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Posted: 6/14/2014 1:38:20 PM EST
[#1]
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Making people deaf as fuck. Quote HistoryQuoted:
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If we're still able to ask questions, I have one, but you probably won't be able to answer it, as the plane retired years ago and was also USN and USMC rather than USAF. If the A-6 was brought out of retirement, and not retrofitted for EA-6B across the board, what would their most-effective use be? hahaha I was recently on a Prowler flightline and the guy I was with said to me after we watched a pair take off, "You know what those things are good for? Turning jet fuel into smoke and noise." |
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Posted: 6/14/2014 2:05:05 PM EST
[#2]
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Not necessarily. Feel free to disagree however, if you choose to rejoice in our despair especially after we've been feeding you for 40 years or so, then yeah, you might get yer ass killed. YMMV But enough of the hijack. Back to the good stuff.  Quote HistoryQuoted:
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What about bombing the ones you can identify (like the Palestinians on the night of 9/11/01 partying about the whole affair in the West Bank)? I can tell you that had I been CinC, I'd have put whatever steel I could have laid on 'em right up their asses and then announced that ALL food and monetary aid was summarily cancelled. The world might not have liked my responses but they damn well wouldn't have wanted any of them either. Disagree with US policy = valid war target... Tracking. Not necessarily. Feel free to disagree however, if you choose to rejoice in our despair especially after we've been feeding you for 40 years or so, then yeah, you might get yer ass killed. YMMV But enough of the hijack. Back to the good stuff. This thread has been off track since the second post. I'm not sure I'm ready to step up off the train of logic that leads to people getting bombed for not liking us on camera. Using that rationale we should have glassed half of Europe and large portions of CONUS. I get the sentiment but it's antithetical to the belief that a person has the right to voice a dissenting opinion. |
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Posted: 6/14/2014 11:00:56 PM EST
[#3]
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Depends on which translation you use. Colin S. Gray uses this translation, as I recall, and he is probably the most significant scholar on Clausewitz that is writing today. Quote HistoryQuoted:
Depends on which translation you use. Colin S. Gray uses this translation, as I recall, and he is probably the most significant scholar on Clausewitz that is writing today. I won't claim to know Gray, but I can access source material thanks to the interwebs. The specific distinction between "policy" and "politics" is English is pretty unique to English. Translating a phrase that short requires context. Bedenken wir nun, daß der Krieg von einem politischen Zweck ausgeht, so ist es natürlich, daß dieses erste Motiv, welches ihn ins Leben gerufen hat, auch die erste und höchste Rücksicht bei seiner Leistung bleibt. Aber der politische Zweck ist deshalb kein despotischer Gesetzgeber, er muß sich der Natur des Mittels fügen und wird dadurch oft ganz verändert, aber immer ist er das, was zuerst in Erwägung gezogen werden muß. Die Politik also wird den ganzen kriegerischen Akt durchziehen und einen fortwährenden Einfluß auf ihn ausüben, soweit es die Natur der in ihm explodierenden Kräfte zuläßt.
Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln So sehen wir also, daß der Krieg nicht bloß ein politischer Akt, sondern ein wahres politisches Instrument ist, eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs, ein Durchführen desselben mit anderen Mitteln. Was dem Kriege nun noch eigentümlich bleibt, bezieht sich bloß auf die eigentümliche Natur seiner Mittel. Daß die Richtungen und Absichten der Politik mit diesen Mitteln nicht in Widerspruch treten, das kann die Kriegskunst im allgemeinen und der Feldherr in jedem einzelnen Falle fordern, und dieser Anspruch ist wahrlich nicht gering; aber wie stark er auch in einzelnen Fällen auf die politischen Absichten zurückwirkt, so muß dies doch immer nur als eine Modifikation derselben gedacht werden, denn die politische Absicht ist der Zweck, der Krieg ist das Mittel, und niemals kann das Mittel ohne Zweck gedacht werden. Now if we reflect that war has its root in a political object, then naturally this original motive which called it into existence should also continue the first and highest consideration in the conduct of it. Still the political object is no despotic lawgiver on that account; it must accommodate itself to the nature of the means, and through that is often completely changed, but it always remains that which has a prior right to consideration. Policy therefore is interwoven with the whole action of war, and must exercise a continuous influence upon it as far as the nature of the forces exploding in it will permit. War is a mere continuation of policy by other means. We see, therefore, that war is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. All beyond this which is strictly peculiar to war relates merely to the peculiar nature of the means which it uses. That the tendencies and views of policy shall not be incompatible with these means, the art of war in general and the commander in each particular case may demand, and this claim is truly not a trifling one. But however powerfully this may react on political views in particular cases, still it must always be regarded as only a modification of them; for the political view is the object, war is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception. The work "politik" is used throughout the German. But... it's not that simple. The translator above did a pretty good job switching terms to capture the English nuance. (I suppose you could argue that the English nuance is a false one designed more to obfuscate than clarify, but I digress) German does not use "Politik" in the sense where we refer to office politics, or "playing" politics. They tend to use different pejoratives for all the negative connotations English has for the word - it seems to then allows for broader use in technical speech. We in English often use "policy" where "plan" or "strategy," or even "principle" could or should be used - and would be used in German. But, in English we shy away from such terms... arguably due to politics. Really, though I thought it would be good to quote all that here since the Rush Limbaugh crowd had shown up. |
