Future WARTHINK 043: Blacktail FA Speaks!

Blacktail Fa

To: James Gavin Jr.

Fri, Jan 7 at 8:16 AM

Sorry for the long delay in responding, but as you can see, I had a lot of thoughts on these topics. I wrote-out a lot, so I decided to section-out these topics to make them easier to find and read.

Over-reliance on airbases --- the nuclear threat

With only one or two exceptions ever, I always see one of two topics missing from any discussion on the basing or operation of fixed-wing aircraft; tactical nukes, and road-basing.

What many fail to understand from a NATO perspective is that a large-scale conflict with the Warsaw Pact is always on some level a nuclear conflict, and that --- as a matter of published official policy --- a war on such a scale means that every single NATO airbase in Europe would come under simultaneous nuclear missile attack.

From the late 1970s to nearly the end of the Cold War, there was at least one RSD-10 Pioner (NATO code-named this missile SS-20 Saber). This missile had a long enough range to hit any NATO base in Europe from any location west of the Urals, road mobility making it essentially impossible to locate or destroy on the ground (witness the failure of the "Scud Hunt" in Operation DESERT STORM), more than enough accuracy to land smack in the middle of an airbase, a flight duration to target of less than 10 minutes even out to it's maximum range, no warning prior to ignition at launch (the solid fuel engine requires no fueling procedure), and a nuclear warhead.

The advent of such a missile was such a watershed event that it led to the U.S. developing the MGM-151C Pershing II IRBM and BGM-109G Gryphon missiles in response, and ultimately the INF Treaty that saw all three of this missiles removed from service.

I wrote an article on it here;

http://www.military-today.com/missiles/rsd_10_pioner.htm

The danger of such an attack hasn't gone away at all. China was never a signatory of the INF Treaty, and with the U.S. Navy's basing of Mk.41 VLS launchers in Eastern Europe (capable of launching the Tomahawk cruise missile, which is basically the exact same weapon as the Gryphon) being a brazen and calculated violation of that treaty; Russia has begun development of new IRBM systems.

In other words, the threat still remains. During a war with Russia, they'll only have (at *most*) 10 minutes to get aircraft into the air, and anything that isn't already gear-up by then is going to be a pool of molten metal. Any that got into the air will have nowhere to land.

Though more importantly, eliminating enemy airpower on the ground doesn't require nuclear weapons, nor even an extremely short window of opportunity. The U.S. and USSR learned this the hard way in 1941, the Arabs in 1967, 1973, and 1982, and Iraq in 1991. Modern Western militaries are quick to roll their eyes at this notion, despite having no combat experience against a peer adversary since 1945.

Over-reliance on airports --- road basing

The aforementioned USSR experience with having the bulk of their airpower wiped-out on the ground in 1941 resulted in every single post-war Soviet warplane being designed expressly for road-basing, and it goes without saying that the nuclear superiority the West enjoyed through most of the Cold War. Even Soviet civil aircraft were all designed to use highways as runways, in part because the bulk of their civil airlift were intended to be conscripted to serve as military airlift during wartime.

There are Western air forces that do in fact take road basing seriously, such as Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Cyprus, Israel, Singapore, and Norway, while Germany, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Japan, and South Korea at least have a few roads and plans in place for road basing. Former ComBloc nations also still maintain a road basing capability, including Estonia, Poland, and Ukraine.

Road basing is universal in all ComBloc nations, in part because they believe that because *they* would nuke all of the enemy's bases the instant the shooting starts, the enemy will do the same to them. Short of actual fighting, the plan is simply to evacuate almost all of the aircraft, support facilities, fuel, munitions, and so on from permanent airbases, and move them all to strategic pre-selected locations across the countryside. The West's ignorance of this fact is astounding, given that this Warsaw Pact strategy (later adopted by China, Cuba, North Korea, etc.) was public policy, even inside the ComBloc nations themselves.

Nothing but crickets on this topic from the U.S. military, despite actually performing road basing exercises in several of the aforementioned nations. I don't recall ever hearing a Pentagon official publicly declare that "It will never happen to me", but this is evidently their mindset.

Those fronting for bad Western defense policies are quick to point-out that road basing didn't save the Iraqi Air Force, while ignoring that they never thought to actually practice road basing. That Saddam Hussein blew most of his nation's GDP building a single-digit of permanent airbases along Iraq's northwestern and northeastern frontiers, falling into the same conceptual cul-de-sac as NATO.

