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NASA'S Role in Aeronautics A Workshop (1981) / Chapter Skim
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THE OUTLOOK FOR MILITARY AERONAUTICS
Pages 77-84

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From page 77...
... This has not always been the case. I would like to take you back a little bit in history to recall that the principle impact that the United States had in World War II -- and in fact in World War I as well -- resulted from our enormous logistics advantage.
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From page 78...
... the Soviet Union invested about $240 billion more in military equipment than the United States. That figure may be l0 or 20 or 30 percent off, but despite this uncertainty, it is clear that we are facing an enormous problem and an enormous disparity in numbers.
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From page 79...
... The MX missile program is not so much a missile program as it is a program to provide a survivable basing for missiles. The cruise missile program is not so much oriented toward improving the striking power of our bombers as it is to allow our bombers to perform their mission without having to enter the air defense net of the Soviet Union.
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From page 80...
... There is a widespread myth that the United States builds expensive airplanes and the Soviet Union builds simple, reliable, and cheap airplanes; that is no longer true. For better or worse, they have emulated us in this department and they are now building aircraft as complex and as expensive as ours.
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From page 81...
... We conduct analyses of air-to-air combat situations, in particular, the very detailed simulated combat we conduct at Nellis Air Force Base in a program called "Red Flag." In this program, we bring Ln squadrons of U.S. tactical fighters and match them against an aggressor fighter squadron that we keep based there.
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From page 82...
... There will be two fairly unromantic and undramatic technical thrusts in that direction. We will be converging toward having a greater short takeoff and landing capability in our tactical airplanes.
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From page 83...
... An AMRAAM missile, the one I described to you, this radar-guided missile, is a very formidable threat to an airplane today, in no way to be compared with the threat of a Sparrow missile in the Vietnam War era. The A-9M, which is the current design of the Sidewinder missile, is vastly superior to the Sidewinder when it was originally developed.
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Key Terms

  • defense department
  • conventional war
  • missile program
  • superior means
  • tactical aircraft

  • tactical airplanes
  • fighter squadron
  • major objective
  • greatly reduce
  • indian ocean

  • massive armored
  • little bit
  • soviet production
  • nuclear war
  • deterring nuclear

  • aggressor fighter
  • described deterring
  • simulated combat
  • combat performance
  • sidewinder missile

  • air combat
  • builds simple
  • own forces
  • wdrld war
  • people argue

  • fighter pilot
  • locating enemy
  • flying radar
  • states builds
  • logistics advantages


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