ELPIf the Vietnamese Air Force ever face the U.S again it doesn’t matter what the success rate is, I doubt Vietnam would actually surrender. As you might know ‘alexz33’, Vietnam is the heaviest bombed country in the world because America dropped over 14,000,000 tons of explosives or eqivalent to 720 ‘Hirsoshima’ bombs on Vietnamese soil and killed millions of innocent people, North Vietnam did not surrender but instead they fight on and actually defeated the United States, a SUPERPOWER!
In Serbia its a different story, a few bombs was dropped on the battlefield and the white flag was raise.
Good History Revisionism. Linebacker II, the unrestricted bombing of Hanoi / Haiphong in December ’72 ended up bringing the North to agree to sign the Paris peace truce. Basically agreeing to a separate North and South Vietnam and an end to hostilities. Later they broke that and invaded the South anyway, we were gutless and did nothing about that. ( should have spun up unrestricted bombing of Hanoi / Haiphong again ) but the political climite wouldn’t have it.
Anyway. Like it or not, Linebacker II did bring the North to sign an agreement. No form of history revisionism can change that.
ELPThere is no comparisson, Vietnam had the latest in Soviet equipment. A Mig-21 in the mid 60’s was like a Gripen today. And they had SA-6’s which at that time were like the S-400 today.
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SA-6…. ? Starting with what year according to you?
The MiG-21 got rolled over like a small speed bump, flown by Soviet advisors vs one of the first appearances of the Israeli F-4 ( no limited ROE ) in the War of Attrition, ( pre-73 ) horses setup for courses.
ELP4th generation warfare. Taiwan has been invaded LOL.
ELPCart before the horse. Given the UK politico’s desire to keep cutting the military,…. it will be cut to one carrier… then none. Good Luck.
ELPRetire all the MiG-21 senior leader pilots in the AF that don’t conform ( kinda like how the F-16 took over power in USAF leadership thinking. 😮 Once some F-16 pilots made Flag rank in USAF, it was all over for the other airframes in the planning meetings ) 😀
ELPHmmm…. I guess we see things different. PLAAF has to keep force applied in many other places than India. And PLAAF knows that. So sure. You have to have force available to face PLAAF, but you will not be facing ALL of the PLAAF.
I ( and at the end of the day IAF an’t going to say: “Look; ELP says….. ) just don’t see it. Give me less numbers of Mirage2000 much less than your current number of MiG-21, And they will sortie rate the hell out of the MiG-21, And sortie rate the hell out of the enemy. Add to that the Bison doesn’t have the diverse ability on REAL performance of mission types that a Mirage2000 has. Any of your threats want to face 50 ( for the sake of argument ) Mirage 2000 inside of a 24 hour sortie rate setup ( including the better air plan/staff ), be my guest. Your threats will be hard pressed. After that wear down, the Mirage2000 just naturally starts progressing to doing more air to ground sorties…. and still be able to keep sortie rates high. After 2-3 days of a hard surge the U.N. steps in because you are being the mean bully. A light fighter ( Mirage 2000 ) and the heavy ( SU-30 ) is a good mix. Everything else starts to bore the hell out of me when you start talking real sustained-surge airpower. Finally, if you come up with something like the French AASM rigged to both those jets ( cheap all weather PGM using dumb iron ) ….. and now you are in the targets per sortie club. And oh by the way India is putting even more of a push recently on netcentric warfare. Hey you mention $$$. Well I can use that same cash used on running MiG-21 units year after year and pump it back into the new way of doing business. If someone wants to go up against something like that, it is a loser_non_starter_plan from the beginning.
ELPWell I guess it is a matter of opinion. IMHO. I think if you didn’t have MiG-21 at all….. India is smart enough to use the other remaining airframe types to do grave damage even on a two front war. Look what happens when you take dynamic thinking like Israeli-Arab 67 war, or other creative, aggressive, well thought out, air plans.
I see Mirage2000 and SU-30 as force multipliers. They do so much more work in 24 hours than all the extra resources wasted on sustaining all those MiG-21s. IMHO some are too fixed on total airframe numbers and not counting in superior combat planning, and high sortie rate per day of your other more advanced jets. Hit one air force hard with one punch and reduce it so as to make it of limited combat use and reform inside of a few hours and be ready to do a knock down drag out defense and counter air killing against the other country. I don’t see the problem. Don’t look at the huge map of India. Look at how you can apply force against available threat airfields.
ELPBison is a good idea. Just as is the Lancer is ( even if the Lancer project didn’t go BVR wild ( if they had the $$$ they could have )..
Nothing wrong with buffing up a MiG-21… But you better spend flying hours per year on the jet AND a combat crew simulator wouldn’t be bad either. At the end of the day you still have an airframe that requires a honcho pilot.
