On 15 Jan 2004 21:18:34 GMT, (Denyav) wrote:

There was serious concern over the
possibility of any conflict during those years escalating. The
political posture of both the US/NATO and the USSR/WP was that an
"attack on one is an attack on all" and the umbrella of coverage was
repeatedly asserted as covering

Only one time during cold war there was a real nuclear exchange danger and it
was during Andropovs' time,because no other USSR leader was coached by a top
product of western capitalismus.

You certainly make yourself a "moving target"--you say something
outrageous, then when it is refuted you jink into some other
preposterous assertion.

Maybe there was a nuclear exchange danger during Andropov's
administration, but you overlook a lot of conflicts from 1946 onward.
Certainly the level of capability grew, but the perceived possibility
of nuclear war was present during the Berlin Crisis, the Korean War,
the Czech and Hungarian uprisings, the Cuban Missile crisis, etc. etc.
etc.

Really? My statement on losses and target service are referring to
stealth aircraft performance, not the total air effort. To date there
has been only 1 F-117 lost in combat. During DS and IF, there were no
stealth aircraft -117s or B-2s lost or damaged.

So what?,only other US aircraft lost during Balkan conflict is a F16.
None of unstealty Eagles or Bombcats were lost,even tough they did the
heavylifting of Balkan air campaign.
If you want to learn why US did not lose any B2 during war,you must first know
why US did not lose any f14 or 15s.

What you first said, when I asserted that Stealth (active or passive)
has resulted in low losses and high target success rates, was:

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.

Now, you come back with "so what" only one F-16, no F-15s, no F-14s,
no B-2s (none participated in the Balkans,) and, of course only one
F-117. The more effective air defense of Iraq had no success against
stealthy airplanes either.



Really?


Yes

Nice editing here. The "Really?" was a follow up to your assertion
he

Regarding target success rate during whole Balkan war only 3 serbian air
defense radars were destroyed.

Which of course, would lead the astute reader to question why, if the
US couldn't put out the radar eyes, they couldn't deter the attacking
aircraft? Either we did kill the radars effectively, thereby enhancing
survivability. Or, we didn't kill the radars and they continued to
operate incredibly incompetently. You've got to choose one horse or
the other to ride.

Networking, not "internetting", but Serbian air defense radars, if we
discount one clueless F-16 "scared rabbit", were ineffective even
against non-stealthy aircraft.

But in order make them ineffective US had transfer almost every available ECM
asset to balkans,even from very far away places like Japan,and ECM fleet has to
be kept airborne three times longer than planned.

I assume your reference to transfer from Japan is about EA-6 carrier
based aircraft. Pacific fleet is in the big ocean, Atlantic fleet is
in the little ocean and usually in the Med.

EF-111s have been retired. ECM, for the most part is self-contained,
carried by the tactical aircraft themselves. Stand-off jamming is
still a part of the equation, but less. SEAD is no longer done by
dedicated single-purpose assets either. Stealth helps considerably
here.

In Balkans every radar that allowed to emit without suppression was a big
danger for any plane,stealthy or not.

There is always a crack in every universal statement. "Every radar" is
not connected to an air defense system. Not every radar can every be
suppressed. Selected radars can be rendered ineffective.

ECM, SEAD, stealth, etc. are not perfect solutions. As they told me
with the deployment of the first generation of ECM pods--they don't
make you invisible, the are used to "increase miss distance".
Increasingly that seems to be adequate.




Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8