Thursday, January 22, 2015
F-35 Close Air Support Testing Vid.
Step up all you JTAC bubbas....especially you John.
I watch this video and I just can't get thrilled. I get the impression of medium altitude bomb drops...not close air support in the classic sense. I could be wrong, but this doesn't look like what we were promised when they said that this airplane would replace the AV-8B and the A-10.
NOTE: Some are saying that all munitions in the future will be precision type devices so flying low is unnecessary. Others are saying that real professionals will not care what type of airplane delivers the munition as long as it lands where its suppose to. If that's the case then we need to go to an all UAV force for close air support and save ourselves a ton of money. If its as some are saying then the B-52 can replace several hundred F-35's in this job and be relevant again. That's the problem when you're defending a flawed F-35. To make the argument that it will be fine at providing close air support, you're at the same time pointing out that its not needed for that role!
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Ok, what is the definition of modern CAS.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you have to wack a targer with a Gun or rockets, if you have missiles like Brimstone, and systems like ROVER and Blue force tracker.
because a demonstration of force doesn't work at 15000 ft. because danger close with a JDAM from 15000 ft is a sloppy way of doing business. because brimstone won't be the weapon of choice for MOST situations (you Brits really need to give up on the Brimstone is the solution to everything line that you guys are pushing) and because blue force doesn't always work.
Deletebesides. if this is the future of close air support then give me a B-52 instead. it can stay over me for hours and provide protection. the F-35 can't.
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DeleteBrimstone missile was just an example, SDB II or the french AASM are other examples.
DeleteNot to mention the guided 70mm rocket gudance kits.
Slowly all western aviation munitions are all going guided.
Why do you have to wack a targer with a Gun or rockets, if you have missiles like Brimstone, and systems like ROVER and Blue force tracker.
DeleteRemember Qala-i-Janghi? An overworked CAS gave their own coordinates to a BUFF as a target? The BUFF pilot could not go low to view the intended target. At the end of the day, you want to have someone go over your coordinate and say "I can see the target you've designated and it's YOU."
You will never replace the Mark-1-Eyeball.
What makes the A-10 such an effective CAS platform is its gun and resistance to battle damage
When flying at night and above 3,000 feet, the A-10 is very, very quiet. Roaming A-10s found a number of Iraqi armour movements at night.
The A-10 may lacked sensors but it can easily be augmented by UAV and other methods. Even though it lacked night vision, A-10 drivers used the IR seekers of the Maverick as a "poor man's NVG" and it worked very, very well.
Ok, imagine the next time the US has to face a competent opponent on woodland/jungle terrain with good camouflage and modern short range SAMs , be it Tor, Tunguska, Pantzir or whatever chineese analogs.
No but you want something that can withstand severe battle damage and very high reliability rate. In both cases, the F-35 can't come close. How many times have A-10s returned to base with parts missing or half of a wing gone? How many cases have an A-10 returned to base WITHOUT any hydraulic fluids left. F-35 is nearly all electronics. The controls are fly-by-wire. It doesn't matter anyway. There are several SAMs that can hit you 200 to 300 kms away. S-300, S-400, S-500 ... Do you think the F-35 can sneak in without anyone of these systems detecting it? Pipe's dream.
We can settle this once-and-for-all: Put the F-35 in it's pace (or place) by letting it go into RED FLAG. USAF has all the latest SAM systems there.
There is a reason why USAF has NOT YET began to "chop up" the A-10.
The current A-10C with the PE upgrade is much more capable than a Gulf War era A-10A. Hog pilots no longer have to rely on Mav seekers for IR / low light targeting.
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DeleteRemember Qala-i-Janghi?
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I certainly do and it was not a failure of the platform but of the SOF team calling down the steel. A modern bomber with a Sniper (B-1B) or LITENING (B-52) would not make that mistake and yet the Sanity Check theory is one of the biggest fundamental flaws of the A-10 visual pass because it requires an 'overhead' approach which a Hornet D/F or F-15E would not have to make. Which brings us right back to A-10s being a CAS design from pre SA-7 Vietnam that was 'upgraded' to Armor Busting in Europe and was never really survivable in either environment with realistic threats of a Man Portable out the back of every BMP.
When you are down in the weeds and they fire not one but a dozen MANPADS at you, you had better have a DIRCM and be making turns for 600 knots+ or you are dead. The A-10 will never be that jet.
A more important concern is the lack of combat tanks, the aging (again) TF34s cores, and the generally horrific altitude performance of the platform, it's fat wings and it's gerbil wheel + giant fan engines in the tanker track. If you have threats stacking up on you don't want to wait /another/ 20 minutes for the Hawgs to arrive and you do not want to wait thirty minutes more with effectively one shooter as the Hawgs switchout with the tanker.
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When flying at night and above 3,000 feet, the A-10 is very, very quiet. Roaming A-10s found a number of Iraqi armour movements at night.
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And so is the Reaper or Pred, another 10,000ft up with superior AAS-52/B MTS. The difference is that an A-10 plays a lot of risky business games trying to do weather breakout through a cloudbase when it can't see the dirt. If it takes a heatshot (because the threat has goggles, mini-ADADS marine thermals and increasingly capable on-missile sensors) it's playing a very dangerous game of which way is up and CFIT this inherent to making hard maneuver defeats of the weapon. Whereas, at 12-15K, you are functionally outside most man portable threatfloor bubbles altogether.
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When flying at night and above 3,000 feet, the A-10 is very, very quiet. Roaming A-10s found a number of Iraqi armour movements at night.
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Captain Campbell lost all hydraulics from a single hit and was pointed nose down at the dirt with Downtown Baghdad less than 5,000ft away when 'miracle of miracles' she the jet righted itself enough for her to go manual and start flying the jet on the trim tabs.
All from this-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kim_campbell_damage_a10.jpg
Which is not that serious a hit.
Had she been able to Viking climb to 10K+ within the approach corridor she had just cleared near BIA, this wouldn't have been a problem. Had the jet had the ability (with a downlook biased sensor suite providing 360` lower hemisphere coverage) she would have had to go low to begin with. A-10s don't belong over hotzones, fast jets do, and everyone should have a full function MAWS/GFAS system. A-10s, at least at that time, did not, or Campbells first 'awareness of the hit' would not have been: "I felt the hit which was loud."
Imagine what would have happened if Campbell had gone down and we had tried a replay of BHD crossed with Jessica Lynch as chivalry shifted intelligence 'lower down'.
An A-10 which comes back with pieces missing is still out of the fight. When you only have 336 of them, 102 of which are active, and the line is 25 years closed (Fairchild Republic doesn't even /exist/ as an aerospace manufacturer anymore, the buildings are gone) you cannot make choices like that.
What you can do is flush 10-20 MQ-9s over the fight, keep track of each other's positions and any SAM launches with something like ARGUS-IS and then blow the roof off the building which fired the round that flamered one of your swarm.
A-10s simply cannot do this. They don't have the numbers or the loiter or the expendability.
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We can settle this once-and-for-all: Put the F-35 in it's pace (or place) by letting it go into RED FLAG. USAF has all the latest SAM systems there.
There is a reason why USAF has NOT YET began to "chop up" the A-10.
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No. Because it's not a one legged mule kicking contest with designer-outcomes predicated upon certain scenarios. This is how we got saddled with the stupid F-35 at the cost of losing J-UCAS as 'too expensive when we are on the eve of a long war'. You bring a range of systems to the fight. You make them do a range of missions from FNOW (First Night Of War) through Day 2,023. And you count things like radius + loiter against 'rough field operations' from forward basing. Finally, you provide REALISTIC threat levels where, for every single 20-something SAM there are a bazillion AAA fouling pieces and then you measure capability against exposure. Because any jet can fly under a radar horizon. But an A-10 cannot fly -over- the trashfire and -into- the medium/high level SAM threat and be survivable.
You will find that a jet powered UCAV that is clean with very narrow bowtie lines and a solid Mach .82-.87 penetration speed to keep up with the fast jets 'can also do CAS', simply because it's got the loiter and the low TSFC (.5 or so) vs. high cruise point to make best use of it's munitions loadouts in either FNOW interdiction or Day 2,023 CAS missions. Mission Flex = larger orders. If you combine this within a COMMON NOT 'JOINT' (as in pass the doobie) airframe you now have a system which can literally go anywhere from a land or carrier basing mode (JPALS/AAR supporting).
