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Originally Posted by FLYBOYJ  Don't hold your breath - in the late 50s some USAF and Pentagon wizkids said that dogfights will be a thing of the past and all fighters will be armed with missiles.
A few years later a little situation called Vietnam proved them very wrong...
I think UAVs will be the next wave of the future and will be used in conjunction with manned combat aircraft. |
In Vietnam the missiles really stank. I can pretty well bet you that if the AIM-9 and AIM-7 missiles had the same reliability then that they do today, there would still be no guns on the fighters. Looking at the stats on the Persian Gulf War, there were few 20mm kills, like, maybe one? That's not much of return on carrying around nearly 1700 lbs of ordinance. AIM-9s probably only weigh 2 to 3 hundred pounds with rack.
There are a few missions that could be handled today with unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAV) with the technology available. Most air-to-ground mission could easily be handled, including strategic bombing. In another 15 to 20 years, depending on funding, most suppression of enemy air defences could probably be handled by unmanned launch platforms, the associated missiles, and probably manned and unmanned control/sensor vehicles.
This capability is fought against tooth and nail by the services but the cost of personnel in and over the battlefield is expensive, both in material cost and political cost and political pressure will move in this direction.
As for the need for highly manueverable aircraft, give me a F-15, maybe even a C-47 (i.e. any platform), a good sensor, and I will give you a missile that will reach out and out-maneuver any manned aircraft you can put against me.
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