Well the canopy bow serves the purpose of being fucking retarded and annoying to the pilot…as is tradition.

Stealth jets carrying GBU-12?!?….how f-cking stupid…oh wait. We do that in the F-35.


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3 hours ago, brabus said:

Well the WSO serves the purpose of being fucking retarded and annoying to the pilot…as is tradition.

Fixed that for you. I keed, I keed…

Seriously, why would the USAF entertain the idea of spending $69B to develop a new A-10 when they could use a combo of Vipers, EXs, and F-35s to do the same thing? When the existing A-10 already 1). works and 2.) costs well under $2B/year to operate and upgrade.

If the answer is “because the senators want the airplane builders to have steady income,” ok I’ll buy that.

Seriously, why would the USAF entertain the idea of spending $69B to develop a new A-10 when they could use a combo of Vipers, EXs, and F-35s to do the same thing? When the existing A-10 already 1). works and 2.) costs well under $2B/year to operate and upgrade.
If the answer is “because the senators want the airplane builders to have steady income,” ok I’ll buy that.

Zero chance the USAF invests a dime into new CAS capes. And with good reason. Bigger things to focus on.

CAS was a popular buzzword after 9/11 and brass wanted a piece of the pie back then. Now it’s a min run effort.


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Had an interesting discussion with an Army 19D (scout) recently.  He said they are quickly becoming of the opinion that they want to do their own organic "CAS" with mini drones and switchblade type munitions that are not reliant on GPS or any other agency.  Makes sense for a scout to think that way.  It spurs an interesting conversation: When do we decide that man-portable tech has advanced far enough that CAS is no longer a USAF fixed wing requirement?  Look at Ukraine.  Lots of videos of drones dropping small/accurate munitions and getting it done in a contested environment without CAS.

Edited July 13, 20232 yr by FourFans

It’s an interesting thought and clearly there is increasing merit to the idea. Seems it does work for many situations, just lacks the firepower one may need in others. But if it’s the 80% solution, fuck it, procure more tech like this and let it rip. 

One of the first things I learned about the CAS mission was that CAS and a not there to win the Army’s war. The Army needs to do that and CAS is a tool to attack rear echelons, temporarily supplement the battle or quickly add reinforcements when outnumbered, arty can’t reach + a few more tenets. It is not a primary tool.

Makes sense for the Army to have its own effects. I’d much rather have good HIMARS and arty linked to accurate targeting capes than an F-35 or A-10 for that matter.



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9 hours ago, FourFans said:

  Look at Ukraine.  Lots of videos of drones dropping small/accurate munitions and getting it done in a contested environment without CAS.

Man, don’t ya just love watching videos of Ukrainians dropping $100 grenades on top of $2M Russian tanks?!  Makes my Cold War-raised heart swell.

3 hours ago, Bergman said:

Man, don’t ya just love watching videos of Ukrainians dropping $100 grenades on top of $2M Russian tanks?!  Makes my Cold War-raised heart swell.

Its almost like watching Macaulay Culkin fighting the wet bandits, but with uavs and grenades instead of toys and hot irons.  

Simply put:

Effective CAS requires and provides high situational awareness coupled with rapid, precise, and accurate fires.

The AC-130 and A-10 reign supreme here.

Other measures of performance matter a lot too, of course (range/endurance/magazine depth/hardened target legality/CDE/survivability/cost/etc). These additional factors all define how much, where, and when effective CAS can be provided, and some other platforms beat out the AC-130 and A-10 in some of these. This discussion is ultimately about how much do we buy in to a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none platform (F-35) vs specialize and diversify… as many others have already alluded to.

I am a proponent of maintaining some specialization/diversification.

1 hour ago, FlyingWolf said:

Simply put:

Effective CAS requires and provides high situational awareness coupled with rapid, precise, and accurate fires.

The AC-130 and A-10 reign supreme here.

Other measures of performance matter a lot too, of course (range/endurance/magazine depth/hardened target legality/CDE/survivability/cost/etc). These additional factors all define how much, where, and when effective CAS can be provided, and some other platforms beat out the AC-130 and A-10 in some of these. This discussion is ultimately about how much do we buy in to a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none platform (F-35) vs specialize and diversify… as many others have already alluded to.

I am a proponent of maintaining some specialization/diversification.

That's nice and all, but the platforms need to change with the environment.  Permissive environment allows CAS, and I think we should keep the capability to do that, but specialization that doesn't take into account the evolution of new technologies is doomed to specialize perfectly to fight the last war.  If there's something the US is great at, it's fighting the last war.  I think the A-10 should say, but with an evolved role.  Likewise the AC-130.  I think we still definitely need them, but not as they were. 

Neither of those platforms are going into the shit on week one of a high intensity fight with China.  Imagine an AC-130 over Ukraine right now...in YEAR TWO of that conflict.  Any Gunship guys here care to speculate how that would go?  I'm genuinely curious.

13 hours ago, di1630 said:

CAS is a tool to attack rear echelons

I thought that was interdiction?  Do you think we stealth platform could do that properly?  F-35 simply doesn't carry the right load to make that worth it.

Edited July 14, 20232 yr by FourFans

I thought that was interdiction?  Do you think we stealth platform could do that properly?  F-35 simply doesn't carry the right load to make that worth it.

Depends if short or long of the FSCL generally for AI vs CAS.

Targets drive weapons so sometimes we have enough….sometimes we don’t


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2 hours ago, di1630 said:

Depends if short or long of the FSCL generally for AI vs CAS.

Big emphasis on generally here. The FSCL really doesn't have anything to do with defining what's CAS vs AI, and what factors are decided on where to place the FSCL is more of a factor to your point.

To FourFans' point, yes going for rear echelons usually is interdiction. Might be blurry depending on if & where the enemy is capable of/is engaging with friendly forces and their maneuver. Likewise for friendlies (SOF or other embedded into the deep, etc...)

Overall, semantics that are likely to be f'd up 3 ways from wednesday by any C2 / staff / GOs / civil leadership anyways.

Depends if short or long of the FSCL generally for AI vs CAS.

Targets drive weapons so sometimes we have enough….sometimes we don’t


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That’s a bit overly simplistic.

CAS is any air delivered kinetic effect that impacts the ground forces elements of maneuver requiring the enhanced coordination between air and ground elements to mitigate risk. That’s why it changes relative to the weapons employed and not just a range or place. Air delivered high dud munitions for example would require a far wider margin of separation/coordination over an APKWS delivered at high angle. Same is true for our fires from the ground to the ground. 155 is different than an ATACM even though it’s all “fires.”

You can be doing AI and still be well short of the FSCL. See all the stuff we did striking isolated pockets of resistance that our ground forces bypassed during things like the 03 invasion. If they weren’t supporting a maneuver unit in the conduct of a developing or direct fight, it was by default AI. Or you get into those weird “shaping” ops like using you guys to knock out a bridge when a unit realizes it’s flank is about to be rolled up. You are technically out of contact, so it stops being CAS even though it’s obviously an immediate consideration to a maneuver unit (whatever echelon).


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Some Air Force guy at CGSC is rock hard reading these posts.

9 hours ago, Danger41 said:

Some Air Force guy at CGSC is rock hard reading these posts.