A-10: Like a zombie, back from the dead!!!

[randy]

OK guys, caution flag here

[Greg]

Hooooly fuck, dude, I'm literally saying "You want to talk to pilots who've had the opportunity to shoot at armored vehicles" here. I went out of my way here to indicate that my own particular experience here is useless. Chill.

Well that's nice. We know you do have experience of A-10's we've heard you gripe about their foibles often enough.

But to generalize from where you do have experience to where you admit your experience doesn't apply - and then continue to argue where your experience doesn't apply - is a logic fail.

[Aesop]

It's really not hard to understand. At no point did I assert that A-10 pilots actually attack ground targets from such a steep angle. I was saying that, in order to effectively attack just the top armor, they would have to. Which they don't. Otherwise they would have zero reason to care about things like side armor and road wheels.

I see.
And no one else did that either.
So you've been flailing away to try and demonstrate that the method of attack described by no one in this forum is impossible.
Well done.
But then you assert that same is absolutely necessary, contrary to 40 years of service experience.
So I'm calling "bullshit".

I keep using it only because you keep doing it. Again: At no point have I asserted they actually, in real life, that is, the non-theoretical world, attack Stuka-style.

Right. You just keep repeating that it's both necessary, and simultaneously impossible and ineffective.
To what end...?
What dog whistle do you keep hearing?

Hokay, so, generic and utterly useless anecdote. Thanks.

Excepting the part where it disputes your assertions they'd have to approach within 4000' to continue to be ineffective.
So you're welcome.
When you stop disproving what nobody's said, and offer some evidence for your unfounded assertion, we can move on to that.

The gun was never the A-10's primary anti-tank weapon.

Right.
Designing the entire airframe to accommodate it was a momentary afterthought.
Especially since it's so ineffective.
Thanks for walking back the entire Cold War.
Maybe you could as easily clear up the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, the Bay of Pigs, and the Vietnam War for us while you're on a roll.
Or, we could believe a paltry 40 years of explicitly stated aerospace engineering commentary, military expertise, the experience in combat, and the anecdotal evidence of a few thousand Hog pilots.
But let's grant that recockulous premise: that leaves only the 11 ordnance hardpoints, more than the F-35 possesses.
Your move.

There's what a 30mm might do, and there's what a 250-pound bomb will do.

Unless it's laser guided ordnance, that 250# bomb will throw up a lot of dust. The odds of one hitting a tank are worse than powerball odds. Unlike, say, aiming a nice BRRRT-worth of DU slugs right at the tank.

Which it is, in the case of the F-35, and won't be in the case of the A-10 without adding a TGP.

Which only leaves 10 other ordnance hardpoints to load with weapons. That would still be several more available than on an F-35.

Evidently no one thought of Mig-23s in the 1970-1990 era in Central Europe, as that was the exact time and place the A-10 was conceived, deployed, and operated. Once again, thanks for straightening out the entire USAF doctrine on A-10 CAS for the most relevant years of its service deployment, at the time when our military was huge and world-beating. Literally.

Or maybe the A-10 was never meant to fly in airspace contested by anything more serious than AAA.

Right. Because the Soviets were stupid like that, and would never have imagined using Mig-23s in a war with NATO in Central Europe.
Look, I can refer you to a few hundred books from the 1970s and 1980s, in case you need a decade or so to get up to speed on this whole concept of the later period of the Cold War. Perhaps you've heard of it?

Thanks for clearing that up. This is clearly why the A-10, with 11 external hardpoints, makes so much less sense to deploy than the F-35, with only 6.
Wait, what?

Except in a permissive environment, it's 10. If you want smart weapons on the A-10, you lose a station to a TGP. For a less-than-permissive environment, it's 9 because you need an ECM pod. You don't need either of those with the F-35.

Except for that whole 9 more tank-killing bursts from the gun. But I keep forgetting, it doesn't work, right?
And after all, why hang a pod on airplanes you already have, when you can replace the whole Airplane You Don't Like with a Giant Budget-Sucking Gold-Plated Rube Goldberg Piece Of Shit, for 20 times the price, because it can go a little faster (sometimes) and doesn't look quite as ugly?

It's worth remembering here that the F-35 is a direct replacement for the F-16, which already does CAS more often than the A-10. Speed counts. The F-35 is not a direct replacement for the A-10, the idea is that we can afford to give up the A-10 since its mission is encompassed by a multirole platform.

