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Originally Posted by GAU-8
In the exercises I took part in and the exercises I monitored when I worked at Red Flag, I never saw the red team get anywhere close to AWACS.
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The USAF and US Navy has always devoted a good deal of attention in defending AWACS and other HVAC's. I remember reading about an air exercise (F-15's 'blue' and F-16's 'red') in which two large groups (around sixteen versus sixteen) of fighters engaged in WVR dogfighting. A small group of F-16's suddenly broke off as though they were going to reposition in the vertical and instead headed for the AWACS. Several F-15's responded and killed the F-16's with BVR missiles before the F-16's were able to get within missile range of the AWACS. The US air forces continuously working on tactics and counter-tactics defending HVAC.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bfng3569
for the sake of argument, why not develop a new misslie?
take say an amramm, and give it a 'booster' to cover a couple hundred miles, then sepration from the booster, and you have a standard amramm and a target? Pratical, i doubt, but as an idea, why not?
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You mean like the Russian Novator KS-172 missile? It has its merits, the F-14 Tomcat used the same philosophy when engaging enemy bombers that had fighter escorts. There were exercises in which the B-1 Lancer played the Backfire/Blackjack bomber and F-15's played the Su-27's. To launch the Phoenix Missile at a range where the escort fighters still could not engage the F-14, yet the F-14's killed the bombers. Could it work against AWACS, yes.... it greatly depends on the efforts being put forth by the anti-AWACS' forces and the air superiority situation at the time by the forces protecting the AWACS.
URL;
Novator KS-172 AAM-L - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I know back in the mid-1980's the WP planned to send a dozen or so aircraft to attack each AWACS. The WP command realized there would be a high loss rate for these missions but, if only partially successful would be worth it.
As for the concept of an aerial battleship, I don't think it is feasible yet! Maybe in future generations of missiles where the kill percentage is near 100% throughout the kill envelope.
One real problem is, the aerial battleship might shoot down many aircraft but, the loss of one aerial battleship would be a huge loss. Not only has an AWACS been loss but, also a weapon that was supposed to equal many fighters is also.
Adrian