G'nads;
The F-111 at the time of IOE was a problem child. Don't take this wrong, I happen to love the plane, always have, and having watched a loss of one have a certain soft spot for it and the operators. The survivability of it in the theatre at the time of IOE was the specific cause of its removal from ops downtown. Had the technology we have today been available, quite possibly the outcome would have been quite different, but that was not the case. To survive, EMCON was needed to be absolute, and the F-111 in common with the A-6A/E etc had problems at that time. The "Bone" is more of the same in that respect.
For AU operations in an area where integrated air defence was limited, then the F-111 is able to make a fashion statement, and range is certainly an attribute of the design. A bit of additional tech on some of the wing stations would have been nice, some design tradeoffs get regretted later.
Today, there is a cost related to range, Breguet's formula means combat range comes at a cost, and that is in dollars for the pounds required (size) or the package size needed to get a smaller aircraft with a limited fuel fraction to get places. AU has developed support capability greatly, which was needed, and will be more important over time in the absence of the range of the F-111. Large packages complicate the C3 issues, and bring in new ways to get messed up (or old ways, recall desert 1...)
Boyd had input into G-1.0, with the army taking a crash course in the importance of getting inside the decision loop of the adversary. Stormin' Normans tactics incorporated that as a concept, which was also of course in keeping with Fuller or Guderian, (Rommel was effective in his efforts as well, at our cost in the antibodies, but failed to manage his logistics tail, which was a chronic problem to the concept of blitzkrieg, where the tail was extended excessively by the success of the Schwerhpunkt doctrine, logistics infrastructure having a lower tech development at that time).
To the F-35, my reservations on that aircraft are fairly simple; it is excessively costly and has had too long a development cycle. Multi role capability comes with a high cost, and I suspect that is going to result in a deficit in some areas that have impact on the boots in the field, which at the end of the day, is still the focus of conflict in conventional conflicts. In asymmetric conflicts, these assets have little impact on dealing with threats. The new battle space in asymmetric warfare may well be better prosecuted by MQ-9's, or smaller units with improved ordnance.
AUS will be well served by the F-35, but it isn't cheap, and I am concerned with the CAS mission. Perhaps it will do well, and we will have enough of them to support boots, but I would be happier to see more dedicated CAS capability.
musings.
Last edited by fdr; 15th Aug 2018 at 01:36.