Defense Technology International - October 2007 - (Page 66) INSIGHT EDITORIAL H “How do you know when your conversation with an A-10 pilot is half over?” asked a Raytheon former Hornet-driver. “It’s when he says, ‘Enough about me—do you want to look at my gun?’” It was a tension-busting moment in an intense and occasionally contentious conference on close air support (CAS) in London late last month, organized by IQPC Defense. “There are no new lessons,” said one speaker. “The same old lessons keep coming back.” Of all missions, CAS is the most likely Danger Close to kill or injure friendlies or civilians. CAS is a matter of aiming weapons at enemies who are in contact with friendlies. It happens in civil wars or insurgencies during which civilians live and work in the battlefield. And the trend in ground operations, toward distributed actions by small groups—they can cover the terrain in more detail and look less like an occupying army—increases the need for CAS, because small units can’t carry their own fire support. “We are really good at CAS. Could we do better? Yes,” comments one officer. But, he says, CAS has done well, particularly considering the diversity of air and ground forces operating in the theater. Four years ago, I wrote a story about fighter guns. Fighter pilots defended the guns left and right, but none mentioned ground strafing except as an aside. Today, not only is the A-10’s gun in high demand, but aircraft that you never would have expected to use their guns in action, such as RAF Tornados, use them routinely. “The great thing about the gun is that it’s accurate and has a relatively small risk of collateral damage,” one officer comments. On the other hand, the problem with the fighter gun is that its range—it is designed to engage fighters at 1,000-meter (3,281-ft.) distances and kill ground targets at 2 mi.—is greater than the distance over which a pilot can identify a target. “If you see people running away, do you engage them? The safe error is that you don’t, but then the enemy can run away, too.” That’s where the idea of a small aircraft like Embraer’s A-29 Super Tucano or an AT-6B, armed with .50-caliber machine guns, makes sense to a lot of people. Smaller weapons are receiving increas66 DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL OCTOBER 2007 ing attention. Raytheon is briefing a lockon-after-launch (LOAL) version of the Maverick, with a video data link in the missile and launcher, showing how it could be fired through a cloud deck at a target on the ground, retargeted as the objective changes course and commanded to impact in “dud mode”—with a safe warhead—to minimize damage. The A-10, now with a state-of-the-art laser-targeting capability, is being tested with Hellfire launchers. The reason is that many targets are “danger close”—there is a 0.1% or greater chance of incapacitating friendly troops. The distance depends on the weapon’s accuracy and yield. A JDAM is more accurate than a dumb bomb, so its “danger-close” radius is smaller. But accuracy creates problems. The bad news, comments an A-10 pilot, “is that if I aim at something it’s going to die.” Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACs)—the current U.S. and Afghan/ Iraq theater term for forward air controllers—are trained to never give their own coordinates. It’s too easy for those coordinates to be entered as the aimpoint for a GPS-guided weapon. “Especially if I’m talking in a non-visual JDAM drop—not in a million years,” says one JTAC. The human factor is vital but that, too, is under strain. Technology, particularly new targeting pods on the aircraft and the Rover video terminal that allows the JTAC to see what the pod sees, brings huge improvements, but the JTAC must be trained to use it under fire. As the ground force divides into smaller squads, they each need to be able to control CAS—and there are not enough JTACs to go around. The U.S. Marine Corps, in the forefront of this trend, is working on a training package to allow squad leaders to use real-time target information to direct air attacks with support from JTACs who are in the communications loop but not on the scene. “The squad leader talks the aircraft on and marks the target,” says a Marine officer. “The JTAC clears the aircraft hot, but the squad leader can abort.” But as one USAF pilot responds, “that’s why the USAF and Marines don’t trust each other to do the job,” adding that “you can train a monkey how to be a JTAC.” He quickly added that he based this observation on his own JTAC training, but for a moment, the odor of tar and feathers permeated the conference. I —Bill Sweetman www.aviationweek.com/dti http://www.aviationweek.com/dti
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.