Cool. Yanks like Canada! Guess what we are getting?

Well, maybe I'm a hopeless romantic... ha ha ha... I think from the days of the first AIM 7 and AIM 9 - sidewinder and sparrows marked the end.

The last real air to air combat was in Viet Nam. As soon as fighter planes had only missiles it was basically over.

It's all now target designators, blimps on screens, click - flick click... HOT HOT HOT.. etc.

Get permission from command etc etc.... and yes beyond visual range.

Almost like submarine warfare without the water (and the smells) and no one gets to look through the periscope !

War will be beyond Hell.... it will be completely sanitized and remote.

 

Just the opposite: Vietnam brought the rennaisance of dogfighting. With some epic, WW1 style dogfighting like 'Duke' Cunningham's rolling scissors contest with a Mig17. 1980's were full of air to air engagements with fighters maneuvering hard for a kill. Falklands, Arab - Israeli conflicts, Gulf of Sidra incidents. Iran-Iraq war probably. AFAIR in gulf war visual identification was required before engaging enemy aircraft by coallition forces.

 

Renaissance ???? OH PLEASE !!!!

How many missiles did Cunningham fire off and how many hits?

Remember he got shot down too!

EVERYTHING Cunningham did was OLD SCHOOL.

Falklands/Malvinas : high speed high alt interceptors fighting low alt jump jets. all wrong.

Exocet missiles at what range?

American satellite info and GPS maps in real time... Where was the renaissance in that?

Arab/israeli ??? you think any of those towel heads were any good?

there were never any targets more than a half an hour away.


Much better lessons were the USAF F-4 = Robin Olds. used guns. read his actions in Europe, Korea and 'Nam.


Sorry I disagree, Korea was the last shooter war and there were few moments in Nam.

Even the Top Gun movie was so full of it..... they tried but only impressed the people who know nothing.

 

Well yeah, because that's what old school means, right? Are you saying that before Vietnam, people had not predicted that the age of dogfights was over?? Are you saying that when air combat got into full swing over Vietnam, people weren't pretty startled to find out that in fact the age of dogfighting was FAR from over?

 

Loose, than how 'romantic' was WW2 air combat? Tearing through a formation of unsuspecting enemy, guns blazing, then breaking contact before enemy could counteract? This is how most of it looked like.
You want it or not, Vietnam war proved that air combat hardly ever is settled by first BVR salvo of missiles. And seconds after that planes close into a distance where ACM and guns come into use. This is why they started to install boresighted cannons on F4's right after first clashes with North Vietnamese interceptors.
Note that all post-Vietnam fighter planes were designed with a special focus on maneuverability.

 

After Vietnam the definition of Maneuverability was changed. Oh, not in any Webster's dictionary.... I mean in The Book.

Vertical Maneuverability is the fight winner these days, I mean, when all the BVR wad is blown and all that is left is guns.


Know what is gonna change the whole thing?
miniaturization, AI and [unknown].

Bullets that cost three cents each and are mass produced in third world countries by the trillions. Each of them with a 1/3 of a cent nanotech chip that is computing in terraflops, tracking targets that are anywhere from the size of a microbe to a planet.

 

It's getting worse than that..... energy weapons are upon us.


US has had lasers that can cut the wings off planes in flight decades ago.

EMP weapons will fry electronics and pilots' brains, disperse crowds, make you roll on the floor and puke or just blind you for a few hours, days or permanently.


The USA spends more money on military weapons THAN ALL OTHER COUNTRIES COMBINED.

Amazing that all the money and energy spent on developing the cheapest and most devious ways to kill or subdue an enemy.

You most likely don't remember the "gyro jet".

A little company in California maybe 40 years ago built this handgun:

a .45 cal pistol that shot mini missiles around .45cal size. It was demonstrated to the US Army.

If fired nearly silent with no recoil rounds as fast as one could pull the trigger and PIERCE amour of the best American tank at the time.

Kill a tank with a silent hand gun.

Within a matter of weeks of the news, "gyro jet" like weapons were BANNED, the US Army REFUSED to purchase , REFUSED to fund the further development and the company "disappeared".... so they say.



Military Industrial Complex gone mad and out of control.

This is NOT going to end well......

 

Problem with all this fancy military technology is that it's way too expensive and too unreliable to be used as a war winning factor on a real battlefield. Also, fancy military technology requires fancy logistics and field maintenance, support and whatever. And from what we see, they already have problems operating "conventional" weapons in modern wars.
AK's and 3 cents per piece bullets are going to rule the battlefields for some time to come.
And conventional war between two high tech nations is unlikely to happen or it's going to be a very short war...

 

Well... yes and no. Unfortunately these days it depends on who starts the war.

Ever since Viet Nam (some say Korea) that the real motivation behind some "wars" was not a military victory. So depending on the motivation for the war is going to be the outcome.

Now we see that wars can be and are started for goals other than a clear cut victory. There are those political forces such a banks, corporations, religious and social organizations that what wars not to end but only to control a population.

So they deploy the technology needed in order to obtain the result they wish.


One classic example was the CIA involvement in Angola. There was one point where the CIA agents KNEW that the "enemy" was in a certain area and preparing for a decisive battle. An agent with that information called -in a strike with a certain equipment that would have completely destroyed this enemy and would have brought the conflict to an immediate end with a clear victory for the side supported by the CIA. This agent was refused that support and was told it was NOT the CIA's goal to have the side they were supporting to win the war !!!!!!

Orders from home were that the war was to continue for as long as possible.

It happens and has happened all the time in our modern history...

Read "Spy in the Vatican" by Branko Bokun as little example.

Trading With The Enemy, by Charles Higham is another good one.

World War 2 ended "suddenly" when Americans started bombing the oil fields.

Did you know that American plans were from after the success of the Sicily campaign to go to Trieste and then to Berlin?

Both Churchill and Stalin objected even when American military showed it would have ended the war 6 months earlier.

Kissinger was convinced by certain interests that were backing Nixon's election to slow down the Peace Talks in Paris until after the elections so that would detract from any Democrat running. Viet Nam war was extended from 6 to 9 months courtesy of Kissinger's actions. They made it look like Nixon was the great peace maker.... ha ha ha.


Even now with Libya.. they are just playing there. Having all sorts of exercises and experimenting with their toys at the tax payers' expense and the lives of those poor bastards.

The "war" could have been over in two weeks IF "they" wanted it to end.

Now the same Sons of Bitches are making millions; oil companies, arms dealers and all the suppliers...