high-tech vs. low-tech (was Blackhawk Down pt II)

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MiGs and Sukois are tuff to kill. They are structurally supperior to our style of fighter. They are also damn near modular. A wing can be replaced in something close to half an hour. A Fulcrum can actualy sustain a short burst of 20mm and not go orange ball on you.
The Su-27 is more maneuverable than an F-15 and has a longer range multy-planar radar wich is digital scan not mechanical scan.
The MiG-31 has the strongest longest range radar in the air excluding AWACS and has some snarly long range missiles to match. It is the supreme Bomber killer, capable of downing individual cruise missiles and B-1 bombers. B-52s need not even try to exist when MiG-31s are on the hunt.
If we face an enemy who has these machines and TRAINS its crews, we will be in for it.
Such an enemy may already exist in the form of Mainland China. They already produce their own Su-27s. Their newer light fighters are far from useless as well. Currently, the PLA Airforce has 4000+ fighter type aircraft.
Some are being retired in favor of new types.
A formation of older fighter types being lead by a new type fighter with BVR capability is a dangerous thing. Your enemy then has you outnumbered and can see you first. Not only that, but the enemy has no ROE that forbid BVR kills.
I believe when China snatches up the Pacific rim in a few years our nose will be broken, in full view, on CNN.
 
one reason the U.S. has relatively mediocre AAMs is that we have been hamstrung with severe limits on BVR shooting. we had a real problem with blue-on-blue casualties in DS, but the answer is good IFF capability. the Combloc countries don't much mind blue-on-blue, nor unintentional shootdown of neutrals. the Soviet philosophy during the Cold War seemed to be, "we will overwhelm our enemy within the first week, or die trying." a lot of their hardware is designed with a short service life. I guess you might say we have a peacetime-optimized philosophy, they have a wartime-optimized philosophy. the problem is that the latter fails to provide enough training.

what I like about the Russian approach is that they don't succumb to the "One True Solution" syndrome. the US puts all of its eggs in one basket, whereas the Russians have role players. funny thing is that a large part of our success in WWII was due to our wide range of weapon systems. for example, the P-47 was a mediocre dogfighter, so we used it quite effectively for long-range patrols and ground attack (particularly strafing of German road and rail transport). now the USAF expects the F-22 to solve all problems. yeah right.

a classic example of the USAF design philosophy; at a USAF base in Florida, a feral pig ran out onto the runway when an F-16 was making a night landing. the F-16 nailed it with the nose gear, which collapsed the nose gear and sent the plane off the runway into the weeds. the pilot waked with minor injuries, but the airframe was totalled. a naval fighter would have survived that impact without any damage, I believe (since their landing gear are capable of absorbing 5 G landings, everything is beefed up including the fuselage).

the AMRAAM is probably a good missile, but like all complex artifacts it will need lots of testing and tuning. haven't heard anything about Israelis selling Patriots, but its no big deal if they did; its mid-1980s technology that is available elsewhere. the Patriot did more than we could have expected, but it was not up to that task.

the red China situation is turning out to be the answer to the old question, "what would have happened if England and the U.S. had continued their policy of appeasement towards Hitler?" I expect red China to annex all the smaller neighbor states (including Burma, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and of course Taiwan) but avoid conflict with India and Russia. the U.S. will probably accede to their military adventurism. I figure the only way we will "defeat" red China is through cultural subversion (which we are pretty good at). fax machines and rock videos rather than bullets.
 
Yeah, but how was the PIG?!? :D PETA wants to know.

Genral Dynamics: 0
Pork-kind: 1

They didn't call it the Grumman Ironworks for nothing.

Cultural subversion. Good point. I think that went a long way towards the USSR's eventual implosion, but I'm not sure what's left is much better. I think I'd rather have one big belligerent that could be swayed by deterrence than a bunch of little annoyances with their own nuclear capabilities, over which they apparently exhibit very little inventory control! :( Maybe we could send Marylin Manson on the first LCI. ;)

However, aren't the mainland Chinese pretty good at cultural subversion themselves? I guess the Prez found that out, though one would have to say that he has no culture to subvert.

Our current design philosophy of making one airframe do everything is real short-sighted, but I suppose it's an inevitable consequence of the massive cost of each new plane. Then again, you could argue that they cost so much becasue they try to cram so many capabilities into one plane. It would seem that our planes are trying to do multiple roles, none of them superbly. Look at the F-18. It's supposed to replace the F-14, the A-6 and the A-7 (already has), but does it have the stand-off capability of the F-14? Can it really do the all-weather as well as the A-6? Agreed, those aircraft are due to be replaced, but wouldn't it be better to have less-expensive planes specific to one job? The Russians have excellent niche-filling planes. The Su-27 is a potent-long range interceptor and the MiG-29 would seem to be an excellent and high-performance point-defense system. The Su-25 is serving well and has roughly the same mission as the A-10, which we're apparently ready to get rid of. The US, on the other hand, is trying to "replace" the A-10 with a stopgap solution like the F-16 that becomes a permanent solution. I wouldn't think that the F-16 would be good for CAS/BAI missions, because those missions involve getting down in the mud, which I'm not so sure the F-16 is good at, what with the much higher speed and all. The survivability issue of the slow A-10 is moot, because casualties are part of that mission profile.
 
John,
I'm checking with the ADA people up north on the Avenger for you, was out of the office today at a meeting, I'll probably post the info Friday. As far as I know they never put a radar on the Duster. But we fielded that 1950s technology well into the '90s. The SGT York DIVAD was basically designed to give us the capability the Soviets had with the ZSU-23-4. We design a lot of equipment to be like theirs. The Bradley IFV is our version of the BMP. Instead of a 73mm smoothbore gun like the BMP I we put on a 25mm automatic cannon. The Soviets countered with the BMP II which mounts a 23mm automatic cannon. The Soviets had the BMP fielded in the 60s. We began to close the IFV gap and succeeded in fielding the Bradley in the early 80s. Nearly 20 years to develop a fighting vehicle. The Infantrymen who ride in the back of the Bradleys (when there are enough Infantrymen assigned for dismounts) have to have two rifles. An M16A2 to fight with while dismounted and the M231 Firing Port Weapon to shoot out of the vehicle's firing ports. We insisted on designing the Bradley so it can swim. It takes time to set up the swim skirts and it's so dangerous that it was forbidden for a while. Maybe still is. Yet we gave up other capabilities so it can swim. It's a never ending circle, we build one, they build one and vice versa. The BMP swims so the Bradley swims.

Ivanhoe,
Air/Land Battle was what we had after active defense. Yes when I entered the Army in 74 our doctrine was active defense. It revolved around defense in depth and pushing the Soviets back across the inner German border. Under the Reagan administration we began looking at actually winning instead of fighting to a draw, which seemed to be the goal of active defense. A simple explanation of Air/Land Battle is that it allows the commander to bring all the forces available to bear at the decisive place and time on the battlefield. It's really nothing more then the synchronization of all the forces to achieve a common goal. In the past, WWII, Korea, Vietnam; each service had it's own piece of the pie and did more or less what it felt needed to be done. There was little unity of command. you might have an air commander bombing bridges the ground commander wanted for his advance or air resources used for strategic purposes that may or may not have an immediate effect on the battlefield. Just like the strageic bombing campaign in WWII. It really just allows an overall commander, from whatever service to control everything pretty much in his area of operations no more begging for air support for his goals when the air commander wants to use the sorties for BAI instead of close air support. In desert storm we developed a plan and then we allocated the resources from all services to support it. That's why Army Apaches fired the opening shots in the air campaign. Before Air/Land battle, the air campaign would have been totally seperate and the radar sites probably would have been taken out by AIr Force assets. Air/Land battle and it's concept of Unity of Command allowed a joint operation and the best tool for the job, the Apaches to take out the radar sites. IIRC the Apaches were led to the target area by an MH53 Pave Low because they didn't have the navigation systems to fly the mission profile. We can thank the late Senator Barry Goldwater for that success, because he wrote most of the Nichols/Goldwater Reform Act which basically forced the services into working together. Without that we would still be negotiating treatys between the services for who got what part of the pie. We still do, but not to the extent we used to.

The Air Force has wanted to dump the A10 almost since it's inception. Even after Air Land Battle they see CAS as a secondary mission for them and don't like a one role aircraft. If it hadn't been for the Gulf war the A10 would probably be out of service except for a few as FAC aircraft and as Sandys to fly RESCAP over downed pilots.

Airspace management is a big deal under airland battle. As we bring all the various systems on the critical part of the battlefield we actually have to divide up the sky for artillery and mortars and aircraft.

Jeff
 
Airspace coordination for artillery mortars, rockets and air is one of those doctirnal items that more than likely won't be done in combat. Formal ACAs are real hard to do and most FDO cann't even determine data to the danger zones. To paraphrase a formal CO of the 12th Marines in VN "we use big sky little bullet to deconflict air. My regiment has shot about 3.5 million rounds in last year, most in airspace with heavy air traffic. In many cases with aircraft attacking the same target as the artillery, we have yet to hit an aircraft."

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God truly fights on the side with the best artillery
 
STLRN,
I'm familiar with big sky/little bullet, but we spent a lot of time on airspace management at Air Ground Operation School's Joint Firepower Control Course, but that was a LONG time ago (83).
Jeff
 
Gopher, as a famous actor once said, "Th-th-th-th-that's all, folks!" ;)

I think the A-10 is like the AH-64; it was designed for the Fulda Gap problem. load up, try to take out a half-dozen armored vehicles per sortie, live long enough for two sorties. the A-10 is a great aircraft, but its strengths and weaknesses don't match up with USAF doctrine. maybe if the Marines bought some, the zoomies would buy them just to keep up. ;)

if I were to redesign the A-10, I'd do an aerodynamic cleanup, remove half of the weapon stations, add FLIR and imaging radar, and add a back-seater to handle the electronics. I doubt the F-16 would be any good at CAS; you'll have a hard time getting a fighter jock to go low-n-slow, and that's what's needed for accuracy down in the weeds.

