Raptors are bombing ISIS!! (Air Force, training, Russian, military)
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This. F-22 is an amazing plane, by far the best air superiority fighter on the planet... but for dropping JDAMs or SDBs from high altitude in uncontested airspace it is no more effective than an F-15E.
For that matter you could get a B-25 out of a museum and it would do as well. If the enemy does not have air defense or airplanes, anything that will fly over them and carry the desired ordnance is all you need.
Every war the United States has ever fought, from the War of Independence to the Civil War to World War II to today, has had rules of engagement. Wars are not conflicts between militaries - they are conflicts between states, in which one of the various tools used to prosecute the conflict is military force.
Were there no rules of engagement, a couple hundred nuclear weapons would end ISIS. But since the catastrophic repercussions of doing so are obvious to the civilian leadership (and, frankly, ever last four-star out there), there is no way that would ever be allowed (even in some alternate reality in which some number of military commanders were delusional enough to advocate such). And what do you call the restriction on nuclear weapons? Rules of engagement.
The idea that there should be no such limits rests on the woeful inability to comprehend the interests of states and the nature of conflicts. It's simplistic, naive, and absurd.
So you took one extreme weapon and built your entire "rules of engagement" on top of it. People notice that but that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about dropping flyers warning ISIS tanker drivers before bombing the convoy. Do we HAVE to do that too?
What an overkill. Using billion dollar equipment to bomb ragtags running around in sandals. There's gotta be a cheaper way. Turkey is 50 miles from Raqqa. Good diplomacy would have Turkish army rolled in and flushed them out in a week. We don't have real diplomats anymore.
Wow. You must be a military expert to have that sort of insight !
I have news for you, those "ragtags in sandals" are pretty much the same guys who put those planes into the World Trade Centers, and who are still killing thousands of innocent people all over the world. I don't care how much we spend to send these idiots to their maker, it is too cheap IMO.
Do you want to win the war or follow the user's manual. We've been at this for two years. Billions in flight time and pilots at risk. They still got their capital and the second largest city in Iraq. The lights are on everywhere and gas stations are pumping gas. WTH. This is no way to fight a war.
I want Raptor pilots to be employed. I want the aircraft to be employed/deployed. I want the units that maintain those aircraft to be employed. No guts no glory, baby. Don't worry about our pilots being at risk. They're doing what they love.
Wow. You must be a military expert to have that sort of insight !
I have news for you, those "ragtags in sandals" are pretty much the same guys who put those planes into the World Trade Centers, and who are still killing thousands of innocent people all over the world. I don't care how much we spend to send these idiots to their maker, it is too cheap IMO.
Lotsa luck with that Turkey theory too.
Don
It is a waste of money. I don't think you were getting his point. The cost per flying hour of a Raptor is well over $50K which is almost 10 times as much as a more capable air to ground platform like our F-16 fleet or even cheaper and having an enormous loiter time of the Reaper. Using the Raptor means you pay 10 times the price and get way less capability (in this mission).
If it was day 1 of a war with a near-peer nation, you bet the Raptors would be out front, but flying them this way is simply wasteful.
You are correct in saying that they are not stupid. That's why we should be using the most effective platforms we have to ensure we can put the right weapon on the right target as quickly as possible. Without an active targeting pod and the ability to use Laser guided bombs you are stuck using GPS weapons with the Raptor.
It is a waste of money. I don't think you were getting his point. The cost per flying hour of a Raptor is well over $50K which is almost 10 times as much as a more capable air to ground platform like our F-16 fleet or even cheaper and having an enormous loiter time of the Reaper. Using the Raptor means you pay 10 times the price and get way less capability (in this mission).
If it was day 1 of a war with a near-peer nation, you bet the Raptors would be out front, but flying them this way is simply wasteful.
You are correct in saying that they are not stupid. That's why we should be using the most effective platforms we have to ensure we can put the right weapon on the right target as quickly as possible. Without an active targeting pod and the ability to use Laser guided bombs you are stuck using GPS weapons with the Raptor.
I don't mind them flying Raptors for a couple of hours.
Well to be honest it seems to me these drones cost more than Raptors
F-35 is already a trainwreck.
With this logic F-16s seem to be the best option.
Still very capable, cheap and effective
Drones like the Predator are a fraction of the cost of a Raptor and a fraction of the cost to operate.
The F-35 is only just entering service and is far from a train wreck, they will be far more autonomous than current fighters, and they're effectiveness hasn't been tested. So, no way to know yet if it was a successful strategy or not.
F-16's, and F-18's, really are the fighters of choice in the middle east, aren't they? I suspect at least one of the reasons for giving the F-22 some combat time is to assess it's cost to benefit ratio. In the near future the military is going to go through significant budget cuts and they're going to want to know where to cut.
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