The 'Bone' and CAS situation

[B52STRATO 215]

I just finished the Osprey's 60th OCA B-1B Lancer Units in Combat, pretty good written, sometimes we feel like being back in a classroom. The so-called psychologic effect of its low passes is obviously transcribed. However it woke up a question I asked myself for a long time, is the use of noise already been widely used in a conflict ? Some "powered gliders" have been deployed over Vietnam for SIGINT and recon, but always in the research of top stealth. In contrast, does many daily sonic booms passes over an agglomeration would be not even more demoralizing than strikes ?

[JediMaster 451]

I don't know, that's hard to say. On the one hand, strikes = bombs going off. That's pretty demoralizing. Low loud passes don't kill.

On the other hand, the low passes are indicative of potential strikes, so it's a strike that could come. For some people, the threat of something is worse than the actual event.

[+streakeagle 871]

Simply the sound of a single unopposed enemy aircraft can cost sleep and cause stress.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washing_Machine_Charlie

 

But actually dropping bombs and doing meaningful damage provides even better results.

Imagine being in Iraq when the F-117s were coming every night.

As soon as the AA guns lit off, everyone knew some very specific target was going to be utterly destroyed.

[usafphantom2 19]

52 strikes were never heard by the VC,NVA but it was the weapon they most feared.

[B52STRATO 215]

I remember reading a book held by a Viet Minh fighter, who participated in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and subsequently reinstated in the Vietcongs. Many passages refer to the BUFFs night strikes, traumatic, including one where he mentions having a day found a single survivor of one of these attacks, a man who never regained the use of the word by on.

 

Now, is that breaking windows, shaking the walls and frequently awaken peoples during their resting phase could not partly replace the "more offensive material" ? Of course as JediMaster stated, bombs can also do it.

[CowboyTodd41 134]

I'll have to check that book out. I know that during the 34th's first deployment to the area in '05 (before my time) and the 37th's directly following that, was some of the few times they used the bone in OIF. We mostly just drop[ped] bombs for the OEF side of things. There were quite a few crowd dispersion sorties using low level sonic booms, and occasionally flares. Only to let the more persistent types know that it won't take long for that flare to become a 500lb munition. Also during that time a B-1 became the only aircraft during the conflict to drop bombs in both theaters in the same day. During the same sortie in fact!

[+EricJ 4,256]

I've honestly never had much faith in Shows of Force especially since the Taliban wasn't always afraid of airstrikes in general. Cool to watch but... I felt time and fuel could be better spent working up a grid and dropping a bomb.