(Incidentally, said permanent airbases built during that building spree were the most massively-fortified structures ever built, so much that the Coalition never bothered to attack them; but on the flip-side, they also cost so much to construct that they irreparably destroyed Iraq's entire economy, which is actually one of the main reasons why Iraq is such a complete fustercluck today. Even the Invasion of Kuwait was a result of this poor planning, because Saddam --- as is typical of dictators --- had the great idea of starting a war to distract the public from his disastrous domestic policies, while simultaneously stealing resources (Kuwaiti oil) from the victim nation in a desperate attempt to pawn them off to pay-off Iraq's debts.)

This webpage has a worldwide list of highways confirmed to be for use as airstrips;

https://www.mil-airfields.de/aa-world/highway-strips/index.html

During the Vietnam War, A-4 Skyhawks flew off short frontline airstrips using arrestor cables, catapults, or JATO bottles, depending on which were available;

https://www.historynet.com/douglas-a-4-skyhawks-provided-support-for-vietnam-war.htm

The JA37 Viggen was capable of phenomenal STOL feats, thanks to a combination of a powerful afterburning turbofan engine, a tremendous amount of aerodynamic lift, ruggedized landing gear, and even a thrust reverser. Here's a demonstration of just how short it's take-offs and landings could be;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyA-oTElVRw

Here's a promo video of the JAS 39 Gripen, highlighting it's road basing capabilities;

https://youtu.be/QyD0liioY8E

The USAF DOES indeed operate an aircraft capable of being used in road basing operations; but they are loathe to admit it. That aircraft is the A-10 "Thunderbolt II" (the "Warthog").

That the blue-suiters' efforts to draw attention away from this capability has been successful is illustrated by the fact that a YouTube video showcasing A-10s operating from a highway in Michigan in 2021 had the title, "WHAT IS HAPPENING, THE MILITARY LANDS A-10 ON A HIGHWAY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN U.S. HISTORY || 2021";

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQi95N7D6dA

Numerous observers and military personnel chimed-in throughout the comments to point out that the A-10 had been routinely road based throughout Europe for many years. This video, posted in 2010, demonstrates one such operation in Germany;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwo2QprI4R8

https://www.bitchute.com/video/qYo0TOaqVA1U/

The USAF in the early 2010s made one of their regular attempts at shorting the A-10 from the U.S. inventory, this time with a report showing that A-10s haven't been flying very many CAS sorties in Afghanistan since 2006, but the reply they got from POGO doomed this effort. Namely, POGO's writers pointed-out that before 2006, there weren't any paved runways in all of Afghanistan that were in a good enough condition to operate anything other fixed-wing combat aircraft in the USAF inventory, as said runways had been in disrepair since the 1980s. Almost 5 years of intense combat elapsed between 2001 and 2006, during which the A-10 was the only aircraft based "in-country" that could support the ISAF forces. Not only does the A-10 have ruggedized landing gear that can endure decayed asphalt runways, but it's TF34 turbofan engines have legendary FOD resistance, and their airscoops are significantly higher off the ground than the engines used in any other U.S. jet.

People in the A-10 community also started chiming-in on various forums and news sites, pointing-out the fact that the USAF deliberately forced-down the number A-10 sorties during this period, even though innumerable sorties were available, and the A-10 was usually the aircraft requested by name. Between this and POGO's revelation, the USAF "leadership" quietly cut and ran from that premature retirement attempt.

The need to have the A-10 constantly available for CAS thus isn't just a hypothetical; it has already been proven true by the War on Terror. The airports and airbases in the countries that the U.S. military inevitably fights almost all of their wars in are no place for an F-16 or F-35 to operate from.

The Bf 110's combat results

The Bf 110 was one of the biggest disasters in the history of military aviation, and I already have a long and complete Warplane Disasters profile (due to be expanded into a Warplane Disaster episode) on this aircraft. Here are a few highlights.

- During the Battle of Britain, the Bf 110 was heavily employed as an escort for Luftwaffe bombers, and it's losses were such that Bf 110s escorting bombers were in turn escorted by Bf 109s. Bombers escorted solely by Bf 109s never used nor needed a second layer of escorts.

