Kills with Guns

Just finished the book Ed. A good read. The most depressing part is that
once again, it's clear that the military works like too many other human
endeavours. Who you know matters more than what you know in terms of how
the organization runs. And in a very real way, like other organizations,
skill actually works AGAINST promotion. Good pilots are more likely to take
risks and pay the price, good politicians serve their constituents instead
of their re-election interests, good professors their research instead of
their careers, etc.

As for the book, one more question: What happened to Sopin? If it's in
there, I must have missed how the relationship ended.

Oh, and one more question (I sound like Columbo!): it just struck me that in
almost every fighter book I've read, heavy drinking features prominently.
Was alcoholism (vs. binge drinking) ever a real problem?

TV

"TV" wrote in message
...
Certainly was covered here. Remember though the memorial service was
held on the 30th he died on the 14th.

Huh, I don't have any such thread from the 14th onwards showing up. Darn
newsgroup provider!

TV

Certainly possible I'm wrong. I received about twenty notices the first
couple of days. By the way, it was a great send off.

Tex Houston

wrote in message
oups.com...
On Jun 30, 8:44 pm, vincent norris wrote:
An interesting note. Most Vietnam gun kills were scored by the F-105,
perhaps the least maneuverable aircraft in wide service there.

John, there ought to be some interesting stories about those kills.



Americans should be ashamed to talk about what they did to Vietnam.

Certainly the Truman doctrine one step too far.

Is there a nation on the face of the planet that hasn't a skeleton or two in
its closet?

Falcon 109
John

wrote in message
oups.com...
The article at:

http://www.afa.org/magazine/July2007/0707strafing.asp

includes the following:

"We're using the gun quite a bit in the Iraq and Afghanistan
operations.
The fighters are using lots of 20 mm off F-15Es and F-16s and 30 mm
off A-10s to hit ground targets. Why is that? For individuals, the gun
is
probably one of the most accurate weapons, with the least collateral
damage. That 20 mm will end the bad guy's life, but stray rounds will
just drive into the ground, and that's it.

In Iraq, the adversary uses both road networks and riverine networks.
There have been a number of occasions where boats have been
identified
carrying insurgents on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and we've
used
20 mm and 30 mm guns to destroy those boats. A moving target is hard
to hit with a bomb. With a gun, it's no big deal. In one instance, the
enemy
was getting ready to move people somewhere to do something later that
night, but we removed them from the fight.

The same thing happened in Balad, where we found people going to get
roadside bomb supplies. We have been using the gun against single
persons
who have been planting improvised exposive devices. You'll have an
individual
with a truck, and a couple of other individuals; you'll see them get
out and
move around, trying to dig a hole, and you'll bring in an F-16 or an
F-15E, or
maybe an A-10, and you'll use 20 or 30 mm and go kill them. If you
have troops
in contact, or you have individuals in buildings, you do the same
thing."


Discussions about aircraft guns usually center on air-to-air usage,
but
nowadays, that's a secondary mission. With the primary usage of
aircraft guns being strafing. For how long has this been true?

Strafe can be a worthwhile employment of the gun, evidently done with much
success in the ongoing pair of conflicts. Can be somewhat hazardous in the
daytime if the bad guys have the capability to shoot back (a risk/reward
thing). Pretty functional at night with goggles, etc.

R / John

On Thu, 5 Jul 2007 00:01:57 -0400, "TV" wrote:

Just finished the book Ed. A good read. The most depressing part is that
once again, it's clear that the military works like too many other human
endeavours. Who you know matters more than what you know in terms of how
the organization runs. And in a very real way, like other organizations,
skill actually works AGAINST promotion. Good pilots are more likely to take
risks and pay the price, good politicians serve their constituents instead
of their re-election interests, good professors their research instead of
their careers, etc.

Strangely enough, in the USAF, the aviator career specialty is the
only profession in which comment in performance reports on your
primary duty was expressly prohibited. While a personnel weenie could
get a glowing write-up about his/her skill at manageing the paperwork,
a fighter pilot got his comments on how he performed his additional
duties. (See comments regarding CTF Officer or Roscoe Control Officer
in Palace Cobra.)

As for the book, one more question: What happened to Sopin? If it's in
there, I must have missed how the relationship ended.

Left in Thailand. It's often a harsh world. Divorced the wife when I
returned to US and proceeded to several years of assignments in
Europe.

Oh, and one more question (I sound like Columbo!): it just struck me that in
almost every fighter book I've read, heavy drinking features prominently.
Was alcoholism (vs. binge drinking) ever a real problem?

Folks deal with their fears in many ways. Some used alcohol to cope.
Fighter pilots tend to live life very strenuously and inevitably some
pay a price.


TV


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org
www.thundertales.blogspot.com

This has been an issue for some time (at least two years) now and has
not made it to the front burner - but now with the USAF SOF looking at
COIN aircraft and people admitting to the vulnerability of the
helicopters and the fact that even the A-10's 30mm has become too big a
weapon for the ROE there is an attitude change. You would think at first
this all should not be interrelated but it has come down to the fact
that the ground forces fighting an insurgency can not get a jump on the
enemy without some help from the third dimension and everything tried
now has been too big weapon wise, too late in getting to where it is
needed, or too clumsy for small unit operations in urban environments.
So now it is realized that when the fighters are up their 20mm guns and
their accurate gunsights can make a difference especially if the ammo is
basic ball.

