Some more of the older responses i have not yet posted:
You can take your time to respond to these WP; i am in no hurry at all.
Originally posted by WestPoint23
With net centric data links the radar picture of the AESAs, AWACs and AEGIS are all merged together giving greater range, fidelity and flexibility.
Despite lessons learned from the 1990-91 Gulf War, NATO forces participating in Yugoslavia as part of Operation 'Allied Force' have not fielded
a real-time targeting capability the ability to pass images of enemy installations and troop formations directly from spacecraft or airborne
surveillance aircraft into the cockpit of fighter aircraft or other weapons systems.
Although significant strides have been made in data dissemination, or accelerating the time between locating targets and weapons delivery
demonstrated by the lone launch of a Tomahawk Land-Attack Missile early in the campaign when it was learned a Serb MiG-29 was out in the open at a
Yugoslav airbase officials interviewed by Jane's Defence Weekly said US and allied forces remain unable to instantaneously provide "shooters"
with radar images and other intelligence gathered by the plethora of allied surveillance and reconnaissance assets and spy satellites.
Real-time targeting as well as real-time battle-damage assessment has been a top priority for Department of Defense and other military planners,
particularly to deal with mobile surface-to-air missile batteries and other assets that can be moved very quickly.
www.janes.com...
It's just very strange to me that the USSR/Russia have been doing these things for decades while the US did not have that capability in even 1999.
How 'integrated' they are now i do not know but it's coming about very late in the day.
Also, as you know the greater the stand off range the more effective AEGIS will be, the shorter the stand off range the lower the survivability
of the attacking platform.
The attacking platform also has active and passive defenses and air defense missile still travels at a fixed speed; the system under attack will now
be better defended but that does not have to translate into higher casualties for attackers. When your defense is almost entirely dependent on radar
homing and the enemy employs ARM's your always going to a big target with few options if the enemy can saturate your defenses with enough munitions.
Originally posted by kilcoo316
A battle group will neutralize most attackers before they are able to launch their missiles.
How will they do that against cruise missile armed aircraft that can launch from well outside the battlegroups anti air defenses and have the
performance margins to outfly the SH?
As for the Super Hornet vs. Mig-31 with greater technology and support on it's side the Rhino is nothing to laugh at.
War is not a laughing matter to start with and few are attempting to discount pilot skill ( beside Russian piloting skills for some reason),
technology , unless it's Russian, and all those other important factors.
Ok, however you should know that (according to Raptor pilots) from recent exercises the Rhino (Block II) has proven to be the most challenging
of all conventional US fighters who have gone up against the F-22 (yes, better than AESA F-15's and F-16's).
Which should tell us that that these exercises are very much rigged and tells us very little if anything about real world possibilities. That has been
obvious for many decades but i suppose more proof does not hurt.
And I might as well add that while exercises cannot account for the "fog of war" and all other like variables, in some cases they are more
difficult than the real thing.
If your attacking third world nations which are using many of the weapon systems you built or have had time to learn to counter then that can happen.
This does not show that US exercises are 'realisitic' but that they tend to fight nations who are simply 'outmatched'.
These are not third world OPFOR pilots using third world systems and flying against AC which they have no clue about.
Exactly and that's the type of assumptions that led to the far from good exchange ratios of WWII, Korea and Vietnam. If you ask me if i believe the
USAF could have had the capabilities you believe they do i can can 'yes' and 'easily so' but your not asking then and instead assuming that badly
maintained export models of Russian planes will always be flown by third world pilots ( and all the issues that goes along with that) against
generally hopeless odds without the assistance of the extensive ground control and air defense environment the Russians designed these planes to
operate in. The fact that these planes&pilots so frequently held their own against such superior numbers is in my opinion something that deserves far
more discussion. In a REAL war against the original designer US and NATO forces would have had to deal with 3-4 of these , at best, not very inferior
aircraft for each of their own and as some notable people have stated there never was much of a chance for that.
Originally posted by kilcoo316
We now have HARMs capable of dealing with radars that go offline, tactical VLO aircraft with great ISR capability (as well as SEAD/DEAD) and a
situation which will require the radar to remain on for more than seconds and minutes at a time. The results might just be different this time around.
And as i said before if such results were achieved by a few dozen batteries of weapons dating from the 60's and early 70's it is to be expected that
all these additional systems would need to be deployed to stand a reasonable chance against the defenses that Russia have been operating by the
thousands since the 80's... If NATO could fail under ANY circumstances against such air defenses as were operated by Serbia one can but wonder what
would have happened in the late 80's assuming a similar venture against the then primary enemy. Why are so few people comparing the acquisition and
operational costs involved in such a thing as the USAF but rarely mentioning the fractions of that cost worth of AA defenses third world nations have
so frequently employed with great success?
What would have happened had Serbia the budget of the USAF to spend on air defenses?
So far the USAF have won it's wars the old fashioned why ( by sending more than whoever could shoot down; which would not have been the case against
the USSR) and what irritates me most is the pretense that it is still spending hundred of billions to save the lives of a few hundred or thousand
pilots while tens of millions of Americans could have their lives tremendously improved. or saved, with such reduced taxation and investment.
Technology is great but soldiers should not be safeguarded beyond reason while the people they are supposed to protect die from preventable disease
and lack of proper investment in infrastructure.
Unless it is made clear to the American public who the American government intends to fight with all this high tech equipment the American public
should demand a reduced defense budget as it's then clearly just being wasted to save the lives of people who have CHOSEN to risk their lives,
supposedly in defense of their country, while the millions of American poor never had such choices to make.
Stellar
Why wont the MIg-25/31
be able to see what it is about to intercept given either ground direction or the use of it's own radar? 
