RE: Soviet Air Power

Yes and these were what one would call planes going up against “upgraded” U.S. Fighters, like Iraq’s 14 MiG-29 B’s giong up against 500+ F-15 C/E F-18’s and 16’s Britsh “Tornados”

Isn’t that the same situation the NVPAF’s faced? No one made excuses for North Viet Nam’s aerial defense. Ever hear anyone say, Operation Bolo was not a success because the USAF had more F-4’s than the NVPAF had MiG-21’s? It is the same situation the Israeli AF faced in their war of liberation.
Using courage, willingness to engage the enemy and decent tactics…. the defense can draw blood and at times make it very expensive (casualty wise) for the air offensive!
If you don’t have a decent military, you settle the disagreement with your diplomats. If you decide on military action, don’t cry if you don’t have the best of what you would like to have for combat.

Concerning the MiG-29B against any of America’s “teen” fighters, the MiG-29B is a far closer opponent than any variant of the MiG-23, which would have been the bulk of the WP fighters in any aerial conflict between the WP and NATO.

Adrian

RE: Tornado ADV and IDS, success or bust?

The big problem is that PANAVIA consortium apparently learned absolutely nothing from the Vietnam War. Low level flight had become increasingly untenable by the era of Linebacker II and the 1973 Yom Kipper War.

Actually, low level penetration was the primary means getting past defenses and strike targets of priority. Low level attacking of armor columns against mobile SAM sites will exact a heavy toll if the attacking force does not have the means of dealing with the SAM complexes.

The big problem is that PANAVIA consortium apparently learned absolutely nothing from the Vietnam War. Low level flight had become increasingly untenable by the era of Linebacker II and the 1973 Yom Kipper War.

The F-111B was always used as a low level penetrator. The B-52 survives because it was adaptable to the low level role. Low level is the B-1’s primary means of penetrating and was used that way over the Balkans.
Linebacker 2 was a real success! It was an aerial campaign that was fought like America was capable of fighting. The two most heavily defended cities in the world at that time, Hanoi and Haiphong had their air defenses obliterated.
Leading the charge was the F-111B’s which came in low and cratered the runways of the MiG’s. MiG being grounded initially, the NVPAF was never a problem. Ten days after the start of Operation Linebacker, North Viet Nam was also out of SAMs! B-52 pilots reported seeing very few SAM’s in the last few days of the operation.
Over seven hundred and twenty-five B-52 sorties were flown during this operation. Fifth-teen B-52’s were shot down, this rate of bomber losses was about the same as the USAAF’s 8th Air Force after the Luftwaffe was shot out of the air

Air-warfare the American style. It does work against inferior enemies only.

One big reason the RuAF is structuring itself is because of the way the initial operations in PGW#1 went. The F-111B, F-15E, Tornado, and Jaguars used low level penetration until medium and high level IAD’s were destroyed. Then low level penetration was abandoned in favor medium and higher altitudes. The tactics used in the PGW#1 were the basic tactics that would have been used in a NATO/WP conflict.

I feel the IDV Tornado was a success. It did well what it was designed to do, to go a long ways over the North Sea, with little or no support patrol and maintain air sovereignty.
My late friend Art was one of the first classes of F-14A pilots who did not transition from the F-4 Phantom. I asked him what he felt about the IDV and he felt it was a good interceptor. That the F-14A could have performed the same mission if the European community had chosen the F-14A, it was offered. Buy European was the mandate. The IDV had avionics that made it a little better for its primary mission, since its primary mission would cause it to face different types of radar jamming than the F-14A. It was sad it took so long to get the radar to perform as originally specified.
Now, in close combat with the F-14A, F-15A, or F-16A, the IDV would suffer badly. He went on to state that the IDV community had a great bunch of tacticians plus disciplined pilots which enabled it to deal with opponents with very good maneuverability.
Now, will it go down in history as a great plane…. no. It did the task assigned to it and did it well.

Adrian

RE: Soviet Air Power

They are no longer held in reserve. AFAIK they are now museums.

I found this on the “Naval Forces Web Board”
TOPIC – GAO Report on LCS By “rickusn”
http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/naval-forces/4863-gao-report-lcs.html
“The USN did strike these ships from Naval Register in 1995 but pressure from Congress got two placed back in reserve but even these were not back on the Navy List until 1997. The USN planned to again strike these in 2003. This hasnt happened yet.
The USN though has no intention of bringing them back.”

main defenders of Soviet airspace were the Su-15 and Mig-25 during the seventies and the Mig-31 and Su-27 later on during the eighties.

