Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnewsc!cbnews!cbnews!military From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: VIFF (was The Snakebite/Pougachev's Cobra) Message-ID: <1990Oct29.024356.5387@cbnews.att.com> Date: 29 Oct 90 02:43:56 GMT References: <1990Oct15.033716.12587@cbnews.att.com> <1990Oct19.033933.16625@cbnews.att.com> <1990Oct26.015212.24827@cbnews.att.com> Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 28 Approved: military@att.att.com From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) >From: Allan Bourdius >>The Harriers spent most of the war picking off relatively defenseless >bombers... > >Most of the "relatively defenseless bombers" were A-4 Skyhawks, if I'm >not mistaken. Kind of negates an A-4 resurgence into the front-line US >combat role. It does make the Harrier look good anyway. Harriers would show just as poorly with (a) no air-to-air armament, (b) pilots completely untrained in air combat, (c) a heavy load of ground-attack weaponry, and (d) incompetent tactics. The Argentine pilots were very brave, and their aircraft were reasonably capable, but they were fighting with one foot in a bucket. (I originally added (e) practically no fuel to spare, but that was actually somewhat true of the Harriers too. The RN held its carriers as far offshore as possible to interfere with land-based attacks on them, and this badly limited Harrier combat endurance. The combination of long transit times, short endurance on station, and lack of useful AEW meant that it was the luck of the draw as to whether there was a Harrier in the right place to attack an incoming raid. A lot of the Argentine attacks faced no airborne opposition.) -- The type syntax for C is essentially | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology unparsable. --Rob Pike | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry