"Paul Krenske" wrote in message

On Sun, 10 Aug 2003 23:23:47 GMT, "Thomas Schoene"
wrote:

The F111's would be unable to self target apparently but would act as
a "Arsenal Aircraft" for F18's. The F18's pass over the information
through some sort of datalink to the missiles and the F111 drops em.
Apparently quite similar to Malaysias idea to use 2 seat f-18s as
controll birds for 4 ship flights of flankers. The new digital fire
control and data systems theoretically allow it to happen, I do not
personally believe it should be a starter though. Instead the F111's
should be smashing the Airbases not running air superiority patrols.

You'll pardon me if I'm still skeptical. That sort of engage-on-remote
datalink is the sort of thing being planned for the F/A-22; I really doubt
that it already exists in the F-111C. Do you have a source for this
capability?

I'm also skeptical about the Malaysian concept being significantly automated
(even having shared datalink) -- mixing US and Russian systems like that is
very hard. I could believe that the Hornets might serve as pathfinders or
mini-AWACS, but they would almost certainly be limited to passing data via
voice. The Flankers would have to acquire and engage their own targets,
which is a very different prospect from what you describe for the F-111.

Note the arsenal plane concept with RPV's is alive and well though.
DARPA is seriously proposing some low performance patrol RPV's (mach
9 semi stealthy) with 4-8 AMRAAMs (or the ER follow on) running the
patrol loops taking targeting information from manned fighters and
possibly directly from AWAC's.

Oh sure, I believe it's possible in the future. But you seem to be saying
that this capability already exists now. If DARPA is playing wiht it in the
US, that's because it's still very raw technology.

--
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing
special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed)