Patriot

shot down?

By Us or them?

lulz.

we still have more kills than the F22 community.

Did you ever ask yourself what's wrong with the system in that they don't trust you?

Lesson still taught/learned from today.

By your own admission, as one of the ground commanders who "didnt bother" with CAS, id be ashamed to even comment. Ill ask you again, were you the guy the army brought up on charges for refusing all cas requests from your subordinates out of hand? You never answered before.

Sleds?

I don't know much about this CAS argument, but it's fun to read those who know about it go back and forth. That being said, it does seem to me that if you're arguing AGAINST the light attack aircraft due to lack of pilots, then can't that same argument be used to discontinue the F35?

Makes sense. Could a single engine turboprop be operated from a more simple airbase closer to the action? My father was an AF mechanic in Vietnam at .... crap, i've lost the name of the base..... but anyways he was on the edge of enemy territory. Mortar rounds and enemy incursions weren't daily, but not uncommon. A couple AF guys on base that he knew died in attacks. One time they had to seek shelter due to a tiger on base But it wasn't the end of the world operating close to enemy territory. At least that was his take on it.

TAG

I gotta say, from my perspective as an outsider looking in, Rooster seems to have a good point here. 1) How did we fill so many fighter slots in WWI and WWII, when it was more dangerous? Was the difference due to draft? 2) If we can get all those volunteers to walk around on the street with possible enemy poking out from every corner, or bombs planted in the dirt all around you in random locations, why can't we get dudes to pilot planes to blow shit up? 3) If the standard is too high, can we separate the standards? We have a super high standard for the "next-generation" aircraft or whatever, the F35 type pilots who are there to defend us against theoretical super power enemies, and then we have a secondary lower standard for the rest of us retards who want to fly in low and blow things up

can you explain? I thought the A10 was already finished...

Disclaimer, I know nothing. But I don't think anyone said get rid of air superiority planes and tactics completely? Presumably if we invaded a less sucky nation, like Iran, then we'd use spy intel and special forces to mark AA and start taking it out from afar, then send in air superiority fighters to take care of the rest, then the troops and armor go in to establish a few good bases, and then the CAS planes come in and assist troop pushes once the air is ours. But again, that's my uneducated guess.

Had nothing to do with trust, or hit rates or fractricide. Had everythig to do with ground commanders who were scared they would make the news for killing people in a war. Cant be "air raiding women and children" and all that. The lower level guys we were actually in comms with and got talk ons from wanted bombs all the time. They couldn't get their bosses to approve the strikes. Those are the facts, We dealt with that EVERY SINGLE DAY.

None of the rest of this argument amounts to anything if the ground commander says no. Sensors, airframes, speed, blah blah blah.

The only relevant thing in this entire thread was the brief discussion of smaller weapons with much much smaller frag patterns/weapons effects. Perhaps that would help get reluctant commanders to say yes.

Then again, maybe we ought to promote a culture in senior leadership that when its time to fight, the enemy and possibly his fellow citizens are going to die in spades. Maybe we ought to fight like we mean it, like we did in WW2. Maybe if we arent willing to kill the enemy with all the collateral damage that will ensue to keep our own men as safe as possible, then we shouldnt be committing troops until we are.

Otherwise, somebody please explain to me why I spent all that time watching men die, with good comms on the radio with a guy on the ground with targets that was bending over backwards trying to find something his boss would approve. Time and time again.

It's almost like the Marines have a different mission. Who has the WAS mission?

So the Navy has one victim killed because of Air Force C2 failure... Holding onto the ATO cycle, centralized planning and TACS/AAGS has probably contributed to the deaths of hundreds of ground troops in the GWOT.

I don't get your argument. Did all of the Kiowas get shot down?

Every last one of them.  The "cover story" was that OH-58 was retired, and the crews moved to other birds.  But in reality, they were really all shredded by MANPADS and small arms fire.  Terrible shit.

Also as an aside, I'm not sure anyone is saying that AF pilots don't want to kill terrorists. One might consider that a strawman... Seems it's a problem a little higher up than the pilot.

ETA: Oh and another thing that is jumping out as obvious to me, but I might be missing something. The CAS argument back and forth, those in favor of light aircraft and those not, seem to be arguing two different points that aren't mutually exclusive. The LAAR (?) guys want the sherman tank of the air, the ever present guns in the sky, to kill the goat fuckers in their huts. The non-LAAR guys want the stealth bomber robotech jet to keep us one step ahead of any potential future threat, which seems to me is also an important thing to have. Both of these tasks can be accomplished without removing one or the other, or so it would seem.

