Lawman

Everyone is a winner, some people are just bigger winners then their peers....

Comanchee was never multi role though. It was and always would have been a scout. It wasn't going to replace anything but the 58D and wouldn't have turned into what it is if they had left it alone doing that. Longbow was still on, lift upgrades because our stuff was all early Panama vintage or older for lift. But we still haven't put any money into our scout program so now we are severely limited by the shortcomings of the 58. It isn't to ugly in low intensity but we will be marking targets with burning scouts if we go into anything else with it.

Had a Experimental Test Pilot in flight school that had been on the program. More things wrong with that aircraft then right, and it's smaller then the Zulu Cobra as far as gas and guns it brings to the fight. It could perform the eyes forward recon/screen ops needed, but it's still gonna be much to short in standoff capability and overwhelming Firepower to be much help against an Enemy main body. It has an amazing flight envelope for a helicopter, it's just not a hitter. And as far as cost goes...When we cx'd the program the money the Army saved paid for the M model Blackhawks, the F model Chinook upgrade, and the retiring of all the A model Apaches from Active and are units.

Don't get me wrong on saying it needed to be 5th Gen. If you could get a real 4.5 gen replacement for Harrier that does its job just better (gas, bombs, sensor, bring back, etc) that would have been good enough. But replacing a fast jet that is limited capable with a prop plane that is even more limited for anything but low threat is not the way to go. Problem is we folded the 4th gen harrier replacement into the Navy/AF 5th gen program... So now it has to be LO otherwise you guys would have had to get on board with another 4th gen aircraft. Which works out fine for the AF just buy more Raptors... But he Navy is a big partner in this. And yes he AF is there... Now... Without a decade of peace dividend cutting into your capability to stage like you can now. Does anybody remember how poorly set AMC was before we bought a billion C17s?Your talking about cutting tankers, cutting fighters, cutting basing in Europe, moving the Armor home (no Abrams in Europe anymore) cutting long range bombers like B1... But your expecting to meet commitments that are already painfully complicated when you have a dozen different options to skin the cat. So it's cutting into the numbers available to put up a constant support element, increasing the log time to get the Marine relief in heavy Army units in place, and the tankers to get either in place quickly. It gets more likely the Marines need that firepower then less doing that. Do we need super T's in the inventory... Absolutely. Buy 120 of them and the second the president flies to an AO under a mission accomplished banner swap them in for all the thoroughbred race horses and let them pull the plow for the next decade. Make it a joint unit open to anybody with a tactical background as a tour like FAC. Be a hell of a lot better use for those guys than RPA's and you keep the community fresh and not burned out on constant 1to1 deployments. If somebody had he forethought to have walked in Embrear at the start of stability ops with 2 billion and just told them "he next 150 off your line are mine!" We would all be better off. Then you wouldn't need sections of 40 million dollar jets and me flying 35 million dollar gunships around at 90ktas trying to be a flying QRF or nearly as many farps and dollars to support that nonsense.

Except there is no quantity limit 4-6 5th gen birds. Look at Iraq, they put 20 Harriers on a Boxer class boat and used them as Close Air Support overhead of the Marines. Because they needed more fixed wing CAS. As I brought up before the Air Force has the new Expeditionary Raptor option. 4 Raptors into an AO with parts to go through to sustain. That's a game changing maneuver element. So is having a half dozen 5th Gen deploy 50km from your beach with a cycle rate that allows hat GFC to exploit the attack. Need more, wait a dozen days for the Air Force to get enough Raptors out to Guam or Hornets to Wake etc, or just get the tankers to get a dozen F-35s out to that boat that's already there with parts and and fuel and a base and close by so they can be more useful. Can't do that without VSTOL. Yeah there is a lot of AF in Korea, but your gonna have 99 problems, and he Marine MEU is gonna be 1 of them. Now he capability of that MEU hinges on an outside source, that's exactly counter to their design and doctrine. Same as if they had no Abrams or 7 tons or Heavy Lift. They need a handful of all the elements for Unified Land Ops. The Marines are not The 911 force as long as it's not a scary enemy. And dude I've been involved in Army Movement operations.... Outside the 82nd unit that's on QRF it's worse than I'm implying. Go read about Task Force Smith and our self deploy debacle into Kosovo if you wanna see a great example of us reinventing the wheel in the middle of having shit to do. If you told my Brigade tomorrow to pack their shit and be in Kuwait we'd need 3 months just to get our shit packed. And we're supposed to be the forward positioned CAB for the Army.

Your argument negates he need for 5th gen fighters at all. Your leveraging everything on us staying and doing a lot of low intensity with the tiny possibility of high intensity. Is your memory so short we've forgotten he last 5 real high intensity conflicts that happened in the last 20 years (about as long as a fighter development program). You have stated it's not the Marines job to send the MEU in to be a miniature self contained force capable of holding a foothold (beach, airport, harbor, etc) while the Air Force and Army get their shit together and assemble an offensive capability. Thats exactly their job! And we have used them for that job (reference Marines deploying in Gulf War I). What do you think their job is gonna be in a Korea scenario? Launch SEAD for the Osprey with the Super T's? We got rid of the Bronco because of that exact scenario. It went to the gulf... And we lost more of them than any other fixed wing aircraft because it was he Marines primary FAC aircraft. We got rid of it and started using D model Hornets instead because survivability was an issue to address. Now your saying hey it's cool that's not gonna happen again bro, what we need is a long time persistent turboprop that can provide enough firepower to stop a Convoy TIC or support SOF doing a hard knock. You can call the scenario as unlikely as you want, fact is it has happened before, it will happen again. Same kind of crap people talk about tanks because when is the last time we rolled Abrams against T72s.

Agree with the wood hobby shop recommendation. Every base I've been to that had one has always had something available. A lot of the guys that work in them have lots of different ways they've tinkered with the basic idea and it's not hard or overly expensive to get something customized.

Except your not arguing for that. Your hung up on Super Tacano which is a step backwards from the Harrier to be able to apply real time heavy CAS. Yeah it's got station time and persistent ISR and all the crap we could have used in the last decade of peace keeping in the Stan. It is no more than a helicopter with a 500 lbs bomb strapped to it in a high threat environment, except he can't hide down low like a Helo can. We just spent a month going around the table on going into Syria with a real possibility of needing ground forces to secure Chem weapons... With no Carrier Strike Group in the gulf. So your plan to cover the Marines going ashore is CAS sorties launched from half a continent away. Before that it was Libya with the same talk to go secure weapons to keep from Terror groups. Now it's the pivot into the Pacific. And your service has a history of telling the others "not my problem bro work it out with what I'm giving you." So big surprise the Marines aren't buying your plan.

But your still living with a low threat only capable system. Longbow can operate in a higher threat environment than the cobra because we have a fire and forget Hellfire. Cobras have to see to kill and due to their cheaper sensor (they are he low cost gunship after all) they can't see as far. The second you start introducing a radar directed threat even I don't want to go, they are even worse off. So leveraging your whole CAS plan behind short legged light attack helos is dangerous. Super-T can do a lot but it's still limited ASE. IR threats, it can fix a lot with bolt ons like CMWS or ATIRCMS but it's still not the high long range standoff to provide the CAS/SEAD/ETC against anybody with anything bigger than MANPADs. Like Swanee was saying if you couldn't take a Harrier into places because of the threat your not gonna do better with a prop driven plane except pay a little less to replace all the ones you get shot down. At Super T is gonna live in the WEZ of any mobile SAM system we can't simply pre plot and kill with a cruise missile. The Air Force argument for anything but low intensity is simply "don't go but if you do we will take care of it." Problem will be when the NCA says don't go isn't an option and the Air Force and Navy are out of position to take care of it. With things like reduction in Carriers, Tankers, Forward bases, etc that becomes a more and more likely scenario.

Cobras can't do that. Cobras won't do that. It's a light attack platform. And it's got very short legs. It's sensor is limited. And importantly it has very little defensive in way of countermeasures and jamming, so it doesn't take much to completely negate its ability (SA18s and better are cheap and out there). It's also slow, all gunships are, so if they are taking he Osprey anything past the first 5 km from the FLOT and it can't. And when will the AF get there is the question he Marines want an answer to. If we had needed to put ground troops on the beach in Libya what was the cycle time and ability to provide CAS gonna be. How quickly can you cycle strikes across the Med from Spang or Aviano. How many more planes would it take to keep the gaps out of that CAS plan with in and egress and flight time available being burned on some ridiculous enroute time. No 6 or 8 jets based locally can't maintain 24 hour ops for a long duration of time, but neither can 10 jets 1000 miles away that need 4 tankers, overflight clearance, and a lot more moving parts just to show up.

They might get emotional because there is historic precedent for the Air Force to demand complete control of a mission and then fuck it away because they have other things to do. Just look at the C-27 program. Argue that you will better support he Army mission with he Army's plane... Then CX the Army's plane... If you don't think that left bad blood between services your crazy. Now the Marines are being told "you don't need this capability, let us spend the money and we will just make sure to take care of you." Meanwhile the chief of staff of the Air Force is talking about cutting tankers and limiting its ability to meet that promise. The same "it will always be a joint war we don't need the boat launched planes they take away from our money for ____" argument has been going on since the 40s. It doesn't work with trying to scale back Carrier Air why would it make any more sense here. The Marines are just better than other services for recognizing this is the same music that always gets played right before they get fucked. And to the guys suggesting that the Marines get by just upping their Zulu model complement and relying on destroyers/cruisers for OCA/DCA. Zulu can't do enough on its own. It's simply too small an airframe to carry enough firepower or enough gas. Not to mention trying to do it in a higher threat environment.

Didn't you guys just celebrate the "exbiditionary Raptor plan" in that propaganda magazine the AF Times? What the hell are 4 Raptors and a C17 worth of parts gonna do in theatre? And before you come back with a lot as the answer, that's exactly what your asking the Marines to do only your argument is those Raptors and other elements will cover them. That's not a real comfort now to them, much less when they are actively putting their force on he ground into a heater and the Air Plane has the Raptors of limited numbers and sustainability based god awful far from the ESG because that's as close to the front as you could get the AF to base them. "Don't worry General you've got Raptors in Guam and even shorted legged Hornets out of Wake... By the way your supporting the trap mission." And don't even get me started on the complicated 1 point failure that would be having your DCA/OCA not collocated and dependent on a chain of tankers to get to you much less take you across the FLOT. The we don't need that capability argument sounds logical till you find yourself somewhere you never expected to be doing what you didn't expect to to. The Army has rethought its Rotory wing requirements based off a decade of war in hot environments and high altitudes. Because 30 years ago had you told somebody we were gonna employ Army Aviation at 7k-14k feet they would have called you high. People have argued for decades that Navel Gunfire is useless because we weren't gonna use it in Germany/Fulda and now it's being revisited as a major requirement of the coming METL. The Marines have been exercised in the rapid deployment role. They have gone in immediately without waiting for anybody else and relieving the airborne while the heavy legacy divisions and the mobility element figured out exactly how much time we had till they needed to be relieved. How fast is an exercise in how big and heavy of a unit you want to move. Airborne can go right now, but they do it with the Stryker MGS as he heaviest piece of of their chessboard and that comes in last. The ESG has it's own Armor, it's own assault aviation, it's own high speed float that is designed to get it all in behind the 72 hour window Airborne buys you. Now with the Marines being told hey we are gonna concentrate on a theater with fewer units assembly areas spread further between than normal.

I think we can all agree that Afghanistan... Especially currant Afghanistan is nothing if not a complete abortion of Doctrine. What's terrible is he entire generation of people who have ignored Doctrine because it doesn't build OER bullets and constantly answer any challenge to train by doctrine with "that's not how we do it in Afghanistan."