Yeah, and all CAS isn't F-16 CAS, or we never would have needed the A-10 back in the day either, would we?
We could have had another thousand F-16s, and the Air Force Pilot Association would have creamed their pants for thirty years non-stop at never having to fly under 600MPH after takeoff.
This all occurred to you more than 5 seconds before you typed it, right??
The F-35 gives you all the minuses of the F-16 (short legs, low(er) payload, limited loiter time-over-target, high-speed passes), and none of the plusses of either it, or the A-10. Including a weaker round from a smaller gun with 1/6th to 1/8th of the bullets, any use of which eliminates their availability for air-to-air.
And now, with less airframes that cost astronomically more to boot.
Winner!
This is why the Israelis are doubling down, and upgrading their F-15s for deep strike. Which is supposed to be why they'd want the F-35 in the first place.
And why nations are backing out of the F-35 right and left, or cutting their planned purchases down.
The last time we had something this worthless, it was the Sgt. York DivAD. Or electronic interdiction on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Mind you, I'm just spit-balling here, since "no one's ever been able to prove it".

Well, as long as we're throwing anecdotes around, I could mention the pilots I've talked to talking about how flying fighters is a career-killer.

Given how well some of them probably fly, they're likely right. There's always the Ten Percent.
But leaving the A-10s behind for GW I wasn't "anecdotal".
Neither was turfing them to AFRES or making them OA-10s, or trying to mothball them entirely. And most of that didn't have the helpful F-35 as an excuse/accomplice.
It was simply Air Farce policy to shitcan CAS, over and over and over.
When you get caught doing it half a dozen times, officially, it's not "anecdotal".
The F-35s main purpose is apparently to kill the A-10, and clearly, as the original press release for this post proves, it can't even accomplish that mission, hence the wailing and gnashing of teeth on the USAF side of the E-ring.

If you want a WW2 attrition rate, by all means, "harden the fuck up" and pay for a military kitted out entirely with WW2 equipment and consisting of 2/3 conscripts. You will lose the next war in the manliest way possible.

Or we can knock it off with the appeals to emotion and look realistically at vehicles rather than "I like this, it has big gun, it best."

Equipment is equipment, and telling an A-10 to harden the fuck up will never get it to release its inner strength and survive a hit from a Strela-10. This isn't anime, or Herbie the Love Hawg.

I wasn't referring to the equipment.
I'd settle for troops like WW2.
In case you hadn't noticed, we've lost two wars already, just this decade, but it wasn't due to the shortcomings of our equipment.
Just a dearth of leadership.
Some of us have seen that before, long before it ever occurred in your world.

And nothing is surviving a good hit from a SAM. Especially not the F-35 Thunderjug. The A-10 probably has a better chance of making it back, but I wouldn't want to live on the difference.
But SAMs don't knock every plane out of the sky at 100% rates, anywhere but in sales brochures.
So when the survivors get through, I'd like them to get more than a few drops and one gun pass over the target before all they have is waving their dicks.

I get that you don't like the A-10. Maybe somewhere, you were frightened by an A-10, or somebody you care for was raped by one, or something. Maybe it's a maintenance bitch, maybe it pisses hydraulic fluid everywhere, farts when company comes over, or some goddam subcontractor used left-hand-threaded Chinese screws individually fitted to each hole; I dunno.
But maybe, once in awhile, think about what that means to some guys with their heads down in a shitstorm when some Hog jock goes all BRRRRRRRTy on the local chapter of Aloha Snackbar, and contemplate that how little they care about your objections can't be measured with existing instrumentation, nor heard over the cheers from their guys.

The point of the article is that the Air Farce management (leadership is too strong a word) has been dragged back crying and pissing itself to the CAS mission until they can improve on what we already have. Not that the A-10 is better than nymphomaniac Playboy centerfolds who own liquor stores, because giant penis substitute cannon.

If that hurts your feewings, then I'm sorry for you.
I suspect to the grunts in any 10 ground divisions, it's good news.

(And nota bene, if the USAF would simply hand them over to the Army and the Marines in total, instead of mothballing them, no one would utter a peep of protest on the green side of the .mil. Only your own guys would shit themselves at the prospect. Think about that.)

Maybe you noticed that the F-22 buy didn't come anywhere close to putting F-15s out of business, any more than B-2s or F-117s got rid of the Bone or the B-52? Do you really fancy that's sheer sentiment?

The F-22 didn't put the F-15 out of business because our dumbass SECDEF actually ended production of the F-22 before we had enough of them to replace all the F-15Cs. We weren't supposed to have any in active service right now.

Welcome to It's Been that Way In The Military For 70 (or 240) Years.
cf.:Your recruiter lied to you.
File a grievance.

Hooooly fuck, dude, I'm literally saying "You want to talk to pilots who've had the opportunity to shoot at armored vehicles" here. I went out of my way here to indicate that my own particular experience here is useless. Chill.

Fair enough then. I've done that. While it was still fresh in their minds.
Their expertise ran 180 degrees out from your assertions.
It was also not coincidentally exactly in line with what I watched with my own eyes on peacetime ranges on multiple occasions. (My raging assumption is that by then, at both MCAGCC/NTC/etc., they were training the way they were going to fight, with a mature deployed weapons system. Call me crazy.)
They were rather proud to have finally had the chance to validate the worth of the aircraft you've spent three or four posts pissing on, from that same dearth of experience.
So I can believe the recorded tally of kills from that war, their anecdotal recounting of their tactics, and my own lying eyes; or I can believe that you're right, and that everything written and disseminated about the plane from the decades before you were born was all wrong.

