Is the F-35 even ready?

Can this fly off happen tomorrow?

It's a darn good thing the Russians and Chinese don't sell their MANPADS to anyone outside their respective countries, ever.

The thing is, killing goat fuckers seems to be the only ongoing mission for the military.  If the A-10 is substantially better for that mission, I don't see why we cant keep a couple hundred in service at a fraction of the cost.  

Its not. It is good at Blue on blue attacks though.

So if the A-10 doesn't have much of a role any more, then why does it have such staunch defenders? Who's going to get rich keeping this thing around? Wouldn't air wings rather have the new whiz bang fighter jet instead of the old klunkers?

Because Americans by culture are impressed by big numbers.

Thank you.  I was looking for the words to make this point.  War is a violent business.  The military is the violence-exporting arm of our national government.  If the politicians don't want other people to get hurt, and cannot stomach any casualties of our own, don't send the military.

In Iraq we got an urgent warning of a possible ied from a sniper pod equipped F16.

It turns out the "IED" was a Bradley fighting vehicle. The pilot couldn't distinguish between a 30 Ton friendly vehicle, and a 30 lbs enemy bomb. This is just one example.

Another time we were supported by a GPS/sniper pod equipped F16 who couldn't find our position for 15 minutes...despite the fact we were the only thing in the open desert, with 17 Americans with IR strobes, an IZLID, and oh yeah the large enemy truck that was engulfed in 20 feet of flames. After wasting a lot of my time on the radio, the jets had to RTB because they were out of fuel. Wanna hear something weird? Shit like this happens every day, and doesn't make it into the cfacc aar.

Everyone is bitching about a contested environment and IADS... What about gps jamming? What about comm link jamming? How are precision munitions the CAS solution when you don't have GPS? How does the comm link help when it doesn't work? Because that's likely in a real contested environment.

So whoever is selling advanced optics, gps, and data link as the future CAS replacement for low/slow is a low information voter.

The only war we can't afford to lose is nuclear... Which has little to do with CAS.

Let's be clear, we aren't invading China or Russia, and they aren't invading us. We aren't even going to risk nuclear holocaust to do meaningful long range conventional strikes in those nations.

With these facts in mind, please explain why securing Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia from Russia, or the Spratleys from China, in a fictional war, is more strategic to the U.S. Than Iraq/Afghanistan, Africa and Syria from terrorists who have demonstrated will and ability to kill thousands of Americans? (the real wars we are in)  

The idea that the F35 is strategic, is a farce.

Well, if that's the case, then should we be focused on upgrading and updating our nuclear deterrent instead of buying Gen 5 stealth fighters? Our nuclear weapons capability is degrading. We haven't actually tested a bomb in more than 20 years, we haven't designed a new warhead since the 70s, Los Alamos is having a harder and harder time recruiting new talent (partly because they aren't building new weapons) and pretty soon they won't have anyone left on staff who actually played a role in designing the untested and aging warheads we have in our stockpile. 

Should we be focusing on maintaining our nuclear capabilities in order to stay out of a conflict with Russia and China and investing less into conventional forces since we don't need legions of extreme high tech systems to kill goat fucking terrorists or blow up Iranian shit?

Or, do we need to consider the possibility that we could wind up in a proxy war with a state or non-state actor who is being supplied with state of the art Chinese and Russian hardware, and ensure that we have the conventional ability to beat that shit?

Ideally I'd say get both, but we're broke as hell. 

It depends on the mission/environment. There are times and places where the ground should be supporting the larger air effort (see SOF conducting DCA in Iraqi scud hunts)

The problem I'm more familiar with is phase 4 wide area security missions, like Iraq 2004-current or Afghanistan 2003- current where the land component is the supported commander. In these instances, it is important for the GFC and supporting air to conduct combined planning. On call CAS doesn't permit this.

In this environment, responsiveness is paramount. Getting on station in 7 minutes, and coordinating for 10-15 more minutes isn't responsive enough. But it seemslike the best case for an infantry platoon on the ground. And this fight is prosecuted at the platoon, section and squad levels 99% of the time.

For this type of situation, I think FW aircraft should be assigned to direct support of specific units to the Battalion level. Battalions have the capacity to plan and coordinate with aircrews, and they are close enough to the fight to understand and prioritize what is happening on the ground with the enemy situation, friendly plan, and terrain. Keep in mind, direct support and prior planing do not require co-location. And superior commanders could shift their priority effort, and the supported Battalions fairly easily. Sure, lots of Battalions wouldn't get support... But that's how it already is. I'd rather know that going in, or if/when I'm involved in a high priority and high risk effort, I'd rather do it right.

