As long as the ridiculously outdated WWII-era paradigm of close air support is revered as dogma between the services, these kinds of shenanigans are going to persist. It's long past time to embrace the reality of supporting the troops with more flexible, accurate, and cost-effective platforms than fast-movers.

Son, I'm done with you.

As they say at the War College, "You profoundly lack the required experience for eligibility to express an opinion on this subject matter."

As they say on the flight line, "STFU before you get somebody killed."

When you get stick time as a combat aviator, personal experience as an AirOps/CAS planner, or years of civilian and military hands-on exposure at the granular level to the current state of ground attack platforms and the reality of their interoperability in supporting boots on the ground, I'll be happy to resume the debate.

Until then, for the sake of your own cred, find something else to discuss. Your sophomoric counter-arguments are simply embarrasing at this point.

>>I would feel free to eliminate the A-10 if Excalibur had not been crippled by its limitation to 155mm tubes, crippling its range and payload.<<

A 22+ mile reach for a weapon like the Paladin firing Excalibur (such heroic names!) with a 5-meter CEP is hardly "crippled." That they can also move constantly to cover ground forces adds flexibility to their deployment. In fact, an entire Paladin battery can roll 180 miles using the same amount of fuel an A-10 uses in a 2.5-hour sortie.

As we discussed on this forum earlier, also consider that the MLRS M30 GPS-guided round can reach out much further. It's referred to as the "70km sniper rifle" by the crews.

>>Malcolm you keep talking about a peer war with China/Russia. In such a war, what do you suppose is going to be obliterated first? GPS/Communication satellites.<<

If an US/Sino/Russo engagement escalates to taking out orbital assets, all conventional hardware and doctrine will become tragically irrelevant in the ensuing apocalypse.

>>EMS [sic] white noise generators are dirt cheap and will be ubiquitous on all army vehicles.<<

As we also discussed earlier, EW is a complicated game. Any transmitter like a jammer that operates for more than 2 minutes near the FEBA will probably be a smoking crater in about 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

>> If you actually did work in DARPA, HAHAHAH, you never have<<

I never said I worked in DARPA. I worked as a contractor in support of a variety of DARPA projects. One of them was in fact the PCAS (Persistent CAS) program.

>>you would already be keenly aware of this fact and all of the proposals that have been issued trying to obtain laser communications instead of satellite coms.<<

You apparently don't understand that even the highest security clearances are firmly tied to the limitations of, "Need to Know." I honestly can't even guess how many other military tech and "black" programs DARPA has in play at the moment. There is no "DARPA Wiki" where someone working on unrelated projects can dig around and find out what kind of other cool stuff might be in the works. Even senior DARPA directors don't have the ability to freely access details of other programs unrelated to those they're overseeing.

And just to circle around and restate the goal: The emergence of modern UAVs, attack helos, and precision artillery represents a massive change in the paradigm of supporting ground troops. It's past time to modernize the doctrine to move away from the WWII-era CAS tactics still in place and integrate these battle-proven assets to provide faster, more accurate, more sustained, and more cost-effective support than the outdated A-10 could ever achieve.

Yes, this will result in a much more clinical and far less romantic conduct of the mission in comparison to the "Yee Haw!" gun runs the media so fondly gloms onto. But the future is inevitable, and the US is long overdue in embracing it.

The Marines already have the Harrier and AH-1W/Z for those roles.

If it's "quite obvious" to you that I have no relevant credentials, I would pass along two pieces of advice:

1) Don't play any high-stakes tables at the Wynn, and
2) Revisit your definition of, "obvious."

Out of courtesy to the others on this forum, I won't repost my background and credentials as a veteran combat aviator, DARPA contractor, aerospace engineer, yada yada yada. Please feel free to take a gander at those posts when you have a moment,

I'd be happy to hear a run-down of your experience in the combat aviation role when you have a moment.

Are you serious? I'd suggest you go back and read some of my other posts regarding experience and qualifications.

>>Care to have heavy artillery land within 500 meters of your position? in the fog of war? yeah me either.<<

So I'm assuming you're trying to make a point that the A-10's cannon is an advantage in it doesn't have a large kill radius?

Would you willingly choose to have an aircraft that lacks the sensors to visually differentiate between friend or foe past eyeball range laying down a burst of HE within 50 yards of your position? If there were no other options, I could see the necessity. But there are better options.

>>And its interesting how you omit karbala before and omit the quantity of enemy armaments and equipment destroyed by A10s in ODS. interesting.<<

When it was well and truly on and everyone had skin in the game once the ground war kicked off, the Apache was by far the dominant tank/vehicle killer. They destroyed more hardware than the A-10 and M-1 Abrams combined.

>>With the way you are pushing them as fixed wing CAS replacements, yes, you are proposing theoretical nonsense.<<

The goal of any combat force is to inflict upon the enemy more energy than they can withstand. This is done through two methods of fire, direct and indirect. There's your theory.

What theory is not: Phasing out obsolescent platforms with limitations and capability gaps (e.g. the A-10) and shifting the mission of supporting ground troops to assets that can perform in a sustained, cost-effective manner with superior accuracy, flexibility, and across a broader range of conditions than a jet achieves both the goal of the first paragraph and the mission of ground support.