Scul, this might get weird, but were you a Laughlin faip?

We had a couple grunts assigned to our battalion at Mojave Diaper. It was a Corporal and Sergeant that had just recently completed the JTAC course. If I remember correctly they were 0311s or 0331s.

Yup.  Americans are getting killed, and I know where the friendlies and the enemies are?  Rounds are on their way, with or without a JTAC.

You make me sad. The ONLY fixed wing CAS asset in theater I had absolutely no control over.

“GRUNT6, are you a JTAC?”

“Negative, BONE.”

“Roger GRUNT6, we’ve just been dynamically retasked; good luck, BONE21 OUT.”

ECAS would suck. If it were me I’d rather dude just pop smoke on his position and say kill everyone not at the smoke. Pulling a 9-line from someone under fire is hairy.

There was a movie with that ending.
Canadians were ambushed. Taliban closing in on a building they escaped into.

I’m sorry that’s your perspective. Seriously.

I do my best to support you guys.

If I’m actually working for a guy on the ground with a radio in his hand, even more so.

Gotta get into the JSOAC!

If a Navy guy did that he would get his shit pushed in from CAG.

I have NEVER, having prosecuted literally thousands of TICs and ASRs, EVER pulled a/c or seen a/c pulled from a TIC.

My $0.02 worth on your comments; concur for the most part but slight correction/qualification (for OP):  in Afghanistan you are not going to have 16s and 10s in theater at the same time, it’s either or (I think that’s what you meant).

Second, an airstrike by a couple of A-10s won’t really be of the scale end the kind of an assault/overrun the OP is talking about.   I guess if each one dumped everything they had in one pass it might reach the scale the OP is implying in his narrative.

Probably true; more likely whispering from whatever kind of hide he could find.

The majority of my EKIA have resulted from following squirters after an A-10 or Viper gun run. But I know how GD loves their brrrrrrrrrrt, so I keep that on the down low.

Not far fetched at all.

I know of an Apache front seater who jumped out and loaded an urgent surge in his seat and then hauled the patient to the FST (while the Apache front seater spent the rest of the night on the ground with the ODA).  While there was initially hell to pay on the aviation side, things got sorted in the long run.

Because you have a TPOD that’s worth a shit.

Oh good grief, not again.

There’s no hate for CAS, just that R/W is more responsive and more effective.

Let’s not derail this from the OP’s ”magical “ thread.

If OP is trying to create the main character out of surviving a strike then a more realistic and sobering scenario would be a Blue on Blue and perhaps make the depth of the character more.

Slap my hairy ass!

I'd do it for you Randy...

Where the heck are all you guns ho guys when the shit gets real?

I’m sorry, no offense intended and I’ll take you guys at your word, but USAF pilots are typically extremely risk averse.

Now I don’t blame them since they’ll get fried if anything goes wrong, but I have yet to run across any pilots so willing to drop regardless.

When the JTAC hears his apache check in, everyone else in the stack is irrelevant, and for good reason.

Where do I sign up?

Self-defense of friendlies is built into the ROEs...

As long as I knew for absolute certain where the friendlies were I’d drop in a second in an ECAS scenario. Self defense ROE would cover it.

Edit: would probably show of force or gun run first. Technically we should escalate force before going full JDAM

In my opinion, there is a big difference between “drop” and “shoot”.

“Drop” impilies a GBU on coords. Yeah, I’m hesitant. I’m gonna make sure my ducks are in a row.

“Shoot” means I’m guiding a laser guided weapon. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I engaged and killed a dude carrying a heavy weapon damn near within 180 seconds of him showing his face. That’s fast.

CAS assets want nothing more than to hear positive feedback from the dudes on the ground, after the threat has been killed.

I know you say that in these threads and I believe you; far from the norm IME.

This is a great forum for discussion. IME, I could have killed a lot more bad guys, had the gfc passed his approval. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at bad guys thinking, wtf is the army waiting for?

They are hanging out on forums pretending that they were and are in the shit.  An unmanned vehicle can deliver bombs and missiles while the operator looks for a fresh coffee filter.  How many pilots draw a grease pencil mark on the plexiglass and roll in with HE's while the left seater is tossing smokes and spraying trees with his rifle?

Everyone knows the only real combat pilots anymore fly something starting with AH, and sadly OH before Obama fucked us.

