Don’t know. Lookin for KP though. Have some stuff I have to ask him.

and a North Korean Bristol Freighter. I remember the last one being used in a film about a bunch of teens rescuing their father (or whomever) from undoubtedly justified detention by the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea. If i’m not mistaken, it was a yellow aeroplane (a New Zealand one, probably ex-military IIRC) with a DPRK roundel.

Ah yes. I remember that. A great film documentary. :p 😀

Define “air superiority”. If your definition is BFM in the sense that a legacy fighter does things, then, you are missing the point. A legacy jet/air defense system, has to first detect, a JSF, a JSF that has a fair bit of team support either as a local area network or as a much wider network reaching across a theater from other sources such as JSTARS, U2, UAVs of various flavors, ESM platforms both airbreathing and non-airbreathing etc. But lets skip that, just a local area network of JSFs can cause pain. A JSF air plan where it’s side strikes first, and at night, isn’t going to be waiting around to do lecacy style BFM to bring down an opposing force. Right from the beginning, it is going to remove enemy targets which include all the standard fare: Sensors, C3, Airfields etc. The legacy fighter is going to have to stop this. The more real estate your battlespace occupies, the worse the problem is trying to find JSF.

The other side of the coin. A JSF sitting on alert for an air to air encounter, or what ever. Probably some use there. And of course again you have to find it. If you are the legacy aggressor, your best bet is in clear daylight, otherwise you are going to be at a serious disadvantage right from the get go…. Buick of Stelath or no. And like a lot of battles a bit worse if you are going into the home territory, that the JSF defender, knows like the back of their hand.

The JSF sensor suite doesn’t seem to have good news for those that think they can avoid it with a legacy jet in a head to head BFM scenario. If you are legacy, and have yet to lock anything up, a jet that carries only 2 AMRAAM, still means something. Especially if there are 4 or more out there working as a local area network and they already have you figured out. I am sure it is very possible to shoot down a JSF. However, starting the game where you are seen already and your sensor suite or network isn’t giving you enough to go on, is pretty much self explainatory. If you always start an engagement at a disadvantage like that, you are going to have a very short combat history.

A few things about the B-52, of the 3 bombers-

-It has the smallest footprint when deployed. Not a lot of logistical things become problems with it like the B-1 or B-2

-It has the highest mission up times of the three bombers. B-2 is around 52%, A B-1 unit can get up to high level of mission uptimes when other units give up resources. B-1 is expensive to run and most of it’s problem, besides the foot dragging on putting in new avionics, and flight controls ( something that would bring mission up times dramatically ), is that senior management never funds sustainment on it properly in a budget. This has been going on for years. It works great when you have them going ( enough fuel and speed on it that if it knows a fighter is out there at distance, it can just contempt-of-engagement/bingo fuel it a way, go hit a tanker and come back, but it is expensive. Also because it is not nuke capable, it brings less options to a deployment. So while the B-1 performs well it is considered “expensive” to run. I don’t agree with that thought, as I think it is worth the money that you can put into it. However, it gets under-funded and this, sometimes results in not-so-happy mission up times.
So B-52 is just more and more simple to deal with as time goes on. Yes we use up fuel pumps on the thing at an alarming rate because the designers never thought it would fly this much. And other expendable things. Again though it is worth it’s weight in gold as it can deploy to more airfields with less logistical hassle.
So, the idea that we need less B-52s is flat out dumb. All the PGMS this thing can carry now. ( and more in the future ), it like the B-1 is also a CAS friendly machine. Even more so in a bug hunt like Afrcapistan where you don’t have small airfields in number for small jets. It’s a platform, it flies, it deploys well, pretty good mission up times. What more do you want? Some dumb pencil neck accountant just doesn’t realize that we have to have long strike ability to deal with things today that is not always some dirt warfare with insurges. Not everything is 4th gen warfare. Funny how they are talking of saving such a small amount of money, and yet we are burning up $318 million dollars a day on two ill advised expeditionary wars, fighting for useless dirt. Or we buy airframes that USAF never asks for in the first place with pork end of year bills, additional C-17s, F-15s etc. It is all smoke and mirrors. They are only showing the appearance of trying to save money. Various lobbyists in the military industrial complex realize Iraq and Afghanistan is sucking up money left and right that they think is rightfully theirs.( Where other vendors that provide a service {logistics, security, intel etc } like KBR, Halb. Blackwater etc and all their subcontractors are very happy with the current dirt wars. } So pressure or a fake need has to be put in the public that we need to buy all kinds of gold plated toys and many of these toys don’t even support the current war effort. Priorites are definately screwed up when all of our ground troops are tens of billions behind on having ground equipment replaced/refirbed that has been used up in these dumb wars. Real smart. Lets get rid of airframes now that can kick out loads of PGMs and those same airframes can be made to fly till 2040 or more,…. with no new large bomber rolling off of the assembly line now. Add a nuke contingency where you have to load up a-x airframes with stealth cruise missiles and put them on alert, and now with that lower number of B-52s, you have NOTHING to respond to conventional contingencies or current ops. If ever anyone needs to go to Gitmo, it is traitors that think up stupid ideas like this.
Don’t get confused. It is all about the next sale. Some flag officers have to at least look like they are trying, so that LM, Boeing or what ever hires them when they retire. Go figure. If they wanted to pacify Iraq we would have 500,000 troops there in a real plan years ago.
This way if it lasts for years, that = more paydays for the contractors/vendors etc that are making money on the dirt war. Osama still being on the lose for them, is a good thing. They should be paying him a commission.

