“Shut up! Shut up, you American.

You always talk, you Americans. You talk and you talk and say ‘let me tell you something’ and ‘I just wanna say this’. Well, you’re dead now, so shut up!”

DEBBIE:
Can I ask you a question?
GRIM REAPER:
What?
DEBBIE:
How can we all have died at the same time?
[silence]
GRIM REAPER:
The salmon mousse.
GEOFFREY:
Darling, you didn’t use canned salmon, did you?
ANGELA:
I’m most dreadfully embarrassed.

– From the Movie: The Meaning of Life –

Second, keeping three types just for having acceptable level of airframes is either throwing the moola outta window or you are wrong with the reasons.

The reason for three different bombers is several. First we don’t live in a perfect procurement world. Two; All three airplanes were originally products of the cold war, yet now a days, with modern near all weather PGMs, one bomber does the job of several smaller fast movers AND takes those weapons over an increased range. As you have seen already there has been downsizing in both the B-52 and B-1 fleet over time.

The fact remains that when it comes to traditional conventional war, these aircraft do a great job. With JASSM and SDB coming on line it just gets better.

If anything we will downsize more small mover wings before these jets. Lots of traditional fixed targets go away real quick in a short time. Large bombers with lots of PGMs are just more efficient in many ( not all situations ).

And of course, Special Ops, Where there are no airfields around yet because of the range of these aircraft, they can drop off a conventional PGM of almost any flavor, and make an important target go away.

I am not sure about the Apache, but it’s very slow and not very manouverable, we’ve seen how it performed in Iraq, out of 33 hits only 3 were in mission ready status the next day, the rest were either shot down, written off or need heavy repair.

As I see with Ka-52 and Mi-28N, Ka-52 seems to be more manouverable and faster, yet Mi-28N seems to be able to pack more firepower and is much more armoured.

Also Ka-52 and Mi-28N are twice as cheaper than the Longbow.

Survival is relative to the threat. In the story below, I doubt any other attack helo would have ended up different. Stupidity in the below case is absolute. Run over an active fighting division en masse and trashfire, AAA, Small SAMs / MANPADs, etc. and the results below are easy to see. You want to make a fighting division combat ineffective with airpower: use moderned fixed wing air with modern, near all weather PGMs.

Use attack helos for lower threats. At least with the Apache now it is very netcentric friendly and has enjoyed some success with offboard sensors like JSTARs handing off targets right into the Apache aircrew display. This makes small hunter killer groups more effective at night. Good for helping cut off access to and from a large enemy formation while the real airpower thins the herd before enemy ground formations even make contact with friendly ground troops.

Attack helos are VERY useful. In the case of the Apache I would say it is far more useful than an A-10. (2 two crew on a netcentric night friendly platform ) In places like Afghanistan where you are limited on the use of ground artillery because of the terrain, it is a big help to ground troops as portable “artillery”.

If JCM ( Joint Common Missile ) is funded, it will give the Apache REAL standoff killing power with its range ( 18 to 30 km ) and tri-sensor seaker. Combine that with the Apaches netcentric ability and its survivablity and killing power will improve….

BTW, while the USMC used their Cobras better initially in OIF, some did get “shot down”. More than one had to land right where they were because trashfires shot them up so bad. They ended up going back to their home base on a truck trailer.

Charge of the Light Brigade and Why Army Aviation Needs Serious Leadership Improvement…. also where were the scout helos??? None to be seen in this event. Their job is to help keep stupidity like this from happening. Certainly some sensor UAVs would have been useful. Running an op with no joint planning and running a large formaion of SLOW and LOW aircraft over unknown ground and you can see what happens…..

U.S. Apache Helicopter Downed in Iraqi-Held Territory

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 24, 2003; 12:40 PM

CENTRAL IRAQ, Iraq, March 24-The Iraq war’s first deep
assault by attack helicopters turned into a frenzied battle early
this morning as U.S. pilots came under intense fire from
anti-aircraft artillery and individual Iraqis with rifles, pilots
said. One AH-64 Apache Longbow helicopter went down in
Iraqi-held territory, due either to enemy fire or mechanical
failure.

The pre-dawn attack was aimed at tanks and other armament
of President Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard
around Karbala, south of Baghdad. Col. Bill Wolf,
commander of the Army’s 11th Aviation Regiment, said the
air assault by Longbows crippled four or five Iraqi tanks and
several light vehicles.

But pilots said they were forced to abandon most of their
targets because of an intense curtain of fire that rose from
streets, roofs and backyards, hitting nearly all their aircraft.

“It was coming from all directions — I got shot front, back,
left and right,” said pilot Bob Duffney, 41, a chief warrant
officer 4 from Springfield, Mass., who flew combat
helicopters in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. “In Desert Storm,
we didn’t have a firefight like this,” he said.

