Lawman

F that. Look how many damned times do we have to learn the same lesson on airplanes/helicopters that carry cargo (or passengers who disembark without landing). Ramps are a requirement. Period full stop. Anybody saying otherwise has never tried to put something not luggage into a “light cargo aircraft.” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That guys numbers on available cargo loads were obviously limited to his experience on google. I would love to see the mission profile that has an Osprey lifting 20k anywhere in Afghanistan from the months of April-Oct with enough fuel to go anywhere outside the pattern. There is a reason nobody has come up with a “heavy lift” tilt rotor design that works. It’s because tilt rotor ACLs are more drastically effected by negative environmental performance due to the effective lift generated by the disk. That’s why the 53 and 47 are still projected out well into the middle of the century. You want to buy something to make a big impact in the log train? Let’s get more small robust/spartan interior Intra-theatre transport planes. Give us a plane big enough in cube space and forgiving enough on CG to put 2-3 randomly loaded pallets on with minimal effort to JI and move. That’s the reason the Army uses rotary wing to move stuff all the time at the cost of more blade hours and maintenance. It’s because when 2x ISUs and a dozen dudes need to go from KAF to JAF and I don’t have 3-4 days to wait to do it. Col wants that stuff up there now, and I’ve got 47Fs that can move it... unfortunately that means I take 2 chinooks doing a job to move 1/2 of a chinooks worth of stuff. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Better question... How are all these masks getting to deployed personnel at location X/Y/Z. We’re having conversations about rationing flight hours and not being able to get back filled on parts that might cause breaks in mission because of flights in/out of country. Now you’re telling me we are gonna get a C17 full of F’ing masks to some of these outlier places? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I wanted to choke a kid over here who said “this can’t get any worse” between this after losing the gym and having to go plates only in the chow hall. About smacked him, pointed at the big Charleston tail sitting on the ramp and went “You see that! Those can stop F’ing coming.” Morale is down no doubt, but this could get far far worse as far as making life suck over here. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And we are closing out that show too... You act like there is an assumption we will just take the billion dollar deployments of units from the Stan and CENTCOM and transplant that to PI, African, etc... If it didn’t justify assets yesterday it won’t suddenly get the billion dollar stack we’ve become too accustomed too in recent years. We are broke, we are tired, we have to reset the military and buying stuff that would have been useful 12 years ago for a fight we are leaving isn’t going to be a big hit on the hill. It will lose its fight when people are asking to replace 25 year old armored vehicles or upgrade/replace a 45 year old 707 series of support aircraft that will be critical to a near peer fight. If your operation doesn’t justify all the help from ARSOA, U-28s, and AC-130s right now yet their mission still goes on, you’re crazy if you think there will suddenly be a JUONS that justifies AFSOC buying a bunch of light attack. Outside AVFID there is no and will be no appetite to put this thing to work. We are scaling back our SOF footprints because we desperately need too so what mass customer demand do you think is going to demand this, because they are the reason for its existence. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hate to break it to you guys but any and all desire at this point to spend money on this will die in approx 12-14 months. Afghanistan is over. The primary customer for this aircraft requirement is done doing missions. Every day that continues you move further and further from your single biggest example of justification. Nobody will care about building this capability for the next mired quagmire war. All the focus will go right back to the big war thinking and acquisitions and the best we can hope for is somebody saves all these power point briefings on a drive somewhere and is in the CSAF and others office on Day 1 of the occupation and rebuild in Venezuela/Sudan/whatever banging it into their heads we can’t afford to consume the F35 fleet flying it around for 10 years doing XCAS against Toyota’s with PKMs on them. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Well... back on our heads... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It could seek a rough field requirement and operate with a deliberate planning cycle to find/make one for prolonged ops. Something akin to what the expectation with 130s is. Fly in the gas when needed. A 47 or even a CV-22 acting as a FARP is 10k lbs of give easy. Heavier than that is possible, but requires a bit more thought. It wouldn’t even need to stay there as you could YoYo your FARP to a 130 and keep it airborne hold, Gas on call with an expected set up time. We already have this TTP for using RW CAS in the kind of fight we are talking about. We would just need a more restrictive set of requirements when seeking a site for it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I’m curious how you would strategically position a fleet of unmanned F-16s in both a timely and useful manner. The reason these UAS platforms are built the way they are is it’s easier to crate them up and fly them in the belly of a big grey tailed aircraft than it is to try and figure out how to fly a Reaper/Pred/etc across all the airspace between us and the S-head country we need it to go too. Somebody with more F-16 experience please chime in on the level of difficulty if you were asked “get from Hill, and go to Thailand/Japan/Phil.... you can’t air refuel and also we aren’t allowed in the following countries airspace.” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

To be honest since we didn’t buy enough of them the first time, I’d be completely good with the ignore the obvious and just take a 21st century technology infused into what is basically the B-2. Modify the technology and add in all the decades of new stuff we have made common place. Evolve the airframe from a maintenance perspective with MSPUs and other sensors to make maintaining it and operational capability more viable, and use the 30 years of knowledge in “keeping/feeding” we have learned with the 4 stealth aircraft we have actively used in the fleet. Combine that with a new engine for the B-52 and holy crap it’s 1993 again and we have bought a bomber fleet with 30 years in it until we need another major infusion or cash. great success everybody, now can we please invest in a new modular 767 or other platform to absorb all those jobs we currently use aircraft constructed during the Carter admin to accomplish.... because time is ticking.

