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Bad ideas in war

Nowadays? Sure, a good case can be made for that. What me and a couple of others have been arguing about was your claim that "It was always a bad idea." (Cf, message #331 up this thread.)
 
HansMustermann said:
Nowadays? Sure, a good case can be made for that. What me and a couple of others have been arguing about was your claim that "It was always a bad idea." (Cf, message #331 up this thread.)
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Minor correction to the highlighted. "Everyone who has responded to the claim that dogfighting was a bad idea in warx We even gave the out by asking if what was meant that it was obsolete.


It's just a silly analysis. As 3point14 put so well using dragons.

By the same logic, point defence systems are a bad idea because they are not offensive and it's better to destroy the systems before they could attack
 
If I read you right you are saying that dogfighting is fighter planes fighting fighter planes as a thing in itself with no nearby bombers to attack/defend is bad?

I'd say that any enemy fighter plane in your airspace or within range of your assets or theatre of operations is a clear and present danger and should be neutralised asap just as an enemy soldier on your territory should be.
 
theprestige said:
So my prescription about dogfighting is primarily for dogfighterboos who make a fetish of Top Gun, not for reasonable people who understand things.
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Oh, if you mean, some variant people imagining that war works like in movies or video games, I can fully agree with that. I mean, not even just about planes, but also stuff like Russia getting their tanks destroyed by using them at spacing like in Fury or War Thunder, and without infantry support like in War Thunder, is just as dumb.

But yeah, if you mean something along those lines, then yeah, we don't have much to argue about.
 
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Wudang said:
If I read you right you are saying that dogfighting is fighter planes fighting fighter planes as a thing in itself with no nearby bombers to attack/defend is bad?

I'd say that any enemy fighter plane in your airspace or within range of your assets or theatre of operations is a clear and present danger and should be neutralised asap just as an enemy soldier on your territory should be.
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Kinda. Sorta. I understand what you're saying, especially when it comes to multi-role airplanes. But sometimes it depends. For example one of the best decisions of the Brits during the Blitz was stopping engaging fighters that were sent ahead to sweep ahead of the bombers. Not the least because it convinced Göring that yeah, the RAF had been neutralized, and made him switch to London instead.

Yeah, sometimes an idea works well not just because of immediate technical, tactical or operational use, but because it's a brain <bleep> for an enemy who can't think beyond those 3 :p
 
HansMustermann said:
Kinda. Sorta. I understand what you're saying, especially when it comes to multi-role airplanes. But sometimes it depends. For example one of the best decisions of the Brits during the Blitz was stopping engaging fighters that were sent ahead to sweep ahead of the bombers. Not the least because it convinced Göring that yeah, the RAF had been neutralized, and made him switch to London instead.
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Good point. Always consider the bigger picture. Strategy should inform tactics.
 
Wudang said:
If I read you right you are saying that dogfighting is fighter planes fighting fighter planes as a thing in itself with no nearby bombers to attack/defend is bad?
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I'm saying that putting one of your own planes into into a high-energy position contest with an enemy fighter plane is the least optimal way to deal with it. Don't glorify it. Don't develop doctrines that prioritize it. Don't design single-role planes for that role. Keep the option in your back pocket as a contingency, but recognize that if you're in the merge it's time for your air force to up its missile game.
 
I will happily agree with that point, but I can't think of anyone except the Fighter Mafia lobby (and possibly similar lobby groups or think tanks that I'm ignorant of) who actually proposed glorifying or prioritizing it in the last half a century. No modern army that I know of, in any case. It's more like being trained to be able to at least fall back to that if things went so pear shaped, that you have to fall back to that.

Kinda the same as why when I was a conscript in an AA regiment, we also learned to use an assault rifle and basic infantry tactics. It definitely wasn't glorified or prioritized, over using those big auto-cannons or missiles, but more of a case where IF the faeces hit the wind turbine in a quite spectacular way, it's SOMETHING better to do than just die.

