Understood sir, and I appreciate the comments. It's extremely easy to be in the business of criticizing the F-35 as it compares to the A-10, but they operate in different environments. Love the ability of the A-10 to provide awesome CAS with tons of loiter time in a permissive environment. But the AO that the F-35…

A-10 needs a permissive environment to do the type of CAS that it can do. The F-35 can operate in an area-denied environment.

ACC requirements guys are focusing on PACAF requirements for doing CAS in an A2AD environment. That's what's driving the train. 5th Gen LPI/LPD platforms are about the only thing that can operate in that bubble. You're simply not putting an A-10 or F-16 in that environment.

Does not look like any ACMI display I've ever seen. Looks like a TBMCS-like generic airspace display you'd see in any CAOC/AOC anywhere, this just happens to be Area 51. Could be wrong though....it happened once.

Love the BUFF. Favorite Marine Corps memory was sitting on Onslow Beach as a Senior Air Director in a TAOC. Saw the incoming strikers going low-level on TPS-32 radar, tracked them till they were close, then ran outside to watch. Titanium overcast! 3 Buffs flew over our site at extremely low altitude.

quality...

"damp squid"...well done.

Best part about this is the ability to link this information TDL wide, decreasing the F2T2EA cycle, and putting steel rapidly on target. God, I love tactical data links!

Trick question and I'll have to waffle on the answer a little bit. I work within the belly of the AF acquisition beast. We've talked before, actually, but I had a different username. Retired Marine, NFWS, MAWTS-1, MCTSSA, SACLANT guy. I actually forwarded the link to your article up the chain, and it was a shack. …

AWACS doesn't have a lot to do with the IRST issue. With the onset of netted sensors and high-capacity data links, IRST provides another non-RF methodology for tracking targets. It goes to the LPI/LPD operations in A2AD.

Incidentally, and not for nothing, this became flag-level reading where I work. It, mostly, supports what I've been trying to preach in staff meetings. There are a couple of technical and tactical issues in the article which are not supported by requirements, but it's largely a nice summation of the issue.

Interesting article. Lots of challenges getting IFDL, MADL and IRST information in a correlated and fused fashion out to the 4th gen fleet.