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Aviation History
2001
2001 - 3139.PDF
US combat aircraft With F-16s average. Consequently, another key objec- bearing the tive for the SPO, according to Bailey, "is to brunt of prevent us getting into this situation again USAF by developing tools to predict what's going operations in to break out of those things that have the Balkans never broken before". and over Iraq, Hand in hand with the job of extending aircraft are a fighter's airframe and engine life is the falling short need to modernise its systems. In the of their decade since the first F-16 Block 50 fighter projected was delivered, the single monolithic threat lifetimes posed by the former Warsaw Pact has given way to a multitude of different potential adversaries. At the same time, air warfighting has been technologically transformed by the advent of stealth tech nology, the revolution in precision guided munitions (PGMs) beyond visual range (BVR) combat and the emergence of network-centric warfare. Continual challenge Says Leaf: "We need to take these old air craft that were designed in a different era and ensure they can succeed at BVR air-to- air combat and hold their own in close air combat. We've skipped a generation going from the F-15 and F-16 to the F-22; our adversaries did not and have the advantage of Flankers [Sukhoi Su-27/30] and other aircraft. I think it would be excessively optimistic to say we have parity." The threat is not just in the air but in the continued evolution of surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems and hybrid develop ments that are continually challenging the TheA/OA-10 defence suppression. This has been com- has received pounded by the fielding of new more capa- few ble surface-to-air missiles. In places like modifications Kosovo this has forced the USAF to adopt since the new tactics, such as precision air-to-surface late 1970s strikes from medium altitudes and above, and the but for which aircraft like the relatively manufacturer, slow-flying A-10 were never designed. Fairchild, no While the expanded use of stealth will longer exists have to await fielding of the F-22 and JSF, www.fliqhtinternational.com FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 11-17 SEPTEMBER 2001 39
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