thobbesF-15 was meant to establish dominance over Soviet fighters in small airspace over Europe in which case the range was to some degree irrelevant.
In the end the F-15 proved to be an absolute monster in A2A combat and is undefeated to this day.
thobbesAlso Israel has shown itself to be capable of reasonably independent long range military operations (for such a small country) over the decades – the most recent being IDF/AF strikes in Sudan.
It has also dominated Syrian Air Defence and flies over Syria with impunity. Syrian AD also includes Buk and Pantsir AD systems.
thobbesI highly doubt Turks will know anything about French Mirages and they are even become more unreliable with having more trade dependency on russia. same will be with new poorer members of NATO in east.
Not sure of this obsession with Turkey. They’re generally not a core contributor to NATO ops.
And rumours are their F-4 pilots thrashed Chinese pilots flying Flankers.
It relevant. Soviets were not as commited to war against Israel as North Vietnamese. If Soviet Priority was Israel. than it will have been alot of different planning from start.
Point is Israelis kicked Soviet butt.
And the Soviets were out to show the Egyptians how it’s meant to be done and then ran home with their tails between their legs.
The North Vietnamese did well with what were meant to be be obsolete aircraft.
In fact the North Vietnamese successes resulted in a complete rethink of US aircraft design, tactics and training.
The Soviets might have been doing this in 1980s but any gains were lost when USSR and associated Red Army/Air Force/Navy collapsed. People forget that elite Russian pilots were lucky to get 50 hours a year of any sort of airtime as well as collapse of moral, decline in training quality, criminalisation of elements of the army etc etc.
Again Russia is doing well to rebuild but I doubt it’s anywhere close to the quality of Western air forces.
Georgians are far more competent than most of Middleast militaries and mountainous terrian give its own advantages. and there was no compaign against them with cruise missiles to demoralize them or bribe them.
Georgians didn’t even put up much of a fight. Their army basically collapsed and retreated to Tbilisi – Russians even captured several abandoned AD systems.
Basically the Chechens fought far better than the Georgians.
Also Kosovo was mountainous as was whole of northern Iraq and most of Afghanistan.
Oh and cruise missiles and demoralising the enemy are valid military tactics. At least the Americans don’t block humanitarian aide which is what the Russians did at Gori.
so you have proof to the contrary. long range compain against what?
Sure – American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, interventions against Serbia, Republika Srpska, Libya etc.
All long range campaigns unlike Russian ones that generally involve interventions in neighbouring states.
thobbeshighly doubt all those aircrafts are present in same exercise and certainly not every thing shared. I highly doubt a Turkish pilot/airforce will no anything about UK EF indepth. There is great chance of leakage of information from Turkey to highly moneyed countries.
Sure that happens.
Chinese also have made great strides in Space launches and satellites. Avionics maynot be that reliable for civilian use but certainly much more advanced than average NATO country can afford.
So Chinese civilian avionics are more advanced than NATO military grade stuff?!?!?!?!?!
half hearted approch without proper backup (like no followup) usually end up like that. That is not chance in capitalist Russia/China. where every pilot is quantified interms of money spent on it.
Irrelevant. The Soviets got smacked. Bare in mind the North Vietnamese did far better than Soviet pilots too.
Also Pakistani aircrews wiped the floor with Russians in the 1980s as well.
those were 3 decades old stuff.
And what have the Chinese faced? Nothing.
What have the Russians faced? Next to nothing – Georgian AD was poorly developed. A great example of just because you have some toys doesn’t mean you have an effective defence system.
Actually waged war against obsolete and poorly trained foe with no resupply backup does not count as some realistic training. other wise there wont be that much bargaining on S300 for Iran.
It is as realistic as you can get. Because if you do it poorly you’ll lose aircraft (e.g. loss of F-117 over Yugoslavia) or be unable to complete the mission.
