Warbirds Thread

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
At this point it's not CAS, it's just exactly the same fire support that something like HIMARS would do except with better kinetics and rapid delivery if not in range already.

As above.
Here's the thing, you're stuck with a legacy definition of CAS (which is borne out of WW2 and Korea). Modern CAS is not where the aircraft is but where the ordinance lands. If that bit of ordinance lands close to the troops, then it's CAS.
 

Marduk

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Here's the thing, you're stuck with a legacy definition of CAS (which is borne out of WW2 and Korea). Modern CAS is not where the aircraft is but where the ordinance lands. If that bit of ordinance lands close to the troops, then it's CAS.
And my point stands. It's no different than other long range precision weapon support, ground or air launched. Who cares if your SDB was delivered by a B-1B, F-35, A-10 or being strapped to a rocket fired out of a HIMARS? What difference does it make? All the issues, pros and cons of arranging gun, rocket or dumb bomb runs are out of the equation, and CAS as normally understood is relegated to cheaply suppressing unwashed terrorist militias and the like.
 

Blasterbot

Well-known member

Close air support (CAS) is defined as air action by aircraft against hostile targets that are in close proximity to friendly forces and that require detailed integration of each air mission with the fire and movement of those forces (Joint Publication 3- 09.3, Close Air Support). CAS provides supporting firepower in offensive and defensive operations to destroy, disrupt, suppress, fix, harass, neutralize, or delay enemy targets as an element of joint fire support. The speed, range, and maneuverability of airpower allows CAS assets to attack targets that enable the ground scheme of maneuver. When conditions for air operations are permissive, CAS can be conducted at any place and time friendly forces are in close proximity to enemy forces and, at times, may be the best means to exploit tactical opportunities

so this is the current working definition of CAS by American doctrine. based on it I have to give it to Aaron. as long as there is integrated targeting from ground forces allowing ordinance to land accurately CAS is more in reference to how close the enemies are to friendlies on the ground not how close the aircraft needs to be. based on that a big high altitude bomber with guided ordinance could achieve the goal. though it wouldn't have the cannon.
 

Doomsought

Well-known member
[gets shot down because the AD battery's radar picked up the A-10 well enough away, the battery commander gets the MANPAD team into position, and then the MANPAD team is literally sitting on that hill, waiting for the pilot to show up]
Search radar is going to be heavily degraded if not destroyed by the time Ground Air support is called in. Even with prestine search raydars, flyign nape of the earth is far more effective than any sort of stealth coating.
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Remember that the Shilka - aka ZSU-23x4 is 23mm. Modern SPAAGs are 30 to 35mm (and even 40mm and even bigger). They do a lot more damage.
Even, while the A10 survived encounters with the venerable Shilka, they get a lot of damage.

Your logic is overly simplistic; the Shilka's predecessor was 57mm.
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
Your logic is overly simplistic; the Shilka's predecessor was 57mm.
Which was based on Nazi 55mm cannons the Soviets captured, particularly because it can be easily linked to a computerized fire control system as-is (a feature of the Nazi 55mm autocannon systems in question). In a period before Bofors managed to shrink the VT fuse into a 40mm package (and, in the 20-aughts, that prox-fuse was shrunk to 30mm), the only way you can get AA kills with medium/small-bore cannon (i.e., anything between 20 to 75mm range) is literally hoping to god that your fuses are set correctly or literally fill the sky with lead.

The US had a 75mm VT-capable system in the Skyweeper, but it was considered too incapable for air defense duties because jets were becoming so fast that any aircraft could outpace the traverse.
And my point stands. It's no different than other long range precision weapon support, ground or air launched. Who cares if your SDB was delivered by a B-1B, F-35, A-10 or being strapped to a rocket fired out of a HIMARS? What difference does it make? All the issues, pros and cons of arranging gun, rocket or dumb bomb runs are out of the equation, and CAS as normally understood is relegated to cheaply suppressing unwashed terrorist militias and the like.
Because you're still playing with the old definition when the reality is that things have changed. The 'Dreadnaught Effect' has changed the battlefield and means that you can't fly NOE and survive. Remember, those S-60s and ZSU-2-23s counted for a surprisingly large number of US air losses, and Soviet SAMs were surprisingly effective for their time, being the other portion of those significant number of air losses.

That was with '60s-era tech and literally learning the ropes (and basically inventing the book, so to speak), mind you.
Search radar is going to be heavily degraded if not destroyed by the time Ground Air support is called in. Even with prestine search raydars, flyign nape of the earth is far more effective than any sort of stealth coating.
Nope, it isn't, Doom. We've made NoE a death sentence in the '70s (the DIVAD program managed to pull that off with its radars, the FCS needed a lot more work though), so that is a no-go.

If anything, the period between Vietnam and the end of the Cold War was something akin to the Dreadnought era of the 19-teens, where scientific advancement started to cause aircraft to be obsolete the moment they got into production.
 

paulobrito

Well-known member
Face it. You see in Ukraine that Su-25 and all kinds of attack Helis suffer tremendous losses because of the density/lethality of MANPADS and SPAAGS. This is not Iraq, is a much more lethal environment.
 

