On Wed, 06 Aug 2003 10:40:10 GMT, "Thomas Schoene"
wrote:

wrote in message

A former -111 jock (yet another ex-jock who loves flying trikes) said
he used to fly low level at 510 kts to 1.1 mach at 100 ft AGL hand
flying or 200 feet on the auto terrain following system in the weather
and 400 feet AGL at night in the weather. He said the F-15E can't go
near as fast, near as far, or carry the Vark's payload. He said the
ride was smoother too, but admits the F-15E can easily out-turn
the F-111.

There's been much discussion of the F-11s low level performance in this
thread. Can anyone here even remember the last time a strike package went
in a terrain-following altitudes? I sure can't; medium to high altitude
seems to have become the standard.

Well it is now the standard for the number one Airforce in the world
fighting enemies with effectively no ability to reach above 1000
metres. Other airforces have had little to do although I believe
Russia still gets down and Dirty at times for attack and support
duties. In GW 1 the Brit, French and the US strikes generally went in
low for the first week but then went high after almost all oposition
had been turned to tin foil. The US also has massive jammer and Weasel
ability with Harms, etc.

Us aussies on the other hand will have no ability to conduct strike
escort with anything but other strike aircraft over the ranges
involved in SEA. So we have no choice but to fly low or to slowly roll
back defences over a period of months before going for juicy targets.
(hmmm that dam upriver from Jakarta would be an interesting target but
I doubt we would do it due to the more than slight civilian
casualties.)

The low level strike mission is now very survivable due to the ability
to toss GPS glide bombs 40-50 km's from over the horizon. It
effectively requires a standing patrol defence off the coast to stop
and that is a pain for Indonesia.


--
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing
special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed)