Daryl Hunt
Your Worst Nightmare
- Banned
- #1,001
Ah so all these thousands of JDAMs they have dropped in CAS role against these insurgents who generally fight close have been useless.Bombs are great unless the enemy is in close contact, which is generally how insurgents fight it seems.. What do you do then?
Let's repeat again for Westwall: the overwhelming majority of CAS in modern era is performed with precision guided munitions. They can drop bombs accurately enough to hit targets quite close to friendlies.
Let's repeat for drain, CAS aircraft are required to accomplish a LOT of different mission profiles. You claiming that a gun is useless is not born out by actual, real world experience.
In any sort of urban combat situation the precise use of the 30mm has been a battle winner. Situations where a JDAM would kill the defending troops were instead handled with the gun, successfully.
You remind me of all those brainiacs who said modern fighters no longer needed guns because the missiles were going to change everything about air combat. Guess what. They were wrong.
Back in MY day, the missiles had to be fired in pairs just to get a 30% kill rate. And they were slow. To give you an idea, if you fired on a Mig-25, he poured the coals to it and outran your missile without even maneuvering. Today's missiles are much faster and have at least 4 times the range. This includes both sides. Before you jump at that bone, you have to be locked on to hit your target. The F-35 can be locked on passively and pick up the incoming missiles and direct them dead on target. Is a foot one way or the other good enough?