Posted on 04/28/2015 8:24:45 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
Maybe her father flew A-1 Skyraiders? Seems she got mixed up A-1 v A-10??????
Both excellent ground attack platforms..............
See #115
I would argue the Marine Corps is the expert on the CAS mission for a lot of reasons starting with their heritage in developing many of the CAS concepts we still use today (the Banana Wars as an example). That heritage has carried all they way through today’s expeditionary maneuver warfare. Marine aviation isn’t a supporting component of a MAGTF. It is an integral part of a MAGTF. Combine that with the reality that “Every Marine is a rifleman” and you have a unique culture where Marine aviators performing CAS have actual experience performing the role of the men they are supporting on the ground. In my practical experience flying with Marines in a CAS environment, there is more of a bond between their pilots and the supported ground troops than there is between Navy or Air Force pilots supporting Army troops. In all cases, pilots of all services perform with a high level of dedication and commitment in performing the mission, but the bond between Manines supporting Marines increases the effectivness of their CAS missions.
I’m not sure that makes any sense at all as written, but it is pretty evident when witnessed. And is a key reason why the Marine Corps is pretty adamant about limiting their CAS support to their own aircraft.
“...not just one pass haul a$$”........
Those days are pretty much over for all aircraft. Back in the old days when you had to drop a string of 6 or more Mk82’s in the hope of taking out a single tank (assuming you could even find the thing from a low altitude ingress to a pop to acquire while under fire from everyone on the ground with access to a trigger). Now, “tank plinking” is done with one or two LGBs at a time, dropped from an altitude that allows you to maintain almost constant situational awareness of friendless and the target, and doesn’t burn as much fuel, increasing loiter time significantly. And it allows 2-4 aircraft to coordinate attacks on the target at the same time using one forward air controller. There are very few CAS scenarios where a flight of four F-16’s or F-18’s don’t have enough ordnance to resolve the problem. And that includes a couple strafe passes per aircraft, with results that aren’t nearly as impressive as those provided by an A-10 strafe pass, but still manage to get a point across.
Yep! it WAS A-1s he flew in Vietnam. Took a lot of guts to do that kind of flying. He made us proud.
“...and lay off half the government civilians who do squat but keep the contractors from accomplishing any job their tasked with doing in a timely and efficient manner...”
Oh, heavens YES!! All I can say is that there are some Prime contractors, DOD civilians and military staff (O-5 and above) who should be thanking their lucky stars I’m not a federal prosecutor because I’d start digging with a passion. The enormous amount of waste and dysfunctional bureaucracy I’ve experienced has *got* to be criminal.
Not only not excellent but doesn’t have range, giving up range for power, and it simply ain’t as tough and can’t do what the Warthog can do in ground attack missions. What we need are updated F-16’s and updated, new A-10’s. There will be a need for a robust ground attack plane for at least the next couple decades——until the ME gets cleaned up at least. The F-35 is a money pit-—too freekin expensive to be usable. Nobody will want to take a chance on losing one.
Not enough maintenance personnel but they are fully stocked in LGBTQ Tolerance personnel.
Yes, that’s a solid plan.
Actually, double-down on the bluff. Go and retire the A-10, and then open up the drone industry to Army armed-drones, with Army folks running them, and edge the AF out of the close air support game. I’d also open up the drone business to long-distance bombing, and put the AF out of that business as well. We are probably forty years from the AF dissolving away into nothing.
I like that idea a lot.
Pepsionice, I’m interested to hear your perspective on whether the AH-64 is a good CAS platform.
Also, with regard to drones and long distance bombing, that is essentially the current role of a cruise missile. The Navy and Air Force have been employing them with great effectiveness for decades. Assuming we don’t already have long range, bomb carrying drones, what makes you think introducing them to the inventory in the future would “dissolve” the Air Force?
Correct, mostly, but multiple passes with a gun is still is necessary and works.
One pass with JDAM or SDB or some sort of PGM does not work as well as multiple passes with a gun (A-10).
Flexibility and sustained firepower counts.
Well that depends almost exclusively on the target. One 500lb GBU-12 hitting a standard tank will destroy it. So why would you want to hit it with multiple strafe passes. One 2000lb GBU-10 will replace most buildings with a 50 foot deep crater. You couldn’t get the same effect with 100 strafe passes.
What target are you thinking about where your weapon of choice would me a strafe pass over a PGM?
“Well that depends almost exclusively on the target.”
Indeed.
“One 500lb GBU-12 hitting a standard tank will destroy it.”
True, if it hits it. Thing is the best tank killer is another tank, and tank plinking may be fun but you only carry a few GBUs, whereas the 1100 rounds from an A-10 means 8-10 passes (not counting the Maverick load-out or its own GBU’s. Again, it is the ability to stay around and shape the battle-space.
“So why would you want to hit it with multiple strafe passes.”
One pass kills it. Move on to the next.
“One 2000lb GBU-10 will replace most buildings with a 50 foot deep crater. You couldn’t get the same effect with 100 strafe passes.”
Never said so. However, a Maverick missile will do some really bad damage, and the A-10 (with its loiter time) can make its own passes with PGMs and move on to the next building.