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Posted: 6/15/2014 7:06:16 AM EST
[#4]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
What about bombing the ones you can identify (like the Palestinians on the night of 9/11/01 partying about the whole affair in the West Bank)? I can tell you that had I been CinC, I'd have put whatever steel I could have laid on 'em right up their asses and then announced that ALL food and monetary aid was summarily cancelled. The world might not have liked my responses but they damn well wouldn't have wanted any of them either. Quote HistoryQuoted:
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Bombing villages full of people who had nothing to do with the people who attacked us on 9/11 accomplishes nothing and is morally reprehensible. Anyone who advocates such fails to understand that Afghanistan is not a country for any other reason but that a few hundred years ago some Europeans drew some lines on a map. What about bombing the ones you can identify (like the Palestinians on the night of 9/11/01 partying about the whole affair in the West Bank)? I can tell you that had I been CinC, I'd have put whatever steel I could have laid on 'em right up their asses and then announced that ALL food and monetary aid was summarily cancelled. The world might not have liked my responses but they damn well wouldn't have wanted any of them either. Using that same logic we could drop JDAMs on half of GD's houses. |
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Posted: 6/15/2014 7:46:01 AM EST
[#5]
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Using that same logic we could drop JDAMs on half of GD's houses. Quote HistoryQuoted:
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Bombing villages full of people who had nothing to do with the people who attacked us on 9/11 accomplishes nothing and is morally reprehensible. Anyone who advocates such fails to understand that Afghanistan is not a country for any other reason but that a few hundred years ago some Europeans drew some lines on a map. What about bombing the ones you can identify (like the Palestinians on the night of 9/11/01 partying about the whole affair in the West Bank)? I can tell you that had I been CinC, I'd have put whatever steel I could have laid on 'em right up their asses and then announced that ALL food and monetary aid was summarily cancelled. The world might not have liked my responses but they damn well wouldn't have wanted any of them either. Using that same logic we could drop JDAMs on half of GD's houses. Foreigners must worship the US government or they deserve to die. Americans must despise the US government or they are Torries or Statists or what not. See the difference? Please, try to keep up. Geeeee. No. G. D. |
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Posted: 6/15/2014 8:09:56 AM EST
[#6]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Using that same logic we could drop JDAMs on half of GD's houses. Quote HistoryQuoted:
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Bombing villages full of people who had nothing to do with the people who attacked us on 9/11 accomplishes nothing and is morally reprehensible. Anyone who advocates such fails to understand that Afghanistan is not a country for any other reason but that a few hundred years ago some Europeans drew some lines on a map. What about bombing the ones you can identify (like the Palestinians on the night of 9/11/01 partying about the whole affair in the West Bank)? I can tell you that had I been CinC, I'd have put whatever steel I could have laid on 'em right up their asses and then announced that ALL food and monetary aid was summarily cancelled. The world might not have liked my responses but they damn well wouldn't have wanted any of them either. Using that same logic we could drop JDAMs on half of GD's houses. Well, we might cut 'em some slack on teh JDAMS but the summary cutoff of food and $ is still on teh table.
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Posted: 6/16/2014 5:20:04 AM EST
[#7]
A-10s Saved the Day in Botched Afghanistan Raid
Low-flying jets better than bombers for supporting ground troops The Royal Marines came up with a desperate and daring plan. Marines would strap themselves to the outsides of two British Army Apache gunship helicopters and dart back across the river to pick up Ford. They wanted the A-10s and B-1 to cover them. “One set of coordinates made the hair on the back of my neck stand up,” the A-10 pilot wrote. “I glanced at my canopy, where I had very similar coordinates written in grease pencil and circled with ‘FDLY’”—code for friendly troops—“written on top. Before I could put two and two together, I heard the JTAC clear the B-1 hot for the four JDAMs.” “Immediately after the ‘cleared hot,’ I heard my flight lead interject.” “Abort! Abort! Abort!” the flight lead barked into the radio. “State reason!” the B-1 crew demanded... https://medium.com/@warisboring/a-10s-saved-the-day-in-botched-afghanistan-raid-b78367f4fd0e |
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Posted: 6/16/2014 6:42:44 AM EST
[#8]
bad link.
