Who should own CAS & why it can't be trusted to an Air Force (from A-10 retirement thread)

[Colin Parkinson]

that's is assuming you can id the targets enough to make it worthwhile. They are good to have but I would also want standard HE as well for hitting an area we suspect having troop concentrations, or denying that area through occasional shelling.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

But what would we do during a 'real' war when the B-52 would last about a minute and a half over the battlefield... if it got there at all?

Gotta stay really high up there and guide your bomb to the target ;D

 

[KevinB]

Given the ROE of some of the current (or recently completed) missions and how restrictions grew and grew - I would not give a rat's ass about having HE to lob at suspected areas...

  Unless we (meaning all the West) totally change the way we fight (and in the Canadian sense - focus on creating a Heavy Bde group to fight a peer enemy) that requirement is gone.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Well we have Ukraine as a model and then there is lovely Korea, dropping HE into suspected troop concentration areas behind hills is a time honoured tradition for that place. The guided stuff is a must for COIN operations, but a near peer enemy fight is going to consume stocks at a rate that will likely horrify accountants and Logistical types

 

[a_majoor]

Well we have Ukraine as a model and then there is lovely Korea, dropping HE into suspected troop concentration areas behind hills is a time honoured tradition for that place. The guided stuff is a must for COIN operations, but a near peer enemy fight is going to consume stocks at a rate that will likely horrify accountants and Logistical types

Having low cost PGM's, and especially ones with multiple types of seekers as well as GPS or inertial guidance, will allow for fire into suspected areas to have some pretty disproportionate results.

Imagine firing STRIX 120mm mortars behind a hill on the suspicion that there is a troop concentration, and having the rounds identify targets and do terminal manouevres to strike them. Spec or harrassing fire suddenly becomes targetted, and the enemy will have to expend far more resources in multi spectral camoflage, wide dispersal and/or C-PGM measures in order to survive.

With a robust communications capability, this also allows "snap shooting" at fleeting targets with the expectation that the round will seek out the target in the terminal phase even if the off board sensor has lost sight of the target (they have at least defined a target "box" for the round to look at).

While I doubt that PGMs will ever be cheap enough to rain them down like the Red Army on artillery targets, I do think that widespread availability of low cost PGM's will have a dramatic effect on the battlefield.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

speaking of which

http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2015/03/us-allies-evaluating-bomb-stockpiles-isis-fight/106518/?

To meet increased demands from the Iraqi military last year, Lockheed Hellfire stepped up its Hellfire production.

“[T]wo shifts of Lockheed Martin contractors are actually working at full capacity right now to modify and test these missiles and get them on their way,” Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said on June 27.

Asked if U.S. companies can meet the increased production demand for weapons, Kendall said: “I think in general industry is prepared to be responsive as much as they can within their capacity to support us.”

The Air Force alone wants to spend more than $700 million on 5,567 Hellfire missiles in 2016. Some missiles have been directly requested for the airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, according to Pentagon budget documents. The Air Force has also requested $559 million to buy nearly 13,000 Joint Direct Attack Munitions.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

So how many SDBs could you load into a CP140 and how long could that stay on station?

Would that qualify as a Canadian CAS platform that was survivable?

The 140 could possibly be set up as a bomb truck, but I don't see it happening.  The cost would likely be too high all told.  I am not sure how many they could squeeze in.  As for how long on station, that would depend on lots of factors but the endurance record is just over 17 hours.    She would be as survivable as the opposing AD assets let her be.