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Looked at article online, Precedent and Rationale for an Army Fixed-Wing Ground Attack Aircraft by Maj. John Q. Bolton, U.S. Army. Military Review May-June 2016.
Bolton commented that each service has its owned preferred missions, and for the Air Force close air support is not one of them. Also, that the Air Force does not care much for the aircraft used for CAS.
The author regards the Beechcraft AT-6 as a good choice.
Yea, I got curious and looked it up. Thanks for the memory refresher at any rate though. I also found out that GE did make a 5.56 mm gatling designed for aircraft and vehicle application. Called the microgun, but it never reached mass production. Ground vehicles using this system would also be good drone killers and team well with aircraft support in that role. Sort of like a CWIZ for killing drones on land. For such an application putting LOTS of rounds up would seem to be desirable, and such a weapon would do the job. 5.56 is plenty big enough to take down off the shelf drones.
For things that get past that that full auto 12 ga system they have would be a good tool as well. Options for knocking down these rotor drones that double as a nightmare for enemy ground forces are certainly readily available for both aircraft and ground vehicles.
Last edited by NVplumber; 05-29-2017 at 07:39 PM..
The Israeli Air Force has pasted plenty of ground targets with it. Matter of fact, wasn't it F 16's and A4s that took out that Iraqi breeder reactor back in the late 80s?
The Israelis used the A4 to good effect. It was a damn fine little fighting plane. Maybe not as good as a Mirage in a fighter/interceptor role, but it was designed with ground support in mind. Not high altitude mach speed engagements with MIGs. But she was a quick handling, nimble little devil, could pour on some decent speed if needed, but still fly slow enough to pinpoint ordnance on the enemies outhouse.
The Israeli Air Force has pasted plenty of ground targets with it. Matter of fact, wasn't it F 16's and A4s that took out that Iraqi breeder reactor back in the late 80s?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim Randal Walker
F-16s, with an escort of F-15s.
beat me to it. the F16s used standard gravity bombs as well, though speculation was that smart bombs were used. at one point the israeli strike force was challenged by jordanian air traffic control. at the time the strike force was flying in a very tight formation, and one of the israeli pilots spoke fluent arabic and told the air traffic controller they were a flight out of syria, i think.
beat me to it. the F16s used standard gravity bombs as well, though speculation was that smart bombs were used. at one point the israeli strike force was challenged by jordanian air traffic control. at the time the strike force was flying in a very tight formation, and one of the israeli pilots spoke fluent arabic and told the air traffic controller they were a flight out of syria, i think.
They played that game in a big round-robin that took them through Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia...claiming as they passed through each country to be a flight from some other Muslim brother nation.
And the strike was dead on target, every bomb was a shack.
At the time, the Strategic Air Command coincidentally happened to be running an exercise with a Middle East scenario. We have BUFFs deployed to an Army airfield in the Texas panhandle which was an Egyptian airfield in the scenario and bombing the Nellis range...which was Iran.
I was in the Blue command cell at the time. About 0400hrs, a runner from the Intel Watch brought us a message saying, "This must be for you. The exercise cell forgot to put caveats on it."
The message reported that Israelis had just bombed a nuclear power plant in Iraq, and the Watch presumed it must have been a scenario message without the "EXERCISE-EXERCISE-EXERCISE" caveats. I ran it down to the exercise cell, and they assured me they hadn't issued it--it was a real-world message.
All this talk of slow COIN aircraft to loiter around the engaged ground forces to hunt drones, we should remember the other side gets to shot at them too. and the man packed capabilities anti aircraft are growing. It is one of the main reasons that the much better protected A-10s are in the process of being retired.
All this talk of slow COIN aircraft to loiter around the engaged ground forces to hunt drones, we should remember the other side gets to shot at them too. and the man packed capabilities anti aircraft are growing. It is one of the main reasons that the much better protected A-10s are in the process of being retired.
An implication being that there will be nothing comparable to the A1 or the A10 for close air support.
Another implication is that helicopters will become more constrained in their usefulness.
Last edited by Tim Randal Walker; 05-29-2017 at 09:04 PM..
All this talk of slow COIN aircraft to loiter around the engaged ground forces to hunt drones, we should remember the other side gets to shot at them too. and the man packed capabilities anti aircraft are growing. It is one of the main reasons that the much better protected A-10s are in the process of being retired.
Which means US troops ought to be armed against drones as well.
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