S-2 hears you, we care-Aviation

[Capt (Ret) Hito]

I will try to use this area to ask for some feedback related to certain topics. S-2 would like to hear your opinion, your ideas, what do you like, what you dislike, and take this into account for future activities, next deployments so we can improve so the things can be more enjoyable for the unit member.

 

Just keep in mind this doesn't mean that all the things said here will be implemented, I can assure you that we will take your opinions very seriously, we will analyze all the information ( that's our job)  and those that are feasible and are in order with the unit overall goals we  will try to implement  them in the near-mid future.

 

Our topic today is

Air Operations

 

 

We would like to hear from our folks that ride on the sky what type of missions or activities our air assets should do in future missions. This is an open forum, so members outside from aviation may also share their views.

 

 

Final reminder keep the conversation civilized, don't be that guy that fucks everything, otherwise, you will deal with the Gunny,  you don't want that                                  

 

Edited July 25, 2018 by GySgt Hito

[LTC Brueske]

My Stance is fine with whatever S-2 does decide to do, as I (personally) care less of what mission I'm flying (ISR, Transport, CAS, HALO, etc..) and more for flying in the overall higher structure of teamwork and Milsim. I do not by any means speak for my aviators, so if they care to put in their opinions they have more weight then myself.

 

@CW4 Carrera @CW4 Whelan @CW2 Waller @Capt Jennings @Capt Pepperman @2d LT Osbourne - Your Thoughts?

[Osbourne]

At the end of the day we’re a supporting asset for the battalion so we can’t really be asking for huge missions entirely for ourselves. Operations where we are required to maybe help with a re-supply or conduct a bombing mission for an MSOT to proceed with their mission might be a cool way of changing things up. This could be something such as destroying an enemy runway or hitting an enemy position before an MSOT goes in etc. 

 

It might also be worth from an S-2 standpoint to look at how the local population would react to us dropping bombs on their village or us hitting a target by mistake for example. I’m sure it happens in real life where civilians are killed by air strikes and it causes outrage with the locals. 

Edited June 29, 2018 by 2d LT Osbourne

[GySgt Cole]

Don't forget that it's not just S-2s job to provides stuff for Aviation to do.

 

Some of my favorite operations were ones where @1stLt Golembesky would put birds on the deck in parking lots, small clearings, etc. One time him and I were separated from the team, and he had a little bird ferry just the two of us back up to the line. During my time as team lead, both myself and my JTACs (Ski and @SSgt (Ret) Derr) tried to utilize aviation as much as possible. Sure, counter insurgency means that you're not going to be calling JDAMs on everything, but use help transport instead of vics. Use fixed wing aircraft to buzz the deck and scare insurgents back into or out of their hidey holes. Rotor should take care to practice tight, fast moving landings. Every pilot should be able to put a Littlebird and Blackhawk in a space not much bigger than their rotor/tail span, and do it quickly with a low approach.

 

Sorry for any spelling/grammar, pretty doped up on post-surgery meds.

 

 

Edited June 29, 2018 by 1stLt (Ret) Cole

[Capt (Ret) Kardnal]

If I could play a negative card here,

 

I try as much as possible to utilize whatever I have given to my JTAC, and I still find the supply of air traffic available to be a bit lacking. I understand the issue of COIN was that we couldn't utilize our heavier combat frames such as the Apache or the A10 so often, but the light to medium frames like the little bird, DAP and the F16/15 would have been welcomed with open arms. I recall as Alp had chosen an Apache for a very low intensity combat mission, and the Apache was used minimally. He later made a statement that the mission was not fun. I think this is not so much a mission fault as a bad choice of planning. Utilizing a pair of single seat light frames with guns and rockets would have vastly increased Aviations' fun AND utility in this scenario. I don't bring this up as a catchall endall, but as a learning example. Can't always BRRRRT every problem to ash, and I think that statement is perfectly fine with me, as long as I can have everyone playing and giving them something to accomplish.

