Rand to USAF and US Army: Why Can't we all Just Get Along?

[Kirkhill]

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/cgi-bin/client/modele.pl?session=dae.16882086.1133972074.Q5cKasOa9dUAAFC2ZcA&modele=jdc_34

Follow the link.

Short Form -  USMC has got it right and is best able to integrate available assets (including USN and USAF air)

US Army still too distrustful of US Air Force and under utilizes available air,  expects too much of AH-64s and ATACMS and should bring Fire Support Coordination Line closer to FEBA as Corps assets (AH-64 and ATACMS) are too few to seriously impact the battle space out to 100 km.  FSCL should be withdrawn to FEBA +40 km to put it in line with M109/MRLS systems.  Marines go one better apparently by setting up 3 zones - a distant zone for air, a near zone for ground and a joint zone in the middle.

The AH-64 needs to work over friendly forces, manoeuver more and hover less.  Invaluable for insurgency operations however.

A related article on the advantages of the A-10 Warthog working with ground forces.

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/cgi-bin/client/modele.pl?session=dae.16882086.1133972074.Q5cKasOa9dUAAFC2ZcA&modele=jdc_34

Cheers.

 

[Kirkhill]

Sorry:

The Rand Corporation is a Defence think tank regularly used by the US Forces (especially the Air Force?) to do strategic analyses.

http://www.rand.org/

 

[tomahawk6]

We dont want to discuss $300m F-22's do we ? Which might explain the decision to chop 19,000 airmen from the USAF. They would have scrapped the A-10 long ago if the Army hadnt pushed to take over the aircraft.

 

[Journeyman]

The Rand Corporation is a Defence think tank regularly used by the US Forces (especially the Air Force?) to do strategic analyses.

RAND was established by the US Air Force (then, the US Army Air Force) in 1946 to analyse various scientific and strategic problems. It's been a non-Defence Department organization since 1948, and now does more policy-type research as well as its original mandate. It's used by all four services and most other government departments and academics.

As for the A-10, it's probably been on the USAF's chopping block more than any other program. The zoomies just don't like airplanes painted green. When they were building the F-15, the mantra was "not one pound for air-to-ground." Naturally, that made it a lot more expensive to modify into the F-15E Strike Eagle when it became obvious even to the airforce that ground ops is where wars (and hence budgets) are won.

 

[Red 6]

The Air Force has never liked ground support. It's not nearly as glamorous as cool fighter aircraft and so forth.

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

Wish we had an Army airforce.

 

[Red 6]

We did, but then they got too big for their britches back in '47 

 

[Journeyman]

Wish we had an Army airforce.  

Wa-aaay back...yes, even before me.....there were Air OPs. Single-engine spotter aircraft flown by artillery officers. Now UAVs are as close as we're going to get to an "Army" Airforce.

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For the record, I actually like some Griffon drivers. But they're not really army, despite sometimes having muddy boots and experiencing the joys of Ft Frontenac 

 

[Sherwood4459]

I seen it proposed before and it seems logical - if the USAF treats the A-10 like its got smallpox and the Army needs better close air support-  turn the A-10 and maybe the  AC-130's over to the Army.  The USAF can then concentrate all it's efforts on high tech air operations in the wild blue yonder and the A-10 could be with people who love them 

I have seen a couple people say that when he was the USAF, Chief of Staff, Gen McPeak offered to do this(the A-10’s part at least) and the US Army  said No.  Was this offer really made?