Ed Rasimus wrote in message . ..
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 04:57:52 -0400, Cub Driver
wrote:



Of course! Any fighter aviator would be eager to switch from Hogs to
Vipers (except for that occasional strange group that seems to have an

Evidently this is not true of Hog drivers. (And anyhow, aren't *all"
fighter pilots strange?)

Humans all tend to make the best of a bad situation. Take someone
before an assignment and ask them to list their preferences. Not many
folks will put the A-10 ahead of the Viper, Eagle or now, Raptor. Once
assigned and wrapped up in the mission, you then get the syndrom of
"mine is better" regardless of the airplane. Certainly some Hog
drivers love their airplane, but if told the unit was transitioning to
something a little more "swoopy" they'd eat it up.

And, while there may be a commonality of "strangeness", let me
reiterate my oft-stated position that not all folks assigned to fly
tactical aircraft are "fighter pilots."

But, I reiterate, the idea that the AF is "anti-CAS" is flat wrong.

Ed, you'd better read Campbell's book and then report back. He quotes
page after page of Air Force argument that your experience in Vietnam
was an anomaly that would never be repeated, that interdiction and not
CAS was what we needed, and that the A-1 and the A-10 would only get
in the way when the Russian tanks came through the Fulda Gap.

I'll try to get to Campbell's book, but having checked the summary on
Amazon, I can almost predict what it says. There was great debate at
the time of acquisition regarding whether we were "reliving the last
war" with the A-10. It would have been a great in-country airplane for
SEA. The real concern was whether the plain-vanilla airplane was going
to be survivable in Europe in a more intense conflict.

Question two, was the definitions of CAS and interdiction. There was
even a transition mission defined, BAI (battlefield area
interdiction)--neither CAS nor true interdiction, but systematic
attacking of the second and third echelon of the advancing horde. If
you did a good BAI job, the requirement for true CAS was minimized.

Defining where CAS ends and BAI or AI begins seems to be a bit murky.
If the definitions as stated by the US Army CGSC are used (CAS being
"in close proximity" to friendly ground units and requiring "detailed
integration" with friendly fire and maneuver, and AI being "at such a
distance...that integration of each air mission with fire and
movement..." is not required), there seems to be a bit of confusion
possible. For example, what do you call a mission against the second
echelon, fifteen or twenty klicks from the nearest friendlies, but
still within the FSCL boundary? It is not in close proximity, but IIRC
all air missions in front of the FSCL require pretty close
integration, lest you conflict with those arty rounds you mention.


Issue three, the development of the Army aviation component to better
provide supplemental firepower to artillery. If you got good gunships,
not just gun on Hueys, but Cobras and Apaches optimized for ground
attack and survivability, you lessened the need for "fast movers."

But the development of Army aviation, while initially aimed at
supplementing artillery, changed quite a bit with the development of
the divisional aviation brigade, which instead became a fourth
maneuver element, as opposed to a fire support element. If your attack
aviation assets are tied up with a deep mission, or with a continuous
attack mission along some axis, then the need for CAS on the part of
the ground maneuver brigades has not really been lessened. I never
thought of the aviation assets as so much substituting for CAS as much
as they *complement* it (JAAT being an example of the latter).


And, problem four, the difficulty in a fluid tactical environment with
deconflicting airspace. You can't be lobbing artillery in where
airplanes are operating. You can't be zooming around willy-nilly at
low altitude of rotary wings are transiting.

That sounds like the now-infamous "where to locate the FSCL" debate
during ODS; haven't heard much about it reappearing during the latest
conflict.

You must have close
control of the airspace and delivery designations to effectively
employ "danger close." And, for a variety of reasons (economic,
political, practical--pick one,) we simultaneously add the demise of
the airborne FAC in a slow-mover fixed wing.

I believe the use of PGM's in the CAS role is making this a bit easier
in terms of operating CAS in "danger close".

Brooks


Did I get the high points? Do I still have to buy the book?