The F-35 is _not_ the replacement for the A-10. The MQ-9 is in low threat COIN and a C-UCAS is for high threat areas and at sea. People who miss this also miss another critical element:
CAS which is responsive, whether 10-15 minutes from an airborne stack or 20-40 minutes from a hot pad alert after hours is nothing but a fast farking ambulance. People _die_ while waiting for the uber solution. An 3 million dollar A-UAV with a 1,000 dollars per flight hour and 32-40 hours of endurance off a 1,000lbs of fuel (MQ-1) or a 10 million dollar, 5,000 dollars per flight hour and 20+ hours of endurance off 3,500lbs of fuel (MQ-9) are going to _be there_, right overhead, playing night watchman with increasingly automated flight handling out of the MCS back in Nevada as well as self-searching sensors which alert the aircrews when to call up a particular airframe that has spotted something.
Which means they can be sentinels over looking small cites or patrols in the field so that people can sleep and when The Bad Men come slinking in like wolves, get everyone up and ready on the /off chance/ that the a Hair-Teeth-Eyeballs conversion of the enemy leader doesn't convince everyone to go right back the way they came.
No manned jet can match this because no manned jet can be built or fly for as long or as little money as a UAV. And that's important. Because it means there will be more drones up at all times (120 separate orbits over Iraq at one time during the height of The Surge) and fewer people coming back in plastic because the Fast Ambulance was actually a hearse in disguise.
You go ahead and fight yesterday's air war sir. I will remember one vital statistic: MQ-1 and MQ-9 were the most request SWA 'CAS' asset of the entire OIF/OEF period up to 2008. Not A-10s. Not AH-64. Not AC-130.
The troops prefer the drones. (_Predator, The Remote Control Air War Over Iraq And Afghanistan_).
What makes the A-10 such an effective CAS platform is its gun and resistance to battle damage (its slow speed helps as well since it's able to put more rounds on target per pass). Assuming the F-35 is loaded with external ordinance, I see no reason it can't do CAS just as well as current 4th gen fighters. However "just as good" doesn't justify the huge extra cost, and if flying with internal ordinance only the air-to-ground load-out is pretty horrible for CAS.
ReplyDeleteWait, F-35 can't use the same modern pods as 4th gen jets...so they can do CAS ALMOST as good as the 4th gen guys until they find an expensive fix to the 35's lack of pods.
Actually A-10 wasnt even close to being the main CAS performer in Afghanistan.
Delete@ Eldererr: As in the Gulf War where the USAF "cooked the books' to make the A-10A look less effective (by undercounting sorties and multiple engagements per sortie, and totally "losing" the data) - and at the same time fluffing the stats of the F-117A - the USAF is also messing around by not counting time on station, targets engaged, and other metric that illustrate how effective the A-10C continues to be in the modern battlefields we find ourselves engaged.
DeleteThe ROE is so restrictive in Afghanistan any comparison between CAS platforms is muted by the very rare opportunities any platform had to release weapons.
DeleteOk, imagine the next time the US has to face a competent opponent on woodland/jungle terrain with good camouflage and modern short range SAMs , be it Tor, Tunguska, Pantzir or whatever chineese analogs.
ReplyDeleteGun runs won't do.
Sensors network and expanding weapons ranges are necessary.
As I mentioned before, in the Peru-Ecuador war in 1995 in the amazon forest several peruvian Sukhoys and Mi-17 were shoot down by AAA and missiles when doing cas. The only ones who succeed were the Tucanos and the A-37, with night vision devices flying extremely low.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.galeon.com/aviacionperucenepa/tucanos.html
I'd call that interdiction actually. If there is an establish front line, it may be battlefield interdiction but it is most certainly not CAS because there is no 'cooperative' interaction with friendly ground soldiers in close support.
DeleteMy experience with CAS ended with F4s and helicopters flying over S. Lebanon in the 80s; so I get that all I know now is what I read. BUT, I want CAS to do more than drop bombs or shoot missiles, even if they can do it right through a window. I want a pilot to be able to put his eyes on my field and maybe have input on what needs to be done - right here, right now. There isn't always time to muck around, especially in difficult or thick terrain. I want him to have options so that he can put rounds on targets too close for 'danger close'. I want him to be able to have a lingering presence. In short, I want CAS to be able to just about join the ground battle, and not be some removed actor. If that means we need another layer to defend them - so be it. But 15,000 feet isn't 'close' anything in my old book.
