
The Plane Giving the F-35 a Run for Its Money - RachelF
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/low-and-slow
======
ckozlowski
There was a fantastic article and analysis I read some weeks ago that
addressed this issue, and I'm trying desperately to find it. However, I
remember the key points, and I'll surmise them here:

\- The A-10's survivability is overrated. The Air Force conducted studies
after both Gulf Wars and found that the A-10 was taking higher damage per
sortie when compared in '91 to '03\. That Iraq's air defense was in shambles
didn't seem to diminish the fact that the A-10 was becoming more vulnerable to
more sophisticated weapons. Technology has made cheaper weapons more effective
since the 1970s in which this was designed. In a higher threat environment,
the lack of sophisticated sensors, threat identification, and ECM is seen as
not boding well.

\- The A-29 is a fantastic plane. But it's giving the A-10 a run for it's
money, not the F-35. In the low-threat COIN environment, it has all of the
benefits of the A-10 with none of the drawbacks. That famous cannon isn't
always idea against militants in the mountains when you're worried about
spraying your own troops. That the A-19 can carry small guided weapons just
like the A-10 gives it capabilities where it counts. And it's half to a third
of the price to purchase and maintain.

So the A-10 is getting squashed from two sides: The F-35 can penetrate the
high-threat environment, and provide CAS in a lethal SAM environment, while
the A-29 can provide CAS/COIN against militants in a low to non-existent
threat environment. There is no middle ground. It left when air defense
systems gained the sophisticated tracking and accuracy that wasn't there in
the 1970s and 80s.

The A-10 was a fantastic plane and well designed for the time in which it was
envisioned to fight. But even I agree that it's time has passed. Like the
F-14, it's sad to see it go, but I think it's the right call.

~~~
protomyth
"The Air Force’s F-35A version of the aircraft and hold 182 rounds. It’s
slated to be externally mounted on the Marine Corps’ F-35B jump-jet variant
and the Navy’s F-35C aircraft carrier version and hold 220 rounds"[1]

The F-35 has no hope of doing sustained CAS. It is another Air Force "drop
your bombs and fire a few shots then run home" plane. An A-10 can keep
insurgents away from your troops for a fair amount of time.

They should strip the Air Force of its CAS role and hand it back to the Army.
Then the Air Force can concentrate on what it likes: strategic bombing and air
dominance.

1) [http://defensetech.org/2015/01/02/a-tale-of-two-gatling-
guns...](http://defensetech.org/2015/01/02/a-tale-of-two-gatling-
guns-f-35-vs-a-10/)

~~~
ckozlowski
There's a lot more to CAS than simply how many bullets your gun has. In any
case, it's often not the preferred weapon. Bullets are indiscriminate. Small,
precision warheads are becoming more in favor because the safety margin is
better.

We've been seeing quite a bit in Afghanistan now where CAS is actually being
performed by a B-1 carrying a SNIPER pod, sitting up at medium altitude with a
large load of small precision bombs.

But that shows you the type of environment Afghanistan is, where the Air Force
can deploy high value assets like a B-1 to perform CAS, because their anti-air
threat is non-existent. The Air Force is not developing the F-35 to fight
insurgents, they're deploying it to fight a well equipped, conventional force
that will have multiple layers of sophisticated weapons. They'll do everything
they can to soften these up before the strike aircraft go in. But there /will/
be some that remain, and its in this environment, that the F-35 needs to
survive.

In the low-threat environment against insurgents, you can do that job just as
well as the A-10 with the A-29 as the article states, for ever cheaper.

This is the conclusion that the Air Force has come to, and that's why they're
retiring the A-10.

~~~
protomyth
My cousin has related stories of the A-10 watching over him and his troops.
Bullets most definitely were the main item related. The A-10's ability to stay
above his group and fire a couple of rounds every so often allow them to
sleep. The F-35 or B-1 is not going to do that. Drones don't currently do
that. The goal is to safeguard the troops and bullets work very well.

The Air Force hates CAS and will say anything to get out of it. The fact that
a modern version of the A-10 has not been developed (the F-35 is not a modern
version) says everything about the Air Force's direction.

~~~
kosmic_k
The A-10 is an obsolete concept. Weapons are so much more advanced than armor
that the best defense is to not get hit. If you want cannon fire supporting
you from above then you want an Apache.

~~~
megaman22
Curious why half of your postings are ragging on the A-10 and claiming it is
obsolete?

For that matter, the Apache is considerably more fragile than the A-10.

~~~
ckozlowski
I was a little puzzled about this as well. Specifically, this incident:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_attack_on_Karbala](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_attack_on_Karbala)

------
petewailes
There's something similar in the world of jet aircraft too. The Textron
AirLand Scorpion, built from off the shelf parts, designed to take a whole
bunch of ordinary weapons systems, went from design to flying at air shows
inside 3 years, without massive costs. It's a subsonic, twin jet plane with a
stall speed around 100 knots, which costs ~$20m.

It's not remotely clever compared to the Eurofighter, Sukhoi Su-XX jets or
similar recent generation multi-role aircraft, but for low speed engagement
with flexible hardpoints and easy maintenance, it's hard to find many
competitors. Which is weird, given the nature of most aerial combat roles for
the past 15 years.

~~~
josefresco
I thought of these fighters as well. Governments don't buy these because they
don't want a 9/10 fighter. They'd rather buy a decades old 10/10 fighter even
though they'll never need (and probably can't pay for) that extra 1/10.

------
WalterBright
> but had the plane been flying as low and slow as older generations of attack
> planes did, the crew might’ve realized their error simply by looking down at
> the ground.

There are a lot of WW2 incidents of friendly fire casualties from ground
attack aircraft, both from aircraft attacking their own guys to aircraft being
downed from anti-aircraft fire from their own side. This happened to all sides
in WW2.

~~~
venomsnake
Also WWII had 4 major theaters, probably 100 000 000 troops mobilized or
deployed, and production lines for armor and planes that would make Henry Ford
gawk. The scale guaranteed that the friendly fire will occur often.

~~~
llukas
Not scale but lack of forward airforce liaison officers. Germans didn't have
the same problem.

------
dkrich
"A crew operating a high-tech fighter plane made a terrible mistake" -> "Had
the crew been close enough to the ground to see their enemies, the mistake
_may_ have been avoided" -> "A-10's require pilots to be close to their
enemies" -> "A-10's and planes that rely on dated technology are superior to
those that utilize the latest and greatest weaponry."

This argument is useless without determining how many incidents like the
example described at the beginning of the article occur, whether they could be
avoided with an older plane, and whether the cost of the mistakes made by the
newer planes outweighs the advantages they provide.

~~~
walshemj
Not in this case it was a sw issue on the GPS that caused this problem.

~~~
tsotha
It seems like fixing the software problem is a more reasonable response than
buying and maintaining significant numbers of a new air frame.

~~~
walshemj
Yes an example of poor test cases happened a few times in Iraq as well

------
Detrus
Afghans eventually withered down close Soviet air support. Soviet strategy
seemed to be winning with new air and infantry tactics. Until they started
losing hundreds of aircraft. If I remember correctly it was mostly heavy guns
and not US Stingers that did the trick.

The enemy is well aware that all they have to do is win an endurance war
against an inflexible bureaucracy that bleeds money and outlast the patience
of a fickle populace. This was demonstrated recently enough in Vietnam. US
strategy was losing, even though they won almost every fight in both wars.

It would take a lot more than this one cheap fighter to outlast the Afghans.
At least body count was better this time.

------
lispm
A different plane would not have helped winning Afghanistan. suffering might
have been even longer. The expectation to win there is an illusion.

Looking for technological solutions - low or high tech - is just more of the
same misguided thinking. The case is lost in a totally different way - it's
not technology.

~~~
venomsnake
Everything is winnable. But the pentagon is mostly a state/corporate subsidy
program with some military capabilities as a side effect.

US hasn't been in a war they HAVE to win since WWII (and even then continental
US was pretty safe) so the institutional knowledge that was bought with blood
is soon forgotten.

Afghanistan was not won, because there was never a criteria for winning
towards which the military and the state department to work. And the fact that
US has the habit of cooperating with the wrong people in third world
countries, makes things worse.

If the US had courts in Afghanistan in which to try corruption, Afghanistan
would be a better country now.

~~~
vlehto
Germany was winnable because after the fighting U.S. and other allies we're
willing to occupy the area with huge number of troops for 50 years. Also
Marshall plan.

Korean war was winnable for the same reason. Huge numbers there. Even today.
Here you can see the long tail of Korean war.
[http://www.heritage.org/~/media/images/reports/chart5_1.ashx...](http://www.heritage.org/~/media/images/reports/chart5_1.ashx?w=520&h=429&as=1)

Vietnam was not winnable because general population didn't support such high
numbers for occupation. There we're practically no U.S. troops left for the
last two years of the war.

Since Vietnam U.S. cannot use draft. So U.S. can only conquer one, maybe two
countries while keeping Korea and Europe under control. But that leaves those
troops bound on foreign soil. Which in turn limits U.S. power projection and
therefore cannot be the long term solution.

Wars have not changed. DoD just would love to find a way to win wars without
the ensuing occupation. And that's unlikely to happen.

~~~
bewo001
No, as old Macchiavelli put it: if a country is hard to conquer, it will be
easy to hold; if a country is easy to conquer, it is hard to hold. The reason
is that a united, highly organized country fights hard, but it won't fall
apart into dozens of factions after being conquered. Unlike countries like
Iraq or Afghanistan.

~~~
vlehto
I'm holding a copy of Prince and happened to find that verse. It's about
Ottoman imperium and feudal France.

If there is a dictator and you simply become the new dictator, then keeping a
country is easy. That would have been because none of the military leaders
would have any loyalty among the people. But nationalism has happened since
and it's questionable if this would hold anymore.

If there is large number of Feudal lords, this makes taking France potentially
easy as some of them would betray the king. But on the other hand they would
have loyalty of the people with them.

Times have changed, otherwise Iraq should be peace of cake now that Saddam is
dead.

~~~
bewo001
After Gulf War I, Saddam had to resort to brutal military actions to keep the
various tribes from seceding. Afghanistan has been ruled by 'feudal lords' for
a long time. Neither Iraqi nor Afghan soldiers were eager to die for their
states, which were colonial constructs anyway. If the country you are invading
implodes after a few days of fighting, you can expect trouble.

------
josefresco
"The Hornet’s cost per flight hour? $25,000 to $30,000, according to official
Navy figures. It’s estimated the F-35 costs anywhere between $31,900 to
$38,400 per hour to fly."

So the F-35's lower hourly rate is almost the same as the Hornet's upper rate?
Doesn't seem like that much of a deal.

~~~
sintaxi
The Hornet is an actual Jet and therefore those costs are real. The F-35
estimates are the most conservative that are legally defensible but will
almost certainly much greater than that once actually in service.

------
hyperion2010
The real kicker for me was the cost per hour for flying these. 600 bucks.
Roughly 2 orders of magnitude less than a 'modern' plane.

~~~
yxhuvud
The numbers I can find for operating JAS Gripen is roughly $4700, so there are
some modern planes that are only one magnitude cheaper. However, many tend to
not prioritize operating costs very high.

~~~
mcv
The Gripen is specifically designed for cost effectiveness. If you want a
modern jet fighter with the most bang for your buck, the Gripen is the most
obvious choice. If money is not an issue, there are plenty of better jets
available.

------
beloch
What I got from reading this article is the impression that it makes
absolutely no sense to use the F-35 for close-air support. It is inferior in
performance and far more expensive to operate than the A-29 for CAS missions.
Here in Canada, politicians are dithering and dickering over whether or not to
buy the F-35 now that it's looking less impressive and the weak Canadian
dollar has made it far more expensive. For some inexplicable reason, the
prevalent idea is that the RCAF should own and operate just one model of
fighter. This idea needs to change.

The reality is that Canadian planes have not engaged in air-to-air combat
since the Korean war, but virtually every conflict the CF participates in
requires close-air support. That mission is currently fulfilled by CF-18's.
The A-29, or a similar plane, could provide superior CAS capability for far
less money. Then, as an added bonus, the successor to the CF-18 would not need
to be compromised for CAS, as the F-35 is. Canada could look for a pure air-
superiority fighter, and buy a smaller number of them because they would not
be called upon to perform CAS. The end result would be an air force that's
better at it's primary roles and far cheaper, and Canadian forces (and their
allies) on the ground would be far safer.

Maybe I'm wrong?

~~~
tonyarkles
I'm totally with you. The CF-18 is pretty good for Arctic sovereignty and for
maintaining our NORAD commitments, but absolutely terrible for peacekeeping &
observation missions. Same goes for coast guard missions. The F-35 seems like
it would just be bad at all of them. Would you want to fly a sortie north of
the Arctic circle in a single engine jet?!

~~~
Ras_
In your opinion what makes it terrible for peacekeeping & observation? Isn't
it just a matter of Canada not buying and integrating suitable armament? With
Jdams and Paveways you have to go too close for early operations, but Canada
still dropped 10% of bombs in Libya according to wikipedia. Sweden has a
similar setup, missing proper ranged options but they were restricted to doing
strictly recon in Libya. In the end I suspect that even if you had the
ability, no-one besides USA(/UK/France/Germany) has the stockpiles/willingness
to start throwing around cruise missiles in foreign ops. For smaller countries
there's political reasoning behind doing enough but not everything you
possibly could in foreign ops.

Not all modern fighters have started as a multi-role, but every good fighter
has ended up as one.

~~~
tonyarkles
Dropping bombs isn't necessarily peacekeeping :).

If I'm remembering properly, my grandfather was stationed in Yemen in '63-'64
as an aircraft field mechanic. Their mission was purely observational: every
12 hours, fly over the border and count any accumulation of military
equipment. I believe they had a DHC-3 Twin Otter.

I don't know the specifics, but looking at the specifications: 945 mile range,
121 mph cruise speed on the DHC-3. That's give or take a 6-7 hour loiter (they
were landing in the desert and had fuel trucks come daily). It's harder to get
exact specs on how a CF-18 would perform on such a mission, but I've got a
pretty good feeling it's not going to be landing on any gravel airstrips, nor
is it going to be fun trying to count vehicles on the ground.

When I think of peacekeeping missions, I think of boots on the ground, ideally
with air support. Looking at the A-29 from the article, that sounds a lot more
like the type of aircraft that should be providing that support.

------
walshemj
The blue on blue in Afghanistan mentioned in the first para was caused by the
GPS resetting its self (to the current location) when the batteries where
changed.

Which is why the SF team unfortunately called the strike on them selves - this
happened a couple of times I belive.

------
Quanticles
My biggest concern about F-35's is how quickly they can be made in wartime
situations. They have so many sophisticated instruments... can they really be
mass produced? In WW2, Germany had the best tanks, but the Soviets and the
Americans overwhelmed them with numbers. You can say that WW2 is an old war,
but if you're wrong do we really have a reliable plane that we can mass
produce anymore?

~~~
greedo
In modern, high-intensity warfare, you fight with what you have. The days of
producing a Liberty ship a day are way past our industrial capability, and the
technology in the F-35 and fighters of its caliber limit the ability to mass
produce in anything close to WW2 quantities.

~~~
Quanticles
You could say that about the initial stage of the war, but can you maintain an
occupying force for years against a sophisticated country? In that case, we
would eventually run out of F-35's due to sabotage or maintenance issues.

This idea that the only thing that matters is what you already have creates a
race - can you crush resistance before those who are resisting realize that
you have limited long-term capability?

~~~
greedo
The weapons used in an occupation are vastly different than what you use to
initially defeat an opponent. Most occupations are faced with insurgencies
equipped with small arms, not 5th generation aircraft.