Marduk

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Moderator
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Close air support (CAS) is defined as air action by aircraft against hostile targets that are in close proximity to friendly forces and that require detailed integration of each air mission with the fire and movement of those forces (Joint Publication 3- 09.3, Close Air Support). CAS provides supporting firepower in offensive and defensive operations to destroy, disrupt, suppress, fix, harass, neutralize, or delay enemy targets as an element of joint fire support. The speed, range, and maneuverability of airpower allows CAS assets to attack targets that enable the ground scheme of maneuver. When conditions for air operations are permissive, CAS can be conducted at any place and time friendly forces are in close proximity to enemy forces and, at times, may be the best means to exploit tactical opportunities

so this is the current working definition of CAS by American doctrine. based on it I have to give it to Aaron. as long as there is integrated targeting from ground forces allowing ordinance to land accurately CAS is more in reference to how close the enemies are to friendlies on the ground not how close the aircraft needs to be. based on that a big high altitude bomber with guided ordinance could achieve the goal. though it wouldn't have the cannon.
Does it really?
that require detailed integration of each air mission with the fire and movement of those forces
With GPS guided weapons, is it still true? A lot of the challenging work forward air controllers do is out of the picture there. Same for CAS pilot skills. Just punch in whatever GPS coordinates the ground forces gave you, and release the weapon from tens, or even hundreds of kilometers, without as much as seeing the battlefield.
Because you're still playing with the old definition when the reality is that things have changed. The 'Dreadnaught Effect' has changed the battlefield and means that you can't fly NOE and survive. Remember, those S-60s and ZSU-2-23s counted for a surprisingly large number of US air losses, and Soviet SAMs were surprisingly effective for their time, being the other portion of those significant number of air losses.
TBH Vietnam was where a lot of the modern SEAD doctrine was being forged in fire.
Compare to Iraq, which also had a metric shitton of these things.
 

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
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Also AD systems are targets fir more then just aircraft when you have the Army and its artillery in the play
 

Knowledgeispower

Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Honestly if the USAF wants axe the A-10 earlier than originally plannedgiving them to Ukraine might a valid idea. Along with F-16s. I'd say F-15s but you'll pry strike eagle from the USAF out of their cold dead hands and the C/Ds are super worn out and in dire need of either replacement or massive overhaul
 

PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
. Just punch in whatever GPS coordinates the ground forces gave you, and release the weapon from tens, or even hundreds of kilometers, without as much as seeing the battlefield.

That works well if you are fighting Middle East goat herders, if you are fighting peer or near-peer enemy that might not work as the enemy might use GPS jamming.
 

Marduk

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That works well if you are fighting Middle East goat herders, if you are fighting peer or near-peer enemy that might not work as the enemy might use GPS jamming.
GPS jamming, even when it works, has to pump out so much EM energy that it attracts HARMs.
That's where INS-GPS and even more complex guidance systems come in - INS kicks in for whatever parts of the flight GPS is not available.
Meanwhile, against GPS goat herders, you can just fly around them in a AC-130 or Apache firing cheap rockets or shells at them and there isn't much they can do about it.
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Which was based on Nazi 55mm cannons the Soviets captured, particularly because it can be easily linked to a computerized fire control system as-is (a feature of the Nazi 55mm autocannon systems in question). In a period before Bofors managed to shrink the VT fuse into a 40mm package (and, in the 20-aughts, that prox-fuse was shrunk to 30mm), the only way you can get AA kills with medium/small-bore cannon (i.e., anything between 20 to 75mm range) is literally hoping to god that your fuses are set correctly or literally fill the sky with lead.

My point is that your argument that later-than-Shilka SPAAGs are far more capable just because they are larger-caliber is overly simplistic. AA calibers have always been a tradeoff between the greater reach and punch of larger calibers and the greater agility and rate of fire achievable with lighter ones; it's not a simple case of "bigger is better".
 

Aaron Fox

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My point is that your argument that later-than-Shilka SPAAGs are far more capable just because they are larger-caliber is overly simplistic. AA calibers have always been a tradeoff between the greater reach and punch of larger calibers and the greater agility and rate of fire achievable with lighter ones; it's not a simple case of "bigger is better".
Well, yes and no. It's a variety of things that make AAGs capable of their job. The biggest is explosive filler. Due to how the relationship of caliber and HE works (for example, a 120mm mortar has a tendency to be only single-digit kilograms in HE filler, but for 35 more caliber, a 155mm round can have just short of 11kg of filler), bigger is better if you can manage it when you're using chemical energy as your primary means of damage.

