With terminal control from a JTAC?

You have "seen" it.  Do you mean "seen it" or do you mean watched on liveleak like everyone else?

Same thing for us. A sheet of paper with 24 aircraft and you rank them 1-24, your merit earns you your spot.

Nothing like a GD CAS thread to learn how to do my job.

"Hey schemes, they're using a lot of turbo props lately, we can barely afford food, have to dry our own piss to get ingredients for explosives and Mohammad needs us at work tomorrow so we can afford a few more mags...,so 'lets go procure some manpads'"

You tell someone to stick to video games but you think some Hezb-e-islami fighter can respawn as an engineer and pick stingers...

Like the world would stop spinning if USAF aristocracy got shot at...Maybe it would piss them off and make them want to win. 

Liveleak?  Somebody doesn't know where to go to watch them all.  

I still don't know why we can't have a few wings around with Super Tucs or equivalent aircraft loitering around with small diameter bombs ready to drop in support of the CAS mission in a no threat environment.

Just because the Air Force sucks at recruiting and retention of pilots doesn't seem like an excuse to me.

The Marines care about CAS (so I'm told) and are an independent branch that could have gotten A-29s whenever they wanted, but didn't.

But the Air Force sucks and doesn't care about CAS because it uses fast fighters with targeting pods to do the job.  Unlike the Marines that use fast fighters with targeting pods.

-Amen

It's a shame the army has no Super Tucanos.

We do have quite a few Super Chicanos though, and they make up for it.

The irony is the tucanos are the right fit for the army and a disaster for the AF.

the army is too stupid to see it and the AF is too selfish to allow it to happen anyway.

See also:  C27J

Maybe SOCOM will pick up the slack, but they share about as well as the AF.  At least the sexys would have something useful when the scary sun comes out.

Has the US had any fast-movers at all shot down in the GWOT?  I know I've read of a few that have gone down for one reason or another -- but a shoot down?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/09/why-is-america-using-these-antique-planes-to-fight-isis.html Tested ov-10's.  Worked great, then said they were too expensive.  The problem cost was the maintence of a fleet or 2.  To some degree costs have a large fixed component.  You need enough airframes in your fleet to lower the average cost.  You need much of the same standby inventory and skill sets to keep a squadron of 20 in the air as 1

A-10 in 2003.

Thats it.

A Viper dude crashed doing a gun run supporting a bad day for CAG and the 160th back in Iraq.

Before I have to go get booger from school and take him shooting I thought I would chime in.

Are we replacing the A-10 to kill tanks and everything else on the battlefield. Or just a simple CAS bird for precision strikes on asshats who need killing. Me and sylvan have got into some discussions about the gun in the bird.  BUT

BUT PLEASE

What ever we do go with FOR CHRIST SAKES PUT A MARINE IN IT. PLEASE just please put a Marine in it.  Don't give to the future 777 drivers to fuck up.

Giving what ever we wind up with to the Airforce to fuck up, is like giving a former meth cook who is now a meth head a new house with a really nice kitchen.

For the last 16 years the Marines could have pushed to get an LAAR for themselves but chose not to.

IMHO I'd put an Army maneuver officer in the back seat.

T6 Texan

Any maneuver or fires officer or CWO.

I'd also make them ANG squadrons habitually gained by a specific division or Battlespace owning BCT.

Yup.

thats kinda my problem with this.  this is the wrong frame for the AF.  It would be a giant waste of money.  The AF should come out and be honest about that.  But now a new SECDEF has a bug up his ass and the AF will jump on this just to cock block anyone else getting involved and frankly to ensure it fails.

why not the texan II?  they're already in the inventory and made in america as opposed to brazil.

They are building tucanos in Florida now.  Texan is much smaller and is a converted trainer.  the tucano was designed from the ground up to be a turbo prop attack aircraft, IIRC.

Ultimately it doesn't matter.
Bronco, tucano, ag tractor, AT-6.

whatever.

Much of the Super Taco is made in the US.

