After discussing mass production of military equipment - such as during WW2, I thought this would be a nice topic to discuss.
Currently Op Noble Eagle costs America Billions of dollars annually. Would it not make sense to produce a smaller, lighter armed and more fuel effecient craft to patrol our skies?
http://www.4forums.com/political/sho...?t=4339&page=2

This opens another subject for discussion:
If a country is bootstrapped for a military budget - let's say a small country building its Airforce - would it not make sense to purchase small, lighter armed, fast aircraft such as the one mentioned in the article above? Maybe with a limited ground attack modification - 2 bombs or something similar?
It make perfect sense to me. Why purchase $20 mil piece of equipment when you can have something that is just as fast, costs less to operate and purchase and is probably a little easier to fly?

In some ways, I buy the Soviet concept of winning by numbers. Build simple systems that are cheap to rpoduce and operate, but build at least 2 for every 1 your potential enemy could build.
I know this plane will probably not stand up to the F16 and win, but few countries have the capability of the USAF and the pilots from "most" other countries tend to be trained a little less and have less experience than the current crop of US pilots (not I said SOME and not all).

Yeah, but if you were a pilot, would you not want the most sophisticated and safe equipment available... If I knew that my countries doctrine was to build as many cheaply made aircraft as possible so that It doesn't really matter if if they get shot down because you can send 10 more up I don't think I would want to become a pilot.
I think that if a country is going to have a small air force they should have the best equipment available in small numbers and focus on training the pilots, so that they can be as effective as possible against a larger force.
Take Canada for example, the only fighter air craft we have are our CF 18 fighter/bomber aircraft, but because we spend so much time on training our pilots, they often come out on top at any international competition.

i guess what you going for is a similar thought to what the F-5 came out of?

Pete,

If that country happens to be the United States, yes - mostly because I know we can afford better. I was referring to some developing countries that struggled to build up an airforce.
For instance, South Africa just bought 12 Saab Grippens at tremendous cost while most of the population is aids ridden and starving - would they not have been better off getting 24 of these Interceptors (that has the same performance with a little more limited payload) at less than half the cost?

Chewie - more or less like the F5 - a very fast, easy to build aircraft that is very cheap to build and replace. The Hunter Hawk comes to mind in design, but not in price! ha ha ha

Yeah, you have a point BushPig,
But In my opinion if a country is having an AIDs epidemic, they should really not focus on military spending at all.

Originally Posted by Pete031

Yeah, you have a point BushPig,
But In my opinion if a country is having an AIDs epidemic, they should really not focus on military spending at all.

HeHeHe Pete - I agree on that one, but it didn't stop the ANC Regime (currently running South Africa) from spending $4 billion on Saabs and german Subs....