http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...22/uafghan.xml

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/5371392.stm

From the BBC Article:

From your own Telegraph link

Besides
In your quote it says he missed the enemy by 200 meters

Still closer to the enemy than the F15 that dropped his bomb ON Brit soldiers :roll:

Well that article was showing both sides of the argument- a good thing for any news orginzation to do and which has been lacking a lot recently! :yep:

Question to the experts at large, do they still mark targets/frendlies with smoke in these days of FLIR? :hmm:

The problem with the RAF is that they are using an aircraft for CAS that doesn't have a gun. The new Aden cannon couldn't be got to work so they ditched it. The crazy thing is they have retired one of the best CAS aircraft this side of the A-10, the Jaguar. Its crews were highly trained in CAS and had an HMS aswell as self designation capability aswell as one of the best inservice rates for UK aircraft. Hopefully with the Typhoon going over to Afghanistan soon things will get better as it has a gun.

I also read that the UK troops prefer the A-10 if they can get it. The apache has proved its worth but sometimes it can't get there quick enough.

I hate the way that so many in the UK as soon as there is a BoB with our guys start complaining the US pilots can't shoot straight. In this situation they were being hit from 3 sides from darn close range.
Lucky more weren't killed.

Read (Interesting), will reply later when I have the time.




While I don't think the idea was completely abandoned, I really don't belive they use it much, if at all, in most situations. Mabye once every so often for helo support, but it really seems to be being replaced by IR Strobes and simple coordanates.

Not that I'm an expert or anything, but I don't think so, or else it is uncommon. I think either an air controller on the ground directs with more precise measures e.g. GPS co-ordinates or laser designation, or the CAS craft does it itself. It's interesting that in the wiki friendly fire timeline posted earlier, there's a surprising lack of accidental casualties in the period I would have expected them to be the worst - Vietnam. Maybe the wiki page is incomplete, I don't know. Or, with all that dense jungle canopy, with smart bombs not yet mainstream... maybe there is really something to be said for an airborne FAC with a bank of WP rockets.

I remember when reading about the Navy SEALs in Vietnam that they would pop smoke on their position and the VC would pop their own smoke (often a diffrent color) and the SEALs would signal the pilot "were the [purple/red/etc] smoke. hit anything else."

I remember durring the first year of the war against the Taliban some Canadians got bombed by USAF jets (A-10s i think) becuse they forgot or didn't have their IR strobes. IR strobes work great exspecally at night but its easy to forget their off when they should be on (got to check them with NVGs or risk using a flashlight to see double check the on/off switch at night) while smoke on the other hand leaves no ambuguity- everybody knows your there.

One more thing don't A-10s lack a FLIR system? Its all nice and good to have an IR Strobe but what if the the plane dosn't have IR! All the pilots got is his NVGs. Or does the A-10 carry a LANTERN pod all the time on CAS missions. Hmmm maybe the USAF could save millions by having the Army issue $5 smoke gernades in place of having $5 million LANTERN pods on every A-10.

OK I found the link for the statement:
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/...visited-02661/

snafu