pjhydro“Smaller end” of the US fighter mix is the rub. The Cold War necessitated lots of short-ranged fodder that could be deployed close to the Soviet advance. But the Cold War is over and present realities show short-ranged fighters to be a weakness.
Short-ranged fighters bring a circus of logistics support with them – political negotiations for basing rights, military construction to prepare airfields, tankers, jammers, maintenance, spare parts, Etc.
After watching Desert Storm, the various operations the the Balkans, and Iraq/Afghanistan, no dedicated adversary will give you 6 months to deploy and marshal your forces so you can attack him. This means you have to deploy to and fight from existing bases that are likely not very close to the battlefield. Your airplanes need to have significantly improved range and the ability to operate without the logistics circus. F-35 eliminates some of the circus, but still required nearby basing because it doesn’t have the range for the USAF or USN mission.
To a degree I can agree with you, but a large airforce such as USAF is only large becasue of a high-low mix. There is no way the US air-arms could be as big if they concentrated on large high end hardware. The irony is medium sized airforces like the RAF can’t afford small fighters, they concentrate on the high end stuff to maintain cabability, but that comes with the cost of reduced size. The USAF would dramatically reduce in size if it didn’t have a “LWF” and with that would go its ability to launch 24 hour air war.
pjhydroI found a picture of sniper and this is the Pod that is on the Gun pod. Which makes me ask what is the Pod on the centre line then?
Recce pod. JRP. The ‘other’ thing on the starbord side is a strake in place of a gun pod. The CVF7 rockets are used in the ‘gun’ role.
pjhydroIf we can’t then we have serious issues, I too suspect we could do it though, if there was the political will and competence but i have no faith in brown at all, zero.
Does anyone? :diablo:
Trouble is that would break the “rule of three” and put aircrew and techs under a masive strain.
pjhydroI seem remember much breathless and panicky talk of Stingers in the hands of the taliban back in 2001/2002 time frame but from what i remember the general thought was that the chemical batteries the Stingers used had long since gone flat redering them useless.
Looking back I assume that was a correct line of thining as I can think of no allied helo’s that have been downed by Stingers.
For the most part tactics have been followed that mitigate the stinger threat anyway, but the battery issue is probably true. Still, not worth the risk though.
pjhydro“Mr Codner, director of military studies, Royal United Services Institute, says Britain’s armed forces have 520 ‘frontline’ helicopters.”
Are there really that many?
Very misleading figure, depends what you mean by frontline. Gazelle’s are technically still frontline and there are are bags of them.
Then of course there is the question of type. We are not going to send many ASW, SAR, HMA helicopters to afghan. Can’t see what use a Lynx HMA8, Merlin HM1 or a Sea King HAR3a will be, add these up and they are a significant proportion of that 520 figure. While they have been sent (or so the rumours say) the Sea King ASAC 7 is no good for troop lift, so thats another you can discount.
The only useful troop lift helicopters are the Chinooks, Merlins and Seaking4s. So thats a total of just over 90, and when you look at availible active airframes that aren’t in a hanger in bits etc, then the total is nearer 50 airframes capable of being deployed to afghan. That does not take into account that most of the seakings are yet to be upgraded, daily training needs in the UK etc.
All out effort, with a lot of strain on the training and engineering system I reckon the UK could deploy 25 large troop lift helicopters, for a prolonged period, if the order was given today.
pjhydroHunts around for the sarcasm button….ah! set too low….. 🙂
pjhydrooh yeah and a satillite helps… with all its attendent keepers…. original launch capability and costs….
pjhydroYou are mixing COIN and CAS. CAS by definition requires ground troops in contact (i.e. getting shot at by bad guys). Those troops in contact are responsible for providing correct coordinates for CAS strike.
COIN, on the other hand, doesn’t need a friendly on the ground with visual of the potential target. Instead, sensor imagery is used to verify the potential targets have weapons in hand. The sensor imagery is then reviewed by the JAG officer on duty at mission control and permission to engage is granted. With the lawyer in the loop, the guys at mission control refer to their jobs as “conducting lawfare”.
Confusion? Not at all. There are very few battlefields sanatised of civvies, afghan is crawling with them. Many UK CAS missions have been scrubed, even with troops in contact because of the presence of civvies.
