Modern Jet Fighters are WWII Battle Ships.
- Thread starter Al
- Start date
Yep, all deaths by SAM operators were due to negligence by higher echelons.
This was true extension of diplomacy campaign, so not really good gauge of capabilities as campaign was designed to bring a party to negotiations, not invade a country. So, there was limited engagement.
Wasn't it kind of like the old video game Missile Command how that F-117 was shot down?
Not so much that they locked onto it well with radar, but got an idea of where it was using radar (with the bay open), then aimed for a specific point and hoped that the blast fragments would hit the target.
Yeah, basics of training in air defense! You don’t keep radar on. How well you execute that depends on the crew training and experience. The whole point of such big missile is proximity fuse and fragments.Wasn't it kind of like the old video game Missile Command how that F-117 was shot down?
Not so much that they locked onto it well with radar, but got an idea of where it was using radar (with the bay open), then aimed for a specific point and hoped that the blast fragments would hit the target.
Yeah. My understanding is that they didn't really aim for the target and hope that the missile would continuously track the F-117 like how most SAMs track an aircraft. More or less they aimed for a specific spot (or altitude?) where they hoped it would be when the warhead was timed to explode. And as you noted they fired two.
I'm thinking kind of like a reverse depth charge in the air.
It is interception. I don’t have experience with SA-3, but SA-6 has a duplicate screen where you transfer data from radar and basically blindly fallow hypothetical aircraft. That is so you don’t radiate. Only in final phases you turn on radar to correct guidance. That, as far as I remember in talks with Serbian officers at war college was 3 seconds in case of F117.
Yeah - my understanding is that they mission planners learned not to be so lazy and to not fly that low all the time. It's not as if the results were all that repeatable. I understand the Serbs were basically timing it for a path that these planes repeated using and just needed a short radar contact (when the bomb bay doors opened) to properly time the launch. I've heard that the missile wasn't radar locked on the plane. As you stated, they were just timing it for interception - basically just navigating the missiles to a location where they hoped it would close enough when the warheads went kaboom.
It’s not the mission planners who were at fault.
In a senior officer course* for AOC/JFACC at the 505th Command and Control Wing, I sat next to the retired 3 star who was JFACC at the time. I’ll decline to mention his name, because he was our senior mentor, and very proud of how he organized airspace during that conflict. We had a module on airspace and traffic deconfliction. He thought his plan was brilliant.
I had to actually fly that plan, and it was terrible. Utterly predictable. Just ask Scott O’Grady (a bozo who failed at the basics of flying in combat, but that’s another story). We had “gates” over the Adriatic. And ”Drops” inside the border. The AWACS would clear a combat mission to fly “gate x, drop y, and proceed on mission”. Well, didn’t take long for the adversary to map out those points through air surveillance radar and know exactly where the fighters would fly.
I actually brought up Scott O’Grady, with the general, and my point was simple, the predictability made him vulnerable. Now the tomcat didn’t have GPS at the time, so we were not as precise and navigating as all the Air Force airplanes, and that made us slightly less vulnerable, because we weren’t flying as precise a ground track. I’ve never been so glad for out of date technology.
The general’s reply was interesting, he valued de confliction, and reducing the risk of a mid air collision, particularly between heavies, and commercial air traffic, over the tactical disadvantage of flying the same route every day. He struck me as a heavy driver, not a fighter pilot.
He actually blamed the shoot down on Scott O’Grady‘s cockpit combat check failures, and to some degree I do as well, but the general’s plan certainly gave the Serbs the home field advantage.
There is an old combat rule to live by; never roll in on the same target from the same direction, twice.
So, it is hard to support a plan that had us flying over the same target thousands of times.
When the F117 got bagged, they were still using the same basic plan. We could not have made it any easier to find the airplane. We all but handed them the flight plan, and the coordinates at which to aim their missile…
*My second time at the 505th, I am a fully qualified AOC offensive systems operator in the eyes of the USAF. I’ve spent quite a lot of time doing air command and control at the operational level. I was there going though a refresher that was required for my billet - CO of an Air Command and Control unit in the USN.