However, all that filler won't work if you can't get within the kill radius of your target. Time fuses are infamous for being ineffective, which is why BeuOrd's VT fuse was so revolutionary. The problem was that, until the 1970s, the fuse couldn't be shrunk to anything smaller than 75mm... and because traverse systems tended to be on the slow side back then, those large-caliber autocannons became useless as they couldn't keep up unless you fit them onto ships (who have not only the necessary infrastructure (i.e., power plant) but also the necessary volume to fit the systems that can turn guns into high-response monsters).

That's why you see a transition to smaller caliber AAGs (20mm and 23mm being the most common). It allowed traverse systems of large-caliber AAGs to give the smaller-caliber AAGs the response time needed in the new threat environment. Going from 20/23mm AAGs to 30/35mm AAGs was due to advancements in traverse systems (specifically miniaturization and alternative methods becoming practical) and threats that need more HE filler to take out. Now, though? We're getting into an era where you can have your higher-caliber AAGs and not suffer in terms of response time.
TBH Vietnam was where a lot of the modern SEAD doctrine was being forged in fire.
Compare to Iraq, which also had a metric shitton of these things.
It should be noted that despite Coalition SEAD efforts, they still managed quite a bit of damage even discounting the fact that the creator of the anti-runway system gave Iraq the specs.

Serbia proved that you could send all the SEAD/DEAD operations you want, but the only real way to take air defense out of the picture is by sending ground forces.
 

Zachowon

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Well, yes and no. It's a variety of things that make AAGs capable of their job. The biggest is explosive filler. Due to how the relationship of caliber and HE works (for example, a 120mm mortar has a tendency to be only single-digit kilograms in HE filler, but for 35 more caliber, a 155mm round can have just short of 11kg of filler), bigger is better if you can manage it when you're using chemical energy as your primary means of damage.

However, all that filler won't work if you can't get within the kill radius of your target. Time fuses are infamous for being ineffective, which is why BeuOrd's VT fuse was so revolutionary. The problem was that, until the 1970s, the fuse couldn't be shrunk to anything smaller than 75mm... and because traverse systems tended to be on the slow side back then, those large-caliber autocannons became useless as they couldn't keep up unless you fit them onto ships (who have not only the necessary infrastructure (i.e., power plant) but also the necessary volume to fit the systems that can turn guns into high-response monsters).

That's why you see a transition to smaller caliber AAGs (20mm and 23mm being the most common). It allowed traverse systems of large-caliber AAGs to give the smaller-caliber AAGs the response time needed in the new threat environment. Going from 20/23mm AAGs to 30/35mm AAGs was due to advancements in traverse systems (specifically miniaturization and alternative methods becoming practical) and threats that need more HE filler to take out. Now, though? We're getting into an era where you can have your higher-caliber AAGs and not suffer in terms of response time.

It should be noted that despite Coalition SEAD efforts, they still managed quite a bit of damage even discounting the fact that the creator of the anti-runway system gave Iraq the specs.

Serbia proved that you could send all the SEAD/DEAD operations you want, but the only real way to take air defense out of the picture is by sending ground forces.
What do you mean?
Serbia proved it worked. So did Iraq
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
What do you mean?
Serbia proved it worked. So did Iraq
Serbia achieved all of its IADS objectives during that conflict -even bagging an F-117! Iraq can't fight out of a paper bag... and it still managed to get quite a few kills.

So what does that tell you?

SEAD/DEAD is only going to work on someone that is basically completely braindead.
 

Marduk

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Moderator
Staff Member
It should be noted that despite Coalition SEAD efforts, they still managed quite a bit of damage even discounting the fact that the creator of the anti-runway system gave Iraq the specs.

Serbia proved that you could send all the SEAD/DEAD operations you want, but the only real way to take air defense out of the picture is by sending ground forces.
Considering the sheer number of aircraft taking part, the number was minimal in relative terms.
Serbia managed less, despite being more competent.
And let's not forget the first part of SEAD/DEAD. Yes, turning off and hiding your air defenses for most of the time to be a "fleet in being" is a valid way to minimize the damage... but that still means they are in effect very much suppressed.
 

LordSunhawk

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I will once again point out to people that the evidence for the A-10's superior survivability vis-a-vis the F-16 in IAD environments has been posted earlier in the thread, despite @Aaron Fox regularly ignoring it and simply repeating his tired old talking points ad infinitum. In combat situations where stealth is not a critical requirement, the A-10 has proven time and time again to be both effective, efficient, and survivable in comparison to the Air Force's precious fast movers.
 

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
Founder
Serbia achieved all of its IADS objectives during that conflict -even bagging an F-117! Iraq can't fight out of a paper bag... and it still managed to get quite a few kills.

So what does that tell you?

SEAD/DEAD is only going to work on someone that is basically completely braindead.
You mean that they got lucky and basically knew where it was and had to blind fire because they didn't have a lock on it at all because the pilot flew the same spot over and over again....
The US is the master of SEAD/DEAD.
We used SEAD in Yugo more then anything. Do you know how many hours we flew in Serbia?
How many aircraft got shot down compared to the amount of hours
 

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