By permissive environment I mean one where there’s no significant threat from ground defences.

If we consider Kosovo, that’s an example of lets say a semi-permissive environment. Hard deck for the A-10 was 15,000 ft, later reduced to 10,000 ft. And from that altitude, a PGM equipped turboprop could do the job just as well. Doesn’t have to lug around all that armour, so much cheaper to operate too.

JSR ,for one time, has given a good reply to it.
How I have written earlier, in our country there was recently an interest into CAS as we have a (rather unconventional) dedicated plane for it and we are to acquire F-35 A&B for our own airforce.
In the comparation that were made, advantages and shortcomings of various assets (drones, Armed helos, specialized planes, bombers) have been highlighted and some consensus have been reached.
We doesn’t have found a single plane decisively overcoming all others , A-10 fared obviously very well but also F-35 was deemed interesting for the role.
Actual drones were still too slow and with a too small payload to be convenient for direct attack against real battle formations (but we would still invest on Hammerhead) while they can act great on the other legs of CAS i.e. the battlefield surveillance and targeting.
For this role however our AMX fared even better as there was the possibility for an immediate and above all two way communication with the troops on terrain without have to pass throught a command center, something that in Afghanistan can be difficult and is considerably more rigid.
Our operative experience in Afghanistan and above all what we call the “five day battle” http://campagnano-rap.blogspot.it/2012/08/afghanistan-la-guerra-segreta-di-monti.html, was obviously decisive in the debate.
Let’s say that we ended up quite skeptical about the possibility of a CAS made by stand off distance in general and with gliding bombs in particular.
Reason is that during the above cited engagement our AMXs were limited by their own Roe into not using drop weapons, so they surely they doesn’t directly did the most of killings, still it was them to ultimely save the (five) day and a lot of american asses, thanks to their continuative presence culminating in several strafing runs with their peashooter, some even when out-of ammo.
American F/A-18 and Mangusta came, drops their load and went away but they were the AMX to gave them coordinates and made talibans to squat down instead of assaulting the trapped grunts, when the others were gone.
Even when they were successively cleared into using bombs ours showed not to be trigger happy in this regard, maybe also for political considerations but surely for this useful and eye opening experience. http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/esteri/ora-pure-litalia-bombarda-e-nessuno-sa.html
This is obviously just our own reflections about the CAS mission, other may obviously disagree and have their own doctrine, still we are one of the two western Air Forces to have still a CAS dedicated asset so maybe we can surely say our own.

Sure in a permissive environment, the A-10 does perfectly well. I think everyone accepts. Thing is the Scorpion and Super Tucano are quite acceptable in that role as well.

Vnomad, it depends about what you call for a “permissive environment” IMHO something of a loan word that have not any precise significance.
Just for an example, did you consider Kosovo in 1999, where both our and Us dedicated Cas assets worked together with great reciprocal satisfaction, such as that?

Type of air defence can vary and so the enemy you have to face-
You can have armed forces with an hell of Shorad defense and not any heavier systems or viceversa someone with valid heavy missiles and great lacks in the opposite range (a name sprang into my mind, guess what:rolleyes:).
Also the type of enemy you face would influence it , if it is an insurgency force only, Super Tucano is a viable option, if They are an heavy mechanized force A-10, Apache and in the other field Mi-28 are the best options, if it have good light infantry but lack of heavy armors Su-25 and Mi-24P work excellently.
Actual enemies in Iraq and Syria are somewhat hibrids, they lack good AA assets but they have shown being very able to disperse and hide themselves to avoid being bombed and to reunite on short notice to attack enemies.
Against those enemies CAS mission proved extremely important and useful not just in defensive, allowing to quickly support troops faced by such surprise attacks but also and above all to support offensive pushes of their own troops in order to force them to choose between staying under cover and being overran or show themselves up and being bombed like crazy.
Such a behaviour can be easily spotten by just comparing how not just RuAf but even SyAAF and the (now not more such) small IqAF engaged more targets than the int’l coalition.
In the last few months however Coalition raids grew sensibly as they begun to operate together with kurd -led SDF designation teams.
And using A-10 for it, obviously.

Question is, where the ISIS air defence units?

So, almost when enemy have not meaningful air defenses guns and rocket are still considered also actually legitimate and convenient choices.
Well, it means almost all the 90% of post Cold war era conflicts.
Before of the end of it the preferred way to approach enemy was infact the one well described by djcross, very low altitude penetration, sudden pop up for toss bombing release and hauling ass away ASAP.
This is however not CAS at all as what costituite a prerequisite for such a mission is exactly a continue permanence over the battlefield.
It is this that made such a mission problematic when performed against a serious air defence, more than the type of armament used IMHO but also by the serious deence publication that I’ve talked about.

i would go multiquote this time.
Still allow me a premise first: position I have taken are actually the result of debate ongoing in specialistic defence publications in my own country about the CAS/COIN. I have counted almost 4 or 5 long articles about the argument just in the main two of them in the last year.
So, problem definitively exist and the generally agreed conclusion was that there is not an easy way out of the question as any proposed system (specialized CAS plane, armed turboprops or trainer plane, armed drones, F-35 and on other side Su-34, legacy fighter planes) has both pros and cons and not one of them that can end up being the jack of all trades . So, take my own positions as the one that contest an excessive simplicistic approach to the question.

Want me to find you some pictures of A-10s with dumb bombs and rockets? Are we really going to play that game? Yes, the A-10 can use the Maverick… more recently it has gained the ability to use a wide variety of smart weapons.

If you want to see the main weapon that will be replacing the Maverick you will find it is a glide bomb…

http://www.defensetech.org/2015/02/25/small-diameter-bomb-ii-completes-live-fire-test-destroying-t-72-tank/

The video posted by Scar is quite interesting, may I just ask hoe many decades it is old?
This one was however posted just a month ago, so it seems that they still doesn’t found gun obsolete at all.

This also was posted just two weeks ago. I see drones, I see A-10 what I doesn’t see are gliding bombs.

Cold War era F-16 pilots were not happy with Maverick A because you had to fly a long straight approach to the target to get the missile to lock onto target. The pilot placed the crosshairs over the target shown in his cockpit display, then hit the “lock on” command. It took several seconds for the Maverick to lock onto target. Meanwhile, Warsaw Pact anti-aircraft was busily shooting at you. This was one of the reasons the life expectancy of a ground attack pilot was only 5 missions.

All pilots stated a preference for using CCIP bombing mode to pop up, loft a load of cluster bombs at the approaching Soviet tank regiment, then dive back to treetop level for egress.

Very interesting historical note but all actual question revolves about the fact that I consider that to came, launch load and egress is something while doing Cas something other and others contest me on this point . So, this is not resolutive at all.

One key word is RECON Intel with aid of UAV’s.
Much like Russia is doing in Syria, (and ground targeting designators).
Russia don’t use FF weapons but rather line of sight laser guide.
It helps a lot if you allready know where the enemy is.
When you deploy CAS.
Rather than just have then stationary.

But ok, infantery do ned CAS support on short noticeably, it is vital to have loiter time over battlefield.
That goes for a lot of different CAS platforms like UAV too.

I would call it supporting my own theory but problem is that seems you have an english even worse than mine.
There are however quite interesting hint in it. So I think we can expand it further.
Certainly, the greater pro of armed UAV it is their exceptional loitering time but the cons is that they are very slow and have generally a very small payload.

And this took you 6 years to figure out when it was literally known on first day? I wonder what is next for haavarla.

I think the SKIP retains Il designation, so technically it is Il-976.

Berkut, you are a great poster and a real expert of PAK-FA.
Just relax yourself a little. There is not the need to start a bickering every time someone says something silly.

You realize an aircraft can provide its own laser designation, right? For that matter there are IR and MMW guided weapons that can hit a moving target without laser designation. (besides, most CAS targets are not actually moving)

Do you have any idea how many people JDAMs have killed during CAS missions in the last decade of war?

Nobody has suggested any such thing. An aircraft may or may not be on station at the time a request for air support is made. Certainly there is no need for the aircraft to know the coordinates of the target at the time of takeoff. A targeting pod can provide that or a forward air control can relay the necessary information the the aircraft.

First thing , thank everybody for the polite debating, i’m actually following a similar topic on RuAf forum and things are much more heated.
For the rest, you have responded yourself when you mentioned laser designation and targeting pods while in the post I responded to it was highlighted the main advantage of using glided bombs from afar is that they can be used in fog, rain, snow or low clouds something that can be a prerogative of just GPS guidance.

I don’t want to be the Monday morning quarterback in this, but people seem to forget that attack helos were designed and supposed to be used differently by the two sides.

Given the superiority in numbers (but perhaps also usability) of USSR tanks, the Apache and its variants were designed. In its incarnation with the longbow radar it is meant to hover in appropriate locations where only its mast is protruding and pick up fast battlefield snapshots so it can guide its hellfires taking essentially pot shots at enemy tanks.

Russian attack helos are designed as support platforms to the armoured columns. They were meant to assist the armoured advancement, not take out the opposing armoured forces.

as such, the EM guided missiles are not essential. They will eventually be incorporated, if not for any other reason, perhaps because as time goes by, it is easier and perhaps cheaper to do so.

Excellent and useful post, thank FalconDude.

Really? Avenger? Hermes?

So, your idea of a modern Shorad system is that sad joke called Avenger turret?
AH;AH;AH;AH;AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!:highly_amused::highly_amused::highly_amused::highly_amused:
Well, let’s say that against it AGM-114l would surely be enough but also almost any other weapon carried by an helicopter today, rocket included.