It has been my limited experience that "30 minutes of straight misses to eventually have an MQ-9 do it", does not typify the gunship community I was a part of for 20+ years. You are certainly entitled to use your observations and experience to form an expert opinion, kind of like when I heard about the C Model dude screwing his Crew Chief at Kadena, that obviously means all Eagle Drivers (past and present), swing the other way...
I like you bro but the plank holders from your community are old friends (many from my community), and they hold the #1 moniker. As you can see below I've given you a more appropriate designation.
It is one of the most maddening observations one can make if you dedicate your life to this endeavor, as good as we are we constant run to the latest crisis and in haste we forget the lessons of the past. 14 short years after the great aerial battles of of WWII the mighty F-4 launched on it's first flight, sans a gun. As a reward for forgetting that history the lads initially paid a heavy price over Vietnam. The AIM-7 had a sub 10% kill rate, in total 452 Sidewinders were fired during the Vietnam War, resulting in a Pk of 0.18. Years of gun pods to get them through until the E model came along with a gun...we will never repeat that mistake right...here we are in 2023 and Fat Amy Charlie does not have an internal gun.
I am guessing you don't know how this went down. This whole thing started not because the SOCOM masters wanted out of the CAS business (quite the opposite), but because Slife was harvesting manpower from Ops squadrons across the command to man his pet project. When Slife tried to cut the gunship crew further he was stonewalled by the Gunner union and A1. Keep in mind that community already paid a price when another herbivore was at the helm (Wurster), and convinced Congress he could cut the gunship crew from 13 to 7 in order to replace 8 H models with 16 J's and keep it manpower neutral. Think I'm kidding, go look at page 23 of the 2009 QDR, actual airframes and numbers are rarely called out in a strategic document but it is there in black and white. When the union said "No" to Slife he immediately replied, "Ok, get rid of the 105MM". There was no analysis on employment history, just a shoot from the hip response. There is much more to the story, I feel bad for the folks that continue the day to day in that toxic HQ building.
Keep in mind, this was NOT a Big Blue decision. I REALLY wish the system worked as you think it does but SOCOM is a different animal. In the history of the command there as been exactly one Airman running the show. Slife badly wanted the job but was denied and sadly survived long enough to worm his way into the VCSAF job (god help you all). Because this was a SOCOM decision and the CC is a ground pounder, the boss looks to his air power experts to shape his decision. Keep in mind the proposal is coming from his air power component commander so he turns to his USAF aviator SOCOM/CV for expert advice and validation. Said SOCOM/CV is a Slife's puppet, he is an herbivore who wants the AFSOC/CC chair next (and gets it), does understand kinetic airpower and most certainly does not push back.
Again SOCOM is different and components get a vote so when this idea surfaced the component commands representing the ground parties pushed back VERY hard, but if you know SOCOM you know the components fight each other for resources. The Purple Pot battles get ugly and if you think USASOC is gonna give AFSOC support, especially when the TF is fighting to resource 160 rotors of their own that are running around with guns and rockets...they will quickly stab a brother in the back to get $. Big Blue could give a rat's ass, they are completely focused on China so there was no debate or actual thought put into the impact this decision will have.
Well done, but as pointed out above just a bit different from the fight I was in. I would also point out that because last days of AFG differs from the early days does not mean fights like the early days will never happen again...thus I would actually prefer to have BOTH options.
The gunfight I ended up in was far more typical of Al-Fallujah, supporting a team fighting a crap ton of bad dudes literally across the street. Chaos everywhere as the bad guys tried to flank, got on the roof to throw hand grenades, popped in and out of windows, doors and alleys. Thank god both guns were humming and we were able to shift fire in a second or two to stop every attempt to over run the good guys. PGMs would and the time it takes to employ them would have been useless in that particular fight.
Point and click CAS is cool and offers another tool in the container but it has limits and dangers all it's own. Professionally I would ask you keep in mind the actual definition of CEP...it means HALF of your munitions will fall within those parameters, there are consequences when they land outside that circle. 26 years of flying and a little bit of combat time, the most focused and SCARED I've ever been (including two MANPADS guiding on me at the same time), was when I pushed that button that close to the friendlies. 8 seconds TOF felt like an eternity and I will freely admit some quite moments of reflection the next morning over some bootleg brown liquor. There was no chest thumping, just a quiet thanks upward that I didn't F it up...and I say "I" because it was me that had the A code, it was my decision and my responsibility.
I recall a training sortie as an O-6 when I was flying with the W's working AGM-176 employment on movers. Obviously I won't get into tactics but it was an exercise in frustration as we tracked farmer brown driving his truck around Clovis. Numerous turns over a 10 minute period repeatedly tumbled gyros tumbled as the crew rode the struggle bus trying to reset the LAR. I could not watch them hump the bowling ball anymore and finally said "Shoot TWO if you want a high Pk, but for the love of god shoot something before he gets away." Point being, there is a benefit of deep magazines. A couple Griffins is cool, a crap ton of candy corn is even cooler and useful in big fights.
I am not trying to be a dinosaur, I was actually an early adopter and advocate for SDB and incorporation on on the gun pig, but as a whole I see USAF and AFSOC forgetting our history and drifting away from core capabilities like CAS. I have great concern when we take away the 105MM (and maybe the 30MM...yes it has been discussed), and retire the A-10...the two greatest CAS platforms that have existed, all in the name of a pivot to peer near-peer. God help us if we do these things and end up in another dark night over Jalalabad and all we have is Fat Amy with 181 rounds and some PGMs.