- USAAF ace pilot Charles "Chuck" Yeager once encountered five Bf 110s during a bomber escort mission, in which he was flying the lead fighter tasked with warning the strike package of any threats in their path. Instead, he shot them all down in a single engagement.

- WW2 U.S. pilots mocked the Bf 110 as an easy mark, holding that the "Me 110" designation they knew it as was an acronym for "Meat on the table".

- The fact that there were not one, but THREE successive attempts at developing a Bf 110 successor by Messerschmidt alone shows how bad it was, let alone the fact that the first of these made it's first flight in September of 1939 (meaning, the project was ongoing even before World War 2, and thus the Luftwaffe knew for at least that long that the Bf 110 was a loser).

- The concept of the Bomber Destroyer (which the Bf 110 was) originated from the works of military theorist Giulio Douhet, a former artilleryman who became an airman during the First World War, who was effectively the godfather of Airpower Maximalism. As the bomber was expected to be capable of wiping-out entire nations in short order, aircraft built with Crippling Overspecialization around the mission of destroying them were de rigeur for Interwar Era air forces; no one dared suggest that the emperor had no clothes. However, not only did World War 2 prove everything Douhet claimed was wrong, but so had the *First* World War. Artillery was fully expected by everyone prior to that conflict to achieve what airpower was claimed to be capable of during the Interwar Era; wiping-out an entire enemy military within just a few weeks. Several hundred kilotons of expended artillery shells later, neither side had accomplished this feat, and it was a combination of more effective maneuver warfare and a surface fleet blockade by the Allies that determined the outcome. All Douhet did was transfer the same empty promises from the gun chamber to the bomb bay.

- The first unit to test the Bf 110 against single-engine aircraft was Jagdgeschwader 26 (a Bf 110 formation), in a mock dogfights with Bf 109s. Not only did the Bf 109s win every engagement, but they wipe-out all of the Bf 110s with complete impunity. Walter Horten, the technical officer of Jagdgeschwader 26, had this to say of the exercise's results; "Gentlemen, be very careful if you should ever come up against the English. Their fighters are all single-engined. And once they get to know the Bf 110s weaknesses, you could be in for a very nasty surprise." His words proved prophetic in the Battle of Britain, where the Luftwaffe lost 223 of the 237 Bf 110s that participated in that battle.

P-38 Lightning's combat results

- The P-38 Lightning was made to do one thing only; shoot-down bombers at low altitudes. It instead ended up being thrown against fighters at high altitudes, which made it a failure; not a failure of design, but a failure of *vision*.

- It's main weakness was inadequate engines for vertical combat and high altitudes, but by the time better engines became available, so too did single-engine aircraft that exceeded the P-38's range and top speed; i.e., the P-51 Mustang. Filling the skies with better P-38s was pointless when within a given timespan, you could produce twice as many P-51s with the materials and one-quarter the price tag. Economics were against the P-38 as well, because high-performance fighter engines were a hot commodity, and it took two of them to make a P-39 operational, versus one for a P-51.

- Because of said weaknesses, P-38s couldn't compete with Axis fighters at the altitudes where the bombers flew and the enemy attacked them, so the range of the P-38 counted for little.

- The top-scoring P-38 Ace, Richard Bong, scored almost all of his kills by diving out of the sun at stragglers fleeing the battle. This opportunistic strategy is self-evidently more of a crutch against the P-38's limitations than an example of it's strengths.

- P-38s were initially employed as fighters over North Africa, Europe, and the Pacific, but they were quickly repurposed recon aircraft in Europe and the Pacific, and hurriedly withdrawn completely from North Africa during Operation TORCH when Bf 109s started cutting them to ribbons from all sides.

- Much has been said about the effectiveness of the P-38 in recon, CAS, and ground attack missions, but little about how this was all that an aircraft developed to be a *fighter* was good for. Getting kicked downstairs to missions beneath it's station is a big red flag of failure for a combat aircraft.

- If the P-38 was as good as it's proponents claim, it would have been manufactured after World War 2, and used by the USAF into the 1950s. It wasn't. The last P-38 rolled off the assembly lines in 1945 after 10, 000 were built, and they were retired from U.S. service in 1949. Over 15, 000 P-51s were produced into 1946 (meaning, 50% more were produced in a production span less than half that of the P-38), and they remained in front-line service with the USAF into 1956, and in other capacities with the USAF into 1978. P-38s weren't even used in any military capacity by any nation after 1965.