And what has the USAF learned about CAS and its importance?

What have they learned? Well, that a USAF ground forward air controller ( terminal controller ) GFAC or USMC GFAC, is about the most powerful killing device on the battlefield. Also, that the grunt on the ground doesn’t care what kind of support or what the airframe is, just as long as it arrives fast when they need fast ( as opposed to planned ) CAS. A B-1 with lots of JDAMs running like it is on fire from the JSTARS stack to get to the GFAC making the job request is also a good thing. Where, a B-1 that arrives in less than 15 minutes beats an A-10 that might, because it is slow, arrive in 20 or more minutes.
The new upgrade “makes” the A-10. Too many night jobs where the A-10 driver only has NVGs flying down into the coal mine hoping the mark one eyeball doesn’t let him down when he drops a dumb bomb. Where a poor visual cue or gust of wind can mean dead friendlies if the CAS request is already “danger close” yet needed now. With the new upgrade, that same team of jets can plant a GBU-12 right smack in a cluster of bad guys, in close and knock the stuffing right out of an ambush. Low fog or low low scud? Low cloud cover, fog, scud, makes old fashioned visual CAS impossible. No good when the ground troop is getting hit by a ground threat that shows poor manners of fighting in bad weather. A JDAM has been used very very successfully in the past, numerous times for CAS. Where there is no visual at all from the perch up high yet the GFAC gives the right instructions, and a JDAM comes flying down and kills off a point of cover the enemy is using. Airburst or in the mud when it goes off. Someday, multi terminal sensor PGMs will be more common ( Laser_JDAM etc ).
The A-10 with the recent “Hog Up” structure refirb, will be good for another 25 years. Most likely at that time, they will just refirb it again. Some war concepts won’t go away with time. I.E. that when you are down low, you are going to eat some trash fire. “The A-10 can take a lot of damage and keep flying”. Well, this happens because it is slow and can’t get out of the way of things. If a GWOT/Bug Hunt target starts using new generation MANPADs that laugh at flares, it’s in for a very hard time. Well, where more times than not it will eat less MANPAD threats if it is operating at night. Night is much safer for it.
A-10 is more of a niche product. It is very useful. However many of it’s tasks can be done just as well with other more conventional fast fixed wings. Want to kill tanks in the open by the bushel in a conventional “big” war? CBU-105, WCMD, SFW/BLU-108B, does a much better job and the platform dropping it can’t be touched by trashfire, AAA, Small SAMs/MANPADs, Medium SAMs.
Windows Video, CBU-105 SFW
http://www.systems.textron.com/movies/sfw_2000.wmv

A-10 as part of a preplanned op where it is very close by and always a few overhead is pretty useful. Because it is slow, one that is a ways away isn’t especially useful to a GFAC. A fast fixed wing is better. A-10 is better to have setup at a bare base. Dumb easy for field maintenance and robust. The idea of some JSF-Bs at a bare base getting mortared into junk by local hillbillys, at their high price doesn’t sound too appealing. Nor does all the dust and FOD kicked up by the thing. Yuck.
A-10 with it’s new PE (precision engagement) package, Apache in it’s full NCW setup, AC-130, Predator B, JSTARS, Global Hawk, U2, with fast fixed wings as backup in the JSTARS stack is good enough for GWOT bug hunts. I would like to see OV-10s make a comeback with all the latest night gear on them, a small chain gun, Hellfire, and marker rockets. Put that at the bare base also. Small wars can use small solutions well.

LOL! But the question is did you complain when they said they wouldn’t tell you how to machine a new engine block in your garage? :diablo:

They also told me a story about only BMW authorized techs could work on it. :p That almost killed the deal until I got something in writing saying I wouldn’t compromise technology transfer. :dev2:

I bought a BMW with 5 different colors of money, offsets and workshare credits. :dev2:

Still cool the idea of photos with arrows pointing at stuff, as I am not the worlds biggest SU-17/2x person and it was interesting to see those differences pointed out in that manner.