Weapon Loadout in the real world

In the old days squadron's out of Europe would fly with 4 mav's and 1150 of Party mix, and they could load all of it, install all the chaff and flare, fuel the jet and do a BPO in 45 minutes. And it was inside a HAS. The modern Air force would never let that happen. Too safety concious. In OIF we flew the occasional mav, an E model or D model. In OEF no mav's, they are available just not used. The LAU-88 is going to basically disapear from the inventory except for the units in Korea. We dont even train to load those anymore (which was NOT fun). Yes, they would only fly with 4 (cause of the tires!). And DRAG, not so much weight is the killer with the -88's. Mav's are not flown in OEF due to drag, and the effects they have on loiter time and range. Also JTAC's love 30mm, -38's and little else. Also gone from normal use is the CBU...pretty much not going to play with any CBU's (-103s and -105s MAYBE!).

That and it isn't like there is any armor for our pilots to shoot at...

The lack of MAV use by the A-10s and other US aircraft in Afghan did always surprise me, considering the number of Brimstone we go through out there.

Well the G has the heavy warhead, would work nice on a bunker...if we could find one that was not a cave.

Well the G has the heavy warhead, would work nice on a bunker...if we could find one that was not a cave.

Perfectly said :thumbup:

Just set up a JDAM on correct heading and shallow impact angle to facilitate cave entry ...

Well the G has the heavy warhead, would work nice on a bunker...if we could find one that was not a cave.

The lack of MAV use by the A-10s and other US aircraft in Afghan did always surprise me, considering the number of Brimstone we go through out there.

I seem to remember (from a wiki article) that the brimstone wasn't used at first because of no laser guidance allowing a JTAC to guide it (or they didn't think that radar was precise enough to identify the correct target) so it's possible they decided the mavs aren't a good idea for the same reason. Like I said it was wiki and a while back so I may be wrong.

I seem to remember (from a wiki article) that the brimstone wasn't used at first because of no laser guidance allowing a JTAC to guide it (or they didn't think that radar was precise enough to identify the correct target) so it's possible they decided the mavs aren't a good idea for the same reason. Like I said it was wiki and a while back so I may be wrong.

For once Wiki is more or less correct, the legacy Brimstone were indeed not used due to being RADAR guidance only.

Not due to JTAC guidance though, but down to the fact that its guidance system was designed to facilitate 12 shot ripples of missiles being fired into an area and then hunt down and kill any Armour they could find. Not really ideal when you're wanting to fire one weapon and hit a very specific target danger close to friendlies.

That's why we got the dual mode heads with RADAR/LASER guidance.