“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”.
The idea that the USAF rejects tactical level flying is as insane as the rest of your ideas.
And no, airplanes should not normally be used at flying artillery. It should be a force multiplier, not a force additive. That often includes CAS.
The Army agrees with me. I made that point at an NTC rotation years ago, and the ARMY asked me to meet with other units at Fort Hood and explain what we did and why we did it.
You’re obviously deranged. You know nothing about the US Air Force, modern equipment or tactics or how CAS is done and why. All you want to do is bitch about the US Air Force and wish the Marines were there to scrape their bombs off of their jets instead of someone using PGMs from up high.
Happily, the people who make decisions, including the US Army, disagree with you. I’m strongly in favor of keeping A-10s, just as I once supported the A-10C program (although my part was fleeting and microscopic) - but I also know why a lot of CAS is done with fast moving aircraft and targeting pods.
It works. It works extremely well - much BETTER than it did in Vietnam. But it fails if someone provides the wrong target coordinates and tells the aircraft to attack that location - just as bad ground control always causes problems.
Couldn't have expressed it better myself. Like my dear Uncle - an Air Force P-51 pilot in WWII said to me "I can't believe I have a Nephew stupid enough to join the Marines during a war".
You say the Army's happy with your new and improved CAS? Sure they are, since something's better than nothing. The difference with your version of CAS and ours is that our pilots start out as infantry officers as all of us do and we know them and they know us. They are committed to helping us gain our ground objectives even if they lose their lives doing it (and our helicopter pilots will come for you if you're wounded, no matter what). We are a single team and that's the secret of our success and why we hang onto our air wing with all of our strength.
Close Air Support is very, very effective at cracking the enemy's hold if it is precise and it is the right weapons. General MacArthur discovered that for himself in the battle for Luzon when he used Marine SBDs and our FACs to eradicate Japanese strongpoints in front of his advancing infantry. He requested Marines because the Army Air Forces wouldn't or couldn't provide that kind of responsive support. As I said earlier, Normandy would have gone much better if the landing forces had dedicated and pinpoint CAS to take out the German defenses. Would have saved innumerable soldiers' lives. Instead the Army Air Forces provided medium and heavy bomber interdiction which was for the most part helpful except for the big strike that landed on our forward force near Caen, killing scores and breaking our assault for the Germans.
There are two points you don't want to understand:
1. Air power supports ground objectives. You don't win any wars by air power alone. You don't win any war until the ground forces run our flag up the enemy's flagpole, period.
2. The ground Marines and Soldiers and Navy Corpsmen are just as valuable as any pilot. Their lives are every bit as worthwhile. We aren't just customers for bombs, we aren't expendable and our families grieve just as much as any airman's family. Rabbiting off 30mm or rockets or bombs or any other munition when you aren't absolutely sure - so sure your own son could be there on the ground too - before you pull the trigger is a crime, period.
"Somebody just gave the wrong grid" is an excuse, a poor excuse for flaws in the targeting and coordinating and deconfliction system. You have to have skin in the game.