The Army is as much to blame as the AF. The generals don't understand the problem, nor try to solve it. Why? Because solving this problem is delegating their role/responsibility, which has already significantly been diminished in COIN. We have a similar problem with rotary wing assets in the Army. While owned by a Division commander, they are typically not assigned to direct support for battalions and below. I've been in units with air assigned to the battalion level. They are amazingly effective.

If there were one word that summarizes why our guys aren't getting the best air support, that word would be micromanagement.

Getting rid of the OH-58 was a huge mistake. If the OH58 can be replaced by uavs, so can ALL fixed wing aircraft.

I have no idea. Maybe it the pod was broke because you can easily see that stuff with nvgs much less a target pod. Or maybe he was an idiot. Maybe he was given coordinates 50 miles away and was going WTF. Again, I have no idea. The fact is, sniper pods work a hundred times better than any visual CAS. If you think problems will go away by going backwards to vietnam tech all I can say is good luck with that. I dont know what to tell you. Enjoy 100 meter bombs instead of 10ft bombs, but you dont have to worry it aint gonna happen.

We dont need gps to drop accurate bombs. Never had a laser guided gbu12 miss by more than 10ft. Dnt need comm link but obviously need comms of some sort...and more lines of comm like the link, is more robust than voice alone.

You know how many times I have had the Army call me in on their own positions? How many times they talk me onto the wrong thing? how about the time a guy was getting angry with me for not dropping a bomb when the total description of the target was "the house with the red roof" when I am over a city with 5000 houses and everything is green because its 2am and im on NVGs and an IR pod. Did I just say screw this CAS sucks I wont ever do this again?

Did I throw my hands up and give on CAS because of those things? No of course not. Did those things happen when I was supporting Marines? No because every Marine I talked to knew how to call in air. Why is that? Training maybe? Yeah but lets not do that. We trained prior with our own ALOs but you know the first tine I ever talked to a GI on the radio? Yep, over Iraq, how stupid is that? How well do you expect that to go? Marines had experience working with their own air so it was much smoother from the get go with them. Not perfect, we still had permission and too many layers of approval...

Complaining doesnt fix problems. Some units I worked with was seamless and got what they wanted quickly, some were an exercise in frustration like you experienced.  The army is reluctant to use cas, marines less so. I could usually tell in the first ten seconds of comm whether id be dropping or if we would be in for a frustrating exercise in how not to do CAS. Im sure that worked both ways at times, but I can tell you the average pilot knows how to do a talk on better than the average guy on the radio for sure. That needs to change.

I feel like I waste my time with these threads. Same stupid arguments, same biases, no one willing to solve the problems. Im out of the AF so it wont be me anymore but for the sake of the guys that need bombs I wish the discussions were more substantive than mud slinging and CAS sucks. Everyone points out a failure, but then make uninformed assumptions about the cause of failure like "target pods dont work we need skyraiders" or "he was going to fast to ID" or other stuff that a CAS pilot knows is crap, while the true failures are in training, procedures, and command. I get it, those discussions arent as interesting or fun as a meme or a flippant insult, but thats the discussion we need to have to improve CAS.

Boom. I agree with this post in every way. Rooster nails it right here, this is what I was getting at in my last post. This is what the discussion should be about. More autonomy, decentralizing CAS control, pushing assets to lower level units and giving ground commanders authority to plan with and actually use CAS proactively instead of just a reactive effort "right of bang."

This is the discussion that needs to take place, not with me of course but between the men with the pull to affect change.

1. Yes, I believe that updating our nuclear force should be our #2 strategic priority/concern... Right behind Cyber.

2. Long range Weapons, and mines are a problem for US force projection. IADS are just one element. I believe the state department, treaties and treaty enforcement are the key. We have treaties governing nuc proliferation, and mines. We need better treaties/ enforcement for advanced IADS, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti ship missiles ect.

The answer is not developing more and more advanced ships, tanks, and planes to defend ourselves from munitions. It's WAY cheaper/easierfaster for adversaries to develop advanced munitions, and quantities of munitions that defeat our defenses.

There many other countries which buy near if not top of the line Russian air defenses. You don't have to get into a shooting war with Russia to go up against these systems. By this logic the F-35 is not needed. But then why are we not talking about retiring surface combat ships and attack submarines? An F-35 has more value in these types of conflict than either of those. The Army doesn't need 5,000+ MBTs to fight guys with AKs either.