SDB, Brimstone, CBU-97 etc etc .... There are more options than just the GAU-8 and Maverick. Point still stands. We the Army and you he Air Force operate on the doctrine to have 2 divisions of ground forces in place ready to fight and the air to cover them in 45 days. The Marines have to hold the beach head, port, TAA, whatever during that time. You can either give them what they want by putting Air Force fixed wing opcon to the ground commander today where he owns your aircraft and doesn't just request assets and get told what he can have, or you can let the Marines use their own organic air.

Ok we've used this capability before. The Marines despite protest to the opposite are critical because they provide a rapid deployment of real firepower. We used it before in the build up in desert storm. Airborne jumped in, Marines reinforced until the heavy division assets could be moved. It's why we maintain propositioned supplies and fast sea lift and it worked exactly how it was supposed to. With Pacific pivot it's even more critical. Less airfields, easier for an enemy to deny the air element freedom to land and offload heavy equipment, now it has to come by ship ala LPDs etc. and it has to last longer because of that 45 day doctrinal requirement of putting an Army Corps on the ground ready to fight. We maintain the airborne element of the 18th brigade for the first 3 days. IE short enough time that an actual assembly of enemy troops is required, they can't just roll down immediately. Those airborne troops have shit for organic firepower. Their heavy weapons consist of mortars and javelins with stingers to counter enemy air. And now that we have eliminated the light CAB they have no air. So they are fixed in place if they deploy until relieved. The Marines are the element that comes in behind that and SOF. Exactly what happened in DS, if Iraq had been able to pivot and move it's mechanized forces it would have rolled over the 82nd in days. The Marine brigade that reinforced did so with all their organic assets and provided a real stop. You can't fight armor without air or artillery. The Marines don't carry much artillery to be fast and mobile so they take air. And they operate in the chaos of the first 30 days when nobody can guarantee a ground combatant commander any kind of Air Coordination and tasking that supports his mission. So yeah they need their own air and I don't blame them. More importantly they need air to counter a peer threat. Something that can live and support with standoff outside the WEZ. OV-10 or Super Tacano or whatever else are great fighting dudes in man dresses. He second an enemy with SA-18s opposes you your air just left let alone the scary stuff like Gauntlet or Greyhound.

I'm curious how many people in his formation are combat lifesaver or whatever the AF equivalent is. Or any of about 2 dozen other useful tasks they could have been doing other than mastering resiliency by learning that life is really full of gumdrops and sunshine if you think hard enough. Just thinking of the time wasted in some command and staff meeting discussing this while troops in some shop somewhere were waiting for their commanders and NCOs to return so they could continue the days duties is infuriating. "Hey we gonna fly today?" "I can't get mission approval because the boss is stuck in a training meeting listening to Cpt Knoblicker publicly congratulate himself for 30 minutes so were gonna run out of duty day..."

Having guns in Germany is a pain in the ass. One of the reasons I left mine home when I pcs'd. Just too many hoops to jump through for something as simple as wanting a gun in the house for protection, never mind being subject to a legal system as a forigner. That's probably the biggest element that would keep me from living in another country after retirement. I loved Phuket, and I could definitely stretch retirement pay comfortably, but I'd also always be the outsider over there. Which is fine... Until shit goes wrong.

That's not just you that's a military wide ###### up. You could never defend our promotional system in the private sector. -Putting emphasis on a 300 pt score above the NCO that can actually write a sentence with some manner of grammar... Hey guys I know mongo is a retard but he can run fast and do lots of pull-ups he'd be perfect for VP of sales. -Every write up having the bullshit fluff language of everybody being a winner some are just bigger winners than their peers... Tell people they are ######tards... And do it early so they learn to apply for work elsewhere. Stop making reading/writing an OER an exercise in decoding some secret language. -PME that is conducted long after it would have been useful. Like teaching officers public speaking in a course when they've operated on staffs and been in command for years... -everybody gets an award because if they don't they won't be competitive with all the candy medals we handed out in the beginning of the war...

