So in other words, Victoria don't believe in what is basically a staple of air power since 1914, strafing vulnerable enemy units on the ground?
In the pre-2074 paradigm, they don't
reject it, but they don't
prioritize it to the point where they're actively looking for clever ways to do it.
Also, strafing runs are a very risky way to do ground attack against an enemy who is even
slightly equipped, because by this point the shoulder-fired SAM has existed for over a century and they're all over the damn place. The Vicks use them extensively, for instance.
They actually lost a lot of jets, often to humiliatingly weak targets like coal-fired gunboats, during the Erie War,
trying to strafe ground targets they wanted dead. But due to a lack of workable ground attack doctrine, it fell apart.
I'm not saying there's never been a specific VAF commander who tried slinging some bombs off a Cessna or other similar light prop plane. But it's not something their whole air force was doing as a matter of doctrine.
Errr. Just a reminder the VAF used F5 to "destroy" the Pacific Republic Airforce. While our continuity is that much of this account is sheet propaganda, their propaganda clearly allows for bombing airfields, especially in a sneak attack to disable airpower.
Okay, yeah yeah... but note that even within the propaganda, this is
bombing of airfields.
The Vick air power narrative I describe is:
"We have pilots in order to do two things: scout for the MANLY MEN on the ground, and if they are sufficiently MANLY, duel the enemy's LESS MANLY MEN in the opposing air force."
And, within the context of propaganda, what better way to prove your superiority over the opposing air force than to catch it totally napping and blow the shit out of it before it even wakes up, pulls its pants on, and rises to challenge you? Lol, libs owned!
Thus, bombing of airfields is an extension of the MANLY SPARTAFREEDOMERICA FLEXES TO VICTORY narrative of Victorian pilots triumphing over enemy pilots,
and only the enemy's pilots.
...
We also observe in the Erie War that the
actual VAF is making a good faith effort to break from the narrative by laying in a stockpile of antiship/antitank missiles and also by practicing to do strafing runs. The problem is that,
limited by the narrative and the effects of toxic doctrine on Vick military posture, they have not been able to prepare adequately for the task.
While they could surely have gotten a variety of more effective air-to-ground munitions (discounting NCR sabotage), they instead have only a relative handful of air-to-ground missiles (I'm guessing Mavericks), barely enough in their whole air force to equip the air force as a whole for a single massed sortie.
They have no training using bombs, even the sort of dumb bombs the Vicks could manufacture themselves, let alone the easily available GPS-ski-guided bombs the Russians would probably give them if they asked.
So while the VAF doesn't
quite restrict itself to the two roles defined for it by the Victorians' doctrinal narrative in the Erie War... They aren't able to break out of the narrative
far enough to be an effective fighting force, especially in the context of NCR sabotage.
Lind? No. Lind agrees with Sprey in that the A-10 is the best ever at low and slow .
Ehhh. Yeah, but at the same time, in the quest setting, the Vicks can't
get dedicated A-10s because the production line tooling was destroyed, and nobody else makes anything similar because it's an obsolete aircraft, and the Vicks can't make their own because Vicks.
So what they actually have/had is the F-16V, which
can be manufactured by production line tooling that actually exists somewhere in the world, as one of the world's cheapest and generally weakest export fighters that still exists circa 2070.
