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From: bjohnson@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brett W Johnson)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: YF-22 Launches Missiles First
Message-ID: <1990Dec20.020347.29672@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 20 Dec 90 02:03:47 GMT
References: <1990Dec19.010923.26217@cbnews.att.com>
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Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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From: bjohnson@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brett W Johnson)
In article <1990Dec19.010923.26217@cbnews.att.com>  writes:
>
>   In the December issue of U.S. NEWS they have an article on the
>   YF-23 "Black Widow "  and the YF-22 "Lightning" the next generation
>   ATF "Advance tactical Fighter".  These 2 aircraft are in competition
>   for a 750 jet contract with the Air Force.
>
>   My question is, can these jets be used in combat? What
>   better way to find out how good these jets are than in actual
>   combat. Saudi Arabia  would be a real good testing ground on how they
>   would fair if a war broke out.
>     
>    Any comments?      

Yeah, it is a very bad idea.  These are *test* aircraft which are do not
neccessarily have all the bugs worked out yet.  Want to lose a 200 M
aircraft because the ECM gear doesn't work right?  Anyway even if they
were perfect there is such a thing as statistical uncertainty.  The 
poorer aircraft could last several weeks while the better was shot 
down on its first mission.  Now if we had 20 of each say...




--
-Brett                                   These opinions are my own and 
bjohnson@athena.mit.edu                  do not neccessarily reflect
bjohnson@micro.ll.mit.edu                those of my employer or MIT.