The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law • Hacker News Board

Re: The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law

#101

Post by gozur88 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #68

dragonwriter wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Army and Marine Corps don't operate the A-10. Conversely, the Air Force isn't responsible for what the A-10 supports. Institutionally, the first two are structurallt biased to discount the burden and the latter to discount the benefit of the A-10. In principle, the DoD has structures that should be better at resolving that than going through the services independently, but there's also a good case to be made that…

The Army and Marine Corps don't operate the A-10. They've expressed interest in taking it over, many times. The Air Force won't hear of it, of course. They don't want to do the mission, but neither do they want anyone else to do the mission.

Oh, they don't mind giving up the mission. The AF offered to let the army have the A-10, but only as long as they got to keep the money they've been spending on it.

Re: The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law

#102

Post by Retric » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #93

Retric wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean the name sure we used the name M16 for a while. If you me the design then no. The M16A2 is the oldest version still in limited use by US armed forces, it's significantly younger than the A-10 which first flew in 1972. This is a 44 year old front line combat aircraft. PS: They really are different guns. The original version used a 20-round magazine, that's been replaced by a 30-round version. The long rang…

You're splitting hairs. If we're going that route, then the A-10 has had plenty of improvements as well. Laser targeting pods, inertial nav systems, computerized aiming, autopilot. The first A-10C emerged in 2007.

Aye, they stuck some lipstick on a pig. It's still less useful than predator and other drones.

The problem where it's to fast to be fuel efficient, to slow to get anywhere. It's got an abysmal mission range, terrible fuel economy, meaningful defense etc etc. Sure, if we where going to face a few thousand 1970 era tanks or supporting huge slow moving infantry lines then it's great. But, we just don't fight those wars.

Re: The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law

#103

Post by trhway » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

gozur88 wrote: post #96

trhway wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, in USSR/Russia the BUK ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system ) is designed to defend ground forces on the battlefield against incoming A-10s. 70kg warheads :) With new, much better targeting electronics, etc., this lighter system is supposed to be doing well too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantsir-S1 (20kg warhead) Interesting that modern system like Pantsir seems to cover the F-35 case too: "Aeri…

The advantage a fighter is going to have is it's higher and faster. An F-35 can fly outside Pantsir's envelop and still carry out a CAS mission using a targeting pod. This is why I don't like the A-10. The environment in which the aircraft is expected to fly is much more dangerous than it used to be. Against a competent opponent we'd see A-10s getting shot down one after another.

For such profile you don't need F35 - a larger Predator / X47 would do just fine.

Re: The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law

#104

Post by jokoon » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 9:31 PM UTC

SEJeff wrote: post #80

jokoon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't apaches do CAS properly because they're not fast enough, so they make good targets?

Apaches are great for CAS, however one of the more common things for CAS is when someone gets pinned down. You need CAS ASAP and don't always know when you'll need reinforcements. An example would be when I was in Iraq and a pair of Kiowas with .50 machine guns and missle pods were doing air support of raids. One of the kiowas took a well aimed RPG to the tail rotor and went down in the middle of a very bad part of T…

Woaw thanks, very nice and cool explanation!

So actually, the A10 is fast enough to reach a CAS mission, but also slow enough for a good gun run. That seems to make sense, since F35 are faster, but I don't think they're good at flying slow for a gun run.

Re: The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law

#105

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 10:20 PM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #68

dragonwriter wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Army and Marine Corps don't operate the A-10. Conversely, the Air Force isn't responsible for what the A-10 supports. Institutionally, the first two are structurallt biased to discount the burden and the latter to discount the benefit of the A-10. In principle, the DoD has structures that should be better at resolving that than going through the services independently, but there's also a good case to be made that…

The Army and Marine Corps don't operate the A-10. They've expressed interest in taking it over, many times. The Air Force won't hear of it, of course. They don't want to do the mission, but neither do they want anyone else to do the mission.

The Air Force has no more choice than they do about keeping the A-10; if Congress directs the function, dollars, and personnel to the Army, that's where they go.

Further, that the Army has expressed willingness to take 360-degree responsibility for CAS doesn't change the fact that theor current perspective on fixed-wing CAS options comes from a place of not having that responsibility.

Re: The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law

#106

Post by GunboatDiplomat » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 10:21 PM UTC

gozur88 wrote: post #99

GunboatDiplomat wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artillery has a range measured in the tens of miles (discounting MLRS and ATACMS). Drones have a range measured in the hundreds of miles.

I don't know why you would discount ATACMS. Technically that's artillery, and end-to-end it's cheaper than aircraft.

While I don't have number in front of me, my instinct is that ATACMS is more expensive and less flexible on a per target basis than aerial bombardment using an A-10.

Re: The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law

#107

Post by GunboatDiplomat » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

SEJeff wrote: post #74

GunboatDiplomat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be reasonable is the Air Force pulling its head out its ass and just giving the CAS role back to the Army, since they hate it so much. Seriously, just give the Army the CAS roles, and the Air Force can go zoom around in their shiny supersonic invisible aircraft, and the soldiers and marines on the ground can get the close air support they so need from an organization not doing everything it can to stop giv…

Randomly, nice nick. The Culture reference made me smile. Doing that (Taking CAS responsibilities from the USAF) is actually a wonderful idea. One of the reasons the F35 is such a cluster f is due to the Marines requiring it to more or less be a Harrier replacement. The Marines use the harriers primarily for CAS and I've targeted for them as well in Iraq when I was there ~2003-2004 during the big Fallujah offensive.

Yeah, that's a big reason the F-35 is fucked. At this point, it definitely would have been more effective to develop at least two entirely separate aircraft.

Re: The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law

#108

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 10:26 PM UTC

GunboatDiplomat wrote: post #106

gozur88 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you would discount ATACMS. Technically that's artillery, and end-to-end it's cheaper than aircraft.

While I don't have number in front of me, my instinct is that ATACMS is more expensive and less flexible on a per target basis than aerial bombardment using an A-10.

Even if so, it might still be cheaper to keep units equipped, trained, and operational with it between actual combat missions, which might make it more cost effective on a long-term analysis. Combat aircraft are expensive even when they aren't fighting.

Re: The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law

#109

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 10:31 PM UTC

GunboatDiplomat wrote: post #61

55acdda48ab5 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the A-10 fleet as ground-piloted drones. This is just a super expensive and failure prone way to do what 100 year old artillery technology does. Site the enemy, call in artillery fire. Drone techno fetishism is a big problem right now. Most of this stuff does not work nearly as well as people are pretending it does.

Artillery has a range measured in the tens of miles (discounting MLRS and ATACMS). Drones have a range measured in the hundreds of miles.

Yes, artillery has short range, if you excludelong-range artillery.

But I'm not sure what kind of point you can reasonably rest on that.

Re: The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law

#110

Post by Pxtl » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 11:27 PM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #84

Pxtl wrote: post #83

I think people are unfair to the air force on the A-10. Obviously discontinuing it should be reconsidered, but they've made massive investment in standardizing on a handful of modern planes instead of zillion overspecialized vehicles. The F-35, for all its frustrations, is a staggering piece of technology. Plus, consider that this is a plane expected to take fire. Everyone loves he story of the A-10 that kept flying…

> The F-35, for all its frustrations, is a staggering piece of technology. It's staggering alright.

It's an invisible supersonic vectored thrust vtol jet fighter. That's goddamned science fiction. The fact that it even exists is remarkable... which makes the debacle of its development unsurprising.