On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 04:57:52 -0400, Cub Driver
wrote:



Of course! Any fighter aviator would be eager to switch from Hogs to
Vipers (except for that occasional strange group that seems to have an

Evidently this is not true of Hog drivers. (And anyhow, aren't *all"
fighter pilots strange?)

Humans all tend to make the best of a bad situation. Take someone
before an assignment and ask them to list their preferences. Not many
folks will put the A-10 ahead of the Viper, Eagle or now, Raptor. Once
assigned and wrapped up in the mission, you then get the syndrom of
"mine is better" regardless of the airplane. Certainly some Hog
drivers love their airplane, but if told the unit was transitioning to
something a little more "swoopy" they'd eat it up.

And, while there may be a commonality of "strangeness", let me
reiterate my oft-stated position that not all folks assigned to fly
tactical aircraft are "fighter pilots."

But, I reiterate, the idea that the AF is "anti-CAS" is flat wrong.

Ed, you'd better read Campbell's book and then report back. He quotes
page after page of Air Force argument that your experience in Vietnam
was an anomaly that would never be repeated, that interdiction and not
CAS was what we needed, and that the A-1 and the A-10 would only get
in the way when the Russian tanks came through the Fulda Gap.

I'll try to get to Campbell's book, but having checked the summary on
Amazon, I can almost predict what it says. There was great debate at
the time of acquisition regarding whether we were "reliving the last
war" with the A-10. It would have been a great in-country airplane for
SEA. The real concern was whether the plain-vanilla airplane was going
to be survivable in Europe in a more intense conflict.

Question two, was the definitions of CAS and interdiction. There was
even a transition mission defined, BAI (battlefield area
interdiction)--neither CAS nor true interdiction, but systematic
attacking of the second and third echelon of the advancing horde. If
you did a good BAI job, the requirement for true CAS was minimized.

Issue three, the development of the Army aviation component to better
provide supplemental firepower to artillery. If you got good gunships,
not just gun on Hueys, but Cobras and Apaches optimized for ground
attack and survivability, you lessened the need for "fast movers."

And, problem four, the difficulty in a fluid tactical environment with
deconflicting airspace. You can't be lobbing artillery in where
airplanes are operating. You can't be zooming around willy-nilly at
low altitude of rotary wings are transiting. You must have close
control of the airspace and delivery designations to effectively
employ "danger close." And, for a variety of reasons (economic,
political, practical--pick one,) we simultaneously add the demise of
the airborne FAC in a slow-mover fixed wing.

Did I get the high points? Do I still have to buy the book?