Daryl Hunt
Your Worst Nightmare
- Banned
- #1
There are some that think it's a cakewalk to do a gun run at low level for a gun run. It's not and never has been.
The flight starts out with accessing the situation. You don't just fly straight in. You talk to the ground troops, access what they have to say, get the parameters and locations from them. Then you fly parallel to those cooridnants and eyeball them to verify them yourself. Then you fly off and turn towards the mark. You will be jinxing as in not flying in a straight line. At some point, you will start flying in a straight line directly towards your targets and then release your gun. You are most vulnerable at this point. You have slowed down to allow your guns to do their maximum damage. After you fire, you now will maintain your low level and spool your engines up and gain as much speed as possible. After you get enough speed, you will gain as much altitude as you can until you are safely above ground fire. You will be releasing all sorts of chaff and flares to minimize hazards all through this. And your onboard jammer will be working overtime.
The problem the A-10 has, it is underpowered. It comes in just fine, flies through the the firing stage great. But when it goes to extend out (spooling up to gain speed) it does it too slow. It's vulnerable too long to ground fire. Remember, not all ground fire is either IR or Radar. Some is line of site or Mark I Eyeball. As long as it was just a bunch of rag tag fighters, the A-10 could do whatever it wished. But today, the A-10 is very vulnerable when on the deck and so is every other Air Craft. But the A-10s Gun can do a tremendous amount of damage when used at low level and sometimes, that is the best option.
NO other Aircraft can do a low level gun run like the A-10. All the others try and avoid it like the plague. Even the A-10 tries to avoid it these days. It's only used when there are no other alternatives.
The flight starts out with accessing the situation. You don't just fly straight in. You talk to the ground troops, access what they have to say, get the parameters and locations from them. Then you fly parallel to those cooridnants and eyeball them to verify them yourself. Then you fly off and turn towards the mark. You will be jinxing as in not flying in a straight line. At some point, you will start flying in a straight line directly towards your targets and then release your gun. You are most vulnerable at this point. You have slowed down to allow your guns to do their maximum damage. After you fire, you now will maintain your low level and spool your engines up and gain as much speed as possible. After you get enough speed, you will gain as much altitude as you can until you are safely above ground fire. You will be releasing all sorts of chaff and flares to minimize hazards all through this. And your onboard jammer will be working overtime.
The problem the A-10 has, it is underpowered. It comes in just fine, flies through the the firing stage great. But when it goes to extend out (spooling up to gain speed) it does it too slow. It's vulnerable too long to ground fire. Remember, not all ground fire is either IR or Radar. Some is line of site or Mark I Eyeball. As long as it was just a bunch of rag tag fighters, the A-10 could do whatever it wished. But today, the A-10 is very vulnerable when on the deck and so is every other Air Craft. But the A-10s Gun can do a tremendous amount of damage when used at low level and sometimes, that is the best option.
NO other Aircraft can do a low level gun run like the A-10. All the others try and avoid it like the plague. Even the A-10 tries to avoid it these days. It's only used when there are no other alternatives.