what is the danger close on that?

Sounds like you're saying it's doable, but be cautious about it.

I mean essentially this is the safety/no safety argument on pistols for army. On a very basic level you're just arguing that people are retarded and can't avoid killing friendlies unless we spend a bazillion dollars per pilot and only put the absolute best in the air. Then you're afraid to use them for normal use.

Wouldn't it be like the army adopting delta training for its grunts and then complaining that they don't have enough infantry grunts?

And when the next Sylvan comes along to argue for lesser trained grunts to reduce cost and open up the lists, you say "but they won't have the skill or experience"

??

Lol. Wtf does pilot safety have to do with CAS? CAS is safer for a fighter pilot than the most basic BFM training mission you start the second week of a qual course. We completely scoffed the notion of ground fire in OIF/OEF unless your talking about our own patriots or you were flying an A10, and flew with impunity from the surface to whatever.

I see the thread got stupider since I left. Shocker.

Someone suggested that pilots lives were more important than the lives of Soldiers.

Lets be fair, more valuable.  He never said more important.

Interesting.  I think it was a F16 pilot who said he couldn't go lower than 10K AGL due to ground fire during a TIC.

I wonder which has the higher fratricide rate; A2G or G2A?

Aren't we going to all smart munitions?  Why does the pilot have to do any work in 

uncontested air space?  Hit the button and let the smart bomb smart.

The pilot needs to understand what's going on at the ground level well enough to know what he can drop on.

It's not easy.

Listening to some of the opinions in this thread, one would think this is so hard that the USAF's highly trained pilots can't do it, and that the USAF should use pilots with far less training instead.

I have no doubt that they could use less well trained pilots than what they use now.

I'm pretty sure your average Kiowa pilot with a GED and a year of training would do just fine.

So it turned into a country club.

Totally different cultures. Most of the Kiowa pilots I flew with were prior Rangers, SF, PJs and regular infantry types.

Ive met and spoken with a few AF pilots.  They had good hygiene, a squadron bar and pool table. And they were going home a lot sooner then me and with fewer (none) bullet patches on their aircraft.  

My Cavalry Troop lost 4 of 15 of our pilots to SAF in 2012.  We didn't have a pool table though.  Hell, most days I chose between eating or sleeping an extra hour.  We didn't have a bar either.

Fuck, I should have been an Air Force pilot.

Interdiction and denial of movement would be effective missions, would they not?

Except that our C-130s, C-17s, and C-5s flew around the clock.  Regardless of the chest thumping idiocy posted by your brethren, the shithooks weren't flying from "C-130 capable strip to strip", they were flying to smaller FOBs and the Green Zone.  We flew our C-130s all over that shithole, to every single airfield that could accommodate them.  Flew them so much, in fact that we pretty much destroyed the E model and H model fleet, which is why they either got new wing boxes or were replaced by Js.

Damn.

There were tons of flights I saw of sling loaded cargo and troops flying between jalalabad and bagram. 

Pretty sure the F-16 was from the ANG unit near my house

I was talking about Iraq, not AFG, I only speak about things I have seen first hand.

Sure he did. I also heard he asked if you could patch him thru to mommy.

If you are comparing rates, ie, number of launches on friendlies divided by total number of launches, its G2A and its not even close. But as usual, never let facts interrupt your worn out narrative.

I do hope you get LAAR. It will be much cheaper to not use them than it was to not use us.

Carry on.

If only everyone in this thread did the same.

Is this a CAS thread or a LEO thread?

rates?

Nah.
just kia.

A simple enough metric.

Don't get on me, Patriot falls under the CFACC.  Something something indivisible airpower, something.

AF is the one talking about LAAR.

or does the CoSAF not understand airpower, too?

funny the parallels.  

Also funny for a pussy who has never been on the ground and won't even fly close to it to talk smack.

but I am sure he saved thousands of soldiers by his brave dropping bombs on grids given to him by someone else.

Ruh-roh

Correct.  

