And then we go back to the argument of who’s going to protect the CAS if it’s part of the army?
Terrorists are one thing, but the Red Chinese Army Air Force, the Russian Air Force, just to name two, would LOVE to vector onto Army CAS without a integrated CAP.
The mission of the Air Force is to FIRST sweep the skies. That way our guys on the ground aren’t the recipients of what WE have become so good at: Wiping them out from on high.
Like I said, the armed services have gone down this road before. It started with the court-martial of Billy Mitchell. It stunned the world in Pearl Harbor. The fight for an independent Air Force took two wars and 30 years. It was confirmed in 1947 and then again in the Key West decision.
Since we’ve had an independent Air Force, combat troops have not been bombed by enemy aircraft. A well integrated CAP and CAS is going to be an absolute necessity the day the balloon goes up with a REAL adversary.
And what you are describing hasn’t got squat to do with the kind of wars the Army has been fighting since Korea, the kind that require CAS.
CAS prevents infantry from being overrun and decimated by opposing ground forces. That’s every war we have been fighting for decades. Infantry types tend to consider anyone who can destroy them as “a REAL adversary” worthy of taking seriously.
I don’t know why you think giving CAS aircraft to the Army would harm the Air Force in any fashion. The enemy can already “vector into” the Army’s CAS helicopters if they feel like it. Warthogs are just a whole better than helicopters in a lot of situations, and the Army should be in control of them.