ReplyDeleteI just wish like hell someone would ask the guys on the ground (the infantry; not the attached liaison guys) what they really would like to see. I'm seriously betting it wouldn't just be bomb-droppers or missile-shooters.
Deleteyou get it Mordechai. the way some people talk aobut CAS it might as well be supplied by drones. what happened to the pilots that got into the mud with the troops on the ground .... what happened to the time when you could recognize the voice on the other end of the mic because they flew in support of you on a daily basis? those days are gone and so is real CAS. they're gonna hate it in the future.
DeleteDamned straight, Mordechai. It all goes back to the fact that it's people who make the difference, not technology (although it can be helpful). Especially infantry. The fly-boys haven't been there in the muck so how would they know the value of lingering in a support role, to the infantry, and all the other points you made so well.
DeleteMordechai,
DeleteThe F-35A has 180 rounds aboard, the B/C pod has 220. That means, in order to be useful CAS effectors they must be employing IFFC technology (Integrated Flight And Fire Controls, coupling terminal attack steering to a sensor).
With this capability, the F-35 can get 6,000-9,000ft gun shots. Boeing in fact advertised this capability in the waning days of the X-32/X-35 competition. If the jets can make 1nm+ gunshots, then they are not doing 'danger close' anything because they are dependent on shooting threats _where the rounds will be_ 20+ seconds from roll-in. With that as a given, what is the difference between a single, 70mm, rocket with a simple, 10lb M151 warhead. And a spray of 10-20 rounds in an ellipse over the target?
Answer: The 70mm rocket is going to hit within 17cm of it's aimpoint and it's warhead will destroy threats to your forces in a 10-15ft explosion radius around it's point of impact. If you fire that rocket from 2-4km out, and within 10 seconds are pulling off target, you get an added bonus in the ability to come back around _more quickly_ that direct/overhead support allows for (safely, with an exit runout on one target radial and a reentry from another, deconflicted with everyone else).
Since a pod with 7 or 19 rockets adds up to somewhere between 14 and 38 total, single shot, passes, the ability to _Hit What You Aim For_ from distances beyond the gun's reach and without Gone Winchester RTB adds up to a bigger change for CAS from munitions than from airframes.
And that whole marketing video, by failing to acknowledge this (as well as Hellfire, Brimstone and Griffin as other alternatives to iron and LGB/IAM) becomes a farce of it's own advertising.
Because the essence of delivering smart stores, effectively, is not the distance of release but the distance of acquisition. And modern LITENING and Sniper, when cued on by JTACs with reliable GPS+Lase on the ground, have incredible lockon distances far beyond what CAS really needs, just to shoot guns and CCIP dumb munitions with.
I readily admit I am not up-to-date on modern munitions and fire control. But I do have vivid memories from lots of time in the dirt, pulling trigger and patching up and evacuating wounded. I don't know the best specific tools today; but I do know what I want them to accomplish.
DeleteI don't know if you are speaking from theory or your direct experience; but your answer is plausible. It does not provide me, however, with the presence of the pilot that I would want for CAS if I were still a young soldier. I described that in my previous comment. I think it is as critical as the munitions. Eric posted a link to a video below that partly describes the kind of interaction I'm talking about. Some things just don't change, or at least haven't yet. I just don't see that the F-35 is the answer to the ground soldier's prayer. Maybe it can contribute to the solution; but it lacks certain key elements for the CAS mission, in my opinion. There still need to be FW or RW assets that provide presence and participation beyond stand-off fire-on-the-target.
Mordechai,
DeleteAre you permitted to mention a specific situation where your experience applies? The JTAC in the Youtube video by ELP is essentially detailing "How we screwed up." in letting the bad guys get that close (maneuver on the Allied unit) without the latter being warned off.
If that's what you're worried about, I agree.
However; I am thinking that 'pilot on scene' could just as easily be in a Reaper or Shadow if he can feed his video up and down stream ("Hey guys, they're lapping you, one block over." "Hey pilot, they are starting to get in front of them, they will cross over to block at this side alley." is so much easier to judge if you have coordinate annotated video to cue the HUD or LDP steer).
This means someone has to have a VHF/UHF/C-band joint tactical radio system to serve as a hubnode which relays for everyone else, which may be a weight issue on a smaller UAV but not a Reaper or Grey Eagle. As such, there is no reason why that pilot cannot be sitting in a shelter somewhere back at base and using his downlook biased sensors to see the Wicked Coming This Way for minutes if not /hours/ before the engagement.