[MAJ Carrera]

28 minutes ago, Capt Kardnal said:

If I could play a negative card here,

 

I try as much as possible to utilize whatever I have given to my JTAC, and I still find the supply of air traffic available to be a bit lacking. I understand the issue of COIN was that we couldn't utilize our heavier combat frames such as the Apache or the A10 so often, but the light to medium frames like the little bird, DAP and the F16/15 would have been welcomed with open arms. I recall as Alp had chosen an Apache for a very low intensity combat mission, and the Apache was used minimally. He later made a statement that the mission was not fun. I think this is not so much a mission fault as a bad choice of planning. Utilizing a pair of single seat light frames with guns and rockets would have vastly increased Aviations' fun AND utility in this scenario. I don't bring this up as a catchall endall, but as a learning example. Can't always BRRRRT every problem to ash, and I think that statement is perfectly fine with me, as long as I can have everyone playing and giving them something to accomplish.

 

I do agree that COIN was a limiting factor in aviation's effectiveness. As for utilizing the light to medium frames we have been doing that more as of late, we haven't used the Apache for several cycles at this point. We had issues with pilots not respecting the air-frame requests from the JTAC's and just took what ever they wanted which lead to using the Apache to much because it does everything the AH-6, and the DAP does but better.

 

Rotary's recruitment and retention has been less than stellar... Especially since most of us are Zues operators and battle captains; which leads to the air-frame shortages that we have. We have tried to combat this by broadening our scope of jobs (IMO 5 rotary pilots are to many slots for a single TF) by subtracting the pilot slots per TF to 3 and adding Crew Chiefs or PJ's but was "shot down" due to fear that would pull potential SARC fill ins away from the teams on the ground.

 

I have gone a bit off topic here so as for the OP I liked the multiple AO's on the same server it pushed our ISR skills to to the max especially if we were short on pilots. I disliked the COIN aspect, it was not a situation that put enough emphasis on combined arms scenario.

[Osbourne]

Following Carrera’s post and this is a bit of a side note, it may be a good idea for us in aviation to get together and put a recruitment video together to recruit some more aviators. 

[Capt (Ret) Hito]

36 minutes ago, CW4 Carrera said:

 

I do agree that COIN was a limiting factor in aviation's effectiveness. As for utilizing the light to medium frames we have been doing that more as of late, we haven't used the Apache for several cycles at this point. We had issues with pilots not respecting the air-frame requests from the JTAC's and just took what ever they wanted which lead to using the Apache to much because it does everything the AH-6, and the DAP does but better.

 

Rotary's recruitment and retention has been less than stellar... Especially since most of us are Zues operators and battle captains; which leads to the air-frame shortages that we have. We have tried to combat this by broadening our scope of jobs (IMO 5 rotary pilots are to many slots for a single TF) by subtracting the pilot slots per TF to 3 and adding Crew Chiefs or PJ's but was "shot down" due to fear that would pull potential SARC fill ins away from the teams on the ground.

 

I have gone a bit off topic here so as for the OP I liked the multiple AO's on the same server it pushed our ISR skills to to the max especially if we were short on pilots. I disliked the COIN aspect, it was not a situation that put enough emphasis on combined arms scenario.

 

Is your retention problem related to the scope of missions or it was more related to other circumstances outside of this?

[MAJ Carrera]

15 minutes ago, GySgt Hito said:

 

Is your retention problem related to the scope of missions or it was more related to other circumstances outside of this?

Not certain, if i knew for sure, we would have fixed this long ago I think it is a number of factors including the scope of the missions not being involving enough. Fixed wing does not have these problems. Could be the higher level of difficulty and added responsibility (killing an entire TF from one little mistake) of flying a helicopter over a jet that scares people away.

[Sgt Waller]

Thank you Gunny for this opportunity!

