No funds, no army. I didn’t say it couldn’t be funded each subsequent year, it just can’t be indefinitely formed. Besides that the founding fathers put other strings attached to troops to keep them from repeating the oppression of the redcoats. The Navy doesn’t have those strings attached to it.

The U.S. is forbidden to keep a standing army by the Constitution. The marines probably aren’t considered to be covered by that clause.

IMHO if the USAF was trying to be good global partners they would have included p&d capabilities in their F-35A by default. To think that in this day and age they are still trying to continue the tradition of operating as a standalone, self-sufficient force! Likewise, the USN F-35C model should be expected to operate full boom compatibility with the USAF.

SRAM

Not dishonest at all, I am simply choosing not to rewrite history here.

Accepted into service is not the same as production. The SA-6 was more complex than the SA-2 and you weren’t going to just rush a few hundred out the door. The original missile was so problematic that the initial ‘modernization program’ for it started out nearly at the same time as its inception into the Soviet army. It didn’t have a consistently working seeker until the mid-60’s. You’re talking about an engineering sample knocking down a target in 1964 and an uncanny ability to execute mass production of a sophisticate electronic system in 1967. Don’t let that 1967 fool you; what the Egyptians had in 1973 was a short cry from the SA-6 they could have rushed out the door in late 1967 for the North Vietnamese. The Soviets waited until 1970 to accept the original operational form of the system.

Also, the SA-6 was the lower echelon of a two-part defensive strategy involving the SA-4. Seems kind of silly they would go to all the trouble to export SA-6 (and its associated Long Track/Thin Skin radar systems) only to neglect their own high-priority SA-4 production, which required the same support systems! You honestly think the Russians were going to export the earliest samples to North Korea when the North was in genuine danger of an American offensive over running their territory? It was bad enough that the system was buggy at the offset, but if some of its early components fell into American hands you’re talking a much bigger national security breach.

When it comes down to their performance in 1973 it was the ZSU-23-4 that really hammered the Israelis. They didn’t have a counter to the SA-6’s illumination radar at the time, so they had to fly low and became vulnerable to the mobile, radar-directed guns. Once the Israelis formed a strategy to counter the SA-6, using equipment similar to that which the Americans had access to during Vietnam, its overall system no longer carried the same potency. You have to remember that years earlier the Soviets planned some changes to the original system to make it much more mobile, they dispersed the control vans away from the launchers, and they gave it a new mid-course command link. The Egyptians only had the semi-mobile original form, lacked the SA-4 complement, lacked the technical expertise to modify the missile, and used a couple different radars compared to what the Soviets themselves used in their non-exported version.

Not all the SdB’s have to be made for getting there. Get one in close enough to spread some flares and filaments in the air to blind their defenses. SDB II can get all fancy in it’s terminal glide, can your defenses hit a target flying in an erratic spiral? You might even have disposeable unmanned vehicles tripping their triggers. We are also neglecting stealth cruise missiles doing similar things within the target area. They can get fancy if they need.

Chinese and Russian pilots flew the MiG’s early on simply because the first graduates of MiG-17 training didn’t occur until the end of 1962. There simply were not enough pilots in the VPAF to fly what little they had before the war. The VPAF trainees had to go to Russia and China for training because they didn’t have high end trainers in Vietnam yet. It wasn’t until 1966 when they got their first L-29 trainers for domestic fighter training.

During the course of the war, the VPAF would use the MiG-17, MiG-17F, MiG-17PF, MiG-19, MiG-21F-13, MiG-21PF, MiG-21PFM, and MiG-21MF in combat. The ground radars included the P-12 Spoon Rest, P-15 Flat Face, P-35 Bar Lock, and PRV-11 Side Net. Their surface to air missiles consisted of SA-7, S-75 (SA-2 / Fan Song), S-125 (SA-3 / Low Blow). They also used radar directed AAA in the form of SON-4 (with the S-60 single-barrel 57mm gun), SON-9 Firecan (using both the S-60 57mm and KS-19 100mm), and the SON-50 Flap Wheel (again using S-60 57mm). The Russians and Chinese equipped them with quite a few optically-aimed guns (both towed and self-propelled) ranging anywhere from 12.7mm to 57mm.

After their first formal trainees left Russia, Moscow gifted them three dozen MiG-17 (along with some MiG-15UTI trainers) which formed the core of their best combat force. In 1964 China gifted them MiG-17’s. China would later introduce their JJ-5 (MiG-17) trainer to them. You have to remember that this was still a relatively quite time. By June of 1964 that North Vietnam noted over 200 incursions into their air space so Ho Chi Minh ordered his VPAF on full alert. The Gulf of Tonkin wasn’t until August 1964. The MiG-21 was introduced to VPAF in the summer of 1965 after 30 pilots graduated the formal Russian training program. MiG-21’s at the onset were solely operated out a joint MiG-17 and MiG-21 base.

Early on the MiG-17’s were intercepting A-1’s, A-4’s, F-100’s, and F-105’s; as well as fighting off flights of F-8’s. The VPAF, though shorter on numbers, had equipment more than advanced enough to fight back when they could manuever their resources into position. Friendly fire was more of an issue than the American fighter sweeps. Accident attrition rates were actually higher than losses to the supposedly more advanced technology of the American hardware.

Another year later the USN and USAF would introduce the F-4. In fact, the F-4’s weren’t even holding much of a superiority edge considering the distances they had to fly was neutering their capacity to engage in an optimal fight. Fuel was always an issue. There was another issue with F-4’s, they brought missiles with them and no guns. The Russians sent in newer MiG-17’s to counter the new American assets. The VPAF claimed a lot of kills that don’t fit into the American records, but we do know that there were quite a few remotely piloted airframes downed during the period. It didn’t help that American commanders used dumb tactics, like sending a dozen F-105 tactical bombers as MiG-hunter which ended badly.

The American forces had very limited airborne radar coverage of the North and the mountain ranges obscured their long range ground based radars. Visibility was always a problem over the North. Rarely did the F-4’s even know when they would be engaged, which led to their high loss rate. For the better part of the war the lowly MiG-17 engaged American forces. Later in the war the MiG-19’s and MiG-21’s took over more of the duties. It wasn’t until the last year of the war that American forces finally overwhelmed the VPAF once and for all. But we all know how the peace accords were signed to bring the boys home and end the war, and what ultimately came out of the calm. The North won in the end by using less resistance.