You noticed that too did you? And I thought it was all a trick? So now they want a '50s vintage turbo prop because....because why? What possible turbo-prop could be 1/2 as tough as the 2 jet engined A-10? And the A-10s get shot to pieces in the mud and only survive because they are a flying titanium bathtub of redundancy. Most of the time they survive. And they are very good at night. Even F16s, 18s, 35, Harriers are far more survivable then these cheap ass trainer/low threat attack whatevers. And you have to "survive" before you can support ground troops.

This Super Turdcano is a POS that wouldnt survive a minute against any halfway decent adversary.

I never once heard a USAF pilot ever complain about CAS. In fact they like turning terrorists into shredded goat meat. USAF pilots absolutely despise terrorists and will happily murder them in a minute.

The P51 actually was a pretty bad fighter bomber compared to the P47

You still aren't listening.

No one wants to fly these things cross FLOT in MCO.

They'll work just fine for what everyone has been spending the last 50 years doing.

The Army does this stuff with rotary all the time.

Wanting to do CAS and wanting to be good at it are different things. But this is beyond CAS, this is CCA which is a lot better and easier for the guys on the ground to employ.

you keep saying that the air force cannot fill open pilots slots.  why is that the case and how do you fix it?

at least 6.   we could buy around 15 t-6s.

It doesn't matter which one.  It would probably be best to procure all 3 (I think there are 3 different planes?) in order to placate the congressmen with airplane factories in their states. The total cost would likely still be under the cost of an F-35.  The important part is to get them and see how the whole thing works.   Then if one of them is a clusterfuck you could point to the others as comparative proof to get it's procurement killed.  At least then you wind up with something in the air instead of an over time and budget silver bullet program saddled with lawsuits from the companies who's plane didn't get picked.

We desperately need something that is cheap to fly that is designed to support ground troops fighting the mud hut wars.   A B-1 or F-35 ain't it.

who flies it?  the air force doesn't want cheap, low and slow, non-stealth aircraft.

Zero of the super tuco is made in the US unless it's to appease congressturds.  It's a Brazilian airplane and always has been.

What the fuck good is a T-6?  At that point you may as well list how many 172s we could get since they'd be just as useful for air support.

...and so desperately need even faster supersonic stealth hoverjets to do...CAS?

For the record I think the AF should have bought LAAR over a decade ago.  I just have to counter the irrational hate.

The Super Tucano is a derivative aircraft from the Tucano, a trainer very similar to the Texan.

I'd be okay with both your points, but in this one you would have to have a pretty high plane:crew ratio if you made it Guard.

This is bullshit.

We've been in Afghanistan for 16 years. During that time, we could have paid for a fleet of LAA and airfields to support them with what we've paid to have strategic bombers come flying in from COTUS to blow up dirt.

We have zilch that can fight COIN warfare. 

We've got oodles of aircraft that can intercept your high value target when he pops up in some shithole in Africa. 

Oh, and before you say it, the next war?  It's a hell of a lot more likely to look like Afghanistan than it is Iraq '91, or some giant masturbatory fantasy of going to war with China.  If you want to talk about China, let's talk about cyber-war, which is criminally underfunded and poorly managed. 

Of course we are limiting capabilities.  That's the whole idea. An encrypted radio set, some sort of gun on a turrent.  If the Air Force can't provide that on a platform that can be low maintenance and land on a dirt strip, the problem is the Air Force.  Unless the freaking laws of physics have changed while I wasn't looking, putting a set of equipment on a fixed wing aircraft is going to give you longer range/loiter time than putting the same set of equipment on a rotary wing...  And less maintenance as well. 

I feel like you've created a set of requirements that are just there so you can't make LAA/LAAR aircraft work.  "Oh, it must have blah blah blah, and then it will be too heavy, and now it won't work".  "Doctrine demands that we do XXXX"  "Procurement is broken, so F-35 all things".  Do you seriously hear yourself talking?  

It doesn't need bombs.  Sure, I'd bet Sylvan would love to have bombs, but if you tell him "It won't work because then we'd have to strengthen the wings to carry them and that would render the aircraft to heavy for a dirt strip" (or whatever), I suspect he'd be fine with it.  