In Iraq, we had time to spool up production of MRAPs to counter IEDs, and were
pretty quick to deploy equipment that would aid in COIN warfare.

But MRAPs would be shit in a real war against a peer grade opponent; too
heavy, too slow, confined to roads, poor overall performance.

------
kjjw
A terrible article entirely predicated on anecdotal evidence. I have no doubt
that most of the 'technologically advanced' equipment Americans put into and
will put into wars will ultimately fail to live up to expectations.

But let's give another anecdote about the A10. In Iraq, the A10, just like the
B52 in Afghanistan, was responsible for killing two truck loads of British
soldiers. Its pilot mistook the luminous arrow signs that indicated friendly
forces for missile systems.

In Afghanistan, an American Apache mowed down a platoon of British troops
after being called in as air support and mistaking the troops for the enemy.

The thing that links all these incidences is not low or high tech but the
American military. Clearly its pilots, soldiers, staff are not trained
properly. Just a bunch of reckless idiots. Much like the government that sent
them.

~~~
djrogers
> * The thing that links all these incidences is not low or high tech but the
> American military. Clearly its pilots, soldiers, staff are not trained
> properly.

No, the thing that links them all is war - it's incredibly messy and people
have been killing the wrong people in wars for as long as men have been
fighting.

~~~
cmdkeen
Whilst you are correct, and every conflict has blue on blue engagements, the
US military have a very bad reputation for being bloody dangerous to their
allies. Mission videos that do emerge of incidents where US aircraft,
helicopters and drones end up engaging friendly or non-hostile targets
commonly show a marked desire to engage the enemy and view any and all
information coming in as confirming that initial prejudice.

I'm not saying this applies to all US military personnel or that other
militaries do not have problems.

~~~
ckozlowski
I honestly believe this is largely the result of the U.S. performing the vast
majority of sorties flown.

Deploying air forces in an expeditionary capability is difficult and
expensive. It's much more difficult than deploying a ground unit. Few forces
have this capability.

When you're in Afghanistan, and 90% of the CAS sorties are performed by the
U.S., then it stands to reason that if an incident occurs, it'll likely have
been a U.S. aircraft based on odds alone.

~~~
kjjw
I suspect you're correct. Issue is, from what I read, it would perhaps be
better if most of those sorties were never flown. It seems that use of air
power will tend to prioritise the lives of soldiers over civilians. ('Blue on
blue' not withstanding, but then my point above was not really about that, but
about the anecdotal nature of much of the conversation.)

~~~
ckozlowski
If I'm reading you correctly and I take this to it's logical conclusion, one
could correctly assume that in any war, regardless of the precautions,
technology, and training, you will have civilian deaths. You'll have terrible
incidents where friendly forced were shot at, or buildings misidentified and a
family of four blown up.

It's probably drifting out of scope of this conversation, but it can probably
never be reemphasized enough that these will be the consequences of any war,
and as such, a war should never be seen as a favorable outcome. In that, I
definitely agree with you.

~~~
kjjw
Indeed agreed.

------
johngalt
I can certainly buy the narrative that the military is spending too much money
or designing weapons for the 'last war'. Yet I have a nagging suspicion that
this is like the business users complaining that IT won't just buy everyone
$200 laptops to save money. Devil's advocate: what could the Airforce's
rationale be? I hate to write off the professionals so quickly.

If you need a turboprop attack plane to deal with a specific threat, you can
fast track something cheaply because it's a widely known/used technology. The
converse isn't true. You can't go back and decide you need a top tier
$trillion fighter in a month.

Loiter time is important. Yet most military engagements in history are decided
by speed and firepower.

~~~
erobbins
The problem is that all the employees are just playing minesweeper, a $3k
macbook pro running windows in a VM is the wrong tool for the job. $200
notebooks are perfect.

------
Havoc
Thats a bit like eating soup with a fork and concluding the fork is broken.