- The only combat actions by P-38s after World War 2 were in 1954, when a Honduran P-38 napalmed a British cargo ship, and in 1957, when Honduran P-38s strafed a village. P-51s, meanwhile, fought ferociously and with phenomenal combat success in the Korean War and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, in which they routinely brought-down enemy jet fighters. Israeli P-51s distinguished themselves in later combat actions throughout the 1950s, notably during the Suez Canal Crisis. The Cubans, Indonesians, Dutch, and Filipinos used P-51s extensively in COIN missions. The Swedes had phenomenal success in the use of P-51s in photo recon missions over the USSR in the 1940s with great success and no losses, as no Soviet fighter in service during Operation FALUN could dive as fast as a P-51 (so much for the P-38's prowess in recon missions). The the last combat action by the P-51 was in the 1969 Football War, which featured the last-ever air battles between piston engine fighters.

- The P-51 even beat the P-38 as a *twin* engine fighter, in the form of the F-82 "Twin Mustang". These served the USAF into the 1950s (the P-38 didn't), fought in the Korean War (the P-38 didn't), and were able to effectively escort even B-29s out to their maximum range (the P-38 couldn't).

Air-mobility of the M113

I'm aware that you've proposed expanding the air mobility of the M113 Gavin by using an attachable "Flying Tank" apparatus, but that's the worst way to do it. The M113's driver's compartment doesn't contain enough space for the entire additional set of controls and instrument panels required for flight, and adding them would severely compromise it's ergonomics. That's not even considering the absence of cabin pressurization and/or heating

[This is a small problem with electronic fly-by-wire controls. Late model, PC-6 Turbo Porters have just a joystick to fly them.]

If you want to make the M113 air-mobile without using a large cargo plane or helicopter, the only viable alternative is a *small* cargo plane. About the smallest one I could find that has the payload to carry an M113 is the C-119 Flying Boxcar, though it doesn't have the internal space to actually fit one. The C-27J Spartan probably has the space, but given that it's payload is slightly less than a C-119, you'd be cutting it really fine. [The M113A3 Gavin is 20, 989 pounds empty]

You'll be hard-pressed to find a cargo plane with a 13 metric ton payload however, as there seems to be a completely empty void between those with a 10-ton payload, and the C-130H with it's 19-ton payload. There is an exception in the C-160, but they're pretty close in size and payload to a C-130 (to say nothing of none being built since 1985). [KC-390s...many small cargo transports available to air deliver 11-ton combat-loaded Gavins]

You might be able to convert a smaller airlifter into a fixed-wing "Skycrane", though. It might be high on drag, but couldn't be as problematic as the proposed Lockheed Flatbed;

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/lockheed-flatbed-transport-designs.1742/

For shorter distances however, Skycrane helicopters are the way to go. They can lift extremely large and heavy cargo with little effort, and in addition to carrying armored vehicles, they would also be able to lift "outsize" cargo and ISO shipping containers. [M113 Gavins can RO-RO from less-efficient CH-53K helicopters.]

Avoiding ambushes

It goes without saying that you can avoid ambushes by driving cross-country if your propulsion and ground pressure allow for it, or by swimming across water obstacles, but there's another approach used very heavily during the Vietnam War that seems to be all but forgotten today; jungle-busting.

M48 Pattons [medium tanks] used dozer blades to tear their own roads through jungles, forests, and heavy overgrowth, making the routes they used completely impossible to predict. You can learn all about it by reading Tank Sergeant by Ralph Zumbro, whose other writings are also on the internet.

The M1 Abrams FOV can't do this, however. POGO found U.S. Army documentation during the 1980s which revealed that dozer blade testing was a bust, because the powertrain was too weak;

https://www.pogo.org/report/1990/01/armys-m1-tank-has-it-lived-up-to-expectations/#heading-10

There have since been no improvements at all to the power, torque, or transmission of the M1 FOV, nor any reinforcement to it's suspension or running gear --- despite the fact that it has grown from a combat weight of 62 short tons to more than 80 short tons.

