Tyler, please stop linking to stories with TS slides on them. Because some folks have to report that they accidently browsed somewhere with wiki leak crap and some places might still even consider it as a spill.

And having F-35s vs A-10s won't make a whit of difference against an insurgency or COIN ops. It will make a difference in a war against a near peer.

Not all the FOBs are large and not all the FOBs are operational for large fixed wing on day 1.

They do STO to get the payload needed. And while you may think it's a gimmick there are certainly scenarios where such a capability is a necessity and vastly reduces time required to get to the fight and allows those aircraft to "ground loiter" very close to the action.

Actually they do.

You could train parts of the Army to regularly operate off amphibs and do amphibious operations but then they would be Marines. Sorta anyway.

In desert storm some harriers operated on 35 miles from the front lines. In OIF they'd often take off from their 'phib, fly a mission, land at a FOB to refuel and rearm, fly another mission and then fly home. That increased their availability to ground commanders for CAS.

A lot of other platforms can deliver 500lb+ loads including the F-35. Whether the helo has more on station time depends on the distance difference between the A-10 base and the helo base. The speed difference is in favor of the Ah-64 in terms of precise CAS support if the helo base is no more distant (in terms of…

Which threats can't we handle with F-35 and not the A-10? Permissive COIN CAS? I'd rather have a helo than an A-10. One that can hover and kill individuals trying to flank my position using gullies and goat paths.

Folks here seem to love the gun on the A-10 but you know which guns works better for COIN CAS?

"So we only are planning to fight a major peer state competitor even though we have not done that for decades and decades."

110 degree AOA and -3G to 9G+s from the Aviation Week article.

I've always wondered why the UH-1Y over a Blackhawk/Knighthawk variant and the only thing I can come up with is so Bell stays in military helo business.

Typo alert: UH-1Y "Venon" should be UH-1Y "Venom" in the first paragraph.

"Raytheon Solipsys, which is the software shown in the picture, is a highly capable desktop suite that can fuse a lot of information into a single picture. "

Kicking in the front door is in reference to busting through the IADS and air force to gain air dominance and also smash their defenses with heavy armor and other assets. For Iraq, after years of no-fly, sanctions and the damage from the first Gulf War this was a very short period.

The last 20 years have been mostly COIN.

Two decades ago (man I feel old) I was working intelligent traffic management and we had to put physical stops on the cameras so the operators wouldn't be able to point them at high rises to peep into windows.

F35s are a god send for marine aviation because you can operate the Bs from their gator platforms as well as forward air fields.

Diesel subs are dangerous in the hands of a good operator, no doubt. But getting periscope shots of a carrier happens very often because the need of the training goes both ways for partner navies.