You garble apples and oranges here. While situational awareness is
critical, it's not the same issue as developing the principles of
three dimensional maneuver between two aircraft. The analytical tools
of P-sub-s diagramming to compare aircraft and optimize your own
performance are important and whether or not you possess total SA
I think you are contradicting yourself here,you gave an excellent answer to
another poster and explained how things are done in the era of full situational
awareness,as you correctly implied there is no need to acquire target with your
Mk.I eyeballs,you dont even need to acquire target with your own
sensors,somebody else could do it for you,what you need is only to fire your
missiles.
Do you need high energy manouvers or jack knife type fights for that?
If we had current SA tools in 60s,the Missilleer project would be a great
success.
And, we still don't have total SA. AWACS and data-fusion/sharing are
great advances, but the "fog of war" will remain. We did have Disco,
Red Crown, T-Ball and Combat Tree as well as our own sensors and nav
Fog of war will always be part of the business.
Let me give a simple example,
Is there any guarantee that your family will start every time when you turn the
ignition key? No
But no auto manufacturer nowadays offers cranking handle type starting option
in their cars.
You really should read a bit more history. While F-4s without guns got
a lot of notice, there were a lot more gun-equipped aircraft than
non-gun. The failures didn't relate to lack of SA as much as to
political gradualism and lack of will to win.
Factors you mentioned were obviously the main factors at the national decision
making level,but less relevant at air-air combat level.
You really should read a bit more history. While F-4s without guns got
a lot of notice, there were a lot more gun-equipped aircraft than
non-gun. The failures didn't relate to lack of SA as much as to
political gradualism and lack of will to win.
The answer is easy. It would be great. But, if you are running the war
for political purposes and trying to avoid major power nuclear
confrontation, it doesn't matter what your SA is.
Unless you bombed production bases of NV,which were located inside USSR and
China,you would not risk a nuclear war.
Politically it does not matter much how you shoot down an enemy plane,with guns
or with BVR missiles.I did not distinguish active or passive stealth, but
simply refuted
your contention that stealth is a failure. Loss rates for stealth
aircraft are statistically zero and target success rates are very
close to 100%. It makes little difference whether the opposition is
first or third world.
Target success rate during DS I is more close to 1/10 th of what you are
quoting and during Balkan conflict more f117s damaged than convantionel
ones,even though f117s made up only small part of allied air fleet.
Regarding target success rate during whole Balkan war only 3 serbian air
defense radars were destroyed.
Even simple internetting of old serbian radars proved to be very effective
aganist stealth aircraft.
Did you ever wonder why US started destroying Chinese built Iraqi fiberoptic
network months before starting of Iraqi freedom using Special Forces and no fly
zone flights?
Chances of stealth aircraft aganist a sophisticated enemy using multistatics
and/or UKW radars?
Not any better than an old battleship without air cover.
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