"Michael Kelly" wrote in message
om...
Tarver Engineering wrote:
Emmanuel would have been correct in what he wrote two years ago, but the
bone has lit up.

Two years ago the Bone was well into its 3rd rotation in support of OEF
and was a very in demand weapons system. 7 BW Bones were routinely
dropping large numbers of JDAM's in support of ANACONDA this time last
year and flew 301 of 301 sorties in support of it, quite impressive.

You'd have to go back at least five years for the original statement to
be true. In all fairness, the Bone was in the middle of the block D
upgrades and availability on any platform in the middle of an upgrade
program is usually pretty poor.

Getting the Bone to work is a major setback for any F/A-22.


Hardly, now the FB-22 proposal is a different story, but that has a
shorter range and much smaller weapons load. Add SBD's to the Bone and
you're talking about 96 to almost 200 weapons carried.

I don't see a need for additional A/G airborn weapons platforms now that we
are not going to cut up the Bones.