But anyway, yeah, we can easily agree that groups like the Fighter Mafia are stupid, if that's what you're getting at. No doubt, really. I mean, not only everyone in the actual US armed forces thought it's stupid, but really only posts or channels like the Kremlin propaganda ones will even pretend to listen to them :p
 
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HansMustermann said:
I will happily agree with that point, but I don't think anyone except the Fighter Mafia lobby (and possibly similar lobby groups or think tanks that I'm ignorant of) who actually proposed glorifying or prioritizing it in the last half a century. No modern army I know of, in any case. It's more like being trained to be able to at least fall back to that if things went so pear shaped, that you have to fall back to that.

Kinda the same as why when I was a conscript in an AA regiment, we also learned to use an assault rifle and basic infantry tactics. It definitely wasn't glorified or prioritized, over using that big auto-cannon or missiles, but more of a case where IF the faeces hit the wind turbine in a quite spectacular way, it's SOMETHING better to do than just die.

But anyway, yeah, we can easily agree that groups like the Fighter Mafia are stupid, if that's what you're getting at. No doubt, really. I mean, not only nobody in the actual US armed forces thought it's stupid, but really only posts like the Kremlin propaganda ones will even pretend to listen to them : p
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One inevitable conclusion from my premise, that I'm still coming to terms with, is that the F-22 was a bad idea, and that the multirole F-35 is a vastly superior plane for that reason.

On the other hand, I can still dream of the F-23 coming back as an interceptor/recon platform.
 
IF it had been only made to dogfight, no doubt, the F-22 would have been a horrible idea. It however was planned to bring more than that to the table -- and at the very least served as a testbed for -- such as stealth, superior avionics, integration with other planes and systems, etc. As I was saying, not all of those were a complete success in the F-22, but it at the very least was a testbed for them, which, yes, enabled such planes as the F-35 to be what they are.

But to get back to dogfighting, it's not what its real primary missile profile was. They were very much equipped with beyond-the-horizon missiles for anti-air roles, and they still were very much multi-role airplanes. (Albeit, a wee bit less effective in air to ground roles than other planes, and more focused on the interceptor side. Which doesn't necessarily mean dogfighting.) Not only there was noting to keep you from equipping 2x AIM-9 and 6x AIM-120 on them for air to air roles, or 2x 1000 lbs JDAM bombs and 2x AIM-120 for a more ground attack role (while still being able to shoot SOMETHING to defend themselves,) or a few other configurations, but it's like right in their spec sheet. Nobody really prioritized getting in a dog fight with their autocannons.


Basically, what I'm saying is that a side-effect of such lobby/think-tank groups as the Fighter Mafia, is that they put out a LOT of misinformation. Especially on Kremlin propaganda channels. Including claiming credit for such stuff like the F-16 (which, no, they had no input in,) or what role some plane was built for. Misinformation which may even sound plausible to laymen like you or me, but it's still false. And then there are the folks who think that the way to fight disinformation is with equal and opposite disinformation...
 
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The demise of dogfighting due to the advent of missiles happened over 60 years ago. And then un-happened as it became clear missiles were only part of the solution so, perhaps most famously, the F4 got redesigned to give it guns.

Also it might not be what you want your fighters to do nor be something you want to prioritise as a capability, but if you have to do it at all, you have to do it well. If you're not a sufficient threat to the other guy, he's just going to take you on and kill you every time.

It would be a bad idea in war to have a half-assed capability of defending yourself from a threat you'd prefer not to be wasting time on dealing with.
 
theprestige said:
I'm saying that putting one of your own planes into into a high-energy position contest with an enemy fighter plane is the least optimal way to deal with it. Don't glorify it. Don't develop doctrines that prioritize it. Don't design single-role planes for that role. Keep the option in your back pocket as a contingency, but recognize that if you're in the merge it's time for your air force to up its missile game.
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Yes absolutely. The goal is to win the war not to score the most enemy fighters shot down.
 
theprestige said:
One inevitable conclusion from my premise, that I'm still coming to terms with, is that the F-22 was a bad idea, and that the multirole F-35 is a vastly superior plane for that reason.