That's a poser.

In the meantime, a plane with no equal thus far, and no replacement in sight, is going to continue in service until something actually better comes along, and it does it my Inner Grunt's soul good to know that. I hope they kill a few trainloads of enemy sons of bitches who deserve it before it gets retired for good.
That the decision means they're going to have to double the daily tampon requisition for the Air Force senior management is just icing on the cake.
So you go on ahead, and BMW all you like.
But I'm truly sorry the news is so upsetting to you.

[JustinR]

*raises hand* I volunteer to go to A-10 school so we can resolve this argument, if someone wants to sponsor me...just saying...ya know, if anyone personally knows a Senator or something...I'd be happy to go...right after I get LASIK...

[First Shirt]

According to some of the A-10 jocks that I briefed on a regular basis, the reason the A-10s nose gear is off centerline of the aircraft is because the GAU-8 IS on the centerline, so the nose wheel had to be offset. Giving the aircraft two different turning radiuses depending on which direction it's going. Which seems to indicate that someone designed the gun, then someone else designed an aircraft around it. And we recovered some that had most of the tails shot off, but they were back in the game in less than 48 hours, which says loads about either (a) the maintainability of the aircraft, or (b) the quality and expertise of Air Force Reserve ground crews. Take your pick. And sending a four-aircraft flight against a dozen or so T-72s was regarding as being the equivalent of sending 4 pitbulls to take T-bones away from a dozen toy poodles. Gun cam footage seems to bear that out.

While you can make all the A-10 jokes you like (it doesn't fly, it's so ugly it repels the ground; it records bird strikes from the rear; the airspeed indicator is a calendar, etc.) I wouldn't recommend making them around A-10 pilots or ground crews. Experience seems to indicate that that doesn't work out well for the instigators.

And the briefing room at Whiteman had a sign over the door that said "Fighter pilots make movies. Attack pilots make history." And every zipper-suited sun god that walked through that door took that as an article of faith, right up there with The Immaculate Conception.

Granted, this is all anecdotal evidence, and is worth about what you paid for it. Unless you were there.

[blackeagle603]

anybody remember to bring the popcorn?

[First Shirt]

No, I thought YOU were bringing the popcorn. Do have beer in the fridge, though.

[Termite]

But maybe, once in awhile, think about what that means to some guys with their heads down in a shitstorm when some Hog jock goes all BRRRRRRRTy on the local chapter of Aloha Snackbar, and contemplate that how little they care about your objections can't be measured with existing instrumentation, nor heard over the cheers from their guys.

THAT....RIGHT....THERE.

As a former scout/armor guy who then went to Army helo school, and flew a few practice extraction/rescue missions(flying the rescue helo) with EAB's Hog drivers back in the early '90s, let me explain something.
GRUNTS LOVE HOG DRIVERS.
Those of us grunts with aviation training KNOW that in a SAM or ADA enviro, Hog drivers will lose wing-men doing CAS missions. Shit happens. But when an Air Force pilot is willing to get down in the mud with Cobra, Apache, and other helo drivers and put steel on target.......that AF pilot is respected by the grunts, and will never have to buy his drinks in Army bars.

CAS is dirty, dangerous, and non-glorious. It isn't going Mach 2 with your hair on fire, but it is highly needed for the ground-pounders.

[Vonz90]

One thing to consider is that the A-10 kind of fills a role like the Hs-123 in the Luftwaffe. The Hs-123 was a biplane dive bomber that was obsolete before the start of the war. But it could do CAS, they had other better aircraft for CAS too, but they had to be shared for other missions (even the Ju-87 only flew los 30% CAS missions). But the Hs-123 was always available for CAS because that was all it could do, so the Wermacht insisted on keeping it. There is a certain advantage in being single purpose. [

BTW - if you don't think the AF would abandon CAS if given a chance, read a detailed history the air war in Korea. They already did it once and had to be forced back to it kicking and screaming.

[Aesop]

I'll just leave this here...
A 5-part episode of Wings from 1995, back when Discovery Channel ran programs to watch worth the time.
It took about two clicks to find.


It covers the A-10, in particular during the Gulf War.
The A-10 whose pilot earned an AF Cross, that limped home with a SAM strike blowing a hole through the starboard wing, kind of takes the wind out of "can't operate in a high-threat environment".
Feel free to tick off how much other relevant information from 20 years ago I nailed, off the top of my head, much of it conveyed first-hand by the actual pilots, less than 4 years after the war in question.
Or, just enjoy a neat flashback of a cool program.

Game, set, match, sportsfans.