Consistent CAP over a fleet from a land base

Douglas Eagleson wrote:
Douglas Eagleson wrote:

KDR wrote:

Has any air force ever tried or practiced providing a consistent CAP
over a fleet by air-to-air refueling? I am wondering whether or not RAF
Tornado F3 units had ever done that.

I am an avocate of adding afterburners to the A-10 for just this
reason. A long duration of coverage is the defensive role.

A five hour rotation is possible for the Warthog upgraded. A radar
targeted front cannon is real cool.

Mach 1.5 is possible even for the odd shape. And this is enough for
coverage air to air fighting. A short evasive is the basic missile
defense.

A basic airframe is perfect for the defensive role fighter.


Every responder need to get their noodle functioning before commenting.
Did I ever say the afterburner would always be used?

Used or not, it's extra weight to haul around.

Also, an engine with an afterburner (and thus designed for higher speed
flight) won't be as fuel-efficient in cruise as the very thrifty
high-bypass turbofans currently used, which were designed for a
lower-speed environment.


Nowhere did I make that claim of good practice.

And the idiots ignorent on how to launch the missile from the hanger
added are idiots. Why upgrade to a fighter without air to air missles?

Well, you said "radar targeted front canon," not "missiles." Don't
expect people to assume things you don't mention.


A rader pod is placable on the nose or the fuel pods.

There's no place to mount a pod "on the nose' of the A-10. With a radar
in the nose, assuming you can find space, gun vibration will do nasty
things to its reliability.

In underwing pods, there are other sources of vibration, plus challenges
in keeping the radar boresighted and adjusted.

Also the antenna diameter of a pod will be much smaller than a typical
fighter nose radar. That means much less effective range.


THe clean slow flight without afterburner gives up to five hours of
coverage duration.

Of course, now you're lugging around afterburners (dead weight in
cruise), a large (draggy) radar pod, and apparently missiles. You can
expect much less endurance than the ideal clean configured cruise.


My claim is a good claim. NEw engines would make the thing useful.

It's damned useful now, in its designed role as a close air support
aircraft. But a fighter it's not.

New engines won't push the aircraft anywhere close to Mach 1, nor give
it the fast transonic acceleration you want in a missile platform.

Look, what you're proposing now is effectively a slower, less optimized
version of the F6D Missileer of the 1960s. That was dropped because it
would have been lousy at anything other than pure fleet air defense (and
not necessarily great at that).

--
Tom Schoene lid
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