Attack vs. MultiRole

Interesting piece Los.

What I found neat was your attack pilot pointed out that your multi-role
choppers exist, though they don't get tasked with two things at once.
That I'd buy. But if you had the capacity to design a ship that could do
both roles well, the only reason to partition the roles would be a
mission oriented one (rather than technical). That is the most cognizant
statement of the situation - that you don't WANT your troopships
shooting when the should be hauling infantry ass. Heck, every flyboy
wants to shoot up stuff so it doesn't surprise me that the psychology
would be there that if a slick had heavy firepower, he'd want to go blow
stuff up rather than worry about landing his crew. That makes perfect
sense!

But that doesn't preclude a multi-role airframe (we have some now). Just
at any given operation, it would be configured for one or the other
task.

>From your buddies post:
the fact that each AIRCRAFT is designed to conduct  a single type
of mission at any single time.	Example, the AH-1W+ is a  multimission
aircraft, we are trained in many type missions, escort, fac(a),  close
air
support, TRAP, TAC(a), etc.  However, we only do one mission at any
given
time.  Also I have no knowledge of any multimission aircraft that share
a
transport AND attack role, except MAYBE the AC-130 and that's stretching
it.

What is TRAP? It is an acronym I'm not familiar with.

Plus, as to the argument of competence: How be I put it to you this way
- the reason you are good at hitting a target with a rifle (assumption!)
and I am good (again assumption) at writing code is the skills are
different and we've each mastered them. If they had a common interface
(ie we both just pushed a button), then we could be equally good at
either. I would imagine this kind of convergence of interface is
possible in attack and transport craft such that any pilot of one can
fly the other with facility. Further, I assume expert systems and
computer aided systems will make this task easy, freeing the pilot to
worry about things like what he should be doing and where. He might even
have chipped implants to let him select what mission type he is on and
just chip-in the right skillset.

Again, that doesn't mean you want troopships engaging ground targets - I
agree thats for gunships. But it needn't be because the airframe
couldn't be kitted out that way, or because the pilot couldn't have the
skillset. It should be for the one good reason - the job of getting
troops down is different from the job of shooting up stuff.

Tom