1. Unless the Sovs really, truly, improve their BVR capacity in the electro optical realm, it’s unlikely that they will be able to track F-35 FQ and JORN and Wedgetail should basically guarantee that. Problem: The F-35 export model is PLO not VLO. Better than the Hornet but probably still vulnerable to BARS or better PESAs.

2. If you want to do the Super Bug, you have to keep in mind that the U.S. armed forces long ago gave up on the traditional dogfight _knowing_ that they cannot beat the HOBS+Helmet capabilities now dominant. This might change with DIRCM but then you have an active laser threat against the pilot’s eyeballs as much as any 5″ seeker zigzagging across the sky in proportional LP. If the Bug Deux is not required to play above 20,000ft and Mach .9 it has a marginally sufficient energy reserve. What allows that option (when most combat is at 30K+ to energize the BVR poles _and always has been_) is the AIM-120D. Get it and you’re competitive with the basic RVV-AE which used to be the RusAF standard model but is now the export version. It won’t beat the Ks-172 or similar weapons but then again, what will. The answer of course is netcentric air and the Meteor ram-AAM. Wedgetail or an F-22 says “Okay, we’ve got the midcourse, turn away…” and because you are out of cone or too tiny a blip to be seen on either opticals or radar, you are free to do a split ess and exit the area.

3. The F/A-18E/F with a load of say six AIM-120D is the master of the Su-30 with R-27ER or R-77 basic. The F-35 with 2X AIM-120D is not. Even with datalink sorting, you will run out of shots before the enemy runs out of planes, particularly as the way you defeat the sneaky indian is to see his ARROWS coming in with MAKS or similar inbound missile detection.

4. Nothing wins the 800nm fight except drones. You can’t stay long enough to find worthwhile targets and you can’t generate enough daily raids to hit targets as they come up. This will become particularly critical as the transition to lightweight GBU-38/39 means more shots off of fewer aircraft, just like AMRAAM. Here, the JSF and F/A-18E/F both lose because they ultimately are costing the pilots 12-15 hour sortie lengths which will destroy the ops tempo. Guarding North Shelf petrogas fields will be even worse because their will be ZERO point targets that are not rigs + tankers on your side of the HVA debit loss.

5. In ten years, we should /finally/ be seeing the advent of hunting weapons (weapons able to motor up alongside, take a picture, compare to a signature database and decide in their own good time), along with the first HEL weapons. As such, the next best fighter is apt to weight 800,000lbs with a 1.2MW COIL on the nose. And the best strike aircraft something that you can afford to lose randomly in large numbers to ground/sea based THEL equivalents and turbo-SAM. People who fixate on the sky knights in gold plated lambourghinis comparisons forget that what destroyed the feudal system was the crossbow and the matchlock rifle. Cheap and Dirty and wielded by peasants in far greater numbers than any ‘aristocratic’ class of silver spoon fools could stand up to. The same is true of fighter pilots. They are only animals deserving of the cheapest kill possible. And we have had for the last 40 years the target and recce drone technology to wipe them from the sky with ease.

KPl.

“Thick Aussies outwitted by American Accent… again Anonymous
10/29/07 (Mon) 08:12 http://orz.4chan.org/n/res/432433.html

American accents work wonders in the hallowed halls of Canberra, the Capital of Australia. Previously Aussies have been swindled by fast-talking American Defense Salesmen into buying helicopters that can’t fly, battle tanks they don’t need, rusted ships and believe it or not, torpedoes that don’t fit their submarines. (Sorry! No Refunds!) Aussies were even gullible to make an early advance payment on the ill-fated JSF strike fighter: Like trusting a car salesman with a blank check.

“Contrary to claims, it’s not a fifth generation fighter. It’s not stealthy. You can’t have a stealthy aeroplane when every bit of ordinance you carry has got to be carried externally. It’s not fast. It can’t carry a lot of weapons. It can’t run. It’s just vulnerable from the word go.”

That’s Air Vice-Marshal Peter Criss talking about the Super Hornet which the Aussie Government just pissed $6.6B up against the wall. Protip: It’s not really “Super”: The Manufacturers named it that to make it sound good, but Aussies are easily outfoxed by such cunning. According to experts interviewed on the show, the Russian-made Su-27 runs circles around it. The Su-27 has been purchased by China and by Australia’s supposedly third-world neighbor: Indonesia.

Oh Austrafailia! Will you ever learn?
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2007/s2073943.htm (Transcript)
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/specials.htm (Video)

So here’s to those gullible Aussies. They even helped the US invade Iraq, only to be billed by the US for the bombs they “loaned” them to drop on Iraqi positions. Aussies being the slow-witted retards they are, even paid the bill. As reward after the invasion, Paul Bremer canceled the Aussies Wheat Contracts with the Iraqi Government. http://www.mambogani.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t1181.html

Has /n/ ever seen a more pathetic country than Austrafalia? Should America find smarter friends?”

I’m surprised you didn’t pick up the Ghostbusters reference. Yer losing your touch, Sidewinder Bob, perhaps you should think about continuing your cultural acclimatisation to the society you live in?

Consider me keelhauled, Keymaster. Though, in my defence, that’s not a startlingly obvious or particularly amusing line from the fillum, and did sound awfully like the platitude of a market skeptic.

Whatever do you mean by “continuing cultural acclimatisation”? Are you suggesting that I’m *gasp* out of touch with hoi polloi?

You show me a flying Portuguese carrack with GPS guidance and a high-explosive warhead and I might buy your argument.

Show me one of those and I might have to go somewhere private and weigh anchor. Heave, there!

Again, you’re conflating the training of the rank and file with that of their strategoi.

