America rules the skies

dilys

A Para?

Bob

"the most successful weapon in history".

I'm not sure that makes much sense in the context of the F15, if we are talking about the success of a weapon shouldn't that be based on sales or kills?

Which probably means the AK47.

mac

Hun horsemen?

Forlornehope

Mongol archers.

bill

Never mind 107 other aircraft; how many people has it killed?

Doug

the atom bomb - 2 for 2.

Verity

That is awesome.

JP

A-bomb - countless thousands to nil...

Anyway can a weapon really be called 'great' by looking at how much destruction it has caused?

TrevorsDen

The AK47 and its derivatives has killed a lot of people but its also missed a lot as well. Basically it has given a whole hoard of un or ill trained militia something to wave around.

Weapons and tactics change all the time - the most successful current western weapon is probably been the laser guided bomb and this is being followed up by by the unmanned drone.

The weapon which the British Army in particular has singularly and shockingly deliberately failed to counter properly is the Improvised Explosive Device, sometimes called the 'roadside bomb'. This is currently dictating policy and tactics in Afghanistan and we are not combatting it effectively.

This is because, despite the glamour of the F14/15, the most effective weapon the British Army is deficient in is the helicopter.

And by the way - given that the F15 is so good it begs the question as to why we are not simply buying a shed load of them and spending the money thereby saved on effective equipment for our troops.

Michael

Yes, but very few of those kills were against planes of the same generation (like the Su-27 or Mig-29). Most were against obsolete aircraft or even helicopters.

Also, America has led the world in integrating intelligence, radar and co-ordination. The F-15's kill record is like that of a schoolyard bully with a gang of all the other toughest kids to back him up: it might look impressive, but only because he hasn't fought the other big kids.

I'm not sure why it is OK to ignore those lost to ground fire, since many of America (and Israel)'s enemies have emphasised ground based air defence over air to air interceptors.

Hysteria

no US soldiers killed by air power - pity about the UK forces killed by US air power though eh?

MT

"...no American solider has been killed by an enemy air attack since 1953."

And how many American and allied soldiers have been killed in friendly air attacks by the USAF? Quite a few.

mac

@ Forlornehope:

Snap!

Mark Heenan

How about Joe Calzaghe?

And I'm sure there are a few late-Victorian British battleships with a similarly impressive record.

Able Seaman Verity

The Royal Navy from about 1750 to 1900

TGF UKIP

Which begs the question, why has the UK chucked billions down the grid on the Tornado, the world's most useless warplane, when the F15 and F16 were available.

Chorley, the Prestons, West Lancs and Blackpool all being marginal constituencies?

Francis

Greek hoplite formation?
Macedonian phalanx?
Roman legion?
Longbow?
Supposedly chariots worked quite well for the Hyksos...

toad

In the past left leaning governments in both Canada and England killed off aircraft projects that would have been superior to what the US had at the time. I put it that money spent on defense would have provided more jobs and scientific progress that that money spent on "social welfare" programs that have rotted the social fabric of England. Also a lot of the money spent on "social" projects seems to have gone down ratholes.

Bill

Do I detect distress amongst some posters regarding the success of the US aircraft.

Alfred T Mahan

How about my pet subject, the British line-of-battle ship c1782 to 1915? Not sure if any fell to the French before 1815 (I'd have to check - may have been the odd one) but nothing above the size of a gunboat was lost to enemy action for at least a hundred years. They didn't suffer from the friendly fire problem, either.

I'd say the F-15's got quite a way to go yet before it matches that record. Cue Rule, Britannia...

Charles

Much of the article in question celebrates technology and air aces (although omitting to mention that the incredible numbers achieved by some WW2 German pilots). Anyway, for those with an interest, here is something at the other end of the scale (a Fleet Air Arm Swordfish attack during the 1942 Channel Dash). Words fail me, you be the judge:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/88/a6237588.shtml

dexey

TrevorsDen
February 18th, 2009 5:31pm
"And by the way - given that the F15 is so good it begs the question as to why we are not simply buying a shed load of them and spending the money thereby saved on effective equipment for our troops."

