Why is Stealth So Important?

"Gene Storey" wrote in message news:sD0Nb.112$ce2.3@okepread03...
The Vietnamese fought for their country and terminated the
American hegemony.


The vast majority of South Vietnamese people did not fight for
their country. The average peasant had no concept of Vietnam
being "a country". Most of the people lived in rural areas.
They knew little of and cared less about what happened outside
their own village.

They wanted to work in peace, with minimum interference from
whatever government was in place. These people were bewildered
farmers with no clear idea of what was happening -- except when
shells, bombs and bullets landed on them -- or when Vietcong
agents extorted payments from them, or murdered their family
members who questioned the Vietcong and their protection rackets.

About 80% of South Vietnamese were Buddhists, so some of them
objected when overzealous Catholics like Diem tried to push
the monks around. But then again, the Communists championed
atheism, and that idea was even less popular.

The vast majority of people who supported the Vietcong did so
because they were afraid of punitive action, not because they
were patriotic.

ways you can approach a target. Why
come down Thud Ridge every day? It points at Hanoi, it doesn't have
much population and it provides radar screening from SAM sites. But,
that means you go the same way every day....Yep.


By all respect to all Thud or Scooter drivers of Vietnam era,we must also not
forget the the most dangerous missions in Vietnam were assigned to Rf101 and
RA5 planes.

ut the South Vietnamese simply didn't want to fight for
their_own_country!

and for their democratically elected,non corrupt government!.

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.

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.

Really?


Yes

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

Lowered returns, no matter what buzzword you're using, are quite
relevant.


Lowered returns?
Actually I would not use the term returns for multi statics as this term rather
closely associated with the backscatters,multistatics have nothing to do with
backscatter,they chase the forward scatterer.
Imagine stealthy airborne platforms as "horizontal" mirrors withot sharp edges
and verticals.
Multi static designers love everything that backscatterer designers hate to see
in their target.

I hate to disappoint you,but correct


Prove it.


Write to your Congressman/woman and demand a Mitchell style public demo,US
stealth fleet vs.US counter LO system now.

Since you do not know the RCS of either (can you say
"classified"?, there, I knew you could) that is an utterly
unsupportable claim.

Say whatever you want,they are identical and their RCS is even smaller than
insects RCS,an excellent number, but a totally irrelevant and useless
achievement in the era of multi statics and UWB radars.

By all respect to all Thud or Scooter drivers of Vietnam era,we must also not
forget the the most dangerous missions in Vietnam were assigned to Rf101 and
RA5 planes.

Negative. The most dangerous missions were the F-4 chaff layers in Linebacker.
Hard to miss a chaff stream across the sky. The target is right at the front
of it. Second, the BUFFs over Bullseye, in the post release turn away from the
run in. heading.

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

"Evan Brennan" wrote
"Gene Storey" wrote
The Vietnamese fought for their country and terminated the
American hegemony.


The vast majority of South Vietnamese people did not fight for
their country. The average peasant had no concept of Vietnam
being "a country". Most of the people lived in rural areas.
They knew little of and cared less about what happened outside
their own village.

They wanted to work in peace, with minimum interference from
whatever government was in place. These people were bewildered
farmers with no clear idea of what was happening -- except when
shells, bombs and bullets landed on them -- or when Vietcong
agents extorted payments from them, or murdered their family
members who questioned the Vietcong and their protection rackets.

About 80% of South Vietnamese were Buddhists, so some of them
objected when overzealous Catholics like Diem tried to push
the monks around. But then again, the Communists championed
atheism, and that idea was even less popular.

The vast majority of people who supported the Vietcong did so
because they were afraid of punitive action, not because they
were patriotic.

You are generalizing. Peasants never get a say in any country (including
the United States). There were enough intellectuals and educated people
fighting, that the peasants didn't count.

On top of that you seem to be talking about the wrong folks. I'm talking
about the Vietnamese that rejected the countries division into two
regions under the promise of a vote. When the vote didn't take place,
the rebels in the South began their inevitable fall.

South Vietnam was a fake country. It never existed except in the eyes
of the invading/colonizing forces.