In this year’s @TopGunMovie, they dangerously fly under the radar, through a narrow, winding canyon to destroy a target, avoiding multiple banks of surface-to-air missiles.
But why not first take out the missile banks? Could then fly without daredevil maneuvers. Just sayin’.
His tweet: https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/1579221475038756866?s=20&t=5SMG3rVIdbDHYa6VHu54DQ
I thought the plan was to fly in stealthlike, take out the main target then get out fast. If they were detected before hitting the target, the enemy fighter jets would have come into action sooner. Then they would have been dogfighting for survival instead of performing the rehearsed maneuver.
shareExactly... they estimated about 90 seconds or two minutes before they'd be intercepted by the "5th gen" fighters if they got detected. If someone blew up the missile sites then they would assume it would be to allow an attack and the enemy aircraft would be coming over right away.
But you'd think the enemy would have some video cameras watching those trenches...
I believe they didn't think people would be crazy enough to fly through those trenches like that. I thought they were monitoring them? Why did they have to zip through there in 2m30 then when they could've gone slower and be safer?
shareCouldn't they just meet those fighters, with their own fighters that are much more capable of dogfighting then? If so, I'm guessing they just wanted to do a quick hit and run then?
sharenail myAsse tyson is a frauds. total haxxors. i hate seeing his face everywheres I go. thinks he is Allah and Jesus all in ones. who care what this man think. full of shitters.
shareProbably didn't have enough ships/subs that can fire tomahawks in the area to hit all of those SAMS in addition to the airbase.
DeGrasse is way overrated.
That is actually not true. Just few of tomahawks with cluster warheads are enough to destroy an airbase.
One Arleigh Burke class destroyer has 96 cells, and usually about half are tomahawks, so they have more than enough missiles on just one ship to destroy just about everything there.
And a carrier strike group usually has 6 ~ 7 Arleigh Burke class destroyers.
I question that. Recall that when we hit the one Syrian airbase with 59 TOMAHAWK CRUISE MISSILES, it was operational the next day. That doesn't sound "destroyed", and we used 59. Not to mention there appeared to be dozens of SAM batteries to hit. This is not a hypothetical assessment of the potential capabilities of the Tomahawk, this is real world data and it sounds like the hypothetical vastly overshoots the actual (as it usually does).
Second, if they fly without the "daredevil maneuvers" as DeGrasse is suggesting, then they show up on radar and Russia would see them coming and launch their alert fighters. Hell, even if the base and all the SAMs could be taken out at once, there will still two Su-57 felons in the area and two of them could take out four Super Hornets no problem.
"Destroyed" just means you make a large number of holes on the runway, if you have fast dry cement of course you can get it running again pretty quickly. But a lot of things could happen in the mean time.
Cruise missiles fly close to the ground, unless you have AWACS they don't show up on radar.
The case of Syria I think it has to do with it is further inland, and at least some of the missiles would have been intercepted. And it was aimed at "aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, defense systems, and radars"
And Shayrat Airbase has two runways and around 40 hardened aircraft shelters. Aircraft shelters alone require 40 missiles.
The mission in the movie was much simpler, just to make sure the runway is down so they have enough time to destroy the target.
But even that was a failure, the F-14 they stole took off anyway.
The entire point was to not be seen at all until on target.
Taking out the missile locations would have alerted the target.
This was made ABUNDANTLY clear in the movie.
The better question is: Why not fly F35?
shareThat is not true either. Tomahawk is subsonic, F-18 can easily follow the missiles and just one step behind.
shareWhy not just fly over at high altitude with a B-52 and drop a full load, obliterating everything in the canyon without the need for pinpoint accuracy?
shareB-52 was designed during the era when the main air defence were anti-aircraft guns, their ranges were very limited, so if you can fly sufficiently high you are invulnerable, but now missiles can even shoot down satellites, so they can shoot you down no matter how high you fly.
Now B-52 in most cases can only be used when enemy air defence is either completely down or more of a joke. That is not what the enemy was in the movie.
I think the only reason US still keeping B-52 is because they need to meet a set number of bombers, and the new ones are just way too expensive.