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From: cdr@amd.com (Carl Rigney)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Expensive fighters
Message-ID: <1991May29.011112.6898@amd.com>
Date: 24 May 91 02:48:37 GMT
Sender: military@amd.com
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Lines: 38
Approved: military@amd.com


From: cdr@amd.com (Carl Rigney)


stevenp@decwrl.dec.com writes:
> The FLIR sensors on F-15E's ALLOWED visual contact under conditions
> that would not have been possible with a cheap, good-weather only
> attack aircraft.

Sure, I'm not at all surprised.  Did the KTO Rules of Engagement permit
firing on a FLIR contact, and if so why were planes coming back on
cloudy days with their bombs still on?

A case could be made that in the cloudy European Theater where NATO is
in a life-or-death struggle against the Warsaw Pact that RoE would be
relaxed and the collateral damage vs. German civilians accepted, but
that doesn't seem like a very credible opponent anymore.

I'm just suggesting that equipment should be chosen to fit the doctrine
that it'll be used to fight under (with flexibility for when doctrine
shifts).  I know the Pentagon loves their state-of-the-art fighters
that push technology and budgets to the wall, but it still seems true
to me that pilot training makes the biggest single difference in
performance, training requires air time, and the more expensive the
plane the less time it'll spend in the air training.  

It's a related problem to buying lots of aircraft and too few spares
because no one wants to command spares.  I wonder if the argument that
if planes were cheaper, there could be more of them and thus more
command slots open, would fly?

OK, I'm crossing my own boundary on politics, so I'll let myself be rebutted
and then we'll move it to e-mail.  Anyone for a soc.politics.defense?
Or if its unmoderated, it'd have to be talk...

--
Carl Rigney
cdr@amd.com