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Old July 28th 03, 04:26 PM
Kirk Stant
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Ed Rasimus wrote in message Great story. My comments--you can get away with that in training ACM,
but if it were for real you'd have to have "cojones al piedra" to pull
the trick. Assurance that your R-Max is the same for the bad guys
based pm intel takes a lot of confidence. Second, I'm surprised that a
Harrier can stay with a Phantom "in mil power on our diesel J-79s".
Third, I don't think I'd have the faith that my staunch Marine allies
would make the vertical conversion in a Harrier against a Tom in full
blow pursuit of the Phantoms. Finally, your pitch back, acquisition
and rapid FOXing shows a bit of befuddlement from the Nasal Radiators,
since they should have been face shooting you at the same rate.

All that said, it sounds like a bold plan well-executed. My own
experience in low-tech vs high-tech ACM often did the same thing--a
vertical rather than horizontal split of the element. Seems that young
aggressive warriors fixate on the first target and only sporadically
search for the second (despite the training artificiality of knowing
all the players). They search in sweep for the remainder, but seldom
scroll up and down to find the other threat.


Well, it was a while ago - and as any good story, has gotten better in
the retelling - but the gist is correct. The reference to "Mil Power"
was that we didn't go to Idle/Min AB to kill our smoke on the run-in,
instead ran in at a tactical speed that the Harriers (fast little
AV-8Cs not big slow Bs, I think) could stay with, leaving a nice big
smoke trail for the Toms to see! But you are absolutely right about
this being a "training ACM sortie" kind of thing - the whole point was
to find a way to get the Harriers into the fight unobserved, tie up
the Tomcats in a turning fight, then play 7th Cavalry and save the
day. That day the plan worked.

I always felt that a lot of our ACM missions were wasted (probably
unavoidably) on canned setups, predictable 1V1 or 2V2, etc. Good for
practicing basics, but no relation to the real thing, as described in
all the Red Baron reports, WW2 books, etc. Then once and awhile
(usually during some exercise like Cope Thunder or Red Flag) a fight
would develop that would be uncannily similar to "the real thing".
And it usually didn't involve any fancy tactics, just (surprise!)
being at the right place at the right time and catching some guy
looking the wrong way. Case in point - A Cope Thunder in the mid 80s,
huge furball off the coast West of Iba, and we are coasting out from
Crow Valley after dropping some inert Mk-82s on rattan targets. No
real tactics, just stay low, skirt the outside of the furball, and
shoot an F-5 that pops out in front of us. Then back to the deck and
beat feet for home, low on gas as usual. Hardly had to turn at all,
just a quick stab-out lock up and a couple of Fox-1s, then sweating
out the illumination period.

When things get complicated and messy, the fancy tactics are the first
things to go. Then it's a matter of SA, systems knowledge, crew
coordination, and luck - not necessarily in that order!

I guess it reinforces what Dudley has already mentioned extensively
here--the training, experience and quality of the driver will often
compensate for the technology of the system.


ABSOLUTELY!!!!


Kirk