On Sat, 06 Mar 2004 15:01:24 -0800, (Harry
Andreas) wrote:

In article , Ed Rasimus
wrote:


Sorry, but Eagles from day one were designed to be pretty darn good in
the phone booth, but that means mutual support and fluid attack. They
also are darn good BVR and got a helluva lot better when AIM-120 came
along. Their capability to search, sort and allocate revised the
tactics of the previous 25 years.

Don't want to interrupt a good arguement (one of the reasons I like
reading RAM), just want to assert that the F-15/USAF's ability to
search, sort and allocate started with the F-14 and the AWG-9
WCS, which was the first aircraft in the world, IIRC, to have
capabilities along those lines.

I'd be interesed in your perspective on this Ed.

You'll get no disagreement from me. The Tom's BVR capability and
track-while-scan was new stuff when the AF was still smoking around
the country side in Phantoms.

I was addressing the issue from a strictly AF point of view. The Eagle
community, particularly some creative types like Jeff Cleaver up at
Soesterberg in the late '70s were revising the tactics at a high rate.
He was running two-ships in spreads of up to 20 miles and stacks on
the order of 20k feet. "Detached mutual support" became a possibility.


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