It being the whole unaccompanied condition which makes the boot vulnerable to envelopment.
My whole critique of CAS begins with: "By the time you're reacting to threats close in, you've already ceded initiative, are trapped by the terrain features/structures and may well be dealing with a casualty."
That's not good and it can largely be traced to the jet having maybe 20 minutes overhead before it has to find a tanker or an RTB new weapons load.
Indeed, the fires delivery platform just needs a decent targeting FLIR and an APKWS or DAGR rocket to get the precision (tracked to moving targets) impacts that are no more dangerous than say a couple hand grenades tossed around a building corner and far more controlled for past-target frag than a gunburst.
Where powered PGM aren't practical (built ups), you can redund to an AGM-175 Griffin in a slanted cassette or pod (the Mirage F-1 mounted grenadelet dispensers along the wingroot:fuselage juncture, The Germans fit a 'Vebal Syndrom' podded carrier to their Alpha Jets) so that you can literally drop the weapon near vertically as you go overhead and then either shift to a designation orbit wheel or use some other designator source, air or ground, to mark with.
As long as, by slant range or by 3,000fps velocity, you have a short TOF, the missile will go true.
And if it's small enough to be used close-in or in a collaterals dense environment, it actually helps, both total firing pass count, firing pass interval and delivery aircraft survivability, to have the airframe only briefly (if at all) put it's nose below the horizon.
M&S, my experience is as an infantry soldier, evacuation medic and later recon company medic with multiple missions in south Lebanon in the 80s, and some anti-terror patrols along Israel's eastern border and even some internally (northern Samaria). The IDF actually used CAS pretty sparingly in my time. But I know what I would have wanted in different situations. F4 Phantoms flew mostly recon but some CAS as well; and Cobras were used. (I think Israel was the last country to fly F4s in real combat missions.)
Delete"Letting bad guys get close" is a reality and one has to be prepared for it. I admit I kind of don't understand "By the time you're reacting to threats close in, you've already ceded initiative, are trapped by the terrain features/structures and may well be dealing with a casualty." In my experience, that's what small units often do. And you can't often control for terrain or structures when the mission calls for go-in-and-get-em. Your initiative just might take you there. Kind of the like the paratroopers responding to 'we're surrounded' with 'good, we're supposed to be'. A large squad/small platoon on seek-and-destroy operation still needs a CAS option, just like bigger units on a larger field. It sounds to me like you're only thinking about providing support for large units on fairly open operations. Many of us didn't/don't fight that way. What is your infantry experience with the kind of CAS you're suggesting?
I had thought about the use of drones, and it is plausible. I think the IDF uses them quite a bit, though that came mostly after my time. But someone sitting just 1000 feet or so over my head is bound to have a sense of what's happening that someone far away watching a screen can't have. This is especially true because I suspect most of the drone operators today have never been in the battlefield. Now, if that drone operator is a veteran of flying combat missions in A-10s or Cobras or Apaches, etc. maybe he would have a different appreciation of what's on the screen. But I don't quite trust most of them to really understand what they're seeing. And that would leave me just a little nervous.
I don't think communication is much of a problem. I know the IDF is rapidly integrating air, ground, and sea units with each other and it worked pretty well in the recent conflict in Gaza. That will keep improving.
It's an interesting topic, and your ideas (I don't know if they have been proven in combat because I'm out of touch with that stuff, and was never expert anyway - not my job) are worth consideration. But my memories as a ground soldier leave me wanting something of a personal touch. Maybe I'm just too old fashioned. Maybe the young studs don't need what I remember wanting at times.
Talk to this guy where you want to put that bomb / missile. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7s73ceVRGI
ReplyDeleteThe standard manpad of the British Army is the Starstreak
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starstreak_%28missile%29
Three 2lb Tungsten Darts travelling at Mach 3.5 HIT and PENETRATE the target, a 1lb bomb then detonates.
Yes, the A10 might survive bombs going off "nearby", does it survive them going off inside?
NEVER EVER BEEN USED IN COMBAT! it sounds good but the results are theoretical.
DeleteVery Very True.
DeleteBut lots of stuff never gets used in combat, and lots of stuff gets held on to for far too long.
Sometimes, time just moves on.