 

I haven't really been active with the 3d MRB yet - due to real life commitments-, although my understanding is that things haven't really changed much from how we did things back at the 506th or 13th - when it comes to aviation at least. Still take everything I say with a grain of salt. Also please note I'm trying to help improve things and not trying to demonize everything that has been accomplished so far. This post might sound very negative in the end, but it's not all black and white. There are a lot of things that work just fine. Unfortunately the nature of posts like these only show the things that don't work and not necessarily those that do.

 

Aviation is and has stayed throughout the "iterations" of the unit as a supporting asset. Which is something all aviators understand and accept when they join. This role as supporting asset leads to a whole bunch of challenges for aviation however. The way things worked at the 506th made things very repetitive, although they did some things right, which balanced that out a bit. Most operations there would look like this: Insert with helicopters, do some recon for ground elements along with some CAS with a final exfill back to base. Aswell as a pilot on resupply/reinsert duty - which, while I enjoy doing, I've never found to be an elegant solution as most of the time you just sit on an empty airfield. There have been times, where I've sat on an airfield for 40 minutes at a time. Now  admittedly this is a rarer occasion and doesn't happen every time you're on reinsert duty and isn't really something S-2 can fix as this has more to do with mission plaanning and how we handle reinserts in aviation. But this is really something that should not happen - ever.

 

The thing that S-2 can fix is the repetitive nature of the missions and tasks aviation has to handle. Repetitivness is in my opinion really the thing, that is killing aviation (and the unit). It leads to routine and that again leads to complacency, which again lead to mistakes. Which spoils the fun for aviation and ground elements alike. Which in turn lead to a dwindling number of pilots (which is one of the major problems aviation is facing), which in turn directly affects how well we can support ground elements. It's a vicious circle really. What's really needed is something, that breaks that routine once in a while. Not every mission needs to be a "moldbreaker", but some variety is desperatly needed. Again this sounds really negative, but some progress has been made in thaat regard in the last few months.

 

Here are a couple of points of what I'm specifically talking about:

 

Transport:

With the switch to a marine unit the air assault portion and reliance of helicopters for transport of troops has dramatically diminished. This makes sense in the milsim aspect of things, but you can and should use aircraft to your advantage and surprise the enemy by dropping friendlies unexpectedly behind enemy lines. SF use helicopters a lot for that very reason. Again this doesn't mean you have to use helicopters everytime you need to move to the AO, but you can and should also use them while the mission is underway: Dropping off a sniper team with an AH-6 on an elevated position for instance. Also fast ropping would be a cool thing. This was very underutilized in the 506th due to different reasons (I understand there are limitations with mods and servers), but I think we do have the size to try this sort of thing more often nowadays. We are in this regard still very much in a line infantry unit on infantry unit mode instead of "raider/sf" mode.

 

CAS:

I can't count how many times I've spotted enemies and was told not to engage, as those targets were destined for ground elements to destroy. I understand the rationale behind it - we are a supporting element, but nothing hinders you to drop down a QRF trying to reinforce, which aviation then is able to take out, while ground elements are busy with their fights. This is something that once worked well, but somehow got lost. Once again not every mission - but once in a while would be nice. Also the tactical destruction of roads/bridges and railways to cut off enemy  supply lines would be something cool to do. We do have a wide arsenal of airframes at our disposal - so let's use them.

 

Air-to-Air Combat:

This is something we rarely (never) do and it is a shame. I understand the last couple deployments would have been difficult to introduce something like this as we were fighting non-conventional enemies (with the exception of China), that don't have access to airframes or qualified pilots. But during the last deployment this could have taken the form of an air combat patrol forcing a smuggler plane to land back on a cartel airfield, which scrambled to take off after the initial assault by ground troops. I understand S-2s ressources are limited, but with the right immersion specialist this scenario could have been a prime example on how to switch things up and make things interesting - even for ground elements.

 

Resupply/Reinsert:

I've mentioned this above. Not much to say on it. It needs to be planned better. 