But there are some really educated and experienced pilots in this thread and I enjoy reading the comments.

In our case, the answer has always been “yes”; I’m assuming, since the question was asked in the first place, if the answer was “no” the ensuing answer would have been “good luck.”

When was the last time you’ve been passed a 9 line?

"C2, standby.  Prosecuting fire mission."

End of discussion.  I'll call C2 back after the threat is neutralized.

I'm bummed that he died just as rescue arrived.

How about Go Fuck Yourself AF!  lol

And what exactly, do you have to contribute to our discussion?

I was an 11B in a regular line unit and while normally the the FO (13F) would call for fire, it was not unusual for the platoon leader(LT), squad leader(SSG) or team leaders (SGT) to call for fire.  When outside the wire  with a squad or team size element the norm would be for a SGT or specialist to call for fire.  We had all the Joes cross train on it and knew how.

Well, his screen name is ”Tango.”

The truth does burn sometimes...

“Mountain....I don’t see what mountain you’re talking about”

“Okay flyboy...go back to taking selfies...have a nice day...”

(Actual conversation with F-16 pilot circa 2009....)

I’m not, and never have been, an F16 pilot.

I’m not sure if you are telling me the viper pilot was stupid, or if the situation update passed by the JTAC was bad.

Regardless, I’ve seen buffoonery from both ground and air assets.

Work through it, figure out what’s goin on, and make it happen.

JTAC gave a good work up big to small...and a grid on the north end of the only mountain in Zhari. The B team was on duty that day...

In fairness,, from 20k’ over a country full of similar looking mountains it isn’t always as easy as it seems.

OP, CAS is magic!

When was the last time you left your trailer?

Oh yeah, magic. Just like this.

Attached File

A handful of years. And you?

If you aren’t picking it up, he flew OH-58s.

Somebody already did the Jessica Lynch story.

No, I had about a dozen beers last night. Didn’t pick it up.

Rotary wing support is almost always what the JTAC wants. Doesn’t mean their always the best.

Fuck that overly dramatic hollywood bullshit TV show. It played on every hollywood sterotype of officers.

That’s the story you need to write. It’s a lot more realistic. Army unit gets wiped out, last man standing tries desperately to get some ordnance dropped. The zoomies won’t because reasons and he gets wounded but can hide and waits till nightfall. Gets out strips his uniform and tries to gray man it to base.
He gets found out by a family on the road, panics and shoots the Dad, eldest son attacks and he shoots him and one of the others on accident. Now he’s got to drive the bloody shot up car to base. Almost gets killed by the gate guards and gets detained.

Then you can write the whole story about his physical recovery from the wounds, the CID investigation into the firefight, the AF not dropping bombs, the family he killed and if they’re going to prosecute him for war crimes. Then he goes home and his wife/girlfriend leaves him because he’s still learning to walk or whatever and she fucked Jody and is pregnant. Now he’s drinking and taking opioids cuz of the pain and VA is fucked up and won’t help. Poor guy couch surfs and then has to live in a shelter before eventually becoming flat out homeless.

It’s not long until he gets in mix up with the cops where he’s mistaken for a car jacker that a fellow vet and current cop helps him out. Tells him his story and holy shit it’s the damn battle NCO that denied his original fire mission years ago! They fight and argue then cry and eventually our hero sees the pain it caused the cop and sees that he can heal and they can both help each other.

He moves in with the cop and his family. Goes cold turkey and starts doing CrossFit. Next thing you know he’s working at the local grocery store and helping out at the VFW and doing speech’s for at risk youth. He eventually moves out and finds a girl that lost her leg in a car accident while on her way to the funeral of her marine Corp boyfriend that died in a helicopter crash on its way to recover some army guys after the whole unit was wiped out.

They fall in love, get married and the son grows up. And joins the army like his old man. And just before he ships off to Afghanistan to fight the same goddamn war Dad whispers some advice into his ear that we as the reader never get to hear but understand as something like, “just come home son.”

You can call it “Clipped Wings” the story of the last survivor from the flafal battle of the 101st in bumfuck Afghanistan.

Fill it with all kinds of stereotypes and shit because there’s just too many real accounts of the war. What we really need are fictional stories from people that didn’t serve about a war that is still happening.