So what we have:
1. No proof that Chinese/Russians airforces/militaries are at same or better quality than NATO forces.
2. No proof that Chinese/Russian military tech is same or better quality than Western forces.
3. Proof that Western forces are good at executing long range aerial campaigns
4. Proof that Western C3 and logistics systems generally work and work well
5. Both China and Russia have had to rebuild their forces following years and in case of China, decades, of decay.
6. Historically Western pilot training. military coordination and equipment has been superior. There is no proof that any of this has changed in favour of Russia/China.
thobbesyou dont need some one permission to surge. only 30k was possible in that time frame.
You need permission when you’re trying to do nation building.
they operate taking into account host countries. resupplied from seas very slow and ineffective.
And when has a host country denied US carriers right of operation? They’re in international waters when they launch missions.
you cannot roll back NK in 24hrs. you have to assemble much larger force.
You can probably stop them.
Georgia was overun in 3 days.
You do realise this is the equivalent of Germany overrunning Austria or Italy overrunning Slovenia?
Given Russia is a large power and Georgia is a nothing small country?
And you already had troops in the country.
Afghanistan was fought against SAM missile supplied by western countries.
What does that have to do with logistics?
NATO was lucky that Russia cooperative in Afghan war. Russia could have closed CIS aerospace and resupplied the afghans with modern training, weopons, intelligence and see how far realistically NATO logistics can survive. You make unrealistic comparisions.
Irrelevant.
They are not masters. see Afghanistan and Iraq example. Russia stayed neutral or cooperative. so NATO does not have thing that much about protecting logistics.
Really. Americans were far better at keeping their troops equipped than Russians were in Georgia. The average American unit had all the kit they needed including NVG, ACOG sights, as well as things such as PX stores.
The average conscript in Chechnya was lucky if they were issued combat boots! In Georgia there was real problems with supplying ammunition and equipment.
taliban are spent force and they didnto fight well either in frontal wars.
I recommend you read some more e.g. ambush on French forces in Uzbin or Operation Anaconda.
In some instances well coordinated NATO CAS was all that stopped massed NATO casualties.
thobbeshe flies but he does not know how his electronics and obsolete radar will fair against upgraded rivals
Except he/she is probably flying under a US task force and is backed up by F-22s, F-15C/D/Es (all being upgraded), E-3s, E-6s, EA/-6Bs and EA/-18Gs.
. French will certainly not share with them.
French do share with NATO in terms of exercises etc. Hell they even sent some obsolete Mirage F1s to Russia just recently for an exercise.
Chinese have vast electronics industry. very fast update to systems and communications.
Making consumer electronics is different to making advanced avionics.
We have no idea whether Chinese military grade avionics are as as good as Russians ones and let alone as good as US/French/European/Israeli ones.
And if they merely copy them, then they are behind.
so you think Chinese does not know how to develop tactics when they introduce so many canard delta fighters and Flankers. Those who can built advance fighers can also develop tactics much better.
Really?
Remember how the Soviet pilots got their butts kicked by Israeli pilots? Even though USSR built planes and at that time Israel just brought them off someone else.
So you think Chinese dont pratice against modern SAMs.
Yes and so what?
These are not warzones but more internal implosion of countries. Warzone means fighting against some peer level equipment and training.
Wow this is getting ridiculous.
In 1991, 1994-95, 1999 and 2003 NATO jets fought against air defence systems and generally defeated them.
And serving in combat is still risky and stressful even if it’s in a low threat environment ala Libya. Even the risk of mechanical failure is more scary – you don’t want to be captured by the wrong side.
And in places like Afghanistan, there is IEDs, sniper, green on blue etc etc.
So being able to operate professionally in such conditions is a sign of good training.
But then I guess Russians and Chinese are uber super men and so much better than Americans or Israelis or anyone who has actually waged war.
Really the Russian military up to 2008 at least was rubbish in terms of human and organisational capital. For the most part it probably still is as you don’t just change that much in 5 years.
The Chinese military up to this day is mainly composed of obsolete rubbish technology wise and up to recently used doctrine and tactics that even the Soviets thought were thoroughly obsolete.
thobbesSlow surge does not change the tide of war. infact it make it costly. It is the fast and unexpected attack that throw things off balance.
We’re talking about highly politically sensitive COIN here. And by politically sensitive I mean within Afghanistan. Karzai wasn’t exactly too cooperative a lot of the time and there was a whole heap of warlords to keep in line.
It’s certainly not a 1967 style strike on a conventional opponents.
That 10 flat tops needs allies for resupply base and those allies have there own conditions. It is not that much freedom. and flattops have medium size aircraft with short range. not very effective for deep strike into large land mass.
The carriers operate as they please. They can also be resupplied from sea.
US certainly didn’t have any issues striking inland into Afghanistan or inland Iraq.
After all this is where all those bases, tankers and long range bombers and missile come into play.
Quickly still be not in 24hrs. actually NK killed SK people couple of years back in attack.
Given US forces are based in South Korea (1 division and 2 fighter wings) and Japan (at least one carrier, several cruise missile destroyers/cruiser/subs, more USAF/USMC fighter wings as well as USMC ground forces) and usual presence of other Pacific based carriers means definite response within 24 hours.
I suspect if NATO drove a couple of divisions into Belarus, the Russians would not be able to mobilise enough forces to stop them within 24 hours.
When you have fuel (remember any Russian attack on Middleast will be windfall) and money. every thing can be sustained.
Logistics are not about fuel and money.
They’re about getting the right equipment and supplies to the troops in a timely manner as well as the troops themselves. It’s about planning and coordination to get things from depots at home to ships/planes to in-country depots and then distribute to troops as needed.
Georgia saw a failure in Russian logistics. And Afghanistan and Chechnya also showed a disregard for logistics.
The Americans and NATO on the other hand are near masters of this. And even then failures do occur due to complexity of this.
obsolete defences under sanctions with poorly paid and trained staff can be defeated even with cruise missiles.
Not sure this obsession with poorly paid v well paid. I doubt Taliban are paid much and some of them fight quite well.
thobbeswhen You have money you can do every thing in compressed time like raising salaries 3 times. when you don’t have money every thing stagnates. Chinese entered into Olympic in 80s when GDR/FRG combined was at Peak. and now where Germany stands compared to China. its the continuous infusion of money into activity and with top class human resources. what is all those Supercomputers and advance simulators for?. Having experience in obsolete cockpit of Belgium F-16 has no relevance to modern Glass cockpit training of J-10.
Jeeze. so according to your definition Saudi Arabian, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait have the best airforces in the world as they throw lots of money at their toys!
Having experience in obsolete cockpit of Belgium F-16 has no relevance to modern Glass cockpit training of J-10.
That’s right.
But the Belgian F-16 pilot is trained according to latest NATO syllabus that’s been based on years of combat experience from a variety of allied sources. His/her instructors probably have hundreds of hours of combat time and can give him/her all the little tricks that make survival in combat critical as well as getting the most out of an F-16AM.
He/she flies against 4.5th and 5th generation fighters from other air forces in DACT and in all manner of environmental conditions in Alaska, Nevada, northern Canada, Europe.
He/she might also do a stint with a US or other NATO squadron thus learning new tactics. Or they have exchange pilots join their squadron which also facilitates learning.
He/she then goes off to some godforesaken warzone and flies combat sorties over hostile countries often in areas with hot, dry and dusty environmental conditions. And as we know sometimes the SA-2/-3 operator does get lucky so the pilot is still operating under combat stress.
His/her senior officers understand modern airforces and have had years of using them in actual warzones.
They have systems in place to ensure the squadron can keep operational thousands of kilometres from home.
———————————-
The Chinese J-10 pilot is training in an airforce where the training syllabus is based on theory and without any actual combat experience.
The instructor probably spent their first few years flying J-7s in basic flying and has no combat experience.
DACT is only done against other Chinese piloted aircraft and occassionally if they’re lucky Pakistani or Russians.
His/her senior officers probably flew J-6s and by the looks of it, struggled with even the most basic of modern airwarfare concepts.
Most exercises are held in country at local bases which means no experience in combat logistics.
thobbesThose formations were not more than 10,000 troops.
Compared to Obama surge in 2009 in Afghanistan. It took 6 months to surge 30,000 men. and most were transferred from drawdown in Iraq.
Maybe cause the US was trying to do it right. Merely throwing men into the grinder without proper planning and support doesn’t work. Surely the Russians learned this in Chechnya after several armoured columns drove straight into ambushes and were annihilated.
so how can you do similar in 3 days. 3 days only Supersonic bombers with supersonic missiles can reach targets.
So Russians are better at power projection than USA, despite USA having 10 flat tops, 20 stealth bombers, numerous cruise missile equipped ships and subs stationed around the world as well as 60 B-1Bs and for those less defended areas, long range UAVs, bases around the world, 76 B-52s as well as over 500 aerial refuelling tankers, 32 major AWACs (plus numerous small ones), 20 large communication jets (E-6 and E-4).
Oh and the USA actually performing strikes with all above over the last 20 years including ultra long range B-2 missions.
If needed the US can act quickly. Generally the requirement is not there especially as the politics tend to rule the day.
I suspect if North Korean T-54s tried to rumble into South Korea or China tried to attack Taiwan, you would see how quick the USA can act if necessary.
There enough transport both in Ruaf and private that Russian can airlift several thousands troops in a day into Middleast.
Sure but can you coordinate a massive airlift and then ensure sustainment of such a large operation? Georgia would indicate not.
Ruaf is hardly defensive force. when you practice 8000km range bombing runs with Su-34. It is training for more realistic combat. I think most Su-34 has the large EW pods and extra large tail. so no need for separate aircraft. Extra large aircraft give more flexibility in range situational awarness and weopons. There is less need for an AWACS.
Sure. Su-34 is a great asset.
Can you identify targets at that range? Can you coordinate suppression of enemy airdefence?
As stated it’s not about toys.
An air force could have 1,000 Su-30/F-35 and 1,000 C-17s and still struggle to get out of it’s own territorial airspace because it doesn’t have the C3 or logistics systems to do so.
thobbesI’ll put it in simple terms then:
“The average Western trained pilot is better than a Chinese/Russian one.”
“The average Western fighter sqaudron is better than a Chinese/Russian one.”
“The average Western military operation is better planned, coordinated and implemented than a Chinese/Russian one and with far fewer casualties.”
West is defined as USA, Israel and Western NATO.
China had 40 years of catching up to do and started from a very primitive base.
Russia lost over a decade and pretty much most of its conventional capability in the 1990s.
You don’t just build up the kind of quality found in West in 10 or even 20 years, unless you’re engaging in lots of combat like Israel did in 1948-67 period and are thus forced to learn quickly (“sink or swim”).
The Westerners have had lots of opportunities to tweak their doctrines and training to reflect combat experience. Thanks to multinational training and other sources, that experience is transferred to other allies who can then tweak their own doctrines and training syllabus.
This includes learning from mistakes – air combat in Vietnam, friendly fire incidents in Iraq and elsewhere, badly coordinated ops ala Operation Eagle Claw etc.
The Chinese haven’t had an opportunity to work out what works and what doesn’t except in a hypothetical manner. It’s all fine to copy Western/Russian procedure but you do have to actually integrate it into your defence strategies, force structure, and adapt your organisational culture to cope with new ideas.
The Russians don’t seem to have implemented anything up to at least 2008.
thobbesSo you think only these countries have excelent readiness and Russia/China with boat load of money dont have readiness?
If the radars were not ready how they picked up the missile test?. infact there is implicit threat.
No, I don’t think their training and capability levels are up to US, Western NATO or Israel.
The above have been developing their air arms for decades and they have years of combat experience. They are world leaders in aerial warfare.
