There's some shiny toys behind some switches, but we don't talk about those.

Day 1 and Day 5 look different.

That's self reinforcing Air Force Maxwell generated bullshit but...that's like...my opinion.

That would take an act of congress, Armywise, and good luck with that.

Because their job isn't Air Indiction and it's actually combined arms maneuver.

This is the point at which I say anyone who wishes to argue is an awesome dude but I'll got weapons free on USAF doctrine going back to 1947.

Sorry, but it's all bullshit.

That person never spoke with Huba.

No. The USAF tries to poach missions it can then fail at, and blame someone else for sucking.

See also, medium bombing since 1954

Wait, you're saying the USAF lied?

This would be a great conversation for @FlyNavy75 am I right @striker and @AJE

Yeah, an unarmored crop-duster in a near-peer environment is.... not gonna work.

Fuck that noise. We shoulda had the F-20 Tigershark. Better all around, but GD had more political throw weight.

Chicoms won't jam signals. Nah.

F-16XL farts in your general direction.




Those are the external hardpoints. The AAMRAMs and Sidewinders are freebies.

Did he get locked?

I'm not a mod or staff. That's a question to refer to them.

That was my gentle way of saying that someone is lying.

No shit. Neither will the A-10.

It turns out that flying slow and low over the modern battlefield is really fucking dangerous. I’d recommend you ask a SU-25 pilot in Ukraine or Russia about it if you can find a living one.

Pretty decent against a ZSU-23.

Double digit SAMs…? Meh.

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So what's your counter to that if it sounds like empty dogma?

The alternative you're advocating for is tantamount to having the controller tell you not just what approach would work best for you, but also what flap and autobrake settings to use.

The "CAS is a mission" statement is an acknowledgement that Ground Commanders and the people who work for them are not subject matter experts in every platform that delivers weapons effects, now how those platforms are employed. It instead lets a GC ask for a particular effect, and to let whomever is controlling the air at whichever level (from the JTAC all the way up to the AOC) utilize what is available at that time and that place.

I'm happy to entertain discussion about those parts in 3-09.3 and JFIRE that talk about Ground Commanders weaponeering their own CAS since the AF's dogma is supposedly so out of whack with reality.

For as much as I hear all of this professing that particular aircraft are the Alpha and Omega of providing CAS, I've never shown up at any tasking (from route recce to Danger Close), done the fighter-to-FAC MNPOPA/TTFACOR handshake, and had the GC say, "Oh, you're a Strike Eagle?  Naaah, never mind, I wanted an A-10, you're cleared off."  Do ground commanders call back to the TOC and complain when they don't get the specific model of ATACMS fire they really wanted?

You're going to have to expound on both of these snarky high-speed passes if you want to have a coherent discussion.

From the outside looking in I see years of CAS customers saying they have a problem with the service and CAS providers telling them to stay in their lane.

A quote I have become very fond of attributed to a French general just before WW2.

"When the cannon sound everything will fall into place."

You shut your dirty sewer mouth!

BLASPHEMY!

Danger close CAS inside of 100 meters.

EXACTLY.

Everyone assumes the war will always be at D+1. No....and attrition of enemy air defenses is very high on any GCC's priority list.

Once the stealth aircraft and other assets (conventional and non-conventional) are used to degrade/eliminate the IADS, you then utilize conventional aircraft such as the A-10 in their designated roles.

Even the tankers eventually have to move closer to the FEBA/FLOT to make logistics easier...and they are big, fat, juicy targets.

I don't think there's anyone on the delivery end telling customers to "stay in their lane".  To the contrary, I'm more than happy to entertain discussion about actual service failures, errors, etc.

It is the other arguments....about the type of vehicle providing the service, and what the customer believes to be the providers' attitude about providing the service...that are thoroughly useless discussion points, and *that* is where the pointed responses enter.

But, to the implied part of your statement, "the customer is always right" is not a particularly useful benchmark for the discussion. Lord knows there are plenty of legitimate criticisms of CAS provided to discuss and improvements that could be made. Hell, I'm usually a particularly cynical critic of the USAF as an organization and many of its leaders; I believe it to be a large, inefficient, incestuous bureaucracy that has a serious cancer of leadership character and a near-total loss of focus on actual mission priority. You fellas have no idea how it pains me to actually have to defend Big Blue in these discussions.

Interestingly enough, this is one of my core discontents with the USAF, at least, in combat.

I truly believed that when the SAMs started flying and the bombs started falling that the political and bureaucratic BS that is rampant in the AF would fall away.  Sadly, in my experience, things just got more political, more stupid, and all of it more amplified. Flying in combat is what really deflated my balloon about patriotism, about being in the service, and many of the other naive reasons I signed up in the first place.

So, unfortunately, no...everything doesn't fall into place when the shootin' starts.

No it does not. Afghanistan illustrated that in dramatic fashion. I what I was refering to with that quote would be a really big war. One that would result in mass casualties on the North American continent and when I refer to things falling into place. I mean that in a Vichy France sense of the word.

As for what you said about the rot and bureaucracy in the Air Force. I stayed with a friend who unfortunately, (hope he isnt reading this but he probably is) seems to represent some of these issues you and others talk about and some things that are even more dangerous. Short version, this guy had a seriously messed up childhood and his experiences in the Air Force did not contribute to his psychological well being.

He has completely broken off communications with me and I think it's because I pointed out that his life is not something any sane person would enjoy. Outside his job his existence can be best be described as bleak.

Ironically enough I have another friend who is like a walking avatar for a lot of serious problems in the US Navy. And with both of these men I have offered my help in addressing their psychological issues. But they don't want my help unless circumstances pressure them into accepting said help.