[Iraqi television aired footage of a Longbow sitting in a field,
surrounded by Iraqis waving rifles, Reuters news agency
reported. The aircraft, still bearing its missiles, appeared
largely undamaged. There was no sign of the crew members
in the video; in Qatar, General Tommy Franks said they are
being treated as missing in action.]

U.S. pilots said they came under all sorts of fire — some
apparently from Iraqi troops using anti-aircraft artillery, some
from individuals firing AK-47 rifles or rocket-propelled
grenades. Much of it rose from tree-lined suburban streets
and backyards, raising a specter of how dangerous urban
combat could be as U.S. forces approach Baghdad.

U.S. pilots said they responded to the fire on their Apaches with 30-mm cannons and four-foot-long
rockets that are as thick as baseball bats.

The Apache Longbow is the new star of the Army’s helicopter fleet, a high-tech craft that uses radar to
swiftly identify and prioritize targets.

It has infrared capacity to “see” at night and carries radar-programmed Hellfire missiles that pilots can
“fire and forget” because there is no need to remain locked on to a target, as is necessary with
laser-guided missiles. The Hellfires have a range of about five miles.

One of the pilots, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Steven Kilgore, 34, of Gary, Ind., said it was not surprising
that the sophisticated helicopters faced such a challenge from relatively primitive weaponry. “The
Longbow is designed for going after armor and high-tech air defense,” he said. But with low-tech air
defense “until they start firing, you don’t know they’re there.”

The pilots speculated that some of the Iraqi fighters belonged to the Republican Guard group they were
targeting, known as the Medina Division. “They definitely had their air defense arrayed in different
zones. That’s what we were fighting against, plus some small arms,” said Stewman.

Pilots struggled during the attack as bullets whizzed past their heads and damaged some key machinery.

Duffney pointed to a small hole in the glass of his pilot’s window where a bullet had smacked at head
level. During the attack, he said, pounding adrenaline made him focus intently on his job. “Instinct took
over,” he said. He became most worried when a pilot in the plane next to him got hit in the neck. The
wound turned out to be superficial.

When the flight was over, the 6-foot-four, 240-pound gun pilot was as emotionally drained as his fellow
pilots. “We all hugged each other,” he said.

During the battle, Duffney’s hydraulic system was hit, blocking his ability to fire his weapons. Others had
more serious damage. One helicopters lost an engine. One sustained damage to its primary flight control
system and had to fly home to the makeshift base south of Baghdad using a backup. Gunners on the
ground hit two of the aircraft’s rocket pods, setting them on fire. The pilots had to jettison them.

The barrage of bullets was shocking to both seasoned Army pilots and newcomers to combat, like Lt.
Carrie Bruhl, 26, a co-pilot and gunner.

“It sounds like a sledgehammer,” said the native of Oceanside, Calif. “The first round that came in, I
couldn’t feel my legs. Then we got ****ed off people were shooting at us. So we shot back.”

When her helicopter got back to base at about 2:30 a.m., she said, the first thing she did was “make
sure my legs were still working.”

Another pilot who was also experiencing combat for the first time had a different recollection of the
gunfire hitting his aircraft.

“As long as I live, I’ll never forget that sound: tink-tink-tink,” said the pilot, Capt. Chad Lewis, 30, of
Rolla, Mo. “There were trees and houses. People were firing everywhere.”

Re: C’mon – own up – who knew?!?!

Originally posted by Steve Touchdown
That the F/A-18E & F, which are rapidly being pressed into service as we speak, have been unofficially christened “Rhino”!?! 😡 😡 😡

I didn’t believe my eyes wehn I saw it today but, after a quick check on Google, it looks horrifyingly true!

Apparently it’s even starting to appear on Puffer-Hornet crew patches.

Is nothing sacred?!? 😡 :confused: 😡

Steve Rush ~ Touchdown-News

That nick has been around for a while with the safety guys, LSO, Air Boss staff etc. Big reason communications safety. The Jet is big time different in weight compared to a regular F-18. This way when you are giving commands on what is to land next, everyone concerned knows, especially when the arresting wires, ( which are set different for each trap based on WEIGHT ). Be bad for a SH to trap with the wires set for the base weight, plus the fuel call out of a Hornet.

Saw this a long time ago on a National Geographic TV special on Carriers and they talked about what I just mentioned. …. ” Those two Rhinos are next …. “

Originally posted by Vympel
Why does the upgrade include both LITENING and Sniper XR? Isn’t that redundant?

The latest LITENING was available almost off the shelf so they put it on and it worked. SNIPER-XR will probably be the pod of choice in the future for a lot of airframes just that in the case of USAF, they just only recently got the contracts sorted out and put a few on a small number of F-15E and a few other airframes. ( Norway by the way got the export version and has them in place now ( PANTERA ). Some of the optical sensor / lasing gear that will go into the JSF is based on SNIPER XR like technology.

