Cold War Intercept

[plan_D]

The Lightning would carry two BAe Red Tops and two Aden 30mm cannon into combat. The Red Top had a range of seven miles and was designed to intercept low-level agile fighters, there was much more change that it would hit than miss a bomber. Then because of the speed of the Lightning, it's always in the situation to be able to use it's cannon which would rip anything to pieces.

[102first_hussars]

There yah go SYS, Now speed is not always a good thing when going to guns on a target, charging your target too fast limits the time you have to accurately aim, I mean **** if you miss you just waisted ammo and fuel.

[syscom3]

I suspect the Lightning would have fuel issues for a re-attack scenario.

[plan_D]

At the full extent of the Lightning's combat range, it would be capable of around three passes on target. The first would be able to attack two targets with it's missiles, and the other two would be against anything else in it's area of attack. If really needed plenty of tankers would already be about somewhere, if not the single Lightning can go home, but there's always the rest of the squadron to follow which would already be up in the air by the time the first (most likely two) would have to go home.

I'll have to ask my dad about doomsday scrambles, but they could have RAF Binbrook empty of all operational Lightnings (about 24 normally) in 20-30 minutes, maybe less. During that time others would be coming home, being refuelled and rearmed then sent back up.

And pilot gunnery training over Cyprus kept RAF pilots in tip-top shape for gunnery. My dad saw plenty of 'targets' splattered by firing Lightnings over the Med.

[HealzDevo]

Actually is it becoming a case with aircraft of 'Jack of All Trades and Master of None'? When you look at it there are compromises that need to be made to accomodate all the different capabilities these aircraft need to perform. Does this mean we could see a generation of aircraft coming that are useless against pure-purpose aircraft? That is the real question which only time will answer...

[the lancaster kicks ass]

holy crap where do you keep dragging these threads up from and what's that got to do with the topic?

either way aircraft have to go that way because it's damn expensive to have a single aircraft per job, the Typhoon's primarily an air-to-air fighter but has a secondary ground attack role, the only ones who can afford a single plane-single role plan to some extent is America with the F-22 which is a pure all out Fighter, and because of that is arguably the best fighter in the world, of course the ideal is to have one type per role but at what cost? and think how hard the logistics of that would be!

[Matt308]

And even the F-22 is being outfitted with air-to-gnd capability with addition of multiple SDB in the bays.

[HealzDevo]

All I was pointing out was that there are some things that could cause major problems in combat, with having to perform different roles, ie. add ground attack and you are sacrificing missile bays on a fighter that could be used to add in more ATA missiles...