reading up on the ETO of WWII, there's an approach to CAS and short-range interdiction that could work well for us. as a parallel to the P-47, we could develop a "fighter" (keeping in mind the USAF only likes model numbers that start with F-##) which would be reasonably fast, reasonably affordable, and carry a substantial weapons load. lets say a 3-barrel 20mm for soft targets, 4 Hellfires for hard targets, and two pods for 5" rockets (do we still have those?) for general area suppression. add a FLIR and a basic imaging radar for all-weather, and I guess a back-seater for navigation and defensive systems. now here's the tactics part; flying alone or in pairs, these guys might be vulnerable to ground fire. but if they flew in "packs", shooting at one would bring hell to the shooter because the other birds would turn and suppress.

when you have a specific known target at a known location, you can always send the F-16s in; but a lot of targets are targets of opportunity, and we can't afford to blanket the skies with high-performance fighters.

speaking of IFVs and the like, it seems strange to me that our primary armored grunt-hauler carries less than 10 guys. I understand the desire to have the "combined arms" thing going with gun platforms and rifle troops speeding around together, but what happened to the ability to haul *lots* of riflemen from point A to point B? the only true APC that I know of in U.S. service is the M113, which is a bit long in the tooth.
 
Looking at the threads on Black Hawk Down and Black Hawk Down Part II and this one, it occured to me that many members are interested in Military weapons and National Defence Policy while pther members are not.
I have suggested that a new Military weapons and National Defence Policy forum be added to TFL which interested members coud vist and non interested members coould ignore.
For the next week opinions pro and con are being requested. If ypu have ab opinion one way or the other you should post your cpmments under the topic in the Sugestions & Comments forum.
[This message has been edited by Hard Ball (edited February 17, 2000).]
 
In an interesting new case of high tech vs low tech, the Army is developing a new high tech infantry "rifle" planned for initial issue to troops in 2005.
The new weapon is called the Objective Individual Combat weapon. (OICW) It combines a .223 (5.56mm) automatic rifle with a semiautomatic 20mm (.84 caliber) semiautomatic rifle. The 20mm high explosive rounds use laser range firing and are set to explode at the range determined by the laser range finder.
Accuracy firing 5.56mm ammunition is to be "equal or better than that of the M16A2 ."
20mm ammunition is tp be accurate at 1,000 meters. The weapon is supposed to weigh 12 ponds or less and incorporate "recoil mitigating features."
One concern I have is the 20mm round. A typical 20mm cannon HE projectile weighs approximately 4 ounces. I wonder just how efective this will be as an air burst(AB) round. The Army has said that a single burst will "produce hundreds of lethal fragments capable of defeating Kevlar type body armor resulting in a large lethal area."
Perhaps the miricales of modern science will save us.

[This message has been edited by Hard Ball (edited February 19, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Hard Ball (edited February 20, 2000).]
 
The OICW is going to be an abortion. Just another excuse to not have the troops practice with their weapons, because it's too expensive.
We had a A-6(IIRC) try to ocupy the same space as an 81mm mortar HE round a couple of years ago. The unit was Weapons Co 2ndBn 24th Marines. I believe it was CAX, but not sure since I was not with the unit at the time. The 81mm mortar guys were talking about it, the plane driver was not supposed to be in that airspace, I was told.
What's with the 39 caliber barrel on the
(x)M777? At CAX this summer, the command element had their drawers in the ringer over notional GC-N-45 systems that we could not hit with arty. Why have we not adopted a 45 or 52 caliber barrel? Seems like a simple solution to the problem. As it stands we have to rely on CAS, which seldom happens because every one is so scared about losing airplanes. Also the Airforce seems so interested in phasing out the only plane that can do decent CAS work, the A10. I've had CAS from fast movers and it's damn disappointing. And that was in the perfect visability at the Stumps. Try that in Europe where the weather sucks most of the time. I rely on arty for most of the work I do. It's getting really annoying to not have any support because they have to displace constantly because they are outranged 10 klicks by some third world countries arty. Also why did the Corps get rid of it's selfpropelled arty. That's the only survivable stuff we had. I wonder whose side the procurement nerds are on. Semper Fi...Ken M
 
EchoFiveMike, in some book about 'Nam that I read awhile back, the author interviewed various grunt Es and Os on how things went. one fellow described how the various services performed in CAS missions. the gist of it was that the USAF guys were the most accurate, the Navy was not too good, and the Marines were rather poor. but the Marine flyers would come around for a second pass at treetop level and pickle their bombs from hand-grenade distance, returning to base or carrier with shrapnel damage sometimes but the bad guys were taken out.

it would be very cool if the Army and Marines started work on a CAS rotorcraft (either conventional or tiltrotor). I wonder how the accuracy vs required ordnance tonnage trades off for CAS? if a CAS mission required maybe 2 tons of rockets, that's quite do-able with helicopters. as far as I can determine, we no longer have the 5" Zuni rockets in service, just the Hydra 2.75 inchers. a 5" rocket that is stabilized but unguided might give just enough accuracy at low cost.
 
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