All that means getting closer to the target to achieve comparible levels of accuracy. This isn’t Iraq you are talking about, where the worst you might expect is some decades old, poorly maintained MANPAD to be shot at you. Need I spell out the implications for you?

No. No spelling as it isn’t a lockout if GPS doesn’t exist. JDAM isn’t going to be off the plate for a lot of targets. Nor will JSOW, JASSM, SLAM-ER which use imaging on the terminal phase. SLAM-ER and JASSM can now loiter and search. The datalink will have to be eliminated and then even that depending on the target doesn’t make for a failure. JSOW, JASSM, and ….. JSF are low observable. Removing GPS won’t keep PGMs from hitting targets. SDB II won’t be crippled by a lack of GPS either. However we may have to frag an additional 10-15% extra in for targets that require sub 4 meter CEPs.
More, the old SAM paradygm is more of a threat to legacy aircraft than low observable aircraft that use their own advanced sensors and LANs, independant of AWACs, JSTARS. Once a flight of JSF are put into the air threats that play by the old legacy rule book, can be managed. This is proving itself out now in F-22 exercises.

Standoff is the best selling point of those “Smart” weapons, without GPS correction, see who can tolerate the drift caused by pure INS guidance.

JDAMs are about 13 miles or so give or take. Again, if it is 2000lb class most targets will still die even with a 20 meter CEP. Then of course there is the airburst option too.

Weapons mentioned already like JSOW, JASSM, SLAM-ER use IR imaging in the terminal phase. Again, no big deal here. With upgrades to those you have to eliminate the data-link also.

Radar assisted and radar assisted off-set bombing with JDAM for targets that allow it do quite well too, …without the GPS update.

Again CBU-105 is INS only

You have to consider too that while other satellites might be taken out, GPS is extremely high in orbit. More, PLAAF has more and more GPS assisted systems so there might be times when they don’t want GPS down. A downside here is since they don’t have the keys to the kingdom on mil GPS encryption that might not help them. Don’t know. ???????

And the US is willing to go to a full blown nuclear war with a garenteed US death toll in the tens to hundred million+ over a few sats? :rolleyes: Get real. China is not some helpless none-nuclear country that the US can nuke with impunity.

China start taking out US sats, US starts taking out Chinese sats and maybe a B2 flight or two to take out major Chinese spaceports and related factories. Much more beyound that would bring an unacceptably high chance of escalation into something no-one in their right minds would want.

But this is mostly a deterant weapon. It exponentially increases the costs and vastly reduces the likely success rate of US military intervention in Taiwan, thus reducing the likihood of direct US military intervention. That is the real goal with the test.

Nope. It isn’t a “few sats” as if it doesn’t mean anything. Any attack that is going to take out our satellites, is a threat to our nuclear response capability. Taking out one satellite means spooling up every nuke resource. Any other response would be really stupid. We are not going to sit there and have our eyes taken out.
Two. Any conventional strike on Chicom soil is going to get a nuke response from them. They have said so in the past. So that isn’t even a option.

Thread needs to be locked. It has gone way off topic.

Topic already started here…

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=61333

“Hard details” to back up my arguments.

1) Tanker role superiority. The A330MRTT has more fuel to offload, further from base.

2) Basing flexibility. The A330MRTT can operate with full fuel from a 10,000 ft balanced runway, the KC-767 cannot. This means that an A330MRTT can operate from all airfields currently used by RAF VC10s and TriStars (for example) whereas at full weight, the -767 can’t. The 767 does have a lighter ground loading, but the 330’s heavier footprint is not a significant disadvantage, because it does not ‘rule out’ the airfields you’d want to be using.

3) Role flexibility. Because the Airbus has a wider cabin cross section, it can accomodate standard pallets ‘side-by-side’ whereas the 767 cannot. The A330 cabin is superior in the passenger role, too.

4) Maturity. Airbus MRTT system elements are already operational, in the tanker role, on German A310MRTTs. The Airbus wing pods are operational, and were developed and integrated without major problems. The KC-767 wing pods caused flutter, and the solution causes drag. Both companies are flying their boom designs.

5) Industrial advantage? The Northrop Grumman KC-30 would provide and protect US jobs, and would provide competition to Boeing.

Darned right, I “continually tout the Airbus design”, and darned right, I do so “for one reason and one reason only.”

But as to why, it’s not because Airbus is European, it’s because the Airbus is the superior tanker.

And why does that bother me? Because I want to see the UK’s most important ally using the best possible equipment, and not to have inferior solutions foisted on them to protect the interests of particular US aerospace companies.

Usually the US solution is also the best. The F-22 is the best possible F-15 and F-117 replacement, if you can afford it. The F-35 is the best possible replacement for USMC AV-8Bs and for USAF F-16s (though perhaps not for everyone else’s). The P-8 is the best P-3 replacement practically available to the USN. The Longbow Apache and CH-47F are the best possible attack and heavylift helicopters, respectively.

But sometimes the European designed solution will be superior – US101 for CSAR-X, for example, and KC-30 for KC-X.

Where are the ‘hard details’ to back up the contention that the KC-767 is a better tanker?

6) Northrop Grumman knows that it can’t meet the contract requirement so they are trying to upsell their product ( tail (vendor) wagging the dog (customer) which is unfortunately not going to work. Add to that their product will come in almost $40 more per airframe. Not such a hot idea as we need numbers of tankers to spread various places around the globe and not a lesser number of larger tankers. Best they submit a design that meets the contract request. NG will have no one to blame but themselves for screwing this up.

Since the author is in the business of promoting Defense Department programs and more so the USAF, his postion is not surprising. What I do find interesting is that he makes no mention of the fact that other US aviators are also flying 1970’s, or earlier, technology (alibeit newer remanufacture) and flying far more combat operations than the USAF, and spending even greater amounts of time operating within a leathal threat environment. Yet even with these facts (both the US Defense Science Board and the Army Science Board have produced the documents to the DoD), the USAF Science and Technology funding for aircraft is ten times greater than the funding of entire military rotorcraft efforts. This disparity makes it extremely difficult to afford not only new aircraft designed for the post WW3 environment, but even effective countermeasures are hard to fund sufficiently. New better engines for rotorcraft has been repeatedly gone unfunded, to the point that the engine producers do not take any proposal to work on them seriously enough to invest corporate start up funds. Likewise the same with the major rotorcraft manufactures.

Sorry if I am off topic and ranting, but having recently retired from Army Aviation in the US I take great umbridge at laments of the emptiness of the Air Forces pockets.

Well off topic to that of course is the fact that the traditional Army branches: Armor, Infantry, Artillery etc, don’t treat Army Aviation with much respect.