Paul J. Adam wrote:
In message , Tiger
writes

William Black wrote:



In other words."Why pay 2008 Corvette money to do a job your old 1988
F150 could do?" I'm sure there plenty of stuff in the boneyard that
fits the bill. A-10's, A6's, A-4's, Phantoms, A-7's. Old stuff, but to
drop bombs in zones with no Mig threats they work. I think the A-1 may
be pushing the concept a bit, but I hear you.....


Fine until the Bad Guys hit it with a 1960s-vintage SA-7 or similar,
which is cheap and widely proliferated and very effective against such
aircraft (as evidenced by the withdrawal of the A-1 from Vietnam by the
end).

The cost vs. benifit seems out of wack. You want a $100 milion plane
designed for chasing Migs to drop bombs on Bad guy X. Rather than a $20
million A6 or A10 designed for that purpose 30 years ago? Both in theory
can get hit by the golden BB.Based on combat so far Choppers are a more
likely target for your SA-7. Lower flying, slow. Our losses in rotor
wing craft far excedes any fixed wing losses. Also even recently retired
planes are equiped with flares & chaff to counter missle threats.




By the time you've added the IRCM capability to survive MANPADS,
included the navigation and comms gear needed to hit *that* building to
support the troops, and bolted on the sensors that let you operate at
night as well as by day... your solution is no longer quick, cheap and
simple.


It's the old problem of the Blitzfighter: it's an appealing notion to
fill the skies with cheap, simple aircraft armed with a simple but
deadly gun and unburdened by complex electronic boondoggles, but the
reality falls over when many are blotted from the sky by SAMs, others
can't be reached on a swamped VHF voicenet, those that can get to where
they're needed get into long conversations about "I see the street, I
think, and some red smoke, you want me to hit the red smoke?... okay,
across the street and three houses north of the red smoke... I show two
red smokes now... was that you calling 'Check! Check! Check!'?"

All the pricey toys of Saddam's Air defence got few kills. The f-16 may
old enough to drink,but I could take a few down to Venezeula turn
Hugo's shinny new toys into toast in a day.


The F-16 and A-10 are good examples, both initially hailed by the
Lightweight Fighter Mafia as everything a combat aircraft should be
(though the ideal aircraft, according to the LWF, seems to have been the
A6M Zero...) and both being "ruined" by the addition of the useless,
wasteful electronics that let them do more than excel at range-shooting
on bright sunny days (and both subsequently demonstrating remarkable
effectiveness and longevity...)

A-10's are lightwieght?

As for the Zero. It's strengths play to a difference in design
philosophy. It was to be used offensively & swiftly like a Katana sword.
It's armor was it's speed & climb. We on the other hand take the suit
of armor approach to planes. Thus we build stuff like the Hellcat or
P47. The LWF program also helped close the quantity gap over our foes.
The f-14 & f-15 had quality, but a $30 million a pop not numbers.