“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas


Thursday, March 03, 2011

"Useless" F-22 invulnerable to Libya air defense system

POSTED BY BILL

The quote below is from someone who wants to remain unidentified.  It was sent out with a note from the president of the Air Force Association and represents part of a response to a question about a "no-fly zone" over Libya.  Remember that SecDef Gates and others killed the F-22 by arguing the non-sequitur that it "hadn't been used in Iraq or Afghanistan" as if those operations represented all future military challenges to our country.

I am not advocating a "no-fly zone" or not in this post.  I do know our President Obama is making us look weak by acting as if there is nothing we can do, while the Brits and Germans fly uninvited into Libya to rescue their citizens instead of chartering a ferry.

"the air defense system could not threaten the F-22.  The Libyans have older systems.  The network is integrated for a common radar picture.  However, their aircraft are older -- mostly Mig 21s and Mig 23s with some light attack/trainers and some ground attack aircraft.  The Surface to Air missiles are also older SA-2s, SA-3s (Viet Nam era) and about 50 SA-6s.  The latter are lethal to almost all aircraft except for the F-22. "

2 comments:

Ed said...

I'm not sure we should enforce a no-fly zone in Libya. We'll be hated that much more for imposing our imperialist will on another Muslim country. If Qaddafi wants to kill his own people with his air force, let him. The rest of the Muslim world will be embarrassed internationally by his barbarism and hopefully moderate a little.

That said, if he's using his air force to destroy his oil fields, which I've heard today he's doing, I wouldn't have a problem protecting the oil fields with our F-22's.

Lets there's any confusion, I have no qualms about killing foreigners in their own country to preserve assets on which we rely, such as oil. Kill your people if you want, but don't touch the oil fields.

Bill said...

I fear that Obama may be deliberately projecting a posture of weakness - the "weak horse" bin Laden spoke of. His background is all from the "Western power in general, and American power in specific, have been forces of evil and should be reduced" school of ideology.