AviationBanter - View Single Post

**Jack Linthicum**

On Mar 21, 8:00*am, Arved Sandstrom wrote:
* Sunny wrote:
"Arved Sandstrom" wrote in message
news:Hegpn.71557$PH1.6315@edtnps82...
wrote:
"Pressure is building from lawmakers on the Hill for
the Navy and Marines to buy more Hornets as the
current fleet gets older and the arrival date for the
JSF continues to slip."

See:

http://defensetech.org/2010/03/20/js...o-135-million/

How expensive is the JSF going to get?
It doesn't matter - the price tag is already well past anything that's
acceptable.

What's really ludicrous is the thought of using any planes this costly
as bomb trucks for ground support. Can you see putting a gold-plated
aircraft like this at risk of getting shot down by cheapo AAA? Just to
deliver some bombs in support of grunts? If it ever did happen, the
ground units would be using every artillery tube they had shooting SEAD
to protect these precious planes...begging the question of why the
artillery wouldn't just pound the main target in the first place.

AHS

Here in Australia our stupid Govt. has not yet cancelled orders for the
thing.
As for artillery, you have to get the tubes and ammo close enough first,
to support the Infantry. (Ex Grunt with 36 years service.)
We should have bought F15s to replace our F111 *:-)

One of the points being, not so long ago (20 years at most) there were
plenty of targets that the infantry needed air for, because the
artillery didn't quite pack enough punch. The only artillery PGM we had
was Copperhead, and you'd never use one of those unless you were
fighting Soviet tanks in Germany, and probably not even then. And if you
happened to be in a military that had heavier artillery, like 8 inch,
there were never that many of those either.

So for a long period of time, for a considerable variety of target
types, aircraft-delivered ordnance, mainly bombs, has been the weaponry
of choice. Now, leaving out those situations where artillery is simply
not in range anyway, this reality led to lots and lots of scenarios
where you wanted aircraft-delivered bombs, but the target area was
nevertheless covered by tube artillery...hence SEAD. Might as well
suppress AAA and SAMs if you can, and hopefully that plane might get
through.

The intent back then was not so much to protect the plane because it
cost the entire GDP of a small country, but simply because its firepower
influenced the mission so much.

Now we are in a situation where if tube artillery hasn't become so much
more accurate it damned well ought to be - we've been ****ing around
delaying or stopping PGM programs for artillery and naval guns for
decades, and yet the necessary money would be easily found if we just
didn't build such insanely expensive CAS aircraft. The intent of SEAD
now most certainly will be to protect the bloody plane for the sake of
protecting the plane, and I wouldn't be surprised if missions get turned
down because the risks of losing a plane in order to blow up a bunker
are just too great.

Take some of the money and address deficiencies in tube and rocket
artillery that still make it necessary to request CAS in the first
place. Much better use of money.

AHS

The excuse is "there are civilians at the target".