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

foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com

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

#111

Post by dsfyu404ed »

specialist wrote: post #91
SEJeff wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn't. The A10 is basically a flying tank meant to be hit and survive. The Iraqi army of desert storm was a "modern enemy" with pretty decent soviet gear at the time. US gear was just that much better due to us spending such an obnoxious amount of our GDP on our military. A manpad doesn't have remotely explosive power of the AA that hit the A10 in this video, don't believe me? See the pictures yourself: htt…

Are helicopters used, useful for CAS? Briefly, if you could, when would you use the warthog over a helicopter (or vice versa). Thanks.

Helicopters are slower, carry less, have less range and make great targets for RPGs, M72s or pretty much anything else you'd shoot a vehicle with.

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

#112

Post by dsfyu404ed »

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…

That sounds like black hawk down without as much bad luck...

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

#113

Post by Turing_Machine »

Retric wrote: post #70
Turing_Machine wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The A-10 is not useful to the modern US military." The Army and Marine Corps disagree. Strongly.

Nope, http://www.dodbuzz.com/2015/02/25/army-not-interested-in-tak... . Army not interested in the A-10. "close-air support is not a plane, it’s a mission.”

"The service’s top civilian, Army Secretary John McHugh"

He is an Obama political appointee with no expertise in this area and who, in fact, has never even served in the military.

Try asking some actual combat veterans what they think. Do you know any? I do.

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

#114

Post by gozur88 »

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.

It's not more expensive when you consider the entire system: training, aircraft maintenance, air traffic control, time-on-station, wear and tear on the airframe, top cover in contested airspaces, etc. Plus the occasional loss.

During peace time an ATACMS sits in its sealed container doing nothing and requiring no maintenance, whereas pilots require constant training.

Maybe if we had a WW II style conflict where you were doing three or four productive sorties a day, but I can't imagine we'll see a conflict like that again

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

#115

Post by greedo »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #94
the_ancient wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me a working program, for a working aircraft, that has been tested in actual combat then we can talk about replacing the A-10 Most of the conversation about the A-10 seems to focus on the fact the Airforce need to free up resources for the F-35, and the combination of the F-16, F15, and F35 can replace the A-10 completely. I believe this to be false, and doubly so when the F-15 and F16 are also suppose to be rep…

SOCCOM evaluated the Tucano and loved it. The program to acquire them for US inventory was killed (and went back and forth a couple times, might be something screwy there or just the usual bureaucratic stuff). We did chose them for the ~20 aircraft we're giving the Afghan Army. They're well proven in low intensity conflict across South America.

Yup, SOCOM likes them because they're able to cherry pick equipment without having to worry about whether it's suitable for the entire Army. They have always had custom aircraft, whether it was Little Birds, or the Stealth Blackhawk. But that doesn't mean the Army should choose what SOCOM likes; different roles, and funding. The reason the Tucano and its ilk are popular is low cost and easier training. Getting the Afghan AF up to speed on maintaining a high bypass turbofan and its supply chain is several magnitudes harder than a proj job.

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

#116

Post by yourapostasy »

maxerickson wrote: post #13
yourapostasy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that preliminary budget, issued by Congress, be considered meddling? Is it akin to software development managers with the sheerest excuses for domain expertise accepting whatever budget and mandate is handed down from managers with zero domain expertise, and then they set about browbeating anyone and everyone they can lay their hands on to meet the hazy objectives? This direction of development sounds to me…

As below, I agree that it is subjective as to what is meddling. I think setting a budget based on a high level discussion is what Congress is supposed to be doing. The military side can explain what capabilities they can get with a certain budget, Congress can decide if that is a reasonable level of capability and set the budget at the requested level or lower or even higher.

If the DoD gives Congress guidance on budget bands and what capabilities are given up in each band below the "ideal" band, especially in projected political terms, then I can see Congress setting a preliminary budget and finalizing after some more detailed DoD analysis of what is projected to be accomplished under that budget. For example, tell Congress for a $1B ideal budget of a weapons program, a $750-800M budget band would mean response time to deploy the weapon drops from 6 hours to 6 days. Not such a big deal for a littoral combat operations boat, but a huge deal for a cruise missile block upgrade. But we're all outsiders here, and I'd love to hear inside baseball on what the real factors are behind these procurement processes.

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

#117

Post by stormcrowsx »

GunboatDiplomat wrote: post #107
SEJeff wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't the purpose to reduce the maintenance cost? I would think one type of aircraft is easier to maintain than 2 different specialized aircraft.
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