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During the Vietnam conflict, the cost of killing an enemy with iron bombs dropped by planes got very expensive too. Due to lacking quality (not guided munition

by dba7dba 11y ago

During the Vietnam conflict, the cost of killing an enemy with iron bombs dropped by planes got very expensive too. Due to lacking quality (not guided munitions), quantity was the path taken to make up for it. This increased # of sorties needed dramatically, increase chance of getting shot down in process, worn out planes faster, etc etc, translating into a very high cost. Pretty sure escalibur shells and hellfires are more cost effective, strangely.

hga 11y ago
A lot of that cost was due to the Air Force being grossly incompetent, resulting in needless losses. On the other hand, in the early '70s when we and South Vietnam stomped a 150,000 man armored invasion, in the Air Force part of Linebacker (I, not II later with B-52s), smart bombs were used almost exclusively to devastating effect, as I remember hearing about at the time. But the Air Force was still all but giving the Northern Air Force free shots at their planes....
- dba7dba 11y ago
  I disagree about needless losses. Hitting a bridge with dumb bombs is extremely hard, let alone actually destroying it. With unguided bombs, they just had to drop enough of them and hope law of chances work in their favor. Stomping on a 150,000 army doesn't require much accuracy on the other hand, especially compared to dropping a bridge. It was always that way with bombing from planes, until guided bombs/missiles came out.
  - hga 11y ago
    Needless USAF losses: Using a WWII era formation in the jet age. This alone reduced their air combat power to 1/4th of the Navy's, and exacerbating the manpower problem. In general a tremendous amount of institutional butthurt from being forced to use Navy planes and missiles appears to have prevented them from updating their tactics and otherwise following the Navy. Dependence on their own ineffective missiles such as the AIM-4 Falcon (only in theory useful for knocking out big bombers) and their own versions of the Navy's Sidewinder. Totally inadequate training, especially for replacement pilots as they rotated the first set out. The Navy was "lucky" that the single most difficult thing you can do in an airplane is generally considered to be landing on a carrier so they couldn't drop standards, but they also e.g. set up the Top Gun school. Inability to learn, to for example realize the above meant their pilots were firing their missiles out of envelope too much. Or that their rough handing of missiles prior to putting them on planes resulted in many more of them failing. Not (hardly as much) a problem with the Navy. Unlike the Navy, they were unable to provide good real time guidance to their pilots (when close to the shore, their pilots could benefit from the Navy's assets). They also found it difficult to impossible to put together a working system to get real time warnings to pilots from intercepted North Vietnamese transmissions. Those are just the big ones off the top of my head, air combat focused, there's lots more. As for the 150,000 man Army, what they most critically did with smart bombs plus massively better constraints (or lack thereof) from the White House (LBJ -> Nixon) was to destroy the logistics supporting it. Yeah, air strikes further south were very nasty, but without fuel etc. a mechanized army withers on the vine and is less able to deal with close in threats ... e.g. easier to hit an armored vehicle if it's run out of fuel....

by dba7dba 11y ago

hga 11y ago

A lot of that cost was due to the Air Force being grossly incompetent, resulting in needless losses. On the other hand, in the early '70s when we and South Vietnam stomped a 150,000 man armored invasion, in the Air Force part of Linebacker (I, not II later with B-52s), smart bombs were used almost exclusively to devastating effect, as I remember hearing about at the time. But the Air Force was still all but giving the Northern Air Force free shots at their planes....

dba7dba 11y ago
I disagree about needless losses. Hitting a bridge with dumb bombs is extremely hard, let alone actually destroying it. With unguided bombs, they just had to drop enough of them and hope law of chances work in their favor. Stomping on a 150,000 army doesn't require much accuracy on the other hand, especially compared to dropping a bridge. It was always that way with bombing from planes, until guided bombs/missiles came out.
- hga 11y ago
  Needless USAF losses: Using a WWII era formation in the jet age. This alone reduced their air combat power to 1/4th of the Navy's, and exacerbating the manpower problem. In general a tremendous amount of institutional butthurt from being forced to use Navy planes and missiles appears to have prevented them from updating their tactics and otherwise following the Navy. Dependence on their own ineffective missiles such as the AIM-4 Falcon (only in theory useful for knocking out big bombers) and their own versions of the Navy's Sidewinder. Totally inadequate training, especially for replacement pilots as they rotated the first set out. The Navy was "lucky" that the single most difficult thing you can do in an airplane is generally considered to be landing on a carrier so they couldn't drop standards, but they also e.g. set up the Top Gun school. Inability to learn, to for example realize the above meant their pilots were firing their missiles out of envelope too much. Or that their rough handing of missiles prior to putting them on planes resulted in many more of them failing. Not (hardly as much) a problem with the Navy. Unlike the Navy, they were unable to provide good real time guidance to their pilots (when close to the shore, their pilots could benefit from the Navy's assets). They also found it difficult to impossible to put together a working system to get real time warnings to pilots from intercepted North Vietnamese transmissions. Those are just the big ones off the top of my head, air combat focused, there's lots more. As for the 150,000 man Army, what they most critically did with smart bombs plus massively better constraints (or lack thereof) from the White House (LBJ -> Nixon) was to destroy the logistics supporting it. Yeah, air strikes further south were very nasty, but without fuel etc. a mechanized army withers on the vine and is less able to deal with close in threats ... e.g. easier to hit an armored vehicle if it's run out of fuel....