Anyone remember when Iraqui TV claimed a farmer with a hunting rifle had shoot down an Apache in the 2003 war?
The F5 is a bigger success
- Thread starter Pangur
- Start date
Anyone remember when Iraqui TV claimed a farmer with a hunting rifle had shoot down an Apache in the 2003 war?
Well, no. F-15 is fighter which was later adapted as attack plane and is still mostly used as fighter. F-4 is multirole and as such was mostly used as attack plane if operators had dedicated fighters (Mirage III in Israel, F-14 is Iran). Same today if country has both F-15 and F-16 F-15 will be used as fighter and F-16 as attack plane (OK, that may be due to turn-around time)
Not quite. The F4 was designed as a naval interceptor that the USAF bought as amultirole aircraft and that was so good it went on to do almost anything...
And in VietNam navy F4s escorted attack aircraft.
The F4 was developed by the USN as an interceptor, the awesome design, (awesome) allowed bombs to be fitted early on.
As a matter of interest the ONLY combat use of the Lightning was in the ground attack role, by the RSAF.
And that was a shame. Someone should write a TL were Saudi Arabia loans a Lightning Squadron with Mercenary pilots from RAF Germany to the Egiptian Airforce during the atriction war (ASB as hell, I know but worth it
Except the USAF, whose dedicated fighter of the time, the F104C, proved quite useless...
We used it as an attack plane, between the Canberra and the F111, leaving the Mirage to do shit like ramming a Singaporean A4 midair in DACM and pulling 13g and having to write that plane off. Being the wierdo I am I wonder what the RAAF medic said about the heamorriods caused by 13g. Like "a bunch of grapes hanging out your arse" being the conventional wisdom.
Didn't you guys felt you had been duped when you handed back the F4s and got the F111s you had ordered? The F4E and some KC135s should have been a much better deal...
NothingNow
Banned
Actually it's because most F-15s in service happen to be Single seaters, instead of Strike Eagles, and the only nations that operate the Strike Eagle and F-16 series together happen to be the US, Israel, Singapore and South Korea, all of which mostly operate them side by side, and/or prefer to use their Strike Eagles for penetration bombing with F-16s serving in an Air Superiority role (which better leverages the capabilities of the F-15E.)
Japan only operates the F-15J which isn't capable of Air to ground operations, and thus has to use their F-2s as attack aircraft, while the USAF and IAF use their C/Ds for Air Superiority and share CAP duties with their other aircraft while anything with multi-role capability is used as such.
Most of the time with the F-4, they'd use it for Attack missions because it was the only thing in their inventory capable of performing such a mission. Mostly because it was fucking huge and light enough to have a useful payload when fully fueled, and had an RIO/WSO in the back, which is a massive asset on both bombing missions and longer-duration CAP flights, (hence the development of the Tornado ADV.)
Meanwhile, with the F-20, it'd probably be a 1:1 replacement for pretty much everybody who was operating F-5s, or looking for a new, cheap more or less dedicated Interceptor, to replace their Lightnings and all of that, while thanks to the F-5's number of variants, the F-20 could've easily been adapted to do pretty much anything you wanted to do with it, faster and cheaper then the F-16, with the capability to support the Skyflash and Sparrow right off the bat.
It could easily work in a role complimentary to any other contemporary multirole fighter (and the Air National Guard wanted to use it like that,) save maybe the Gripen.
They also used it on a few occasions for photo reconnaissance. Said situation wasn't exactly combat, but fairly close to getting there.
Are you on drugs!?
Our F111s were the best strike aircraft in the southern hemisphere and the anchor to South East Asian military politics for 37 years. They were the biggest bargain any country has ever purchased in the 20th century, the F4E is a toy compared to the F111.
One role not often talked about is how our F111s used to designate targets and do live recon for the SASR. The only thing more frightening than an RAAF F111 dropping bombs was an RAAF F111 not dropping bombs, you'd put your anti-garotting collar on if you heard the sound of TF30s in the distance.
I'd say it's because they are expensive to buy and operate so instead of buying F-15E they opt for F-16- Don't have exact numbers at hand but I think it's something like 3 squadrons of F-16 for 2 of F-15 and similar ratio of missions in same time over Lebanon Israel. In 06 Israelis used mostly F-16s for attack missions while F-15s provided air cover, which is pretty standard for them. F-15I were involded as well, though.
That's what I said. Israelis had air superiority, multirole and CAs planes so missions were obvious.
Not that I'm aware of. Exactly on whom would your F111 be dropping bombs on?
What scenario would you be engaged in offensive ops without a USN carrier group doing the job for you?
If you were, say, planning to invade Indonesia, couldn't you start by being polite and liberating East Timor, setting up a forward base there, and run a interdiction campaign from there. A few F111 with conventional bomb aren't going deter anybody the USA would let play in the first place...
In the postwar era the USA wasn't very keen to support Australia against Indonesia; they didn't back us in 1961 over West Papua, nor stop Indonesia invading East Timor in 1975, nor did they send troops in 1999 to 'liberate' East Timor. The US is often busy or at odds with national aims, this is why it's allies maintain powerful and effective militaries for themselves.
Our F111s gave us potential escalation dominance and therefore detterence, the hypothetical scenario being deep precision strikes and close cooperation with the SASR well behind the 'lines'.
Our F111s gave us potential escalation dominance and therefore detterence, the hypothetical scenario being deep precision strikes and close cooperation with the SASR well behind the 'lines'.