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From: prentice%triton.unm.edu@ariel.unm.edu (John Prentice)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: How effective was the Stealth fighter?
Message-ID: <1991Apr9.025945.1283@amd.com>
Date: 6 Apr 91 08:42:00 GMT
Sender: military@amd.com
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
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From: prentice%triton.unm.edu@ariel.unm.edu (John Prentice)


Much is being made of the effectiveness of the Stealth fighters,
based as far as I can tell mostly on the fact that we didn't lose any
and that they accomplished their missions.  But the same thing was
true of every other type of aircraft in the war.  I would therefore
question whether this war has provided us with any really valid
measure of the effectiveness of this technology, given that Iraqi
air defenses proved so ineffectual against everything.  I would comment 
that there is no denying that while the Stealth fighters flew a small 
percentage of the sorties, they accounted for a disproportionate amount 
of the destruction.  However, I would suggest that these statistics
alone don't tell you anything.  It may simply be because they were the 
first in and they had the best weapons.  The point is that I don't see 
a clear argument, given the anemic Iraqi defenses, for suggesting that 
the Stealth fighters performed a mission that ordinary aircraft were 
incapable of.  That is not to say Stealth didn't work, just
that this wasn't much of a test and therefore can't be used as a
persuasive demonstration of the effectiveness of the technology.  Are
there other measures that can be applied to argue that the Stealth
aircraft were better than non-Stealth aircraft in this conflict?

I haven't been following the various Stealth discussions, so I apologize
if this is hashing old ground.  In that case, just ignore it.

-- 
John K. Prentice    john@unmfys.unm.edu (Internet)
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Computational Physics Group, Amparo Corporation, Albuquerque, NM, USA