The bulk of these aircraft were under the command of the PVO not V-VS. The Su-27 for the most part, the Su-27 did not start operations until mid-1988. Only around one hundred and eighty by mid-1990.
Russian Warfare Website
http://warfare.ru/?catid=239&linkid=2178
1987 V-VS order of battle;
10 Su-27 Flanker, 275 MiG-29 Fulcrum, 490 MiG-21 Fishbed, 1570 MiG-23 Flogger, 105 MiG-25 Foxbat, 260 Su-15 Flagon, 20 Tu-128 Fiddler, 20 Jak-28 Firebar, 30 MiG-31 Foxhound

In all these engagements, the users of Soviet design aircraft (Syria, Iraq, Serbia) were vastly outnumbered

The same conditions face by the North Viet Namese. The Syrians were not outnumbered in the engagements over the Bekaa Valley in 1982 and the outcome was very one-sided.
I doubt anyone would think the Israeli Air Force would show so poorly if faced with the same situation as the Iraqi AF in 1991. The first attacking wave of aircraft would have faced serious aerial opposition.

the first engagement between an F-16 and a MiG-25 ended with the F-16 firing a Slammer down the throat of the MiG-25

Can you provide details of that engagement?

Transcript of “Benji 41’s” Kill -First AMRAAM KILL (12/27/92)
http://www.sci.fi/~fta/amraamsrc.htm

On the rare occasions when the latest models were delivered and used, a nasty surprise was provided to the users of Western type arms.
Mig-15 in Korea or SA-6 (Kvadrat) SAM in 1973

Long before we considered the Soviets as being ten feet tall, we Americans considered them as mental midgets! Incapable of any intellectual feats. The MiG-15 came as a shock but, America attributed the MiG-15’s design to German designers/technicians captured at the end of WW2. We attributed the Soviet nuclear weapons program as being successful because of Soviet spies in the American nuclear program. By the time Sputnik came along, Americans were beginning to suspect the Soviets were competent in designing first rate equipment.
The SA-6 is a case where the weapon should not have been a surprise at all. It was the Soviet equivalent to the HAWK Missile, which had been in operation for over ten years. Yet, the USAF had no CW jamming gear to counter this missile!

From the eigthees on the strategy of the warsaw pact was to invade via the northern german plaines with massive armer and to soften up the enemy the plans were to use tactical nukes in the first hours of the war.
I don’t think that airpower was an issue the first few days when this plan was executed.

That was only if the situation was where the NATO/WP conflict would be allowed to expand to WW3. Remember how upset Europeans got in the 1980’s (all the protest parades) when the population found out how much effort the USA and USSR were taking to insure that any conflict would not expand beyond the European theater? There would be no limiting the conflict once the nuclear thresh hold was crossed.

Adrian

RE: Soviet Air Power

What strikes me: the US Army has 5000+ Abrams in service. What do they need it for?

They are there for the same reason the US Navy has the USS Iowa Class battleships in reserve. It takes eighteen months to manufacture a M-1, when the production line ‘was’ open. One never knows what the future holds, you have to be prepared. Do you really expect that there would be no conflict in the next twenty to twenty-five years. The world did not have a period of twenty-five years without a major conflict in the last century!

As far as the air war between NATO versus the WP, the control of the air was definitely on the side of NATO. Yes, the WP had in access of 3,500 MiG-21’s, and MiG-23’s but, they were no match for the F-15’s and F-16’s of NATO from the early 1980s onward. Pilot training time was reduced starting as early as 1984, with the expected loss of flying proficiency. The reason given at that time for the reduction in flying time by the Soviet Air Force was that simulators were good enough to keep up pilot proficiency.
The WP command structure completely dismissed the capabilities of the F-117, that would have been fatal. NATO SEAD was more effective than the WP thought. The lack of aerial tankers for the WP meant slower transit times and smaller war loads to and from the target areas. The PGW#1 was a very ugly wake-up call to the command structure of the Russian AF. It validated NATO’s aerial warfare concepts. It showed the WP’s aerial offensive to be lacking by comparison.
Now, the MiG-29 with the HMDS and HOB Archer Missile would have caused real problems but these did not exist until the late 1980’s and then in small numbers.
There were problems in the interface between the Soviet designed aircraft and the radar guided missiles they fired as they approached the merge. The result is they had to wait until the merge and maneuver before firing their missiles. After the Cold War NATO discovered the ‘tactics’ of the WP were not advanced as NATO had thought. The air battle would have been more one-sided than initially thought.
Check all the engagements between Soviet designed aircraft against Western designed aircraft since 1980, they charge head-on approaching the merge. The Soviet aircraft do not fire radar guided missiles as they approach the merge!
Even the first engagement between an F-16 and a MiG-25 ended with the F-16 firing a Slammer down the throat of the MiG-25.

