Elite Fighter Squadrons?

[HeyJoe]

I guess the Army just used any old helicopter battalion for their purposes until the Iranian hostage crisis happened, and the same would need to happen for an elite unit to be stood up in the fighter community.

I suggest you read up a little more....”battalion” isn’t even the right term in this case and what you are referring to is Eagle Claw which was Navy helicopters flown by Marines so using “any old helicopter [unit]” shows you have drawn the wrong conclusion....BUT the issues that arose in execution of Eagle Claw highlighted the need for and resulted in creation of standing Joint organization to foster high level of HABITUAL training and successful mission execution. Recommend reading “The Guts to Try” which is the inside story told by one of the lead planners and participants.

I think you need to focus on getting selected and acquainted with the “Fighter Community” as a member (that would be a misnomer for Navy and Marine Corps BTW as Strike Fighter is more appropriate) before you try to suggest a better way of doing business. Regardless of what you call it, the members are pretty aware of each other’s capabilities and if a situation warranted a deployment or dedicated strike mission by a select group of individuals, it would be relatively easy to do within the current Air Wing construct. In fact, it has been done by several different type aircraft when need arose in the past.

 

[Hotdogs]

Great question. The Marines have long had an uncomfortable relationship with armor. Look at the this way, the largest company in any Marine tank battalion is (or used to be) the Anti-Tank company. Tanks are for Europe and the Middle East and the Marines see the future of warfare along the fringes of what China controls. There is a pretty remarkable anti-tank capability with all the newish rocket artillery stuff and I imagine their combat loads will reflect this.

Except modern armor will have a numerical advantage and exceptional active and passive protection systems that will make exisitng anti-armor systems obsolete. The hellfire is already heading to obsolescence. There is large concern over not just the the lack of armor but overall lack of logistical considerations, indirect fire, and air support in the new force design that has been laid out.

Interesting concepts in the event of the .000005% chance we execute existing contingency plans against China but is not necessarily what is needed in other GCCs. Lots of anxiety going around on the requirement to rely on another service for support. We’ll learn hard lessons over again. The commandant thinks we can win wars by shooting missiles at everyone.

 

[Farva01]

As to Combat Dragon II, that kinda makes more sense but it was 3 pilots and 3 WSOs for the deployment to Erbil with only 2 aircraft in the Limited Objective Experiment(LOE)/Extended User Evaluation (EUE). To your point, the OinC started the project in 2007 as a LCDR and the A-29 Super Tucano (Imminent Fury) and spent his entire O-5 career as the lead spending 10 years recruiting and training his aircrews. The senior WSO went from O-4 to O-6 while participating (he left for his command tour as a weapons school CO but returned when needed as did others).

I guess another niche example is VF-154 at the beginning of OIF. They kept a couple aircraft on the Kitty Hawk for operations and send some others to fly out of Al Udeid with FAC(A) aircrew augments from the Weapons School and Topgun.

"VF-154 deployed with 12 F-14As and detached five F-14As and five air crews to the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar where these F-14s and its crews would work closely with Royal Air Force Panavia Tornado’s, USAF F-15E’s, F-16CGs and F-16CJs and Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18As. CENTCOM had contacted CVW-5 and specifically asked for the air wing to deploy Forward Air Controller capable Tomcats and crews to support coalition land-based aircraft as well as Special Forces squads operating inside Iraq. The F-14s were usually paired with the aircraft already deployed to the airbase, dropping bomb themselves or guiding other aircraft bombs. The aircrews would fly daily missions and in one 48-hour period the VF-154 detachment flew 14 sorties totalling 100 hours of flight time. The crews at Al Udeid flew more than 300 combat hours and delivered 50 000 pounds of ordnance, (98 GBU-12s) during the 21-day stay at the airbase."

 

[HeyJoe]

I guess another niche example is VF-154 at the beginning of OIF. They kept a couple aircraft on the Kitty Hawk for operations and send some others to fly out of Al Udeid with FAC(A) aircrew augments from the Weapons School and Topgun.

This is exactly what I was alluding to...in fact, aircrews had been developing TTPs stateside well in advance with the SOF units that were supported in OIF. AIRLANT himself was a little taken aback when they did a engine swap at a remote airfield and then one Tomcat was lost due to a fuel transfer issue. It all got sorted out later and more coordination was done within the normal Air Wing Training cycle at Fallon with appropriate members of Squadrons that would interact with SOF. From then on, at least 2 members of N5 (Strike) staff designated as LNO became the SMEs at NSAWC. In fact, one of them became the second Super T pilot as an augmentee and then got orders as second pilot to fly OV-10G+ and stayed with it for 5 years until retiring as an O-5 (spending 10 years total as augmentee or part of cadre).

 

[HeyJoe]

One critical aspect of high performance units (my preference vice “elite”) is the maintenance component. In IF, we experimented with a hybrid AD/CO* concept so we could leverage the expertise of the A&P mech certification. We needed AD type(s) for Ordnance handling but borrowed the 160th SOAR best practice of using aircrew to conduct refueling and reloading in FOB ops so we had AFSOC Ordie acting as Load Team Leader supervising O-4/5 aircrew. All aircrew were certified for loading ordnance and unlike a typical Navy or Marine Corps squadron, the aircrew outnumbered the dedicated maintainers thanks to having an A&P who took care of everything from ejection seats to changing tires and installing/trimming engines.
Note: our A&P experiment was ultimately successful but not without going through what I call a Goldilocks process....first guy was way too quiet and reclusive....second guy talked way too much....but this guy was perfect
*AD=Active Duty CO=Contractor

 

[Brett327]

We had the same concept in P-3s, where the aircrew was the load team in the crew Ordie was the QASO. Used that method a bunch during Bosnia, flying out of Sig.