Same reason as our troops got the SA80 rather than the M16. It's all about jobs in constituencies; not the best equipment.

oldtimer

18thC Royal Navy ship of the line cannons deserve serious scrutiny. They, with probably superior training and seamanship, defeated French dreams of Empire (North America and India to name but two) and bottled up Napolean in the early 19thC. Not the kill ratio of the F-15, but in the scheme of things infinitely effective. See Alfred Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power on History. At only 30 years F-15 has more work to do to equal that record.

Tankus

both at the Somme or there abouts ...
longbow's at Agincourt
and a couple of centuries later ...maxims machine gun ...

then again ....

maybe the worst one is our brain gaining sentience ...closely followed by it then discovering religion ...!

Cant beat a tool makers want for the love of gods ...body count....!

|Everything else is derivative ..

RW

New Labour lies?

Anthony

The article is too long and covers too much ground to be dealt with adequately via a comment box. However, the weapon system effectiveness comparison game, while entertaining, is ultimately hollow because there are far too many possible variables and points where one might attribute value. I think Michael comes fairly close to flagging up some of the "Yes, but..." aspects of this.

Max Kaye

Little Boy and Fat Man ended a war.

Dan Schwartz, Sayreville, New Jersey

The W88 nuclear warhead with its "Dial-a-Yield" allowing the operator to change the squirt of tritium in the core.

America has a Very Long Fuse... But at the end of that fuse is one Gigantic BOOM!

Dan Schwartz, Sayreville, New Jersey

The Ohio-class Trident sub: Some of them have their Trident MIRV missiles removed and are used for Special Forces deployments.

Dirty Euro

Please report that one, I repeat one, euro fuighter defeated not one, but two f 15 fighters in a mock dogfight in 2004 over the lake district. So the F 15 is not so good anymore.
Europskeptics beat that. It is painful for you to take but it is the truth.
Plus the USA has not had a hot war with a major airforce nation in the last 50 years.
Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam Grenada etc are not renowned for large airforces.
Plus the USA lost an airplane off the coast of China when one airplane collided into theirs, and they were forced to land, so that is sort of a loss.
The best weapon is the Euro fighter none of them have even been shot down. Plus they have beaten the so called unbeatable F 15. Even top gear could not beat it. :

Dirty Euro

Please can euroskeptics explain why a report says that one euro fighter in 2004 defeated two F15s in a mock dogfight over the lake district. Oh but I forgot all european things are rubbish. Yes I understand. Lets ignore that. Lets pretend nothing has ever beaten the F15. Even though it has never fought a war against a proper western army.
Fact The F 15 is putty in the euro fighters hands. Everyone knows it. Beat that euroskeptics I know that makes your blood boil. LOL LOL :

Nigel Sedgwick

What about the German V2 missile?

Best regards

Henry Crun

Dirty Euro ignores the fact that the F-15 is thirty years old (actually designed in the 1960's), whilst the Eurofighter is brand new (if you can call 10 years late and well over budget brand new); that the Eurofighter has never yet seen action so we don't actuallly know how good it is whilst the F-15 is a proven combat winner; and the F15's replacement, the F-22 Raptor would kick the Eurofighter's sorry ass.

My vote for a war winner; possibly HMS Warrior, the first ironclad warship. In its short career it never fired a shot in anger because it didn't need to; the threat was enough.

Anthony

Dirty Euro, I think you miss the point somewhat.

The fact that a Eurofighter can trash one or more F-15s is hardly big news. The two planes aren't directly comparable. The Eurofighter is a generation ahead of the F-15. If it couldn't hammer an F-15 there'd have to be very serious problems indeed. If we're looking at qualitative comparisons, they need to be between the Eurofighter and the F-22 or F-35 (to the extent that they are directly comparable even then, which is questionable), not the Eurofighter and the F-15.

Second of all, it's not as if all the arguments over Eurofighter are rooted in Euroscepticism (though in these comment boxes they may be...). The key question is whether, given tight defence budgets and the sheer cost of some of the next generation military technology, ploughing vast amounts of money into a next generation fighter conceived of to be used against the Soviets was a good way to parcel up the funds.

In short, there are two fundamental questions regarding the Eurofighter:

1) Should the Royal Air Force get next generation manned fighter aircraft?
2) How does the Eurofighter fare qualitatively against the F-22 and the F-35.

Both of these questions amount to navel-gazing at this point, incidentally. It's far too late to change much without flushing even more money down the lavatory.

Robert Simpson

The Typhoon (RAF name for Eurofighter) is the next generation on from the F15 - a fairer comparison is with the F/A-22 Raptor, which came into service at roughly the same time.

I'm sorry to say that the Raptor is better than Typhoon at air dominance, though Typhoon is probably the second-best air-superiority fighter out there at the moment. And the best the RAF could have - the US won't sell the F/A-22 to anyone yet.

Richard

JP

Yes, obviously. The purpose of a weapon is destruction. The necessity or utility of destruction might be debatable, but that is another issue entirely.

AS for answering the question then the nuclear-powered huner-killer submarine. None lost in combat, one kill. It happens that the kill was vital to that war, and quite possibly decisive. Well done HMS Conqueror!

Dirty Euro

A new generation takes over, that is all. The Typhoon is not the best in its generation, although the only thing better is so much more expensive the cost/benefit analysis probably falls with the Eurofighter. However you don't have to look that far for theoretical kills. The Sea Harrier managed that, in the skilled hands of Sharky Ward.

But that is not the point. Read the quote. Most successful, i.e. actual record, not theoretical capability.

GS London

The F-15 is good, but the Americans apparently refuse to test it against a eurofighter, which can fly itself.

Tommy

Dirty Euro and GS London:

The eurofighter typhoon is indeed very good, but it costs £70 million compared with £20 million for an f15 eagle.

Its also important to realise that the f15 was built in the 70s using 70s technology, whereas the typhoon was built in the early 2000s using late 80s technology. Ofcourse its going to be better but you have to compare it with other such modern aircraft:

The eurofighter is superior to the french Dassault rafale which also uses late 80s technology, but inferior to the American F-18 hornet or Super Hornet which are both almost 30 years older.

The real comparison should be between the american f-22 raptor and the eurofighter typhoon, and nobody in their right mind would suggest the typhoon is better than the f-22.

Tommy

"Fact The F 15 is putty in the euro fighters hands. Everyone knows it. Beat that euroskeptics I know that makes your blood boil."

But they don't even compare as I already said they are seperated by more than 30 years. The eurofighter typhoon could never be used in a war against a powerful nation because they would not reach their targets. They would be shot out of the air by anti-aircraft missiles locked onto their HUGE radar cross section. The F-35 and F-22 on the other would pass through un-detected.

bill

I cannot comment of the efficacy of the eurofighter although it is probably a complete waste of money like much of European defence expenditure as with the major exception the UK, our so called allies generally refuse to come mout and play. A bit like eighteenth soldiers.

Dirk Blade

@Dexey, TrevorsDen: Up to a point. Protection of UK industry, jobs etc is obviously a factor, but the 'EuroCONspiracy' view doesn't tell the whole story.

A boring but important mantra in defence is that 'if you buy the kit, you buy the doctrine'. Military acquisition programmes are based on more than the magpie approach - 'it's shiny, so I want one'. It takes into account the threats we face, and how, doctrinally, we propose to defeat them. For example, US acquisition in the 1980s was predicated on the need to find and destroy the Soviet Operational Manoeuvre Groups (OMGs). So it developed Apache, F15E and so on, to complement its ground systems of MLRS, Abrams and Bradley – a mobile tactical defence to fix the forward elements, combined with a deep attack capability to find and destroy the second echelon/deep strike forces. It wasn’t exactly holistic but the different elements were mashed together to support the emerging doctrine.