Which is fine for AVFID. We are talking about making this item part of the conventional order of battle. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I just don’t see that logic tracking through the demands of high level people. We already have a fleet of non utilized liaison aircraft and instead we fly important people on their own much more expensive aircraft that could be used for any other mission. We flew the Chinook hours out of an entire Brigade in Iraq because for some reason we couldn’t use a C-12 to move 2 people regularly. Honestly it would have been smarter to just pull one of the dozen manned ISR platforms and make it do that job. Likewise we have “airlift” capability in aircraft that will never because of the demand of their other mission be used as airlift in the minds of the planners. How often is anybody sticking pallets in a KC-10 when it can do that and in some cases do it at greater volume than other airlift in country. Not talking about "hey we can take our stuff TDY" I mean looking at the available lines and taking aircraft from mission A to task to mission B. It doesn’t happen because nobody is giving up a tanker to move pallets of stuff. ISR would get the same treatment. Even if it’s pod mounted, you might as well weld it on, because when the COCOM with the big show going on is trying to steal assets from other theatres like CENTCOM in 16-17, you aren’t going to see them turn one of your available TOC porn relay stations into a high value low density parts transport. Oddly enough... this is exactly the mission the C-27 was intended to do. Irregular immediate request logistical support. It don’t fly ring routes, and it’s not for anybody else to retask. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The second you put a pod or ball on it you will cease to have it as an option for airlift. There is no limit to the thirst for FMV from manned platforms. Honestly the only way to protect an airlift platform is to make sure it can’t be used as a jack of all trades crappy substitute for GOCO C-12s or U-28s. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just saying.... the unrefueled distance required to launch from Israel and range all of Iran and the distance from say.... Lakenheath to Moscow are nearly identical....

Honestly it’s always surprised me given their investments they didn’t find one, but a long range combat radius aircraft with the ability to defeat or counter air defense is something the Israelis would kill for. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It was outstanding being in Iraq when we stood back up with all the “that’s not how it used to be” issues we created ourselves. Logistics... oh just put those parts on the rotator.... What do you mean there is no rotator? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The simple fact is too many of our doctrinal lessons have been lost on an entire generation who is now at the reigns of leadership. Brigade Commanders grew up in the era of TOC Porn, unending lines of support, bus schedule designed mobility, and conops instead of 5 para orders. Now those same captains/Majors are wearing Eagles or Stars calling out their sister services for “not supporting us” because the reality is in a non GWOT war, you won’t always get whatever you want and if you aren’t the main effort that’s exactly what is supposed to happen. In fairness though the don’t understand Army stuff like the fact that surge is a temporary situation that requires repayment on the back end. Hence dumb stuff like blanket extensions to duty day, priority target lists and NAIs that don’t function as they should, etc. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ah, couldn’t give you specifics on here, but as to say the level of micromanagement on what the AWT line is doing in Iraq is pretty insane. We were constantly banging against it when I was there. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you’re referring to the festivities at BAF, that was for different reasons (gate guards literally locking down ECPs even to people briefed to cross them. But yes I’ve had permission to launch denied while I sat blades turning during IDF and told to remain level 1. So it’s too dangerous to fly because mortars/rockets, but no too dangerous to sit in a running aircraft while we receive that fire with a dude outside completely exposed to launch us. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No you’re talking direct Battlalion echelon attack supporting Brigade operations. None of that is de conflicted the way Divisional/theatre ISR plans are. I’ve got Army C-12 guys across the hall. You know what they don’t do? Coordinate via the CAB here. You know what an aviation brigade sends to an attack battalion as far as airspace coordination? Not a damn thing except maybe it’s hot walls if you’re lucky. You know who does go get that information? The Battalion Tacops guy. The one warrant that figured out how to load the file on the AMPS because the F if some Captain in the plans or FUOPS cell has any idea what they are even looking at. I spent too many days cleaning up 7th IDs G3 Air disaster of and being told by both 1-2 and 2-2 SBCTs “we don’t have an ALO so just figure it out,” to watch you lecture us all on how great the Army is at integrating the battle space. And don’t think you can tell us this is an “Army takes care of