Lawman

Because it shows a lack of honesty on some of the more interesting things RPAs have been doing recently and are doing right now. There is plenty going on right now today with drones and other tools that resembles far more closely the scary scenarios than the permissive scenario of putting a predator orbit over a mud hut in Afghanistan for days on end. Everybody wants to scream "RPAs aren't mature for the near peer fight" well after 15 years of coin-centric warfare neither is probably 60% of the military. The Army has only just been getting its shit in a sock to do Brigade level maneuver warfare again. I've been in units where my senior NCOs don't know how to put up a GP medium because up until now they've never had to. But if you or others want to sit here and pretend that the RPA structure from tactical to strategic is just gonna throw up it's hands and say "we can't play" either you're inventing a scenario that doesn't exist or ignoring the laundry list of other systems/players/platforms that are going to be just as screwed or have to work around just as many issues in the nightmare worst case WWIII fight.

I honestly think if we could metaphorically hold a gun to their head and make them actually BRAC, it might not go the way most would want. Votes are votes, and those nice locations with the functioning economies of a metro area don't really need or in many cases want us. Plus as stated earlier a military base is a huge landmass of developable (meaning valuable) property that could line a lot of pockets. Those outlier installations 3 exits down from the edge of nowhere don't really attract anything but social welfare votes. I'd see them more likely to tell us enjoy Cannon/Polk/Fallon/etc while they close and repurpose the Mcdills of the force structure if you made them chose between option A/B.

I'm guessing by the timeline you just suggested your not exactly in the loop with the current goings on. Given where UAS exist in the active targeting cycle and the targeting cycle it's self, the necessity/history of work of guys developing TTPs for the scenario described, and the current daily validation of them doing a lot more than just thump guys in man dresses who have at best a ZPU.... yeah drones have actually been doing a hell of a lot of proving themselves. I guarantee you right now there is a drone orbiting somewhere that 20 years ago some Intel troop or planner would have said "we can't sent anything but the 117 there...." And they are only getting more refined and supported. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And this becomes relevant again.... https://youtu.be/XPxs9WQ6ZW8 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I would worry about timing any sort of adverse location bonus to a specific amount of time. That's way too easy of a "fix" for assignments to accomplish where they simply PCS two guys from two separate crap locations at the year X-1 day mark to the other guys crap location (and vice verse). Then they get to pretend the PCS cost nothing and that they "saved the service money" in not paying out a bonus. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It would be an amazing concept for the services to actually offer a hardship location pay to some of the spectacular locations stateside like Polk or Minot. I get prioritizing cost of living adjustments but BAH is designed to handle that, what isn't handled is money to make being 7 hours away from anything and any family in the middle of the desert. Another factor I would say all the service branches need to see is what there actual needle is at with the constant game of "that's where you're PCS'ing enjoy the sandwich I gave you." I can count on one hand the number of people told to go to crap location that threatened to drop their papers and leave that didn't, but I can count at least 15 guys that are out for the same reason. How many times does HRC have to lose that fight while still calling themselves successful before somebody tries to make a change. Maybe treating people eligible for retirement/guard/etc like they have no option but to take the hand dealt isn't a good policy to stick to when you're simultaneously facing a manpower shortage. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

What? I had to reread that first paragraph a few times to figure out if you were actually serious. I'm guessing you've never served in either the Army/Marines or been near either of their helicopters let alone have any idea what happened at Karbala huh. Your impression of the ROK forces doesn't match much in the way of mine or others I know. Language barriers not withstanding, those guys can fight, and given the choice between watching their cities glow/absorb massed artillery or taking their vastly better fed/equipped forces north I've got a good idea which one they'd want to do.

I'd go Fairchild before McChord. Put you on the right side of the mountains to get to Yakima during 8 months of the year, by plane or car. Love my house at JBLM but god did we find a way to make the field so close yet so far.

