McLame is a POS...needs to be ‘retired’ many years ago...
I would absolutely insult your intelligence if you had any...
First one must assume McCain has any actual intelligence to insult. I’m glad we have a Marine to head the DoD. Mattis is fully aware of what value toe A-10 is to ground troops.
He’s a clueless geezer. The B-1 has been flying CAS for decades.
As crazy as McCain is on this one he’s right, Sec. James is a ditz.
(McCain being a boss)
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I think you misspelled. Should be an a instead of bo in that last word in parenthesis.
With a ton of loiter time, a Sniper pod, and a bomb bay full of JDAMs, a B-52 can plink enemy positions all day long.
The B-1B can do the same.
On this day and age, close air support doesn't have to mean laying down gunfire at treetop level.
We don’t need to insult his intelligence - he is perfectly capable of doing that on his own.
From what I uncovered in researching McCain last summer, he is a mostly phony, including his medals for ‘heroism’.
And I didn’t draw that conclusion without solid evidence. He really is a phony who got tortured in the Vietnam War and then proceeded to embellish and twist his suffering into a ‘hero’ story.
He is a liar because persons in the media take facts and omit details to make his history something that it is not and he goes along with it.
The Air Force has tried to weasel out of true Close Air Support for decades except for the outstanding capabilities of the Warthog. The Taliban have very little in the way of effective air defense, so behemoths like the B-1B and B-52s can get away with bombing from way up on targets 1000m or more away from friendlies. Other wars, other enemies will not be so permissive.
McCain's right to make them support the army as they were required to do since 1947.
I think McCain went too soft on Sec. James. She is an idiot. The General is an idiot for inserting his nose into the discussion. The point was that the B-1 is not a CAS aircraft. Just because they did some “close interdiction” in an permissive environment doesn’t mean they can pick up the CAS load in a non-permissive environment. The A-10 needs to be straight lined until there is a real replacement. And just because the F-16 and F-15E is being used in this role for the war on terror, doesn’t mean that they will not be used for higher priority missions and leave CAS unserviced. The Air Force and the Army have a hard deal that the Air Force provides a certain amount of dedicated CAS aircraft. I have the possible answer, but it will take time. They need to find the savings in the non-operational side of the house.
Defending foolishness only makes you look like a fool.
I’m no fan of McCain, but he’s right on this one. No way should the A-10 be replaced, not the least of which is with the B1. Fighter jets don’t fit the bill either.
Debbie James is the one who needs to be mothballed. Can’t Trump put someone competent in there?
The B-1B with several dozen JDAMs of sizes from 500lb to 2000lb can cover a lot of battle space.
Especially if also equipped with anti-armor cluster bombs.
One could likely do the work of a full squadron of A-10s.
From 50,000 feet.
Close Air Support from 30,000 feet is possible these days.
The problem is that technology will take away that advantage.
If they can develop technology that can detect and destroy an RPG approaching a tank, then the technology to detect and destroy a bomb is not far behind.
Low level CAS will be harder to defeat.
We need to keep the A10-period.
The YouTube video is from 2014, not from the most recent Congressional hearings on the A-10. :)
For once McCain gets it right.
the Warthog is the best close air support weapon ever created.
It’s not possible to insult McCain’s intelligence.
Sufficiently crude epithets do not exist.
Depends on the definition of “close” but the Bones & Buffs did fine during the early Taliban campaign in Afghanistan.