“Bombing from nice, safe altitudes above the reach of small arms also introduces variables - relative wind, air density, variable conditions in the weapon’s drag among others - and the CEP gets larger. A big CEP means that the odds increase that the munitions will hit us instead of the enemy - or in many cases, the wrong damn treeline and innocent villagers get killed.”
I’ve dropped thousands of bombs. I also worked on the SNIPER targeting pod, and worked with PGMs.
If you don’t know the difference between bombing in 1965, or 1985 (when I started doing it) and 2010 or 2014...well, listen. Target ID is vastly BETTER at altitude. Accuracy with PGMs is vastly BETTER. Communication is vastly BETTER. Datalinks allow a JTAC and the pilot to exchange pictures, to make sure both are seeing the same thing. That makes it SAFER for the guy on the ground.
Targeting pods were developed in part to make CAS BETTER. They largely take the pilot of 200 hours and let him put bombs on target like a pilot of 5000 hours. That was an investment in CAS by people who believe in the mission.
I’ve also had to fight with Army officers who didn’t know squat all about HOW to get bombs on target. The ARMY doesn’t know CAS very well, or airpower. I know, because I’ve spent time teaching them as an ALO.
Despite all of the newest technologies, a USAF Bone crew managed to kill several Special Forces guys and the Afghan battalion commander due to "failures of tactics, techniques and procedures" and an over dependence on the SNIPER pod.
I would love to believe that the Air Force is past the bad old days of bombing us instead of them but new technologies or not, it's still happening.
What's missing is cultural. Since the days of Mitchell, the Air Force has accepted as Gospel that their mission is strategic, not tactical and that the ground forces will benefit more from interdiction fires than being employed as "airborne artillery". Implicit with that concept is an implication that the ground forces are inferior and some Air Force guiding lights still suggest that air power can win the wars all by themselves without us humble crunchies.
I was stuck with being the Assistant G-3 for a Bright Star exercise in Egypt years ago, with the US Army 3rd Infantry Division staff acting as Army Theater Command. We had an Air Force staff in a large camouflage-netted tent alongside us throughout that exercise but they had nothing to do with us. I gained entry to the Air Force planning cell (despite some opposition) and found out that they were completely unconnected from the Army play of the problem and refused to provide CAS for the live fire portion of the exercise which the division and the Egyptian Army and the Marine MEU were taking part in near Wadi Natrun. I ended up using Egyptian MiG-21s for live fire CAS instead.
I believe that technology will eventually give us safe and dependable CAS. Unmanned CAS. I do not believe that any iteration of the Air Force's mentality or culture will ever provide what the ground-pounder needs because the Air Force will never give a damn about us.