You need money, and you need the will in leadership. Seems with most bureaucratic bullshit, it's always that there's a lack of willpower in leadership that gets in the way of certain projects.

Related,Kenya just got the go ahead for an FMS sale to get a dozen Air Tractors to use against Al Shabaab.

Yeah - Obama and his crew didn't make the appointments and set the policies that screwed the military for the last 8 years all by themselves.

You really are unbelievable. So the Army shoots down a friendly from an asset whose sole purpose at that time was theater ballistic missile defense and this is the Air Force's fault. By the way, that wasnt the only time. They tried to kill an F-16 CJ and the guy had to freakin shoot a harm at the patriot radar to keep from being killed himself.

Fighters at 500 knots in the 30s sure do look like baliistic missiles.

Nobody is buying your bullshit. .

Yeah rooster. Im sure the Marines dont have much interest in CAS. They have their own air force but farm out all the CAS to the USAF even though they are worthless. Do you even hear what you are saying?

Who is the ACA responsible for fratricide prevention?

In OIF, like every other mission, the Air force centralized planning system failed. SPINS were not updated fast enough to keep pace with the operation, and weren't effectively distributed to the lowest level. After the planning and coordination failure of the CFACC, the operators system didn't identify the aircraft as an aircraft.. Lastly, there were some training issues with the PATRIOT crew. This isn't my opinion, these are the facts documented in the official CFACC OIF AAR, and released in many unclassified venues.

According to Rand:


What kind of planner puts an air corridor over PATRIOT sites?

As for the F-16 who shot a HARM at a PATRIOT site... That wasn't self defense. That was again planning failure by the CFACC, execution failure by the AOC, pilot...And by the way, the HARM was basically a fail too...Luckily.



But by all means continue to spew Air Force propaganda and lies in lieu of facts.

It's sad when the press corps knows more about your profession than you do. The Air Force failed concept of centralized planning preached by the zipper suited morons of Maxwell, has done nothing but get people killed.

Instead of debating the instances of fratricide from ground to air that can be counted on one hand, why don't we discuss the dozens from Air to Ground? Once again, the trend is a lack of Situational awareness, routinely caused by centralized planning and control.

Oh, the SPINS werent updated enough to explain to the patriots that an aircraft doesnt look like a ballistic missile? Really?

If you think that HARM shot on the radar was an accident you really are gullible. If you knew anything about how threat receivers work youd know better than that. It was no accident. Btw, you dont have to "fly over" a patriot for it to shoot you down genius. If we flew over the border, we were going to be in a patriot wez. Bad on us for thinking that patriot operators can tell the difference between radar targets 1000knots different in speed and 80,000 different in altitude.

I get now why your views arent based in reality. You get your info from the press, or general so and so's official conclusion, or some staff weenies thesis at his pogue pme school and have the audacity to call first hand experience propaganda. You think reading about it is the same as being there. But go on, now explain to everyone how when the patriots shot down that brit tornado was also the air force's fault. Did the army also shit its pants when the air force forgot to tell them they could go? Believe me, you give our generals way to much credit.

Seriously, you dont know what you are talking about. You should teach at an Academy. Have you ever been a part of any CAS chain in any capacity?

As for centralized planning you cant be serious. I had a fixed target at takeoff exactly once. Every other time, it was checkin at a killbox or with a specific unit and see what the Army or Marines need/want, real time.  And then watch as their own boss wouldnt let them have it. Our planning was admin like how many tankers we needed airborne and what their offloads would be. You and Sylvan probably have more powerpoint time in a week than Ive done my entire life. Please.

Dont get distracted now. Answer my original question. Why wont the ground commanders authorize strikes when their own people ask for them? HAPPENED EVERY DAY.

Again, it isnt working. Your bullshit is no longer going unanswered, and your arguments are a thin veneer of secondhand party line hearsay. Tell us something you actually know something about firsthand, cause this aint it.

The official CFACC AAR, Rand and media at large disagree with your position. Sorry you prefer to believe the word of mouth flight mafia propaganda, over real reputable sources of information.

Do you know what a CFACC is, and what their responsibilities are? You do know that PATRIOT is direct support to the CFACC?

If the Airforce can't figure out how to C2 Army units providing direct support, maybe they shouldn't pretend to be capable of being the CFACC and divest themselves of that mission too.