On the other hand, I can still dream of the F-23 coming back as an interceptor/recon platform.
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I think you are missing the point slightly. Yes, the YF-23 seems to have had more potential, and yes, the F22 has also been used for attacking ground targets. But with what I understand to be the state of the art, you still need to have a high altitude launch platform to deal with the curvature of the Earth and it needs to be stealthy to survive (so not just an AWACS missile truck), so you need something optimised for that to ensure air superiority and make the strike fighters more likely to complete their missions


And even back in WWI, most fighter kills were surprise attacks where the target didn't notice the attacker.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, to finally actually answer,

1. Eagle Claw was actually a good idea, but the execution was lacking. (They really should have executed someone for that;))

2. Neptune Spear... well, I have my doubts about its morality and what international message it sends (i.e., whether it was a good idea,) but you have to admit the execution was definitely not lacking. (I mean, they did execute him, right?;))
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It should have been Cyrus Vance, Carter's National Secrutiy advisor who became obssesed with keeping the operation low profite and not having as small a footprint as possible for the sake of internation opinion . In fact, Vance seems to have been opposed to any military mission.
Which are of course, both BS. There was simply no way you can keep an operaton like that low profile, and Vance insisetence on a minimum force is why the operaton failed. there was not back up .
Franky, if you are going to put the priorites Vance had ahead of giving the military what it needed for a reasonable chance of sucess.you are better off not launching the operation in the first place.
It was a sad case of Carter knowing he had to do Something or lose the election, but then listening to the wrong advisors;
So Carter went ahead with the Mission but never gave the Military when they felt they needed, the result was a fiasco, and pretty much sealed Carter's fate in November.
Caeter was probalby one of the best men ever to hold the White House as far being honest and well intenioned goes, but he badly blew it in serveral areas. this was one of them.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
The demise of dogfighting due to the advent of missiles happened over 60 years ago. And then un-happened as it became clear missiles were only part of the solution so, perhaps most famously, the F4 got redesigned to give it guns.

Also it might not be what you want your fighters to do nor be something you want to prioritise as a capability, but if you have to do it at all, you have to do it well. If you're not a sufficient threat to the other guy, he's just going to take you on and kill you every time.

It would be a bad idea in war to have a half-assed capability of defending yourself from a threat you'd prefer not to be wasting time on dealing with.
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In the late 50"s both the US Navy and US Air Force decided that missiles had made cannon on fighters obsolete, and did not include them in some makes of fighters. They came to quick regret that decision in VIernam, and by 1967 they had rigged up gunpods for the fighters that did have build in guns.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
The demise of dogfighting due to the advent of missiles happened over 60 years ago. And then un-happened as it became clear missiles were only part of the solution so, perhaps most famously, the F4 got redesigned to give it guns.
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This turned out to be a training and doctrine issue. Navy pilots with proper training did better with missiles than Air Force pilots did with their precious gunz.

Also it might not be what you want your fighters to do nor be something you want to prioritise as a capability, but if you have to do it at all, you have to do it well. If you're not a sufficient threat to the other guy, he's just going to take you on and kill you every time.
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Hear me out: Maybe it's more effective to simply take the occasional dogfighting L, rather than trying to be really good at it. Instead focus those efforts on being really good at the more efficient air combat strategies. Like BVR combat or straight-up IADS.

It would be a bad idea in war to have a half-assed capability of defending yourself from a threat you'd prefer not to be wasting time on dealing with.
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My thesis is that once your enemy starts investing heavily in being really good at dogfighting, you can win by investing heavily at not having to dogfight. If one of your interceptors occasionally gets in a jam with a dedicated dogfighter, that's not really a big problem for you on a strategic level. Your resources are focused on things that matter more than winning dogfights you're not getting into.
 
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