Henry J. Cobb wrote:
Since the Air Force has never put their stealth aircraft into harm's
way without jamming I would think they agree that stealth alone has
never been 100 percent effective.

It has been widely reported that USAF F-117s flying into Baghdad were
initally supported with jammers, but that this practice was stopped when the
Stealth pilots complained that the AAA was opening up before they dropped
their bombs. The gunners were apparently being alerted to the impending
attacks by the fact that their radars were being jammed. When the jamming
was stopped, the AAA only began firing reactively *after* the bombs went
off.

So they're 100 percent dependent on the Marines.

??? The Navy flies most of the EA-6Bs, and they do deploy to land bases from
time to time, as well as from carriers.

Which is why Boing just got the contract to develop the Growler.

This contract has nothing to do with the Air Force, since the USAF is not
actually planning to get any EA-18s. The Air Force solution appears to be
EB-52s equipped for very powerful stand-off jamming, as wll as fairly masive
hard-kill defense suppression.

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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)