Designing a Squad Insertion, Command And Support Aiborne Vehicle (SICASAV)

[Phoenix_Dragon]

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

I think you may be overestimating the number of people who have game ending information.

The location of the HQ is the only information that means game over for the entire organization that the crew has, and only the pilot has to have it since he's the only one that needs to see the area where he takes off/lands.

The pilot and copilot would know precise information. The flight engineer and crew chief would need to have most of that information to do their jobs (And would easily be able to get it even if it's not). Anyone in a role capable of deploying weapons, sensors, electronic warfare, or command would be able to have that information unless you deliberately black out their controls the entire time (And locked them in compartments with no windows). Every single crew member (And you've got a lot because of all those extra engineers!) would have information that would give a competent intel analyst significant leads to tracking them down (Even just flight time, local time at takeoff, weather at takeoff, etc, gives you a lot of info). Even if you literally drugged every single non-flight-critical person until you were in-theater, you'd have at least four people in your insertion aircraft that know where your HQ is.

By comparison, consider the multi-aircraft. A Littlebird weighs about 3,000 pounds, so let's go with something around that weight. You can easily pack that inside the "base" transport that flies them and the ground team to a staging point. Which means the insertion aircraft, the one that's most vulnerable to the enemy and most likely to get shot down, has zero people with precise information on your HQ. You've got the flight crew of the transport, that's never in the AO. Instead, you've got the pilot/copilot of the EW aircraft, which stays well away from the ground, and if you're going with a fighter instead of a UCAV, the pilot of that. That's three people total in the AO that have your precise navigation information, and none of them get near an LZ. It's less risk.

Of course, all of this is assuming you somehow manage to assemble and train all of these people without a single one being able to figure out where they are, which is extremely optimistic at best.

If your entire operation will collapse if something goes wrong, the organization is screwed. Straight-up screwed. You're sending people into combat. Things will go wrong. And when they do, it's going to be a lot better if you have other assets in the area to rescue that pilot (Or otherwise eliminate the threat) than it will to have all of your assets lost in the same singular event. Making an LZ in non-friendly-controlled terrain is always going to be a risk, and you're sending a lot of organization-critical personnel and every single local asset into it.

And I still don't seen why the pilot needs such extreme skill. He's piloting a heavy transport, not a nimble fighter. There's going to be a pretty sharp limits on what the airframe can handle. In what ways is he pushing himself to need such an extreme level of skill? Because it seems like any competent pilot should be able to do this job.