External Weapons Station. The wings on the 60S.
AKA "The Batwings"
External Weapons Station. The wings on the 60S.
AKA "The Batwings"
The EWS turns the Sierra into a light gunship along the lines of the Army DAP birds. 20mm, hydra rockets, & hellfire. As folks have alluded to, it's one of many missions as well as a new capability, so we're not Apaches or Cobras, nor do we have the resources to be. That being said, there's lots of room to grow with it.
But like I said earlier, we have a community (and Navy for that matter) SLAP FULL of WTIs who've never actually done ANYTHING outside of heavily controlled shoots on ranges so our foresight and depth on how to effectively fight our helicopter is pretty freakin' shallow.
Seriously, what WTI pissed in your wheaties? Like, fuck them for trying to give you the best synthetic training they can with limited resources? You can agree the merits of why we're doing things, but blasting the guys working hard to make something work seems like wasted effort to me.
Green time is not a prerequisite to being a tactical expert. None of the aviators in the fleet on 6DEC41 had any green time but they still developed the doctrine and tactics that were trained to in order to counter the expected threat.
Which brings us back around (I think?) to the original topic - tactics being developed in a vacuum. We can train guys to perfection that we're going to fight our helos by leaning out the back with polo mallets, but without using combat experience, or failing that, realistic and brutally honest evaluation, to judge those tactics, we're just signing up to lose people and airplanes. All the aggression and training in the professionalism in the world isn't going to mean a damn thing.
I think the original topic was WTIs with no tactical experience teaching tactics. And my point remains: there's no place to get relevant experience short of a war. Accurately assessing our tactics would require accurate knowledge of enemy capability, doctrine, and tactics; and it's not easy to paint the full picture of your potential foes strengths, weaknesses, etc.Which brings us back around (I think?) to the original topic - tactics being developed in a vacuum. We can train guys to perfection that we're going to fight our helos by leaning out the back with polo mallets, but without using combat experience, or failing that, realistic and brutally honest evaluation, to judge those tactics, we're just signing up to lose people and airplanes. All the aggression and training in the professionalism in the world isn't going to mean a damn thing.
I think the original topic was WTIs with no tactical experience teaching tactics. And my point remains: there's no place to get relevant experience short of a war...I get what you're saying in that our tactics need to be tested. I just don't know how that could happen in a truly operationally realistic sense.
That's where you need to train to a goal such as CEP vice number of shots (which was a discussion at work the other day, oddly enough). Pilots should train to being able to hit a threat representative target within such and such a CEP so many times to say they're qualified. I'll let the stats nerds figure out the actual numbers, but you'd essentially train to a confidence level. Or you could use the data another way and be able to show that Unit X shot so many times with a CEP of so much while Unit Y got a different lower score. Unit Y would get more resources for improvement while Unit X would get enough resources to sustain.There's something to be said for investing in your pilots too. Training is all good and well but having 1) actually fired the weapons numerous times and 2) perhaps actually having fired them at bad guys is where you go from book knowledge to real knowledge of how to employ them. What good is a 20mm when the only pilots that actually shoot it more than once are the CO, XO, and certain O-4s and even they only shoot it a few times? What good are hellfires on the rails when no one in the helo has ever actually shot one?
I'd agree that that would be a good idea for the SOF/PR mission set. But where do we send WTIs to get experience in the mission sets that truly matter for the Navy: SUW and ASW? MIW is at least a passive activity whereby you can set up a fake minefield and send the HM guys against it. ASW is almost easier to come by than SUW. We can get own subs for excercises. Where do you get the required threats for SUW?Well...we've got a couple of those going on at the moment. If the idea is for HSC to be capable of going in hot, and if you don't want to commit the squadrons to the overland mission, why not at least start embedding WTIs with guys who are going over the beach?
I'd agree that that would be a good idea for the SOF/PR mission set. But where do we send WTIs to get experience in the mission sets that truly matter for the Navy: SUW and ASW? MIW is at least a passive activity whereby you can set up a fake minefield and send the HM guys against it. ASW is almost easier to come by than SUW. We can get own subs for excercises. Where do you get the required threats for SUW?
I guess at the 160th you'd shoot a lot in a 60, which is better than nothing. It wouldn't be against maritime targets, so the skills wouldn't crosswalk perfectly but I could see the value there. Or just send some guys to marine skid squadrons or to fly apaches. I know when VX-1 developed the tactics for the 20mm guys flew with Huey bubbas and USAF Jolly guys. I'm not sure what MEDEVAC would do for you though.The 160th to fly the Army DAP 60s? Or maybe do some MEDEVAC with the normal Army 60 guys or fly little birds? Just a thought. Exchange tours aren't a bad thing. Maybe we could send our WTIs before or after they get their patch.
I guess at the 160th you'd shoot a lot in a 60, which is better than nothing. It wouldn't be against maritime targets, so the skills wouldn't crosswalk perfectly but I could see the value there. Or just send some guys to marine skid squadrons or to fly apaches. I know when VX-1 developed the tactics for the 20mm guys flew with Huey bubbas and USAF Jolly guys. I'm not sure what MEDEVAC would do for you though.