For the most part every unit will request you, because it's easy to hit copy/paste/send. Nobody is actually expecting you to show up. If you do it's a huge bonus for that ALO to look good for the Bde Commander, but I've seen tons of Calfex's that were deemed successful without the Air ever actually being there. It just becomes a JTAC on a radio pretending to be Hawg. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No but if you're talking about doing integrated training with supported customers SF/Rangers are the guys to lean on, because your average BCT may do 1 Calfex a year and in that the JAAT is about the only time they care if fixed wing shows up. Those are largely a waste of time depending on rangisms present at whatever particular base causing them to be extremely scripted and often times not reflect realistic scenarios. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The customers for this kind of thing (SOf/Rangers) have money to go TDY. More importantly there is literally a SOF group in every region of the country so it's not like you're gonna be off on your own unless you go to Hawaii/Alaska. Pick a base wth good combined vehicle/air ranges or at least access/range to them. I'd say try an East/West model where you get the most bang for your buck with customers. For example any reason you guys couldn't do Peterson with 10th group or Mountain Home where you have Orchard with all the Rangers/SOF from JBLM? Somewhere in the SE US to cover Bragg, Campbell, and Benning would take another huge swath of customers up. The worst thing you could do is stick this thing somewhere like Cannon where you are hours away from anything that wants to use you by plane let alone by car. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm 100% tracking capes and lims. It certainly is not a hell fire replacement, but I also don't have enough hands and feet to count the number of times I watched an R9 target something that was agr-20 wheelhouse. Or the number of times I've watched hell fire impact, dude runs away. The hell fire family is a great weapon, but the AGR-20 is no distant slouch. That said, I don't have much SA on the RW version. Clearly impact angle is far more limited when shot from RW than FW. As you said, this weapon is probably a far more significant capes increase for FW than RW. We aren't shooting these things from RW altitudes and angles. 10k feet is 10k ft and it's the same rocket. It's all about what the rocket tries to do where it picks up guidance and comes in at the shallowest angle it can. That's great when you're talking about taking all that warheads lethality and delivering it into a target like a truck, but given the PD warheads blast/fragmentation it works exactly opposite against any sort of area target like a group of dudes around a mortar position. We've pushed this up in Army circles to BAE and the answer isn't forthcoming on when/how they plan to fix it. I know the Marines were talking about a flechette version but then you hit a new problem of needing to know/control which rockets are in which tubes so you can properly match warhead to target because there is plenty a flechette can't do. When you mix that with the R model 114 getting a programmable HOB setting to better combat that effect of driving into the dirt and killing its blast/frag lethality. I agree it's still aggravating as hell to see a guy get up from a Hellfire strike but a lot of the times we've seen that it's either due to poor gunnery technique driving the missile off target or effects like terrain which would make a PD even less effective due to it only having a PD fuse. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It has greatly caught on all the way to the service levels, and is significantly cheaper than every PGM we're using in the current fights (sans a nose plug GBU-38...but that weapon cannot do what the AGR-20 can). Again, not saying we should be paying $25K for a rocket, but it beats the $100K+ Hellfires we're also shooting at an asshole riding a horse, and provides a capability to bring a lot more low-CDE firepower to the fight vs. fighters showing up with only bombs and being useless in many situations. It may not be perfect, but for once we actually did something that surpassed spec, works well, is relatively cheap, and all in a fairly short timeframe for our typical acquisitions process. You need to look at some of the delivery limitations on it particularly it's angle on impact vs the bug splatter charts . Until they put a programmable trajectory it's never going to supplant Hellfire, especially when you factor in the R model having a programmable warhead while APKWS is essentially a very target position vs point of impact dependent hand grenade with only a single type of fusing. Don't get me wrong we've shot them plenty (most of the Army's total inventory) but the time and place that I can use it is far more limited than Hellfire, but it wasn't designed to do what we are trying to do with it in this fight. Really it wasn't even designed for us, it was built as a way to put a PGM into the hands of air forces that own a lot of crappy planes/helicopters with old 7 shot pods they inherited from our Korea/Vietnam era weapon that is the Hydra system which is why it's totally self contained vs DAGR and other such systems. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's fine and can be done, but it starts with the Supported elements ALO being actually competent in the weaponeering and tactics that he has to convey will be employed for that GFC. DA fight yeah get out of the cockpit, but COIN where CDE and all the after effects are major factors that GFC has to have trust and confidence that the air isn't going to make more problems being on a long chain to make their own decisions. He's the one that has to send guys into that village next week after the strike and deal with the aircraft having done X/Y/Z to meet that intent. It's the same problem we have with them and we wear the same uniform. If we send an LNO that can't confidently and accurately reflect the needs and capes of the supporting element we end up getting dumb requests like "we want you to use 30mm instead of hellfire to lower CDE" from 3km standoff. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Fixed it for you. APKWS is a good place to start, but that weapon has some pretty serious issues that need to be resolved before it's ready to get fully utilized as the PGM of choice the way hellfire is. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'd be very interested as well. I'm liking the possibilities here for a more full frame carry pistol to option instead of just my M&P9 shield.