It does indeed sound like an easy process, but there's numerous safety protocols built into the process before the pilot and -2 (if applicable) is cleared "hot" by the FAC / JTAC to ensure friendlies don't die because of miscommunication and a lack of SA by the pilot.  

At least we (as in our guys on the ground) don't have to convert MGRS to Lat/longs via mathematical equation on the fly to put ordnance on the right grid anymore.

The USMC assigns pilots-either FW or RW types-to be air officers / FACs to ground elements for the very reason that they speak aviator.  Sort of like the USN assigns NGLOs-usually a WO when I dealt with them-to the GCE of a MEU.  Enlisted go to JTAC school to learn the nuances of being a FAC without being graduates of pilot training.

In the brigade I support, I have not heard of a single FAC or JTAC organic to the brigade;  instead, MOS qualified personnel are acquired from ASOS units in the USAF or ANG, and it seems to me to be nothing more than an afterthought.  It's a major exercise when they train together, and I've only seen it once in over 2.5 years.  

I'm an outsider looking in, but there doesn't seem to be any doctrinal importance placed on CAS for the Army.  Even a "CALFEX" when conducted during a BDE (-) level exercise is limited in execution from what I've seen.  Pathetic, actually.  

Furthermore, even senior US Army leadership said they want nothing to do with the A-10 were the Warthogs to be offered to the Army in lieu of being sent to the boneyard at DM.  What's that tell you?    

The non-aviation community of the US Army hates the aviation community.  I work with enough Army aviators that I can understand why.  OTOH, sometimes you have to look beyond the pettiness and just do the right thing for the organization, personality differences and petty differences aside.  I'm sure this can be done, if senior leadership in the Army would worry more about warfighting, rather than tripping all over themselves to make sure that the first female tanker to graduate from 19K school received a participation trophy from her senator.  No, I'm not joking in the least.

Hopefully, the last eight years of nonsense will fade away, and competent senior officers will be allowed by the new SecWar to configure the operating forces to fight and win wars, rather than worry about sensitivity and "inclusiveness" training for the Bradley Fucking Manning's of the world.

I wouldnt say the army hates army aviators. But they dont get a seat at the table. You had cody a few years back but that was exceptional. At the tactical level you have good working relationships. The old cav squadrons with organic air were highly effective. But as we continue to buy fewer gold plated aircraft with higher operational costs there is less opportunity for combined arms training. Compared to vietnam our mobility has regressed which is very ironic considering the wide open terrain with sparse vegetation of the desert makes aviation more effective. We spend a fortune and get little return on our investment

As an aside, if one of the branches goes the light attack aircraft route, we could get some neat PC simulators

IMO, no. You are talking to two different standards but you don't have a frame of reference to base that off of...at all. Taken literally (the bolded), those assessing for CAG have often BTDT elsewhere...the vast majority of us (95% - 99.9%, total WAG) in my UPT class and on had zero experience prior. I get it though, I know that wasn't the point of the post.

UPT is about the basics. Taking a guy with zero experience and teaching him to fly close to other aircraft and in some dynamic situations...that's not even the start of employing aircraft. I started flying CAS with ~35-40 hours in the Viper during B-Course. Obviously, the Hogs do it a little quicker. Either way it's not a lot of time in a new airframe with exponentially more capabilities than training aircraft.

Who knows what (if anything) will happen to the proposal, interesting though for sure.

Some good/and bad information here, either way it's something to learn from. I will say this though...to think the AF has a retention problem because people don't want to get shot at is about as retarded as it comes. IMO and what I have seen we don't have an issue/shortage of applicants, never have. We have a shortage of IPs/SEFEs/etc and are bottlenecking from UPT to FTU/RTU.

So why is there a pilot shortage?   I assume its because major flyboy wants to fly and not take his family to maxwell and then 3 years in dc.   So they punch so they can fly somewhere else.

Army has majors resign and sign up as cw2s so they can just fly

I'm a civilian; what does all that crap (in red) mean?

