gums: I am a few years out of date, but from what I saw most smart bombs were dumb bombs with a fancy doohickie attached to the front end. ;)

Likewise. In their crude, unadorned state without the tail units and front end gizmos, most bombs I saw would not have looked out of place in WW2 battlefield, pointy at the front, flat at the back. Even the clever stuff was still wound up by a propeller that looked like it had been cut from a baked bean tin and painted green

Mind you, it has been along time since I walked around that part of the armourer’s empire.

I think when this Ukraine thing is all over, the military planners are going to have a field day analyzing what worked and what didn't on what's pretty close to state-of-the-art battlefield.
Part of that will be a complete re-think of how the CAS mission is accomplished - e.g., is the A-10 type CAS model comparative suicide, or can it still be done with appropriate countermeasures?
The widespread use of drones - both for recon and actual air-ground attack - appears to be a major game changer. In contested airspace, there seems to be little reason to risk human pilots when drones can identify CAS targets that can be readily destroyed by smart weapons carried by aircraft located out of harm's way. And the high loss rate of anti-aircraft radar systems to HARM type weapons is going to require a major re-think of how to provide anti-aircraft protection (especially near the front lines). Who knows, maybe the answer will be remotely piloted A-10s.

Back when I was in college, the military planners were analyzing the results of the Yom Kipper war, determining what worked, what didn't, and how to counter that in the future. No doubt the current unpleasantry's will receive similar attention.

Salute!

@ TD........I don't think we will get a new, improved, high level doctrinal study or review of tactics and such from the current war zone for some time.

The CAS mission has not been the most crucial battlefield element as far as I can see compared to arty and maybe some helo gunships. So debating use of high-tech weapons and planes and such may need to wait and see what happens.

I go on record as opposed to doctrine that dictates little or none losses to provide the support our ground forces need. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet, roll in and hit the enemy best you can using whatever munition you have. Sheesh. Nobody said it was gonna be easy!

Gums sends...

I think I missed that one. Was it like the Cod War ?

Very interested to see any open source assessment of this loss rate. It's an aspect of the war which as far as I can tell is being heavily classified on both sides, unsurprisingly because the wider costs of any weaknesses exposed would be huge.

Now if you are going to link me to videos of Ukrainian aircraft firing HARM with a tablet interface mounted in the cockpit, I'd be very impressed with the forward leaning attitude of their weapons integration engineers, but I'd also reflect this: a few video clips showing jerry-rigged HARM firings, unguided into the deep blue yonder; some yells of "MAGNUM MAGNUM" in Ukrainian on unencrypted frequencies; and some previously unseen social media photos of GBAD destroyed in ground fighting all adds up to quite an effective info ops campaign to demoralise Russian operators and discourage them from transmitting. Not saying that's what it is, but that it's very hard to know what those videos actually show!

Salute!

@Anglian....
RE: Yom Kippur.... see Wiki, et al

Many lessons learned there, and IAF, in particular, when they encountered the SA-6.

I was fortunate enuf to check out the first and only IAF class in the Viper. Most were active in that fracas, and one or two were on the Iraq nuke mission, plus their young furture astronaut on the Columbia.
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Best summary of the HARM in combat will be in the Desert Storm literature. We would sure have loved that puppy over Hanoi...

Gums sends...