Your question has already been answered. You weren't allowed to drop, because your profession is a joke from start to finish, and does not have the confidence or respect of real war fighters. Your community doesn't know how to plan and execute joint operations or combined arms. The only thing we know the air force is good at is air dominance and targeting of infrastructure against third world nation states. No one trusts air force fixed wing pilots to do anything else lethal.

The first time you are on the ground in a life or death situation, and a zoomie reports a bradley fighting vehicle as a possible enemy IED, or one circles overhead for 20 minutes and can't find your entire unit with strobes and lasers and burning vehicles in the open desert...You don't really trust anything a pilot says. They aren't part of the planning process. They don't know who or what the enemy is, or how he fights. Having served on multiple joint staffs, and having spent a good amount of time educating field grades... I wouldn't follow the average AF pilot to the nearest gas station. They are really incapable of planning. The average Army E6 infantry squad leader is a better leader and planner than the average pilot.

Ahhhh.  Multiple joint staffs guy thinks I'm a joke, while the actual real warfighters I was talking to on the radio think their staff guy is a joke, for never allowing the support they needed. I know who I believe. I was getting the idea that was your background, the copious acronyms and Rand citations give you away.

You are no longer even attempting to discuss CAS, because the sum total of your knowledge of it is that you hate the Air Force. We have nothing further to discuss.

Except I've been the guy on the ground with the radio, many times. Yes, the process is broken, because rear echelon Commands and their staffs are fucking it up. The rear area pogue Army pretends to care, the pogue rear area air force (which is 99.9% of it) pretends to provide support and answers. In reality all they do is provide bureaucracy. Thousands of staff officers in positions designed to plan and coordinate joint operations...Yet there are no planned joint operations, and we use a system designed to fight the cold war. It's already been posted here. This shit doesn't work.

What would the CFACC say if the CFLCC requested direct support units assigned down to the Division or BCT level? That's a real solution, that the Army won't push for, because then the BCD and all the upper echelon fires coordination doesn't have a reason to exist. Even if they would ask, the Air Force would say no. Airpower is all strategic or some other bullshit reason to continue to fail.

Thank you, now we are getting somwhere. I agree 100% with this. Im not sure the AF would say no, but if they did it wouldnt surprise me. On the initial push there were some meager joint ops, but on the whole they dont happen. They need to happen stateside, this shit doesnt just come together in combat for the first time. For instance, I had a "talkon" from a guy who was getting frustrated with me because I cant find the house with the red roof, with no grid/coordinates etc...at night, with no other helpful information. Clearly, he had no training whatsoever in calling in air, or even in determining the coordinates of a target. What does it say that one hundred years after the invention of the aircraft that the Air Force has to have a enlisted career field to imbed guys with CAS training with army units because they apparently have little desire to train their own men? It isnt rocket science. The Marines do it, the Army can too.

However, thats not the point, lack of proficiency on their end or ours isnt the main issue. Despite that abortion of an org chart, I can tell you that everyday we ended up over some unit, that many of those days something came up we could help with, targets were ID despite the lack previous joint training (this always went much smoother with Marines, many of whom clearly had experience calling in air effectively) and yet, the entire operation, from that org chart on down to even the most painful talk on, was rendered moot because nine times out of ten, literally, the poor guy could not get his boss to clear us hot.

Im not saying there arent acquisition problems, training problems, structural org problems or whatever. Im saying is that despite that, despite big army and big af bureaucracy throwing wrenches in the works, we were still there, together we made it work, all previous obstacles and hurdles surmounted, except for the main one...two words, cleared hot.

We can and should fix the charts, do the joint training, streamline the process, and employ the best weapons, but none of that will mean a thing until ground commanders feel more free to use the assets available to them. I just cannot stress this enough, and I dont know what the official reports say or what the discussions were at the staff and dont really care. What I can say, as someone who did this day in day out, the vast majority of non effective CAS is not from a failure of the guy on the radio or a pilot like me...it is the roe ground commanders are using. Me and the guy on the radio have our end doped out, and then he gets denied.

Look, I get fired up about this because I have literally seen men die with my own eyes (maybe you have too) in attacks from enemy positions on which I have eyes on, not even danger close, and yet because it is too close to a freakin highway or some other BS they deny the guy and I get watch this crap unfold over and over as a high speed cheerleader. Sometimes they let me do a flyby at least. A "show of force" they call it, thats anything but.  Yeah thatll show em, but I do what im asked.