~~~
eru
The fork is the wrong tool.

~~~
hyperion2010
You have to give the guys the right tool for the job. The guys are telling you
that the F-35 is the wrong tool for the job. "Yes, keep using that drill to
install those nails because otherwise the taxpayers will have our asses."

------
mrmondo
Talk about clickbate, it's a shame to see this up voted on HN.

------
ElectricPenguin
This is the equivalent to saying that a cigarette boat could get a couple
shots off in a fight with a battleship because of it's maneuverability and
speed.

Well yes that may be true.

However, it's more likely a battleship would sink a cigarette boat with a
precision guided weapon a second after it becomes visible on the horizon.

~~~
th0waway
ahhh, but put a little effort into building the cigarette boat and the
response envelope is drastically small, small enough that a swarm of cheap
boats could gut a battleship.

------
chinathrow
I would love to see the content labelled as "sponsored by Embraer" or the
likes.

~~~
sanoli
Really? You really think Embraer would go to _Vice_ for its PR?

~~~
strictnein
Their PR dept could very well have floated this story all over the place and
Vice is the one that took the bait.

------
erikpukinskis
My working assumption is that military procurement has everything to do with
which contractors need to get paid and very little to do with military
objectives, since we don't actually have any achievable military objectives.

------
megaman22
For close-air-support (which the Air Force really doesn't want to be involved
in...), the most effective aircraft have often been cheap, slow, unsexy
aircraft that can carry a lot of ordinance, take a lot of punishment, and get
down low and slow to hit ground targets with bullets. See the Ju-87 Stuka,
IL-2 Sturmovik, Douglas A-1 Skyraider, AC-47 and AC-130 gunships, and the
A-10.

------
moron4hire
Quantity has a quality all its own.

------
ordbajsare
War in Afghanistan? I seem to miss the formal declaration of war by congress
as required by the constitution.

~~~
13thLetter
Happily, I'm here to help! This is what you missed:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Terrorists)

Anything else you need?

------
dingaling
WW2 era? What a load of rubbish, just because it has a propellor. The basic
Tucano first flew in 1980.

By the same yardstick I assume Vice thinks a helicopter is da Vinci era?

~~

The turboprop ( geared propellor driven by a jet engine ) is still the most
efficient means of aviation propulsion devised; it surpassed internal-
combustion engines in efficiency in the early 1960s, with the Turboméca
Astazou, and continued to improve.

Turboprops fall-off in efficiency with altitude and speed, but below around
20,000 ft and 400 kts they're the champions.

~~~
allencoin
Typically in the news process the copyeditor chooses or edits the title of the
piece for brevity and "punch."

By saying "WWII-era," the title very succinctly sums up the idea that "hey,
there's this interesting airplane that's been in the works alongside the very
expensive F-35, but it's actually much cheaper and much less technologically
advanced, but actually much better suited for the war in Afghanistan--and it
resembles the types of fighter planes that you've seen in 'Pearl Harbor' and
'Saving Private Ryan'."

The title is meant to convey as much information to the audience (a general,
non-technical audience) in as few words as possible, and it mostly does its
job.

If you read the article, it's clear that the authors understand the
difference.

~~~
reitoei
I think dingaling's point is that the headline is clickbait.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
The editor was trying to convey as much info within the given length as they
could. They didn't realize that it would result in a title that was also
clickbait. Remember, never blame malice where stupidity will suffice.

(P.S. Of course it was click bait and purposefully done so, there is an art to
creating clickbait headlines that can be defended as not being clickbait.)

~~~
smallape
Do you actually have a line of communication to the editor or are you
guessing?

~~~
Lawtonfogle
Direct line of communication. But they could still be lying, so I guess I
should say it was a guess.

Actually, I got a psychic to get me direct access to their brain, so I'm sure
they aren't lying. But they could be incorrectly remembering it. So we still
can't be certain. For it to be 100% not a guess, I'm going to need to get go
back in time with my time machine and have the psychic come with me, but he is
saying something about how that could cause problems.

So sadly we are stuck just inferring (guessing) with the information given.

------
smegel
Hell, lets scrap them all for a fleet of modern drones supported by advanced
AI.