When I see culture differences like this it's really hard to think that you once used to be Army. 0400 Sunday health and welfare in an enlisted dorm in garrison/tradoc? That used to be a pay period activity in some units. Typically a battalion worth of leadership on hand to see exactly what the troopers were doing. It's a top level check of troops as well as first line NCO's. Is it annoying, sure but so is pissing in a cup every few months. Thing is that we catch a lot of stupid shit and it immediately becomes a handled problem. It also determines that while Pfc Knutfukker needs to be chartered out of the Army for ____, that his squad leader who was ignoring the problem isn't ready for more responsibility. Now needless shakedown of combat crews and officers who should be afforded the respect befitting their station... Yeah that's a bit stupid. But hey it's happening in Korea at Humpheys right now so hey back to Garrison we go.

No they share blame so yeah fire the guys, I'm saying what has really changed to deter anybody from hitting us again in a similar way. We didn't do anything up near mustang ramp other than put in a few T walls, same as many of the other fobs I was on after the attack. That is hardly a refocus on security that you would expect after something like this happens. I'm not gonna go into detailed list of faults as Bad guys read the internet too, but for an example maybe it's time to put the guys writing speeding tickets on guard duty.

Oh I don't doubt it but there's sure as hell lots of blame to go around for the Taliban cashing in on our stupidity. Wasting force cap to have MPs write speeding tickets instead of do their job as combat security. Driving around in vehicles who no crew serve weapons and minimal equipment. Perimeter fences with urban areas built up next to them (the whole river side of bastion) providing enemy with free movement. After Frontnac's success it was only a matter of time till word got out and they tried something bold. Sacking these two generals was just the latest in our "look we did something about it" knee jerk leadership model.

"Airfield Security" might be a bit of a stretch... The night of that attack, the 25th CAB commander put the pathfinders out on the line to guard the perimeter at Mustang Ramp.... First time and only time during that deployment where I actually felt safe sitting in an aircraft running it up. Before that there was a chain link fence guarding half of the helicopters in southern Afghanistan. Security is a joke at most of our airfields. Look at the whole area of KAF surrounding housing on the south west side, nothing but container yards and roads that lead to nowhere. It's almost like we are hoping any enemy incursion wastes it's time and ammo trying to get somewhere it can do damage rather Han actually have an effective QRF.

While we are up for this massive culture shift in the military, lets get rid of Betty. I am offended for.... For someone I'm not sure who but I am. The implication at men can only respond to the shrill sound of what can only be presumed to be an Angry 33 year old divorcee collecting yet another child support check while she tells me everything I'm doing is wrong is just insulting. It can't be a hot sounding chick either... If I listened any better to pretty girls my wife wouldn't be so pissed off I was ignoring her all the time.

That's not that crazy... Daleville Alabama (shit town of 5000) has an M113.

No I'm with you on this Bcan, but this problem is like 90% skills training/10% platform. But that's just it, no matter what comes out on the CAS brief the only real concern is gaps in coverage. No mission has ever been stopped and ruled out because we asked for 30mm frontal fire, whatever and got told "all I've got available is viper and hornet." Caveat*Not true with the Special Ops guys but that's it's own weird animal. Seeing what stack they require as a minimum and then being told on a conventional day I was supporting half of RC-E with 2 Apaches is kinda insane. We get into a no shit fight where the Air Force isn't giving the GCC the air he asked for because they'd rather task the aircraft they do have to do strategic shit then the generals will have it out and the Army guy that's usually in charge will evaluate priority. Point is if we spend the next 10 years waiting and keeping A-10 at the suffering of money to train with it then really how is it doing the job any better than any other platform who due to budgetary reasons said "###### it we'll do it live." Doesn't matter what they are flying off the IP with if the guy is fumble ######ing it in the cockpit he's just as useless in a Hawg as any other plane. Organic CAS never gonna happen. And frankly we wouldn't know what to do with it. Anybody that's been to joint firepower in my community says the same thing. If you gave us something like the A-29/Hawg/Harrier what we did with it wouldn't resemble what you would. Remember we don't view the Apache as a CAS platform, I'm a maneuver element same as Abrams or Cav Scouts or any other organic fires platform. We operate with a much looser set of rules than you do, the flip side is I own my bullets whether I'm terminally controlled or not. You guys might like the sound of being able to release ordnance etc based simply on overall commanders intent, but there's some nasty hang ups to it too.