Note that no videos or photos of M1s cutting hard-packed earth or ramming-aside multi-ton solid obstacles exist; only M1A1s or M1A2s scraping spoil at ground level, made nice and safe for them by separate engineering vehicles.

To get an idea of what would happen to an M1 encountering the kind of resistance a dozer blade would create when using it for anything other than moving loose spoil, I've attached a photo to this E-mail, of an M1A1 that snagged something in the ground while scrapping through it with a mine plow --- the resulting snag shattered the entire powertrain.

This leaves the U.S. military with only three options; either take the M60 Patton out of storage, import foreign-owned tanks, or develop a new MBT from scratch. Needless to say, we're not likely to see any of these things happen.

Right now, this is all that U.S. tanks can do when they have trees in the way;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fReXK_ntOYg

BAD IDEA. If you look at the glacis plates of most tank hulls, you'll see that they're basically giant axe heads, and this obviously lends them a tendency to chop a standing tree in half horizontally --- resulting in a steadfast stump that the hull could either hang itself up on, or *be impaled by* (more than a few tank drivers have been injured or killed by tree stumps ramming through the insidiously thin belly armor that virtually all tanks have). If a tree stump is far enough off to the side, it will ram through the track, snapping it in half.

I'm honestly astounded that the U.S. Army still tries to ram trees with tanks like in the above video, given that the Army themselves are where I learned of the aforementioned dangers from (see articles from Armor Magazine from the 1990s for clarification; notably the one that talks about the South African "Bush Bar" plow).

VTOL vehicles

Many others have commented on the problems with VTOL vehicles before, and I dare say that most of them are smarter than I am;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruyRlw9_5VA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ5vTRE4DLQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nGmKv-tCyo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znv0TQsR5jk&t=3s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlaLofOC3XU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdAQefnZsLk

 [Disagree with above do-nothing, nay-sayers carrying water for rotorheads. Tilt-wings and ducted fans work for VTOL.]

Modern Seaplanes

There is in fact already a serious effort to revive seaplanes, and the DoD is even doing something you proposed decades ago --- developing a C-130 floatplane;

https://www.aerotime.aero/29066-C-130-on-floats-Can-we-expect-a-seaplane-renaissance

No one credited you or your study groups of course, just like when the Army pulled their M67s, M40A1s, and M202A1s out of storage for use in Afghanistan in 2011, nor when they recently started issuing the M3 MAAWS to every infantry company (all of which the CombatReform contributors have been calling-for since the 1990s).

Marines and coastal defense

It's rather startling that the marines are pursuing this strategy, given their own combat history in World War 2. Just sitting around on the beach and sniping at ships is a quick way to get bombarded by aircraft or cruise missiles, or to be raided by enemy commandos swimming out of a Submarine.

The whole "snipe at the ships" strategy didn't work so well for U.S. forces on Guam, Wake, and the Philippines, or for Japanese forces on Tarawa, Tinian, Saipan, Peleliu, Guam (again), the Philippines (again), Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, and all the others. Whenever a hardcore battlegroup rolled-up, and a heavily-mechanized landing force with a lot of tanks went ashore, they just ground away at the would-be defenders with impunity.

The marines are rapidly divesting themselves of armored vehicles, with the LAVs due for retirement in the *very* near future, the AAVs already being quietly swept out the back door, the AAV successor program dead and the LAV successor close to the same fate, and the M1A1 Abrams already gone (with no replacement in the works --- nor even *intended*). They're getting rid of their Super Cobras and Vipers, the V-22 Osprey is creeping up on the same fate, the CH-53K King Stallion isn't turning out as good as promised, and there's even talk of getting rid of the F-35B (without replacement). Some of what they *are* keeping isn't worth the trouble, like the F-18 Hornet that the Navy got rid of back in 2019. To add insult to injury, their new assault rifle is just a rebuild of the old one, and so is their "automatic rifle".

Contrast this to the Chinese, who have a metric f***-ton of amphibious APCs of both tracked and wheeled varieties, tracked amphibious IFVs and fire support vehicles, hundreds of light tanks (including more than 200 of the Type 63A, the world's premier amphibious tank), and a wide range of other amphibious vehicles, some of which weren't ever known-of by the West until photos of them were published by the Chinese press. They're putting multiple new Carriers in the water, navalizing stealth fighters, navalizing two separate models of attack helicopter, greatly expanding their power projection capabilities as a whole, and so on.

