OK, I am about done with this. Talk in circles all you want, I am honestly finding this rather tiresome. I do not care if your RADAR operates witth valves (vacuume tubes) and inter-war era tech, or microprocessors tied to a supercomputer. It still all has the exact same major issue. The horizon. You see, this is a pretty fixed point that primarily depends on altitude, and you simply can't see beyond that. And yes, I can talk about backscatter and over the horizon search, but that is at best a blurry-foggy reflection of a reflection. Kind of like wandering around a football field at night wearing dark sunglasses, trying to find a black cat that is moving around. You kind of know something is out there, you can tell it is moving around, but you really have no idea what it is. No matter how much "detection means" have improved, they still effectively do not allow us or anybody else to look through objects, or over the horizon. And it is information and knowledge of things like this that seperate out "armchair admirals" and "armchair generals", and those of us who actually undderstand how such things work. The united States had some of the best detection technology in the world in 1941. They were neck in neck with the British in the use of RADAR. Yet for all that technology, they still did not know that the Japanese were attacking Pearl Harbor until the bombs started falling. Iraq had one of the most sophisticated defensive networks in the Middle East, yet they barely knew an American strike force was approaching Baghdad. Afghanistan in 1979 also had a pretty sophisticated RADAR system. And the transport aircraft that dropped the first Soviet invaders were not stealthy in the least. Yet they entered Afghan air space undetected and unmolested, simply by shadowing commercial aircraft. Soviet special forces were taking out key defensive locations before they even knew they were under attack. China today is not the same country as it was in 1945, or in 1905, or in 1805. It is a country that sits primarily in the same area of land, with the same name. It is not the same nation at all. The same thing for Russia. Do not confuse the area of a nation with the nation itself. I am no "armchair general", simply an individual who is well versed in history and the way the military uses it's equipment, and the tactics and logistics involved in such operations. I consider myself not an "armchair general", but a "military analyst". And there is a massive difference between the two. One is a pure amateur, the other is a knowledgeable professional.I first put on the uniform during the first Reagan Administration, and I am still in uniform today. I have served in 2 branches of the military, in 4 primary military specialties. And served in both the S-3 (Operations) and S-4 (Logistics) sections of Battalion sized organizations (as well as the S-6 - Communications). I bring a lot of actual knowledge and understanding to the table, not just "der arrow going at the enemy goes here". Wow, just wow. Are you aware that the Al-Samoud was actually a very sophisticated missile? The idea behind it's construction was to make a TBM that fell within the UN mandate on range and payload. And since the Iraqis could not buy such a missile, they had to make it. Here is a comparison. The missile 4th from the left is a SCUD. The one on the far right is the Al-Samoud. It had a shorter range then a SCUD. But it was significantly smaller (smaller RADAR return), faster, and had more sophisticated electronics then the SCUD did. They even built in a "RADAR detection" system, in the hope that it would evade enemy tracking RADAR. This did not good though, since they backwards-engineered an old Soviet system which could not detect the wavelength used by the PATRIOT system. I do not know where your dismissal of "third world tech" came from, but you really need to understand that a lot of that tech is among the best in the world in many ways. Thankfully I do not dismiss such things, nor the Iranian missiles that are also "third world tech". It is such tech for example that has enabled Iran to keep flying the F-14 a decade after we retired them, and even mount on them what many now consider to be the most powerful and capable air defense missiles. Wow, really? And I suppose we should next look to the KKK for information on our future engagements. And where is the evidence to show otherwise? Drones are not the future, I am betting that in the next decade they will largely be an interesting bit of trivia and return to their previous role of surveilence and recon. And if China knows all about this "future warfare", then why are they investing trillions of dollars in programs to develop entirely new classes of tanks, aircraft (stealth and conventional), and aircraft carriers? All manned by people? No, pilots are not climbing out of the cockpits to be replaced by machines, no matter what the technology wonks want people to believe. Mag-rail weapons are not the future of surface warfare. And until somebody reinvents the Submarine Aircraft Carrier, they will be no stealth aircraft carriers.
Not necessary true, new isn't always better. The U.S. Navy's Carrier Air Wing no longer has a deep strike capability with the retirement of the A-6 Intruder. The same is true with the U.S. Air Force retirement of the F-111 Aardvark. In the Navy's case the A-6 replacement the A-12 Avenger ll was canceled by Sec. of Def. Dick Cheney with no replacement on the drawing board. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_A-12_Avenger_II < The U.S. Navy's aircraft carrier air wing during the Cold War (1956) with the USS Forrestal air wing of 1,210 nautical miles unrefueled. The Navy's CAW peaked in range during the Vietnam War and through the 1980's, A CAW A-6 Intruders being refueled in the air had a range of 1,800 nautical miles. It's FA-18's E/F had a range of 1,000 nautical miles. Today a Nimitz class carrier air wing's FA-18 E/F unrefueled range is 908 nautical miles. Retreat from Range: The Rise and Fall of Carrier Aviation http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/CNASReport-CarrierAirWing-151016.pdf
And to make it even worse, we retired the last dedicated Naval refueler 25 years ago. The Douglas A-3 Skywarrior has a rather interesting history. Originally the XA3D-1, it was designed originally as a naval strategic bomber, for delivering atomic then nuclear bombs. However, this concept did not even last a decade so the Navy found other uses for these aircraft instead of just retiring them. One was the A-3 Attack aircraft, that was often used in Vietnam. They were fast, and could carry a decent amount of ordinance (up to single 2,000 pound bombs). The next was the KA-3B. This was a tanker, with a 3,350 gallon capacity. It was an aircraft with offensive capabilities, that could protect itself while waiting for the fighters that would get fuel from it. Then there was the EKA-3B. Same fuel capacity, but they also added electronic jamming capabilities. And there were other variants, including the RA-3B photo recon aircraft and E-3A Electrical Intelligence versions. But in 1991 they were all retired and destroyed. The tanker missions were replaced by the much less capable A-6 (1,660 gallons) until those were all retired in 1997. Now we have no dedicated tankers on any of our carriers. So now we need to launch even more aircraft in order to perform even basic missions. Because we lack the fuel capabilities that we had 25 years ago. Newer is not always better. But at least we are not going the way of the British (yet). In replacing our E-2 Hawkeye aircraft with helicopters.
The U.S. Air Force would adopt the Navy's A-3, it became the B-66 Destroyer. -> http://www.tailsthroughtime.com/2011/01/achilles-heel-of-douglas-b-66-destroyer.html