I have been told that I have done all I can. It sounds like you have done all you can. It sounds like General Kelley has done all he can. But until something comes along and smacks the whole system so hard that it rings like a bell. I don't see much productive change happening.

Hey, we haven't even gotten to how the AF treats the Strategic Missile forces.  Compared to them, this conversation has been rainbows and unicorns.

A turboprop is fine for killing the mudhut people.

Using it in the South Pacific would be stupid. And you know the Air Force has bought such an aircraft.

Oh Christ on a crutch, what happened to FlyNavy?  Did this place ban yet another SME?

Or simply fall.  

Nice find; I hadn't heard that before.

And here I was wondering how an airman is an infantryman?

CAS in the pacific? Against China? Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not going to happen.

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Actually, we should have found a reasonable replacement over the past 25 years. CAS is still significant and while the A10 platform is dated and vulnerable in a near-peer LSCO environment, the mission is still quite relevant.

Having seen up close what A10s (as well as the lumbering AC130) can do, despite their outdated platform, they bring significant morale from the sky. I also assume enemy SAMs and fighters would eliminate them quickly in a LSCO environment.  

Best alternative to grunts would be Army-controlled, cheap A10-light drones that can carry substantial ordnance, good targeting capabilities with plenty of EW protection where 30-40 drones to currently a single A10 in inventory. Fast to field, austere capabilities with some type of short take-off and landing, and modular enough to do field repairs to keep them in the sky. Let the fagot flyboys do their aerial acrobatics and send gifts to HVTs from 40-50K feet with cool callsigns and comfy cockpits while the Army provides their own CAS.

ROCK6  

I was in South America in the mid-90's and we exclusively used C27's in and out of Ecuador and down to Peru. Our short dirt airfield ended in a pretty abrupt and significant drop into a valley and while the C130 did successfully make the landing and take off, the pilots about shit themselves. It was a smaller JTF with some support staff, two ODAs and an ODB (about 60-70 US personnel). We simply didn't need that big of transport for the mission. Loved the little C27, like a baby C130

ROCK6

Agreed. I'm certain we could have an entire sub-forum called "What's F'd Up in the AF?" and fill it regularly with legitimate issues from across the force that aren't just surface-level bitches.

The sad part is that it is the guys out on the line, the E-5s and below and the O-3s and below who really know their job and are the ones who actually make combat airpower work, are the ones who are led astray by and bear the brunt of the discord resulting from the supposed "leaders".

Unfortunately the fix has to come from the origin of the cancer itself. AF leaders have to stop their methodology of picking and grooming future leadership, as all it results in is clones of the cancerous leadership that initiated the process. Having 20 years of "combat" to backstop and rationalize their enjoyment of smelling their own farts will keep things messed up for decades as the new leaders will produce the same farts and have the same affinity for the smell.

It has always amused me that a service that was born out of heterodox thinkers who weren't afraid to ruffle feathers with their new warfighting ideas is now so rigidly aligned with itself that you're not even allowed to *think* outside the box, much less act on it. Unless, of course, you're part of the social victimhood class.

The problem is that since the Air components and the Ground component only meet at the 3 star level, this is becomes lots of reason for why the correct fires aren't at the correct place at the correct time.

It makes the assumption that every JTAC E-5 is as capable or integrated into ground effects as the O-4/O-5 maneuver component commander actually doing these things. That's a strong assumption, to be charitable.

This is in opposition to how the the USMC did the air/ground integration team, back in the old days, where a FAC-A would be a combo of an aviator to fly/coordinate air assets and a mid grade or CWO ground officer to coordinate with arty/NGFS/other surface fires and the ground component commander.

The fact that the air and ground commanders are stovepipes only connected by either enlisted or bro-net work arounds in a high intensity fight makes SOME sense, and that was accepting in both the iterations of Air Land Battle before it grew into our current fires doctrine. Essentially, it assumed that both ground and air attrition would be so high in a central European fight that few components below the divisional level would be available or alive at any given time to manage the fight.

That was what was taught at places like Leavenworth at both CGSC and the NSC. Air was kind of a simulated and nominal "effect" and there would be some estimate of what its effect is.

For delivering air fires in a MCO environment, sure. Most FACs would argue that CAS kind of goes away in the Major Combat Operations environment, and the air delivered fires mission usually becomes counter fires (Air Interdiction against Arty and air assets) or air interdiction (especially against softer maneuver enablers like engineering and logistics.)

The problem was when we did 20 years of non MCO, the USAF wanted to continue to operate with its doctrine because it did what I assess is the actual the primary mission of the USAF, which is to preserve the independence of the USAF, especially from perceived other service or other Joint equities.

Air support in the COIN fight became a function of your organic assets (USMC or SOCOM) or your approximate distance from your leadership to the AOC. So air assets became these theater level assets doled out to the ground combat commands in accordance with the business rules of the AOC and 72 hour ATO cycle which in COIN, in a fight of very local, highly perishable intelligence meant that air assets were often ignored by the ground combat commander until they stepped in poop, and then they rightfully scream for help, that Joe Average Airman really tried his best to provide.

All of this works better in the SOCOM model with their various attempts to degrade networks, often developed with necessarily different intelligence models. Of course, the fact that in no theater of operations were terrorist networks decisively defeated (most just degraded) puts of shade on that model, but that's a different discussion of doctrine and resourcing.

Another wrinkle to this was that often air assets were on different deployment timelines (4-6 months) than their ground assets (6-12 months) and in the majority of cases, not habitually assigned to specific AORs. In the cases where air units were assigned to specific units or AORs, they often achieved disproportionate results. The fact that this wasn't USAF doctrine, but rather bro-net level work around is exactly the point.

Every Devil deserves his advocate.

I've been told that's a question I'm not allowed to ask.