And did I mention that China has four times as many tanks as the U.S.? The U.S. inventory may hold more than 2000 tanks, but the M1A1/A2 Abrams is too expensive and maintenance intensive to operate in numbers greater than that (the Abrams alone consumes more than half of the U.S. Army's annual maintenance budget!).

It's clear when looking at the PLAN and the USMC that --- given World War 2 in the Pacific as an analogy --- that the shoe it going to be on the other foot for the U.S.

The "Missile marines" can't even justify their continued existence with this new role, because the U.S. Army [was before] is developing a similar capability as well, [Combatreform idea given in 2016] hand no one in the Pentagon or on Capitol Hill are proposing that the Army stop doing so. The upper levels of marine leadership are even entertaining the idea of just getting rid of their branch altogether, and merging into the Army; a proposition that would have been considered heresy in the marines just a decade ago.

It's popular in the present day to lament about how we're losing the marines to stupid decisions like these, but it's pretty obvious by the prevailing trends that we already HAVE lost them, without even so much as a defeat in battle.

The Douhet Dupes

The USAF's crazed fixation on bombing is a manifestation of their own insecurity, because the the supposed need for the Aerial Interdiction and Strategic Bombing missions are the only qualifications for the USAF maintaining their independence from the U.S. Army. Ignored in the process is the fact that neither Aerial Interdiction nor Strategic Bombing have ever affected the outcome of any conflict, nor have they ever been used in earnest without ruinous cost to whomever used them. There's always an excuse for why Allied forces were still fighting on Italian soil after Operation STRANGLE until the end of World War 2, why the Ho Chi Minh Trail wasn't permanently severed by airpower, why drone assassinations haven't stopped terrorism, why the Taliban were able to maintain their supply inroads and ultimately reconquer Afghanistan, etc.

The ghost of Giullio Douhet still haunts the Pentagon, despite airpower always failing his promise that it would end wars all by itself.

The bombardier mindset of the USAF is embarrassingly obvious when one looks at the intended purpose of every single USAF warplane developed since World War 2;

F-82: Bomber Escort

F-83: Close Air combat

F-84: Dropping Bombs

F-84F: Dropping Bombs

F-85: Bomber Defense

F-86: Bomber Escort

F-86D: Shooting-down bombers

F-87: Shooting-down bombers

F-88: Bomber Escort

F-89: Shooting-down bombers

F-90: Shooting-down bombers

F-91: Shooting-down bombers

F-92: Shooting-down bombers

F-93: [designation changed to F-86C]

F-94: Shooting-down bombers

F-95: [designation changed to F-86D]

F-96: [designation changed to F-84F]

F-97: [designation changed to F-94C]

F-98: [air-to-air missile; designation changed to AIM-4 Falcon]

F-99: [surface-to-air missile; designation changed to CIM-10 BOMARC]

F-100: Close Air Combat

F-101: Bomber Escort

F-102: Shooting-down bombers

F-103: Shooting-down bombers

F-104: Shooting-down bombers

F-105: Dropping Bombs

F-106: Shooting-down bombers

F-107: Shooting-down bombers

F-108: Shooting-down bombers

F-109: Shooting-down bombers

F-110: [designation changed back to F-4]

F-111: Dropping Bombs

F-112~116: Skipped designations?

F-117: Dropping Bombs

F-4: Shooting-down bombers

F-5: Close Air Combat

F-12: Shooting-down bombers

F-15: Shooting-down bombers

F-15E: Dropping Bombs

F-16: Close Air combat

F-16XL: Dropping Bombs

F-17: Close Air Combat

F-19: Skipped designation

F-20: Close Air Combat

F-21: Aggressor

F-22: Shooting-down bombers

F-23: Shooting-down bombers

F-32: Dropping Bombs

F-35: Dropping Bombs

A-1: Dropping Bombs

A-7: Dropping Bombs

A-9: Dropping Bombs

A-10: Dropping Bombs

A-37: Dropping Bombs

Notice a pattern here?

Also, I omitted aircraft specifically designated as bombers from the above list, for obvious reasons.

I have a lot more to say about these aircraft, but this is already a crazy-long reply as it is, so let me know if you want to know the dirty little secrets each of on these aircraft.

****

John 3:16

Semper Airborne!

James Bond is REAL.