Your thoughts on the future of air warfare

[Exorcet]

Plus if you take a head-to-head engagement between 30 F-22 and 150 sukhois, a number ratio of 5, the F-22s need a 62% missile success rate to shoot all sukhois down, but then would have no missiles left for bombers or whatever the sukhois were escorting, thus the risk of losing F-22s on the ground.

Technically, on paper, the F-22's could ignore the Su's and get what they were escorting.

 

You also mentioned fuel/maintenance earlier, saying it would make things more extreme. I'm not sure. Certainly the side with more numbers is going to spend a lot more on fuel. Not only for their fighters but for their logistics since they can't ship in bulk to all their little spreadout bases.

 

In general, I get the feeling that we are in an analogous situation as just before vietnam, when military thinkers though the age of dogfights over and did not see the use for a cannon in a fighter. See how that turned out. Why should it bee so different now?

They really weren't so wrong then, it was the implementation that got screwed up. People also sometimes overlook when a technological shift was done right, jets replaced props, carriers replaced battleships, guided weapons replaced carpet bombing, etc.

[GGTharos]

That has been done, and the F-22's beat the pants out of the more numerous opposition anyway. As in took no losses.

 

Not all engagements/exercises are ones you'll hear about.

 

And that pilot with 'one hour' of flight time probably has a couple years of training already.

 

Give an f35 to a pilot with an hour of flight time a month against a (name your "inferior" plane of choice") with a pilot that flies 30 hours per month and now we start to see balance. An f35 with an inexperienced pilot against 10 cheaper planes with well trained pilots... I dare say the tides have turned.

[GGTharos]

It turned out quite well once they started training BFM again. The addition of the gun was icing on the cake, allowing them to take shots they couldn't previously take with missiles ... today, the missile envelope intrudes more and more into the gun envelope.

 

In general, I get the feeling that we are in an analogous situation as just before vietnam, when military thinkers though the age of dogfights over and did not see the use for a cannon in a fighter. See how that turned out. Why should it bee so different now?