Britian going down the pan?

They wouldn't VTO only VL - can't go where a Harrier can go!

The Chinese have bought both a large quantity of Sukhoi 27's and, unusually for them, a license to build more. The Chinese must have wanted the capability to build their own 27s very badly to pay for the license and drawings as opposed to their usual practice of buying a small batch and then reverse engineering the design. Of course, reverse engineering takes time, and this approach will save them years.

Bill Shuey

i sure hope capatalism owns them before the military gets ideas for adventures.

How often do Harriers vto?I'd imagine the jsc could take off vertically if lightly loaded.And didn't they decide Viffing wasn't as useful as they'd hoped?

Do you honstly think they haven't done that already?..

Not to mention that if that war ever happens, sheer numbers alone will leave but one option...and it won't be fighter jets.

From what I understand the USMC wants a VTOL jet similar to the AV8 - VTO, RVTO, SL, RVL, VL the works. Of course, VTO with much of a combat load over pure A/A isn't workable - even for a Harrier.

Big population needs jobs - slave labor or not.

And it doesn't really matter what airplane carries a LOOONG range missile - I'd rather see us developing armament rather than airplanes. The days of dogfighting are over...if you're dogfighting, you've screwed up.

Mostly RVTO - Rolling Vertical Takeoff. Useful for heavier loads/shorter operating lengths.

Yes - viffing is overrated if you don't have a weapon to imploy off boresight.

You could always save money by just buying whatever they cook up. We pretty much do that already :+) Kim M

That's what the USN and USAF thought at the time of the Viet Nam conflict too.....

If they had caught up they wouldn't still be forced to buy Russian jets, now would they? And they're still a *long* way from fielding an effective Blue Water navy.

They're also a *very* long way from matching our strategic nuclear arsenal. I fervently hope that democracy breaks out there before they do catch up.....

Maybe, but they basically only had one weapon back then - AIM-7 or AIM-9, and radar sets that weren't as sophisticated as those of today. What do you think might have happened if they'd had...say...AIM-54 and the ROE that allowed them the ability to use it?

Not to mention that I've aquired a cube-mate whom was an F-4 RIO over Viet Nam - flew with the Black Widows; I forget the exact unit number; two tours, one Enlisted, one as an Officer in F-4C's and E's, stayed in until about '94 and retired as a LtCol...anyway, once a fighter jock always a fighter jock - so I've been getting earfulls of first hand living history on the airwar over Viet Nam which has me fermenting some reality into my opinions of late. From what he has to say the F-4 couldn't turn with the Migs, so the gun was pretty much useless unless you were head-on, and that wasn't the NVA attack doctrine...so AIM-7 remained the (his...) weapon of choice in an air engagement.

Unless - like in the Cunningham/Toon engagement you were able to sucker the Mig nito a vertical fight and keep him there - but you had to really know what you were doing. AND - hope that there wasn't a wingman on you while you were engaged - which was the NVA attack doctrine.

To dogfight or not is really a function of the weapons you have on hand and how badly you've screwed up your timeline during the intercept (if you're fortunate enough to have that advantage)...I'll suggest again one of the best referecnes I've found outside of actually joining up - "Fighter Combat Tactics and Manuevering", by R.L. Shaw; published by the Naval Institute Press. Reccomended to me by a former Top Gun instructor, and an excelent read on the subject.

Given the direction of tech in modern air-to-air weaponry, and the current world situation I'd be willing to bet the only thing that would precipitate dogfighting from now on would be politics.

Not as long as you might think...and from what I think I understand of them, I'm not really sure I (or they) think they need to...

...and from what I understand they're manufacturing Russian jets, which is a bit different. That not only builds jets, but creates jobs - which I'd expect they need based on population alone.

Then we would be back to MAD (and I'd venture that they wouldn't even have to match our arsenal to get there, from a diplomatic standpoint), and we saw how that turned out with the former Soviets. Of course, I think the Chinese are MUCH more patient...it'll be a VERY long Cold War indeed...

Problem was, the political lights that were leading us had promulgated rules of engagement that virtually made the AIM-7 useless.

As I understand it, the few times the AIM-54 was fired in a combat situation, it failed to hit. Seems it wasn't the wonder weapon it was written up to be when the shit actually hit the fan.

Bill Shuey

Yes - but it was fired at ranges much shorter than it was designed for; AIM-54 was intended as an over the horizon missile...ROE getting in the way again, as I previously pointed out, and as backed up by both my former RIO cubemate and yourself. You need both the weapon and the room to use it. Still gonna hold to my statement that the days of dogfighting are over...for many reasons.

The LtCol still says the AIM-7 would have been his weapon of choice over Viet Nam, had he been able to employ it as he had wished. Most of his missions were mud-movers, from what I gather...says lost half thier complement before his tour ended; to SAMs and Migs - SAMs mostly. Though he tells a story of one of thier best guys getting shot down when a Mig took a shot at lead's wingman with a heater - the wingman broke and manuvered, and apparently the missile switched track in flight and killed the lead jet whom didn't turn, thinking he wasn't targeted.

He's eagerly awaiting me finishing my Trumpeter SA-2...that gets him talking...

Didn't you just love the movie "Top Gun"? The entire premise was this school where the pilots were taught to dogfight and literally shoot down the enemy, yet when real combat occurred the technologically inferior enemy planes used autocannons while the heroic and oh-so-pretty Americans splashed them with missiles. I guess it would have been anticlimactic to show us using "old-fashioned" bullets and stuff . . .

KL

The real fly in the Chinese ointment is US anti-missile defense. At the stage their economy is in right now, they cannot afford to deploy ten times the eighteen or so long-range nuke birds they presently have, but eighteen might as well be zero if we deploy effective missile defense 'against rogue states.' Now, getting an effective system is not a sure thing, but it does make me wonder why the Chinese haven't put extreme pressure on Kim Jong Il to shut it down and remove the political cover the US had right now to develop anti-missile defense.

The US strategy appears to be Reagan all over again--force the totalitarian state to spend so much on defense that its political system collapses.

Mark Schynert

Bullseye, Mark - and the point of my comment about feeling they may not even consider that deploying an "effective" navy may even be required for anything other than coastal defense. I don't really see them holding any geo-political aspirations for more land mass outside of the dispute over Tawain, anyway...at least not for the present. You can also gather an inkling of what their strategy might/must be from just how opposed they are to someone having such defences. Sort of scarry when you stop and think...

That being said, I would be keeping an eye on what they are good at producing, and what that small scale tech might produce in large numbers by cross application. Missiles are cheaper, lower collateral politically (in that anything without a crew in it means you can tell the public that you're not risking the lives of it's sons in combat), and the more workable route from both technological and economic standpoints.

The whole of weapons tech seems to be moving toward remotely piloted delivery systems for force projecton anyway - moderate to large numbers of small, fast, manuverable systems will soon replace the bigger, older, slower types we're all familiar with, IMO...for both economic and political reasons as I've stated - smaller blasts/larger numbers is my gut feeling as to where things will be going.

As for the Reagan Cold War strategy all over again - I serously doubt that strategy would or could work today, and may even backfire in the light of the new "global marketplace" and the growth of e-commerce. IMO that strategy can only work if you are able to isolate an opposition economy to some extent. The growing trend toward linking all of the world markets is going to make that less and less possible without suffering collateral damage to one's own economy. In the light of my opinion, "war" in the "information age" may be determined more and more by whom controls the information and it's delivery, and a bit less by whom controls the air/land/sea by force of arms.

Rather well, I thought.

Well, the last one went over forty years.....