lukostwo thoughts.
One its probably a welcome relief to the UK and US that there aren’t lots of journalists able to cover exactly what is going on (for the first time in decades).
I doubt they’re insane enough to be trying to cover the more gruesome atrocities. More than their life is worth.
Secondly I think I was wrong about the B1B carpet bombing things. Slowly slowly catchy monkey.
Carpet bombing would hardly solve the humanitarian problem.
I am curious to know why the Tornado fleet was sent without RAPTOR and just a targeting/imaging pod……
Hopefully the weather forecast for Northern Iraq is Brimstone. Maybe even Brimstone II now it’s entered serial production if I’m not wrong.
lukos1) How many aircraft have been lost to SAM threats in Ukraine?
2) What type of aircraft have been lost?
3) How many sorties have been flown overall?
4) What was the nature of the sortie the aircraft was flying when lost, was this a sensible or necessary employment of the aircraft?
5) What counter measures, if any, were those aircraft lost employing?
6) Were the Ukraine forces even aware of the SAM threat when flying the sortie?Just a sample of the type of data you need to provide to be able to back up your asseration that events in Ukraine give credance to the F35 type cas argument.
Simply claiming that a loss of an(y) aircraft to a SAM equates to an argument for F35 type cas is sloppy, lazy and most importantly for your argument, weak.
It would be safe to assume that most of the Ukrainian air force was there prior to split, as you can’t exactly train people to fly modern fighters in 3 months from scratch. As such they trained with Russian counterparts, therefore not entirely incompetent and perhaps more competent than the Serbian pilots during Operation Allied Force. Probably with functional aircraft too. I believe that covers 1,2,3,5 and 6.
At least one Su-25 and one MiG-29 were flying fairly high. Kiev thought the Su-25 had been shot down by a Russian jet until the Buk story broke. That covers 4.
lukosThat may be true. But three days ago you were fully prepared to step into this “the point is false” subtopic an make a dogmatic statement that was obviously wrong to anyone familiar with the subject.
I showed that it was wrong.
No you didn’t. You made a brief non-specific reference to a unreliable source. I could show the Queen to be a reptilian using similar tactics.
So now you respond by dismissing the subtopic as not being relevant to what was being discussed.
Because it isn’t.
Well, at least it is related to aerospace, unlike the political ranting that clutters many threads.
So let’s keep it that way.
And I have set the record straight for anyone who searches the subject in our forum at some time in the future. The HN-5 is in the area – as is the Misagh 1.
According to Wiki Leaks (maybe?) via non-specific reference to an anonymous source.
lukosYou have to stop with the conspiracy theories on an aviation forum. It needs to be discussed a long way from here and I think there is little scope to tolerate another thread being ruined by conspiracy.
How do i change the title of the tread so it says aviation only?
Okay then. Why are we not seeing more military aviation over IS?
lukosThere has never been a decisive air strike against a guerrilla insurgency in recent history. Even Israel couldnt knock Hamas out by around the clock bombing of a strip of land the size of Manhattan. Even if US acts alone they are not going to commit ground troops, and you cannot win a ground war with only air power. The Sunnis and Kurds are not going to go much beyond their defensive positions in north and south of the country.
The Western Sunni area in Iraq and across the border in Syria is in ISIS hands. Who is going to take over that area from ISIS? US ground forces? And after every ISIS member has been bombed to death by air?
Let’s stop playing with semantics to disguise facts. Obama deliberately said, “limited airstrikes”. That doesn’t make it sound like the requisite amount of effort is being put in.
No one is asking for ground troops. That is insane and costly. What is required is the destructive of all vehicular hardware in the hands of IS – artillery, transport, Scuds, tanks etc. and any other targets of opportunity. If you remove the major hardware, that will give the Kurds and Iraqi army (and Syrian army or FSA, either is better than IS) a fighting chance of winning the ground war against them.
lukos???!!!???
Frankly Lukos, get some rest.
It doesn’t look very good does it though? IS running around with US hardware hacking off heads and slaughtering people. Unless decisive action is taken, people will tend to form the opinion that this is a conspiracy aimed at weakening the Shia allies of Iran on behalf of Israel and Saudi Arabia etc.
In 2003, the US was prepared to act without UN approval to remove Saddam. In 2011, they were prepared to act without UN approval to conduct airstrikes to remove Gaddafi (no fly zone –> CAS zone). And for Syria in 2013 the same can be said were it not for Congress/the public holding them back. Now they won’t even act with almost unanimous approval to conduct decisive airstrikes on IS, who everyone can universally agree are completely insane.
lukosAn on-line collection of US material (much of it classified) is not something that you consider a record? The US DoD and intelligence community seem to take a different view.
