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

#91

Post by specialist » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 7:43 PM UTC

SEJeff wrote: post #73

55acdda48ab5 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the CAS mission the A-10 performs is effectively impossible against any modern enemy with modern missile systems and manpads. The A-10 is for shooting up poor brown people we're messing with for no particular reason, not for fighting a real war. The solution here is to get rid of the A-10 and simply not do "nation building" and counter-insurgency in poor countries. We don't need the A-10 because i…

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.

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

#92

Post by Retric » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 7:51 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.

20 years ago they would have taken it over, now they really don't care.

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

#93

Post by vinceguidry » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 8:05 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #58

vinceguidry wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we're making comparisons to infantry weaponry, the M16 rifle is nine years older than the A-10 Warthog.

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.

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

#94

Post by jasonwatkinspdx » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 8:12 PM UTC

the_ancient wrote: post #81

greedo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of straw horses being set free here. The primary weapon against tanks carried by the A-10 is the Maverick missile. The GAU-8 can do wonders against a tank especially perforating the upper engine deck etc, but it's really designed for destroying soft targets in combination with unguided rocket pods or CBUs. Comparing it's accuracy with PGMs (that it can carry as well) is disingenuous. Oh, and you seem to be forg…

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.

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

#95

Post by SEJeff » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 8:42 PM UTC

ecnal wrote: post #87

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…

>The A10 is basically a flying tank meant to be hit and survive. Like Dale Storr's OA-10, which took a single Strela hit and went down? The A-10 is certainly more likely to be mission killed by MANPADS and AAA than other aircraft (which are liable to be destroyed outright), but those that survive are not useful for combat--Kim Campbell's A-10 was grazed by a Shilka and rendered combat ineffective; after she landed it…

First off, fantastic reply, thanks for taking the time to write it. The typical US strategy is utter dominance of the sea, air, and night. I really do see drones + tomahawks taking out much of the AAA in addition to long range bombers like the B2. Even if stealth isn't effective, a hoard of Tomahawks is going to give any advanced adversary a hard time. The newer Block IV Tomahawks ones are smarter and quite a bit more lethal. The suckers can loiter for up to 30 minutes on station in a holding pattern and be set to all hit targets at the same time. Hitting 4-5 targets is cool, but hitting 20+ at the same time is quite devastating. In the opening of the war in Afghanistan if I recall they launched a cruise missile every 12 seconds on average for 48 hours. Also, they'll use drones (again like the RQ-170, or its classified and armed bigger brother) to find AAA, where it is worth sacrificing a few to sniff out the well hidden AAA. Hiding in the tree lines won't do much to hide from modern UAVs (as I can attest as a former UAV pilot). With the Shadow I could see footprints through wet grass at night with the thermals (as it detected a +/- 0.1 degree C temperature variation).

So in summary, I think you're entirely right. The A10 was meant to be survivable in contested airspace of yesteryear, but gen 5 and the coming gen 6 fighers along with modern AAA would obliterate it. Even not entirely modern but very advanced AAA like maybe the S400, which Iran has, would knock out an A10 no problem. But the US wouldn't willingly put boots on the ground without utter dominance of the air first. You only need CAS when you have boots on the ground, so I see it ultimately as a moot point. China isn't stupid enough to go toe to toe to war with the US, as we'd both suffer heavy heavy casualties. They're doing a better job of simply asserting their strength economically and through cyber means, which they're better at than us.

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

#96

Post by gozur88 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 9:05 PM UTC

trhway wrote: post #89

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…

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.

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

#97

Post by gozur88 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 9:07 PM UTC

55acdda48ab5 wrote: post #45

cstross wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution here is to get rid of the A-10 and simply not do "nation building" and counter-insurgency in poor countries. Or not to get into wars in the first place; then you could give up having an Air Force at all, right? Seriously, "stop doing COIN in poor countries" is a political solution that requires a top-down policy change that goes counter to the entire historical direction of US military involvement since…

> "stop doing COIN in poor countries" is a political solution that requires a top-down policy change Yeah? That was my whole point. You make it sound like it's crazy. It's the most sensible course.

The military doesn't get to decide when to go to war or against whom.

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

#98

Post by gozur88 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 9:10 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #57

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the A-10 is simply the best manned aircraft we have for CAS You won't hear it here or on jalopnik et all, but there's substantive disagreement on this. The A-10 no longer has a primary mission: the gun is not effective enough against modern tanks. For CAS in low intensity conflict it's both overkill and overly expensive per operating hour vs alternatives. The CEP on the big gun is >10m while the CEP on small guided…

A lot of straw horses being set free here. The primary weapon against tanks carried by the A-10 is the Maverick missile. The GAU-8 can do wonders against a tank especially perforating the upper engine deck etc, but it's really designed for destroying soft targets in combination with unguided rocket pods or CBUs. Comparing it's accuracy with PGMs (that it can carry as well) is disingenuous. Oh, and you seem to be forg…

>The GAU-8 can do wonders against a tank especially perforating the upper engine deck etc, but it's really designed for destroying soft targets in combination with unguided rocket pods or CBUs.

If the gun was really designed to destroy soft targets you wouldn't need anywhere near the muzzle velocity. You'd carry something a lot lighter and you'd carry much more ammo.

No, the gun was designed to destroy tanks. For anything else it's overkill.

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

#99

Post by gozur88 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 9:15 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.

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

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

#100

Post by gozur88 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 9:17 PM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #42

dforrestwilson1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a real moral dilemma for me. I served in the military, and the A-10 is simply the best manned aircraft we have for CAS. However, I also hate the defense lobby. One one hand there's probably a job interest in keeping the A-10 running. Mac Thornberry has taken campaign donations from lots of defense contractors, including some related to the A-10: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/pacs.php?cycle=2016&c...…

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

The problem is Apaches are relatively slow, hard to maintain, and easy to shoot down. I question whether they'd exist at all if the army were allowed to operate fixed wing aircraft.