How often do you use live bombs in training? How often do you get to shoot down aerial drones? Thanks

Not sure what the answer is these days, but when I was at Tyndall...you got one shot at a drone..yep, one shot per career normally...

Live bombs...not sure.

The SOF community is a bit more active. AC-130's shoot live ammo on nearly every training mission, as do MH-53's. The only real limitation is usually getting range time. Aerial gunnery is viewed as a perishable skill so AFSOC and SOCOM place considerable effort and money on maintaining the capability.

On the fighter side, I can't imagine there being a big difference for strafe between TP and HEI, other than what it looks like at impact. Perhaps some minor ballistics that can be compensated for by the mission computer. In the old days you were limited to 100 rounds per training sortie. There was a switch you could bribe the crew chief to reset for you.

I am guessing the big difference is with MKs and GBUs. The jet must feel different when you pitch a few thousand pounds of Tritonal and steel off your wing.

If you want to have the best chance outside combat to drop live bombs, apply to the Weapons School. Fighter and bomber guys going through the Weapons School usually get to drop several types of live rounds while going through the course.

For the fighter guys, it depends on what and where you're flying, but around here we mostly do this on deployments. The only place I know of for shooting missiles is the Combat Archer WSEP at Tyndall AFB. On a normal schedule, I think most squadrons get to go about once a year.

In the 2.5 years I've been at my squadron, we've had about four opportunities to drop live at home station. A couple were LGB (Laser Guided Bombs), one was dumb bombs (MK-82s), and the most recent was JDAM. Similar to Archer, Combat Hammer is the WSEP for A/G drops. There are also numerous other A/G WTDs (Weapons and Tactics Deployments) that we've gone to.

A/G strafing is easier to coordinate and every so often we get a gung-ho commander who says, "Dammit, we're gonna start strafing again - guys don't know how to do it - it's a dying art!"

Then we go strafe a couple times and because we haven't done it for so long, the guns all jam and the jets come back code III. Then maintenance complains and we stop strafing for a year or so...until the next gung ho commander shows up.

[ 29. March 2004, 23:12: Message edited by: Toro ]

For the B-130 guys, I'm guessing they still drop loads of "pet rock" bombs(concrete slabs on pallets)... for training purposes. This was obviously just a joke to wander into the F/B/AC territory.

Hey Clearedhot, I still remember filling your planes full of those damn rocks back during our Moody days brotha!

At Hill one sqd drops lives about every other month. Strafing is done about every month. Typicaly the whole "drop lives" thing is used a a reward in the fighter sqdn much the way incentive rides are for the MX guys. Of course it dosent hurt that the range is 15 minutes away and we have an AMMO depot here....

In th BUFF we typically use tone scoring to simulate Mk-82s/84s. With JDAM and WCMD, it's assumed you're hitting the target due to their accuracy. Same goes for CALCMs. I hear they'll use the "Intimidator" practice bombs that will produce a smoke cloud on impact-more for visual scoring.

Last year my viper squadron dropped CBU-130's, JDAM, shot HARMS, Mavericks, and strafed. But that was in a war.