Even if you couldn't necessarily build a hot rod version (i.e. the Navy's old Vipers in the 80s). Not having to have it be fully mission robust you could set aside some of these early lot 35s and just PMC their support allocation. Keep them flying, even keep them air to air capable, but you're not anywhere near the priority of a line squadron with actual deployments to meet, that sort of thing. With 35 price possibly dropping at some point below the 100 mil mark a few years out it just seems dumb to go about trying to find a 40-60 million dollar square peg to fit the hole while ignoring the one you have. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

2 things.... If the goal of aggressor squadrons is to truly replicate any and all threats likely to be encountered when Air Forces around the world getting ready to field their own 5th gens... And Price of aircraft decreases with larger group buys and total cost of ownership decreases with less diverse fleets... Why are we kidding ourselves or trying to buy some other aircraft instead of say... buying a stripped down version of the 35 which doesn't necessarily need as robust a mission capability but instead can go out there and replicate the worst day scenario of a LO threat in the Red Air playbook, or attach some radar reflective pylons and play Johnny 3rd-4th gen 4/5 days of the week? I feel like all buying some FA-50/Saab/etc trainer jet and trying to use it as an aggressor also is going to just lead us to the exact question of "ok now that PAK-FAs are everywhere how to we make a stealth aggressor" 10 years from now anyway. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And I think a lot of that prevention that is a concern: -Ground Security -Log-pack -FOD/airstrip MX -Etc But it could and would be more easily solved by combining the idea of forward basing with personnel that actually understand aviation operations. One of the biggest boons to the Army UAS community was in getting a lot of it out of the BCTs and attaching them to Aviation Brigades. At least fundamentally those people understand how to better keep and feed aircraft. This in a way would be the today's version of some of the Raven/Birddog/FAC type little expeditionary strips we used in Vietnam. Where yes it says US Air Force on the side but you look and live more like the grunts you are there with. I'd venture you would see a very similar attitude of mutual support if you were at some of these forward locations in a "we are here to help but you gotta help us" type capacity vs playing the game of my toys are expensive and your mission is not worth the risk. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Meanwhile... in the service that treats aviation like Hilux's.... I'm not discounting your points, but take a look at our forward UAS presence out there right now in the AOR. If we can land 10-15 million dollar sensor equipped drones on an airfield that had as little preparation made for it as just an earth mover and a couple sprays of Rhino Snot, you aren't going to win any favor with the supported commander (the ground force) by insisting you can't go to the same places. I'm the first to admit the way the Army beats on its helicopters is a self inflicted injury, but to pretend that an aircraft meant to survive austere conditions is a bad idea is a bit much. Yes your example of forward to the point of "why are we doing this?" Is valid, but it's also the 1% of the time Flight Concepts "let's go get Bin Laden" kind of day. The other 99% would be take a look at the conditions at some of our "Not Erbil/Taji" airstrips out there and say we need to set up operations. Essentially the requirement shouldn't be that it can go mud bogging, but that it wouldn't need you to ever land a C-130/17 to support it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Funny enough... Our current Army operations in OIR have through a combination of limited footprint for forcecap and minimal equipment due to fragmenting out resulted in a lot of bottom level mission command delegation. We actually have air mission commanders being air mission commanders again because the TOC doesn't have a way to get themselves in the decision circle jerk. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The fact that this platform couldn't be viewed as a strategic asset the way UAS is would grant a lot of protection to theatre/AO commanders to keep and use their assets. AFSOC could undoubtedly get usage out of this as well in the "not a real war" places like SE Asia or Southcom where we can't or don't want to advertise we are around. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Pretty sure you guys have an entire group of "Air Commandos" who do exactly that for a bunch of third world Air Forces around the globe. How sad is it that we can figure out how good a deal this plane is for the Afghans just not for ourselves in the same theatre. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It's not without historic precedent. The Eagle development was the Air Force baby. Boyd and the LWF program were treated as pariahs by comparison because they were "stealing money" from the real project/need. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So pretty much exactly the same as the unconditional release.... which usually comes with conditions like not leaving in a timely fashion to get ready for your new job lest your losing command give you a death sentence OER that stops you from leaving all together...