its people” argument. I spent more than a few hundred hours flying counter IDF over places like Warrior or Sharana that never took any only so we could have those poor bastards at FOB Boris get to keep their heads down. Brigade commanders don’t share low density assets any better than the Air Force apportionment. In fact after watching the main effort brigade steal all our organic shadows for their ISR collection plan it’s pretty obvious they don’t give a damn about what’s outside their AO. Because we stopped supporting a lot of units just so they could have a few more TVs worth of TOC Porn. Not that any of the work of the CAB would really matter in this case, since the specific idea is using these in support of clandestine ops in austere locations (IE USASOAC). So paint the bitches black and lets stand up 5-160 already... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I’ll give you all the conventional Cyber for no trade at all. For F sake can we make that part of space force already? Having people promoted to leadership in that MOS while they are being compared against their peers for how fast they run and what their rifle qual was is insane. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oh bullshit man You know what direct Apache Support lines look like so don’t go misrepresenting in. Flying “Silver line” in Afghanistan.... ok go Support Dragon brigade for 2 hours for “named operation” Thunder Road... which was NAI recon of the same road every day. Well done Dragon S3 for making that a named operation... Ok they got theirs for the day. Now head 40 miles west of current location, refuel and conduct “counter IDF” over Shank/Dalke. Hey wow look we are supporting multiple brigades... you can’t actually shoot anything but maybe your presence will make them not go set their IDF. (Nope). And if you’re really lucky they will let you do ground postured QRF for the remainder of your gun line at BAF so you can maybe get a plate while you sit. Or you can get dedicated QRF line for a location that has no mission and then the CG can turn off countless named operations in vicinity Al Asad because part of their min Force is rotary wing fires. But hey, you got Apaches staged at location X ready to respond to anything within 60 minutes.... if they ever actually get approval to launch (which we didn’t... even when we had a DART outside the wire). Yeah man, we really got that stuff figured out. Again, I spent more than a decade and several deployments seeing how well we understood airspace. You’re nuts if we think we understand enough to even integrate with the rest of the Air battle space to suddenly go employing a 10k altitude 300 knot platform without being a risk to ourselves and everybody else in that airspace. When a CAB doesn’t even have an LNO at the CAOC it cannot be anything but reactive and restricted to the little set aside boxes they carve out for you to play in. That is not how you can even remotely try to employ this type of platform. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Working well into my second decade as an Army aviator with first hand experience watching us not get out shit in a sock. No we have no god damned clue what we are doing when it comes to anything above the coordinating altitude (the altitude where the ATO/ACO just says “stay down there and kill yourselves if you want too, but don’t get any higher”). That is exactly where this platform would live. Unless we just want to go with the default dumbassery of “stay low and we won’t need to coordinate so it’ll be ok.” I’ve seen that method used to great effect. When you have 1 guy per company of aviators who even knows what the ATO is and maybe 2 guys in a battalion that understand how to pull it off the spins... when your ALSE guy is a W2 PI dude that spent two weeks learning how to sew and now has to worry about oxygen and ejection seats/chutes.... When your S6 can’t get crypto into the equipment you have and now we want to add GPS keys to guided munitions maintained at a flight line that won’t be collocated with your battalion... When your brigade worries more about making sure the piloted are painting their faces in the field with a flammable paint and ignoring the fact your aircraft have no ASE installed and sends them to China Lake to run the radar lane... that last one was 4 CAB at NTC just a few months ago. Don’t even get me started on the guard.... No the last thing the Army needs is a fixed wing attack airplane. And I was a staff aviator working up to Brigade level before I said F this I’m tired of banging my head against the wall for these idiots to ignore basic facts/requirements and crossed over. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ha Because the Army has ever had its priorities together when it comes to an aviation platform.... No... just hell no. The last thing we need in the CABs is another platform and mission they don’t understand when they can’t get UAS right most of the time. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So basically do what existed in the 80s when the Guard had a FAC(A) mission with the OV-10s. Wait.... it’s almost like we’re buying the same damn plane if we went with the *drumroll* OV-10X. F me I’ll bet there are still pubs regarding doctrine of such a unit buried right next to books on Air Land Battle. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk