Can we throw a few of these into our AUKUS trolley?

3 Responses to Can we throw a few of these into our AUKUS trolley?

1. Rex Anger says:

   24 September, 2021 at 3:00 pm

   We’re already halfway there with Loyal Wingman, which is meant to act by turns as a bomb truck, extra sensor node, sacrificial missile decoy and maybe even a backup dogfighter to protect the manned aircraft directing it.

   An aerial refuelling variant probably wouldn’t be too hard a thing to make, except that we’ve gone for US Air Force Boom instead of the US Navy/Marines/European Probe and Drogue aerial refuelling systems for the vast majority of our new aircraft types.
2. C.L. says:

   24 September, 2021 at 8:16 pm

   Great info, Rex, and very interesting.

   Why do I get the feeling, though, that the gear we get is on the way out when we get it?
3. Rex Anger says:

   24 September, 2021 at 9:49 pm

   Why do I get the feeling, though, that the gear we get is on the way out when we get it?

   That’s just this funny thing called ‘technical obsolescence.’ More often than not, it’s based on perception and propaganda, rather than actual hard, demonstrated data of failure.

   Remember that 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s-era guided missile designs like the SA-2, SA-5, SA-6 and SA-7 to 10 (All Russian designs) and Rapier and RBS-70, Patriot and so forth all still form the basis of most nations’ air defence systems, and the vast majority of combat aircraft worldwide (regsrdless of actual airframe age) saw their genesis in the 70s. Heck, the C-130 Hercules first flew in 1954!

   And despite the occasional short, sharp regional slapfight that might expose the limitations of one particular radar or detection sensor, or a few weapon systems or a nation’s training paradigms, we have not really seen blanket technological progress since the Vietnam and Yom Kippur War eras.

   We are presently facing the historical equivalent of Europe not having gone to war in 1939, where you might see Mk V Spitfires vs. Me109Fs in the mid to late 1950s.

   For all the blather about hypersonic weapons and AI and cyberwarfare and so forth, a major air combat scenario in 2021 will not be vastly dissimilar to that seen over Iraq in 1991 or even 2003, or Serbia/Bosnia/Kosovo in the late 1990s. The grandkids of those generations will be at the controls or behind the triggers of more or less the same aircraft or ground defence weapons. There is just a skerrick more automation now, and the communications are better.