By no means am I educated in this, just making some basic arguments based on the info I've read from this and other CAS threads. But what I'm reading in the blue text above is that it really shouldn't take long, or be that expensive, to get usable pilots for CAS. So where is the fork? What happens between A) We can get pilots read for CAS quickly to B) AF Pilots are expensive as hell, fly super expensive airframes that apparently aren't used for CAS enough. ??

In my opinion, just my honest assessment it's different for everyone and it's community dependent. Take from it what you will.

Do some just want to fly, skip the staff and pursue what they feel their purpose is? Absolutely. It would be a dishonest/ignorant statement to say otherwise but you can't lump everyone into that group. Money is absolutely better elsewhere for less "distractors" but that isn't everyone's reason. Some are tired, just like everyone else the CAF has been extremely busy for the last 16+ years...I know you have seen it, who hasn't. People get worn out, simple as that. Some want to focus on family, their kids are older and they are tired of uprooting their families every two years. Stability has been huge for the guys I know that are jumping to the ANG/AFRC, they get a chance to let their families relax, let their kids make/keep friends, you name the reason. Hell, some just want a chance to do something new. I have personally seen people from each of these groups.

Like I said, just my .02s worth.


mp9fan
I'll send a PM later when I have a little more time to describe what I am talking about.

Sigh. Another internet tough guy. When all else fails...

I will thank you for this; your maturity and attitude, as a commander of troops, is giving me a lot of insight about why OIF and OEF went so well.

JFCs can create subordinate JFC's, and specify supporting/supported roles... But they usually don't, because making the next star, or getting the next desired appointment isn't about winning wars, it's about sucking dick and making as many powerful friends as you can.

The biggest problem with Kiowas, is they don't have enough lift to carry around the pilots huge brass balls. Our sackless Army brass was of course intimidated, so they had to end the whole program.

That defeats the entire purpose of a manned aircraft. If you are just going to drop on a grid, use artillery or missiles. It's cheaper, faster, all weather, less risky and more reliable.

The only possible advantage added by a manned aircraft is reconnaissance.

Did your mommy type that for you?

We failed in gwot because we fight small wars with bigger budgets than the public will accept. And using an air doctrine created in ww2 with fighters designed to fight the commie hordes are a huge part of that problem

Lets name the C130, C141, C17, and C5 shot down in OEF, OIF....

Lets name the Ch47s shot down day and night doing the Lords work...

thats different.

you aren't as valuable.

its a brilliant model.  buy aircraft so expensive they can never be used properly in actual combat (but crash the fuck out of them at airshows, thats totally cool)

Lookin cool for recruitment that they say doesn't work

Pilots in the AF have determined that pilots in the AF need a lot more money.

thats some top notch service to the nation right there.

Never in the field of human conflict can I remember a counter insurgent force essentially self-limiting its prime advantages.

Could anyone imagine US forces in Astan or Iraq not having supplies because the Navy was busy building convoys and running them to Europe and Asia at 7 knots because that's the most efficient way to secure it?

You don't care about the lives of your sailors.

were you ever brought up on charges because of your callous disregard?

Manned aircraft as also flexible. Humans are really good at exploiting advantages quickly. Air combat is really three dimensional chess played in a 45000 foot by 400 mile by 400 mile box, where the adversaries are constantly matching their advantages of sensors, endurance, speed, altitude, and weapons against adversary disadvantages of the same at speeds where seconds are measured in miles.

Let's make sure we tie them to a 72 hour planning model.

The USMC and USN saw this early on, which is why MAGTF sorties and ship defense sorties are doctrinally carved out of Joint doctrine, and why USN/USMC operations are by definition not Joint.

Its kinda amazing that after 70 years of amazing support from the AF to the Army, the Navy and Marines haven't seen the light and abandoned having their own tactical air forces.

Until we're ready (both technologically and philosophically) to let every step of the "kill chain" including weapon release happen autonomously, manned platforms are still going to be the preferred method of missions like CAS.

Does that include the spending of my tax dollars?