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Sturgeon's House

Not so fast you Zoomie bastards...


Belesarius

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Funny that the thinking behind the AHRLAC is almost the opposite: CAS should be manned (because the ground is the most complex environment), so the best option is to make a cheap-and-cheerful plane suitable for operation by relatively low-skilled pilots:

http://www.paramountgroup.biz/en/ahrlac-rad-aircraft.html

 

Actually, that's exactly the niche manned CAS is going to have as I mentioned above:

 

 

 

Manned CAS's niche will in fact be with very low cost militaries that can't really afford to keep up on the electronics and want something very simple to operate and maintain.

 

In fact, the AHRLAC's selling point is that it's supposed to be cheaper than drones from a dollar value perspective, so if you're the sort of military that can afford to spend lives instead of dollars (and don't mind a lot of misses) it's exactly the sort of plane you'd want over a drone.

 

(the exception being CAS over a low-threat environment, but then I'd argue it's technically a COIN as opposed to CAS aircraft - and even the USAF is getting AHRLAC-like planes like the Super Tucano for the COIN role).

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That thing's a fucking deathtrap.

 

Of course it's a death trap. That's the whole *point*. Note how "Optional Ejection Seats" are listed as one of the features?

 

  • Compact size
  • High wing for crew visibility and better field operation
  • Low purchase and operation costs
  • Simplified logistic support
  • High cruise and dash speeds
  • Payload capacity in excess of 800kg
  • Large operating range
  • Short Take-Off and Landing
  • Self-protection counter measures
  • Optional ejection seats
  • Light attack capability
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That thing's a fucking deathtrap.

No, it's a logical deathtrap (as Zin lays out). People are cheap (an 18-year-old will set you back by around $245000) and come pre-paid from mom and dad. Training and equipment is expensive.

So you can either train up people and try not to expend them, or save on training and equipment costs and soak the occasional body bag. For light recon and CAS in low-intensity environments, I'd say that paramount actually has the maths right.

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Studies seem to indicate that pilots are by far the most expensive asset, and that you don't want to be throwing them away.

Sure, you could put no-training scrubs in Cessnas and try to get them to do CAS, but your attrition rate, coupled with the low delivered capability would make these "assets" decidedly appendix-like.

Infantry need a good, well-trained CAS element, not some idiot who doesn't know how to read a battlefield puttering around uselessly in the sky.

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Look at the casualty rates for pilots in low-intensity combat: the border war produced something like 50 total deaths in SAAF squadrons over a 20-year period, including accidents. You can have reasonably trained dudes rolling around at low level in cessnas all day and not lose too many to replace.

 

The issue is that they should be reasonably trained (not overtrained or undertrained) and that there should be a lot of them flying about wrecking stuff and making other people's lives a misery. Putting 10 pilots you've invested $3 million each (current US training figure) over the bush is madness when you could be putting 30 pilots you 'only' invested $1 million in over the same area. Ditto your $100 million super-fighters.

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Studies seem to indicate that pilots are by far the most expensive asset, and that you don't want to be throwing them away.

 

Also taking exception to this a bit. The lifetime cost of a pilot might be high, but then so is the lifetime cost of a plane.

The upfront cost of a pilot (in the form of training) is always a fraction of the cost of the plane.

 

edit: infantry is where it gets weird, because the soldier himself is much more expensive in terms of training and upkeep than his equipment. You can gold-plate rifles all day and still have it be a fraction of the all-up cost of a soldier, yet here the procurement process usually prioritises cost over other concerns for some reason.

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Studies seem to indicate that pilots are by far the most expensive asset, and that you don't want to be throwing them away.

Sure, you could put no-training scrubs in Cessnas and try to get them to do CAS, but your attrition rate, coupled with the low delivered capability would make these "assets" decidedly appendix-like.

Infantry need a good, well-trained CAS element, not some idiot who doesn't know how to read a battlefield puttering around uselessly in the sky.

 

That's because as Toxn pointed out Western militaries tend to have pretty ridiculous pilot training costs since they're being asked to fly very expensive aircraft for an extended period of time. For a Third World military pilot training costs are much lower, to the point that the running joke is that the Philippine Air Force is just a flight school for commercial airlines where you actually get paid instead of paying tuition but at the slight risk of death.

 

Incidentally, this is also exactly why drones make sense for a well-funded military. With drones your well-trained Western pilots are no longer put at risk and can instead spend more time on things like target acquisition and verification to make sure that your expensive Hellfire missile actually kills actual enemy targets and not some innocent civilians in the wrong place and time.

 

Meanwhile the Philippine Air Force pilots, while skilled, are expendable enough that they can continue to be risked on bombing runs using OV-10 prop planes. Since getting through a tour makes you employable in a high-paying commercial airline job, there is no shortage of new candidates.

 

Moreover, for CAS to be really effective you need to have on-the-ball forward observers; and they are arguably more important than the pilots. The pilots for the most part are dependent on the FO to tell them who's the good guys and the bad guys.

 

In the recent Masamapano fracas for instance the supposedly "elite" ground team was using Google Maps to navigate a swamp, ended up on the wrong side of the river and thus violated a cease fire agreement, and got wiped out to nearly the last man because no one could give the army any coordinates as to where they were and where the Moros were. The OV-10s in this instance didn't even bother dropping bombs, much less take off from the nearby airfield - they didn't have any valid targets and the ROE sensibly forbade willy-nilly dropping of munitions.

 

On the other hand, with some very good intelligence and some exceptional recon one of our OV-10s actually took out one of the top AQ leaders in the region. That our pilots could drop a bomb in a properly identified hut so surprised the local media that they still think that the OV-10 bombing was a hoax and it was really a US drone that conducted the strike (at best a couple of US drones might have helped guide the OV-10, but the US has been extremely scrupulous about its "no combat" pledge in the PH).

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We have the same issue: our air force actually does way too good a job at cheaply churning out pilots skilled enough to enter the private sector and thus has an abysmal retention rate.

 

Edit: similarly, our medical and veterinary graduates basically represent a massive, continual handout to first-world countries as most of them leave the second their mandatory service period is up. We end up sucking in doctors from Cuba to make up the shortfall.

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Of course it's a death trap. That's the whole *point*. Note how "Optional Ejection Seats" are listed as one of the features?

 

  • Compact size
  • High wing for crew visibility and better field operation
  • Low purchase and operation costs
  • Simplified logistic support
  • High cruise and dash speeds
  • Payload capacity in excess of 800kg
  • Large operating range
  • Short Take-Off and Landing
  • Self-protection counter measures
  • Optional ejection seats
  • Light attack capability

 

 

So, you lose 10% of the payload if you want ejection seats? That doesn't leave much weight for a gun

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That's because as Toxn pointed out Western militaries tend to have pretty ridiculous pilot training costs since they're being asked to fly very expensive aircraft for an extended period of time. For a Third World military pilot training costs are much lower, to the point that the running joke is that the Philippine Air Force is just a flight school for commercial airlines where you actually get paid instead of paying tuition but at the slight risk of death.

 

Incidentally, this is also exactly why drones make sense for a well-funded military. With drones your well-trained Western pilots are no longer put at risk and can instead spend more time on things like target acquisition and verification to make sure that your expensive Hellfire missile actually kills actual enemy targets and not some innocent civilians in the wrong place and time.

 

Meanwhile the Philippine Air Force pilots, while skilled, are expendable enough that they can continue to be risked on bombing runs using OV-10 prop planes. Since getting through a tour makes you employable in a high-paying commercial airline job, there is no shortage of new candidates.

 

Moreover, for CAS to be really effective you need to have on-the-ball forward observers; and they are arguably more important than the pilots. The pilots for the most part are dependent on the FO to tell them who's the good guys and the bad guys.

 

In the recent Masamapano fracas for instance the supposedly "elite" ground team was using Google Maps to navigate a swamp, ended up on the wrong side of the river and thus violated a cease fire agreement, and got wiped out to nearly the last man because no one could give the army any coordinates as to where they were and where the Moros were. The OV-10s in this instance didn't even bother dropping bombs, much less take off from the nearby airfield - they didn't have any valid targets and the ROE sensibly forbade willy-nilly dropping of munitions.

 

On the other hand, with some very good intelligence and some exceptional recon one of our OV-10s actually took out one of the top AQ leaders in the region. That our pilots could drop a bomb in a properly identified hut so surprised the local media that they still think that the OV-10 bombing was a hoax and it was really a US drone that conducted the strike (at best a couple of US drones might have helped guide the OV-10, but the US has been extremely scrupulous about its "no combat" pledge in the PH).

 

Uh, no it's because an experienced pilot is expensive.

UAVs make a lot of sense for CAS. What you need is cooperation between UAV assets and manned CAS/FAC assets. Which is pretty much what we have now. Plop all the Hellfires and APKWS onto a drone or drones, and have something manned supported by loads of unmanned assets so they're able to take fewer risks while still getting intel calling the shots.

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Uh, no it's because an experienced pilot is expensive.

UAVs make a lot of sense for CAS. What you need is cooperation between UAV assets and manned CAS/FAC assets. Which is pretty much what we have now. Plop all the Hellfires and APKWS onto a drone or drones, and have something manned supported by loads of unmanned assets so they're able to take fewer risks while still getting intel calling the shots.

 

Again, you really need to reconsider "expensive pilots" when South Africa can get 30 for a million dollars in training. Flying a plane nowadays is not that hard. Heck, modern airliners are primarily flown by auto-pilot in the first place; which is why even the really basic PAL flight training is more than enough to get them civilian airliner jobs.

 

Also, mixing manned and unmanned planes over the same area? What for? Anything the pilot can do, the drone can do also. You seem to be under the impression that the future lies in having a manned bomber "supported" by unmanned drones, but you don't need a manned bomber in the area at all when you can have the drone control center in the United States.

 

Or are you saying that the unamanned drones do the SEAD portion to pave the way for the manned planes? Sorry, but that doesn't make sense. The SEAD portion is in fact the bit that is most likely to encounter electronic jamming in the first place which is why SEAD - despite being hugely risky - may need to be one of the roles that goes to the drones last.

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Bombers controlling drones also suffers a bit from the death star issue: you now give your enemy every incentive to concentrate on the manned asset in order to knock the entire force out with one blow.

Drones controlled by an AWACS stationed well within friendly skied makes a lot of sense to me.

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So, you lose 10% of the payload if you want ejection seats? That doesn't leave much weight for a gun

 

Actually, our OV-10s don't even have guns - they come standard but as far as I know we haven't done a gun strafing run since maybe the 70s and they've been removed or gutted to save weight for the most part. But again, the main virtue of this class of planes is that they're so cheap to fly and maintain, so your operating costs are really low, your acquisition cost is so low you can afford to replace them when one or two are lost.

 

Sure, a 500 lb payload is totally irrelevant against the Red Amy, but against a handful of rebels a single bomb is often more than enough to win a major fight outright.

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Bombers controlling drones also suffers a bit from the death star issue: you now give your enemy every incentive to concentrate on the manned asset in order to knock the entire force out with one blow.

Drones controlled by an AWACS stationed well within friendly skied makes a lot of sense to me.

 

Uh, I didn't suggest something out of the first Star Wars prequel, I suggested a few manned aircraft supported by larger numbers of UAVs.

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Also, mixing manned and unmanned planes over the same area? What for? Anything the pilot can do, the drone can do also. You seem to be under the impression that the future lies in having a manned bomber "supported" by unmanned drones, but you don't need a manned bomber in the area at all when you can have the drone control center in the United States.

 

Battlefield intelligence doesn't work the way in practice that it does in theory, mate.

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Battlefield intelligence doesn't work the way in practice that it does in theory, mate.

 

These are the same tired old argument from the corners of the military that still can't accept their obsolescence that actually don't hold any water.

 

Battlefield intelligence doesn't primarily come from air-based assets in CAS in the first place, and you'd notice this if you read my argument. You have planes flying at high speed looking at itty-bitty little figures on the ground - and this assumes that the pilot can get a good view from the cockpit and the pilot isn't terribly distracted by being shot at. Does this sound like ideal conditions for intel-gathering?

 

Instead, the ones actually guiding the planes are your Forward Observers on the ground, which is why it's silly to claim drones can be jammed when a jammer powerful enough to do this will also break the comms between the ground team and the CAS bombers.

 

So really there's no need for manned CAS. Battlefield intelligence comes from your FOs on the ground.

 

Moreover, if you subscribe to the fantasy of primarily air-based recon then drones can do that for you too, and you can have a team of analysts sitting in a comfortable building to actually have time and support to figure out which of the little figures on the ground are the good guys and the bad guys to begin with; rather than asking a pilot to do this solo while being in mortal danger.

 

Really, have you ever tried identifying targets on the ground based on an aerial recon picture, much less try identifying targets when the plane is flying really fast? Why do you think so many actual drone strikes still end up killing the wrong people even with a room full of analysts?

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A.) I didn't read your post in its entirety because I am far too busy for that, today.

B.) "No need for manned CAS" is a very different statement than "the majority of CAS missions can be unmanned". The latter I agree with, the former is absurdly generalized.

C.) I have no dog in the fight of pilots not wanting to be obsolesced. The closest connection I have to it, my father, worked on UCAV and FireScout and is an unmanned idealist.

D.) I have IDed targets on the ground from aerial photos.

E.) None of this means we should just throw our combined arms out the window in favor of promises of mature unmanned technology that does not actually exist yet. FFS, we don't even have optical navigation down yet!

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This thread has gone far afield since last I responded. But I think some of you are really underestimating the political cost of dead pilots and dead ground pounders.

In the aftermath of Desert Storm, the shitstorm in the media and DC with the various friendly fire incidents - including the infamous "this Bud's for you" one - lasted for years.

Now multiply that ten times over and add the hot button issue of drones to the equation to a 24 hour news cycle with social media and the Internet and you have the risk of an event that could make Abu Gahrab look like an isolated, one-off bit of horseplay involving a bunch of POGs with poor platoon leadership.

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Uh, I didn't suggest something out of the first Star Wars prequel, I suggested a few manned aircraft supported by larger numbers of UAVs.

I was trying to avoid that specific reference - just re-watched the first prequel and dear lord it is a wonky beast.

In any case, the issue is that the only reason for a data link between manned plane and drone is that it improves the capacity of the whole package (either by givng your drones access to the larger load carrying capacity of the bomber, or by allowing some of the decision making to be handled by the manned asset). If the small manned component is providing no increase in capabilities then you just replace it with another drone.

So removing the manned plane will always be a priority in those sorts of setups: either to deprive the drone fleet of ordinance or to make it dumber/slower.

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This thread has gone far afield since last I responded. But I think some of you are really underestimating the political cost of dead pilots and dead ground pounders.

In the aftermath of Desert Storm, the shitstorm in the media and DC with the various friendly fire incidents - including the infamous "this Bud's for you" one - lasted for years.

Now multiply that ten times over and add the hot button issue of drones to the equation to a 24 hour news cycle with social media and the Internet and you have the risk of an event that could make Abu Gahrab look like an isolated, one-off bit of horseplay involving a bunch of POGs with poor platoon leadership.

 

Again, you do realize that as much as a third of drone strikes *already* cause civilian casualties and nobody even questions this, yes? There is very much an understanding that drones are still controlled by people and it these people who are ultimately responsible for any collateral damage mistakes.

 

 

 

So. The answer is lots of aircraft flown by six-year olds?

 

No, as Toxn and I already explained the only niche for manned CAS aircraft is the low-cost military aircraft, because those are cheap enough to be had in large numbers - cheaper than drones in fact even with pilot training - for militaries that don't have the cash to afford drones.

 

You do realize that the US Air Force went through a phase like this, yes, when they formed SEAD units that had the crappiest jets available? The idea being that it's better to risk some older planes like F4s for Wild Weasel duty instead of the more expensive F-15 Strike Eagle.

 

====

 

 

 

E.) None of this means we should just throw our combined arms out the window in favor of promises of mature unmanned technology that does not actually exist yet. FFS, we don't even have optical navigation down yet!

 

"Meh. The day when we go all-drone with CAS isn't too far off anyway."

 

"Really, it's glaring how people keep going we shouldn't all-drone for a risky job like CAS, when Space Exploration went all-drone years ago, suffers plenty of glitches and lost missions, and yet the reaction to lost space probes is "Oh well, good thing we didn't send a guy up there or he'd be dead now!" while taking the risk to the human operator away from CAS is treated as dangerous sci-fi fantasy despite drones conducting the majority of actual air strikes (as well as most of the recon flights) since Obama became president."

 

Finally, what does optical navigation have to do with present-day drones? Most human pilots don't even navigate optically anymore for most of the journey - that's what GPS is for and why autopilots are common for airlines. And even if we assume some optical navigation is necessary there's a reason the things still have a human operator back in the base; and nobody in this thread is advocating fully automated drones that fly without human guidance and choose targets for themselves without any human input. 

 

If you get to the point of fully automated drones, then you can retire the fighter jocks because at that point you really don't need a pilot for the dogfighting portion anymore (and dogfihts will keep happening because BVR thing just isn't going to be allowed unless in an apocalyptic war because of ROE issues). Before then CAS is actually going to be the first to end up all-drone'd because having a full picture of the battlefield is much more important to ensuring the ordnance gets dropped on the right target instead of the advantage of having no lag due to tele-operation.

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Wow. You responded seriously to my joke post about six-year old Anakin. Geesh man, lighten up.

And as someone who is intimately familiar with American politics and media, trying to gauge the cost of a pilot's life based on the dollars spent to train him is... let's just say it is a very unique way to view how things are prioritized in this country.

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Wow. You responded seriously to my joke post about six-year old Anakin. Geesh man, lighten up.

And as someone who is intimately familiar with American politics and media, trying to gauge the cost of a pilot's life based on the dollars spent to train him is... let's just say it is a very unique way to view how things are prioritized in this country.

 

It's hard to believe you're "joking" when you're grumbling about how we put dollar values on a pilot's life while ignoring that the whole point of the drone program for Western miliataries is to take the mortal danger away from the said pilots; and that the only folks who will still continue using CAS aircraft are those who train their pilots dirt-cheap like in South Africa or the Philippines because we accept some of them might not come home.

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