The problem is that ground pounders don’t understand how to use air assets. As an ALO at Ft Hood, and later during a tour in Afghanistan, I spent a lot of time trying to explain to brigade staff the implications of having aircraft that move at 500+ mph. I could set up the aircraft over a mountain range and support fights in 2 valleys 50 miles apart, with the local commanders in both valleys complaining that “their” air wasn’t sitting on top of them.
Most of the brigade commanders I worked with wanted air assets to be a ADDITIONAL force, hitting targets their own men could already hit. But to use air well, you need it to be a MULTIPLIER, shaping the battle beyond the range of the Army guns.
When air is hitting targets the Army can hit, you are doing a type of close air support - and that means you have already screwed up either your planning or execution, and are now trying to salvage a mess. That isn’t exactly wrong, because sometimes bad things happen and all there is left to do is a salvage operation with CAS. But most Army commanders want CAS as their first choice, which means they do not understand how to employ air effectively.
THAT is why the Air Force was split off from the Army in the first place.
When air is hitting targets the Army can hit, you are doing a type of close air support - and that means you have already screwed up
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Not sure how to read this sentence. As an Army ‘grunt’ during TET 68 I was never so glad to see AF F100s circling to make bomb runs in ‘close’ air support when our 1 company of 199th Redcatchers encountered a battalion size NVA unit. I can only highly commend the pilots who dropped 500 pounders just a few hundred feet from our positions. The Army air support gunships tried to provide support but the heavy AA machine guns that an NVA battalion has with them made their support impossible. I surely wish the AF pilots after saving our asses were able to return to an air conditioned hooch and quaff a cold one.
Stop talking sense!
Though I must say that 500+ mph doesn’t always make sense over countries that are smaller than most of our states. And the A-10 still has a mission that the F22 and F35 can’t match. Which service wanted to kill the warthog right before Desert Storm lit off? Maybe just CAS needs to go green. ;)