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

"John Keeney" wrote...

The bandwidth issue is still a real concern. That's a lot of data to
transmit via long-range RF signal, and there's already lots of competition
for the spectrum. What's possible to do by wire or fiber inside the
aircraft may not be practical via radio to a remote operator.

TCDL provides 200Kbps downlink/10Mbps uplink service. That's adequate for
this kind of situatuational awareness. More downlink would allow more raw

For how many nodes/UCAVs at once?

Another good point! What would the nominal/maximum number of simultaneous UCAV
missions be in a single theater? If there are ongoing UAV recce missions as
well, will there be enough infrastructure support for simultaneous control of
all the UAV/UCAVs?

Traditional CAS was seldom done with a single airplane. More often, flights of
2 airplanes would orbit an IP and alternate attacks under the control of a
single FAC. That provided a larger total ordnance loadout and reduced time
between individual attacks. It also provided backup in case one aircraft broke.

Similarly, CAS with UCAVs would likely require more than a single vehicle per
mission. With the proposed capability (DAS + TCDL, etc), the infrastructure for
UAV operator stations would be expensive as well as space-consuming. That type
of infrastructure would not likely accompany front-line units, but would be held
by separate, dedicated units.

Finally, while semi-autonomous recce UAVs could be controlled via satellite
links, time delays in control links would likely make high-altitude satellites
and/or multiple relays unsuitable for real-time control such as that needed in
CAS. One article I read on TCDL mentioned line-of-sight ranges of 100-160 KM,
which were very dependent on UAV altitude. Some CAS and target ID is very
difficult with high-altitude run-ins...