Ok, let's take a look at the highway south of Baghdad.
The green line is the north south road, the blue, the east west road.
The red is the areas directly lining the road and the pink are areas indirect fire weapons can
be shot from.
Now, let's say you have a convoy of a couple of hundred vehicles and you start taking fire.
So you call for the fast movers and you get an A-10. Lucky you.
So you set up the coordinates, make sure he knows you're on the highway, and call him out. He makes his gun run with that big cannon of his, everything around you on fire.
And then five minutes later, the mortars start up again and you don't see anything other than a couple of helicopters for the next five hours.
Why?
Because air support is like money, everybody wants some, but it is a finite resource. So, people think, yes, the US will do what it takes to get everyone home in a fighting retreat, but they can't carpet bomb their way home. The people they may be fighting can hide from bombs and bullets.
If there is a fighting retreat from Iraq, there will be more targets than the AF/Navy/Marines can handle.
No matter how many Air Tasking Orders are written, no matter how many CCT's are calling in strikes, they won't have enough, and they may face serious AAA opposition. All those guns sitting in depots captured after the invasion didn't go anywhere.
It could be a very ugly, desperate fight.
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