Until the national command authority decides to let the Army FIGHT, the Army's commanders are not going to allow much CAS. It is what it is. I doubt it will ever happen unless we take a truly catastrophic hit to the homeland or face in open combat some entity senior leadership perceives is a true existential threat to the nation.

Instead, like we do in many other areas of national policy, we will "fix" this problem by throwing money at it or buying something instead of simply letting our people do their jobs.

Im tired of these threads really. I keep telling myself not to mess with it but those events are still very real to me. In the end, it just evolves into an heated argument with people in which I probably share 99% common values with.

Kiowas were shot down in Iraq and AFG fairly regularly. All that did was get the rest of the pilots more focused on the job, and there was never a shortage of dudes wanting to fly them.

you are hilarious.

I have never been "brought up on charges" in my life.

None of my subordinate elements EVER did a formal CAS request, because they are a complete waste of time.  They were free to request in extremis at any time.  The restriction was they had to be "in extremis" and not just fucking about with a random TIC.  I never had a complaint from any of them because we had all experienced your "world class" air support and we had all figured out that if it wasn't rotary wing, it was a waste of time.  I guess an airshow while sitting static in some COP is fun and all.  But when you are maneuvering on an enemy you need an integrated and intelligent element working with you, not simply buzzing around and waiting on a grid.

go sell your blue kool aide elsewhere, warfighters are talking.

so what part of the ATO SPINs did the patriot unit violate.  be specific now.

and, while you are at it, list what part of the SPINs were violated by the F18 and the tornado crew.

If you are tired of these threads, read more, post less.

Kiowas were shot down?

Have you ever considered only flying at night?  Might be safer that way.

Solution: hire Erik Prince's guys in Air Tractors. They have a fuckload of experience in Libya and Yemen.

You mean like the entire chinook fleet did?

Yup. Apples to Oranges much?

A fleet of dudes flying around and responding to TICs and fighting the enemy, and a fleet of aircraft doing ass and trash and air movement from sundown to sunrise.

You just compared your C130 fleet to your A10 fleet.

You mean the fleet doing the USAF mission? The USAF fleet for intrathreater that was upstaged in Iraq by PT-6 driven Winnebagos?

Attached File


Air tractor....problem solved ...

So just like Sylvan, as the supported commander you don't ask for what you need but when the supporting element doesn't provide it then it's the Air Force's fault?

These threads are always interesting.

chinooks were flying CCA?

Guns A Go Go 2?

thats hot.

If you have video of that, I'll send you my JWICS email.

Or were those just the Chinooks flying from one C-130 capable airstrip to another c130 airstrip doing admin runs?  

Intratheater airlift; it isn't just for fixed wing anymore.

The visibility on those things gives me pause.

Kind of like a bad marriage.  If you keep asking for sex and you get a tepid 2 minute hand job that finishes with, "my arm is tired" and no orgasm, you stop asking after a while and do the job yourself.

wife doesn't care, as long as she still has the credit card to go shopping for 600 dollar shoes.

Just as a point of procedure, I don't think the supported/supported relationship exists doctrinally at echelons below the GCC/FCC. I'd love the know if I'm wrong.

I do believe it exists within Army doctrine implicitly as main/supporting efforts, but that is as much a phasing as command relationship and resources tool.

I think I've cracked this.

Let the Army buy and operate whatever LAAR platform they decide on.

Attach a tiny rotor to the the top.  Like a beanie propeller.

Call it OH-X or some such.  Screech austically at anyone who doesn't have the vision to see it's really a helicopter.

Profit.

The Army aviation branch isn't much better than the USAF.

Army aviation officer corps is demonstrably worse.  

The AF, if not caring about its actual mission, does actually care about its equities.

There is nothing in law or regulation which precludes the army from buying any aircraft it wants.

Of all the various "agreements" the AF has violated each and every one multiple times.  They are at this point manifestly notwithstanding.

I wouldn't call a Cesena clone a fast mover, more like a slow easy target. A-10s have done the job fantastically and proven to take a beating and still get the job done. Stick with what works best.

You mean the only fixed wing aircraft in GWOT to be shot down (by the enemy)?

My commanders were great. Why does it take the French about 5% of the time it takes the USAF to drop a bomb?  Commanders juggle a lot of things in a TIC. They don't always have time to baby the USAF until they do their job.