PRC and Russia have had long periods of either no growth or complete stagnation. They’ve both only started rebuilding in the last 15-20 years. And they’ve had to completely rewrite their operational doctrines whereas Western AFs have been performing in the modern manner for decades.
You don’t just develop a world class airforce in a few years, even if you buy the toys.
So if you took a roughly similar scenario, say Serbia 1999 or Iraq 2003 or even Iraq 1991, the Western Air Forces would perform far better than the Chinese or Russians and with far fewer aircraft losses.
thobbesAgain you dont understand anything and continously with misplaced assumption. Dutch/Belgian advanced capabilities takes time to show up. They cannot finish off Georgia size country with mountainous train in 3 days. This is such speed that no airforce can prepare for it unless there is intention before hand. There is lesson from that speed of operation
First of all Russia already had a lot of formations in the country or around it for peace keeping duties.
Secondly the Dutch/Belgians don’t need to invade neighbouring countries.
Thirdly, the USA can start swatting within 3 days thanks to it’s carrier force.
Trainining in mass formation has increased alot. see the recent exerices.
That’s good news and great for capability building. I’m impressed Russia could mobilise such large forces so quickly.
Most of Nato exercise only few aircrafts are contributed by each country and i dont think it involve live firing of PGMs or deploying dedicated EW aircraft.
Depends on exercise and what it’s focus is- some are A2A, others are ground attack and others are EW and yet others are multirole. Bigger exercises generally have some sort of AWACS and EW aircraft.
A lot of the EW and general training systems are performed by private companies with business jets or second hand aircraft. There’s also ground based units.
Some countries do provide own but these are often quite discreet aircraft based on existing transports and business jets and generally not cared for much by spotters.
E.g. Norwegian Falcon busines jets, Italian G222VS, as well as Tornado ECR and USN E/A-18G.
It seems to me Russia’s focus is purely defensive with modest force projection capability for keeping the buffer zone in tact (i.e. the various Stans).
And until we see the RuAF in action again, the impacts of the reforms will be hypothetical.
thobbesNATO isn’t going in on any Syrian strike – all NATO focuses are on containment. So far any action on Syria is US and possibly French.
In fact the Turks are begging for NATO/US intervention.
They want their cake and they want to eat it too.
thobbesRussia doesn’t need to make worldwide deployments. Why is that a factor in determining AF strength? Not part of Russian doctrine, so not relevant.
It certainly demonstrates advanced capability in terms of training, C3 and logistics.
When was the last time the Dutch and Belgians faced something modern as even the Buk that Georgia used? And in a rushed, unprepared counterattack? Oh yeah, never.
Given it was a Russian system, I would’ve been surprised if the Russians didn’t know how to suppress it.
In none of those dates have they faced a cutting edge defense net on the level of Russia or China, or even in the same universe of capability.
Main thing is they suppressed them and suffered few casualties.
How would the Russians fare against similar grade US/NATO systems?
Though to be fare, NATO did manage to get info on just about any system the Russians had up to 1991s thanks to Israeli efforts, fall of Communism and the defection of Warpac members to NATO.
If you want to compare the entire NATO defense scheme to that of one country, Russia, well….absurd comparison.
NATO’s core contributors (France, UK, Canada, Belgium, Norway, Italy, Denmark, Netherlands and Italy) do generally try to operate as “one country.” Indeed the 4 Northern F-16AM/BM operators generally operate as integrated joint forces.
If we want to nitpick random capabilities how many nations on earth even have a strike capability that say the Tu-160 + Kh101 affords? How many have any sort of decent anti-ship capability?
They don’t.
Does that mean Russians have ability to effectively use Tu-160 + Kh 101?
We are discussing ability to use systems effectively and not just name dropping systems. As stated Saudi Arabia is getting Eurofighters, has tons of F-15s and owns AWACS. But their ability to use any of this effectively in a shooting war is questionable.
thobbesWow.
I think that if the likes of Erdogan stays in power, Turkey will continue to shift from Europe and NATO.
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