Flying CAP has taught me the ridiculousness of CAS.
What’s the ridiculousness you ask?
I grab my (theoretical, I don’t have U.S tanks) F8F-1 or F4U-4. I load them with 3 x 1000 LBS bombs.
I airspawn at cruising speeds ~3-7 km from B point. My 400-600 km/h plane gets there in ~1 minute (assuming 7 km with 400 km/H, it’ll likely be half-that if not less).
I drop my 3 1000 lbs bombs that kill from…12 metres and penetrate 97 mm of armour.
I likely exceed my 600 km/h cruising speed and RTB within 30 seconds.
I use forward slip/S-turns/corsair airbrakes/belly land to get to ground quickly. I use my theoretical maxed repair crew to get rearmed in 15 seconds (theoretical as my main air crew only has level 4 repair right now).
I take off with 3 x 1000 lbs bombs that kill from 12 metres and penetrate 97 mm of armour.
I fly towards the battlefield and rapidly accelerate to 400-500 km/H, likely not having enough time to reach cruising speed of 600 but it’s no matter - the battlefield is within 5 or so kilometers since I took off.
All in all, I spent ~30 seconds RTB, 15 seconds rearming, ~40 seconds returning to offend enemy vehicles with 3 1000 lbs bombs in a plane that’s an excellent fighter and can easily kill anything at its BR if you have energy and room/time to use that energy (and if not, run away with your 600 km/h speed).
What did we learn from this?
The airfields and plane spawns are way too bloody close to the AO.
(and american props have ridiculous payloads for excellent fighters at offensively low BRs, but that’s another tale).
Solution?
BR 1-3: Airfields should remain ~5-7 kilometers away, planes at this BR can barely reach 300 km/h and only have 500-250 kg bombs, except for some heavy bombers.
BR 3-5: Airfields at least 10 kilometers away, although american props make me want to say 15 but that’d punish everyone but american planes. Planes at this BR can easily hit 300 km/h if not 400 (americans somehow have a 4.7 plane capable of 650 but that’s another story.) Payloads start to become ridiculous for americans.
Br 5-7: Airfields at least 20 kilometres away. Props can now all hit 500-600 km/h, some even exceed 700. Payloads have become ridiculous.
Br 7+: airfields at whatever distance that makes RTB and ability to offend again take at least 5 minutes.
Likely want to break BR 7+ apart for subsonic/supersonic and even dumb/guided. I won’t comment on it though as I’ve only personal experience flying 7.0/8.0 planes so far.
And before you say I hate american planes - I fly american planes primarily, with a bit of japanese for redfor and russia/germany for winrates for BP tasks.