You use a buffed up MiG-21 for something like point defense and you will do well. Get outside your comfort zone on various missions and expect to be cut off at the knees. It ain’t something you are going to do other mission types with v a first team af with and expect not to lose a bunch of them in the real world. Also for WVR: For Fancy WVR HOBS Heaters to be effective, you still have to “see” out of the cockpit. The only thing with worse vis looking out of a cockpit…. worse than the MiG-21 would be the MiG-23.
Many engagements after blowing through the BVR game, go visual. I would NOT take a buffed up Bison ( or Lancer ) WVR against an Eagle, F-16, F-18 ( non SH ) or any other jet with excellent vis outside of the cockpit. In order to use HOBs Heaters, You have to talley the target… talley first or die. The garbage cockpit vis hurts you.
Now nice that Cope India 04 allows the stupid congress to be lead by USAF that a fixed ROE exercise is the wake up call to sell F-22. F-22 is not being “sold” well to congress. I can “sell” F-22 without bringing up Cope India or the fantasy…. Look it will shoot down cruise missiles! WTF?.. shame on USAF for being dumb on that.
Anyway, My favorite buff up of a MiG-21 is the LANCER . Why? Because Romania has almost no $$$ for running an air force and pulled off this project. Hell, I guess we need freakin Romania to project manage USAF after pulling off that play. I like the idea for the Bison, but horses for courses. Romania didn’t have much of a choice ( $$$ ). India IMHO would be better off stepping away from the MiG-21 and let it retire with some form of dignity. The mantenance procedure on the jet is just so damn limiting for an air force that knows better. You maintain a Mirage2000 and just about everything else looks like a joke. Mirage2000 would sortie rate the hell out of a Bison after 1 week of war. I don’ know what kind of spares they have on hand for sustained fighting with a Bison but I would say considering $$$ spent on all their other jets, if it was an all out surge real war, Bison would be maintenance managed by using the growing supply of “cann” birds created that could’t fly after a week of hardcore sustained flying.
Entertaining article. Rots of Raffs. 😀
ELPRead it again. It said many exercises.
ELPThat’s an incredible lookin plane…
Better than all the other PSed fictional planes I’ve seen on the net…
The news tomorrow will announce that the Pak AF will get 200 of these.
( joking guys… )
🙂 😀
ELPvelly interesting mr Elp.
but what about the Rafale? do not prefer that? Because it seem the AASM is mainly developped for the Rafale. Also perhaps some country may find the twin engine of the Rafale more important when doing maritime type mission (non carrier).anyway there is one M2K with RBE2 installed, it is M2K B.105
Love the Rafale… Fuel and upkeep to run a second engine on a jet is always a consideration. Fuel isn’t getting any cheaper either.
ELPwhat are the pros and cons of buying French?
Not many problems if you have the cash. Remember, that a lot of F-16 sales ( not all ) are U.S. taxpayer give aways.
When I think of the M2000 or the Rafale, the first thing I want to see is cheap near all weather PGMs. AASM will provide that. I would pick a single seat M2000 and of course it would be one of many platforms in a netcentric environment. AWACs, UAV, UCAV, Ground FACs, etc. There just isn’t much to say. There shouldn’t really be any problems. The very latest weapons on an M2000 and you will be good to go for most things. Remember fuel prices. A single engine jet over time, like the M2000 is cheap to operate. I could care less also about nth degree of turning. That is solved with HOBs / Helmet Heaters.
ELPThere were a few more… but I will pick the following as being the most moronic…
AND MORE: “I have a hard time getting a justification for the F-22 from our planes losing to refurbished Mig-21s,” says Defense Tech reader MB. “What I get from that is look at how to upgrade the planes we have and take some of the money saved over F-22s to buy some more jet fuel so our guys can get some more flight time.
That comment would assume the person writing it has knowledge on F-15 airframe life, which obviously they don’t. There were a few good comments in that artilce, but a chunk of them being hobbiest aviaition types or other uninformed’s.
The only thing that needs an outright cancellation is JSF.
ELPdoesnt deserve a separate thread, please merge and delete.
Really?… This is about the deployment of the IAF to Alaska. Completely different thing. Add to that, if you read the link that Steve provided, you would find out that the deployment is stopping in some interesting places along the way. Egypt etc. I think some of the readers in the forum would be very interested in that, for the lucky few that get to take photos of an IAF deployment package landing in their country.
ELPNo! I don’t think a different forum needs to be established…
However, this much I agree: It’s high time for all those who had been overly confident
of themselves and/or of their wares to start reassessing the machines of others and to come to terms
with the facts that other people’s wares may not altogether be as inferior as is painted.😀
Except no one has published any of the engagement rules from that exercise in detail. This renders some of the posts on this thread as speculation and not much more than that.
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