You make good comments - but in this insurgency just having something that
is flying above your head and talking to you is better then what is there
now. If it shoots something - better yet. If it can hit something -
vunderbar!!

In the beginning of the war and just out of Afghanistan the CAS concepts
were classical, the TACP team the radio's and the long discussion about
where everybody is and the "nine-line" descriptor and target coordinates all
passed verbally even though people were using GPS because the link between
the systems was moving to the Rover and not the simple IDM that operated off
the radios and could only pass data and a picture. So CAS was focused on
putting a precision bomb on a known target properly identified amongst
friendly positions. The targeting pods because a big helper for the
fighters, one generation after LANTRIN or more. Then the bomb's collateral
damage made it only usable when the house or target was a bit distanced from
friendlies but the enemy still collected a crowd to protect themselves, so
strafing came back and then even the 30 mm round became too big. This is
becoming a real tough job now - hence the Blitz fighter idea



"eponymous cowherd" wrote in message
...
In article RM_lh.8389$tc5.6241@trnddc01,
"Ski" wrote:

e Army failed to do that when its
"boots on the ground efforts" recognized that the armed helicopter
(mostly
Apache and Kiawa) were now unrealiable against a ground sprinkled with
armed
insurgents shooting wildly at them from all directions (Cobra II Chapter
14
and Fiasco Chapter 6).

I hope you are not referring to that single maneuver element fiasco during
the
initial invasion.



The war, which again remmebr is costing billions
every month and is taking nearly one hundred lives every month with many
more wounded has gone on now for five years.

Then declare defeat and leave. Let them fight each other down to the last
man
and let the last man be kicked to death by a donkey.



A new F-15E or F-16C or F/A-18E coming off the production line is in no
way
an "old" aircraft when considering whether it can do a job or not.

They are old. The wing loading on the -15E is too high for low level
attack such
as CAS. The -15 and -18 don't make use of relaxed stability. The -16
and -15
don't make use of vertexs created by LERX to reduce stall speed. That's
just the
stuff I know and can remember off hand. A lot of **** has been learned
since the
1970s. Aerodynamic research did not come to an end when NACA became NASA.



machines have been continually maturing and continually improve to the
point
that now they are more capable in just about every category of fighter
comparisons that you can think of except the materials and shapes that
lend
itself to so called stealth features. To say that the JSF has a mystical
integrative advantage over the F-15E is simply a case of displays,
antennas,
and circuit boards because the ever changing software tapes are
deliberately
held up as different beasts in different models because we have long past
the day when you could distinguish the difference between an F-16 or F-18
or
F-15 or B-2 or JSF radar - it is just boards, components and software -
all
of which is grossly overpriced and enornmously over-paced to drag out the


There is no way older aircraft can mix IR and radar info without
completely
redoing the cockpit and all electronics. A software upgrade will not do
it,
because on planes previous to the -22 and -35 the IR and radar systems are
seperate, they're ain't no stinking wires between them.

Integrating sensor data from other planes with your own is possible with
an
upgrade, but the value is questionable. In the older systems the displays
are
all committed, they show one thing all the time. In the new systems all
displays
are controlled by a single brain and can show whatever the programmers are
capable of coming up with. It takes a while to explain, maybe you should
just do
the work yourself.