Question for Salty Fighter/Attack Pilots

[Fly Navy]

In modern air-to-ground warfare, how often are dumb bombs used? Seems like they're adapting JDAMs and laser guided munitions to everything, including CAS.

The Fleet bubbas know better, but anyone else, please don't violate OPSEC.... this is a tricky line of questioning as it is....

 

[skidkid]

With over 300 controls Ill throw out an answer and let others chime in. Dumb boms are still used a rough guess would be 30-40 percent. A dumb bomb on a smart jet (laser spot tracker and GPS/INS) becomes pretty good.
JDAM is not the ideal weapon for CAS outside of an urban fight. Urban it is pretty good as long as the ground guy cna pull menserated grids. JDAMs do not do moving targets well. LGBs are pretty much the king of CAS still. The nice thing about dumb bombs is they are relatively cheap, plentiful and the systems on board now provide a very good CEP withe above metioned systems. I will let the pointy nose guys chime in

 

[Kolja]

concur wtih skid, insofar as I can discuss it here (not a pointy nose guy, but AM an instructor at Strike FWIW...)

 

[TurnandBurn55]

So with every swinging d!ck in the world able to buy a GPS jammer, does that affect how/when we utilitze JDAMs?

$10 says y'all won't be able to talk too much to that one... but thought I'd throw it out there...

 

[skidkid]

No one will speak to that sorry. Careful everyone we are approaching lockdown

 

[Fly Navy]

So with every swinging d!ck in the world able to buy a GPS jammer, does that affect how/when we utilitze JDAMs?

$10 says y'all won't be able to talk too much to that one... but thought I'd throw it out there...

Tell you from my engineering background that GPS is easy as SH!T to jam. It's also pretty easy to counter-jam. To those wondering about OPSEC, this is not new information in the least. This is something studied in any self respecting electrical engineering signals class.

 

[Fly Navy]

No one will speak to that sorry. Careful everyone we are approaching lockdown

I know. I think any SNA/SNFO with half a brain will know better.... but I'm sure someone else will ruin the party....

 

[Fly Navy]

I can't imagine that any SNA/SNFO would actually know enough to cause any damage with that one.

Hahha yeah. Just covering my bases since I started the topic.

 

[Super18Ordie]

During the Iraqi cruise we used Rockeye and those new propoganda dispensing bombs and those arent guided

 

[Fly Navy]

During the Iraqi cruise we used Rockeye

This I remember, since the media seemed offended and appaled at this. Rumsfield handled that question excellently.

 

[Kolja]

So with every swinging d!ck in the world able to buy a GPS jammer, does that affect how/when we utilitze JDAMs?

$10 says y'all won't be able to talk too much to that one... but thought I'd throw it out there...

I'm not taking your bet.

 

[SteveG75]

In the old days we used to carry enough dumb ordinance to get the kill. Now, we trade quantity for precision.

Why? An A-6E could easily carry 12 Mk-82's where as an F/A-18 had a hard time with 4 Mk-82's. Now, an F/A-18 with two 500 lb JDAM is as effective as an A-6E with 12 MK-82's.

In effect, we have traded smart B/N's and pilots working hard to solve the targetting solution for delivery pilots that drop smart ordinance that does it's own targetting problem.

 

[Fly Navy]

In the old days we used to carry enough dumb ordinance to get the kill. Now, we trade quantity for precision.

Why? An A-6E could easily carry 12 Mk-82's where as an F/A-18 had a hard time with 4 Mk-82's. Now, an F/A-18 with two 500 lb JDAM is as effective as an A-6E with 12 MK-82's.

In effect, we have traded smart B/N's and pilots working hard to solve the targetting solution for delivery pilots that drop smart ordinance that does it's own targetting problem.

Of course. But there has to be a place left for unguided munitions... right?

 

[Super18Ordie]

Of course. But there has to be a place left for unguided munitions... right?

We use them alot for test and eval.

 

[Brett327]

One more thing: Smart pilots spell it "targeting".

V/R

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Nobody EVER accused Meat of being smart.

Brett