COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

Tell me again how Hogs would:

a) Operate off helicopter fields (unimproved or inadequate for the fuel and
munitions weights required in combat...about 49,000 pounds for an A-10).
And, no, Harriers cannot operate with full combat loads either when doing
VSTOL ops. Ever notice how the Marines are buying F/A-18s?

b) Have planned depot maintenance performed at these same fields

c) Be employed across Brigade, Division and Corps boundaries (one of the
principal advantages of fixed-wing platforms, i.e., speed, range, payload
and response times)

d) Avoid the disastrous operational control policies finally and fully
repudiated (at least until they forgot) at Kasserine? (Hint: Parceling out
fixed-wing air to individual ground commanders does not work, at least not
according to Eisenhower)

e) Be transferred to the Army when that service already has an extremely
capable CAS asset (that would be Apaches) that simply hasn't been employed
effectively by Army airmen because they haven't been allowed to do so.
Their current long range strike doctrine has me licking my chops as an OPFOR
guy - radar cross section that size of a small state, paper-thin armor, a
"dash" speed that is about 10-20 knots below what I use to rotate for
takeoff...and I fly a slow jet...as a defender, I'd kill you before you got
within 10 miles of my high-value assets and, assuming you survived the
shoot-down, I'd pick you up for political exploitation because your
short-range weapons put you right next to darn near any of my maneuver units
(it's hard to glide out of harm's way, ala Scott O'Grady, when your
employment altitude is ~100 feet AGL. And don't tell me the Warfighter
exercises vindicate the tactic...the simulation algorithms are about as
accurate as a NYT poll.

Now, all that ranting aside, you are absolutely spot on about the Marine
Corps having broke the CAS/Combined Arms code. They are not perfect, but
they are a damn site better, on the whole, than the Army/Air Force team
'cause they have to be. Neither of the other two have figured that out yet
(the necessity for cooperation). I think they'll have to when the new "units
of employment" activate with less organic fires than they've had in the
past.

On the day when Air Force guys start awarding "ace" status to air-to-mud
pilots for ground kills (read: ground attack/CAS is as important as the air
superiority mission) and the Army starts seeing the Air Force as a separate
service as legitimate as the Navy (read: these guys should be trusted as the
experts on air combat, just as the Navy is for maritime campaigns), the code
will be broken. It's a cultural issue more than anything else.

Great blog by the way...I learn a lot, enjoy your writing talents and
intellectual honesty but invite you to do a little more target study on your
sister services. I also want to thank you and your troops for acquitting
yourselves magnificently in Iraq...absolutely superb.

BTW, full disclosure: have 26 years on active duty, 2000+ hours in A/OA-10s,
served as a Corps ALO and have participated in Army/Air Force exercises and
operations in the CONUS, Alaska, Korea, Norway, Germany, Italy, Albania,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, and The Netherlands.