Sure. But the way some pro-Serb comments tell it, the F-117 was relatively easy to get a radar lock on (even with the bay doors closed), which I don't buy. I thought that more accurately they were just aiming a missile to blow up at a point in in time and space that the missile operators hoped the plane would be.
The airplane was also flying immediately below an overcast, another combat rule broken.
Never fly directly under an overcast, it makes you easy to see from the ground.
That is the point. You need trained crew for that.
Nah, it was not easy to get it. But, the thing is that actually they are arguing contrary to their interests. The whole ordeal would not happen if crew were not good at it. And not only that, they had fairly good HUMINT from areas where airplanes were taking off.
Serbian military at that point was grossly neglected. They took away (stole) pretty much all weaponry from YPA when dissolution of YU happened. The regime of Milosevic was interested in self enrichment and military was neglected by pro regime leaders. They actually exported a lot of weapons to Africa in those times to make money. So, take into consideration that state of equipment in 1999 was really bad. Their MIG29 did not have operational radars, and they were ordered to fly just to satisfy population need to see that something is happening.
Basically, their military was sacrificed by Milosevic for his genocidal personal goals.
I've known a few Serbs and Croats, and they might have some interesting things to say about the conflicts of the 90s. But they don't seem to hold any grudges. It was a long time ago - especially for younger people. Even these combatants seemed to get along.
VPM Documentaries | Second Meeting | Season 2017 | PBS
War met the two men once. One was a pilot, the other shot his plane down.
www.pbs.org
Stories I can tell you about that.I've known a few Serbs and Croats, and they might have some interesting things to say about the conflicts of the 90s. But they don't seem to hold any grudges. It was a long time ago - especially for younger people. Even these combatants seemed to get along.
VPM Documentaries | Second Meeting | Season 2017 | PBS
War met the two men once. One was a pilot, the other shot his plane down.
From my incredibly small understanding, you can use long wave radar to *see* that there is a stealth aircraft, but it is useless for identifying or getting a lock on the aircraft.
That is some seriously wishful thinking, right there. Where are you getting your information?
China has built islands in the ocean to claim the South China Sea as a sovereign zone. They’ve been expansionist, they threaten Taiwan routinely, and bully their neighbors all the time.
They have two fully operational carriers, both ski jump design, and just launched a third this year with catapults. It is undergoing sea trials right now. Their future carriers are already under construction, so, three, not just one, and a full up CATOBAR carrier like ours is at sea. The Russian carrier is the one that caught on fire, by the way.
China’s newest aircraft carrier prepares to take to the seas
Beijing aims to challenge US air superiority in the Pacific but the Fujian still trails rival’s nuclear-powered warships
www.ft.com
Their stated goal is to expand their military and make it world class. Their Army is five times the size of ours, you can make a dollar argument (they spend less than we do) but the more compelling argument is that they get more for their dollar. They have more than doubled the size of their Navy in the past five years. They buy and build more airplanes per year than we do, and they have built weapons systems that have one purpose - kill US Carriers.
China knows that the reason the US has such broad influence is the ability to project US AirPower anywhere on the globe from its Carriers. The British know it, too, which is why they built two. China wants to be the major player on the world stage, and credible power projection is a pillar of that ambition.
So, while it may not all be about war, the ability to wage war is their crystal clear goal, and it must be taken seriously by the US, and the time to prepare is now, not after the first strike. It takes decades to develop a new airplane or ship, years to build it, and years to train the crew. It is about capability.
No, LCS is not a good example, that is a terrible platform, but the F-35, despite all of its programmatic shortcomings, is exactly the airplane the USN needs in a high-end conflict. The Super Hornet, while a great performer in some environments, is too slow, hampered by range, and too visible on radar to survive the early phases of a high end conflict.
That is some seriously wishful thinking, right there. Where are you getting your information?
China has built islands in the ocean to claim the South China Sea as a sovereign zone. They’ve been expansionist, they threaten Taiwan routinely, and bully their neighbors all the time.
They have two fully operational carriers, both ski jump design, and just launched a third this year with catapults. It is undergoing sea trials right now. Their future carriers are already under construction, so, three, not just one, and a full up CATOBAR carrier like ours is at sea. The Russian carrier is the one that caught on fire, by the way.
China’s newest aircraft carrier prepares to take to the seas
Beijing aims to challenge US air superiority in the Pacific but the Fujian still trails rival’s nuclear-powered warships
Their stated goal is to expand their military and make it world class. Their Army is five times the size of ours, you can make a dollar argument (they spend less than we do) but the more compelling argument is that they get more for their dollar. They have more than doubled the size of their Navy in the past five years. They buy and build more airplanes per year than we do, and they have built weapons systems that have one purpose - kill US Carriers.
China knows that the reason the US has such broad influence is the ability to project US AirPower anywhere on the globe from its Carriers. The British know it, too, which is why they built two. China wants to be the major player on the world stage, and credible power projection is a pillar of that ambition.
So, while it may not all be about war, the ability to wage war is their crystal clear goal, and it must be taken seriously by the US, and the time to prepare is now, not after the first strike. It takes decades to develop a new airplane or ship, years to build it, and years to train the crew. It is about capability.
No, LCS is not a good example, that is a terrible platform, but the F-35, despite all of its programmatic shortcomings, is exactly the airplane the USN needs in a high-end conflict. The Super Hornet, while a great performer in some environments, is too slow, hampered by range, and too visible on radar to survive the early phases of a high end conflic
Astro, you wear some seriously thick rose colored glasses.
Ever wonder why they are so afraid of us?
imagine the idea that a sovereign country that isn't the USA should be able to defend itself and not be beholden to the US?
anyway you look at it, this thread is starting to stray into the political arena so I'm done with it.
You said that they have one old carrier, and that it caught on fire.
I’m not putting words in your mouth, bud, that is exactly what you said.
The reality, they have three carriers, at sea, and they have several more in various phases of construction. Real carriers. Better than the UK because they have a catapult design. Nearly equal to our own.
Rose colored glasses allow you to pretend that things are better than they are.
So, it is quite clear I am not the one with rose colored glasses. I am not wishing away potential problems by grossly under-stating another nation’s capabilities. Everything I have told you in this thread comes from unclassified sources. Not rhetoric. Not politics. Facts on what the Chinese have said, publicly, what they have done, what they plan to do.
I am a realist. I am aware of the military build up and capabilities of other nations. Not just the Chinese. Comes from decades of having a vested interest in the military landscape and being involved in analysis to define future US capability needs.
I am not faulting the Chinese for their ambitions, but I am accurate on what they are doing to achieve those ambitions and I am not pretending that the ambitions, and the build up, are not happening just to feel better about the current state of world affairs.
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I work for the Navy, am the expert in my little niche, am very knowledgeable in the area around my niche, and pretty knowledgeable and well-briefed on a wide range of subjects. I brief 3 and 4 stars, get the ONI briefings, etc. Concur 100% with Astro about these threads. Un- and mis- informed discussion by people who have very little information. Fun but comical.
jeff
jeff
My fifth grade class field trip was to NAS Alameda where we toured a hangar. The only restriction on photos was none of the radar if the radome was up. We got to see a KA-6 refueling mod of the A-6, and for whatever reason, our guide (a Journalist 2nd Class) called it a “whale”. I thought it looked like a big metal tadpole with wings.
The one thing we didn’t experience on that trip was base food. Our teacher had been there multiple times and said the food was actually pretty good and cheap. And apparently the base personnel loved serving students on field trips. But for whatever reason they weren’t open that day and we had to go back to school without lunch. Luckily that was hot dog day at school and there were plenty left, and every student had money that was supposed to be spent on the field trip.
