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John H.[_5_]

On Mon, 14 Oct 2019 19:40:22 -0400, wrote:

On Mon, 14 Oct 2019 22:18:53 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

John H. wrote:
On Mon, 14 Oct 2019 18:57:21 -0000 (UTC), Bill wrote:

John H. wrote:
On Sat, 12 Oct 2019 00:18:16 -0000 (UTC), Bill wrote:

Not my boat, but interesting cruise. Fleet week in San Francisco. Going
out on the Jeremiah Obrien to watch the air show. I always wonder if my
dad worked on this ship. He was a machinist at the Kaiser Richmond yards.
One of only two unaltered Liberty ships.

Hope it was a blast!

Was a beautiful day on the bay. Little wind, sunny. The kids on the boat
had a blast running the bow ack-ack gun. Good show by the fliers. F35
flyby. Unfortunately we are building F35 type planes instead of a modern
A10 with ground pounding guns for soft targets.

I'm with you on the A-10s. They put on a demo for us with live ammunition
on the Ft. Sill (Artillery
Center) firing range when I was in school there. Unreal airplane.

Problem is it is designed as a tank killer. We need low and slow that will
survive attacking ground troops. Men’s different guns. 50’s or 30 cal.
Gatling Guns.

That 30MM can use other ammo and be quite effective against guys on
camels or riding in a pickup truck. There is some new air burst ammo
that will spray the ground with nasty bits of metal or set your ass on
fire. They also have the ability to put mini gun pods under the wings
and shoot 7.62x51 or maybe even 5.56 (I am not sure what pods are
available). They can use AP bombs, hellfire missiles or rockets along
with side winders if the bad guys have "air".. The idea of a low and
slow aircraft that has a long loiter time is pretty important to
supporting ground troops. If an armored vehicle is getting a little
frisky, that 30MM shooting AP will spoil his day.
I hope they store these in a way that we can fire them up again if we
need them.

Looks like it may be around for a while.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/y...il-late-2030s/