“What target are you thinking about where your weapon of choice would me a strafe pass over a PGM?”
Armour, armored infantry, infantry, CAS/TIC, even anti-ship (disabling).
It is a matter of flexibility and an ability to serve as a force multiplier.
An A-10 provides a mix of weapons (gun, PGMs), and has the gas to stay on station to provide that level of dedicated support that ensures the battle-space is affected directly.
More than a few times during Gulf War I, I was working a 4-ship of A-10’s as they pounded the pee out of the Iraqi's pass after pass after pass, and then some flight of F-16s shows up and calls only 5-minutes playtime. Great, hold the A-10’s high and dry, call in the Vipers with a GPS designated Tgt, whoosh and then call back the A-10s.
CAS is where the ability to provide precise weapons delivery really counts (and takes time to get eyes on, and also CAS means the friendlies are close and blast/frag means something, and a gun makes all the difference.
Bullets aren’t precision guided munitions. And while A-10’s are accurate strafers, they can’t match the probability of a kill on a strafe pass that they can achieve dropping a laser guided bomb. That is exactly why they now employ the same weapons in the same way as F-16s/15Es/18s/ B-1s/52s etc. and very rarely strafe. Are you aware that in the last decade, a vast majority of CAS has been conducted by aircraft other than the A-10? The argument that if the A-10 goes away, the Army will lose its CAS support has been invalidated by the simple reality that the A-10 has already largely been replaced in the CAS environment. And when it does perform CAS, it almost never does it from low altitude, or uses its gun. There are much better ways to perform CAS now, and all aircraft use essentially the same weapons and tactics to do it.
During Gulf War 1, CAS was conducted almost the same way it was in Vietnam. The only aircraft employing precision guided bombs were F-15Es and A-6s. Now, every aircraft uses them, and employs them with roughly the same targetting pods and tactics. That includes the A-10. In Gulf War 1, one of the most challenging missions was night CAS. You are most likely familiar with A-10s dropping slow burning flares on the ground to create measurement “units” that were then used to talk pilot eyes onto a target that may or may not have been visible under airborne flares floating down in parachutes. With the advent of IR targeting pods, night vision goggles, and IR laser designators, it is now easier to perform CAS at night than it is in daylight. If you were working a CAS mission now, you would pass GPS generated coordinates to the aircraft you were working. You may or may not even have to talk on the radio to do it. You could mark that target with an IR laser and ask the fighters what they see. From an altitude of over 20,000’ agl, those fighters could tell you something like “I see a small two door pickup with a heavy machine gun in the bed. There are four personnel standing near or on the pickup and another doinking a goat behind the bush next to the pickup. The man firing the machine gun is smoking a cigerette” You simply respond, “That’s your target, cleared hot”. 35 seconds later, a 500lb bomb with an accuracy measured in single digit feet, takes out everything including the goat, and you move to the next target. Does that sound anything like the CAS you conducted in Gulf War 1?
Loiter time is a key issue, but moving CAS out of the low altitude environment has significantly increased the loiter time of all aircraft involved. And note that moving CAS out of the low altitude environment didn’t decrease the accuracy of the weapons employed. It increased it. If loiter time is the most important factor, your favorite CAS aircraft should be the B-52. Dozens of laser and GPS guided bombs of all sizes employed using almost the exact same guidance systems as the A-10.
That’s a long way of saying that people who argue the A-10 is the only aircraft that can effectively conduct CAS, have very little idea how CAS is now conducted. Their previous experience (or more commonly, their perception of how CAS is conducted) is obsolete. That’s a good thing, because the technological advances we now use to execute the CAS mission have vastly increased the accuracy of weapons delivered and greatly reduced the time it takes to deliver them.
That said, high altitude, high angle strafe provides a pencil beam of bullets with a Pk that is down-right astonishing.
No need to fly low if you don't need to, and that point is lost by many when discussing CAS. Seems many associate CAS with “Close”, and thinking “close” means the aircraft is close to the ground. Close means close delivery of the weapon, not how close to the ground you fly. Don't you get tired of trying to explain that? I know I do.
What the A-10 provides is the ability to remain in the tgt area and perform multiple precise attacks, delivering just as many (if not more) PGMs that the -16’s and the JSF, and well beyond the F-22. And the A-10 can deliver these PGMs just as close as all other platforms. . .and the A-10 has a gun that allows VERY close CAS. Can't do that with PGMs of any type (except, perhaps, for the SDB).
So, the A-10’s biggest asset over other platforms is the gun, flexible and allows for weapons effect much closer in a TIC environment.
Never said the Army would lose CAS if the A-10 goers away.
The reason most CAS is performed by other platforms is because the A-10 is being retired and the number of platforms is decreasing. Of course, that means a multitude of other platforms have to pick up the slack.
Accuracy, flexibility, multiple passes beyond a -16’s load-out, multiple passes because of fuel state, delivery weapons (gun) VERY close to friendlies. . .yes, for CAS the A-10 is the platform, not the only platform.
Other may disagree.
Cheers.
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