Re:The F-35’s Terrifying Bug List
by somegeekdude on Wednesday February 03, 2016 @11:03PM
(#11031903)
The number of CAS missions carried out is not a measure of the effectiveness of those missions.
The B-1 has dropped more ordnance in Afghanistan than any other aircraft. The combination of long range, high endurance, and big payload make it perfect for this role. But the A-10 has its fan club that ignores this.
If you look at how much the B-1 cost to develop and fly... Wow.
The cost of operating the B-1B is actually cheaper than both the B-52 and the B-2 (though that's not saying much since the B-2 is a hangar queen).
Afghanistan is a hard nut to crack due to being landlocked, surrounded by enemies, and with primitive facilities. B-1s do well in this situation since they can fly out of Diego Garcia, carry a shit ton of fuel, and munitions, and have a crew that is used to long duration flights. Once it was equipped with the AN/AAQ-28 Litening pod, it really came into its own for providing CAS.
People also misunderstand what CAS is. CAS stands for Close Air Support, but doesn't mean the aircraft providing it has to be close, but that the munitions are hitting close to the FEBA (where our troops are).
Pretty much everything is a lot cheaper to fly than the B-2 (by a wide margin) but I wonder about the B-52. It's such an anomaly. It does kind of seem like the last plane we still fly that was made to be a big, dumb bomb truck, which might be a pretty useful role with the new smart bombs, laser designation of targets, and so on.
But keeping all that old hardware flying...
And there's no reason to keep it around for low tech wars - if we need a dedicated aircraft to destroy mud huts we'd be better off with something cheap and easy to maintain, like Embraer's Super Tucano II.