The word you’re looking for is strategoyim, referring in the case of Iraq to all of those of us not at the moment in the Department of Defence or on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who aren’t at the moment let in on the secret of what on earth the point of the exercise is. Their opposition seem to have a great deal more understanding about their mission and the means of achieving it, and seem to be experiencing success: an object lesson, if ever there was one, about information sharing and education.
As for rank-and-file training, I understand the word US troops in Iraq most commonly use for the people they’re fighting is ‘hajji’: a made-up epithet to stand in for any meaningful description of the enemy. Up with military education!

War planners these days don’t know what it’s like to work in the private sector… they expect results.

I’m surprised you didn’t pick up the Ghostbusters reference. Yer losing your touch, Sidewinder Bob, perhaps you should think about continuing your cultural acclimatisation to the society you live in?

Interesting you mention the Malayan and Vietnamese to-dos. You’ll remember that the British did so well in the Emergency because they had so much colonial knowledge about who hated who (Chinese diaspora vs. ethnic Malays, vs commos, vs etc.), and left so much of the massacre-work to the locals. Classical education did the toffs wonders in that case.

Though presumably not the footsloggers of the the Royal Pomo Fusiliers and Special Arts Students Regiment. Again, you’re conflating the training of the rank and file with that of their strategoi.

You’ll remember the French and Americans did so poorly in their Indo-Chinese adventures because they weren’t willing to let each civil war be civil, the French imagining a peaceful Empire and the US imagining an anti-communist middle-class Massachussets on the Mekong.

PLEASE, I’m begging you, do NOT get started on Indochine.

Amen to the second part. On the first part, consider the forgotten major part of actually making an insurgency: educating and politicising your supporters. It’s the People’s War, stupid. Multilingual squaddies might be a hard ask, but would it be too much to expect junior commanders to have some idea of what’s in the Little Red Book?

Sure, why not? However, I gather the LRB’s rather short – does it really take an entire Arts degree to read one book these days? Anyhoo, as a work on strategy the LRB is obtusely derivative commie drivel. If it’s strategy with added MSG you’re after, you can’t go past Sun Tzu. You’d get more use out of Musashi’s Go Rin No Sho, and that’s full of fucking out-there mysticism.

No, when you think about it, not really. It’s exactly what Clinton was thinking when he dropped those Tomahawks on Sudan.

Nah, I bet he was thinking, “Mmm, DOH-nuts…”

Actually, I believe the Catholic Lad is the authority on Clinton’s strategic thinking. No doubt Bubba was REALLY ruminating on how best to allow the future 9/11 perpetrators to escape capture, in between derelictions of his official and matrimonial duties.

And, really, it’s not what you’re thinking about. You show me a flying Portuguese carrack with GPS guidance and a high-explosive warhead and I might buy your argument. In the meantime, I’ll stick with my (reasonable, I thought) assumption that warfare’s moved on a bit since the 15th century.

I’d have loved to try blasting through a West Bank slum in a tank after ‘militants’ (heh), and some of the recent Yankee ’strategists’ have had the distinct tincture of Inquisition about ‘em. The only difference is that these days, cabinet wars and adventurist invasions aren’t expected to be self-funding in slaves and spices.

Really? You mean you’re NOT one of those “blood4oil” types? Knock me down with a howitzer. Not that I’m seeing what this has to do with the argument.

War planners these days don’t know what it’s like to work in the private sector… they expect results.

Ouch. Please, tell me more about the superior results-driven management paradigm of our statist overlords.

Oh, and on cue, the editors of the very interesting Small Wars Journal have opened up a writing programme to uniformed readers, inspired by the US Army’s Centre for Lessons Learned (CALL).*

Sure – they’re no doubt expecting results. The naivete of the US Army bureaucracy is often terrifying, when not amusing.

But please, go ahead, keep strafing those straw targets marked ‘pomo’ and ‘cultstuds’ downrange with your anti-intellectual wunderwaffen.

Wunderwaffen? Wirklich? Wieso und warum, Wasko? Seit wann ist würzen mit Sarkasmus wunderbar?

The defining features of a strawman, Fresco, are that it is an immobile, passive and, in all senses, unresponsive target of one’s own construction. However, you’re anything BUT phlegmatic in your response to my “anti-intellectual” teasing, which proves I’m hitting home ["Aargh! You heff sahnk my bettlesheeep!!!"] and that you’re probably a humanities graduate who’s had to put up with the zanier fruits of our over-specialised academia. Here: have a Purple Heart.

I have a cracking biography (now out of print) of Wingate that you are welcome to borrow.

There are many instances of brilliant military leaders without any formal education whatsoever, even in modern war. Buonaventura Durruti was one. Some had just military schooling mid career, like Zhukov, who was a trapper and fur trader to begin with – I’d say that’s as good grounding as a course in semiotics. On the other hand, there were many PhDs. Giap had a doctorate in Economics. Current commander of US forces in Iraq has a doctorate too. But I do not think it will do him much good.

And as regards effective Anglo irregular force leaders, let’s remember too Ord Wingate, far less formally educated than T. E Lawrence (Oxon) and whose fluency in Arabic and Hebrew meant nothing in Burma, and yet he proved to be pretty much as effective military and publicitywise and even more crazy than Vaseline of Arabia.

OK, maybe referencing Wingate is going it a bit. How about General Bill Slim instead? A former primary school teacher and clerk with no tertiary education who rose through the ranks to utterly squash the Japanese Army. And I don’t remember Arthur Wellesley doing much fancy book-learnin’ beyond 18th century libel laws. I’m also struggling to recall whether Cetshwayo took out a double first at the other place.

And the blokes now steadily bleeding the Yanks in Mesopotamia I’m fairly certain didn’t spend much time at staff college either.

“They’re called ARes University Regiments.”

Now why does remind me of the Cambridge University Naval Training Squadron?