Fighters, fighters, and some bombers? Air combat: past, present, future.

The Japanese are trying to break into the top tier of next generation fighters?

The Japanese are attempting something called systems integration. The (political) takeaway is that the Japanese have excluded the Americans and invited in the British. This has kind of annoyed the Americans.

Between Sgt "Schultz" and Vlad the Inhaler LockMart is doing handsprings of glee.



What the heck is going on?

Pierre Sprey.



While Lazerpig is kind of funny, Pierre Sprey is much funnier.

The man is either a poor comedian or what we would call "mentally ill".

As a side note, if one does not know who Alexander Kartveli is ...  Then one does not know an aircraft designer in the same class and generation as R.J. Mitchell, Clarence Johnson, Kurt Tank (Nazi war criminal, that guy.), Jiro Horikoshi, Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich, Oleg Antonov, or the super-genius Ed Heinemann.   



The A-10 by the numbers, as a strafer, does not work. What does work, for the stated mission / purpose for which the A-10 exists, are the precision guided munitions, it now carries after its latest modernization, that any properly instrumented and configured aircraft can drop or launch: such as the F-15, F-16, F-18, F-35, B-52, the Gripen, the Rafale, the Tornado, the Eurofighter, the B-1, the B-2, the P-8, the B-52 or any of the converted "Spookies" the USAF and USMC operates.      

For crying out loud the C-130s can perform close air support with a pallet guidance support module in the cargo bay, and target designators used by the infantry being supported, painting impact points with radars or lasers. Loadmasters manually shove the PGMs off the tail ramp at medium altitude to fall on the hapless enemy, being PGM snuffed below them. Positive control this is called.

Note the "Ah ____." moments. You do have to have good communications and IFF and EW systems to make a launch platform work.

I point this necessity out because it seems from the reports that I have perused that the RUSSIANS, whose pilots are war criming in the Ukraine with cheeky gusto and reckless abandon, have this same exact problem of the early A-10s, of no electronic aids and shoot-no-shoot decision step "man in the loop release authorizations" in addition to the Russian pilots actually being trained to become human automatons who do not care at all what they bomb or shoot, as the recent children's hospital they blew up in Mariupol illustrates.    

  

What goes for Russian civil aviation will be especially true for Russian military aviation. This is going to put their entire aviation industry into the technology toilet as well as screw up the civil air routes.

Aeroflot's air fleet overseas is subject to seizure. The Russians have recently stolen 1,000 WESTERN aircraft. (Airbus and Boeing made.).  Russia will cannibalize these planes. 

Sukhoi and Irkhut will benefit by Russian isolation. Chinese airliner maker Komac could also benefit. But note, the sanctions wall will mean these aircraft will be "suspect". 

Alaska may become the major hub to bypass Russia.   

1. Turkish drones and loiter munitions are hideously effective.
2. Russian equipment in robotics is over-hyped.
3. TB2 aspects.
4. UAV tiers go from Global Hawk down to Amazon four rotor package delivery systems.
5. Proliferation. US drones led the way by routinely violating heavily defended airspace. USAF budget is out of whack. Robots agogo.
6. Medium sized nation drone users... Israel and Turkey have COMBAT experience, so these system users should have been expected to work well.
7. Ukraine users have shown that the TB2 is very effective, proven to be a tank eater. Cheap and slow may be an invalid description. TB2s are very much like Predators or Mojaves. Very effective. These drones are killing Russian SAMS in SEAD missions allowing Ukraine infantry to close and kill Russian armor in follow up. Tors, Buks, and Pansrs are being ripped to shreds. This is the cost exchange ratio that benefits the DRONE.
8. Civil drones are being used to run battlefield recon.
9. Russians are using drones to bait, loiter munitions to ambush, etc. The Russians used decoys and KK drones to bait Ukraine IADS assets. Russian drones are being their most effective military force application, but still not as effectively as they could or should have been used.
10. Commercial drones are being turned into kamikaze units.
11. How is drone defense working? Not too well. Apparently Russian jamming does not work. Counter aircraft Russian weapons seem to have not been designed too well to handle drones. Russian IADS is still somewhat effective against MANNED systems. Robot systems are small and agile and hard to track with even the best radars and infrared systems. Now Russian IADS is CRAP compared against western air forces, but read further about drones against western IADS.
12. We now know that drones are very cost-effective OFFENSIVE systems in any IADS environment. This is the Ukraine lesson. Even the US IADS is in trouble here. The Americans need to understand just where the exchange ratio factors play. When we go on offense, and we will have to in a denied battlespace environment, then that drone starts to look very cost effective against an enemy power who is bigger and has the logistics advantage over the US.
13. Cheap loiter drones and kamikaze drones can get through to target via attrition through numbers. Factor in manning costs, pilot training, manned aircraft maintenance and compare that to a one-time use drone (Like an Israeli systems set.). A one million dollar Turkish drone buzzing along, with four 2.75 inch guided rockets, is more efficient than the three 3 million dollar Russian tanks and one 18 million dollar Pansr Air defense vehicle it killed before the Buk splashed it.

Rock, paper, scissors.

There is going to be a hard look at how to handle the new drone menace.

As for the United States, it has the MOST combat experience in this kind of warfare. Whether fighting in the Middle East or in other areas of the world, US drone strikes have killed hundreds of "terrorists" in opposed hostile air environments. I personally have objected to the judicial murders carried out, but have to admit, it has been a form of warfare that has proven remarkably effective to penetrate into enemy IADS which have mostly failed to stop these US attacks. Note that when the "enemy" has tried to go the other way against us, the US has been somewhat effective in defense?

Now the singular fact about the Lancaster, as a Silverplate special, was impractical because the bomber would NEVER have survived the drop. It could not have out climbed, outrun or outturned the shock wave. The plane would have been destroyed.