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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: unclewest who wrote (31971)6/9/2002 10:20:13 PM
From: Hawkmoon  Read Replies (2) of 281500
 
not to be too picky...but that presupposes one is in the artillery fan.

Oh absolutely Uncle... And that's why mechanized units are supposed to be able to provide their own mechanized artillery support. But in Iraq, outside of the MLRS rocket system, few mobile artillery pieces could keep up with the Abrams and Bradleys. Thus, they needed to rely upon Apache gunships for CAS. So we have even more reason for why we need the Crusader (based on the Abrams chassis) which can keep up the pace, while excelling at the "shoot and move" game.

But you yourself could surely agree that if you are required to perform a CFF mission "danger-close", or call a "broken arrow", calling fire down upon yourselves when in danger of being overrun, you'd rather have artillery performing that mission rather than aircraft dropping Napalm or a ton of HE on your position..

And I'm sure you can provide an extensive discussion on the firebase strategy and how we were able to orchestrate round the clock fire missions on large stretches of Vietnam.

I have nothing against CAS.. But that equates to using a wrecking ball when only a sledgehammer might be required. And I hope that you would agree that there is still a disconnect between the Air Force leadership and the grunts on the ground. It shouldn't be there, but I think most of us would rather have artillery than aircraft. Aircraft have to fly back and reload, while Artillery can sustain fire for significant periods of time.

What I wonder is whether we should revisit the "firebase" strategy in some of these Afghani areas.

Hawk
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