Is there a place for Traditional CAS in the 21st century?

In article ,
Peter Kemp writes:
On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 20:55:50 GMT, "John R Weiss"
wrote:

"Tony Williams" wrote...

Of course, but the opportunities for recognising different vehicles in
different conditions from an aircraft must be limited, and looking at
films isn't quite the same thing. My suggestion is that viewing
training videos from UAVs would look exactly like what the operator
would see on his screen for real. And he could do it again and again.

The training opportunities you describe would be available equally to pilots and
UAV operators. The pilots would still have the advantage of being able to see
or visualize the broader picture available from the cockpit.

Also, repeating the same "canned" scenarios ad nauseum may not provide any
additional training. Without experience, any difference from the already-seen
perspective may be unidentifiable.

But the pilot is unlikely to be able to fit his copy of Janes Armour
and Artillery in the cockpit, and the UAV jockey can have his next to
his terminal.

Which, with the way that the business of who is on who's side is
stacking up these days, won't help a damned bit anyway. For example,
in 1991, during the Second Gulf War, you had among the Coalition
members Syria and re rump Kuwaiti Liberation Force, equipped with
Soviet T-62 and T-72 tanks, BMPs adn BTRs, (Or, in the Kuwaiti case,
the Yugoslav clones of same (M-84?). Fat lot of good recognizing
shapes is going to do you. Paint jobs don't help either, Once an
armored vehicle's been out of the Kaserne for 20 minutes, the only way
to tell what colors it had been painted is to wipe off the dust.

And somebody ele's point of having "Higher Authority" around to settle
policy matters doesn't particularly stack up, either. Consider the
case of teh U.S Army UH-60 that was nailed by an F-15 in '91 or '92.
The pilots weren't 100% sure, one way or another, about their visual
ID of the aircraft. But they also had Higher Authority, in the form
of an AWACS Controller, screaming for them to shoot it.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster