Which aircraft Is more effective in the ground attack role: Harrier or Apache?
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: by the Great Salt Lake, USA
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The Brits may have gotten rid of their Harriers, but the USMC still has plenty flying in various parts of the world - as well as those 72 ex-British airframes slowly being stripped of anything useable.
And the USMC ones even have that 25mm GAU-12/U 5-barrel gatling cannon fitted - as well as that small-dish AN/APG-65 multimode radar.
And the USMC ones even have that 25mm GAU-12/U 5-barrel gatling cannon fitted - as well as that small-dish AN/APG-65 multimode radar.
Strictly speaking, the Apache does not perform, CAS. In Air Manoeuvre doctrine it conducts CCA or Close Combat Attack. CAS is an Air doctrine term for fixed wing platforms. Minor detail I know but we are not comparing like with like here.....
20 years ago, an Apache pilot I know (Major Braun) was working on Army doctrinal development with the aim of classifying Apache as CAS. The core of his approash was that having a differnt name for the same function (airborne fires) struck him as conceptually limiting. Granted, he was looking at this from an Army point of view, institutionally, but he was also informed by the US Marine Corps' combined arms doctrine.
It looks like his efforts were in vain.
CCA, is it? OK, whatever.
It looks like his efforts were in vain.
CCA, is it? OK, whatever.
Saying that the difference between CCA and CAS is simply helicopters v FW is a rather crude simplification and doctrinally there is more to it than. Due to some of those differences (and a host of other reasons) AH is always (from personal recent experience) the first preference for the guys on the ground in CURRENT operations but clearly just because that is the preference now, certainly doesn't mean FW CAS wont be the best platform for the job in the future!
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Exiled in England
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someone said AC-130........
a real crowd pleaser, if you are well out of the way..
we'll just circle around in a pylon turn out of manpad range and have at you with a broadside of everything but the kitchen sink.....
I always wondered why they never did a variant with 4x GAU-8 (A10 cannon) and a whole herc full of ammo.
Bring the rain, indeed yes.
a real crowd pleaser, if you are well out of the way..
we'll just circle around in a pylon turn out of manpad range and have at you with a broadside of everything but the kitchen sink.....
I always wondered why they never did a variant with 4x GAU-8 (A10 cannon) and a whole herc full of ammo.
Bring the rain, indeed yes.
Aynayda, thanks for your reply. Major Braun was dealing with military reality as it was in the mid 1990's, so your point on "what's popular in the current fight" is very well made. 