We can refurb some of the old planes, but some will eventually have to be scrapped. Would you rather buy new F-16s or spent a bit more to get new F-35s? Give the Russians (and their customers) 1-2 decades and they will catch up with F-22/F-35 level technology. Will you still want to be fielding F-16s in the 2050s?

And it never flew again.  It is better to NOT get hit at all.  During the GW1 when we had people actually shooting at us the A10s got ripped up pretty often.  They came home and got parked.  

Worst part is, we could field and entire fleet of those things for the cost of one f-35.  Even worse is the political gridlock that would prevent a purchase.  The simple solution is to buy all of them.  Every American entry is purchased to fill out a squadron.  Nobody has any grounds to sue or even bitch.   Bet we could even slip some A-29s in if we could convince them to manufacture here.

WTF,

Magnum, WW, 20FW Shaw AFB, YGBSM.  SEAD, DEAD is very much alive and kicking.

My point isn't that pilots suck, or the tech is worthless, my point is it still isn't easy or ideal. If that's all we can do for some multi mission platforms... Fine. But we need a dedicated CAS platform, more than anything else, at the operational to tactical level. Without it, we aren't a fully capable joint force.

In completely permissive environments (which are common thanks to the USAF establishing air dominance), there's no substitute for low/slow. We need a cheap and plentiful platform dedicated to this end.

As far as coordination goes, I think a lot of that is a symptom of the larger problem of no joint planning and convoluted C2, which we've discussed how to fix. One reason you are frustrated with the Army GFCs, is their lack of training. Why don't they train more for CAS? Because that's what we have JTACs for.

By the way, the Marines wrote the joint CAS doctrine. They actually do delegate CAS assets better than the AF/Army do. They plan and execute CAS at a lower level. That is the approved joint CAS doctrine, and it isnt implemented, because micromanagement.

Thanks for bringing sanity to this thread Rooster. Im not sure we will ever get another single mission aircraft, its too hard to defend in the budget wars though it seems like it ought to be possible if both the Army and the Air Force were both pulling for it. I wont hold my breath though.

Why low and slow fixed wing? Why not more apaches? Are you talking about something like the super tucano or the attack version of the T-6 trainer, the At-6b?

I can see a need for something smaller than a 500lb bomb, but then you start having penetration problems dropping light weapons from low/slow platforms.

Expand your low/slow concept Im interested.

Low and slow platforms can Autonomously kill the target with minimal coordination. I always thought Kiowas were the best air support. Lower than Apaches, they often provided as much info about the enemy to me, as I did to them. Often they needed no coordination to engage the enemy. I was able to use my platoon to fix them, while the Kiowas strafed them from a flank and destroyed them.

What we lack in COIN day to day is the ability to find fix and finish the enemy. Intelligence is the most common problem for finding them, but that's different topic. I will say that low/slow platforms can help find the enemy in some rare circumstances.

Low/Slow platforms can give Observation feedback on the overall enemy situation that most fast movers will not be in position to see or evaluate. Low and slow platforms can be more effectively used to fix a fleeing enemy, with low visual orbits vs a fast mover pass, which might cause temporary distraction, or maybe relocation (which doesn't help).

Low/slow requires less coordination to deliver ordinance, and gets ordinance on target faster.
Number of aircrew is important too. Someone has to be diligently looking at the sensors, which a pilot cannot do if he is flying/coordinating.

The AC-130 is so great, because it trains and deploys with the same small community, it is part of a joint mission planning process, has the combination of crew/sensors/ordinance and flies in a low/slow orbit where it can observe the battle underneath it.

Helos and AC-130 are the only truly effective CAS we have in COIN. Everything else we are better off using artillery or rockets for. Ironically, GMLRS takes too long to coordinate through the cfacc, because of fratricide concerns with the other shitty platforms.

I don't know how good a super tuc or Texan would be. I don't know enough about aircraft. We do this topic all the time, and some people have brought up some good points about a super tuc vs apaches. Apaches are expensive, maintinence hogs that were built to fight the Soviets. One of the biggest problems with air, is there's never enough. Lots of low cost, cheap to operate platforms, is way better than a few sexy airframes with a bunch of over engineered shit we don't need.

A low/slow plane with a crew of 3-4, a few good sensors, comms, a couple of 500lbs or smaller bombs and a decent gun, are all we need. But we need a squadron or more of them in/with every Army Division.

Is that your RFQ?

MC-27J?

I think I may have mentioned this before....  

OV-10X with a crew station added in the rear for someone (preferably an enlisted prior-service 11B or similar) to control a small belly turret.  This turret would contain GAU-19 and a TADS system similar to (or the same damn one, possibly) the one on AH-64.  This guy is your primary CAS "shooter".

Load the wings up with 2.75" rockets, Hellfire, Brimstone, SDB, converted mortar shells.... go kill stuff trying to kill our guys.

Interesting...Sustaining Systems Engineering: The A-10 Example (Based on A-10 Systems Engineering Case Study)

This would be a good test.  Lets see which one takes the most damage. No contest.


Attached File

Even a basic RFF/RFC has more detail. I'd want to be able to specify AC performance parameters: range, power, speed, ordinance type, fuel consumption, logistics requirements, sensor and comm specifics. We'd want it to be able to operate from a remote and primitive airstrip. All of those details matter a lot, and require research and expertise far beyond the knowledge off the top of my head. That's why I have no idea what the best plane is.

MC27J is very cool, but I don't think it is the answer to CAS, even in a permissive environment. It would probably be a more specialized platform. It would probably only be a night asset.

This does bring up the other problem of intra-theater lift. If the Army controlled their own small fleet of MC-27Js, they wouldn't waste all their CH47s moving ash and trash.

Hell, I still want to arm the CODs the Navy is phasing out... AC-2 Hellhound carrier-based pocket gunship FTMFW!

And if I told you there are people that pull against every statistic and scenario ever and balance taxpayer, performance, technology and feasibility interests? And those people decided on the F35?  

Will you still hate the F35 when it's controlling multiple drones, allowing faster CAS on station for multiple units?

OK.  

So what do you want?  Keeping in mind: low, slow, survivable ... choose two.  

we need to bring back the RRW program.

Are you making this distinction between the two terms?

Vulnerable = gets hit.
Survivable = gets hit and stays in the air.

Best way to ensure a sophisticated war is to count on nothing but goat-fuckers and arm for it. Read much history?

We aren't talking about every statistic and scenario. We are talking about Low/slow CAS in a permissive environment. This is the most likely scenario the past 75 years, today and into the future. We are talking dedicated CAS platforms, which the F35 clearly is not. So I'd tell you and your people who think F35 is the answer to that specific problem, that they are fucking retards.

The F35 is a solution to a set of very specific tactical problems, that don't yet exist, and likely will never exist, because advanced nuclear nations don't want to risk nuclear war. These few scenarios, and places we might need the f35 have questionable strategic value to US interests (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Spratley Is).

The F35 is what you get when you have no defined foreign policy, enemy or military strategy. It's the air power Swiss Army knife.

So let me get this straight, you guys think we can go up against a Russia or China with an F-whatever, 4th gen aircraft, and it won't get shot down?

You do realize they would be the enemy? A pretty good one? Whose job it is to kill us? And they would just suck so bad, that our miracle ghost planes would smoke them like a 3rd or 4th rate military like Saddams?

Yep. That is the shit the Airforce is selling. No, that is not what a war would be like. There would be losses. Lots of losses. I'm sorry the Airforce culture is more like the DMV than warrior culture, and they like to play air soft in the sky with the coolest gear... But it ain't going to happen. You go to war, even a limited war, with the big boys, and they will make you bleed.

For the F35 fanboys, what happens on day 4 of the war when you've lost multiple squadrons of F35s?

Does anyone else remember when the army air corps declared a formation of B17s couldn't be attacked by a fighter? Anyone else remember an F117 getting shot down by a forth rate military? Pepperidge farm remembers.

So no, LO and "survivability" aren't at the top of my list. Especially for AC designed for permissive coin fights. It's a war, no technology prevents losses.

Yes, let's talk relevant history. Specifically, let's talk history of conventional warfare betwixt nuclear armed powers.

Looking beyond your lack of understanding of the program, the most likely scenario is that I'll never get robbed or my home invaded. Does that mean it's wize to sell all my guns and ignore the possibility?

You probably should read up on the program before criticizing your understanding of it.

Why not game theory?

A straw and Bait and switch? No thanks.

It REALLY doesn't work in this example, because you seem to be claiming the F35 is an acceptable capability for a dedicated CAS asset. I've made a long, detailed and strong case for the requirement for a dedicated low/slow platform, and why the F35 doesn't fit.

Feel free to debate my facts and portions as presented. Attempting to come off as intellectually superior, using logical fallacies is beyond foolish and ignorant.

I've read about the program. Would you care to debate a specific point or just use ad hominem to continue your trend of empty logical fallacies?

That's nice, honey. Would drone CAS be acceptable to you if it was readily available?