Digging up the Wikileaks document(s) that refer to the Chinese NANPADS would have taken time, a commodity in acutely short supply for me at the moment. I simply indicated the source and left anyone who was interested to do their own search.
“Reality is frequently inaccurate” – I love it! Thanks for that reminder, Vleugelmoer. Must reread the book once MH17 and the latest Gaza War give me some free time.
Well lets cut this short. The original strand of this conversation started with a statement regarding reasonably proficient and prolific S2A threats in East Ukraine proving the need for the F-35 rather than the A-10. Somehow that diverged on to the possible, scant, and unconfirmed use of rather shiitty forms of MANPADS in Afghanistan that had virtually no immunity to basic flares.
Whether they were there or not, the point is false wrt the original strand of the conversation. /Discussion
lukosYour claim in posting 1033 of this thread was “no record”. I have shown that there is a record.
Wiki Leaks is not a record. Find something official. Not that you even provided a link to it on Wiki Leaks either.
lukosTu-202
lukosA ‘trawl’ through Wikileaks should turn up confirmation that the Chinese HN-5 was being used in Afghanistan.
A trawl through Wiki Leaks could turn up pretty much anything you want, or don’t want as may be the case. The density of use, if at all, has been negligible, or incompetent, or we’d have heard a lot more about it without going to Wiki Leaks.
lukosGiven this reply i’m safe in believing that at the time you were making claim of manpad superiority over aircraft of a certain nature you had no data that actually backed that claim.
Decidedly iffy.
Which then brings into question the whole it’s got to be the F35 because manpads will get anything else doing the cas role differently (or traditionally) hokum.
For goodness sake. Look at Eastern Ukraine. That’s my data. Do you even keep up with current affairs?! And I didn’t just say MANPADS so don’t try change the damn subject. They’re very vulnerable to all manner of S2A missile threats.
lukosC41STAR or not, I dont have any hope for a “well trained” army which fled en mass when rebels riding pick up trucks tuned up at their bases.
All that means is that these areas will be under Iraqi control as long as US bombers are flying overhead. If the soldiers on the gorund are not willing to fight what can the Americans acheive? And why would a Shia soldier die for a Sunni town somewhere in the northern desert? As long as ISIS keeps away from Shia areas they are happy.
Just have a look at how many Afghan provinces are under full Govt control.
So you don’t have any hope for US air power? IS seized a whole shed load of US equipment, or had it given in Syria. They now have an advantage because of that. It’s the responsibility of the US to destroy that equipment at the very least. Anything less can only be seen as massively irresponsible and more cynical people will tend to allege that it’s orchestrated.
lukosThere might be a weight problem. BRU-55/57 racks are designed for 1000lbs class weapons… a BRU-61 with 4 SDBs weighs 1460lbs.
Those Gripen cgi loadouts are purely fictional at the moment.
A Gripen carrying >10,000lb of stores wouldn’t have a very useful range.
lukosThe Iraqi army was operating under conditions of complete air dominance. Supporting air power could pick-off IS convoys at will – there are plenty of videos on YouTube of Mi-35s destroying technicals and supply vehicles without a single return shot being fired.
Thousands of tons of supplies have been fed quietly from Iran. Iranian officers are assisting the Iraqis in the field.
Yet the Iraqi army broke and fled any time they werer pushed. Why do you think they’d do any differently if there were stars-and-bars on the aircraft?
Unfortunately the Iraqi army has become a political play-thing for various factions in power. Capable officers have been removed because they don’t align with a particular sponsor’s tribalism – when Mr Hussein did that we tut-tutted and said he was a blinkered fool.
Far better C4ISTAR, SA and target acquisition. More assets, better comms. No harm in trying unless there’s an ulterior motive for not doing so.
lukosContinuous drone strikes, boots on the ground and thousands of dead American soldiers could not finish off Taliban. What makes you think an air campaign will have this impact on IS?
Only a strong Iraqi army/ air force can do that, and I dont think they have the stomach for a fight. Shia and Kurds have been sitting idle as long as IS didnt threaten their heartlands in north and south. Iraqi army might be impressive on paper but ISIS fighters have been battle hardened in guerilla warfare in Syria, its not going to be easy without local support.
Apples to oranges. Iraq have a decent army capable of kicking out the insurgents with help from NATO air power. We let them expand too far, we should have hit them as soon as they entered Iraq, in doing so we’ve made the job bigger. We need to integrate efforts and provide CAS for the Iraqi military and work on providing the Iraqi army with proper tactical planning for their advance. Putting troops on the ground is a no.
Anyway more news:
http://breakingdefense.com/2014/08/isis-adapts-to-us-airstrikes-much-like-vietnamese/
ISIS Adapts To US Airstrikes – Much Like Vietnamese
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