I was under the impression that the A-10 is fine for Afghanistan but useless anywhere there is good air defence - just too slow. That said it could be useful for blunting an armoured vanguard.
The main problem for the A-10 is widely available, effective MANPADS. I'm not sure what you can do to immunize your attack aircraft from them, but I am pretty sure that the F-35 isn't the answer.
> I'm not sure what you can do to immunize your attack aircraft from them
You can't. What you can do, is make attack aircraft more numerous, cheaper, and more expendable -- which almost certainly means unmanned. Manned combat aircraft are becoming dinosaurs for much the same reasons as battleships did.
MANPADS are an issue but the A-10 was designed with their deployment in mind. The most important feature of a MANPAD system is it's ability to be carried by 1-2 soldiers. That places an upper bound on the weight of a system which limits the size of the missile's warhead.
Most MANPADS have warheads weighing less than 5kg, a few kg of HE is enough to cause significant damage but the A-10 was built to fly with half a wing, one engine, one rudder/elevator assembly, and a mountain of shrapnel stuck in the pilot's armored tub. MANPADS will get a mission kill on an A-10 but they aren't powerful enough to bring one down the majority of the time.
Stealth unfortunately does not make the plane invisible, just harder to detect by radar. But for CAS missions, you're going to be seen anyway, so stealth is useless there.
I agree. I think the F-35-can-do-CAS people contend that the F-35 can do CAS from altitude (above MANPADS range) with smart-munitions, but I doubt these claims for a number of reasons including availability/sortie-rate, ie cost per sortie, mission turnaround time, etc.
> I think the F-35-can-do-CAS people contend that the F-35 can do CAS from altitude (above MANPADS range) with smart-munitions,
Stand-off attack with smart munitions is a different role than CAS; so this isn't so much F-35-can-do-CAS as F-35-is-sufficient-because-CAS-is-not-necessary.
EDIT: to be clear, I am characterizing the position here, not endorsing it.
It's been said before, turned out to be untrue before, and I see no reason to believe it this time. Until someone finds me some credible infantrymen who say that CAS isn't needed, I will not support putting boots on the ground without a strong CAS game.
EDIT: re: EDIT: Fair enough! Don't worry, I haven't downvoted you or anything like that. As far as that position, I feel like it is maybe not the most honest one from some folks since the F-35 has been touted by some as a platform with which to do CAS.
I was responding to "MANPADS",
etc. Such a device will need
detectors of some kind, e.g.,
heat, radar, and the usual approaches
to stealth should help.
For close air support, maybe the
US wants to use fast, stealth
aircraft firing missiles to spots
specified with laser designators,
GPS, etc.
As I recall, at times the USAF
claimed that to kill tanks
an F-16 with a missile was better
than the A-10: Sure, the gun
on the A-10 is amazing, but the
A-10 flies low and slow and
should be vulnerable to, say,
MANPADS. The F-16 flies
higher and faster, fires a
missile, and then is out'a there.
Maybe the USAF wants the F-35 to
be better, still: Use stealth.
Sure, maybe soon the USAF will want
its missiles to kill tanks, etc.
fired from drones, maybe even
stealth drones.
Not aware of any MANPADS that can use radar. AFAIK they all use heat seekers. Not much you can do other than deploy flares. Stealth doesn't help you in close visible range.
>For close air support, maybe the US wants to use fast, stealth aircraft firing missiles to spots specified with laser designators, GPS, etc.
Yeah, the Air Force always says that, and the ground troops always demand A-10's Apaches, etc.
>As I recall, at times the USAF claimed that to kill tanks an F-16 with a missile was better than the A-10: Sure, the gun on the A-10 is amazing, but the A-10 flies low and slow and should be vulnerable to, say, MANPADS. The F-16 flies higher and faster, fires a missile, and then is out'a there.
The Air Force always claims that they have a good reason to get rid of the A-10.
The fart-gun while awesome, isn't the real reason troops love it so much. The ability to loiter on station for a long time and keep enemy forces down in defensive mode is. Neither fast-movers, nor helicopters can loiter as long.
>Maybe the USAF wants the F-35 to be better, still: Use stealth.
Stealth isn't a panacea, it's a buff against the enemy's radar. And, yeah, drones/unmanned are the future.
I mentioned both radar and heat.
If MANPADS are heat seekers, okay.
Some versions of stealh try to lower
their heat signatures, e.g.,
hide the jet engine output from
the ground by an extension of the
part of the plane below the engine
and mixing the jet exhaust with cool
air. For the F-117, can get a
little view of its engine output
at
Close in CAS means close in proximity to friendly troops. Before smart munitions this required the aircraft to also be in close proximity to hit the enemy force without hitting friendlies. Now an orbiting bomber or drone can deliver a targeted strike while flying high in the sky miles away.
I love the old warthog, but in the days of drones, I can't see much of a use anymore.
I think we'll have the Warthog until after the ground troops are confident with the drones / remotely piloted craft. That opinion is less to do with my own ideas about the potential of drones to do CAS well, and more to do with my assessment of what military decision makers will tolerate in terms of change.
They're heavily invested in us, both in terms of bonds and in terms of selling us stuff. Both of that goes away the second they challenge us militarily, and their economy couldn't take it.
I'm not so sure their economy is still as weak as it once was. My impression is that China really has its shit together, more than any other country. Their economy isn't as big as the US yet, but it's catching up and maturing. I think the time will come when China will insist on dominating its own sphere of influence.
Yes, that is also true for every other effective ground attack platform. AC-130, Drones, Apaches and other helicopters. The A-10 isn't a fighter, it is for ground attack. Not even the most fervent A-10 fanatics believe that the A-10 is a capable air-to-air fighter; it was never intended to be. So, yes it needs fighters to ensure air superiority so that it can operate. That's not a bug.
While it's fine for Afghanistan it was designed for a cold-war tank battle. If you don't need to kill tanks or dodge air defences a propeller-powered plane that looks like something out of WW2 is a lot cheaper... and that's what's being developed by a bunch of firms for counter-insurgency.
There are already several of those types of aircraft to choose from. My favorite is Embraer's Super Tucano, of which the US is buying 100 for the Afghan government.
Replace "Afghanistan" with "the Fulda Gap" and you have exactly described the A-10's original design criteria.
In a ground support aircraft, slowness is good, because then it can turn over the battlefield. Anyway, the plane can take a huge amount of punishment and still fly.
Military purchases aren't just for today's conflicts.
Russia is going to continue to assert themselves against NATO's encroachment into the former USSR countries and China wants to be seen to be their region's unquestioned superpower. Both have a lot of political support internally to demonstrate their military strength.
