A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft flies a combat mission June 17, 2009, over Afghanistan. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jason Robertson/Released)

Noticed this tidbit in Afghanistan airstrikes highest since July 2008:

Over Iraq, the use of bombs continues to be rare. AFCent reported only two bombs were dropped in 742 sorties in October.

Two bombs in a month.

After the elections in 2006, Nancy Pelosi said this about Iraq:

We cannot continue down this catastrophic path. And so we say to the president, ‘Mr. President, we need a new direction in Iraq. Let us work together to find a solution to the war in Iraq.’

In 2005 she said the war in Afghanistan “is over”:

“I assume that the war in Afghanistan is over, or is the contention that you have that it continues?” she said to a reporter.

A few moments later, she said: “This isn’t about the duration of the war. The war in Afghanistan is over.”

The war that was “over” more than four years ago sees the most bombs dropped, 647, in the past 15 months and the war on the “catastrophic path”, the one where she fought tooth and nail to surrender or at least prevent the “surge”, saw two.

Let’s just keep that in mind as this crowd decides what to do in Afghanistan.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Instapundit publishes this observation from a reader:

The towers fell in New York on 9/11/01, Kabul fell to American led forces on 11/14/01. That’s 65 days.

President Obama’s hand-picked replacement commander in Afghanistan, GEN McChrystal, delivered his Afghanistan war plans to President Obama on 8/30/09, and President Obama hasn’t acted on his General’s recommendations as of today, 11/11/09. That’s 73 days, and waiting.

Potential 767 and 777-based platforms make up the “7A7 family of tankers.”

Staff Sgt. Justin Schramm, an aerial gunner on an HH-60G Pave Hawk scans the countryside while on a mission here. The Pave Hawks are used for Combat Search and Rescue, and have been operated by the U.S. Air Force since 1991. Sgt. Schramm is from Eugene, Ore., and is currently stationed at Kadena Air Base, Japan. Here Schramm is working in the 33rd Expeditionary Rescue Squadron. Photo by Senior Airman Susan Tracy

Is that tube below the machine gun for brass and links?

The C-130 gunship lab at Robins AFB is updating fire control systems to allow targeting two weapons simultaneously:

“The way they described it is ‘We want to be able to shoot the ant hill, and then kill all the ants as they leave the ant hill,’” said Steve Pollard, the lead C-130 gunship test engineer.

After months of work and close contact with combat flight crews about how they wanted it to work, software engineers in the 402nd Software Maintenance Group did just that. After testing it successfully in the lab, the new capability was put to use.

I didn’t realize that only one gun could be targeted at a time. It’s also unclear whether this upgrade is for the AC-130H, the AC-130U, or both.

Last week I pointed out a story which claimed that the Prince of Wales, the second of two new British aircraft carriers, could be switched to a helicopter-only commando carrier.

British defence equipment and support minister Quentin Davies called the report “complete rubbish.”

He also noted that the British have no intention to cut back on the number of F-35s they plan to purchase. This had been the reason cited for the downgrading of the carrier.

Female Soviet WW2 Pilots near a US-built P-39 Airacobra

A reader sends a link to a BBC audio slideshow about the 588th Night Bomber Regiment (later called the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment) in the Soviet military, an all-female attack unit.

Despite the photo above and an IL-2 in the slideshow, the Night Witches actually flew Po-2 biplanes.

The graphic novel mentioned in the slideshow is available from Amazon.

F-35B
A Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter aircraft is on display at the production facility in Fort Worth, Texas, Aug. 31, 2009. (DoD photo by Cherie Cullen/Released)

Rising costs, changing threats and rival aircraft — manned and unmanned — could cut nearly in half the number of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that ultimately are built, a Dutch defense analyst said in a report to the Dutch parliament. And if fewer planes are built, the price for each, already $100 million or more, will undoubtedly increase, analyst Johan Boeder warned.

A “likely estimate” is that 2,500 F-35s eventually will be built, Boeder wrote in a report delivered to Dutch lawmakers in September.

Lockheed Martin disputes that conclusion, but Barry Watts of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments thinks it might be accurate.

Current plans call for the U.S. military to buy 2,443 F-35s, “but if history is any guide, I would not hold my breath waiting” for that many purchases to be completed. “I think the number is going to be about half of that,” said Watts, who is a retired Air Force combat pilot and former chief of the Pentagon’s Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation.

Watts said he expects the Air Force to buy 800 to 1,000 F-35s instead of the 1,763 in current service plans. The Air Force can get by with fewer F-35s because it has decided to keep its A-10s and F-15Es in service.

One thing to keep in mind is that the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have meant a lot more flying for our planes than in a normal peacetime environment. The option to just keep flying the older fighters isn’t going to be there in ten years like it is today.

[Lockheed spokesman Chris Geisel] said that the U.S. still intends to buy 2,443 F-35s, Britain plans to buy 138 and the seven other nations participating in the F-35 program plan to buy about 700. “There are no indications from any of the partner countries that they are going to trim back,” he said.

As noted last week, Great Britain is considering cutting its buy to around 50 and turn its second Queen Elizabeth-class carrier into a helicopter carrier.

Now that F-22 production is being ended, in part because the F-35 can more cheaply do a lot of what’s needed in today’s world, are we going to see F-35 procurement further hamstring our air superiority?

UPDATE: (05 Nov 2009) A British official stated that they have no plans to reduce the number of F-35s they’ll buy or to downgrade the carrier to helicopters only.

Jonathon Johnson, an air interdiction agent for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, pilots a Predator B unmanned air vehicle (UAV), April 3, 2009 at the Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D. The Predator B has been flying and observing flood dangers along the Red River.(DoD photo by Senior Master Sgt. David H. Lipp, U.S Air Force/Released)

Daily transition between battle, home takes a toll on drone operators

Call it combat as shift work, a new paradigm of commuter warfare that is blurring the historical understanding of what it means to go off to battle. And the strain of the daily whiplash transition between bombs and bedtime stories, coupled with the fast-increasing workload to meet relentlessly expanding demand, is leading to fatigue and burnout for the ground-based controllers who drive the drones.

“We have 5,000 years of one type of warfare and only a couple of years of this new kind,” said P.W. Singer, author of “Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.” “These guys are simultaneously at home and at war. It may be that human psychology isn’t designed for that. We don’t know yet.”

With all due respect (and Murdoc’s got a TON of respect for our guys in uniform), I’m not sure if I’m really buying the “war during the day, home at night” description because the “war during the day” part is nothing like the war that soldiers have fought for the past 5,000 years. Isn’t UAV operation more like air traffic control than infantry?

“It can be very surreal,” Capt. Zeb Krantz, a former C-130 pilot, said about stepping into the ground control station and entering the battle space. “You think: ‘I was just at home this morning.’ ”

What I find surreal are some of the examples:

“The family pressures don’t go away, they heighten,” Singer said. “You’ve just been on a combat mission and half an hour later your spouse is mad at you because you’re late to soccer practice.”

and

For those stationed at Creech, there seems to be an ever-receding finish line. The Air Force hits one target of production only to see it get bumped higher.

and

“It’s hard to forge that esprit de corps, that tribe mentality when you can’t all go to the bar after work and decompress together,” Mathewson said.

and

Overall, Predator and Reaper crews tend to be “tired, disgruntled and disillusioned,” Kent said.

Not to minimize the stress issues, and I have no personal experience to compare it with, but I’m guessing that a lot of troops deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan would be happy to deal with the issues facing drone operators.

(I’m sure I’ve pissed off people here. That wasn’t my intent. What do you guys think?)

Operation Champion Sword, in Khowst province, Afghanistan, Aug. 2, 2009. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Matthew Freire/ Released)

Popular Mechaincs: A deadly day of helicopter accidents in Afghanistan highlights the risks rotorcraft crews face in and out of combat. Is the ride worth the risks?

Helicopters are powerful, fragile machines. They are used heavily every day in Afghanistan, and they stay in the war zone when troops rotate home. Mechanics do their best to keep them in good shape, but the tempo of operations and the conditions make crashes nearly inevitable. In a place like Afghanistan, the terrain is as deadly a foe as the armed enemy.

Helicopters provide some great advantages, but they are vulnerable. I’ve written before about The danger of helicopters:

The same vulnerabilities that attack choppers face make support choppers vulnerable. But despite these problems, the advantages that helicopters provide far outweigh the danger. Air transport has cut down on enemy opportunities to bomb roadways, making our supply lines far more secure. The ability to patrol (and pursue) from the air has undoubtedly contributed to our effort to limit insurgent attacks.

But helicopters remain fragile. And their operating environment and the severity of consequence that mishaps bring make them more than a little dangerous at times.

On that post, a commenter added:

I hate to point this out, but Murdoc, you need to stress one word in this article with a little more emphasis. That word is FRAGILE.

In Afghanistan, many of the risks helicopters bring are accentuated due to the environment.