Salute!
Some good comments and observations here, lately.
In all fairness to TD, the 'vaark never did "close air support" as TD imagined, but it introduced a direct support tactic ( not real close, but within a km) that was later employed by the B-1. Yep, the Bone! That thing prolly dropped more precision bombs than anything in the 'stan for years, and it wasn't visual parameters within a few hundred meters of the friendlies and they dropped from the stratosphere. JDAM's.
The 'vaark was the only sky-puke plane I saw in the '72-'73 last months of the "first end of the war" that the commanders allowed to drop unguided bombs within 500 or so meters of friendlies. The LORAN F-4's did not drop close to friendlies using radar, just the LORAN. The friendlies had radar beacons and would provide the "offeset" to the 'vaark and it would do a radar drop . They wouldn't let we SLUF's do it as we had 1) not practiced it, and 2) we ere the new guys in town and many grunts had not seen us in action. The 'vaark passes at the speed of stink were not supersonic, but fast and low. They were the ones over the Vee airfields at the outset of Linebacker II. One driver told me they popped up for frag clearance ( even with high drags) and down the runway - the rwy lights were still on and they laid down a dozen MK-82's.
The B-52"s dropped several km's away from the camps at Khe Sahn in '68 and An Loc in '72. Support, but not close support.
So seems we are still trapped in the WW2, Korea and 'nam concept of don't drop until you see the whites of their eyes at low altitude. I personally would like to see the friendly position and exchange of fire if dropping within one or two hundred yards, but that could be with my cosmic E-O sensors or LIDAR or finally, my Mk1 eyeball. There are great videos out there of drone strikes that illustrate the point. Nobody got down in the weeds at the speed of heat and the bad guys had a really bad day. There's also a super video of a Viper using a laser-guided wepon on a bad guy crown coming down the street to the friendly position. Not sure if he was guiding or a wingman, but results were awesome. Trying to find it.
Gums sends...
Last edited by gums; 5th Jun 2022 at 23:11.
Reason: typo