First, in response to BoCfuss's post, the AC-130 may be preferable in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that's only because it can loiter much longer than any other aircraft. But it can only operate in low-threat environments and only at night. The air force lost an AC-130 in desert storm during the battle of Khafji to a manpad because the pilots didn't RTB after sunrise.

The A-10 is probably the best all-around CAS airplane out there. And what is its most effective weapon for CAS: its not missiles, and its definitely not bombs but its gun. Please explain to me how youre going to get a fully-automated UCAV put bullets on a target. There were many occasions in Afghanistan where soldiers didn't have GPS coordinates for their targets or where the enemy was too close to use a bomb or missile. Ive read stories of f-15s, -16s and -14s strafing targets with their guns because they had just run out of everything else.

I'm not saying a UCAV couldn't drop bombs in support of CAS but to be truly effective, you need more flexibility than that. Remember that the most cost-effective approach may not be the best. I think the UCAVs best role in CAS is the FAC; the predator has already proven that.

Yep, I can't see a UCAS taking the place of the A-10 as of right now, but, it is inevitable. The strong points of the A-10 is its low speed(eyes)/Loiter time, pilot protection, and payload(amount and types of weapons it carries). How awesome would it be if the guys on the ground had a plane THAT THEY CONTROL had a larger payload, a longer loiter time, with even greater protection on the engines, flight controls etc. I think that is a winner. A grunt points out on his GPS mapped handheld exactly where the bad guys are, bam, there dead much faster then if it was sent to a man in the machine. Why couldn't a UCAS have a kick *** gun either?

quote:

Originally posted by BoCfuss:
A grunt points out on his GPS mapped handheld exactly where the bad guys are, bam, there dead much faster then if it was sent to a man in the machine.

How is this any different than today with a pilot in the cockpit?? And I don't see how giving troops on the ground who are in the middle of a fire-fight control of the UAVs (or I guess I should say UCAS now) makes their job any easier. Now they have to be focused on the correct employment of the different kinds of weapons being dropped so they don't kill friendlies; isn't that the pilot's job??

I guess a UCAS could use a gun in the same way it drops bombs. Look, making your air force completely and entirely dependent on a GPS constellation is dangerous; the future of warfare is not in UCAS, its electronic warfare and when your entire air force cannot function without GPS, youve just given your force its achilles' heel. The air force as of now is dependent on GPS but it can still function without it. A UCAS dominated air force is not only dependent on GPS, it cannot function without it and what happens when an enemy electronic attack renders your GPS constellations inoperable??

I leave you with this article:
http://www.defencetalk.com/news/publish/article_004430.php

Heh...maybe we could have a QA-10 or something, BoCFuss. There's a lot to be said for the A-10 in the CAS role, but there's also alot to be said for UCAS in the same role. But...like WhizKid says, a UCAS is quite susceptible to EW which will not only affect its sensors but its basic operation. Manned aircraft don't have that problem with basic functionality, or many of their optical sensors. GPS isn't exactly required for UCAS operations, but INS isn't exactly what I would call precise enough for CAS...should the GPS coverage fail in that area.

quote:

Originally posted by Whiz_Kid07:
How is this any different than today with a pilot in the cockpit??

It isn't except there is no pilot in the cockpit.

Like I said before, I don't see a difference in a manned plane being hacked/jammed and a UCAS, except the UCAS, again, has no pilot in it. Yes, the future of warfare is electronic warfare, I believe the U.S. has been aware of this much longer then even the Chinese, Japanese, which ever nese is "attacking" the U.S. vendors. Are we invulnerable, NO. No one is. I think we fair better then the rest of the world though. Ask yourself how the U.S. thought it was the Chinese, if they left no fingerprints? Hmmm. Maybe it was retalitory.

Iguana, come on man, UAVs are the future, resistence is futile, or something. Anyways, Home on Jam equipment will eventually render EW emmitters as deadly as ground radar.

Well...so far, the only "combat-tested" equipment that has attempted to jam GPS signals was made by Russia. Ironically, all of these jammers were taken out with enhanced GBUs...so I guess they weren't too effective.

quote:

Originally posted by IguanaKing:
Well...so far, the only "combat-tested" equipment that has attempted to jam GPS signals was made by Russia. Ironically, all of these jammers were taken out with enhanced GBUs...so I guess they weren't too effective.

Yeah, some how the USAF knew how to find those, odd.

Well...it certainly raises a few eyebrows when ELINT sees GPS-like signals coming up from the ground.

quote:

Originally posted by IguanaKing:
GPS isn't exactly required for UCAS operations, but INS isn't exactly what I would call precise enough for CAS...should the GPS coverage fail in that area.

How accurate is INS? I remember hearing that the F-15's INS was surprisingly accurate for such an old system. But could INS put the plane right on the runway after a lengthy mission?

quote:

Originally posted by IguanaKing:
Well...so far, the only "combat-tested" equipment that has attempted to jam GPS signals was made by Russia.

I wasn't referring to ground-based GPS jammers; HOJ pretty much makes those things obsolete. My fear is that the entire constellation, or a signficant portion of it, may be susceptible. With a UCAS fleet, everything relies on one system for basic functionality and so one can render a entire air force useless with a concentrated attack on that system. A UCAS may be able to fly without GPS, but how is it supposed to drop bombs? With manned planes, you might not be able to use GPS weapons, but there are other weapons you can use. Remember that space will soon become another battleground.

Space will soon become another battleground, that's a given. However, GPS satellites aren't networked and have very little input from outside. But...they can be sent a signal to degrade non-military accuracy. Not sure much can be done other than destroying a satellite or two, outside that. GPS jammers attempt to overlay incorrect time codes on signals from a particular SV...thus giving inaccurate position data.

INS is accurate...but only accurate enough to get an aircraft within an acceptable range of other NAV methods as far as landing goes. It isn't accurate enough to reliably determine the UCAS's exact position in relation to targets and friendlies. At that point it would have to rely on INS and visual...which seems a bit dodgy through video.

Obviously, there are holes in my argument and I admit that my knowledge in these areas is limited (although hopefully not for long), so understand that I am looking at this from a logical point of view. Like BoCfuss said, nothing is invulnerable. Someone else is always better at finding weaknesses in your system than yourself. Someone always thinks of something you didn't. Just understand what I'm getting at here; a systematic attack on a weakness in one system renders your entire air force grounded long enough for an enemy to accomplish its objective, what are you going to do? Launch nuclear weapons? No one was killed; they just grounded some UCAS's and they are not invading continental US. I know all of this is strictly hypothetical, but its unnerving to be so dependent on one system.

Its gonna take a mix of ALL this stuff. No one system or concept is gonna make manned AC obsolete.....and the AF is already studying the QA-10 concept for LIMITED use in APPROPRIATE situations. Manned F-35s and improved A-10s etc will be with us for some time, just used differently perhaps.

It's still poor, uneconomical, and unrealistic planning to build less than 300 F-22s, much less a number below 200. Reminds me of the B-2 program.....21 aircraft after all that developement funding;worked out to about a billion bucks a plane....gimme a break. the more you build, the cheaper they are...alot cheaper.

quote:

Originally posted by Whiz_Kid07:
I know all of this is strictly hypothetical, but its unnerving to be so dependent on one system.

It's not entirely dependent upon GPS (or any other single system for that matter). For example, we have UAVs that will fly independently and can even return home successfully if there is a loss of communication with the control station.

We have automated systems that are exceptionally good with scene correlation. If you let the guy on the ground look through the aircrafts sensors he can usually ID relatively easily. Once identified visually, the UAV can stick to it. (We actually had something like this happen in an urban CAS mission fairly recently. The JTAC had a system that let him hook up to what the pilot’s FLIR showed. He talked the pilot onto the target by saying essentially, “down, down, a little to the right, there that’s your target.” Give the JTAC direct control of the sensor and it would be even easier.)

One final comment. Someone mentioned something about it being the pilot’s job to know where the battle lines are and what weapon effect ranges are. It is. But it’s also the job of the guy on the ground. A JTAC (joint terminal attack controller) goes through training specifically about that subject. It’s also a busy enough job right now that it is impossible to do well while fighting like a normal ground soldier. (Actually normally you have 2-3 soldiers dedicated to air control back far enough from the fighting that they can at least hunker down and worry about aircraft rather than getting shot.) Anything that can be done to make air control easier will increase their ability to act as a ground soldier.

As I said earlier. UAVs as the best CAS platform out there is still a future vision, but I think in the future we'll see it.

quote:

It's not entirely dependent upon GPS (or any other single system for that matter). For example, we have UAVs that will fly independently and can even return home successfully if there is a loss of communication with the control station.

I was actually referring to weapons employment, but I had forgotten about "scene correlation" as a means to ID targets.

quote:

Originally posted by Enforcer572005:
It's still poor, uneconomical, and unrealistic planning to build less than 300 F-22s, much less a number below 200. Reminds me of the B-2 program.....21 aircraft after all that developement funding;worked out to about a billion bucks a plane....gimme a break. the more you build, the cheaper they are...alot cheaper.

With 183 planes, the per unit cost is between 130 and 150 million dollars, right? Does anyone know what the per unit cost would be if they bought the 380 planes the air force wants or even the original requirement of 750 ?

quote:

With 183 planes, the per unit cost is between 130 and 150 million dollars, right? Does anyone know what the per unit cost would be if they bought the 380 planes the air force wants or even the original requirement of 750 ?

It would be $130 to $150 per unit... the only variable on unit cost is the number produced each year. The jump from a unit cost of $90 to $130 reflects the line adjustment from 26 per year to 16 per year IAW with the QDR agreement.

The unit increase caused by taking the line to 18/yr and buying to the cap coupled with the sunk R&D produces roughly 180 a/c. If the line ramped to 28 and unit cost dropped to $90, the total quantity would be closer to 271.

Anyway, you were talking unti cost, not fly-away or weaposn system cost. Both of those amoritze RDT&E.

One of the proposals for controling UCAVs suggested a manned a/c (preferably a 2 seater) following a UACV wing, controlling it through short range directional datalinks. Somewhat of a mini-AWACS for UCAVs. This concept could be extended to a full sized CnC a/c like E-3 or E-6. This way a UCAV could recieve control inputs from a number of sources such as ground based and airborne command posts, GPS, INS etc, making them less dependent on GPS alone.

I fell that with the current state of art, the helicopter gunship is the best CAS platform. It can loiter near the ground forces for a longer time, hide behind terrain, is better at observation so less chance of friendly fire, and does not have to overshoot the target after every attack run and expose its six to AAA.

Well I would feel unsafe flying an AH-64 though because on lucky bullet to the tail rotor from an ak47 will give you a bad day. But the chances of that happening while taking on a tank collumn by hovering a couple of miles away makes the chances of that happening a bit lower, but if you are flying over a city or something then you better be ready for anything. Just look at what happened in somalia to the blackhawks, one went down by just a bit of small arms fire, the other went down by a lucky RPG.

except that the AH-64 is more survivable than the blackhawk. The Apache is designed to withstand combat damage. If it can have an entire engine shot off and 23 mm bullet holes (which are explosive) through EACH rotor blade and still fly, I have a hard time believing that a 7.62 mm non explosive round is going to do spit to the tail rotor. The whole dang thing is armored up the wazu, it's essentially a helo A-10. Not to mention it's crash survivability, with a vertical decent rate of 50 ft/sec (about three times faster than a carrier landing) the two guys inside feel only 5G on impact. Besides, with Hellfire and the 30mm Bushmaster, what AK-47 is going to get within 100 yards of the Apache?

The Scotsman was Here!