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Originally Posted by JA Boomer
Thanks for your responses wabpilot...I didn't know the nuclear option was considered the "strike" mission in the Navy. Just wondering, what would a standard bombing mission on a fixed target be called in the Navy, simply "attack"?
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Correct. Strike missions involved special weapons, attack missions did not. Fleet air defense missions were defensive in nature.
There are certainly different kinds of attack missions. Light attack tends to be day visual bombing. In different places different profiles would be used and "Light" is something of a misnomer. A F-4J loaded with 9000 pounds of Mk.82s is still on a light attack mission while a A-6 with four SRAMs is medium. Medium attack missions are night, adverse weather or electronic in nature. In Viet Nam we had the peculiar circumstance where F-4s would formate on an A-6 for a IFR bombing run. We would watch the A-6 which would use its ground mapping radar to identify the target and then we would drop as soon as we saw his bombs release. Thus, the F-4 which was never capable of medium attack missions could participate in them. We also had radar controlled bombing of some targets. A radar controller somewhere in the south would guide us to a target and then call our release. Results of both profiles were sketchy. We usually ended up bombing lots of extraneous rice paddies while not doing much damage to the main target. Although, we did put a SAM site out of business one time by bombing a dam, next to a SAM, site that held back about feet of bovine fecal sludge. The SAM site was unworkable for days while the NVA version of the EPA tried to clean up the mess.