neeneko wrote: ↑Wed Mar 23, 2022 10:13 am
Gregg wrote: ↑Tue Mar 22, 2022 9:08 pm
The only advances that made sense after that were stealth and then unmanned aircraft. And for the most part, that's the way we've gone.
I also gather that a lot of the advances have been in things like sensors, weapons systems, countermeasures, and integration with other units (there is some fancy name for it that I am blanking on), things that can (and have been) retrofitted to existing aircraft.
Yeah, but those are weapons systems advancements, not real advancements in new aircraft. AN F-15 is the Apex Predator of air to air combat and its doubtful anyone is gonna build anything much better for that purpose. As I said, you can fly yourself to death in an F-15 with the safely software disabled. But yeah, better missiles etc.... Oh, another thing that makes the F-15 nigh invincible is the fact that it has local long range range traffic and fire control. With and AWACS plane overseeing a battle, the F-15 and other aircraft can engage enemy aircraft long before said enemy know there are any F-15s up there that just fired missiles at them and turned back towards Miller Time before the bad guys ever knew of them. The AWACS can control the planes and more importantly control the munitions once fired so that Iraqi one Iraqi Pilot who didn't flee to Iran before the war started was doomed when he was still pre-flighting the airplane because a satellite was watching him do it, watched him take off and handed him over to an AWACS who called an F-15, told him what direction to fire the missiles and BOOM, no more Iraqi Air Force.
The Russians are a little, but not much better. They have the latest version of the equipment but the corruption of the country has bled over to their military and they don't train nearly as much. Partly because they are afraid every time they fly the newest and best that the pilot might go left and land the plane on a NATO airfield as way of resignation. Not so much anymore, the new problem is the big wigs skimmed so much off the top of their military programs and budgets that they aren't capable of fighting.
You ever wonder why they have 15 year old rations? Because the money allocated to buy fresh food, some guy thought "we're not going to war and conscripts cannot be sent to combat, so the rations the conscripts have are fine and I can keep the money meant to refresh them"
Multiplied by how many chances for a guy to rationalize why the military doesn't really need THAT particular thing and how can I move that money to my Swiss Bank?
They're paying for that now.
x4