I am real curious about the “improved” engines on the A-10 it is going to have to be a lot of thrust to keep the jet up there. The jet really can’t take a big load up high and is a pain to do tanking with near 15,000 ft. ( The jet is a pain with it’s slow speed to tanker drag across the ocean. Those big F-111 like ferry tanks btw are not combat rated. ) So this idea of giving it the ability to drop bombs from a higher altitude ain’t that much higher. A slant range of 25,000 ft with lets say an altitude of 10,000 or so droping LGBs still puts you in advanced MANPAD / Small SAM range. Add to that running around in the hills and mountains of Afghanistan* like terrain, doesn’t help it’s lousy ceiling with a big load. It is still at threat risk where as an F-15, F-16 etc can drop a JDAM from 35,000 plus feet out of the range of those threats. Mod’d LANTIRN, new LITENING and SNIPER-XR can lase a target as high as 40k. As a USMC flyer said: “The A-10 orbits around in circles and kills our own people.” Which brings up another point. The improved engines are still going to leave you this slowish airframe that can’t blow on through like a fast mover when strafing. You can hype the survivability of the A-10 all you want, but when a F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18 comes down to strafe, it is fast and gets the hell out of there and assumes a MANPAD shot in their escape. An A-10 doesn’t have that luxery.Even with advanced decoys on this slowish bird, it can lose big time to an advanced Chinese /Russian MANPAD like a game of rock/paper/scissors. Hey look it survived. Look at all the holes in it. It got all the holes in it because it was slow and orbiting around and can’t blow in and blow out of a bad situation.

“I can touch you but you can’t touch me, in almost any weather.” The A-10 doesn’t and can’t live by that motto in the new age of netcentric war with cheap PGMs.

*=Notice the photos you see of it in Afghanistan with a small number of Mk82s, marker rockets and a few Mavericks. Hardly impressive and is partly a result of the limited altitude performance.

You have other loading issues with the jet when you max it out. Only certain hardpoints are smart bused. You can’t put the LITENING on the centerline because it would eat gas and debris from the gun.

All in all the A-10 is still useful, but it has a lot of limits on it. If you want to get mean at night, you are better off with the Apache as a lot of them now have some great netcentric gear that allows it to get all kinds of info from UCAVs , JSTARs etc. including targets handed off into the crew targeting display. Combine that with some A-45 UCAVs ( which btw will IMHO take away the A-10s last advantage ( that the A-10 can get in and out of some “shortish” fields. Well we will see. Like I said. There is still a use for the A-10, just that it is not the first tool out of the bag when going for CAS, especially when a fast mover answers a 911 call quicker. For fixed wing manned stuff doing CAS I’d rather have an ( just to name two … ) F-15E or F-18E/F with a fair number of GBU-12, SDB, WCMD. Trash fire, AAA, and MANPAD / small SAMs couldn’t touch them.

Re: SSSSSH! Keep it secret, but…

Originally posted by Flood
There is shortly going to be a barbecue raid on the cabin cruisers forum, when burnt meat-stuffs, tea, coffee, cake, and maybe even ginger beer will be dispensed to all and sundry in an effort to bring good cheer to those poor begotten sods who’d watch wing’ed buses in their time of need.
We need to know how many to cater for so if you could leave your names below then we shall see if it is a viable proposition.

But, very importantly, DON’T TELL THEM! Surprise is everything!;)

Flood.

Don’t believe it. The only food they will have will be extra two day old un-used flight meals they brought home from work, and those are never really great even when they are “fresh”.

I was going to do a Sig of all the Class A mishaps I have taken photos on but decided I couldn’t one up Arthurs sig. 😮

IMHO FB-22 will require R&D funding we don’t have at the moment. Too bad we had C-130Js forced down our throat. Might have been enough margin there to deal with it.

JSF IMHO is over rated. You have team players that don’t need it’s stealth ability for doing strike and could better be served by a EF2000 or Rafale or Gripen and some who could use JSF. That is a lot of range of diversity, of mission needs by the JSF partners where some just don’t have the threat level and are better served by conventional “legacy” designs, and if they suddenly did need a striker, An A-45 class of UCAV would better serve some.

Like I said, I wouldn’t miss it if JSF gets cancelled. Again, spend a $110- $120 Bil to bring F-22 up to 500 air frames and reduce significantly total USAF shooter air frames. ( Yes there will be an A-10 for a long time and yes there will be Guard F-16s for a long time ). I just don’t see the great benefit of spending $250 Billion + / – for an airframe like JSF, and I think bleeding L.O. tech to foreign sales is a dumb idea for us.