A new Air Control policy?

[Tom Odom]

Oddball: Well, yeah, man, you see, like, all the tanks we come up against are bigger and better than ours, so all we can hope to do is, like, scare 'em away, y'know. This gun is an ordinary 76mm but we add this piece of pipe onto it, and the Krauts think, like, maybe it's a 90mm. We got our own ammunition, it's filled with paint. When we fire it, it makes pretty pictures, scares the hell outta people! And we have a loudspeaker, when we go into battle we play music, very loud. It kind of... calms us down.

After having the outhouse blow up on them...

God Almighty!

You guys smell like you fell
into a dung heap.

It kind of makes you homesick, don't it?

It does kind of, doesn't it, old buddy?

Full script available at Kelly's Heroes

[Stan]

After having the outhouse blow up on them...



Full script available at Kelly's Heroes

Ya know Tom, I doubt the paint trick works very well any more. Thanks for the memories and link !

Kelly and crew need to try some vintage 109s, 110s and M1s. We've improved the munitions since then

Edit: Forgot the great jpeg and why the North won't go South !

[slapout9]

LawVol, You might like this about Airpower in Small Wars.


http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchr...pr05/read.html

[Culpeper]

We will never be able to prevent innocent people getting killed in an air strike. But with today's precision that number is at an all time low. As for innocent people getting killed in such things as tribal areas. Well, how much does innocent count for? I mean some of these tribes do love a good fight. So much so that they can certainly and inadvertently end up with a bomb on their roofs. Nobody says we have to be fair in all our fights. If Lt. Michael Murphy, Petty Officer Danny Dietz and Michael Axelson were here today they might have a thing or two to state about the opportunity cost of fighting fair in these types regions. Having too much air power in a small war may be a jagged little pill to swallow and if that means the opposing force doing what comes natural and manipulate mistakes that may result than we will just have to take the pain. There is no rule that states that we must win on all fronts. Air power ends up saving lives in the long term. And not just life on our side of the barrel. In hindsight using "The Bomb" on Japan may be viewed by many as a huge mistake and a gross misuse of air power. But at the time it was a necessary evil and who knows it may come to that again. And I would bet some of us in America and a whole lot of people in Japan would have never been born if we hadn't dropped them. I realize that throwing in the A-Bomb as a compare and contrast for a small wars topic may be too much but I think everyone can at least catch my drift. The Japanese culture at that time was just way too aggressive. Sort of like certain factions of Islamic culture today. The Japanese were cutting off heads then and today it is these fanatics. If people can't figure out that it is because of them that our bombs are falling in their backyard than more power to them. There is nothing we can do about that other than what we are currently doing. Which is make an effort to minimize injuring and killing innocent people with air power. And I believe we do this at the loss of life on our own side. That is our true opportunity cost and the one I value the most. I dread hearing that innocent women and children were killed alongside the enemy. I dread even worse finding out that we suffered a loss because we gave something or someone the benefit of the doubt to prevent the loss of innocent life for this is what we do best.

[Tom Odom]

We will never be able to prevent innocent people getting killed in an air strike. But with today's precision that number is at an all time low. As for innocent people getting killed in such things as tribal areas. Well, how much does innocent count for?

In WWII which you next bring up, you may be right.


In COIN, the "innocent" are the objective of the fight. If killing them amounts to an "OOPS" and no more, then plan on staying there because you are creating targets as you go,

In a strategic sense, indifference to such casualties--particularly in a COIN--is disastrous as an IO. Eeven in WWII, we did make the effort to portray the day bombing in Germany as precision where the Brits went to area bombing. Of course in the Pacific, it was a different war with an different culture and after LeMay took over it became total.

Tom