Visualize a 20/23/25 mm gun with a constantly chambered round
(side-by-side twin for instance) that can get off quicker and a
"spit-burst" of 6 to 10 rounds every trigger pull and combine that with
a laser-sight. If the platform was survivable then you can see from the
grunts poiunt of view it would become a very popular machine. It is not
yet possible as a UAV although it should be put into the go-do locker
for sure, yet a manned platform gives the grunt-air relationship a
chance to exploit the combat situation as it always has and yet has been
denied from this war for too long.

In Vietnam as you talk to the Thud pilots, which still represents an
enormously proud and daring group of can-do people ("there is a way"
right!) and what you see time and time again is their courage and
airmanship being thrown up against incompetence in command and the whole
targeting cycle and perceived purpose of air power in the war. If they
would have been let loose, with people like Olds at the helm, they would
have ripped North Vietnam a new asshole in a few months. If we honor
their courage and dismiss the incompetence that sent them on their
missions that only added to their risk, then we have failed both them
and ourselves. This "gun" strafe issue in Iraq and again in Afghanistan
is the same script being played in a different theater. Incompetence at
the top, apathy at the midsection, and dead heroes at the bottom. Could
or would we ever face off with the retired generals who we praise so
much over and over, like Meyers - nice guy, hard worker but totally
irrelevant to any path in this war to victory. When you read those
words about how important a fighter strafing was to a ground unit, can
you understand for a minute how just about everything else we have been
doing has not added up to a hill of beans.

We as a nation have accomplished this in five years of war - 100 dead a
month / 1500 wounded / $30 billion spent - that's it, it does not get
better then that and the thousands of troops that go out in small units,
patrols, convoys, etc., all rarely get the chance to have real air
assist and protection. In Afghanistan now the UK is concerned because
their casualties are taking four hours to get to hospital, there are no
spare helicopters, and those there are too vulnerable. We are looking at
sling configured ultra-lights now.

All of you in this group have enormous distinction in combat and in the
aviation disciplines - you must not let this incompetence go on and on
when you can see in a micro-seconds solutions that have yet to be even
put on the table in the Pentagon and the commands. Politics aside - we
are doing this to ourselves and we (you and I) are not doing enough to
honor the Thud spirit for one, to get ride of the incompetence and bring
back the warriors placing the network managers aside for a while until
business with the al Qaeda can be finished.




"John Carrier" wrote in message
. ..

wrote in message
oups.com...
The article at:

http://www.afa.org/magazine/July2007/0707strafing.asp

includes the following:

"We're using the gun quite a bit in the Iraq and Afghanistan
operations.
The fighters are using lots of 20 mm off F-15Es and F-16s and 30 mm
off A-10s to hit ground targets. Why is that? For individuals, the
gun
is
probably one of the most accurate weapons, with the least collateral
damage. That 20 mm will end the bad guy's life, but stray rounds will
just drive into the ground, and that's it.

In Iraq, the adversary uses both road networks and riverine networks.
There have been a number of occasions where boats have been
identified
carrying insurgents on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and we've
used
20 mm and 30 mm guns to destroy those boats. A moving target is hard
to hit with a bomb. With a gun, it's no big deal. In one instance,
the
enemy
was getting ready to move people somewhere to do something later that
night, but we removed them from the fight.

The same thing happened in Balad, where we found people going to get
roadside bomb supplies. We have been using the gun against single
persons
who have been planting improvised exposive devices. You'll have an
individual
with a truck, and a couple of other individuals; you'll see them get
out and
move around, trying to dig a hole, and you'll bring in an F-16 or an
F-15E, or
maybe an A-10, and you'll use 20 or 30 mm and go kill them. If you
have troops
in contact, or you have individuals in buildings, you do the same
thing."


Discussions about aircraft guns usually center on air-to-air usage,
but
nowadays, that's a secondary mission. With the primary usage of
aircraft guns being strafing. For how long has this been true?

Strafe can be a worthwhile employment of the gun, evidently done with
much success in the ongoing pair of conflicts. Can be somewhat
hazardous in the daytime if the bad guys have the capability to shoot
back (a risk/reward thing). Pretty functional at night with goggles,
etc.

R / John

"Flashnews" wrote in message
. ..
Joining this late because I have been gone but if it helps here is a
collection of data I put out years ago ----



An Air Combat Summary for Western Fighters:



Since 1979, American made fighters have been engaged in air combat at
least 214 times and have downed around 214 aircraft. Air Battles that
have occurred were from the Bekaa Valley and Persian Gulf to around the
world during the coup attempt in Venezuela. Engagements and Kills were
recorded throughout more than 3400 air-to-air and air-to-ground combat
sorties. Western aircraft included the F-4E Phantom, F-14 Tomcat, F-15
Eagle, F-16 Falcon, F-5E Tiger II, Mirage F-1, and F-18 Hornet
fighter-bombers. These engagements resulted in (with this data base) 214
confirmed Kills with only the two air-to-air combat losses. No direct
correlation is made with those kills offically sanctioned by the
respective air forces; for instance, Israel and Pakistan will make a
determination of "personal kill" versus "squadron kill" based on the exact
way the pilot performed rulling out louck and chance in the scoring.
There we



What about the Harrier FRS1 in the Falklands 1982 - They had 24 kills with
most being AIM-9L but IIRC there were several cannon kills - their targets
were all "western" aircraft.

David

The article at:

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/hta.../20070707.aspx

has more on the strafing "renaissance".