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Kevin Brooks wrote:
: Not necessarily. Given that the air threat to the CV's, or for that : matter to their strike packages, is greatly reduced these days, the : USN may be willing to place the major air defense/air superiority : roles solely in the hands of the F-18's with their AIM-120's, and use Well, it does not need to be a 'great' threat to do serious damage: Look at the achievements of the Argentineans with only five Exocet missiles. One of the lessons of the Falklands war (now again conviently forgotten by the British) is that a fleet really needs a strong BVR defense, capable of intercepting low-flying aircraft at distances up to 100 km away. But AIM-54 is now a relatively old weapon (although upgraded several times) and it was designed primarily to defend the fleet against Soviet bombers attacking at high and medium altitude, launching the very big Soviet cruise missiles of the period. The threat has changed, the attack profile of an enemy force would now probably bring them in just a few feet above the waves, only poppping up to fire their missiles. It is likely that AIM-120 has better performance against low-flying targets, although AIM-54's range against high-flying targets is still unrivalled. The F-18E/AIM-120 combination may actually provide a better fleet defense than F-14/AIM-54. Emmanuel Gustin http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gustin/ |
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