Reminds me about some reports I've read about the birth of the Saab 37 Viggen. Sweden faced the same problem back then, the Soviet, eh sorry I mean the enemies, were supposet to have air superiority and nuclear weapons to take out all of our airbases. There were many studies in to VTOL but the results of the trade studies showed that the best solution were the road base concept, and the STOL capabilities of the Viggen. You just payed to much penalties with the VTOL compared to a conventional aircraft.
Hey, I'll worry about how to take off once I'm done worried about staying alive. Dunno if you've looked at Anderson, Diego Garcia or Okinawa recently but they ain't exactly the definition of "hardened". Open air parking ramps, open air taxiways, about the only thing they do have is runway redudancy on the taxiways - but once again if all of your aircraft are burning cause you didn't bother protecting them whether or not they could have taken off is irrelavant...
Looks great, so long as you don't have to land on your destroyed airbase!
ReplyDeleteok, i'll grant you that...but hopefully airfield engineers will be repairing runways while they're off dogfighting...
ReplyDeleteReminds me about some reports I've read about the birth of the Saab 37 Viggen. Sweden faced the same problem back then, the Soviet, eh sorry I mean the enemies, were supposet to have air superiority and nuclear weapons to take out all of our airbases. There were many studies in to VTOL but the results of the trade studies showed that the best solution were the road base concept, and the STOL capabilities of the Viggen. You just payed to much penalties with the VTOL compared to a conventional aircraft.
ReplyDeleteHey, I'll worry about how to take off once I'm done worried about staying alive. Dunno if you've looked at Anderson, Diego Garcia or Okinawa recently but they ain't exactly the definition of "hardened". Open air parking ramps, open air taxiways, about the only thing they do have is runway redudancy on the taxiways - but once again if all of your aircraft are burning cause you didn't bother protecting them whether or not they could have taken off is irrelavant...
ReplyDelete