Talk:Air superiority

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Pearl Harbor[edit]

Is the information on Pearl Harbor relevant? I'm not sure if it is, but since I don't have anything to replace it with I'm not changing it.

Well, the US sure didn't have it on that day, that's way for sure.--Wiarthurhu 19:46, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

F-14 Tomcat[edit]

If somebody tries to remove the F-14 again because he thinks it's not an air superiority fighter, I'm gonna have a fit.--Wiarthurhu 19:46, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Design vs. Doctrine[edit]

Oy. This article is about air superiority in military doctrine. It is not a place for original research about what elements of fighter design consititute or contribute to "air superiority". And cite your sources, please!

In WWI, WWII, and the Korean War, air superiority was a matter of speed and agility. In the 1950s it was thought that missles that could kill at long ranges would obviate the need for maneuverability, but combat in the Vietnam war would lead to a rebirth of Air superiority fighters, the first of which would be the F-14 Tomcat of Top Gun fame, and later the F-15 Eagle, F-16 Falcon and F/A-18 Hornet.

Look at AirLand_Battle, which is about a specific doctrine. It doesn't and shouldn't address the design characteristics of the M1 Abrams or the Bradley, especially as doctrine revolves around combined arms that involve more than one component. In WWII, there were many DIFFERENT types of fighters that combined to achieve air superiority - heavy fighters, day fighters, escort fighers, each with different characteristics. And it was not just speed and agility. Armament mattered. Survivability mattered. But this is not the place to delve in to such matters.

That's why the term air superiority fighter didn't enter usage until the F-15; until then the mission of offensive counter air was accomplished by a mix of complementary fighters; only later did it become possible to achieve all those aims in a single fighter.--Mmx1 19:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fighter[edit]

And you don't think even the development of the F-15 with AS as the #1 design point affects doctrine?--Wiarthurhu 20:00, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


To answer your question, no. Doctrine stipulated the development of the F-15, not vice versa. Doctrine is not dictated by evolutionary upgrades to weapons. Only with revolutionary ones (e.g. Nuclear weapons) is the converse relationship true.
The use of "air superiority" in the development of the F-15 is correct, but trying to fit the term backwards and inappropriately on historical periods where it wasn't in use is a) Original Research and b) inaccurate.
I don't want this page to delve into "what constitutes a good fighter", which is of tangential relevance to the doctrine and detracts from the topic at hand, which is the evolution of the idea of "air superiority" and its increasing importance in military doctrine. That is what drove the development of fighters, not vice versa (if anything, it's the development of bombers that established the importance of air superiority). --Mmx1 20:05, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

F-100 and F-104[edit]

"The USAF had developed the F-100 and F-104 as air superiority fighters, but these did not have the range or performance to counter the MiG threat encountered over Vietnam."

This statement is accurate for the F-100, a good example of failed development, expensive, difficult to fly and maintain, and met none of its initial objectives except for speed.

However this is untrue of the F-104. The F-104 was rejected by USAF according to their doctrine at the time, which did not believe visual range air superiority fighters were useful, and because the F-104 was small and had limited avionics (no BVR capability). The F-5, the only other successful USAF air superiority development between the F-86 and F-15, was rejected by USAF for similar reasons.

F-104s won the William Tell competition three years running. They were never effectively tested in Vietnam because every time F-104s were assigned escort duty over the North, NVAF failed to molest the attacking aircraft. The Vietnamese probably believed the F-104 to be more capable. Note that NVAF had no qualms about taking on the huge, heavy, no-guns Phantom.

Both F-5 and F-104 went on to long, distinguished careers in other airforces. The F-104's biggest weakness was being unforgiving of pilot incompetence, both flight envelope violations (German accident history) and tactical mistakes (Pakistan's experience against India). The F-104 was probably the second best energy fighter of its time after the Lightning. Its only performance deficiency compared to MiG-17, -19 and -21 was low speed maneuverability, more than compensated by its acceleration, climb rate, and roll rate. Its range was also adequate based on numerous missions over North Vietnam. Like the F-8, it was a far better visual dogfighter than the Phantom in the hands of a properly trained pilot.

If you look broadly at historical combat records, with skilled pilots, energy fighters typically defeat turn fighters. But they have to stay fast and use the vertical.--RandallC 06:25, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move - Proposed merger[edit]

Air superiority → Levels of air dominance — I think it would be better to move the contents of this page and that of air supremacy into a single article, Levels of air dominance. Both of these articles are about different levels of a single concept. Also, I think that the third level in the hierarchy, the as-yet uncreated air parity, will probably not yield enough content to form a viable standalone article like the other two. Its content would probably be best as a section in another article. 01:06, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

This was originally filed as a move request, but has then been moved to Wikipedia:Proposed mergers. Procedural discussion collapsed.