So by making it “cheaper” and having the pilot based at Creech, you also have to pay for a lawyer… surely thats extra cost, then of course there is the pilot you deploy in theatre to take off and land, so one UCAV needs a minimum of two pilots and a lawyer to clear up the legal issues….? :confused:
pjhydroI wish more countries had bought the A10 when they had the chance and if it was available now i could see quite a few airforces buying some. (especially the UK if they had the budget) It would be perfect addition to the Harrier and GR4.
I believe the UK looked at the two seat night attack A10 very briefly in the early 80s, but it was deemed that Harrier GR3 and its successors were what fitted the UKs take on the cold war scenario. They idea of doing a lofty swooping gun attack on an Soviet armour column protected by ZSUs made the RAF flinch a bit. Far better to blitz past at max speed, very low level and drop tons of BL755s and be in the next valley before they hit.
pjhydroCome back in December and tell us how much light there is.
Almost nine hours. Which is only on one day, the 21st december and after and before that it is lighter for longer. On the longest day it never truly gets dark and today, almost three weeks after the summer solstice we have over 16 hours of direct sunlight, which translates into 18-19 usable hours of light.
pjhydroIf the troops in contact bungle the coordiantes for the CAS fire request and target civilians, then verify those corrdinates are correct. There is no difference in culpability whether the shooter is a manned airplane or UACV controlled from 1000+ miles away.
It goes back to situational awareness. Don’t want to repeat myself from another thread, but at prsent Reaper etc have a much lower SA than a manned fighter. An example is a UK Harrier pilot who demonstrated on TV the other day how he could see the people on the target he was eyeballing were half-size – in otherwords children. He could not see that in the small scope of his sniper pod, but could on the visual sweep.
If you look at the disproportionate scale of civvie casulties in UCAV raids, it does point to the fact that this weapon system is either not mature, or misused.
pjhydroBy the way, the UK is quite far north, much of the year we have much more daylight than half the day…. just a pedantic point….:D
pjhydroIt dark during half of your average 24 hour period. Mark one eyeballs do not work well in the dark or weather. So, the aircrew is forced to rely on sensor imagery anyway. Why should it matter if the gray cell computer interpreting that imagery is 1000 miles away at a mission console rather than in the cockpit?
Because the speed of light is what it is and data being collected, transmitted 1000 miles, procesed and presented will be slower than if you are there in person. Even at night, yes a pilot has to rely on sensors more, but the data is not then transmitted with any delay and degredation of signal that will entail.
What is forgotten is that “the bags of flesh” are the fighter aircrafts central computer. Far more powerful than any man made processor and easily upgraded and adapted to task. What a UCAV essentially does is take that central computer, move it thousands of miles away and tether it to the aircraft by a long stream of data that can degrade and is always delayed. Why take the central decsion making asset out of the place it is needed most?
pjhydroModern CAS requests involve use of datalinked coordiantes from the ground troops who need the fire support. Ideally, the UCAV would pipe the imagery from its own sensors back down to the troops in contact so they can verify the coordinates are correct. Once the verification is made, precision weapons are employed.
There is nothing in that process that requires the airplane be manned as the human operator at mission control is in loop to assure the timliness and accuracy of the fire support. That’s the way CAS from Predator and Reaper work today in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places. The caveat is troops still haven’t been provided a device to view imagery from an orbiting UCAV. That feedback to the troops in contact is a planned future capability (d@mned bureaucracy is standing in the way).
Go read the “UCAV ilegal” thread… pretty hot debate about this. There are all sorts of implications, mainly to do with civvies, mis-identification etc.
What you are proposing would tie the UCAV to a given set of troops as essentially an airborne fire support. The Manned fighter-bomber is too flexible to be replaced at present. One minute you do a CAS run….then your off to intercept something….could you top up at the tanker and fly across the country?… you land and can be redeployed anywhere in the world on a whim…. can’t do that with a UCAV yet.
pjhydroThe difference is the “aircrew” is at a console in mission control, not in the cockpit. But the console operator would likely have better situational awareness of a DAS equipped UCAV than an F3 infested with bags-o-flesh.
Really? Any visual representation will be just that, a representation. The Mark one eye ball matched a grey-cell processor is still a far superior system to anything synthetic. How ever good your data links etc are, there will be a sight delay in presenting the information to your “console operator”, the visual quality will be slightly degraded and those tiny details the human eye picks up will be lost. A UCAV in a dogfight would be downed in pretty short order by a manned fighter.
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