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The Great, Constantly Changing Picture Gallery, Troisième partie: la vengeance!
- Thread starter SynixMan
- Start date
hlg6016
A/C Wings Here
That bird must have ran like a scalded dog all cleaned up like that.
Do test dummies get a Martin-Baker number?
Interesting, my new “failed retirement” job is not far from the Portsmouth Navy Yard (Kittery Maine) and they just leave in the dark. Very cool picture though.SSBN USS Nebraska yesterday being escorted with USAF A-10's as she begins her patrol and can submerge. Apparently this is a thing and common AF mission. Commander Submarine Group 9 Public Affairs photo.
Question - why doesn't VFA / Strike own this mission? @Brett327 ?
What's the new gig Griz?
State Park manager…which really means state park repairman, janitor, money-collector, rules enforcer, and so on. Hardly a new career, but it gets me outside and moving and will help pay for the pending Griz-O-Copter repairs.
SSBN USS Nebraska yesterday being escorted with USAF A-10's as she begins her patrol and can submerge. Apparently this is a thing and common AF mission. Commander Submarine Group 9 Public Affairs photo.
Question - why doesn't VFA / Strike own this mission? @Brett327 ?
Hmmmm. I’d never heard that. If true, WTF?
We actually debated this pic around the office this afternoon - the conclusion, reached by folks who have lots of JPME and understand how this stuff works, that this "armed overwatch" is very likely a directly funded STRATCOM or NORTHCOM thing - or maybe a combination. But they explained that there are very real reasons why this mission is executed the way it is considering the players.
I'm like, "hey Navy submarine - it should be a grey Navy jet overhead"..
"Dude, that's not how it works". Boink.
I proceed to stick my head back in my cubicle.
Guard unit? Title 32 vs Title 10...
I could see some superficial reasons, such as: joint interoperability, keeping up pilot flight hours, giving CONUS A-10s something to do since Russia and Mexico aren’t planning tank invasions anytime soon, etc.
No idea how useful the A-10 is for actual threats/contingencies facing close-to-homeport SSBNs. A-10s can fly slow… but that’s pretty dang slow. Also, I’d guess that a surfaced SSBN and A-10 could theoretically talk to one another on a radio if they needed to, but doubtful they have much meaningful to say to one another. Seems marginally better than a ballpark flyover. Maybe a Sierra would be more practical than a Warthog for SSBN escort, like in case someone goes overboard.
Another wrinkle, for the JPME guys/gals in the room: If the A-10 is so crucial to the SSBN port escort mission, why has the USAF consistently tried to divest itself the aircraft dating back 10+ years? And, not once did the Navy offer to take it, or argue that it was needed by the Air Force for “SSBN stuff.”
Maybe somebody with an NC3 CONUS protection mission just has a bunch of A-10s and not much else, and therefore every task starts to look like a nail when all you’ve got are hammers lying around.
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I personally haven't seen this at Kings Bay, but maybe it's a new thing. Before I retired, I never heard of a Romeo squadron getting fragged to go do this, either, even when an AGI was sitting out there, which is pretty common. Littoral ASW is a different matter, though, but that's a different threat.
I will say that when I "escorted" a SSBN through the Molokai channel, I got the impression someone wasn't too happy about it. When I would fly around vessels, I would usually have 156.8 up, and I made sure I did this time. You didn't typically see a sub going through the channel, so it caught our eye, which was then followed up with a, "man, that looks bigger than a LA class...oh hey, it is! Let's go look."
After giving the top-side watch-standers the privilege of a free fly-by, there was some scratchy noise on the radio that seemed to be someone complaining, but we legitimately couldn't understand any of it (we were probably on the upper antenna), so we flew on, continuing to defend America from our enemies.
Watch out for bears.