I've watched a thousand videos on liveleak that happen like this:  Guys take fire from somewhere.  Maybe 100 rounds and a couple of RPG's...  They shoot back some.  They call in artillery or CAS that arrives 15 minutes later when the shooters have gone back to bed and are fucking some goats.  How difficult is it to understand that having some sort of airborne support that can shoot at them a bit and keep them from running away, and that can direct your ground guys in would have ended a ton of those engagements with dead bad guys instead of traumatized goats?

We need to be able to fight wars, these sorts of low intensity COIN operations without spending a king's ransom.  All the services need to figure this out, but the Air Force seems to be the ones most resistant to considering the economy of it. 

After we assraped Saddam, nobody is going up against us toe to toe conventionally anymore.

Yet we've fought numerous wars, basically to a loss, because we lose at COIN.  

If you are Iran, what do you look at doing?  Watching everything you own get chewed up in 48 hours in the desert?  Or fight a low cost insurgency for 10 years until we get tired and go home?

Oh, and we have B2's and B1's, and F-35's and F-22's and all sorts of shit.  Why can't we have 100 LAAR aircraft to fill a real need?  For a line item that's pocket change to the pentagon.

Yeah, if we only had 2,300 F-35's to hit the beach with in Irawn or Korea.  

If we only had nearly 200 F-22's to provide air superiority.  

If we only had the world's only fleet of deployed, operational stealth aircraft.  

If only.  

Truth. 

In this entirely ridiculous thread, typical for the GD CAS "experts" not a single armchair expert has ever even attempted to address the ground commander problem I brought up. Everyone sidesteps it and blames it in airframes they no nothing about, or tactics they know nothing about. If it didnt mean the continued death of so many fine soldiers and marines I would wish that GD got everything on their CAS wishlist. Then, when not a damn thing changes, and good men are still dying with unused weapons overhead, theyd no longer be able to pretend what the main problem is.

When I checked in with callsign and loadout with the soldiers or marines I was supporting, I am 100% autonomous. That is, I drop on their order without any contact or permissions required from my chain of command.

You want LAA aircraft because they will be there when the fight starts. More times than I can count, I HAVE been there when the fight starts, DIRECTLY overhead the TIC watching it unfold, and ground comman simply will not give clearance to engage.

Time after time, I have watched men stack on a door or courtyard to take out a sniper on the top floor of a building or rpg shooters from a corner wall and they take casualties while Im eyes on. Already there, in radio contact, Cant get clearance to engage from the commander.

We would attempt to guard convoys. They get ambushed, dismount and fight. Again, already there, eyes on, watching it all go down right underneath me. Cant get clearance from the ground commander.

All of you morons who think a new aircraft or different color uniform are going to solve the number one problem with CAS that causes 99% of the bombs that should have been dropped to stay on the jet dont know jack because you havent been there. I have. Countless times. Ready willing and able, loaded for bear, and many times go home with every bomb still on the jet.

I have never had a talk on fail to find a target. I have never had a bomb miss by more than six feet. I have refused to drop exactly once, when I was cleared hot on a friendly position. Other than that, i dropped when asked everytime and hit every target i was allowed too. Less than ten percent of the time would the ground commander allow me to do my job.

Ask yourself if you really believe that men that spent nearly waking moment of their life training to fight, men so type A they will at times come to blows over how crisp their wingmans checkin was over the radio, just decided that when they get put in the big game they dont care to engage. These guys want to kill the enemy so bad they can hardly sleep at night. We were absolutely enraged at not being allowed to fight.

These threads are entertaining the way that watching an idiot hurt himself can be, but just in case one of you out there is someday in a position to fix the mindset of the modern military commander which is that casualties among his own men is less of a risk to his career than collateral damage, know the truth.

The cold hard truth if you fought in on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan is this: you own commanders let you down, and I didnt like it anymore than you did.

I agree with you.

No matter what the frame, if the AF is flying it, its gonna suck.

There hasn't been a pilot shortage since Orville and Wilbur had to flip to see who went first. It's a matter of changing the aperture of selection, not some mythical shortage of what is in essence a meat computer that this nation builds in the hundreds daily.

The observer will be an Army Fires, Aviation or Maneuver officer. The pilot can be a USAF officer.

The ratio point had nothing to do with shortages, but rather about deployment dwell time for something that's going to be forward or training a lot.

F/A-18C

Shot down how?