Originally Posted by
dtfl
In an aircraft there is no DIRECT contact with enemy forces ...unless you land, get out, and stab them or shoot them with your 9mm. The CV-22 in AFSOC is Spec Ops....the Pave mafia might be keeping women out...but there are other forces at work..You don't see women on ODA or SEAL teams do you? The Paves and CV22s carry those guys in....engage gomers on the LZ, pull pitch and leave.
They are a bit more DA than I was on the AC130 or anyone is in a fast mover.
Major thread jack, but I beg to differ. I'm not a patch wearer who forgets to check all her ACMs to see if they have warheads in them or not, but I don't see any mention of a requirement for ground contact in JP 1-02 or JP 3-05 when it comes to defining DA. No disrespect to the outstanding and very impressive pave low guys we have serving, but are 53 crews now routinely getting out of their helos to hunt down the enemy? From JP 3-05:
direct action. Short-duration strikes and other small-scale offensive actions conducted as a special operation in hostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments and which employ specialized military capabilities to seize, destroy, capture, exploit, recover, or damage designated targets. Direct action differs from conventional offensive actions in the level of physical and political risk, operational techniques, and the degree of discriminate and precise use of force to achieve specific objectives.
I've seen gunships, A-10s, preds, etc, work with ground SOF on DA missions. I don't know what else you would want to call it. My point is that this is the kind of flak the pave mafia puts up to keep their boys from having to integrate (read: SF, SEALs, Rangers, etc are a different story). Eventually that line of BS that they're like SOF/conventional ground teams will no longer fly and they can catch up with the rest of the AF and learn to keep their coin purse shaving fetish in check when the women are around.
