,000 of the MIG 21's were being re-furbished into
more
 > advanced and capable version.
 
 Do they have Air to Air refueling? What are their Combat loads? Or are 
 they really short legged Interceptors like the Mig-21 Bis? Looking at a

 few sites they have an operational range of 650 nm carrying two AAM.s
Not 
 an impressive Warload.
 
 > was too many eggs in one very fragile basket.  The time of the
 > battleship has re-emerge because of satellite guided projectiles. 
There
 > is no reason why a 16" gun couldn't fire 300 nm's.
 
The Navy rejected the idea once already. The "Sea Control class refitted

Iowa" which was supposed to retain the two forward turrets and mount a 
"Kirov" type deck off the back. It was the less capable than a Carrier.
You 
don't need 300nm 16" guns when you can do the same job with either a
cruise 
missile or guided air dropped weapons. The Navy has been experimenting
with 
multiple types of long range and extended range shell's also. 
The problem with the BB's is they, (and the modern CVA's too for that
matter) 
are getting too big and to expensive. Smaller ships with more capable
weapons 
allowing more area to be covered and more operations to be done is what
alot 
of Navy folks are looking at and pushing for. Given the Navy/Marine 
requirment for the JSF that it be S/VTOL capable, you can see the trend.

Smaller carriers which combine the atributes of a Cruiser and a Carrier
are 
what they want.

Sattilite guided shells are good, you could even "spot" using Sat's but
I 
would count more on RPV's for both guidance and spotting. But don't
count on 
any 16" guns again. Given smaller more manuverable platforms,
smaller-longer 
range, more accurate gun's are available, cheaper and easier to use and 
maintain.
 
>> And far more overall.  Let's see...	We could cut the JSF, or maybe
the
>> F 22, or maybe the M1A2, or maybe TLAM's for the fleet...  They are
too
>> expensive for what they can do.  This is one of the reasons I call
them
>> a failure.  It doesn't matter how good a weapons system is if it is
too
>> expensive to field in the numbers required to do the job.

I'm figuring we'll see the JSF before we see the F-22 in service. But
the 
capabilities that the F-22 has the Air Force needs. Both the F-15 and
-16 air 
frames are overage already, and even with constant upgrades we'd be hard

pressed to upgrade them enough in the next 5-10 years to keep up with
what's 
coming out for the advesaries.
Expensive yes, but also more capable. 
as for: 

>The problem isn't the systems. Its the president we have in office that

> is spending training/purchase money on operations. I don't see the guy
as 
>one to really support the military. 

Let's not forget that Congress is the one's who've been nixing the last
few 
years budget for the military causing us to make choices between
spending the 
money we do get on keeping up the equipment or training and quality of
life 
stuff. I (and alot of other military folks) got chills when Newt and
gang 
FIRST started on the "Peace dividend" speel. We knew what was coming.
It's 
not just the Pres. 
 
Randy