The following was my response to a comment on the air supremacy talk page. Since it is part of this whole discussion, and since this is where the move/merge is to be discussed, I felt that it would be appropriate to post it here as well. I feel that it more fully explains my reasons for thinking that a single article would be better than separate articles for each level of air dominance.

"*Stepping aside from the procedural question, I would prefer not to have a merge. Air superiority and air supremacy are the actual terms which our readers will be looking up; they will be better served by an article on the subject than by the same wording in a section. A reasonable compromise would be to write a stub, essentially a disambiguation page saying that there are three levels, and linking to it from the top of each article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:25, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

It's true that almost everybody looking up this subject will look up either "air superiority" or "air supremacy" instead of "levels of air dominance". However, redirects would make this a non-issue. Having one single article would more clearly show that these two things are different levels or air dominance, and that the terms are not interchangeable. When you look at the articles themselves, I think they would be better suited for being sections within a parent article rather than separate articles. Consider:
  1. The article on air supremacy is fairly short. On top of this, references to its distinction with air superiority and air parity are thoroughly mixed in with the article, straying from the topic of air supremacy.
  2. The article on air superiority is longer. However, most of the "history" section contains references of fighters which would most likely be more appropriate in the air superiority fighter article (also, take into account that an air superiority fighter would be more than capable of also being used for air supremacy). When you take these references out, it is about the same length as the article for air supremacy
  3. The article for air parity hasn't even been created yet. It is highly unlikely that there will ever be enough information for it to warrant its own separate article, but if air superiority and air supremacy have their own articles, then it would follow that air parity would have to have its own article as well

For the above stated reasons, I still strongly support a merger of these two articles into a single new article.-- 15:50, 25 July 2009 (UTC)"

This is not a valid move request, and it appears to be controversial merge proposal, so it's important to tidy up the process. Can we close the move request as a first step towards this? Andrewa (talk) 18:09, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I'm only a casual editory on Wikipedia, and I'm not experienced with the move/merge process. It doesn't matter to me whether this is considered a move or a merge, but could somebody please explain the reasoning for why this is a merge? I'm confused, since this does involve putting two pages together, but at a new title for both of them. I thought at first it should be a merge, but then I thought that merging was only done with existing pages, and that giving an existing page a new title was a move. I'm trying to understand the process, reading over WP:Move and WP:Merge, but they don't seem to say specifically what to do when two existing pages are united on a brand new page, and so far I've only had one editor saying that I'm "abusing" the move request function, giving the simple reason that "It's as simple as that", which doesn't help.
Like I said, I don't care if this is a merge or a move. I just want to understand why it's one or the other without being accused of abusing the process and being made to feel like I'm stupid for not knowing. Like I said, I'm only a casual editor. I browse though Wikipedia, and when I see something that I think should be fixed, I try to fix it as best I can. I try my best to do the right thing. If I'm wrong, fine, but please tell me why what I'm doing is wrong, so that I can fix it in the future. That is all I ask.--Witan 20:17, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
You cannot move two pages to the same location, it's not logically possible for two articles to occupy the same location. What you want to do is to merge two pages together at a third location, that is not a move, anything that involves combining two or more sources into one article is not a move request, it is a merge request. 76.66.192.64 (talk) 05:50, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's a merger request, and the request has been moved to Wikipedia:Proposed mergers now. (See above.) Jafeluv (talk) 07:28, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stepping aside from the procedural question, I would prefer not to have a merge. Air superiority and air supremacy are the actual terms which our readers will be looking up; they will be better served by an article on the subject than by the same wording in a section. A reasonable compromise would be to write a stub, essentially a disambiguation page saying that there are three levels, and linking to it from the top of each article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:25, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's true that almost everybody looking up this subject will look up either "air superiority" or "air supremacy" instead of "levels of air dominance". However, redirects would make this a non-issue. Having one single article would more clearly show that these two things are different levels or air dominance, and that the terms are not interchangeable. When you look at the articles themselves, I think they would be better suited for being sections within a parent article rather than separate articles. Consider:
  1. The article on air supremacy is fairly short. On top of this, references to its distinction with air superiority and air parity are thoroughly mixed in with the article, straying from the topic of air supremacy.
  2. The article on air superiority is longer. However, most of the "history" section contains references of fighters which would most likely be more appropriate in the air superiority fighter article (also, take into account that an air superiority fighter would be more than capable of also being used for air supremacy). When you take these references out, it is about the same length as the article for air supremacy
  3. The article for air parity hasn't even been created yet. It is highly unlikely that there will ever be enough information for it to warrant its own separate article, but if air superiority and air supremacy have their own articles, then it would follow that air parity would have to have its own article as well

For the above stated reasons, I still strongly support a merger of these two articles into a single new article.-- 15:50, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

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