 

Again all of this might come across as very negative. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, because mostly things are going alright. Once again thanks Gunny for the opportunity to finally write all of this down, as you can see I've been thinking about it for a while. Also sorry for the lenghty essay.

Edited June 29, 2018 by CW2 Waller

[Sgt Waller]

Also as far as pilot retention goes: I would argue it's a number of factors. Not only mission scope and type. There's a somewhat long training pipeline, that scares people away. Add to that the fact, that Arma 3 is in it's end cycle as a product and the fact, that there are tons of other units out there. Being a pilot is very much a niche in Arma. Hopefully making the mission less repetitive for aviation is something that'll help.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 29, 2018 by CW2 Waller

[MAJ Carrera]

32 minutes ago, CW2 Waller said:

Transport: Dropping off a sniper team with an AH-6 on an elevated position for instance.

We did do this during this last deployment, but only once; would like to see this more often. +1

 

32 minutes ago, CW2 Waller said:

CAS:

+1

 

32 minutes ago, CW2 Waller said:

Air-to-Air Combat:

the last time we did this regularly was our deployment on Taunus which someone correct me if I'm wrong; was about a year ago. Would like to see more. +1

 

32 minutes ago, CW2 Waller said:

Resupply/Reinsert:

+1

[LTC Brueske]

to add on a comment RE: Air to Air

 

Did engage in some air to air interdiction once or twice with an a-10 and AIM-9's against a few helicopters, while I may have only fired once (escaping HVT that ended up crash landing and being recaptured by the TF) it was an interesting experience and something different. With the addition of GUARD on CH 99 All roleplayers who man a civilian aircraft should monitor that channel, allowing for some interesting scenarios of chasing off aircraft from the ao and trying to identify their intentions.

[Capt (Ret) Pepperman]

I really haven’t been here for the last deployment at all, I did maybe 1 and a half ops because I was just- bored. I couldn’t take it past an hour of just floating above the AO and watching movies on my phone. 

 

I’m fine with sitting out on the fun- or being strapped to boots on the ground, but when i’m being an over glorified, $18.1mil UAV camera for ground, I don’t see the fun it. At least boots on ground as a UAV operator, I get the birds eye and the pew pew.

 

The serbian FTX was the shit. Hell, even the Afghan one before that was pretty cool blowing up haji’s who had stingers in the middle of the desert.

 

Back in the days when Golemesky was on the net, I got excited knowing he was my JTAC for that op. He always gave us something to do. Even the small shit, he just held our hand and gave us sky-chimps a feeling of inclusion. Not just ‘look here what you see’ and ‘okay blow up bad guy here’. Idk how he did it, but he made flying fun. 

 

 

Tl;Dr, more pew pew, or a ‘yes or no’ to needing aviation before op’s. And be a definite, not this ‘come in, watch through an IR camera for an hour and 45 minutes, and blow shit up for the next 3’. Like if you need me for one strike? Give me a 30 min heads up. I come in, boom, back to the Baracks(log off). I got we’re supporting, but being supporting is fine, but doing the job that ground can do without us, but don’t want to because it’s ‘boring’ or ‘not fun’, etc. and we just get the scraps of each mission.. no thanks.

[K. Cooper]

From a JTAC perspective, I definitely feel that our Aviation is not being used to its full potential. However, it is in my divine belief that the full utilization of our Aviation depends on the Ground Force Commander. Team Leaders get the only authoritative say on whether kinetic strikes can or cannot occur. It is important to note that it is not the fault of the JTAC for using y'all as a "$18.1mil UAV camera." We'd rather continue to do that than keep you grounded without any action.

As debatable as that is, at least this we know is true : The 3d Marine Raider Battalion is an 'unconventional unit.' 

In my opinion, Aviation is not utilized not only because of the lack of kinetic approvals; but the lack of conventional forces to engage with. 

I feel that an increase of conventional forces in regards to OPFOR will not only be a healthy change of pace from the standard COIN style, but will allow more of a dependence on Air>Ground. 

V/R