On Sat, 21 Aug 2004 18:02:07 GMT, "Thomas J. Paladino Jr."
wrote:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...ina/tu-22m.htm

Two part question; first, do you think that China will actually succeed in
it's acquisition attempts regarding the Backfire, and if so, how many would
they end up with?

Second, what does this mean to the the US? Backfires are a viable threat to
the carrier group, and with the F-14/Phoenix weapons systems getting phased
out with no real comparable replacement, I can't help but think that the US
carrier groups may find themselves in an uncomfortably vulnerable position
sometime in the near future. The F-14 and Phoenix missile were designed
specifically to counter the long range bomber threat, and when this threat
was thought to have disappeared, the AAAM (Phoenix replacement) and the
Super-Tomcat upgrades were cancelled.

Although there is basically no chance for the F-14 to be brought back to
life, should we now possibly be concerned with developing a new long-range
missile system for the F-18 and JSF, or do these aircraft already have the
capability to defeat the long-range bomber using stealth and smaller, medium
range weapons?

The AMRAAM has a pretty good range - most of the extremely long range
shots taken by the Phoenix were test runs unlikely to be repeated in
real life.

And with the improvements in stealthy ships, the steady improvement in
SM-2, and the far superior last ditch defenses (compared to
pre-Phalanx days when Phoenix was first deployed) of Phalanx, RAM, and
ESSM, the USN shouldn't be too concenred until China actually looks
like gettign *dozens* of Tu-22Ms.

If the worst comes to the worst, the US can always buy Meteor ;-)

Peter Kemp