Adrian

Re: Cheap stealth point-defence fighters?

The problem with point defense fighters is that they place a country into a fully defensive posture, with little ability to strike well beyond their borders. If the enemy has long range fighters, they can ‘wait out’ the point defense fighters and attack them as they land (similar to what the P-51’s did to the Me-262’s).
In this situation the country better have a good diplomatic corp and a low chance of hostility with the neighbors. In this scenario an enemy first strike must be stopped and fail in its objective to ‘blind’ the defense. If the defense is blinded, the war is lost.
That the main need for a fighter be insuring the potential unknown on radar is a commercial aircraft that did not file its flight plan accurately or to stop a 9/11 situation.

Adrian

F-15, F/A-18

Where does it say that the Indian AF Mirage fleet is equipped with MICA?

The piece was refering to the weapons each of the the different aircraft had access to. The same ‘terminology’ was used when writing about the R-77 and the Su-30 series of aircraft.

Adrian

RE: F-15, F/A-18

Where as anybody with even a little knowledge about the IAF would know that IAF Mirages are not equipped with Mica.

Here is some information from the annual issue of Janes Book of Aircraft 2003/2004 Pages 121 to 126;
“Mirage 2000-5 (2nd generation Mirage 2K started production in November 1995), can carry MICA active missile on 4 hardpoints (rated up to 400 kilograms each). The MICA missile weighs 243 pounds (100Kg). Indian AF name for Mirage 2000-5 is Vajra (Divine Thunder).”

Adrian

RE: F-15, F/A-18

In Cope Thunder, four F-15Cs were pitted against 10 or 12 of same model Indian fighters such as the Mirage 2000, MIG-27 and MIG-29s in offensive and defensive counter air scenarios. But the two most formidable IAF aircraft proved to be the MIG-21 Bison, an upgraded version of the Russian-made baseline MIG-21, and the Sukhoi SU-30K Flanker, US officials said.

Look at the date of the article, June 18, 2004. The time when the USAF was still ‘milking’ the results of Cope India in an effort to get more funds for the F-22 program.
Yes, the USAF was surprised by the performance of the MiG-21BIS but, if you are engaged in ACM with an Su-30MK and you have a chance to disengage to engage a MiG-21…. which would you make as priority number one? Yes, the USAF was foolish and arrogant in under-estimating the Indian Air Force capabilities.
Later that year (10/04/04 AW&ST Pg. 50) the ROE’s were explained, URL;
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1237790/posts

The ROE’s revealed plus the little information that the F-15C’s in another exercise with the HMDS/”-9X” missile, APG-63(V)2 AESA radar would go to Singapore, not Cope India. (SEE NOTE) The F-15C’s in Cope India used a generic SARH (Sparrow type) missile, Sidewinder-9M missile and, AN/APG-63(V)1 (non-AESA) radar while the Su-30MK’s used Adder Missiles and the Mirage 2000 used MICA Missiles. The USAF pilots at Cope India had not practiced against the ARH missile threat.

NOTE;
We never have heard any results of the exercise in Singapore that year.

I found the second article about Cope India 2005 interesting, the first time I saw an article about the ROE’s of that exercise. Again no, “-9X” / HMDS for the F-16C’s, Link-16, BVR combat or, the latest aerial combat doctrine of the USAF. The Indian AF again wants no BVR combat, why?? Again, no mention of the usage of the ACMI, most likely they used a PC again to verify the percentage of a kill.

The quote by the Sukhoi Deputy Director, “We feel part of a game, ‘protested Mr Alexander Klementiev, Sukhoi’s deputy director-general.’ But we are not participants in that game.” He acts as though the KGB or GRU is or was not providing accurate information, what a joke!

Adrian