The Air Force wants to retire a bunch of aircraft. 21 A10’s, 33 F22 interceptors, 8 E3 Sentries, and some other stuff, total 150 aircraft to be “retired” otherwise known as “scrapped”. The A10’s will be missed. They are the only aircraft in the inventory that can fly low enough and slow enough for the pilots to see ground targets, like tanks, and then hit them. The supersonic jet fighters are not good for this. The Air Force is run by fighter pilots. They all worry about what it would be like flying an A10 and get bounced by Migs. Answer, you supply fighter escort to your bombers. This was the lesson of WWII. The fighter pilots seem have forgotten it.
The 33 F22 interceptors is a long and sad story. The F22 is a very hot air-to-air interceptor. Numerous writers, in Aviation Week and other places claim that one F22 can beat 4 or 5 of any other kind of fighter. The original F22 program planned to build 400-500 of them. They were expensive; the last and cheapest batch was still $80 million a plane. The defense secretary back a few years ago decided that was too expensive and canceled the program at 182 aircraft. Now they want to scrap nearly 20% of the not very big force. Back in the Viet Nam war my fighter wing lost 90 fighters in as many days. Keeps that loss rate going and in 6 months we won’t have any F22s left.
The E3 Sentries are
better known as Airborne Warning and Control AWACs
for short. An AWACs
will warn our aircraft away from enemy fighters and vector our fighters onto
the enemy. They are in high demand all
over the world. Especially for a war
against a first world enemy that has a real air force. They are not so necessary going up against a
third world power that lacks an air force. Which is the kind of enemy we have been engaging for many a year.
No comments:
Post a Comment