The UK did not take that view in those terms, and continued to invest in more positional defence - hence the big-gunned, heavy-armoured but less mobile Challenger, and more static infantry tank-killing positions intended to create fixed killing areas; Harrier for the tactical strike, and Tornado for longer-range interdiction. We attempted to get into the stand-off radar game but failed. Buying the US kit would have meant buying into US doctrine, to which UK defence chiefs were hugely resistant - at least until the Bagnall reforms started to bite in the mid-80s.

Similarly, SA80 had to be capable of firing NATO standard ammunition, of penetrating a standard Warsaw Pact body armour and helmet at set ranges, as well as being short enough to enable troops to operate from the confined spaces of an armoured fighting vehicle. It might be a flawed system, but buying the M16 would have meant compromising on these assumptions.

If we'd have bought the F15, we'd have been buying US assumptions about the way we fought it; and we simply couldn't afford to replicate the whole system F15 would have needed to be fully effective.

@Dirty Euro: I'd like to see a Typhoon fight a *current* generation US aircraft like the F22. Well, you might say, the Typhoon is actually 20 years old. And that would make a different, more condemnatory, point about multinational acquisition.

Chris Harrison

The most effective weapon of all time has got to be bully beef. Before the invention of canning, armies had to live off the land, which limited both their size, time on the battle field and flexibility. Armies went from 10s of thousands to 100s of thousands thanks to food preservation.

The Bellman

As we're all intent on reductio ad absurdum, can I nominate 'communication'?

Dirk Blade

@TrevorsDen: More boring defence spottery from me... Another of your examples illustrates the importance of doctrine in procurement. Helicopters are not a panacea. They're vulnerable to small arms fire as well as SAMs, and they are very expensive. (That is why the Russians invested so much in 'flying tank' helicopters like the Hind, and so much was spent getting Stingers out to AFG to defeat them.)

Helicopters give you excellent operational mobility, but poor tactical mobility: to move a force 10km by helicopter is quick once you're in the air, but embarking and disembarking is slow and renders the force vulnerable. They have limited 'loiter time' - they can move a force, but must recover to refuel/rearm between missions. They're prone to failure, and if you ose a Chinook or CH53, you've lost 50 men, rendering a whole company combat ineffective. They're vulnerable when parked and need a massive protection effort, tying up valuable combat troops in rear area security. (Look at the size of an Apaqche regiment's required real estate v an infantry battlegroup.) The disembarked air assault infantry have very low tactical mobility - they have to walk, or bicycle, or, if they can steal the horses, ride.

Armoured/mechanised infantry can move short distances very quickly, and keep their transport and thus a high degree of firepower with them; but are restricted by 'tactical bounds' - the need for the force to move 'with one foot on the ground' - for long moves.

The hull-attack IEDs you mention are the enemy reaction to Coalition applique protection from side attack by RPGs etc. I guess we will now see an action-reaction-counter-action cycle similar to the Russian development of protected mobility. BMP-1 was developed for use in Europe, and as a result was vulnerable to ambush from above and behind by mountain infantry: the cannon couldn't elevate sufficiently, and the weight of armour was at the front. So mujahide'en fired into the softer top armour into the crew compartment and rear fuel cells. BMP2 had a high-elevation cannon and belly-mounted fuel tanks. Result? The mujahide'en started using landmines to pierce the hull armour and fuel cells, and machine-gunning the dismounts.

And when we act to counter the belly-attack IED, there will be a trade-off in another aspect of protection - maybe the weight of side-armour.

I'm being a bore, but I find this a fascinating, and very human, subject.

Conservative Cabbie

Changing the view slightly, can I nominae the spitfire and F-16 falcon as the best looking weapons of all time.

Dirty Euro

Actually the eurofighter beat the F 18 in mock dog fights too. The F 22 is just better at stealth. It is not a great dog fighter.

Archie

Sorry group, bit late for this, but may I nominate HMS Warspite? She fired over 1,000 rounds in anger and survived, I believe.