was the A-10 acting as FAC-A? |
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Posted: 6/16/2014 7:31:34 AM EST
[#9]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
bad link. was the A-10 acting as FAC-A? No. Part of an on-call CAS mission. TL:DR - A-10, hanging on the tanker, figured out that the JTAC had passed his own coordinates to a B-1 for a BOC drop and called abort. Speaks more to the training and proficiency of the A-10 pilots than it does to the airframes capabilities. If anything, it shows that having a second crewman in a CAS aircraft can be incredibly useful. |
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Posted: 6/16/2014 7:59:33 AM EST
[#10]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
No. Part of an on-call CAS mission. TL:DR - A-10, hanging on the tanker, figured out that the JTAC had passed his own coordinates to a B-1 for a BOC drop and called abort. Speaks more to the training and proficiency of the A-10 pilots than it does to the airframes capabilities. If anything, it shows that having a second crewman in a CAS aircraft can be incredibly useful. Quote HistoryQuoted:
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bad link. was the A-10 acting as FAC-A? No. Part of an on-call CAS mission. TL:DR - A-10, hanging on the tanker, figured out that the JTAC had passed his own coordinates to a B-1 for a BOC drop and called abort. Speaks more to the training and proficiency of the A-10 pilots than it does to the airframes capabilities. If anything, it shows that having a second crewman in a CAS aircraft can be incredibly useful. True on all counts. F35 pilots are going to get zero CAS training. Then they are going to show up to the party ready to follow the fucked up doctrine. Hating on the plane has nothing to do with the men who fly them. |
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Posted: 6/16/2014 8:43:17 AM EST
[#11]
The easy way around this problem is to have the pilots spend time on the ground doing JTAC stuff and learning the other end of it.
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Posted: 6/16/2014 8:44:40 AM EST
[#12]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
The easy way around this problem is to have the pilots spend time on the ground doing JTAC stuff and learning the other end of it. AF already teaches a course on ground combat. Nothing else required. 
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Posted: 6/16/2014 9:10:06 AM EST
[#13]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
True on all counts. F35 pilots are going to get zero CAS training. Then they are going to show up to the party ready to follow the fucked up doctrine. Hating on the plane has nothing to do with the men who fly them. Can't speak to USAF training, or really even that much to Navy training, but I know that USN is buying dual-mode LJDAM, which potentially offers you more capability than just BOC with a JDAM. |
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Posted: 6/16/2014 5:08:22 PM EST
[#14]
Relevant.
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Posted: 6/16/2014 5:32:10 PM EST
[#15]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Yes, most of our men who have fought and died in our more recent wars did so in vain. We lost over 58,000 people in Vietnam trying to keep the Communists from taking over. Yet we failed and the Communists did take over. The people that died there died for abso-fucking-lutely nothing. It was a waste of good men. And it sickens me. The same is true for Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq is falling apart and will soon be ruled by people that will make Saddam Hussein look like a fucking Sunday school teacher in comparison. And Afghanistan will suffer the same fate the second we leave there. What have these wars accomplished? Nothing! And you wanna talk about ignorance? Ignorance is continuing to get involved in dubious causes that lead to protracted guerrilla wars that we cannot win. Ignorance is trying to succeed at nation building in countries populated by 13th century savages who want nothing to do with our grand visions of democracy. I am well aware of recent US history and the history of warfare. And that awareness tells me that the American public simply won't tolerate wars that drag on for years without any progress. Americans supported the Vietnam War initially, until they realized how politicians dragged us into the mess, then wouldn't do what was necessary to actually win the damn war. Americans also initially supported the Iraq invasion...up until they realized the WMD threat was dramatically overstated. They quickly grew tired of it when a steady stream of flag draped coffins started returning home for what had become a highly dubious cause. And though it took much longer, popular opinion finally even turned against the war in Afghanistan, despite the fact it is the land where the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 were trained and their leadership based. They did so because it became apparent that it was futile to attempt the sort of nation building we were trying. Had we stuck to killing terrorists rather than trying to bring democracy to a hodgepodge nation like Afghanistan, maybe we could have actually succeeded. I think Americans are willing to make sacrifices. But it has to be for a reason. And it must serve a purpose. Sacrifice and loss of life without any benefit or purpose is not going to fly here. Unfortunately, our inept leadership can never seem to learn this lesson and as a result get us bogged down in these purposeless, endless wars that have objectives which are ill-defined or can't be achieved in the first place. I'm sick and tired of seeing thousands of our best and brightest sacrificing their minds, bodies and lives for hopeless causes. War should be a matter of last resort. And when it comes, it needs to be fought as a war, with definable objectives that we can reasonably expect to achieve. If the situation calls for kicking ass and breaking things, fine. But if it calls for police actions, nation building and other such folly, then forget it. It isn't worth getting involved in. Quote HistoryQuoted:
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So every KIA, WIA, and Veteran of every war post WW2 was wasted and accomplished nothing because the outcome of different wars in different times for different reasons was different. That speaks volumes to your ignorance on recent US history and the overall history of warfare. Do you think that insurgency using Guerrilla tactics is new to the world in the 20th or 21st century? It's impossible to solve a real problem if you refuse to acknowledge its existence in the real world. It is tempting to attempt to ignore political reality and try to just blame the politicians. But that doesn't work. They, like the military are just a reflection of our society. I always find it ironic that the AF culture consistently longs for the days of fighting the good fight in WW2... Which happened before their service existed, and was a meat grinder for the Army Air Corps because of terrible doctrine and ignoring reality/results. Yes, most of our men who have fought and died in our more recent wars did so in vain. We lost over 58,000 people in Vietnam trying to keep the Communists from taking over. Yet we failed and the Communists did take over. The people that died there died for abso-fucking-lutely nothing. It was a waste of good men. And it sickens me. The same is true for Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq is falling apart and will soon be ruled by people that will make Saddam Hussein look like a fucking Sunday school teacher in comparison. And Afghanistan will suffer the same fate the second we leave there. What have these wars accomplished? Nothing! And you wanna talk about ignorance? Ignorance is continuing to get involved in dubious causes that lead to protracted guerrilla wars that we cannot win. Ignorance is trying to succeed at nation building in countries populated by 13th century savages who want nothing to do with our grand visions of democracy. I am well aware of recent US history and the history of warfare. And that awareness tells me that the American public simply won't tolerate wars that drag on for years without any progress. Americans supported the Vietnam War initially, until they realized how politicians dragged us into the mess, then wouldn't do what was necessary to actually win the damn war. Americans also initially supported the Iraq invasion...up until they realized the WMD threat was dramatically overstated. They quickly grew tired of it when a steady stream of flag draped coffins started returning home for what had become a highly dubious cause. And though it took much longer, popular opinion finally even turned against the war in Afghanistan, despite the fact it is the land where the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 were trained and their leadership based. They did so because it became apparent that it was futile to attempt the sort of nation building we were trying. Had we stuck to killing terrorists rather than trying to bring democracy to a hodgepodge nation like Afghanistan, maybe we could have actually succeeded. I think Americans are willing to make sacrifices. But it has to be for a reason. And it must serve a purpose. Sacrifice and loss of life without any benefit or purpose is not going to fly here. Unfortunately, our inept leadership can never seem to learn this lesson and as a result get us bogged down in these purposeless, endless wars that have objectives which are ill-defined or can't be achieved in the first place. I'm sick and tired of seeing thousands of our best and brightest sacrificing their minds, bodies and lives for hopeless causes. War should be a matter of last resort. And when it comes, it needs to be fought as a war, with definable objectives that we can reasonably expect to achieve. If the situation calls for kicking ass and breaking things, fine. But if it calls for police actions, nation building and other such folly, then forget it. It isn't worth getting involved in. Agreed. However, wasn't this a thread on CAS technicalities? |
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Posted: 6/29/2014 8:16:05 AM EST
[#16]
What in THE hell is a goin on in here? You all sound like a bunch of Kansas City fgts!
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Posted: 7/2/2014 2:56:50 AM EST
[#17]
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Time and again I see people post opinions and speculations about the use of Air Power in support of ground operations that suggests to me that there is a widespread misunderstanding of how the apparatus works. In particular, (referencing the current frat thread) notions of the role & application of CAS, how decisions are made, and what is and is not appropriate as a CAS asset. I will NOT discuss any particular missions/operations, nor will I disclose any capabilities or TTPs that are not common knowledge. When in doubt, I will err on the side of OPSEC. I just want to give the uninitiated the opportunity to learn more about Close Air Support planning, execution, and command & control. (DISCLAIMER: I'm pretty much going to just ignore Sylvan, should he chime in, as he has demonstrated a recalcitrant prejudice towards USAF CAS and refusal to look at the bigger picture. So, no offense, Sylvan, but if you'd like to discuss CAS with me, we'll do it in a private forum.) Ask away... what do you do now? You still in the mil or did you get out? |
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