1) Well, if I am not mistaken, the skies over North Vietnam were heavily contested, in fact, they were the most heavily contested in the history of aerial warfare, no?
a) Perhaps the above explains why "half of the F-105 fleet is still in Vietnam?"
2) The F-105 is credited with 24.5 gun kills and 3.0 missile kills against the MiG-17, versus 17 confirmed kills for the MiG-17. That's not too bad for an aircraft originally designed to be a nuclear attack strike aircraft. The MiG was an incredibly agile pure fighter, wasn't it?
3) The F-105F/G preformed the SEAD/ECM mission until 1984?
4) Let's spend $10k wiring the F-105D for GPS (that's the cost of doing it, not the price) and $50k for the cost of a glass panel up front, and now we have GBU-31/54 (JDAM) capability. Adding a LANTIRN/LITENING/SNIPER pod brings us up to bomb dropping skill parity with a F-35A, no? Am I wrong?
5) Not to put fine a point on it, but in a bomb dropping/visual dog fighting fly-off, after doing '4' above, a refurbished F-105D gate guard embarrasses a F-35A in any configuration. No? Am I wrong?
Not trolling. I'm just trying to understand the fundamental reasoning and rational for the F-35. In the very near future, unmanned, low-observable aircraft will be doing ALL of the Day 1 missions, no? And if this is true, and 1-4 above are all true, then why are we still building these things?
Last edited by Channel 2; 12th Apr 2016 at 21:59.
Reason: Numbering typo