EA-18G "Growler"Woody,

IMHO the 28-bomb loadout was almost a "ferry tail" given that at least one drop tank was required for on station time-at least in my experience.

True...or lots of "give" available overhead. (My head is still locked in the Days of Wine and Roses, when each cycle had at least one EKA-3 and one or two A-6 duty tankers in orbit.)

******

Nasty crack that circulated in the early 1970s, just as the EA-6Bs were about to make their first sea deployment, was one that asked how much "give" they could offer. On at least one occasion, this sort of comment came from a "heavy" who had never taken the time to notice that the EA-6B was an electron-chaser by design, and not a hypermorph like the Whale had become.

And now it appears we are coming full-circle, with the Growler being the new hypermorph.

--
Mike Kanze

"There's no such thing as a soul. It's just something they made up to scare kids, like the boogeyman or Michael Jackson."

- Bart Simpson


"Doug "Woody" and Erin Beal" wrote in message ...
Owl,

Si. The many targets per one jet thing made jets with more bombs (e.g. BUF) more attractive to ABCCC dudes.

The A-6 was used very handily in the shore-base expeditionary role in DS. In fact, I seem to remember photos of USMC squadrons loaded with 10 x 82's and 12 x Mk-20's. IMHO the 28-bomb loadout was almost a "ferry tail" given that at least one drop tank was required for on station time-at least in my experience.

I'm fairly sure the 500 lb JDAM has IOC'ed (GBU-38). I haven't seen one yet personally though. Good for Harriers mostly... And any other strike platform that is concerned about CD.

--Woody

On 11/14/05 1:02 PM, in article , "Mike Kanze" wrote:


Woody,

It goes almost without saying that one of the Drumstick's finest attributes was as a carrier-capable long-legged flying dump truck.

And playing the "what might have been" along with you, the switch to weps that give platforms "targets per sortie" capabilities (versus the "sorties per target" days of the VN war) would further magnify the "dump truck" honorific.

With the air attack emphasis in the current conflict moving increasingly toward smaller, high-accuracy weps (take out the shed in the back of the third house in the block, instead of the entire block), the potential A-6 loadout approaches the old 28 weps-on-5-MERS configuration (and your FAC(A) scenario, minus the comparatively-inaccurate rockets). Further, this hypothetical begs the reintroduction of the A-6 into a USMC-style shore-based expeditionary usage. With no need to lug to/from the boat, more drop tanks are switched out for MERs.

Certainly a change from the days of "take out the center tank in the first row of the POL complex" and pray that your system didn't go squirrelly, taking your run over Uncle Ho's Happy Peoples' Convalescent Hospital & SAM Warehouse, or some other McNamara-forbidden target.

ISTR that a MK82 JDAM is in the works, or maybe already deployed, n'est-ce pas?