On Mar 8, 11:06 am, Ed Rasimus wrote:
On Sun, 8 Mar 2009 11:22:17 -0700 (PDT), hcobb
wrote:

On Mar 8, 8:10 am, Ed Rasimus wrote:
UK is credible, but may not be financially able. Australia looks like
a customer. Taiwan? Probably not. S. Korea? Unlikely right now, but
could change rapidly. Israel? Definite candidate. Western European
NATO? Depends on trends in governments...both theirs and ours. India?
Who knows. Emerging S. American capitalist democracy? Too far
down-stream to predict.

All of these are notable for the lack of a need for a pure air to air
fighter and a lack of airfields near to the spots they're likely to
drop bombs so all of them would be better off with JSFs.

-HJC

Actually all of them are notable for the fact that their military
requirements are almost exclusively defensive and NOT offensive power
projection. Their most likely application is defending against attack
from the air.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last superlative Air Superiority
Fighter developed by the US on the scale of ambition of the F-22
was the F-15.
A good bean-counter could likely give you the cost of deploying
and operating the F-15 fleet from pening the requirement to now.
Let me toss out that cost at $50 billion, lot's of beans (?).

Next part is harder. What is the $ value having the F-15 fleet
provide? It's more than it's combat record, because having them
is a deterrence and provides a sense of *subjective* security.

The many aware (US) taxpayers that frequent this group,
might ask, what if the F-15 fleet never existed? Would it
have made a difference?

Because the answers are so subjective, your responses
(opinions) cannot be wrong, so go at it.
Ken